Title: Rambling and Bewildered

| Part One | Part Two |

Fandom: Lost and Delirious

Author: Chosentwo4381

Email: chosentwo4381@yahoo.com

Summary: After the movie, Mouse has to take care of Tori

Disclaimer: I don't own these characters; they belong in some measure to Susan Swann, and the rest to Léa Pool.

Author's Note: I'm not at all sure where this came from. It's not beta'd. This part is really short. I'm not sure how long this is going to be. It'll probably be Mouse/Tori eventually.

Part One

Mouse's POV
May 23

Leaving school for the summer holidays was almost worse than going there for the first time. Then I had no idea what to expect, now I have no idea what to do. Paulie is dead; and Tori? Well, Tori kind of just snapped after it happened. It made her sister realize exactly what she had done by walking into that room after she had been told not to. Because in that room, our personal idyll, as odd as things were, we were all safe, no matter what the real world was like things were okay.

Mrs. Vaughn, knowing the truth of everything from the beginning, talked to Tori's parents, so here we are now, in a car with a hired driver, going out to a place in the country where hopefully, I can do for Tori what I couldn't do for Paulie. Save her, from herself. 

When I first realized that they were lovers, it didn't bother me that much; at least they each knew that they had someone that loved them. But later, when things began to fall apart, and Tori asked me to help Paulie, I began to wonder if love was worth it at all. To let someone become your whole world and then, not to move, but to have someone push you, and to fall, just seems like courting disaster. But they are/were my friends, the first true ones I had ever had, so I'll do this to the best of my ability. Looking at Tori hurts these days. She stares straight ahead most of the time, and even if you are standing right there, she's not looking at you. It's like she's seeing beyond what's really there. Sometimes she talks, but not to me, or to anyone else for that matter, only to Paulie. She's still beautiful, but now in an ephemeral angelic way rather than the vibrant goddess aura she exuded before.

I want to fix this, as much as I can at least. I can't bring Paulie back, but maybe Tori has a chance. Maybe we both do.

Part Two

May 28

'Unsex me here and fill me from toe to top with direst cruelty'.

I wish that when I gave into the raptor, that it had worked; that I really didn’t care when I watch her stare up at the sky for hours. Or that when she bursts into tears at the cry of a bird that it didn’t make me want to cry too. I say it makes me want to cry, because I haven’t. Not since that day. I can’t cry for a Paulie who is finally free. Even though she’s gone, it’s like her spell still exists. I still exist because she willed it so.

We’ve been here a few days and I can’t help but remember what Tori said when she took me aside that day and asked me to stick by Paulie. She told me that it would be the hardest thing anyone ever asked me to do. She was wrong. Watching Paulie destroy herself for the only person she ever loved was easier, because Tori was still alive and even if she didn’t get her back she was still there, to be adored from afar.

But this, this watching Tori destroy her self for a Paulie that isn’t here to care anymore… It’s harder than watching Paulie fall every night in my dreams.

I overheard Tori once, back when everything was still okay, she told Paulie that she would totally lose it without her. I hope that’s not true. I need her to be okay. Because I don’t know how to be Mary Brave without one of them there.