“You let your guard down, with her”, she thought to herself, distractedly running her hand through her hair, “…You do it all the time. No defenses, no shields, no armors. What are you doing? Are you waiting to see if she’ll disappoint you like everyone else?”.

Like Jenny. Jenny used her friendship at her own advantage, with you, didn’t she, Shane?

Shane shook her head, frowning. Sometimes, she really didn’t like the voices in her head.

“…Or are you trying to rediscover the innocence in you?”, she murmured to nobody in particular.

The weakness in you.

The voice into her head suggested, slyly, and Shane covered her eyes with the back of her head, scoffing.

“There’s no innocence left”, she mumbled, gruffly, to the empty room, and for a second she felt like yelling it at the top of her lungs. Yelling that there was no innocence left, in her, no goodness, no loving kindness, no light.

But she stayed quiet. And she perceived the dull pain, painful and crawling, inside her soul. She tried to soothe it, but that was something she couldn’t do without alcohol or drugs. And her apartment was clean, now. Since Carmen had first stepped into Shane’s apartment, Shane had stopped taking drugs for no apparent reasons. Maybe, she didn’t want to disappoint her new friend. Or maybe, she didn’t need to lose herself anymore, at least when Carmen was around.

As the dull pain started to become sharper and sharper – Shane pictured it into her mind, and it looked like a warped hand covered in a blackish, wrinkled skin – Shane looked frantically through the few self-defenses left, and found Carmen’s eyes.

Carmen’s eyes behind the lenses, big and shining and dark, reassuring and sweet.

“I can’t imagine how someone could hate you”, Carmen had told her, and Shane clung to those words tightly. Slowly, the dull pain disappeared and she closed her eyes.

”…A friend in need’s a friend indeed,
A friend with weed is better,
A friend with breasts and all the rest,
A friend who’s dressed in leather…”

***

Carmen was still awake, staring absent-mindedly outside the window. There was nothing really interesting there, the night was quiet and the streets practically deserted, the whole city seemed frozen, but Carmen’s mind was caught into an emotional turmoil.