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Swallow The Moon	By : GhostHelwig Category: +1 through F > Ed, Edd, and Eddy Views: 9539 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Ed Edd and Eddy, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 15
- 16
- 17
Disclaimer – I do not own or profit from Ed, Edd N Eddy or “Fallen”. The Eds belong to the Cartoon network and the song belongs to Sarah McLachlan. Still rated R, though for things only referenced in this chapter. Again, for the thousandth time (say it with me now), a slash story.
Author’s Notes - I must apologize for how long it took me to upload this chapter. I’ve been busy, with a job, my original fiction, and various illnesses (colds, mostly) that were never serious but always annoying. I know that just sounds like a bunch of pathetic excuses, and I’m sorry for that, too. I hope to somehow begin managing my time a bit better.
This chapter is dedicated to two very special people – Mysticlynx and Embrio at deviantart. I love you both, and I didn’t mean to disappear like that...
As always, special thanks to darthelwig for inspiring this story. You rock, dearest.
And thanks as well to everyone who has taken the time to review, or even just read this story. You make this hard work incredibly fulfilling.
This chapter ties directly into the last, and to the next few following it. Just thought I should point that out...
A final note – I’ve received a few reviews at fanfiction.net asking just when it was that Double D got raped. Though it was never explicitly stated until this last chapter that that was what had happened to him, I ask you to reread chapters ten through twelve for the information you seek. I tried to be subtle when writing that plot twist, but it seems that to some I was just plain unclear... Again, my apologies.
Well, that’s more than enough of my rambling. Enjoy. Peace, all.

Lonely Light (Would Not Heal)
by Ghost Helwig

It had started out so... simply. A connection made when they were younger, strengthened as they grew older by the simple fact of their being the only one who truly understood the other – Ed could love them, unconditionally, purely, but understanding would never be one of his gifts. And they both loved him all the more for his gentle simplicity.
“Heaven bent to take my hand...”
But then... Double D could remember that first night, the pain Eddy had been in, his own fruitless attempts to comfort... And then a hand, misplaced, and a look held too long, and finally a clumsy kiss met his lips and stole them forever.
“...and lead me through the fire.”
But now... Double D knew he’d betrayed that memory, betrayed both Eddy and Ed with his thoughtless idiocy, his innocent and damning mistake.
What was wrong with him, that he could feel completely alone-
And then go out of his way to ensure that he stayed that way?
“Be the long awaited answer...”
And so now here he was, huddled on his bed at night, listening to the silence that forcefully permeated his house. It was always quiet here. The few times this place had been filled with loud, vibrating energy were the times his friends were visiting.
They were also the only times he felt at home here.
“...to a long and painful fight.”
He tried to fight the tears, the knowledge, but it was all just too much – he was sobbing, laughing first, but then weeping like he always did-
Like he often felt he would always do.
“Truth be told...”
It didn’t help that he could feel eyes on his skin, had been feeling watched since he’d run home from Ed’s – was it only a few mornings ago? It felt like so much longer.
It felt like he had been here, suffering through this, living his cycle of guilty, broken grief, forever.
“I've tried my best...”
He’d tried so hard, too. Tried to be better than he was, prove the judgmental voices in his head (that sounded so, so much like his parents; he knew their voices better than their faces) wrong.
But he’d failed. Badly.
No wonder Eddy couldn’t forgive him.
“But somewhere along the way...”
He fell into a restless sleep, tossing and turning throughout the night, hearing raised voices even in his slumber. Resting no longer seemed to give him any... rest.
But that... was only right.
“I got caught up in all there was to offer...”
It was his own fault. He couldn’t even remember why anymore-
But it was.
“...and the cost was so much more than I could bear.”
He’d lost everything. Eddy, Ed, his own sense of safety, his self-worth-
With a soft sigh he sat up in bed, staring blindly, desolately around at his hopelessly rumpled bedspread, his own thin, trembling hands.
A breath, he thought to himself. Another. And another. A breath. Breathe.
“Though I've tried...”
He got up, shaky on legs weak with stress, lack of food and sleep, and far too much fear, and began pulling everything off his bed. He moved mechanically, returning form and order to his bed, idly wishing it was that easy to redo the mistakes he’d made, to fix his broken life.
“I've fallen...”
And suddenly it was all too much, and he was racing downstairs, scrambling for the phone. Old sticky notes whirled off into the air in his wake, got crushed beneath his violently shaking palm. He dialed the number from memory – though he’d never used it before, the sticky note under his sweaty hand had glared the numbers up at him ever since he was a child...
He used to stare at that sticky note when he was sitting home alone at night, homework long since done, dinner eaten, and no one else around, to care for him, to put him to bed (put him back together), to love him...
“I have sunk so low...”
The phone rang once, twice. When he heard the distinctive click, his heart soared; for one all-too-brief, beautifully shining moment, he was not alone.
“I messed up...”
“We’re sorry. The number you have dialed has been disconnected.”
“...better I should know...”
The cold, recorded voice sliced into him, blew all his hopes to tiny pieces. Tears clouded his eyes, shock paralyzing his whole body. As the recording began again, he flung the receiver to the floor, the whole phone toppling off the table along with it.
“So don't come ‘round here...”
He clenched his fists, a few random, frustrating (frustrated) tears falling down his cheeks. Breathe, he told himself. Just breathe.
The shaking had invaded his entire being; it wasn’t until the trembling had eased a little that he knelt down, replacing the phone neatly on the table. Through the receiver, he could still hear the robotic voice giving its icy message in a dull, pitiless monotone.
He hung up quickly.
“...and tell me ‘I told you so’...”
Their number had changed, and they hadn’t told him. That lifeline he’d always thought would be his, his safety net, his connection to them, was gone. Severed.
And a terrible, damning, too-easy-to-believe thought-
Had it ever really been there at all?
Was he really so bad, that not even his parents could love him?
“We all begin with good intent...”
He squeezed his eyes shut, biting his bottom lip between his teeth to hold in a scream of pure frustration. What exactly was it he had done to deserve this? Was he just meant to be alone?
“Breathe,” he whispered in a voice that shook as violently as he did, shook, wavered – fell apart. “Breathe.”
“Love was raw and young...”
Funny how that was so very hard to do anymore.
“We believed that we could change ourselves...”
Nothing he’d ever done was enough. Not the good grades, or the perfect attendance – he’d even gone to school when he had strep throat, had thanked God that he fell ill with the chicken pox during the summer, and for what? Had they ever cared about anything he’d done, anything he’d achieved – even anything he’d, however rarely this came about, failed at? Had they ever even noticed?
“...the past could be undone...”
He felt so... disappointed, all of a sudden. Not betrayed, not really, because to be betrayed one had to expect something from someone, but still disappointed. He’d always believed (secretly, in his heart of hearts, where not even Eddy knew him) that one day, if he was just perfect enough, they’d come through.
Was it really so hard to love him? Was it really?
“But we carry on our backs...”
Eddy might think so, Double D thought, feeling inexplicably chilled.
Yes, if anyone had a real reason to, it would be Eddy.
“...the burden time always reveals...”
He stood, uncertain on his own feet, uncertain – uncomfortable – in his own skin. Early morning sunlight, tinted pink and gold, gently streamed in through the windows, caught in his unbound dark hair and streaked over his flushed cheeks, but it didn’t warm him.
“...in the lonely light of morning...”
Outside, a bird gave a particularly loud squawk, and he whirled around, throwing himself backwards. He slammed into the wall, hard, sticky notes catching and pulling at his hair. He pulled them out with impatient fingers.
“...in the wound that would not heal...”
He wanted so badly to be free of his pain-
It was too bad his pain showed no interest in abandoning him.
“It's the bitter taste of losing everything...”
As a small act of defiance, he dropped the sticky notes to the unyielding floor, where they fluttered down atop those that had already fallen.
Breathe, he thought again, because he suddenly couldn’t.
“...I held so dear.”
His back throbbed as he pushed himself away from the wall, running one pale hand through the sweaty darkness of his hair. He was still shivering; he couldn’t seem to stop.
“I've fallen...”
He walked into his kitchen, staring blankly around at the familiar blue walls, yellow sticky notes scattered haphazardly around, a mess one wouldn’t think his stern, sternly controlled parents would allow. And yet, it was their mess; their sickness.
He had never felt less like he belonged there, like he belonged with them, in his whole life.
“I have sunk so low...”
He’d spent his every single moment here trying to turn this house into a home, with no help from anyone. When Ed and Eddy were there-
He stopped, choked. His own thoughts choked him; he couldn’t think of Ed and Eddy without a debilitating ache centering in his chest, clenching his lungs, his heart.
“...I messed up...”
He wished, suddenly, that he could call someone, anyone, just anyone who would listen. Anyone who could tell him what to do, what to say, how he was supposed to be feeling...
Because he no longer trusted himself to do anything right-
Even feel.
“Better I should know.”
A few hours later, and he was still standing there, sunlight chasing itself over the tiled floor. He probably would’ve stayed standing there, locked in place, had there not been a harsh knocking on his front door.
“So don't come ‘round here...”
His jaw trembled, his whole body spasming, preparing deep in his bones to flee. It was another few minutes before he realized the pounding of his heart had distracted him from the continuous pounding on his door.
“And tell me ‘I told you so’...”
Instead of running for the front door, he raced upstairs, panting and sobbing for air. Behind him, he could hear his front door opening, hear footsteps and eerie, sneering laughter floating up at him...
“N-no,” he gasped. “No.”
“Oh...”
He tripped and fell, slamming hard into the stairs. Heavy footsteps sounded behind him, moving faster, thumping violently into the stairs now that he was down, vulnerable. He cried out, lurched forward-
And fell to his knees on the cold kitchen floor.
“Heaven bent to take my hand...”
He blinked, ran a shaky hand through his hair (he hated having his hair down for many reasons, one of which was that it allowed him a nervous habit he’d done everything in childhood to curb) as he rose to his feet, all natural grace gone. He was hallucinating now, apparently – and wasn’t that just... fitting?
He had lived through so many true horrors – why not live through a few unreal ones as well?
“Nowhere left to turn...”
Carefully he climbed upstairs, blind to most everything, feeling nothing but the fine trembling in his bones. Before he entered his bedroom, he stopped only once, to glance numbly out a window.
There were people gathered outside, in the middle of the street. A veritable crowd. Curious despite himself, he leaned forward, staring down with wide, innocent eyes.
His friends were down there. He saw Sarah’s bright mop, Nazz’s golden tresses, Eddy’s-
Eddy.
“I'm lost to those I thought were friends...”
Hurriedly he backed away from the window, stumbling into his bedroom. He didn’t care why everyone was down there; no, he didn’t care at all.
“Breathe,” he whispered. “Please, just breathe.”
“...to everyone I know...”
It didn’t occur to him until he was getting ready for his first scaldingly hot shower of the day that they weren’t gathered in the middle of the cul-de-sac, but directly in front of his out-of-the-way house. He reminded himself that he didn’t care, and tried his best to put it out of his head. (But Eddy was down there; he could feel Eddy’s heart beating against his skin, as he had when they were together, feel it like a second skin, a thump-thump that caressed his very flesh.)
Because it didn’t matter (Eddy, please, I miss you) – he couldn’t afford to let it.
“Oh, they turned their heads...”
After all – what was he to them anymore, to those once-friends who’d always shunned him but never really hurt him? Just a big joke, a forgotten and useless trick, a broken toy. The village fag.
“...embarrassed...”
He remembered being at Nazz’s Fourth of July party after everything had happened, after being beaten and left to suffer in the rain. He’d made his peace with it before, easily, but now... He remembered, and he knew now what it all meant.
The little companionship they’d ever offered was being taken away. He was just too different. They could never accept it – accept him.
On that day, they’d seen his pain and ignored it.
“Pretend that they don't see...”
On that day, they’d proven that his only friends were Ed and Eddy-
“But it's one missed step...”
And he’d very effectively, very neatly rid himself of them.
“...you'll slip before you know it.”
If he could make it up to them, he would. In a heartbeat.
But life was not that easy; he knew that. When you burned your bridges to ash, what was left for you to rebuild from?
“And there doesn't seem a way to be redeemed.”
Hope... He needed to find hope again.
But... did he even deserve to?
“Though I've tried...”
He glanced up, suddenly, finding himself on his knees in the shower. Burning water poured all around him (hotter even than his remembrances of past embraces, Eddy, breathe, Eddy, just breathe), scorching his already aching skin, but the ice in his chest didn’t melt at all...
Tense and uneasy, Double D wiped at his eyes. Were those tears on his cheeks, or just drops of water from the shower, warm on his still-iced flesh?
He couldn’t even tell.
“I've fallen...”
And moreover, he didn’t even care.
“...I have sunk so low...”
He dried himself off quickly, hating every second he spent unclothed (yet he still showered multiple times a day – he never bothered trying to make logical sense of his neuroses anymore, the only thing in his life given that special, strange freedom, especially since the day he’d been – just especially). He shivered from both nerves and the unshakable cold inside him, body atremble and alert for any small, unaccounted-for noise, any sound that would tell him he was no longer alone...
But there was nothing.
“I messed up...”
Was that a blessing, or a curse?
“...better I should know.”
He couldn’t tell that anymore, either.
With a restless sigh he went back into his bedroom, glancing anxiously at the window (Eddy) before grabbing his hairbrush from the top of his dresser.
Though he was frightened now, constantly, always, by the world outside his house, he couldn’t bear to shut the blinds on it. Despite himself, despite everything, despite even how watched he suspected it contributed to him feeling, he couldn’t shut out the world that way.
No matter how crestfallen and dejected he was, he could not turn his back on the little bit of love he knew Ed and even Eddy still held for him.
“So don't come ‘round here...”
And closing the blinds would be closing them off, shutting them out. It would be boxing himself in. It would be accepting that the rest of his life would be spent living in cold, lonely fear.
And it would be letting the darkness inside him, the darkness he had not put there, win.
He couldn’t do that, any of that. Even though he knew he was expected to.
“...and tell me...”
He could hear high-pitched, mocking laughter echoing in his head. He tried to ignore it.
“’I told you so’...”
He walked, falsely calm, to his bed, plopping unceremoniously down on its perfectly-made surface. He ran the brush through his slowly drying hair, bristles tickling, scratching, his skull, even though he was gentle (he had sensitive skin, a fact Eddy had always both simultaneously appreciated and exploited, to his cocky, satisfied enjoyment and Double D’s own quiet, blushing pleasure). The brush both soothed and agitated Double D at once, with its tender touches and seething hot memories and impersonal feel, the weight of his hair pulling his head down – at least, that’s what he would have claimed made him lower his darkened gaze to the blanket, had anyone been around to ask.
His hair spilled in front of his eyes, hiding them in concealing shadows as he started to cry.
“...oh...”
The brush fell to the bedspread, dropped from powerless, hopelessly trembling fingers that instantly moved to cover his face; moved to hide him. He sobbed into his hands until he’d wept himself dry, and weary.
“...I messed up...”
Shaking – he was still shaking, as though he still cried. He shifted around until he could pull the blankets up and over himself, huddling under them with only his head peeking out.
So much knowledge swirled around in his head, theorems, equations, wisdom gleaned from books and people and the observations he formed with his own formidable mind, rattling around and setting off more brainstorms when they collided, more fonts of knowledge blooming in him every second, a meteor shower of facts and data and intelligent, reasoned reflections on reality-
Yet none of it helped him at all.
“...better I should know...”
His gaze drifted again to the window. They were out there-
Yes. They were out there.
All of them.
“Don’t come ‘round here...”
“Breathe,” he whispered – and it came out as a breathless gasp, a plea; heartfelt, and broken.
“Just breathe, Eddward.”
“And tell me...”
“Breathe.”
“...’I told you so’...”
Hopefully, just saying it would keep him from stopping.
- 15
- 16
- 17
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Swallow The Moon