Chapter Fourteen → What have you done? What if there's no heaven?

Warning! Warning! Danger Will Robinson!

This chapter will feature some issues that might make people uncomfortable, without giving too much away too soon, it deals with depression and substance abuse and the things that it can lead too. If you think this might make you uncomfortable, perhaps it's best you skip this chapter.

As the weeks dragged on, Zane took care of his infant son and watched as Joanna pulled back more and more. The woman hadn't even picked the child up since the day she brought him home.

"Joanna?" Kinsley knocked on the bathroom door. "Joanna, what are you doing in there?" The brunette could hear the people on the other side of the door, knocking, banging, talking, but they seemed so far away. The voices echoed in a tunnel of distance that was beyond Joanna's realm of caring.

Eventually Zane had enough and decided that he and Joanna were going to talk things out whether she liked it or not. "You can't walk away from me!" The man said after the woman attempted to walk out on the conversation for the third time in twenty minutes, Cherie just reminding him gently to keep his voice down. "Joanna, dammit, why won't you talk to me, what the hell is wrong!?"

 "You know what Zane!" She snapped, pointing at him. "You and your fucking hero complex is starting to get on my nerves, you are driving me nuts! I'm not your god dammed problem to fix, so just drop it!"

"What about our son?"

"I didn't ask for that!"

"And i did!?" Zane snapped, letting his anger get the better of him. "I didn't just make him outta thin air Joe!"

"He ain't my issue."

"He should be! I have no idea what's going on in your damn head anymore!" Zane huffed before stomping away.

The weeks following their argument, Joanna spoke to Zane very rarely, the woman spending more and more time at Haven. More than once she'd disappear for days only to turn up beaten or bloodied, the two elderly women in the house tending to her wounds silently, wishing there was something else they could do for the child but considering how much she had pulled away, they considered themselves lucky that she even came to the house when she was hurt. "You can't live like this honey, you need to do something." Kinsley said one day, her words falling on deaf ears she was sure. 

"You're right." Joanna said softly, surprising the other woman that she was even listening. But the look on the brunette's face made Kinsley worry for some reason, a knot of fear turning in her stomach.

That night as everyone crawled into bed, Joanna was awake, alone. The woman had grabbed a couple of bottles of booze from Haven and brought them home with her, hoping to drown her sorrows in them, whatever they happened to be. Truth was, Joanna didn't know when her sorrows had started, or really when they had over taken her life so completely, all she knew was that they were always there. They were all she could see, all she could hear. The pain would beat on her, sting her more than any smack down that a vagrant John could lay upon her. The noise in her head was screaming, swirling, causing a rushing in her ears that made it difficult to hear anything else. She felt like she had died years ago, a zombie walking through life, her body too stupid to follow her missing soul to the emptiness of death.

It wasn't until the next morning that someone found her.

"Joanna?" Zane's voice shook, the man momentarily frozen in place. She couldn't be, she wouldn't have....

"Joanna!?" Zane rushed over to the woman, kneeling down next to her, seeing the pills, the booze, the letters. 

Zane's body went slack as he sat back down on the floor, bowing his head.

She was cold, it was over.

Chapter Notes:

Oh the drama! Yes, this is what i had planned out for her all along, well, actually i had a few ideas but i went with this because she seemed to be the red herring of my game glitches and the sooner she was gone, the freaking better! The moment her character was killed the game glitches seemed to stop, so i figured there must have been something tied into her when she was rendered in the game. I will miss her, cause she was cool, but for the sake of the story and my own sanity, bitch had to go lol. I forgot the say what Michael's traits were in the last chapter, he's insane and good. I must admit, i love playing the insane sims cause they're so funny, so when he was randomly given that, i was like, whee! Stay tuned, or ya know, whatever. Cause there is more to come.

Oh, and if anyone was curious, the pills, booze bottles and scattered paper i got from Club Crimsyn. They be fabulous, check 'em out if you haven't already ^_^