Diego had felt that he was forgotten. They didn't have the long conversations in the middle of the night anymore. She hardly even acknowledged he existed anymore. She had nearly forgotten his name. He felt like a childhood fad, something that came and went. But, he was always there. The times she thought she was hallucinating and her grip on the world was wavering, that was him, trying to remind her that he was there. He had tried less dangerous methods before. He left behind dark blue hairs on her shirts. He left scratches on her arms where he used to lay. There were paw prints on her bed. But, she ignored the signs. She thought she was just going crazy. She applied rash cream to the scratches, washed off the paw prints, and blamed the blue hairs on the cat. The cat, who had grey and white hair, hardly blue. He tried desperately to get her to remember him. He missed her. So, desperate times called for desperate measures.
He brought back her nightmares.
He brought back her hallucinations.
The train station? - He amplified all of the sounds. All the things he promised to keep away from her, he brought back with full force. And she suffered the way he suffered. He watched her become desperate. He watched her grasp at straws as she attempted to quell the hurricane. And, finally, she returned to him. Curled up on her bathroom floor, in the middle of the night, she cursed him. She cried out and told him that he was supposed to keep it all away from her. He promised.
"What good are promises?" She told herself.
And he came back to her, tail wagging. He told her it would be okay, that he would make all of the bad things go away again. He was here and he wouldn't go away again. Not that he had ever gone away in the first place. But, he didn't mention that. If he was bitter, she might know that it was him, and she would send him away. And she cried into his blue fur and grabbed clumps of it, her grip threatening to pull chunks of it out.
And he was happy.
And she, she would never know the difference.