Chapter Text
Days passed. How many? Amanda hadn’t exactly been keeping track.
All she really did know was that the days that followed were starting to feel like a damned eternity to her.
Goooood, had she fucked up .
Adam would get over it……eventually. He might never truly forget it or even forgive her for what she had done, and what she had said about it, but eventually he would move on just as he had eventually gotten over the initial shock of going from being completely out of it, near starving to death in that dark bathroom to Amanda’s, comparatively, bright car that day she’d rescued him and he’d freaked out over it. She wasn’t worried about that .
It was that other part.
It was all the unanswered voicemails she’d left him, it was the guilt that had only worsened the second she saw the look on his face when he was recalling everything that had happened and why they had truly happened……
It was the look on his face……..not completely anger, at least that she could likely live with, and why shouldn’t she have to live with it after all she had put him through….
It was the depth of what he had likely been feeling, all the hurt and downright betrayal that she saw in his eyes, particularly after his realization of why she’d been there in the first place……it was because, in that moment, everything was off the table.
It was the way he was likely thinking, “well, if she could lie about something like that, what else is she lying or would she lie about?” .......but most of all, it was that he had every right in the world to think that of her. Hell, she’d be lucky if that was all he thought of her, after everything she’d put him through.
But on the other hand……..the one that was almost gnawing away at her even
more
than any of that……what the hell
else
had there been for her to do? What the hell else should she have done after she pulled him out of that hellhole?
“You’re welcome for rescuing you, and oh by the way, I’m the one who put you in there to begin with, my bad” ?
Or perhaps after she’d spent the next few days of his hospital stay, and just after his release lingering around in the cafeteria, keeping an eye on how he was doing, perhaps after that cigarette they shared she should’ve said, what?
“Sorry, I can’t sit with you because of what I did to you.” ?
She sat there on her couch, her head in one hand and the other hand shaking as it held her phone in it as she deliberated with herself whether or not she should leave what was likely about the eighty ninth voicemail this week, saying how sorry she was, and how she understood him not wanting anything more to do with her, but would he at least say
something
?
Anything
back to her?
“To what?!” His own words echoing back in her mind. “... make yourself feel better?”
“Stupid!” , she thought right after it.
Of course that’s all that would be accomplishing, if it would even work at all.
Even if it didn’t make anything better, and most probably it wouldn’t, it would only be for her, wouldn't it?
God knows he didn’t need to say anything else to her, and why should he even want to?
She wiped her eye for about the tenth time since she’d first picked up the phone.
……But that was it, wasn’t it? That was just fucking it .
He didn’t want anything more to do with her .
That
fucking part of it, what had likely been the most potent fuel to her motive behind keeping this all from him in the first place…….that
she
would never get to see
him
again.
“Selfish.” She thought to herself. “Stupid AND selfish.”
She snapped the phone shut in her hand and tossed it back down onto the coffee table with just a little more aggression than she’d intended to let out with it.
“You’ve made your bed, Amanda.” She muttered under her breath to herself. “You’ve made it, and now you have to fucking lie in it.”
She threw herself back down on the couch, practically hitting the back of her head on the arm of it as she did.
“ Fuuuck !” She whimpered, ramming the side of her fist against the couch’s back cushions. “ Fuck, fuck, fuck!! ”
She eventually settled in her place, turning over to lay on her side and face the coffee table; her eyes practically glued to the little cell phone that was laying on top of it.
Eventually it would ring………it more than likely wouldn’t- no, definitely wouldn’t be Adam on the other end of the eventual, inevitable call, but it would ring.
Life didn’t stop just because she almost definitely ruined Adam’s…….it would go on and so she would have to, just as she thought she’d had to….well, anything she’d done to Adam the last time she’d gotten one of those God forsaken calls.
John had had his eye on someone new who, to his belief,
needed
to be tested.
Some man by the name of Bobby Dagen who’d been making the news pretty recently for his new book that allegedly detailed the gripping retelling of his own ordeal at the hands of the infamous Jigsaw killer …….keyword, allegedly .
In full honesty, the man had never been put through such an ordeal a day in his life, hadn’t even had a smidge of a reason to end up on John’s, or any of his apprentices’ radar up until now.
The lucky bastard….
“Lucky STUPID bastard”, as Amanda had initially thought to herself when John had first mentioned hearing about him. Even came with his own plans and everything.
If intelligence, or rather lack thereof, was even at all a qualifier for ending up in any of John’s traps, this guy took the whole goddamned bakery, as Amanda saw it.
She sighed to herself as the whole thing started to circle in her head a bit more, hoping that, pathetic as it was, it would perhaps take her mind off the whole Adam thing and how stupid she, herself, had acted in all of it.
She debated a while longer with herself on it, before she eventually decided to get up from where she’d been lying on the couch to make her way across the threshold and to the bag that she’d hung up days ago when she’d returned with Adam before it all went down, opened it up and pulled out the notebook that, up until now, she’d always had to stay on top of keeping out of Adam’s sight for what plans and various other notes it carried inside of it to bring back to look over some more in her previous spot on the couch.
Admittedly, however, John had also recently mentioned that Lawrence, by the time he would actually get someone on keeping an eye on this man, would be well enough for the job, and with the perfect excuse, even, now that this Bobby Dagen asshole had also been a fairly regular participant in a local Jigsaw survivor support group that met up regularly.
Merely as part of some promo for his new book, no doubt.
Though, none of that, of course meant that Amanda shouldn’t stay on call for the matter.
After all…..shit happens.
“Shit fucking happens.” She muttered to herself.
-
-
Sure enough, sometime after and about midway into perusing through the aforementioned notebook, that god forsaken little cell phone finally started ringing on the coffee table and scared the life out of her.
Her eyes were immediately drawn to it; her heart, pounding against her chest as she hesitated to answer it.
She sighed to herself, any lingering shrivel of hope draining from her as she finally picked it up, just before it would stop ringing, and read the caller ID to herself.
Nope…….definitely, not Adam.
“Hello?” She hoped to God that her voice didn’t sound as weak as she imagined it probably sounded. “.....No, I’m not doing anything…….” She sighed. “....Right. I’ll be right over.”
She instinctively all but slammed the notebook shut as she stood back up after hanging the phone up, shaking her head as she looked back down at the notebook when she was about halfway across the room and realized what she had just done and the lack of necessity for it as she just opted to take the notebook with her anyway, stuffed it in her bag upon reaching it, grabbed her jacket and slung the bag over her shoulder to head out the door.