She thinks about it. Thinks about rage, about the enormity of things, and the weight that kept her in the space between yes and no. She wants to rise up, to become flush with passion and tear things apart and decry the very idea of love. She wants to revoke her name from the Floral Court and pour ice water into her veins until she goes completely numb.
She opens her mouth. Closes it. Covers her eyes with her hand, and hates, hates, hates that everything feels like acid burning against her skin, bitterness and twisted knots in her head, and when she breathes in -
It's the telltale hitched breath that preludes crying. Please. Not now. Please. Calm down. Calm down.
"Don't say sorry. You don't have to be sorry with me."
It's not some big dramatic declaration, it's just a statement of fact. Fever doesn't need to be sorry for needing to cry. It'd be easier, wouldn't it, if their emotions worked the way they wanted them to. Screaming would feel better, wouldn't it? Kicking and screaming is more befitting of people like them. But your emotions don't care about that.
Permission is the dam breaking, twin leaks in the foundation, her whole body feeling it. Silent at first, then a heaving, sharp edged breath, tremors as the body attempts to curl inward, fleeing from what hurts. But the pain is inside, inescapable, and Fever weeps - tears like blood from a grievous wound, grateful for the sofa so that she doesn't have to hold her body up. She knew, she knew, it wouldn't be forever. This was probably always going to be the outcome. And yet, years in silence, for this to be the result - exchanging one heaviness on her heart for another. There's only one solace in that she hasn't been asked to yield her feelings. She'd have to be a better woman - a woman who felt less, did less, was less in order to do that. Maybe she'll carry this forever, if no one makes her let it go.
Nothing that's happened between us has been something I've regretted. So why does she want to take one of her daggers and drive it into the space between her lungs, create a point she can gesture to and say here, here is where the hurt is. It's everywhere otherwise - it's in her whole body, and no medicine she knows will cure it.
Fever sobs, doubtlessly leaving tear stains on the cushions, feeling herself in pieces. Once, it would have felt like exposing her throat to do this in front of anyone. But Daisy will keep her safe. This she knows as much as she knows the pain.
Daisy slides down from the back of the sofa, lets her weight distort the cushions beneath Fever's body as a substitute for direct touch. Shuffles closer, within range to be reached for if so desired, but still not so close as to impose it.
It's not easy, bearing your soft parts to a world full of sharp things—even when you are a sharp thing (especially when you are a sharp thing). But Daisy won't let another find its way in, here, now. Fever can cry. There is no judgement here. There are no teeth but those that have already been gnawing at her insides in her own silence. Just a friend.
The indication is permission, and Fever finds a miraculous thread of strength somewhere to reach for her, to ask for what she needs. Her heart, whipped around by the winds, bruised and seared and punctured, wants the solidity of someone there, so she's not just holding onto herself. She wants to hurt, and yet she hurts too much. It suffocates. It undoes. And the worst part is that when she leaves this house she'll be expected to somehow shove it back inside and stitch herself back up, a mocking parallel of the scar on her abdomen.
Crying floods her, justifies the months she's spent quiet. It's not fair she wants to say, like a child would. What is she supposed to do with all of this, when the person she would ask for advice is the one making this happen?
She'll live. Of course she'll live. But she isn't coming out without scars.
Daisy goes easy. Draws in and circles an arm around Fever's shoulders, presses close to her side. She is a solid rock, warm from the sun; what she lacks in softness she make up for in presence and immutability.
She doesn't say anything, doesn't even really make soothing noises, she's just there. And she's not going anywhere.
It's the steadfastness she needs, after giving it to others. A rock, a safe place to hide, somewhere she can curl up and be...not lonely, not in that way, but heartsick in a way most people learn to deal with far, far earlier. Did she ever know this before? Was there ever anyone she longed to weep over, until her tears ran dry? Fever doesn't know, will never know.
What she knows now is that she stays like this, until finally it seems like she can come up for air. She's not cried out, but she's allowed a brief reprieve. A respite, in which she simply leans her weight into her friend, trusting that she'll hold her upright still.
"It sucks," Daisy murmurs, eloquent as ever, more acknowledgement than anything meant to be meaningful. She doesn't move away, squeezing just once before settling back into stable presence alone. The feeling sucks. Crying sucks. All of it sucks. Love shouldn't be such a trial, should it? And yet she's never known it to be anything but, even now she's out the other side of most of the obstacles that make it so.
You have to choose it. And you have to choose to let it go. And neither is as easy as it sounds. And the latter might just be impossible.
"Is it okay if I don't know how I'll ever stop loving him?"
How could she? How could she give it up, though it will hurt every time she breathes too deeply? And what in the hells is she supposed to do now with all of it but keep it set just enough to the side?
"Depends what you mean by 'okay'. Probably won't ever stop hurting. But. You don't have to force yourself to let it go. Not if you don't want to. Probably wouldn't work anyway."
You can't let it go if you don't want to. That'd be like trying to amputate your own arm with the saw in the same hand.
"...love's like. Ripping your heart out. And giving it to someone else to carry. You can take it back. But you can't put it back."
Poetic, by Daisy's standards, but, well, she's thought about this one a lot over the last few years. And that's how it feels.
Love is your heart, offered out for company. A piece of the self in the shape of that vital organ that will always bear fingerprints. It's knowing exactly the direction she has to stand in her apartment to be facing the house, all the way out there. She can't put it back. It's too altered by now.
"...it's Phil."
She doesn't want to carry the burden of secrecy anymore. Let Daisy know the name of the person Fever cried on her for.
It must say something, about the kinds of people they have always been, that a she can describe it that way and it resonates in an instant. But they know the kind of people they are. It's not a surprise.
"Ah." Now that Fever says the name, it only makes sense. Can't imagine who else it could've been. Would sooner have had answers for people she could be sure it wasn't. "No wonder it's so complicated."
Phil's a good guy, and his voice is on the radio every day, and he's the kind of guy with reason to keep his wedding ring years into being pulled into multiple other universes. And that's before getting into everything else.
"You're telling me. Out of everyone on this island."
She had to fall for the would-be widower with a good heart who comes from a world without magic in it.
"It's not like I didn't know. He's normal, and I'm not. It's not like I didn't know that he wants to go home."
To his normal world without magic, to the wife he has long since mourned, to a place where strange occurrences and kidnappings and unexpected gods and transformations don't happen. To a place she can't follow, even if she wanted to. And that would be complicated enough, if not for all the rest of it.
"If knowing all the reasons we shouldn't fall for someone was enough to stop us..." Well, add that to the list of things that would make life a lot easier. But it's not. They don't get the easy ways out of this. "These places make a lot of things easy to ignore. Or feel less impossible. Then reality crashes in. For better or worse."
Or for both, sometimes. There's not such a fine line between the two, in her experience.
"Or you finally speak after staying silent and you can't pretend anymore."
For all of the heartsickening terror that she'd felt, thinking she was going to be cast out by everyone when her truths came to light, at least that hadn't given her any kind of hazy ending or false hope. Being hated makes sense. Being loved, far less.
"And I tried so hard to pretend it wasn't what it was. I really, really did. I thought I'd be able to somehow manage it."
Somehow, someway. Somehow, she could convince herself that it was something she was okay to lose.
"Well. Not gonna pretend you could've. But thinking you could is pretty normal, I think. People want to believe. Even people like us."
Far from 'normal' as they might be. Apparently even mass killers with multitudes of issues can't help but be a little pathetic, sometimes. Emotions are horrible and inconvenient, like that.
She feels choked up - vaguely disgusting for it, like she will talk and flood the room with what's been stoppered up, and that somehow this will expose a fatal flaw that everyone can see. All she can do is keep breathing for the moment, working through the parts that feel like trapped muscles finally unclenching.
"Yeah. I spent six years pining after Basira, back home. Telling myself all the reasons it wouldn't work. Trying to convince myself it could in the same breath. Clinging on all that time because having her there was close enough. Things are better here. But if we'd never left... it never could've happened."
There's no version of reality back home where they got a happy ending. They had to leave that world behind to have a chance. And even if it has changed now, Daisy still remembers. And she still knows how their story was meant to end.
"She was the first person I had ever actually felt that way about. Learned all this stuff the hard way."
Six years. She can easily see how she'd do the same if it was possible. Locking her tongue in place so that it never moved, never jostled the situation. Taking solace from the fact that they were near, and that was enough.
"Gods. I don't need to explain it all to you, then."
Empathy's in her tone. Things are better here, possible here. Not identically the same - Daisy can live a life with Basira here, both of them attached to this soil - but enough that she doesn't need to rehash the level of terror that's felt at the idea of losing them by speaking. Wanting so badly to make things work anyway.
"...I'm going to be a miserable fucking wreck when it happens." She doesn't know how she's going to be able to do anything but grieve.
"You will be. And it'll hurt like hell. And then you'll figure out how to keep going. Because we've done it before."
It's just a new kind of rebuilding. They've both had to learn to live for something, to accept that they have a future that isn't doomed by their histories. A broken heart's just another piece of that.
The only thing she'll be able to do will be to give herself to the care of her friends. She'll live - people don't die of broken hearts. And she won't run away from life - he'd never want that for her. But it will need to be lived through.
Daisy, who right now feels as steady as sun warmed stone. She'll bare her wounds, and let them be bandaged.
Zero hesitation. No expectation. No expiry. She will be here. There's no other option. In choosing a new life, a new version of the her she is now, she made a choice to stand by her friends.
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hadnoright) wrote2022-11-01 01:56 am
no subject
She opens her mouth. Closes it. Covers her eyes with her hand, and hates, hates, hates that everything feels like acid burning against her skin, bitterness and twisted knots in her head, and when she breathes in -
It's the telltale hitched breath that preludes crying. Please. Not now. Please. Calm down. Calm down.
"I'm sorry."
no subject
"Don't say sorry. You don't have to be sorry with me."
It's not some big dramatic declaration, it's just a statement of fact. Fever doesn't need to be sorry for needing to cry. It'd be easier, wouldn't it, if their emotions worked the way they wanted them to. Screaming would feel better, wouldn't it? Kicking and screaming is more befitting of people like them. But your emotions don't care about that.
"Feel what you need to feel, Fever."
no subject
Nothing that's happened between us has been something I've regretted. So why does she want to take one of her daggers and drive it into the space between her lungs, create a point she can gesture to and say here, here is where the hurt is. It's everywhere otherwise - it's in her whole body, and no medicine she knows will cure it.
Fever sobs, doubtlessly leaving tear stains on the cushions, feeling herself in pieces. Once, it would have felt like exposing her throat to do this in front of anyone. But Daisy will keep her safe. This she knows as much as she knows the pain.
no subject
Daisy slides down from the back of the sofa, lets her weight distort the cushions beneath Fever's body as a substitute for direct touch. Shuffles closer, within range to be reached for if so desired, but still not so close as to impose it.
It's not easy, bearing your soft parts to a world full of sharp things—even when you are a sharp thing (especially when you are a sharp thing). But Daisy won't let another find its way in, here, now. Fever can cry. There is no judgement here. There are no teeth but those that have already been gnawing at her insides in her own silence. Just a friend.
no subject
Crying floods her, justifies the months she's spent quiet. It's not fair she wants to say, like a child would. What is she supposed to do with all of this, when the person she would ask for advice is the one making this happen?
She'll live. Of course she'll live. But she isn't coming out without scars.
no subject
Daisy goes easy. Draws in and circles an arm around Fever's shoulders, presses close to her side. She is a solid rock, warm from the sun; what she lacks in softness she make up for in presence and immutability.
She doesn't say anything, doesn't even really make soothing noises, she's just there. And she's not going anywhere.
no subject
What she knows now is that she stays like this, until finally it seems like she can come up for air. She's not cried out, but she's allowed a brief reprieve. A respite, in which she simply leans her weight into her friend, trusting that she'll hold her upright still.
no subject
"It sucks," Daisy murmurs, eloquent as ever, more acknowledgement than anything meant to be meaningful. She doesn't move away, squeezing just once before settling back into stable presence alone. The feeling sucks. Crying sucks. All of it sucks. Love shouldn't be such a trial, should it? And yet she's never known it to be anything but, even now she's out the other side of most of the obstacles that make it so.
You have to choose it. And you have to choose to let it go. And neither is as easy as it sounds. And the latter might just be impossible.
no subject
How could she? How could she give it up, though it will hurt every time she breathes too deeply? And what in the hells is she supposed to do now with all of it but keep it set just enough to the side?
no subject
"Depends what you mean by 'okay'. Probably won't ever stop hurting. But. You don't have to force yourself to let it go. Not if you don't want to. Probably wouldn't work anyway."
You can't let it go if you don't want to. That'd be like trying to amputate your own arm with the saw in the same hand.
"...love's like. Ripping your heart out. And giving it to someone else to carry. You can take it back. But you can't put it back."
Poetic, by Daisy's standards, but, well, she's thought about this one a lot over the last few years. And that's how it feels.
no subject
Love is your heart, offered out for company. A piece of the self in the shape of that vital organ that will always bear fingerprints. It's knowing exactly the direction she has to stand in her apartment to be facing the house, all the way out there. She can't put it back. It's too altered by now.
"...it's Phil."
She doesn't want to carry the burden of secrecy anymore. Let Daisy know the name of the person Fever cried on her for.
no subject
It must say something, about the kinds of people they have always been, that a she can describe it that way and it resonates in an instant. But they know the kind of people they are. It's not a surprise.
"Ah." Now that Fever says the name, it only makes sense. Can't imagine who else it could've been. Would sooner have had answers for people she could be sure it wasn't. "No wonder it's so complicated."
Phil's a good guy, and his voice is on the radio every day, and he's the kind of guy with reason to keep his wedding ring years into being pulled into multiple other universes. And that's before getting into everything else.
no subject
She had to fall for the would-be widower with a good heart who comes from a world without magic in it.
"It's not like I didn't know. He's normal, and I'm not. It's not like I didn't know that he wants to go home."
To his normal world without magic, to the wife he has long since mourned, to a place where strange occurrences and kidnappings and unexpected gods and transformations don't happen. To a place she can't follow, even if she wanted to. And that would be complicated enough, if not for all the rest of it.
no subject
"If knowing all the reasons we shouldn't fall for someone was enough to stop us..." Well, add that to the list of things that would make life a lot easier. But it's not. They don't get the easy ways out of this. "These places make a lot of things easy to ignore. Or feel less impossible. Then reality crashes in. For better or worse."
Or for both, sometimes. There's not such a fine line between the two, in her experience.
no subject
For all of the heartsickening terror that she'd felt, thinking she was going to be cast out by everyone when her truths came to light, at least that hadn't given her any kind of hazy ending or false hope. Being hated makes sense. Being loved, far less.
"And I tried so hard to pretend it wasn't what it was. I really, really did. I thought I'd be able to somehow manage it."
Somehow, someway. Somehow, she could convince herself that it was something she was okay to lose.
no subject
"Well. Not gonna pretend you could've. But thinking you could is pretty normal, I think. People want to believe. Even people like us."
Far from 'normal' as they might be. Apparently even mass killers with multitudes of issues can't help but be a little pathetic, sometimes. Emotions are horrible and inconvenient, like that.
no subject
She feels choked up - vaguely disgusting for it, like she will talk and flood the room with what's been stoppered up, and that somehow this will expose a fatal flaw that everyone can see. All she can do is keep breathing for the moment, working through the parts that feel like trapped muscles finally unclenching.
no subject
"Yeah. I spent six years pining after Basira, back home. Telling myself all the reasons it wouldn't work. Trying to convince myself it could in the same breath. Clinging on all that time because having her there was close enough. Things are better here. But if we'd never left... it never could've happened."
There's no version of reality back home where they got a happy ending. They had to leave that world behind to have a chance. And even if it has changed now, Daisy still remembers. And she still knows how their story was meant to end.
"She was the first person I had ever actually felt that way about. Learned all this stuff the hard way."
no subject
"Gods. I don't need to explain it all to you, then."
Empathy's in her tone. Things are better here, possible here. Not identically the same - Daisy can live a life with Basira here, both of them attached to this soil - but enough that she doesn't need to rehash the level of terror that's felt at the idea of losing them by speaking. Wanting so badly to make things work anyway.
"...I'm going to be a miserable fucking wreck when it happens." She doesn't know how she's going to be able to do anything but grieve.
no subject
"You will be. And it'll hurt like hell. And then you'll figure out how to keep going. Because we've done it before."
It's just a new kind of rebuilding. They've both had to learn to live for something, to accept that they have a future that isn't doomed by their histories. A broken heart's just another piece of that.
"But it'll hurt like hell first. So. Yeah."
no subject
The only thing she'll be able to do will be to give herself to the care of her friends. She'll live - people don't die of broken hearts. And she won't run away from life - he'd never want that for her. But it will need to be lived through.
Daisy, who right now feels as steady as sun warmed stone. She'll bare her wounds, and let them be bandaged.
no subject
"Always."
Zero hesitation. No expectation. No expiry. She will be here. There's no other option. In choosing a new life, a new version of the her she is now, she made a choice to stand by her friends.