Work Text:
Insp: Sara Bareilles – She Used to Be Mine
Some days, Bonnibel feels like she’s made of dough. The stuff seeps everywhere – under her nails, into her hair, even down her oversized work shirt. It takes all she can muster on some days to sit in front of the cracked plexiglass she filched off the street to use as a bathroom mirror, breathe and try not to inhale more floury fumes as she slowly picks lump by sticky lump off of her.
It not that she hates her job. Being a full-time waitress/ pastry cook at one of Ooo-town’s many pie shops is something…mindless. It’s simple, to put on her sensible shoes and yellow apron every day, plaster on a smile and greet patrons. It takes only a moment to remember if Mr Creampuff wanted coffee or tea to go with his slice of blueberry pie, in a brain that used to store the first 200 digits of pi for fun. Child’s play, to dot the “I”s on the happy birthday pies with hands that used to pick up floating pieces of pure sodium off hydrochloric acid.
It’s just, not what she imagined herself doing at twenty-two.
Bonnie slouches down the hall to her apartment, another day of work complete and another evening to be spent staring at her reflection. Today had been an especially bad day – first, the ovens broke down and she had to come in two hours earlier than usual to pry open the goddamn thing. Then, the morning rush tripled, because it was raining, so of course everyone wanted a slice of warm pie to start their morning well. Never mind the one pink-haired (or more red-haired these days, dyeing was expensive) waitress that was frantically running around trying to pass water and juice and tell the frat boys hanging around that they can “ask for a smile from one of the male servers, thank you.” Then the morning rush snowballed into the lunch one, and the lunch shift cook called in sick so Bonnie had to continue doing both, and then some child puked onto the display case and…
Footsteps stopped. The door. Closing her eyes, the half-German woman exhaled slowly and dug through her knapsack for her keys, quickly finding them (there wasn’t much else in there) and pushing them into the keyhole more out habit than any dint of force. The rest, from there, was a tired blur. Door open. Close. Bag down, shoes off. Radio on. Place her necklace under the pillow. Open closet. Gather sleep clothes. Don’t look at the picture.
And before she knows it, she’s seated at in front of her makeshift mirror once again. It’s as if the last 24 hours had never happened. As if the last few months haven’t happened. But they have, and Bonnie sees it in her sallow cheeks, the new bags under her eyes, the oil burn on her arm from her first day handling fire not from a Bunsen burner. The Bonnie that looks back at her is someone that the old, “I’m going to go to Oxford and go below absolute zero” Bonnie would not recognise.
She blinks. The other Bonnie blinks too. She spies an obvious lump of dough just cresting over her ear, and removes it with care. Small victories. She keeps combing her hair slowly. Piece by piece. It’s tender, loving almost – like the way she always did before…
Stop.
Bonnibel closes her eyes, and clenches her jaw, letting her hand fall to her lap with a muted thump. The thing she hates the most about having to do this every night was the contemplation it invited. Away from the bustle of the shop, away from immediate needs and orders and wants – the frizzled woman was left with the memories of the deeper things she wanted the most. Her old university dorm. Her scholarship. Her experiments. Her friends. Her family. Her.
She gets up, and starts running the shower. Scrubs at her pale skin like the redness that comes out is more than just epidermal cells and also the mistakes of her past. Finds more pieces of crust and focuses on just removing them. Watches them swirl down the rusted drain. Old Bonnie would have taken a long bath, maybe worked on a paper or two while lounging in the wasteful water. Old Bonnie would have been interrupted by a raven-haired beauty blowing a raspberry into her ear before getting halfway through.
Deep breaths. The water’s been shut off now, and Bonnie’s just leaning against the slightly-yellowing tiled walls. She feels moisture track across her eyelids and drip into the batter mixture down below. She clutches at her abdomen, and cringes when she feels the phantom emptiness in her uterus.
One petty fight, and too many shots alone at the university bar was all it took. The university didn’t want anyone who was “a party girl”, and her parents didn’t want someone who had been stupid enough to get knocked up. Her secret lesbian girlfriend of three years coming along for moral support when breaking the bad news sure didn’t help much. The termination was quick: a few pills and then a bloody mess in the toilet bowl over the next few days. But the damage to her life and psyche – that wasn’t so easy to repair.
Slowly, once Bonnie feels like her dry heaving has stopped for the night, she steps out of the shower on wobbly legs and pats herself down. Tugs on a black shirt with a faded snake and marshmallow-on-stick design and some yellow bottoms. Collapses onto the hard single bed and slips her hand under the pillow to touch the golden bat-wing heart locket hidden there. Turns up the radio, because maybe that could drown out her thoughts.
Wrong.
“Hi, my name is Marceline, from Marceline and the Scream Queens,”
Bonnibel can’t decide if she wants to laugh or to cry. Her ex; her wonderful, lovely ex, is on the radio and about to sing one of her heart-breaking songs just as she wants to stop wallowing her pit of self-made hell.
“This song…is for a really good friend of mine. We’re not talking anymore, but if she’s listening, somewhere out there – I’m still looking, love. This is Sara Bareilles – She Used to Be Mine.”
A cough, and shuffling. Then a piano, and Bonnie curling into herself.
“It's not simple to say
That most days I don't recognize me
That these shoes and this apron
That place and its patrons
Have taken more than I gave them”
How was it, that Marceline still knew. Still knew, after three months apart, exactly what the ex-chemist was thinking and feeling? Did she know too…how much she was missed?
“It's not easy to know
I'm not anything like I used be, although it's true
I was never attention's sweet center
I still remember that girl”
She’d been the one to leave, Bonnibel recalls. The shame and the sense of profound loss, coupled with seeing Marceline having to get up earlier and come back later every day as she struggled to juggle still pursuing a degree as well as working to provide for them both – just led to the pink-haired woman running away one day. She couldn’t it. Betraying her, then leeching off her. Her.
“She's imperfect, but she tries
She is good, but she lies
She is hard on herself
She is broken and won't ask for help
She is messy, but she's kind
She is lonely most of the time
She is all of this mixed up and baked in a beautiful pie
She is gone, but she used to be mine”
Marceline forgave her, and had tried to do as much for Bonnie as she could. Began sending in her portfolio and applications to other reputable schools, talking to her father about mounting a legal challenge. Shielded her from Lady and Jake’s pitying glances, made her eat, and hissed at anyone who told her that “she deserved it”. Even though; she did. Bonnibel Buchman would never have gotten into this mess. Bonnibel Buchman would have been rational that night and gone to Lady instead.
“It's not what I asked for
Sometimes life just slips in through a back door
And carves out a person and makes you believe it's all true
And now I've got you
And you're not what I asked for
If I'm honest, I know I would give it all back
For a chance to start over and rewrite an ending or two
For the girl that I knew”
The last straw was when Marceline got a call back from an audition for a record deal. Bonnibel could see the spark light up in her eyes, and the word “yes” on the tip of her tongue. But then, her eyes slid over to Bonnie’s room, and they dimmed. Bonnibel left that night. Found a job, and a dingy apartment. Ignored Marceline’s calls and messages and pretended to change her number.
“Who'll be reckless, just enough
Who'll get hurt, but who learns how to toughen up
When she's bruised and gets used by a man who can't love
And then she'll get stuck
And be scared of the life that's inside her
Growing stronger each day 'til it finally reminds her
To fight just a little, to bring back the fire in her eyes
That's been gone, but used to be mine
Used to be mine”
Looking back, there are so many things Bonnie would change. She can’t even remember what that initial fight was about anymore. She misses Marceline’s gentle touch, the sensation of long hair and not baking mix between her fingers, the way that her brown eyes crinkled at the corners when she’s holding back a laugh. She misses the way Marceline could convince her that she was a goddess, a queen. She misses…her. So. So much.
“She is messy, but she's kind
She is lonely most of the time
She is all of this mixed up and baked in a beautiful pie
She is gone, but she used to be mine”
The song ends, and Bonnibel still feels like dough. Except now, she feels like she’s never going to rise again.