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Scars on a fairy are meant to heal. Wounds never leave so much as a trace unless the fairy wills it. Keeping them around is something of a skill in itself, and one most fairies see no point in cultivating.
But Zenovia has been alive for a very long time. She has seen the ways near-immortality can corrupt the mind. It's one thing for the mind to remember, quite another for the body. To hold onto a scar, one must hold onto its cause.
She doesn't say any of this when Kinsale asks her about the scars she's kept. She's realized recently that it's not that Kinsale wouldn't understand, but that she would try too hard to understand, would hurt herself just to understand Zenovia a little better. No clearer indication of that than the blow she took in Zenovia's stead.
Zenovia has made sure to remove every trace of those wounds in the course of her healing.
What she says, when Kinsale asks, in the gentle, halting tone of one who thinks she is broaching a sensitive subject, is, "I like them."
Kinsale laughs, and the tightness in Zenovia's chest eases. Kinsale doesn't press further.
There are things most fairies will never know. Perhaps they aren't meant to. Old wounds ache when there's a storm in the air. Sometimes fingertips traced across a scar make her wince, not because it's painful, but because it feels like nothing. Most of the scars she kept aren't even the worst, or the most important. She didn't keep the scars left upon her wrists by the Chains, but she can still feel their weight in her dreams, dragging her downward as though into the depths of the ocean.
There's a jagged little scar on her shoulder that seems to have caught Kinsale's particular attention, and her fixation with it quickly begins to wear on Zenovia's nerves. It's from her youth, one of the first she learned how to keep, when she'd been in a fight with Irina over something trivial and Irina had stabbed her with a quill pen.
"Do you remember this one?" Kinsale asks her one evening, and Zenovia bristles immediately, irrationally.
"Why does it matter?" she snaps and turns away.
How is she to put into words why she kept it? That she was never really close with her sisters, that she never understood them or the bond they shared, that a fight was the only thing that had ever felt like closeness to her, and now Irina is gone and all that remains is this useless, meaningless symbol of nothing?
"I'm sorry, I..." Kinsale offers weakly, and opens her hands in a gesture of surrender. "I'm sorry."
But Zenovia is practically vibrating with misplaced fury, trying with every fibre of her being to convince herself to turn and walk away, to remind herself that this is not Kinsale's fault, this has nothing to do with Kinsale at all, that Kinsale is just trying to understand, that Kinsale would tear herself apart to understand just a little, and Zenovia is making it so much harder than it needs to be.
"Just leave it, won't you?"
Kinsale takes in a shuddering breath, and Zenovia is sure that will be the end of it.
"You know," Kinsale says instead, and Zenovia's stomach seems to twist, "I'm...really trying to give you the space you need, but this...it's..."
"Please, don't." Zenovia realizes distantly that she is trembling, though whether it is with rage or with terror, she is no longer certain.
"Zenovia," Kinsale tries again, gently, "what are we even doing here if you won't let me get to know you at all? I mean, that little scar on your shoulder can't be—"
Zenovia turns on her. "What can't it be, Kinsale? I pray you, tell me what it can't be!"
Kinsale holds up her hands, not quite afraid, but decidedly off her guard. "I was just hoping to start with something small!" she says.
"Small," Zenovia scoffs. "I might have known you'd be so easily deceived by appearances."
Kinsale's features contort into a troubled frown, but Zenovia's fury is not to be mitigated. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"I don't speak in riddles, Kinsale." Zenovia lets out a huff of mocking amusement, but she feels very near to abject nausea. "It means exactly what I've said. I thought I'd misjudged you, but now I see you are just as superficial as I'd imagined."
"This from you!" Kinsale cries. "What has this whole thing been if not superficial, because you won't allow it to go any deeper!"
"As though you'd understand!"
"You haven't even given me a chance!"
"To what end?" Zenovia cries. "In the vain hope that maybe you'll surprise me?"
"Oh, for Hell's sake!" Kinsale throws her head back to the ceiling. "You know, I thought you were better than this when-you're-my-age shit, but—"
Zenovia cuts her off coldly. "Yes, well, perhaps you've been trying to see beyond what's real."
Kinsale stands stunned a moment, lips still parted, eyes wide and shining, breath coming in ragged gasps. She nods slowly, takes a few staggering steps backward. "Perhaps I have," she agrees quietly.
Zenovia closes her eyes and breathes deeply. The anger has faded rather abruptly, and left only a cold nothingness in its wake. Somewhere, buried deep within her, something is screaming for her to do something while there's still time to mend what she's wrought, but the screaming is vague and distant, like a fragment of a half-forgotten dream. Disturbing, yet decidedly divorced from reality.
"It...seems I've overstayed my welcome, Mistress Zenovia," says Kinsale, and now she, too, sounds distant. Her eyes are watery with unshed tears and her lower lip is trembling, but her words are steady. "My sincerest apologies."
Zenovia means to reach out and stop her, but her hands hang heavy and lifeless at her sides. Kinsale, she means to say, but the word dies somewhere in the back of her throat. So she stands and she watches as Kinsale backs out of the room, and the only thing that saves her are words she had never even thought to speak aloud.
"My sister."
Kinsale stops. "What?"
Zenovia doesn't move. She feels as though she can't. "The scar. My sister gave it to me."
The tears spill over from Kinsale's eyes, and she responds with a shuddering, "Oh," that seems like it might double her over entirely. She leans heavily upon the doorframe, still watching Zenovia with wide eyes as tears stream down her cheeks.
Zenovia feels her own lip tremble, feels her hands clench into fists at her sides. "Kinsale, please," she breathes. "Come here."
Kinsale doesn't move right away. Zenovia can see the way her knuckles whiten against the doorframe as she struggles to right herself, can see the way her shoulders shake as she struggles to steady her breathing, even as fresh tears flow from her eyes.
She stands upright at last, swallows hard and takes in gasping breaths before she acquires the wherewithal to dab at her eyes with her sleeve. All the while, she barely looks away from Zenovia, and Zenovia cannot even bring herself to raise a hand to reach out to her.
When at last Kinsale has crossed the room to stand before Zenovia, Zenovia has still not come up with anything useful to say. She inhales, opens her mouth as though to speak, hopes words might come forth from the nothingness inside her, and then sighs and bows her head when she is left wanting.
Kinsale unclenches her fist from her skirts and offers a tentative, trembling hand to Zenovia. Zenovia studies it for what must be a long time, unmoving, still unable to move, still unable to think clearly. She inhales again. "I don't want you to go," she says quietly.
Kinsale's hand falls to her side. Zenovia looks up to find her smiling sadly.
"I don't think you want me to stay, either," she says.
Regret hits her like a physical blow, right in the center of her chest and rippling outward violently like a stone tossed into still water. Zenovia feels her shoulders contract from the force of it, feels her brow furrow and her throat tighten. She reaches out with arms still heavy like lead and draws Kinsale into her, feels a fresh wave of sorrow for the softness of Kinsale's embrace, the way Kinsale wraps her arms about Zenovia so perfectly, the way Kinsale buries her face in Zenovia's shoulder, and the way Kinsale's wild curls tickle Zenovia's ear.
She feels Kinsale's lips, warm and wet against the scar on her shoulder, and her grip on Kinsale tightens. "I'm sorry," she breathes, and she isn't certain what she means by it. Sorry for what she said, or sorry for what she didn't say?
Scars on a fairy are meant to heal. Holding onto them means holding onto what caused them. The pain, the weapon...and the wielder. Zenovia knows how to hold onto scars far better than she knows how to hold onto people.