Work Text:
She’s forgotten how much it sucks to have to deal with her own stitches. It’s not so much that no one else would be willing to help as it is that she doesn’t want to ask. Asking means admitting weakness. Which might be acceptable if this was a battle injury. Or a sparring one.
But no. Too high to feel the bite of the blade as it slips in a lot deeper than intended isn’t a valid excuse. That would require telling someone that A, she was high, B, she was slicing holes in her own hip, and C, she can’t fix it. She’s not sure which of those would be worse. In any case, the fallout isn’t a thing she wants on the menu of excitement for the day.
That leaves her with a length of thread, a curved needle from her med kit, and a tube of lidocaine that promises to sting much, much more than the needle will. That shouldn’t be appealing, but she hates herself just enough to stroke the viscous substance over the skin surrounding the gash (and across the opening in her skin itself). Her vision whites out for a fraction of a second before everything is a little too shiny and rippling at the edges but still very much there.
There isn’t time to do more than drag a whistling breath through pursed lips before she slips the tip of the needle into the uppermost edge of the wound. She could wait for the lidocaine to work, but this is more punishment than treatment, really. It needs stitches, that’s not up for debate, but there’s no rule saying she has to be gentle about it.
The tip moves in, across, catches the underedge of the other side and slips upward. It doesn’t matter if it hurts. Probably better it does, though the pain was the point so it’s not much of a deterrent. There is moisture tracking down her face now, perfect running stitches lining up just above the rise of bone she both loves and hates at her hip, tears dripping from the line of her jaw. She keeps going, the needle sliding in and out, the faint pop as it punctures the skin each time both sickening and somehow grounding. She remembers other time, other places, and silently catalogues the marks left behind by the many stitches that have found purchase against her flesh.
Now that the dark thread is standing out against reddened but still pale skin, she thinks about how this scar will differ from the ones above and below it. There are lines from blades both new old and very old, but this one will remind her that she has to pick one poison at a time if she’s going to get the peace she’s after.