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You can carry me,
I’m not heavy
I’ll grow extra arms
to hold onto your body
Dig my fingernails
into your shoulder,
And you’re so steady
and you don’t tip over
and you’re so pretty
so I want to be pretty
Can you carry me?
'cause I’m not heavy
- The Original Crooks and Nannies, Carry me
-
For the first week after she quits the Institute, Melanie doesn’t dream.
It’s been a long time since she last managed to sleep through a whole night without waking, terrified and gasping and snarling at shadows, her fingers curled tightly around the knife hidden under her pillow, the handle biting its carved indents into her skin. Holding it until it hurt — until she could barely tell the hilt apart from the aching flesh of her palm, her tongue thick with the taste of blood and bile.
It had felt safer that way.
She knows that was never the case. It would have never been enough to cut through the thing watching her with rapt attention, gazing down at her heaving chest and her tear-stained cheeks and the mindless terror crawling down her spine, and delighting in her furious struggling, pinning her like a moth on a board for its own amusement. Not like she could have stabbed the eyes lingering heavy on the back of her neck, bursting their swollen, engorged whites until all that was left was a bloody mess on her hands, slick red through her fingers.
The only eyes she did that to are her own, in the end.
There hadn’t been a lot of blood. Less than she expected, really.
The thing that had made her grip slippery and uncertain on the wooden handle was a clear and unpleasantly viscous liquid, oozing slowly from the wound. It’s only by some act of grace she hadn’t dropped the awl after the left was done.
She isn’t sure she could have gone through with it, otherwise, even though she likes to think she would have.
Her own scream had been too loud in her skull, the white-hot pain of the wound so beyond anything she had ever felt, weaved through with unfathomable pressure. Something else, howling with rage in her head, prying apart the folds of her brain, yawning and hungry.
Melanie had lined up the sharp tip of the blade, looking straight at it, the metal glinting dangerously under the incongruous bright lights of the Archives. Her hands had been shaking.
She hadn’t missed, despite it all.
She doesn’t remember much after that.
Turns out blinding yourself with a bookbinding awl takes a lot out of you.
So does the exhausted, unimaginable relief of being free from the evil fear god that has been leeching off you for the better part of two years. The strength of her painkillers also helps with staving off nightmares, if only because the stuff knocks her out almost faster than she can swallow the pill.
It’s not forever, though.
Georgie has been… everything she could ask for. More than that, even, because Melanie wouldn’t ask her for half of the things she does.
She knows she shouldn’t hide the dreams from her. She shouldn’t even try.
Nightmares are a normal part of her life. They’re expected, and a way for her subconscious to process her trauma, at least when they aren’t supernaturally-induced and orchestrated specifically to make her live through it for someone's amusement.
Laverne has been very clear on that point.
But, well. She had also been very clear on the fact Melanie should call her immediately, should she ever find herself in a position in which she felt the need to hurt herself.
That hadn’t gone over very well, had it.
It doesn’t make it any easier.
Not that it’s easy to flail awake in a hospital bed, grasping at the bandages over her eyes, disorientated and wailing at the top of her lungs. The night-shift nurses trying to hold her down make it worse, and the first time it happens again she’s almost in hysterics by the end, because she can’t even see that everything’s alright.
So it isn’t easy. But she doesn’t have to do it for long, and it’s still better than the alternative.
Above all, Georgie doesn’t need to know about it.
Melanie is aware it’s stupid. Georgie already knows about the nightmares. She has known for months.
But if she finds out how bad they’ve been, still, while she can’t be there at all — she’ll get that little wrinkle in between her eyebrows, the one that doesn’t go away no matter how much Melanie rubs at it, trying to smooth it out. Her mouth will twist downward with worry, the small dimple on her right cheek disappearing for good, buried under the weight of her expression.
Melanie can’t see it anymore, but she still knows when it happens.
She won’t say anything, because of course she won’t. Her silences get pointed and uncomfortable, and her forearm tenses under her touch as she sits next to the bed, her breathing growing quiet, and she doesn’t have to say anything.
And Melanie has spent a while trying to figure out how to avoid putting that expression on Georgie’s face, and these days she can’t seem to do anything but.
(Laverne wouldn’t be happy about that, either. Won’t be happy, when she is finally discharged and deemed well enough to go back to having regular sessions.
Melanie can hear it in her voice, crystal clear like they're sitting in front of each other.
Don’t you think you deserve someone caring about you and your well-being? Especially after such a traumatic event?
Did you consider maybe you are focusing on Georgie’s reactions so you don’t have to confront your own feelings about your condition?
She hates therapy.
Or she doesn't, but she hates that it works, and she hates that Laverne is always right and always reasonable, even when she doesn't know all the facts or, really, not even half the facts.
Maybe she just hates how it made it so that she can tell it isn’t really about Georgie knowing, and more about her seeing it. Understanding just how much of a burden she’ll be.
Laverne really won’t be happy with her.)
She thought she’d dream of the Institute, most of all. Of being back at her desk, digging her nails into her shoulder hard enough to draw blood to bring herself back into her own body, the sour aftertaste of fear left in her mouth after a statement. The eyes of paintings following her as she stalked through the hallways — laughing at her, at the desperate pacing of a caged animal.
Sometimes it is. Most times, night after night, it’s her father.
It would be too merciful to have the knowledge stripped from her along with her sight and so, naturally, the memory remains.
The sickening buzzing of the flies. The flesh sloughing off his cheekbones, suppurating and boiling with that wet, foamy yellow rash, fat writhing larvae squirming through the fluid, burrowing deeper and deeper, settling in the narrow spaces between his organs until they had wings to carry them out his raw and aching throat. The smell of it, putrid sweet rot coating the roof of her mouth, heavy with the heat.
And so she wakes to her skin crawling away from her, clawing at an itch that isn’t there, her eyes burning under bandages soaked with tears. She can still cry – she hadn’t been sure, really, or done much research about how it’d be… after.
It’s probably a good thing she doesn’t sleep with a knife anymore.
Not while laying in a hospital bed in the silent hours of the morning, only newly permanent darkness and the distant sounds of sickness for company, bile collecting at the back of her mouth while she trembled in petrified horror. Not on the first night back home, either.
Georgie’s flat feels familiar and foreign at the same time, when she walks in, clutching her arm like a lifeline. The turns and angles of it are clear in her mind but much harder to navigate in practice.
She moves to the bedroom with the uncertain gait of a newborn foal, even with the support, hissing when she bumps her hip into the dresser — twice — and stumbles on the bed at last, trying not to crush the Admiral, purring somewhere in her vicinity.
Georgie leaves to go wash up with a kiss to the top of her head, and she starts the laborious process of shuffling the sheets around to find the sleep shirt that was left out for her.
Somehow, Melanie manages to get undressed, leaving her clothes haphazardly scattered on the chair next to her nightstand — or, at least, she thinks she threw most of them on the chair, but she can't really be bothered to get up and fumble to check - and wear the shirt, settling under the covers with a sigh.
That's when Georgie announces herself from the doorway, a soft greeting under her breath.
The sound of her steps on the hardwood floor, moving closer, is careful but not so quiet Melanie can’t pick it up, turning her head in the direction of her voice.
Melanie smiles at her. Or she tries, at least.
She can tell the expression stretches too thin over her lips, the edges of it quivering and uncertain, and it feels like it, too. There was a distinct lack of reasons to smile in her life, up until recently, and she's still rather out of practice with it. But she tries, and she reaches a hand out in invitation, wiggling her fingers.
The way the mattress dips under her weight is startling enough that she hums in surprise, her smile coming easier when Georgie takes her outstretched hand, pressing a delicate kiss to her knuckles.
«Alright?» she says, and her voice is low and a little worried, which makes it pretty clear the question isn’t about right now, specifically.
It will be alright. Maybe. Eventually.
It’s already better than it’s been in years. Almost in longer than she can remember, really, with the dry, warm skin of Georgie’s palm cradling her fingers, and then her cheek, and the careful way she leans in, kissing her nose.
She still isn’t sure how to answer.
Instead, she relishes the steady rhythm of her breath against her jaw, the way it tickles a bit where Georgie’s curls brush against her cheek. She smells like argan oil and rosemary, the scent clinging to her hair, achingly familiar.
«Do you want to be the little spoon tonight?» she asks, and she tries to be playful, nudging her lightly when she hesitates, because of course Georgie notices she hasn’t answered the question.
Melanie can feel the moment she decides to let it go — how she tenses and relaxes again, the conscious effort to put the thought away, keep it somewhere at the back of her mind where it will be out of sight, but not forgotten.
She laughs, instead of saying whatever she’s thinking. Under her breath, quiet but sincere, and the movement brings them close enough together that it’s almost a proper kiss, her shaking shoulders jostling Melanie too, as if the sound is travelling through both of them. The smile on her face feels more real than it has in a very long time.
«You wish, King,» she says, but there is no bite to it, and she expects it when the kiss comes for real.
She likes kissing Georgie.
It’s a very effective distraction, with how it silences the constant background noise humming in her head, drowning it in the blessed relief of her touch. Reeling Melanie back inside her body almost effortlessly, with no need for blood. It doesn’t hurt — never hurts.
And so it’s easy to settle down to sleep. It’s easy to relax into Georgie, rest her head on the yielding give of her inner arm and feel the raised edges of an old scar there with her lips, melt into the weight of her hand under her ribs, grounding and safe, pulling the breath out of her in a long, unsteady exhale. The Admiral is purring somewhere near them, too, curled in a ball of warmth against her leg.
It’s so easy. Melanie lets herself hope maybe it'll be enough.
She's never been a lucky person.
It’s the scent of rosemary that wakes her — the way the sickly sweetness of rot is shot through with it, the delicate tang of it corrupted and lost.
She jolts awake with a gasp so violent it’s almost painful with how it tears at her lungs, straining against the tightness of panic in her chest, every muscle in her body tensing in preparation to be touched by concerned hands that feel wrong wrong wrong and not relaxing even when they never come.
The skin around her eyes is raw and hot and tender, stinging where it chafes against the bandages. Like she has been crying for hours.
She keeps them shut as tightly as she can, because it isn’t like it’ll make any difference if they’re open and maybe she’ll be able to stop crying if she can only hold the tears in, but they still leak from the corners, traitorous, and they still burn going down, leaving salt on her lips, trails of wetness tracing a path down to her neck.
She muffles a sob against her palm, and then another. Frustration simmers dangerous and sharp in her veins, thorns stuck under her nails.
She can’t wake Georgie.
She must have rolled away in her sleep, and Melanie can hear her breathing, even and slow, feel her shuffle to make herself more comfortable. She rarely wakes in the night, and Melanie has witnessed her staying asleep through much worse than this, but she’s still wary.
Her anger is more brittle than it used to be.
It’s more broken ceramic than shining metal, these days — a shard with jagged edges she holds up in front of her face as she shakes, more for the comfort of wielding it than for what it can do to protect her, and she never feels it more than she does in moments like this.
She doesn't know what will happen when she lets it go. It terrifies her.
And so she can manage to get herself a glass of water and calm down and stop crying, and there is no need to bother Georgie with it. The kitchen isn’t that far away.
She moves carefully, bringing one foot at a time over her side of the bed, making sure they’re firmly planted on the floor before levering herself up, fingers outstretched to follow the shape of the bed, her steps small and hesitant.
She makes it almost all the way to the door before she stumbles.
It’s a stupid mistake. She was moving too fast, her shirt catching on the corner of that damn dresser.
But she falls, still.
She already had her hands out, at the very least, so she doesn’t split her head open, too, on top of everything else, but the sound of her knees hitting the floor, the curse she lets out in surprise — it’s loud.
Georgie startles awake with a confused, pained sound that tugs uncomfortably at her, something like guilt curling in her chest.
«What— Mel? Melanie?» she calls out, still rough with sleep, and Melanie is still on the floor, and she’s still crying and she hates that all she can do in response is sob.
She isn’t sure how much of it is for the nightmare and how much is for how incredibly angry she is at this. At all of it. How much is for the thing under the anger, instead, that sits hollow among her ribs, echoing with her cries.
She cries for a long time. When she stops, it’s a slow thing, until it isn’t— until her tears run dry and her breathing evens out, and she can take in her surroundings again.
Georgie is right next to her, a warm hand stroking along her spine, soothing her with murmured nonsense. She’s sitting with her back propped up against the dresser, giving her space, always careful, but she feels about to crawl out of her skin, and it’s easy to crawl into her lap, instead.
It's always easy with Georgie, is the thing. She makes it so easy — she sees all the places where she's sharp, all the edges on which she could cut herself, and she makes it easy anyway.
Georgie doesn’t protest — doesn’t say anything much, at all.
She just sighs, and tightens her arms around her middle, rests her chin on her shoulder.
«Mel, sweetheart, what—» her tone is gentle, but she cuts herself off like she does sometimes when her phrasing gets away from her, inhaling deeply. «Why didn't you wake me up? You just came back, please let me— I'm here to help you. I want to help you,» she says, in the end, and the earnest sincerity in her voice is almost enough to start her crying again.
«It's just— nightmares. It wasn't worth it, waking you up just for that,» she says.
She knows it's the wrong thing to say the second the words are out of her mouth.
Georgie holds her tighter against her chest, another deep breath she can feel under her hand, resting on the side of her ribs. The kiss she presses to her temple is unexpected, but Melanie leans into it, lets herself melt into her until she does it again and her heartbeat feels almost normal, and her breathing evens out completely at last.
«I— We'll talk about that. In the morning,» she whispers it in her hair, low and worried. «Let's go back to sleep, now?» and Melanie just nods, words lost to exhaustion, and grasps her hand too tight until they're back under the covers.
Georgie doesn't let go, even then.
She brings it close to her face, kisses her palm and her fingertips and the rough skin on her knuckles, presses her cheek into her hand like she trusts Melanie to hold all of her, all the soft and yielding parts of her, without making her bleed. Maybe she does — maybe she wants to. Maybe it could be easy, she thinks, and the anger is almost too feeble to hear.
That night, she doesn't dream again.