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to nobody’s surprise, mona wakes up the morning after her birthday with puffy eyes and four missed calls from jean.
they’re probably just birthday messages, anyway, so she’ll look at them later. she really should be getting up by now, though, so she does just that, only to find that of course, she’s still got that god-forsaken photo in her lap.
it’s practically glued to her palm (by which she means she can’t bring herself to let go of it), and as much as she wishes she could drop it onto the floor and move on with her day, it seems that unfortunately, she’s just as much of an emotional wreck as she was last night.
rip it. burn it. tear it to shreds until nothing remains. it's easier that way.
she wants to. the material of the polaroid feels so fragile in her hand, as if even the gentlest of touches would cause it to burst into flames and dissolve beneath her fingers.
it’d be painfully easy. absolutely no effort required on her part. after all, it is just a photo. a memory ingrained on paper. a bittersweet memory, in hindsight, but holding onto it was pointless.
the urge is burning, sparking at the edge of her fingertips like a crackling fire.
right. there’s a box of matches in the bottom left corner of her drawer– kept for emergencies.
for a short moment, the photo is abandoned, fluttering to the floor as she scrambles to her bedside table. the drawer is thrown open hastily, and her hands shove every other miscellaneous item to the side, eyes frantically scanning for those aforementioned matches.
and now there mona sits, photo in one hand, and a freshly lit match in the other.
do it. do it, quickly, before you can change your mind.
the second the flame flicks at the paper is when she feels it. a heaviness in her chest, her breaths becoming uneven, and suddenly she’s desperately fanning the picture back and forth, trying to put out the fire, all the while her eyes sting from—
ah.
the fire’s out.
the only evidence left on the photo of her attempt to burn it to a crisp is a dark mark on the corner, centimeters away from touching the image in the center.
her chest remains heavy, however, despite having saved the photo and despite the way she can still see how the camera captures the way he’s looking at her like she’s the only person left on earth.
she wishes she remembered what exactly that felt like.
mona, for one, remembers lots of things about scaramouche.
she remembers how he liked sleeping in, how he’d latch onto her in his sleep and refuse to let go until she nudged him awake, and even then his grip would continue to be tight as a vice.
she remembers rolling over one morning to do that same thing, as she’d done every day for god knows how long, and being faced with an empty bed, two blankets neatly folded on his side of the bed.
she definitely remembers the way she stayed deathly still, eyes locked onto the soft gray pattern of the comforter. the way she’d felt as if she couldn’t move, as if getting up in itself was too much of a task.
it’s almost pathetic that she’s allowing tears to drip onto the floor, all because of someone who hadn’t even bothered to leave a note.
she’d moved into her new apartment about a month later. the one they’d shared had been nice, sure, but she’d have lost her mind if she had to wake up alone in a bed for two one more time.
and for a while, she’d managed to forget. she ignored the ache in her chest and went on with her daily life, her usual job, taking care of her cat, and the like.
or, that’s how it had been, anyway, at least until she’d spotted one of his coworkers one day while buying groceries. she thought she’d ask how he was doing, just out of curiosity.
childe, she thinks his name was. she can’t bring herself to remember. he’d told her that scaramouche had practically disappeared off the face of the earth. that no one had been in contact with him for months, to be precise.
and like it had never left to begin with, that sinking feeling hit her like a truck.
she remembers muttering some poorly thought up excuse, avoiding the look of pity childe had shot in her direction. she didn’t need pity, and she sure as hell didn’t want it, either.
she wonders, sometimes, what exactly could have happened.
okay, not only sometimes. all times, to be brutally honest.
that feeling, that familiar weight in her chest, along with the strong urge to hide it, to not let anyone catch so much of a glimpse of her while in that state— that feeling is what plagues her day and night, refusing to relent no matter how many months pass.
and she hates him for it.
of course she does. how could she not? everytime he comes to mind (which is… a lot more often than she’d like to admit) she’s immediately hit with a wave of heartbreak, one that pushes her under and leaves her to drown, and—
her phone’s ringing again.
the noise shakes her out of her thoughts, and the photo is slipped into her pocket as fingers shaky with fatigue (both emotional and physical) grasp at her phone.
it’s jean. again.
she’s starting to think these aren’t just birthday messages.