Work Text:
Click click
Click click
Click click
The needles move fast, cross knotting and triple looping line after line.
Click click
The lines become a long layer of purple which has turned to indigo.
Click click
You keep the finished ends piled on your knees. The blood on the floor would stain it.
Click click
The tentacles on the floor would tear it.
Click-
Clack
You pause. The door has opened. The bright light, green like the rest of the house, reveals no blood on the floor. Only you, little china doll, with her needles and her green velvet dress. The scarf in your lap has turned over in color. From pink to purple to indigo.
The needles are set on the bed. They make no sound.
The boy in the doorway has his collar flipped up to his ears and is clutching something. You know very well what it is. Bright white against his dark green clothes. It is something he has cherished since you met him.
You don’t speak. He doesn’t either, not yet.
Die steps into the room. His shoes only make a soft
Crunch
On the green velvet floor.
He clicks on a lamp by the door and closes it behind him.
He sits next to you, the little rag doll boy and the little china doll girl. Both dressed in green velvet. He doesn’t call you Handmaid. Doesn’t call you ‘doll’. He calls you by your name.
“Damz” he says. His voice is small. And it shakes you to your bones because he's always so small. Painful to look at, compact and hunched like he could possibly be smaller. “Can I talk to you?”
You nod, smooth with a smile of red lips. Your skirt rustles as you shift.
He talks and when Die talks he always talks a lot, and always talks thoughtlessly. Not in the way of being tasteless but in the way of being directionless. You rather enjoy the recklessness of it. But this time it’s not about Itchy cheating him in cards or Clover forcing him to answer riddles. It’s about his home. His mother and his pet cat. All this as he strokes the round head of his doll. The fabric of the thing is gray with wear and tear, there's a bright red stripe where he had you stitch it up.
Soon he’s crying and still talking. You let him lay against you, head in your lap to keep it out of the blood in the floor.
Your needles turn your scarf over, from indigo to purple. You wonder what color the Doc bleeds.
You wonder if finding out the answer will soothe the way Die’s tears make your heart ache.
The Doc had stolen both of you away. Dolled you up in velvet green. Die once told you he always hated green. So the next day, when your blue is ready to turn, it turns over into grey, then into yellow. You will gift Die with a yarn rainbow.
One free of green.