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Muu stands over the bathroom sink. The water comes out steaming. It hurts to touch – but she just can't help herself. It’s like it calls out to her. There's blood on her hands.
It won’t come off no matter how hard she scrubs at it. She can scratch and tear until her skin is raw and red and her hands hurt so much they’re numb and there’s blood under her nails, fresh blood, not from the stains but from under her skin – but it won’t come out. It refuses.
The stain glares back at her, stubbornly, from her place above it. The light shines rings around her head like a blessing from God, but she’s not religious. She never has been.
Amane has approached her a dozen times over offering her assistance she doesn’t want and doesn’t need. She talks, often, about how God can help her; about how prayers work, really, they do, and that even she can be forgiven if she just puts the work in. The girl talks about how her worst moments don’t define her. She talks about how, sometimes, deaths simply can’t be helped.
Muu, personally, thinks she’s stupid. But maybe that’s just her.
A twelve year old wouldn’t understand. Someone like Amane would never understand. Muu doesn’t need to improve herself, because she’s done nothing wrong – but she knows that’s not true, and she knows everything leading up to now is all her fault, and she doesn’t understand how two contrasting ideas can both be so glaringly true and totally incorrect at the same time but the thoughts clashing in her mind make her dizzy nonetheless.
She shoves her hands under the boiling water to shut them up, and they do. Her mind comes to a screeching halt the moment her skin starts to blister.
It’s quite a miracle, really – the way she can shut her thoughts up by simply hurting herself really is quite the skill. It’s a secret she learned back before MILGRAM; when living was hard, and when everyone hated her for simply being. Back then, though, she used more efficient methods – short slices along her arm that she could just as easily hide with her sleeve or deeper cuts along her stomach where no-one would ever see.
Boiling the skin on her hands is nothing short of unmissable. It was glaringly obvious the moment she had began to pick up this habit: the skin on her hands, whenever it’s visible, is raw and angry and wrinkled. She winces when she has to so much as touch things and the fact that she bleeds whenever her skin is so much as prodded – well, she’s sure no one misses that, either.
Nobody does anything about it. Why would they? The only person who might have cared is dead at her hands, and the only person she truly wants to see her suffer is just as gone. The most she gets is a sympathetic glance from Kazui, or a grimace and a turned face from Fuuta. “You can always talk to me,” says Amane, looking anywhere but her hands, and yet she never steps in. No-one truly gives a damn.
Even now, as she stands there, the boiling hot water digging into her palms as she scratches and scratches and scratches at her weak tearing flesh, as she begins to sniffle and cry harmoniously along with the whining of the pipes, as the pain begins to crawl up her arm and hits her square in the head – nothing happens. Her thoughts stop, and her hands hurt, but nothing gets better. Nothing ever gets better. Good things just don’t happen to her.
Just as Muu lets out her first sob, the water flow comes to an abrupt stop. The sink squeaks – a dainty hand reaches around her and pulls the knob tightly shut before she has so much of a chance to protest. Her thoughts are elsewhere, her mind dazed, as she feels her arms get tugged away from her and the basin to her side.
Her gaze shakily travels to meet the other prisoner – and it is at this point that she realises, and suddenly Muu can barely breathe. That purple hair; those sharp eyes; that cool, uncaring demeanor –
“Rei,” she murmurs, breathlessly. The world around her spins in agreement.
Rei only hums. Her grip is cold and firm around her wrists, and her eyes are furrowed in what seems to be thought – Muu always thought she was cutest when she was distracted. Her heart thumps, her pulse sluggish but strong, in her chest, as Rei’s arm tenses around her side.
Wherever she’s reaching can’t be nearly as important as Muu. The sink sputters on again, and she nudges Rei’s arm with her elbow in some lame attempt to make her wrap around her, instead.
“Look, Rei,” she says, her words slurred and her speech unreliable. “Look at what you’ve done to me. Look how much Muu is hurting.”
She shoves her hands, bare and raw and peeling, underneath Rei’s chin. She glances down, pulls a face, and takes Muu’s wrists in her hands. Her heart nearly leaps out of her ribs as Rei begins to examine them.
“This is worse than last time,” she hears her murmur, her touch gentle as she takes Muu’s hands and rotates them in her own. Muu relishes in the jolts of pain every touch from Rei gives her, because she’s here, and she’s alive –
“You can’t keep doing this,” Rei says, decisively. Muu lets out a whine – but she, stony-faced as ever, ignores her protests to take her hands back to the sink.
The cold water hurts – and not in the good way. The stream is light, and clearly meant to be soothing, but all it does it make things worse. Muu attempts to pull away, pushing herself into Rei’s chest as she does so, but Rei doesn’t let her, her grip firm and steely – so she, instead, settles on whimpering, every single drop of water feeling like a thousand tiny painful little pinpricks to her wrinkled skin.
“You’re hurting me,” Muu says. Rei sighs, softly, and doesn’t respond verbally – but she lets her tug her hands away, turning off the tap and following her wrists with her free hand, slowly retracting her arm. It’s better than nothing, she supposes.
“I brought bandages,” Rei tells her, pulling out wraps of fabric from her pocket. “I’m sorry I took so long to get here, but that’s why. I didn’t have them last time.”
Muu shakes her head, like she’s stupid. The room spins around her to compensate. “This hasn’t happened before,” she says. "Don't be silly."
Rei stares at her, expression unreadable. It only makes her head hurt. “You don’t remember?”
Muu doesn’t know what to say to that. She just shakes her head again. Rei tuts, clearly perturbed, as she begins to wrap her hands up in bandages.
“Fine,” she mutters. “I should’ve expected that, really. It’s not like you were paying attention.”
Muu hums. Rei ties her hands together, making her fingers interlock, and finishes the wrap with a hasty-looking bow. Despie it all, she finds it in herself to grumble. “You can’t make it look prettier?”
Rei stares at her for what feels perhaps a little too long. Muu blushes under all the attention, and the other rolls her eyes. “This is just an emergency thing,” she finally says. “I’ll do a better one tomorrow, alright? It’s late.”
Muu grumbles. Of course it’s late, that’s why she’s hurting herself – but Rei ignores her angered murmurs to take her by the shoulders and guide her out of the bathroom.
“Come on,” she says, leading her through the panopticon with very little protest. Muu simply relishes in all the attention. “Go to bed.”
Muu turns her face to look up at her. She widens her eyes, pouting, and – “Will you tuck me in?”
Rei scowls down at her, but something in her expression softens after a moment. It turns into a look of pity. Muu will take what she can get.
“Fine,” she says. “Just don’t do this again.”
Muu beams back at her. They both know she won’t fulfill her side of the promise; it’s only a matter of time before she returns once again to the boiling sink and her tearing skin and that awful, red stain. But, for now, she thinks she’s okay with just sleeping.