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She plucked on her veins like she plucked on her heartstrings, just like she plucked at her violin. It was a dirty method that she developed at a time she doesn’t quite remember, but she remembered that she liked the experience of pain. She wasn’t looking for a way to die or a way out, she just wanted a friendly reminder that she hadn’t completely lost herself yet again.
What would the use of dying be anyway? She was a god. Suicide was neither heroic nor just. Simply cowardice.
Rose Lalonde wasn’t a coward. She just plucked at her veins like a violin solo. Her mother drank, and she played.
Once upon a time there were four friends who had never seen one another past a computer screen. Once upon a time these friends played a game, one that they thought would be like playing go fish or even rummy. Maybe even a little challenging like a role-playing game, which is mostly what they all had thought it was.
Once upon a time four friends destroyed the world, once upon a time four friends died, once upon a time four friends were revived, once upon a time they died again and
Once upon a time they became Gods.
Of the four friends, one became a Witch, and one became a Knight. Another became a Heir, and the other became a Seer. The kids became Gods and they inherited the elements that lay permanently upon their shoulders.
Once upon the time the Gods remembered that they were just kids, because they began to crumble under the weight of their given godhood.
The Witch became too aware of her surroundings and couldn’t stand the hyper-awareness.
The Knight couldn’t turn off the ticking of the timelines, and he became obsessed with the hours and the beats.
The Heir wasn’t able to stand how the earth breathed, how each person exhaled so much emotion.
The Seer could not bear the thoughts of those she was forced to read.
Once upon a time the game became so much more than a game, robbed four friends of their childhood, and instantaneously locked them into an existence that none of them had ever asked for.
Except they’d been forced to go for it, because all these kids, who had before never seen one another past a computer screen, had to survive.
They had to save the world that they had a hand in destroying. All their friends, all their enemies, their guardians, had died because they had all decided to play what they thought was going to be a
simple,
innocent,
Game.
Once upon a time there was only heartbreak and growing up, because there was no other choice if they wanted to fix what they all believed they had broke.
Rose played on her arms and spread herself out on the framework, soliloquies written in her blood as it seeped into the concrete floor. She was alone on a ship with five aliens -- six, there was a dead one that had somehow escaped a dream bubble -- and one of her friends. She was not intimidated; she had come to understand that they were all reaching towards the same goal.
And when she saw into their minds, there was a lack of bloodlust for them that had actually, genuinely surprised her the first time.
In the quiet alcoves of her mind, she could admit that she missed her mother. She missed the aimless bantering they would do, the pointless strife’s that never felt anything but safe.
She wished the last thing she had seen of her hadn’t been her body spread across the pavement like a run over animal.
Rose hid herself very well. She was locked so tightly behind dictionaries and the eldritch knowledge that it would be hard to see past the microscopic cracks that are left for people to try. If you could navigate the tunnels, you could reach the center. At the center was everything she was, everything she could be. But the tunnels were dark and twisted and there were some cracks that could lead you the way out.
“Rose, dude. You can’t keep doing this.”
She looks up from her position on the floor, blood running from her arm like water, and she sees a person clad in the same colored robes as his eyes. As her blood. Though they always remained hidden like her blood should remain hidden, but it never did.
“I don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to. It is a harmless little habit that is doing no one any real harm.” She sits up, and places a towel over the fresh wounds, and she doesn’t even flinch at the stinging contact. “You and your brother had your music to share, my mother and I have our destructive tendencies. Perhaps it’s my way of bonding.”
Both Rose and Dave know this isn’t the case. At the very best, it is an acute coincidence. So Dave just sighs and squats down next to her, and wraps one arm loosely around her shoulders. She doesn’t move, doesn’t return the gesture or even push him away. Dave doesn’t expect her to. So they sit like that until Rose can feel him take a deep breath, signaling he is about to speak.
“What would John know if he heard about this. The kid is like, super against these sort of things. We might be invincible, but I don’t think you’d really be able to use that as a reason. Heh, you might even make him cry.”
You actually do smile at that. Not that you want to make your friend cry, just at the fact that it would probably be true. When he found out that doomed Dave’s were offing themselves, he was mortified at the aspect. He had an innocence like no other, and Rose had to sort of admire it, if she was being honest with herself.
That was why he was the leader.
“Then John won’t ever find out, now will he?”
Dave chuckles, a warm vibration throughout his chest as he kisses the top of her head. “Whatever you say.”
She tried not to feel guilty when she hears the worry echoing in his thoughts.