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You can’t seem to sleep. Conversations are playing over and over in your brain, running down your nerves like ice water. Everything feels colder now, like you went swimming in an ice river and can’t seem to dry off. Every gust of wind makes you shiver, every bump of armor is a shock to your system, like you hadn’t been feeling anything to its fullest before this moment. Is this what you’re supposed to feel like? Is this how everyone goes about their lives, with exposed nerve endings, gritting their teeth through the overstimulation?
You doubt it.
unsafe
“We’ve made our promises to each other, and they’re not promises we’ve made to anyone else on the server.” They’re not wrong. You’ve made promise after promise, each one done out of the desperate kind of need you keep tangling yourself up in. You don’t regret them. You don't.
You roll over to your left side, trying to focus on the pins and needles that flair up under your skin. It only takes your mind off of the cold for a little while. The numbness is spreading in you, working its way through your veins and capillaries, threading through your muscles, seeping into your bones. It’s not comfortable. It’s not going to help you fall asleep. It’s not going to stop you thinking-
unconnected
“-keep it for yourself.”
“No.”
“Why not!?” The words are a desperate rush of breath. You stare at her as she paces in a circle, until she’s turned back to face you. There’s a pit growing in your stomach before the words hit your ears, please don’t do this please please please-
“Because you’re a good person. And the server could do with one of those.”
You give up on sleeping. Footsteps bounce around the bricks as you walk around the base of the dilapidated tower. The floor is just as unstable as it’s been since the beginning, and you’ve no intention of fixing it. Wind rustles the trees and drags across your skin like a knife. It’s so much colder than it used to be.
unprotected
rin: do you consider yourself a good person?
You don’t respond, you can’t let yourself. The messages disappear as you shut off your comm. Not worth thinking about right now.
There are shears in your hands. You do not remember how they got there into your inventory. Gathering leaves? Shearing sheep? They're not enchanted, there's tell tale signs of wear already, the twin blades too dull to draw blood when you press your palm against each one. There’s surely better ways to test sharpness, but you’ve always found this to be the easiest.
There were shears near your eye just a few days ago. Blue traded them out for a sword in the end, and you wished they hadn’t. Staring down the sight of diamond was never the same as facing the cold metal of iron. Both made for cutting things off, trimming, shaping into what the wielder wants to see. The hole where your eye was is filled swiftly enough, a pink iris staring back at you when you pass by the water entrance of the home you’ll lose later that night.
There were shears in Void’s hands when they killed you the fourth time. It was only fair.
There are shears around your left horn now. You remember every second of how they sprouted forth from your skull, a distinct and sickening familiarity at the sensation when it happened. The feeling of your skin tearing as the metal coverings were ripped from you, skin splitting as the protrusions were finally freed. You don’t remember if you screamed this time.
There are broken shears at your feet, your horns left distinctly intact. You don’t know how to change yourself. You think perhaps you should leave it to others to decide what shape you're supposed to be. The broken tool finds its way back into your inventory. You’ve always been far too sentimental to let things like that go.
understand?
cymae-mesa: Didn't succeed, but I tried, for you.
cosmic: i heard…
cosmic: im sorry
cymae-mesa: <3
For you. For you. For you. The words echo through your skull even days later, you return again and again to them. You still don’t understand it, none of this makes sense to you anymore. There are broken shears in your inventory. There are promises weighing down each of your steps as you crawl back under your sheets.
it's the plan and it’s something
“You're not a very good teammate, you know.” It's said with a hint of a smile. Something inside you withers.
You look down at your skin, at a skin stitched together with stars, at a skin that is not yours. There are patterns there that you know by heart, hours spent tracing and studying how they moved, but all of it feels alien when it’s on your own body. You wonder if you’re starting to regret this promise. You know there’s no point in dwelling on it.
What else are you supposed to give? What else are you supposed to say yes to? How many more things can you lend yourself to before you become a patchwork person, driven solely on other’s wishes? You'll never see them completed.
but it's nothing if you never let it go
“It’s hard to know where you stop and I start… In some of this.”