Work Text:
There’s something morbid about the blood-matted wildflowers that populate the toilet bowl. Your heart is beating so hard that it seems to ring in your ears, teeth copper-tasting and crimson-tinted.
You recognize each one — another you, used to uproot them by the fistful to make bouquets that would wilt within the day; fireweed, bluebell, paintbrush, lupine, beeplant.
Plentiful and colorful, and you’re tempted to touch one, even though you know it will stain your fingertips red (what part of you hasn’t been stained; what can a drop of blood do to you that you’ve not already done?).
You don’t, in the end.
It’s painful to move, but you find the flush and press down. You turn your face away from the pinks and purples that are now swirling down the drain. Your legs are shaky but you stumble to the sink — water pools in the crevices of your palms, and you let it overflow. It’s scalding, but you’re glad for the warmth. You’re always so cold now.
Bring it up to your mouth. Swirl the copper off your tongue, only half-succeed in doing so. Spit out. Rinse and repeat until the taste of you is as gone as you can achieve.
When this — this curse, this disease — first happened, you looked everywhere, trying to find meaning, trying to find symbolism in the petals and stems that spilled from your lips, but there is no meaning in your suffering. At least, not anymore. Not in a way that anyone cared to write.
“Dani! Are ye done?” Rahne’s cheerful voice pierced through the silence.
Something akin to guilt stirs within you as you turn off the tap. You respond, as bright as you can muster. You meet your own eyes, take in your slowly-sickening pallor. Eyes as dull as that dollar-store pail left to the elements for years until all the likely-leaded paint peeled off, leaving it a whimpering, dying gray.
You know what could save you — just as you know you will never do it.
You’re going to die one day. Not on the battlefield, or of old age, but of a love unspoken and unrequited. You’ve accepted it.
An arm wraps around your shoulder as you step out. You can see the confusion and worry in their gazes. You grin wider to compensate (you hope they can’t smell the blood scraped from your throat). You’ve accepted it in the same way you know they never will. They’ll want to fix it.
They don’t understand, this is your cross to bear. You could never free yourself from who you were, and it clings like sticky-taffy between your teeth, around you. Your faults, the many there are.
One day, your own, selfish, love will consume you. But not tonight.
Tonight, you can pretend, for them all.
(And if you nearly collapse in exhaustion in the middle of the dance floor, you think, at least it’s in her arms.)