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Apo's body is covered in scars; Faint white marks blending with the freckles on her sun-worn skin. She wishes there were some cool, edgy backstory for each one; a bear attack, a run-in with bandits, a drunken fight, but, truth be told, they were all so mundane. Well, except for the ones from Cherri, her shoulder pierced with tough scar tissue, long scratches clawing their way up her right leg. The fall still came back to her in their nightmares. Cherri's crumpled body lying on the floor, the blood pouring out much too fast, forming a paste with the dust on the floor of the pit. Her shaky breaths growing softer and softer as the dream swims before Apo's eyes.
"Apo, love. Are you alright?" Cherri's voice snaps her out of her daydream. She was alive, and they were back in Pity together. Everything is fine. A hand grabs their own, squeezing them tight. "You were picking at your nails again." Cherri says softly "What's happening? Talk to me."
Apo hated it when Cherri used their soft voice. Her Cherri, with her knives and crossbow bolts; The girl who would get into fights over the tiniest disagreement, staring at her with nothing but concern in her eyes. Apo knows Cherri worries about her. They feel so guilty for making her so fretful, for causing them all this distress.
"It's nothing." She said, pulling her hands away from Cherri's to inspect them. the cuticle of their thumb was spotted with blood, the skin around the nail red and raw. "Just…" She twists her hand around, the droplets of blood catching in the mid-afternoon sun, "just a bad thought"
She begins cleaning under her nails, starting with her left thumb, working systematically across both hands, there was only dirt under the nail of her left index finger, but that was besides the point.
"Apo, stop it." Cherri says with an exhausted sigh. Apo quickly pulls her hands away from one another, sheepishly running a hand along her forearm.
"Sorry."
Her fingertips catch on the jagged edges of the old scars her father had given her when she was little, the first of many.
Sal Kuna should never have been a father, that much Apo was sure of. Her earliest memories consist of sitting on the floor of their home, alone and hungry, while their father was off in the mines, and that is how she spent most of her early years. Alone.
When he was around, her father had a short fuse, primed to explode like dynamite. She tried her best to avoid the explosions, to dance around the minefield but it was impossible.
When she was six, she had refused to eat her peas. She hated peas and her father knew that, or he should know that, if he had listened to her. She had tried to get up from the table, to run upstairs and hide under her covers.
A hand grabbed at her arm, sharp, dirty nails digging into her skin. She wriggled and squirmed but her father just held on tighter as those nails pierced her arm, cherry red blood burrowing under them as it slowly seeps from her arm.
"Don't you ever go and disobey me again, you understand girl?" He had said, with one final squeeze of her arm before letting it go. "Now. Eat your peas."
She had stared down at her arm for hours after that, the taste of peas still on her tongue, the small red semicircles barely scabbed over, the tears still fresh on their face. Each time she scratched at the cuts serving as a reminder to obey, the wounds growing deeper and deeper, and wider and wider until they could never fully heal. She deserved it. 5 crescent moons carved deep within her skin, a reminder of him, however painful.
The skin picking had become a nervous compulsion for her, when her father would send her in to help with his 'deals', Apo would pull at the skin around her nails, her thumb nails now permanently appearing different sizes, the cuticle pulled back.
Things had changed when she met Cherri.
Apo had never had a serious injury before, a few scrapes and bruises, cuts that worsened due to their scratching, but nothing like the crossbow bolt lodged in their shoulder.
Apo remembers Cherri's face when she saw Apo pulling at the skin around the wound, wincing slightly at the pain, but seemingly unbothered. They had reached over to the bed Apo sat on and slapped her hands away from the cut, reprimanding her for their stupidity. Questioning the strange habit. They made sure to wrap Apo's wounds after that, forming a small barrier between her and her compulsions.
"To make sure it doesn't get infected" Cherri had said, but Apo knew it was to stop her picking at the cut.
The rest of the day is a blur to Apo; She allows herself to be dragged around town by Cherri, she knows they spoke to the sheriff at some point, what was discussed is a mystery to Apo. Graecie was there too, she remembers that.
Back in their orchard home in Pity, the pair lie in bed, Apo clinging extra tight to Cherri.
"I'm really sorry about today" She whispered in the dark, burying their face in Cherri's arm, breathing in the comforting scent of blossoms and fresh baking.
"Apo Kuna. You have nothing to be sorry for. Were you… just having a bad day or did something happen?" She says it so softly, the concern in her voice impossible to ignore. Apo's hands start shaking, tears welling up in her eyes.
"I don't know… I just got thinking about all my old scars, the ones from my father. I think- I think I kind of deserved it y'know."
"No." Cherri replied, cutting off Apo's thoughts. "You were just a kid, we were just kids." she brushes a hand over her own scar, gnarled and jagged across her left eye.
"It's just… maybe if I had been a better daughter… maybe I wouldn't be like this, maybe you wouldn't have to worry about me so much."
"Apo." she says "I love you because you're like this, and I worry about you because I love you." They hold their hand softly, running her thumb across Apo's scratched knuckles, kissing each crescent scar along their arm, warm lips pressing gently against freckled skin. A warm feeling floods through Apo's body, a soft, comfortable glow from within.
The realisation that maybe, just maybe, she doesn't deserve to bleed.