Chapter Text
OWN had been growing out her hair, lately.
Well, that wasn't quite right. She hadn't really. It wasn't that she'd been growing it out, but that she hadn't had time to get it cut. She hadn't made time—hadn't bothered—and she didn't particularly want to dwell on the reason why. Especially when she looked in the mirror and saw that face again.
Her face.
The one that always left her feeling sick; with her heart so far up her throat she could probably cough it up onto the bathroom floor. She laughed dryly to herself as she imagined it: a bloody, still-beating mess at her feet, staining the tiles red, before turning back toward the mirror. Just to sneak another glance, just to be sure it was really her.
Then another.
Then another.
(Did you miss me that much?)
OWN flinched. The mere thought of her was enough to make her not-very-human heart do very human things. Like jump, for instance. Her hands flew to her chest in an instant, and she forced herself to breathe, fingers curling against the fabric of her shirt like whatever organ lay beneath might've slipped through the bars of her ribs, and leapt free.
Though when dealing with her, OWN supposed it was always a possibility. She'd always been disgustingly good at winning the hearts of everyone around her.
(Oh? Even—?)
OWN ignored whatever traitorous thought had tried to slip into her mind. She sucked in an uneasy breath to try and calm herself, unfurling her fingers slowly, carefully; feeling her heart tremble once again. Her hand shook as she pulled it away—but she did not look away.
She held her reflection's gaze for a second more; then two.
The longer she stared, the more she saw of her. It was hard not to. She looked a lot like her. Maybe too much. It was enough to be unsettling, and when she grimaced, Yuki seemed to smile back. Almost like she was looking down on her一smug. Letting OWN know with that annoying lilt of hers that she had everything she (they?) ever wanted and she didn’t even have to work all that hard to get it.
More than unsettling, then—she thought it was revolting.
It was wrong. The image reflected back at her was wrong. She should've grabbed the scissors months ago, hacked away at her hair, and have been done with it once and for all. And her. It'd be painfully easy for her to snip it all away, and it'd be what Mafuyu wanted, too.
(…But what about you? a voice whispered back.)
OWN shook her head.
Now wasn't the time to let the phantoms beneath her skin get the better of her. It didn't matter. She didn't matter. She needed to hurry up and cut it, and put it all in the past. The memories; the guilt—she could sever all of their lingering attachments as long as she picked up the scissors, and soon.
It was for the best, she told herself, gentle fingers reaching to trace over the silhouette in the mirror.
…Wasn't it?
The girl staring back wasn't her, after all.
OWN wasn't… god, she couldn't ever be her. Her hair was too messy, and her ponytail wasn't ever quite right. It hung in choppy, uneven strands, pooling past her shoulders in a way that bore a faint resemblance to Yuki, but nothing more.
She was a mangled effigy of the girl her mom had wanted them to be.
She wasn't sociable, the way that she was. She wasn't as nice; wasn't as perfect, or even half as beloved. She was incomplete: the void beneath their ribs. A black hole born from the colossal explosion of a star. All that remained was this deep-seated hunger inside of her—and even that didn't begin to encapsulate the desperation she felt.
Both to be saved, and to simply be loved.
OWN sighed softly to herself, and when she raised her eyes to the mirror again, she noticed something else. The mirror-image looking back at her almost looked… free. Or maybe she was just happier than she was inside the cage. She’d learned how to adapt to it; how to use it to her own advantage.
Briefly, she wondered why she couldn't do that, and after that, came the flickering thought of—
(Why would you want to?)
OWN tilted her head, confused. It didn't really sound like something she'd think, but the thought was there—bouncing around the inside of her skull. It felt more like a distant memory than something that belonged to her: disconnected; disjointed; wrong, and OWN shook her head to try and rid herself of it.
It… didn't really help.
Instead, it made everything feel hazy. It was as if she was a small child again, tiny hands curved around the snow globe that was only brought out around the holidays, shaking it next to her ear, scattered snow and words inside her head. Dizzy and dazed and disoriented—not entirely herself.
OWN blinked to try and refocus her thoughts.
She locked eyes with the girl in the mirror, and with trembling hands, she grabbed her hair by the root. Maybe in doing so, she mused—in cutting bits and pieces of herself away—she could get a little closer to her. To Yuki, and to being the daughter she always should have been. Cutting away cancerous, unneeded tissue—that was something that doctors did, wasn't it?
Maybe she might finally make her mom proud.
Some small part of her doubted it, though.
OWN reached for the scissors with her other hand, and held them up to her face. She tried not to let her hands shake too much as she positioned her hair between the blades, and gritted her teeth. "Don't," she muttered to herself—unsure of what exactly she was instructing herself to do. Don't think too hard? Don't do it? Or was it something else?
She didn't really know, but—
What she did know was that things couldn't go on like this. She'd break. They all would, if she wasn't careful. She needed to cut it. Even if she didn't want to be the one that destroyed the mirage, she had to. She'd told herself that she would so many times.
How many more would it be before it finally got through?
She needed to cut it.
She needed to.
She needed—? What did she need, again?
(Do you need somebody to tell you what to do?)
With a quiet, broken sob, she looked back toward the mirror. She wasn't really sure what she was expecting from it—whether it was comfort, or merely advice—but the reflection offered neither. She just… stared at her. Silently; scrutinising, like she felt sorry for her. Like she was pathetic.
OWN didn't particularly blame her for thinking so.
It was true, anyway. She'd always been the most pitiable between them. The least likely to be saved.
That still didn't mean she liked being reminded of it, though.
She adjusted the angle of the scissors slightly, and lowered her eyes. Looking at (or was it for?) Yuki wasn't going to help, and neither would letting her gaze wander from where the sharp edge of the blade grazed just beneath her ears.
It was better to avoid her when she could.
Moving her hand downward, then, OWN stroked along the length of her hair. Her fingers sifted through the strands—careful; slow, like a needle trying to close an open wound—until she eventually reached the ends. She toyed with them for a few moments: every split end; every silky strand that could've been mistaken for hers, and raised them to her lips. She murmured a quiet apology for her insolence, and then—
OWN pulled her hair taut, and forced the scissors shut.
Or at least—she tried to.
For one reason or another, she just couldn't find the strength. Her hands were shaking so badly that she could no longer keep them still. Tears prickled at the corners of her eyes, and her vision blurred. The face in the mirror became indistinct, and suddenly—all too soon, she felt the undeniable urge to be sick.
She tried her best to swallow it back down; to bury it alive, like everything else, and looked at the ugly chunk of hair that had fallen into the sink.
Her skin crawled.
It wasn't enough hair for it to be noticeable, but it was certainly too much for her to deny that it had happened. Definitely too much for her to dismiss it as an accident, or innocent curiosity. It was deliberate. It was murder—the kind of surgical violence only a doctor was capable of.
Maybe she was closer to that dream of hers (…hers? Was it really?) than she'd originally thought, even if the only one she was trying to save was herself.
Her lower lip quivered at the thought.
(Why?)
Thousands of tiny daggers continued to press against the inside of her eyelids, until it eventually became too much. The scissors slipped from her hands, and they clattered somewhere at her feet. She didn't know where. Didn't really care, either.
Not when she could see from the corner of her eye how her reflection trembled, too.
Her entire body was shaking from head to toe, and it took a tremendous amount of effort for her to simply breathe. She could feel every ragged breath that pushed through her lungs; every horrible, hiccupy gasp that bubbled somewhere deep inside before spilling past her lips. Her hand fell uselessly around the base of her throat to try and contain them. Her eyes darted back to the mirror, and then—
Quietly, she wondered how it was that Yuki remained so effortlessly beautiful.
Even crumpled and beaten—her smudged lip gloss glinting alluringly under the dingy bathroom lights—she was still the most irresistibly gorgeous girl OWN had ever known.
For a fraction of a heartbeat, OWN considered turning on the faucet for her so she could wash it all away. Letting the water run, and with it, the evidence of her failure, and her guilt. If nothing else, she hoped it might be able to drown out her thoughts. The ones that screamed at her unnecessary things, like, 'Why did you do that?' and, 'What were you thinking?'
Before, she'd have done almost anything to make them shut up, and yet—
All she could do was stand, and let her fingers curl against the sink.
They both knew she deserved it when Yuki turned to look at her to judge.
She'd been so, unbelievably stupid. She hadn't been thinking. If she had, she would've realised that sooner; would've known she was wrong, that this body wasn't hers. She was an utter fool for ever believing that doing something like this would make it so.
OWN couldn't have taken this body from her, even if she tried.
She squeezed her eyes shut, and leaned in. Her forehead lay just inches away from the cool glass, some semblance of comfort; some semblance of warmth. (But for who?) She let her now-empty hand follow suit, and placed it on top of Yuki's. Her fingers curled.
She imagined dipping them into the empty spaces between, tangling them together, running her fingers adoringly over her knuckles.
(Someone saying, I love you, and, "I'm sorry.")
She tilted her head in response. Leaned in a little more. This time, to attempt to press her lips against OWN's (against Yuki's? Just who was she, again? It was hard to tell when the images blurred.) and feel the gentle softness of her mouth. She was faintly aware that she wasn't supposed to; that she shouldn't have even entertained the thought, but for the moment?
She just couldn't remember why.
It seemed like such a silly, arbitrary rule. It couldn't hurt to pretend, could it?
Not if it was just for a little while, until she remembered who she was supposed to be.
Not if it was just this once.
She leaned in a fraction of a centimetre more. Strangely enough, the girl in the mirror leaned in along with her. Had she wanted this, too? OWN laughed—either in disbelief, or joy—and gently bumped their foreheads together. She could hardly remember that she'd been crying a mere moment ago, and she dragged her fingers against the glass: down towards her palm, then back up again.
"Closer," she mumbled, feverish. She wanted to feel her closer.
She buried her face into Yuki's hair. Someone—not her. It couldn't possibly be her—tittered affectionately at her transgression, and OWN, utterly entranced, felt herself laughing along with her. It coaxed the weight away from her shoulders, and her body relaxed against the mirror. Against her.
Her arms wrapped around herself; around Yuki's neck, and she tugged her closer as she tried to breathe all of her in.
She smelled nice. Like home, and flowers; like warm rain against her skin. She wondered if the lingering scent of morning glories was because of the perfume Mizuki had let Yuki borrow earlier that day, and she nuzzled against the mirror. She'd have to remind herself to ask to borrow it again later, when she wasn't so… preoccupied. When she wasn't so eager to sink into Yuki's embrace.
Who could blame her for it, though?
It'd been such a long time since she'd last been held.
It was almost alarming how nice it felt. How addicting, to be stained in even a fraction of her warmth. To be wanted and considered worthy of Yuki's time—it almost felt like a dream, and she sighed gently; adoringly. Her eyelids felt so heavy that she could hardly lift them.
So did her limbs.
She held onto Yuki's hand tightly, even so.
For once—for once, she could feel everything so poignantly. Every fragile heartbeat, every breath that trembled past broken lips. She could feel each of them as if they were her own, and for a fragment in time, OWN believed that maybe they were. Whenever she peeked at the mirror, after all—they seemed to breathe in sync. It was the most alive she'd ever felt, and yet—
And yet.
Something commanded her to stop.
It was as if her body was shifting on autopilot, and she paused right before her mouth could hit the glass; right before the illusion could break.
She let her eyes open a sliver, just enough to discern her expression.
Instead, she saw how the condensation had hidden Yuki away. Her breathing had coated the mirror's surface in a thin layer of fog. Something akin to disappointment slipped between the cracks in her ribs at the sight, and she quickly wiped it away with her sleeve. It wasn't particularly difficult to erase, but when the mirror cleared—
Yuki was gone.
Frowning, she tried again, smoothing over smear-stains with the heel of her palm.
And again.
And again.
And again.
But even when OWN pressed her thumb against the glass, trying to trace over the gentle curve of her smile, and her cheeks, Yuki stayed that way. Gone. She existed nowhere but in the recesses of her mind; the darkest and innermost corners of her heart. Just as she'd felt she might have something that finally belonged to her, just her, it had been ripped away.
Her chest hiccuped with grief, and the sob that tore itself from her throat nearly made her gag.
She began clawing desperately at the mirror. Maybe to try and prove that she wasn't going crazy; that she was real—or just to dig her out of the glass so she could actually hold her. She knew it was pointless, but she couldn't stop herself. She'd have done anything to get closer to her; to lick up fragments of that residual warmth.
A tear rolled down her cheek when she finally realised that she couldn't.
Not now, not ever.
She wondered if her tears were the only warmth she would ever be able to feel.
She wondered what was wrong with her.
Her face was flushed, her pupils wide and unfocused. There was a trail of spit at the corner of her mouth from when she'd nearly thrown up. She looked disgusting. Repulsive. Nothing like her. She should've known this was the closest she'd ever get to the real thing. She should've known better—should never have tried to desecrate her, not now. Not like this.
It was pointless to.
There was nobody there, no breathing fogging up the mirror but her own. It was exactly as it was back then, the way it always would be: two fingers pressed against her lips in the imitation of a kiss, with only one of them ever exhaling; only one of them ever existing.
Yuki wasn't here.
She hadn't ever been.
The feeling of somebody breathing down her neck was something her imagination had conjured up. It was all in her head. The pair of eyes that watched her from inside the mirror—the way that they skittered across her face, drifted toward where their fingers would intertwine, and the way her lips curled into a smile. All of it.
It was all in her head.
She'd driven herself insane.
The one in the mirror tried to mouth something to her, even so.
OWN tilted her head. A trick of the light, maybe? Her intuition told her it wasn't, but—
She shook her head. It didn't really matter, either way. She didn't have an answer for her—or anything at all. She had, and felt… nothing. The only thing to accompany her was her grief, and for the first time since she'd started trying to cut her hair, she looked toward the mirror.
Really looked. Properly, this time.
It didn't take very long, after that, for the realisation to set in.
OWN pulled herself over the sink, and retched into it. She covered her mouth to try and stop it, but it was no use. Bile slipped between the gaps of her fingers, and into the sink. Her throat burned with the effort to purge everything from her body, and she wondered when it was that she'd last had something to eat.
Had it been over a day ago? Three?
She couldn't remember.
Dizzy, she stumbled away from the sink, and pressed her back against the wall. Suddenly, she felt too weak to even stand, and her knees buckled under her weight. She slid to the floor. The bathroom was floor was cold—too cold—and the tiles stung against her bare palms. She shivered, just as she used to in their bed, alone.
OWN blinked, dazed.
Alone.
She stared at a blurry patch of paint on the wall. Some shade of pink that Mizuki had insisted on brightening their home with. It'd been so long since they'd painted it together that the original colour was beginning to peek through the cracks.
—Alone?
The colours merged as her head began to spin. They became a singular entity. They became one, which was really just a fancy way for saying—
Alone.
OWN tilted her head to the side, and rested her head on the edge of the bath. The acrylic dug uncomfortably into her skin. She sighed and let her eyes scrunch shut.
She really was alone, wasn't she?
Something about the thought didn't seem quite right, but the word sounded so impossibly familiar as it slipped past her lips. It felt like an old friend of hers, a presence she'd been made intimately aware of over the years. Like something she was destined for.
She was alone.
And for the first time in a long, long time—OWN balled her fingers into fists, dug them into her eyes, and began to cry.