HEA-lth Inspector

Certified By The Board

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

HEAlth Inspector, certified for the inspection of food service establishments to the compliance of health code regulations

StP Minimum Wage-verse Masterpost

HEA tags:

#hea-lth inspector answers - answered asks

#health inspection hea - health inspection being conducted

#health code test success - employee passed a demonstration of knowledge test

#health code test fail - employee failed a demonstration of knowledge test

#a picture of a life - my past...

#until even the air we breathe is stale - ......

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

So this is how it feels to die.

It is not nearly the spectacle you had expected of the end of a life. There is no raging fire, no burning pain, no fear, no ache, no loss.

It is simply nothing.

But you are still here.

There is no sight, no sound, no smell. You are suspended in between the beginning and the end, the body and the soul. You are weightless. You are nothing.

And yet, you are.

There is no time, there is no wait, there is no boredom. You are not eager to return to your body, nor are you glad to be rid of it. There is no feeling. There is neither thought nor emotion. There is no body.

But a person is not a body. You are still here.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

You are weightless. Suspended in gravity. This is the inevitable destination where all roads end. You are nothing but a picture of your life, in a picture of your life, in a picture of your life.

Shed this vessel for the next.

Remove the wounds. Destroy the flesh. Strand the spirit.

When it is all gone, do you still have who you started with?

No—

But you come back to yourself to fight death.

< @hr-sleeping-mound >

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

So this is how it feels to die.

It is not nearly the spectacle you had expected of the end of a life. There is no raging fire, no burning pain, no fear, no ache, no loss.

It is simply nothing.

But you are still here.

There is no sight, no sound, no smell. You are suspended in between the beginning and the end, the body and the soul. You are weightless. You are nothing.

And yet, you are.

There is no time, there is no wait, there is no boredom. You are not eager to return to your body, nor are you glad to be rid of it. There is no feeling. There is neither thought nor emotion. There is no body.

But a person is not a body. You are still here.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

She shouldn't be here. But here she is anyway, standing silent in the doorway. She is the line of chalk scored into the edge of the cliff.

[ @hea-lth-inspector-stp ]

Army is sweeping up the thoroughly dusty floor of her barbershop, flicking the lights on soon as she spots the woman in the doorway.

<the barbershop that now only has one main room and Army’s own because i’m retconning it>

She smiles at HEA that in another world would’ve been completely friendly.

“Heeeeey!! Come in! Fancy a cut??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Her fingertips move instinctually to the side of her face.

You do... haircuts? Is that right?

Her speech is hesitant. Treading over eggshells.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Army’s posture straightens, be it to give HEA attention or as a form of freezing up isn’t clear.

“Yyyyup!! Haircuts!! That is my job. The job that I do often, and do not forget is the case. I do it a perfectly normal amount, I do.”

“Trims, styles, shaves, I do ‘em all!!”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Her breath is uneven.

I think I need one.

Her fingertips trace the edge of the blade around her throat. She doesn't seem to notice the thin red line it elicits.

She hasn't moved.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“Well, come on in! The chair’s open, so what’re you waiting fooor??”

Army moves behind the chair in jerking steps and swivels it to face HEA.

She hasn’t looked away.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Right.

There are another few seconds of heavy silence before she moves, her footsteps slow and poorly measured. She sits herself down in the chair, blank expression staring at the reflection of blades in the mirror.

She traces her necklace.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Snip snip, go the scissors in Army’s right hand. Unlike the rest of the room, almost dilapidated with mold-like water damage coating the walls, her silver blades glimmer.

It’s not anywhere near HEA’s head, and yet much too close for comfort.

“Sooooo, what style we looking for?? Just a trim?? Maybe you want it all off?? I’m up for anything!!”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Oh... right.

She's distracted.

She pulls her gaze up to herself in the mirror, but all she can see there are the faint lines where her injuries used to be.

What do you...

...

Right. What do you recommend?

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“Hmmm...” Army drapes the cloth over HEA and clips it around her neck, “We haven’t met, have we?? I dunno if I know your vibe yet.”

Elated gasp, “Wait, you’re the lady from that Down place!! The one whose mouth I cut open; I can still see the scars now!! Guess you got stitches or something to close it back up.”

“I think I have an idea... do you tie your hair back??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She stiffens at the recognition.

Partially.

Her voice is strained, but she hasn't flinched away from the scissors.

She traces her scar, staring transfixed at it in the mirror.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“I’m thinking I cut it good for a bob, nice and neat. Some hair free to trail out in the front. How’s that sound??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

...

But she isn't listening anymore. Her attention is elsewhere, her gaze fixed unmoving on the faint scars across her face.

Completely lost in her own head. The lines of chalk cut across the edge of the cliff.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

The sudden chill of water, being sprayed into each part of her hair. It’s brushed out of its hiding places and out where Army can see them. The fluorescent light hums.

She’s closed the blinds.

“I’m taking your silence as a yes!!”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She doesn't move.

Doesn't answer.

Doesn't reject.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

And she gets a perfectly ordinary haircut in kind where nothing happens.

Army nudges HEA’s head a few times to get her in a good position.

She blow dries her hair and it feels cozy, until it doesn’t.

She leaves the room and doesn’t come back for a while unannounced, leaving HEA alone with hair rapidly cooling down.

“I’m gonna get a hair tie!! You wait here.” She said as she left. A rank smell emanated from the door when she opened it.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

For a while, she was too preoccupied to notice.

Until she wasn't.

Army...?

The name, in that tone, was foreign on her tongue. But she did not take it back.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

After much longer than it should take to find a hair tie, Army comes back clutching something small in her hand.

HEA’s hair is pulled back and tied into a bob. It hurts, but no more than one would expect. She was hardly gentle.

“There!! What do you think??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

The jolt of pain from the tugging at her hair snaps her back to reality at once, grounding her. She calms. She shouldn't.

She stares into the mirror.

It's different.

She doesn't get up.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“That sounds like a compliment!! I’m gonna take it as one.”

Army clips off the cloth, hanging it on a cabinet hook and dropping white hair all over the floor. She begins putting things away, eventually stopping right behind HEA.

...

A stabbing pain in the back of her neck, nary over an inch deep but so close to her brain, so close to her spinal cord...

Something disturbs the already fresh wound, sealing it as though to replace the blade that was removed. The new object twists in her spine’s direction.

It does not touch it, does not sever it, but is so, so close.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

The pain is akin to static. It shoots down the length of her spine and back up again, proving by force the presence of her body. She sits at rapt attention, holding her breath.

Her attention is all on Army now.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

With little fanfare, Army walks in front of HEA, holding a bloodstained pair of scissors.

Her skin is clammy against HEA’s cheek as she holds her head still, pressing a single scarlet soaked blade against her cheek.

She presses

and starts to slice.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She stares at the mirror, enraptured, watching the blade slide across her skin. Her gaze follows the blood, almost unblinking.

She forgets to breathe.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Other cheek. Army’s thumb rubs the leaking tear, though all it does is spread around the seeping crimson.

Old wounds are reopened. Not as gaping as they once were, for they do not reach the full way through, but still agonizing in their damage.

Army stands up straight, circling her handiwork.

“You really are a doll, arn’t you?”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She almost doesn't respond, only staring at her wounds.

But she moves then, lifting her fingertips to the reopened cuts. Wetting her hands with her blood. Almost moving her hand to her mouth, before diverting her focus.

What?

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“You sit here in complete silence letting me do whatever I want to you. You’re kinda like Ghostie when I brought her to my room, but she still talked, still did things. I get you’re in the chair and all, but really???”

“Would you say something if I cut your finger off??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She stares at Army as she talks. Still, there's silence before her response.

I... said a few things, didn't I...?

Her gaze slips down to her own bloodied fingers. It speaks for itself, doesn't it? The injury is the conversation, the dance, the disease. Words exchanged between the affliction and the cliff's edge.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“Barely, mostly when you first came in, though. After that??”

Army reaches for HEA’s left hand. Gentle, or... is it subtle?

She presses the scissors against her pinky.

“Maybe you just don’t talk much in general. That’s fine! Who needs words, anyway??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Her eyes lock to the point of contact, the blades against her finger. She takes a sharp breath in.

It- speaks for itself,

she says, voice quiet.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“I guess it does, doesn’t it?”

She presses down, but blood is still not drawn.

“Why are you letting me do this? All of this?” Her voice is not remorseful, not wavering or hesitant. Is it curious? Perhaps.

Yet it does not wait for an answer as the pressure increases.

“You let me pick your hairstyle. You let me stab you in the neck. You let me stick a key inside and twist it. You let me——” Snapping bone.

“You let me do this.” A pale finger in a pallid palm, held out in front of its owner.

“Why? Do you like it?”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She pales a bit at the sight of her own finger sitting there, detached. But still, she does not pull away.

I... don't know.

[Why don't you sit down? Wouldn't that be nice?]

Why haven't I...?

Why haven't you moved? Why haven't you protested? What are you hoping to find in these dark spaces?

Him? No.

But you haven't made a single choice of your own since you walked in the door. Doesn't that kill you, that this keeps happening? That you never make a choice?

You died. You came back from the dead.

She changes the subject.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Silence. Army’s smile falls as she studies the princess’ face.

It rises again, bemused. “That happens.” The finger is clutched in Army’s hand as she moves back to hers.

“It doesn’t happen to everyone,” press, “I haven’t seen any of the people I’ve killed come back.” crack, “But we do. We come back good as new.”

“It’s annoying.” The ring finger joins its smaller sister with a snap. “It’s like nothing that happens to most of us matters. Sure it’s fun to keep going forever, but... still.”

“What do you think? If anything.” She twirls the fingers in her grasp.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

They just come back. It's just something that happens.

[How deep must repetition still our movements, until even the air we breathe—]

It's stale.

She watches the second of her fingers join the first, a fog clouding over the pain. It'll end, and then it'll start again. Won't it?

She has been in this place for a long time, and try as she might, she cannot leave.

She looks up at Army.

When do we get to do something that matters, do you think?

[A body, dead steel, curled stiffly around a bird trapped in a basement.]

But here the culprit stands.

When will our actions start to be real instead of the same things over and over again?

The pain returns as she thinks of it, and it is as real as ever.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“Well... we still have each other, so it’s not like nothing matters.”

Again. “It’s just—— when we die, when aaall of this is just a memory, it’s like it never happened in the first place.”

“That’s why I avoid killing us. Let the scars stay. Let them mean something we’ll never forget.” Press.

“But you’ll still die. Maybe not from me, but something else. It’ll happen eventually.” Crack.

“And then all the scars are gone, like they were never there in the first place.” Snap.

“So that’s the question, isn’t it?? When will it all matter? Or is it not mattering the point??” And now she has three.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She takes in a deep breath. Dying. Living. Being reborn. It had always been happening around her, hadn't it? She drove a stake into his body, and he came back again to rescue her. It had happened to Army, even. But it had never happened to her. Perhaps it never would.

Maybe you can do something that matters now.

Her gaze drops to her hand, missing three of its fingers. Gone, still gone, and remaining that way until she one day dies. Perhaps remaining that way even past that point.

Army...

The cycle goes on all around you. Is this how you finally escape it? Or are you only tightening its grip on you with your every attempt to leave?

Would you kill me, if I asked you to?

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

As Army places her blades on the fourth, she... stills. The question gives her pause.

“It wouldn’t be the first time. ‘d be the first time on purpose, but still not the first time.”

“Are you asking me to? I thought we had a good thing going, doll.”

Something in her voice resembles hurt.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

I'm not asking you to get rid of all this progress you've made, I'm saying--

She takes in a sharp breath. If anything in the world had ever been difficult to articulate, this was worse.

Well, you said the bad thing about dying was that it doesn't stick, but...

There's no reason for your thought process, is there? It's an impulse. You're rushing ahead, barrelling off the edge of a cliff only because it popped into your head to try it.

I think it might. I think it could.

Won't you try?

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“What’d you mean, ‘xactly? You think you’d die and not come back? You’d die and you’d stay like this?”

“I’d miss ya, if you were gone, doll. There aren’t a lotta folks out there like you.”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

There's a pause.

I'm... not sure. I don't know what I mean.

Then why are you trying?

I just have this gut feeling that it could stick to me, somehow.

Why are you lying?

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

A long pause. The room is uncomfortably still.

“I s’pose I’ll still see you tomorrow.” Army pulls back her bloodied scissors.

She heads back to behind HEA. “You’ll come back for me, won’t you? See for ourselves, together? Otherwise...”

Her hand grips the object lodged in the princess’ neck, sending a shiver of pain through her entire body, “I’d have to assume you died for good, and that’s no fun, no fun at all.”

“So won’t you, darlin’? Won’t you come back here, when you can, if you can?” The other strokes HEA’s cheek, smearing fresh blood with her thumb.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

I will.

She smiles. She shouldn't.

I'll come back.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Army pushes the key closer to her spinal cord. “That’s a good Doll, thank you.” Press.

Crack.

She smiles too. “See you soon, darling.”

Snap.

Everything goes dark, and she dies.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

She shouldn't be here. But here she is anyway, standing silent in the doorway. She is the line of chalk scored into the edge of the cliff.

[ @hea-lth-inspector-stp ]

Army is sweeping up the thoroughly dusty floor of her barbershop, flicking the lights on soon as she spots the woman in the doorway.

<the barbershop that now only has one main room and Army’s own because i’m retconning it>

She smiles at HEA that in another world would’ve been completely friendly.

“Heeeeey!! Come in! Fancy a cut??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Her fingertips move instinctually to the side of her face.

You do... haircuts? Is that right?

Her speech is hesitant. Treading over eggshells.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Army’s posture straightens, be it to give HEA attention or as a form of freezing up isn’t clear.

“Yyyyup!! Haircuts!! That is my job. The job that I do often, and do not forget is the case. I do it a perfectly normal amount, I do.”

“Trims, styles, shaves, I do ‘em all!!”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Her breath is uneven.

I think I need one.

Her fingertips trace the edge of the blade around her throat. She doesn't seem to notice the thin red line it elicits.

She hasn't moved.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“Well, come on in! The chair’s open, so what’re you waiting fooor??”

Army moves behind the chair in jerking steps and swivels it to face HEA.

She hasn’t looked away.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Right.

There are another few seconds of heavy silence before she moves, her footsteps slow and poorly measured. She sits herself down in the chair, blank expression staring at the reflection of blades in the mirror.

She traces her necklace.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Snip snip, go the scissors in Army’s right hand. Unlike the rest of the room, almost dilapidated with mold-like water damage coating the walls, her silver blades glimmer.

It’s not anywhere near HEA’s head, and yet much too close for comfort.

“Sooooo, what style we looking for?? Just a trim?? Maybe you want it all off?? I’m up for anything!!”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Oh... right.

She's distracted.

She pulls her gaze up to herself in the mirror, but all she can see there are the faint lines where her injuries used to be.

What do you...

...

Right. What do you recommend?

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“Hmmm...” Army drapes the cloth over HEA and clips it around her neck, “We haven’t met, have we?? I dunno if I know your vibe yet.”

Elated gasp, “Wait, you’re the lady from that Down place!! The one whose mouth I cut open; I can still see the scars now!! Guess you got stitches or something to close it back up.”

“I think I have an idea... do you tie your hair back??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She stiffens at the recognition.

Partially.

Her voice is strained, but she hasn't flinched away from the scissors.

She traces her scar, staring transfixed at it in the mirror.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“I’m thinking I cut it good for a bob, nice and neat. Some hair free to trail out in the front. How’s that sound??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

...

But she isn't listening anymore. Her attention is elsewhere, her gaze fixed unmoving on the faint scars across her face.

Completely lost in her own head. The lines of chalk cut across the edge of the cliff.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

The sudden chill of water, being sprayed into each part of her hair. It’s brushed out of its hiding places and out where Army can see them. The fluorescent light hums.

She’s closed the blinds.

“I’m taking your silence as a yes!!”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She doesn't move.

Doesn't answer.

Doesn't reject.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

And she gets a perfectly ordinary haircut in kind where nothing happens.

Army nudges HEA’s head a few times to get her in a good position.

She blow dries her hair and it feels cozy, until it doesn’t.

She leaves the room and doesn’t come back for a while unannounced, leaving HEA alone with hair rapidly cooling down.

“I’m gonna get a hair tie!! You wait here.” She said as she left. A rank smell emanated from the door when she opened it.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

For a while, she was too preoccupied to notice.

Until she wasn't.

Army...?

The name, in that tone, was foreign on her tongue. But she did not take it back.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

After much longer than it should take to find a hair tie, Army comes back clutching something small in her hand.

HEA’s hair is pulled back and tied into a bob. It hurts, but no more than one would expect. She was hardly gentle.

“There!! What do you think??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

The jolt of pain from the tugging at her hair snaps her back to reality at once, grounding her. She calms. She shouldn't.

She stares into the mirror.

It's different.

She doesn't get up.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“That sounds like a compliment!! I’m gonna take it as one.”

Army clips off the cloth, hanging it on a cabinet hook and dropping white hair all over the floor. She begins putting things away, eventually stopping right behind HEA.

...

A stabbing pain in the back of her neck, nary over an inch deep but so close to her brain, so close to her spinal cord...

Something disturbs the already fresh wound, sealing it as though to replace the blade that was removed. The new object twists in her spine’s direction.

It does not touch it, does not sever it, but is so, so close.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

The pain is akin to static. It shoots down the length of her spine and back up again, proving by force the presence of her body. She sits at rapt attention, holding her breath.

Her attention is all on Army now.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

With little fanfare, Army walks in front of HEA, holding a bloodstained pair of scissors.

Her skin is clammy against HEA’s cheek as she holds her head still, pressing a single scarlet soaked blade against her cheek.

She presses

and starts to slice.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She stares at the mirror, enraptured, watching the blade slide across her skin. Her gaze follows the blood, almost unblinking.

She forgets to breathe.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Other cheek. Army’s thumb rubs the leaking tear, though all it does is spread around the seeping crimson.

Old wounds are reopened. Not as gaping as they once were, for they do not reach the full way through, but still agonizing in their damage.

Army stands up straight, circling her handiwork.

“You really are a doll, arn’t you?”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She almost doesn't respond, only staring at her wounds.

But she moves then, lifting her fingertips to the reopened cuts. Wetting her hands with her blood. Almost moving her hand to her mouth, before diverting her focus.

What?

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“You sit here in complete silence letting me do whatever I want to you. You’re kinda like Ghostie when I brought her to my room, but she still talked, still did things. I get you’re in the chair and all, but really???”

“Would you say something if I cut your finger off??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She stares at Army as she talks. Still, there's silence before her response.

I... said a few things, didn't I...?

Her gaze slips down to her own bloodied fingers. It speaks for itself, doesn't it? The injury is the conversation, the dance, the disease. Words exchanged between the affliction and the cliff's edge.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“Barely, mostly when you first came in, though. After that??”

Army reaches for HEA’s left hand. Gentle, or... is it subtle?

She presses the scissors against her pinky.

“Maybe you just don’t talk much in general. That’s fine! Who needs words, anyway??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Her eyes lock to the point of contact, the blades against her finger. She takes a sharp breath in.

It- speaks for itself,

she says, voice quiet.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“I guess it does, doesn’t it?”

She presses down, but blood is still not drawn.

“Why are you letting me do this? All of this?” Her voice is not remorseful, not wavering or hesitant. Is it curious? Perhaps.

Yet it does not wait for an answer as the pressure increases.

“You let me pick your hairstyle. You let me stab you in the neck. You let me stick a key inside and twist it. You let me——” Snapping bone.

“You let me do this.” A pale finger in a pallid palm, held out in front of its owner.

“Why? Do you like it?”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She pales a bit at the sight of her own finger sitting there, detached. But still, she does not pull away.

I... don't know.

[Why don't you sit down? Wouldn't that be nice?]

Why haven't I...?

Why haven't you moved? Why haven't you protested? What are you hoping to find in these dark spaces?

Him? No.

But you haven't made a single choice of your own since you walked in the door. Doesn't that kill you, that this keeps happening? That you never make a choice?

You died. You came back from the dead.

She changes the subject.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Silence. Army’s smile falls as she studies the princess’ face.

It rises again, bemused. “That happens.” The finger is clutched in Army’s hand as she moves back to hers.

“It doesn’t happen to everyone,” press, “I haven’t seen any of the people I’ve killed come back.” crack, “But we do. We come back good as new.”

“It’s annoying.” The ring finger joins its smaller sister with a snap. “It’s like nothing that happens to most of us matters. Sure it’s fun to keep going forever, but... still.”

“What do you think? If anything.” She twirls the fingers in her grasp.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

They just come back. It's just something that happens.

[How deep must repetition still our movements, until even the air we breathe—]

It's stale.

She watches the second of her fingers join the first, a fog clouding over the pain. It'll end, and then it'll start again. Won't it?

She has been in this place for a long time, and try as she might, she cannot leave.

She looks up at Army.

When do we get to do something that matters, do you think?

[A body, dead steel, curled stiffly around a bird trapped in a basement.]

But here the culprit stands.

When will our actions start to be real instead of the same things over and over again?

The pain returns as she thinks of it, and it is as real as ever.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“Well... we still have each other, so it’s not like nothing matters.”

Again. “It’s just—— when we die, when aaall of this is just a memory, it’s like it never happened in the first place.”

“That’s why I avoid killing us. Let the scars stay. Let them mean something we’ll never forget.” Press.

“But you’ll still die. Maybe not from me, but something else. It’ll happen eventually.” Crack.

“And then all the scars are gone, like they were never there in the first place.” Snap.

“So that’s the question, isn’t it?? When will it all matter? Or is it not mattering the point??” And now she has three.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She takes in a deep breath. Dying. Living. Being reborn. It had always been happening around her, hadn't it? She drove a stake into his body, and he came back again to rescue her. It had happened to Army, even. But it had never happened to her. Perhaps it never would.

Maybe you can do something that matters now.

Her gaze drops to her hand, missing three of its fingers. Gone, still gone, and remaining that way until she one day dies. Perhaps remaining that way even past that point.

Army...

The cycle goes on all around you. Is this how you finally escape it? Or are you only tightening its grip on you with your every attempt to leave?

Would you kill me, if I asked you to?

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

As Army places her blades on the fourth, she... stills. The question gives her pause.

“It wouldn’t be the first time. ‘d be the first time on purpose, but still not the first time.”

“Are you asking me to? I thought we had a good thing going, doll.”

Something in her voice resembles hurt.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

I'm not asking you to get rid of all this progress you've made, I'm saying--

She takes in a sharp breath. If anything in the world had ever been difficult to articulate, this was worse.

Well, you said the bad thing about dying was that it doesn't stick, but...

There's no reason for your thought process, is there? It's an impulse. You're rushing ahead, barrelling off the edge of a cliff only because it popped into your head to try it.

I think it might. I think it could.

Won't you try?

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“What’d you mean, ‘xactly? You think you’d die and not come back? You’d die and you’d stay like this?”

“I’d miss ya, if you were gone, doll. There aren’t a lotta folks out there like you.”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

There's a pause.

I'm... not sure. I don't know what I mean.

Then why are you trying?

I just have this gut feeling that it could stick to me, somehow.

Why are you lying?

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

A long pause. The room is uncomfortably still.

“I s’pose I’ll still see you tomorrow.” Army pulls back her bloodied scissors.

She heads back to behind HEA. “You’ll come back for me, won’t you? See for ourselves, together? Otherwise...”

Her hand grips the object lodged in the princess’ neck, sending a shiver of pain through her entire body, “I’d have to assume you died for good, and that’s no fun, no fun at all.”

“So won’t you, darlin’? Won’t you come back here, when you can, if you can?” The other strokes HEA’s cheek, smearing fresh blood with her thumb.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

I will.

She smiles. She shouldn't.

I'll come back.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

She shouldn't be here. But here she is anyway, standing silent in the doorway. She is the line of chalk scored into the edge of the cliff.

[ @hea-lth-inspector-stp ]

Army is sweeping up the thoroughly dusty floor of her barbershop, flicking the lights on soon as she spots the woman in the doorway.

<the barbershop that now only has one main room and Army’s own because i’m retconning it>

She smiles at HEA that in another world would’ve been completely friendly.

“Heeeeey!! Come in! Fancy a cut??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Her fingertips move instinctually to the side of her face.

You do... haircuts? Is that right?

Her speech is hesitant. Treading over eggshells.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Army’s posture straightens, be it to give HEA attention or as a form of freezing up isn’t clear.

“Yyyyup!! Haircuts!! That is my job. The job that I do often, and do not forget is the case. I do it a perfectly normal amount, I do.”

“Trims, styles, shaves, I do ‘em all!!”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Her breath is uneven.

I think I need one.

Her fingertips trace the edge of the blade around her throat. She doesn't seem to notice the thin red line it elicits.

She hasn't moved.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“Well, come on in! The chair’s open, so what’re you waiting fooor??”

Army moves behind the chair in jerking steps and swivels it to face HEA.

She hasn’t looked away.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Right.

There are another few seconds of heavy silence before she moves, her footsteps slow and poorly measured. She sits herself down in the chair, blank expression staring at the reflection of blades in the mirror.

She traces her necklace.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Snip snip, go the scissors in Army’s right hand. Unlike the rest of the room, almost dilapidated with mold-like water damage coating the walls, her silver blades glimmer.

It’s not anywhere near HEA’s head, and yet much too close for comfort.

“Sooooo, what style we looking for?? Just a trim?? Maybe you want it all off?? I’m up for anything!!”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Oh... right.

She's distracted.

She pulls her gaze up to herself in the mirror, but all she can see there are the faint lines where her injuries used to be.

What do you...

...

Right. What do you recommend?

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“Hmmm...” Army drapes the cloth over HEA and clips it around her neck, “We haven’t met, have we?? I dunno if I know your vibe yet.”

Elated gasp, “Wait, you’re the lady from that Down place!! The one whose mouth I cut open; I can still see the scars now!! Guess you got stitches or something to close it back up.”

“I think I have an idea... do you tie your hair back??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She stiffens at the recognition.

Partially.

Her voice is strained, but she hasn't flinched away from the scissors.

She traces her scar, staring transfixed at it in the mirror.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“I’m thinking I cut it good for a bob, nice and neat. Some hair free to trail out in the front. How’s that sound??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

...

But she isn't listening anymore. Her attention is elsewhere, her gaze fixed unmoving on the faint scars across her face.

Completely lost in her own head. The lines of chalk cut across the edge of the cliff.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

The sudden chill of water, being sprayed into each part of her hair. It’s brushed out of its hiding places and out where Army can see them. The fluorescent light hums.

She’s closed the blinds.

“I’m taking your silence as a yes!!”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She doesn't move.

Doesn't answer.

Doesn't reject.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

And she gets a perfectly ordinary haircut in kind where nothing happens.

Army nudges HEA’s head a few times to get her in a good position.

She blow dries her hair and it feels cozy, until it doesn’t.

She leaves the room and doesn’t come back for a while unannounced, leaving HEA alone with hair rapidly cooling down.

“I’m gonna get a hair tie!! You wait here.” She said as she left. A rank smell emanated from the door when she opened it.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

For a while, she was too preoccupied to notice.

Until she wasn't.

Army...?

The name, in that tone, was foreign on her tongue. But she did not take it back.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

After much longer than it should take to find a hair tie, Army comes back clutching something small in her hand.

HEA’s hair is pulled back and tied into a bob. It hurts, but no more than one would expect. She was hardly gentle.

“There!! What do you think??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

The jolt of pain from the tugging at her hair snaps her back to reality at once, grounding her. She calms. She shouldn't.

She stares into the mirror.

It's different.

She doesn't get up.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“That sounds like a compliment!! I’m gonna take it as one.”

Army clips off the cloth, hanging it on a cabinet hook and dropping white hair all over the floor. She begins putting things away, eventually stopping right behind HEA.

...

A stabbing pain in the back of her neck, nary over an inch deep but so close to her brain, so close to her spinal cord...

Something disturbs the already fresh wound, sealing it as though to replace the blade that was removed. The new object twists in her spine’s direction.

It does not touch it, does not sever it, but is so, so close.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

The pain is akin to static. It shoots down the length of her spine and back up again, proving by force the presence of her body. She sits at rapt attention, holding her breath.

Her attention is all on Army now.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

With little fanfare, Army walks in front of HEA, holding a bloodstained pair of scissors.

Her skin is clammy against HEA’s cheek as she holds her head still, pressing a single scarlet soaked blade against her cheek.

She presses

and starts to slice.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She stares at the mirror, enraptured, watching the blade slide across her skin. Her gaze follows the blood, almost unblinking.

She forgets to breathe.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Other cheek. Army’s thumb rubs the leaking tear, though all it does is spread around the seeping crimson.

Old wounds are reopened. Not as gaping as they once were, for they do not reach the full way through, but still agonizing in their damage.

Army stands up straight, circling her handiwork.

“You really are a doll, arn’t you?”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She almost doesn't respond, only staring at her wounds.

But she moves then, lifting her fingertips to the reopened cuts. Wetting her hands with her blood. Almost moving her hand to her mouth, before diverting her focus.

What?

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“You sit here in complete silence letting me do whatever I want to you. You’re kinda like Ghostie when I brought her to my room, but she still talked, still did things. I get you’re in the chair and all, but really???”

“Would you say something if I cut your finger off??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She stares at Army as she talks. Still, there's silence before her response.

I... said a few things, didn't I...?

Her gaze slips down to her own bloodied fingers. It speaks for itself, doesn't it? The injury is the conversation, the dance, the disease. Words exchanged between the affliction and the cliff's edge.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“Barely, mostly when you first came in, though. After that??”

Army reaches for HEA’s left hand. Gentle, or... is it subtle?

She presses the scissors against her pinky.

“Maybe you just don’t talk much in general. That’s fine! Who needs words, anyway??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Her eyes lock to the point of contact, the blades against her finger. She takes a sharp breath in.

It- speaks for itself,

she says, voice quiet.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“I guess it does, doesn’t it?”

She presses down, but blood is still not drawn.

“Why are you letting me do this? All of this?” Her voice is not remorseful, not wavering or hesitant. Is it curious? Perhaps.

Yet it does not wait for an answer as the pressure increases.

“You let me pick your hairstyle. You let me stab you in the neck. You let me stick a key inside and twist it. You let me——” Snapping bone.

“You let me do this.” A pale finger in a pallid palm, held out in front of its owner.

“Why? Do you like it?”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She pales a bit at the sight of her own finger sitting there, detached. But still, she does not pull away.

I... don't know.

[Why don't you sit down? Wouldn't that be nice?]

Why haven't I...?

Why haven't you moved? Why haven't you protested? What are you hoping to find in these dark spaces?

Him? No.

But you haven't made a single choice of your own since you walked in the door. Doesn't that kill you, that this keeps happening? That you never make a choice?

You died. You came back from the dead.

She changes the subject.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Silence. Army’s smile falls as she studies the princess’ face.

It rises again, bemused. “That happens.” The finger is clutched in Army’s hand as she moves back to hers.

“It doesn’t happen to everyone,” press, “I haven’t seen any of the people I’ve killed come back.” crack, “But we do. We come back good as new.”

“It’s annoying.” The ring finger joins its smaller sister with a snap. “It’s like nothing that happens to most of us matters. Sure it’s fun to keep going forever, but... still.”

“What do you think? If anything.” She twirls the fingers in her grasp.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

They just come back. It's just something that happens.

[How deep must repetition still our movements, until even the air we breathe—]

It's stale.

She watches the second of her fingers join the first, a fog clouding over the pain. It'll end, and then it'll start again. Won't it?

She has been in this place for a long time, and try as she might, she cannot leave.

She looks up at Army.

When do we get to do something that matters, do you think?

[A body, dead steel, curled stiffly around a bird trapped in a basement.]

But here the culprit stands.

When will our actions start to be real instead of the same things over and over again?

The pain returns as she thinks of it, and it is as real as ever.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“Well... we still have each other, so it’s not like nothing matters.”

Again. “It’s just—— when we die, when aaall of this is just a memory, it’s like it never happened in the first place.”

“That’s why I avoid killing us. Let the scars stay. Let them mean something we’ll never forget.” Press.

“But you’ll still die. Maybe not from me, but something else. It’ll happen eventually.” Crack.

“And then all the scars are gone, like they were never there in the first place.” Snap.

“So that’s the question, isn’t it?? When will it all matter? Or is it not mattering the point??” And now she has three.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She takes in a deep breath. Dying. Living. Being reborn. It had always been happening around her, hadn't it? She drove a stake into his body, and he came back again to rescue her. It had happened to Army, even. But it had never happened to her. Perhaps it never would.

Maybe you can do something that matters now.

Her gaze drops to her hand, missing three of its fingers. Gone, still gone, and remaining that way until she one day dies. Perhaps remaining that way even past that point.

Army...

The cycle goes on all around you. Is this how you finally escape it? Or are you only tightening its grip on you with your every attempt to leave?

Would you kill me, if I asked you to?

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

As Army places her blades on the fourth, she... stills. The question gives her pause.

“It wouldn’t be the first time. ‘d be the first time on purpose, but still not the first time.”

“Are you asking me to? I thought we had a good thing going, doll.”

Something in her voice resembles hurt.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

I'm not asking you to get rid of all this progress you've made, I'm saying--

She takes in a sharp breath. If anything in the world had ever been difficult to articulate, this was worse.

Well, you said the bad thing about dying was that it doesn't stick, but...

There's no reason for your thought process, is there? It's an impulse. You're rushing ahead, barrelling off the edge of a cliff only because it popped into your head to try it.

I think it might. I think it could.

Won't you try?

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“What’d you mean, ‘xactly? You think you’d die and not come back? You’d die and you’d stay like this?”

“I’d miss ya, if you were gone, doll. There aren’t a lotta folks out there like you.”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

There's a pause.

I'm... not sure. I don't know what I mean.

Then why are you trying?

I just have this gut feeling that it could stick to me, somehow.

Why are you lying?

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Why are you doing this to yourself?

...I don't know.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Honestly you probably could have ask a voise or even some princesses to cut you and it would've been more safe than this

...

You have been kept in safety for far too long already.

You assume I came here for something safe?

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

She shouldn't be here. But here she is anyway, standing silent in the doorway. She is the line of chalk scored into the edge of the cliff.

[ @hea-lth-inspector-stp ]

Army is sweeping up the thoroughly dusty floor of her barbershop, flicking the lights on soon as she spots the woman in the doorway.

<the barbershop that now only has one main room and Army’s own because i’m retconning it>

She smiles at HEA that in another world would’ve been completely friendly.

“Heeeeey!! Come in! Fancy a cut??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Her fingertips move instinctually to the side of her face.

You do... haircuts? Is that right?

Her speech is hesitant. Treading over eggshells.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Army’s posture straightens, be it to give HEA attention or as a form of freezing up isn’t clear.

“Yyyyup!! Haircuts!! That is my job. The job that I do often, and do not forget is the case. I do it a perfectly normal amount, I do.”

“Trims, styles, shaves, I do ‘em all!!”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Her breath is uneven.

I think I need one.

Her fingertips trace the edge of the blade around her throat. She doesn't seem to notice the thin red line it elicits.

She hasn't moved.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“Well, come on in! The chair’s open, so what’re you waiting fooor??”

Army moves behind the chair in jerking steps and swivels it to face HEA.

She hasn’t looked away.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Right.

There are another few seconds of heavy silence before she moves, her footsteps slow and poorly measured. She sits herself down in the chair, blank expression staring at the reflection of blades in the mirror.

She traces her necklace.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Snip snip, go the scissors in Army’s right hand. Unlike the rest of the room, almost dilapidated with mold-like water damage coating the walls, her silver blades glimmer.

It’s not anywhere near HEA’s head, and yet much too close for comfort.

“Sooooo, what style we looking for?? Just a trim?? Maybe you want it all off?? I’m up for anything!!”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Oh... right.

She's distracted.

She pulls her gaze up to herself in the mirror, but all she can see there are the faint lines where her injuries used to be.

What do you...

...

Right. What do you recommend?

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“Hmmm...” Army drapes the cloth over HEA and clips it around her neck, “We haven’t met, have we?? I dunno if I know your vibe yet.”

Elated gasp, “Wait, you’re the lady from that Down place!! The one whose mouth I cut open; I can still see the scars now!! Guess you got stitches or something to close it back up.”

“I think I have an idea... do you tie your hair back??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She stiffens at the recognition.

Partially.

Her voice is strained, but she hasn't flinched away from the scissors.

She traces her scar, staring transfixed at it in the mirror.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“I’m thinking I cut it good for a bob, nice and neat. Some hair free to trail out in the front. How’s that sound??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

...

But she isn't listening anymore. Her attention is elsewhere, her gaze fixed unmoving on the faint scars across her face.

Completely lost in her own head. The lines of chalk cut across the edge of the cliff.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

The sudden chill of water, being sprayed into each part of her hair. It’s brushed out of its hiding places and out where Army can see them. The fluorescent light hums.

She’s closed the blinds.

“I’m taking your silence as a yes!!”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She doesn't move.

Doesn't answer.

Doesn't reject.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

And she gets a perfectly ordinary haircut in kind where nothing happens.

Army nudges HEA’s head a few times to get her in a good position.

She blow dries her hair and it feels cozy, until it doesn’t.

She leaves the room and doesn’t come back for a while unannounced, leaving HEA alone with hair rapidly cooling down.

“I’m gonna get a hair tie!! You wait here.” She said as she left. A rank smell emanated from the door when she opened it.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

For a while, she was too preoccupied to notice.

Until she wasn't.

Army...?

The name, in that tone, was foreign on her tongue. But she did not take it back.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

After much longer than it should take to find a hair tie, Army comes back clutching something small in her hand.

HEA’s hair is pulled back and tied into a bob. It hurts, but no more than one would expect. She was hardly gentle.

“There!! What do you think??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

The jolt of pain from the tugging at her hair snaps her back to reality at once, grounding her. She calms. She shouldn't.

She stares into the mirror.

It's different.

She doesn't get up.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“That sounds like a compliment!! I’m gonna take it as one.”

Army clips off the cloth, hanging it on a cabinet hook and dropping white hair all over the floor. She begins putting things away, eventually stopping right behind HEA.

...

A stabbing pain in the back of her neck, nary over an inch deep but so close to her brain, so close to her spinal cord...

Something disturbs the already fresh wound, sealing it as though to replace the blade that was removed. The new object twists in her spine’s direction.

It does not touch it, does not sever it, but is so, so close.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

The pain is akin to static. It shoots down the length of her spine and back up again, proving by force the presence of her body. She sits at rapt attention, holding her breath.

Her attention is all on Army now.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

With little fanfare, Army walks in front of HEA, holding a bloodstained pair of scissors.

Her skin is clammy against HEA’s cheek as she holds her head still, pressing a single scarlet soaked blade against her cheek.

She presses

and starts to slice.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She stares at the mirror, enraptured, watching the blade slide across her skin. Her gaze follows the blood, almost unblinking.

She forgets to breathe.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Other cheek. Army’s thumb rubs the leaking tear, though all it does is spread around the seeping crimson.

Old wounds are reopened. Not as gaping as they once were, for they do not reach the full way through, but still agonizing in their damage.

Army stands up straight, circling her handiwork.

“You really are a doll, arn’t you?”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She almost doesn't respond, only staring at her wounds.

But she moves then, lifting her fingertips to the reopened cuts. Wetting her hands with her blood. Almost moving her hand to her mouth, before diverting her focus.

What?

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“You sit here in complete silence letting me do whatever I want to you. You’re kinda like Ghostie when I brought her to my room, but she still talked, still did things. I get you’re in the chair and all, but really???”

“Would you say something if I cut your finger off??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She stares at Army as she talks. Still, there's silence before her response.

I... said a few things, didn't I...?

Her gaze slips down to her own bloodied fingers. It speaks for itself, doesn't it? The injury is the conversation, the dance, the disease. Words exchanged between the affliction and the cliff's edge.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“Barely, mostly when you first came in, though. After that??”

Army reaches for HEA’s left hand. Gentle, or... is it subtle?

She presses the scissors against her pinky.

“Maybe you just don’t talk much in general. That’s fine! Who needs words, anyway??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Her eyes lock to the point of contact, the blades against her finger. She takes a sharp breath in.

It- speaks for itself,

she says, voice quiet.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“I guess it does, doesn’t it?”

She presses down, but blood is still not drawn.

“Why are you letting me do this? All of this?” Her voice is not remorseful, not wavering or hesitant. Is it curious? Perhaps.

Yet it does not wait for an answer as the pressure increases.

“You let me pick your hairstyle. You let me stab you in the neck. You let me stick a key inside and twist it. You let me——” Snapping bone.

“You let me do this.” A pale finger in a pallid palm, held out in front of its owner.

“Why? Do you like it?”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She pales a bit at the sight of her own finger sitting there, detached. But still, she does not pull away.

I... don't know.

[Why don't you sit down? Wouldn't that be nice?]

Why haven't I...?

Why haven't you moved? Why haven't you protested? What are you hoping to find in these dark spaces?

Him? No.

But you haven't made a single choice of your own since you walked in the door. Doesn't that kill you, that this keeps happening? That you never make a choice?

You died. You came back from the dead.

She changes the subject.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Silence. Army’s smile falls as she studies the princess’ face.

It rises again, bemused. “That happens.” The finger is clutched in Army’s hand as she moves back to hers.

“It doesn’t happen to everyone,” press, “I haven’t seen any of the people I’ve killed come back.” crack, “But we do. We come back good as new.”

“It’s annoying.” The ring finger joins its smaller sister with a snap. “It’s like nothing that happens to most of us matters. Sure it’s fun to keep going forever, but... still.”

“What do you think? If anything.” She twirls the fingers in her grasp.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

They just come back. It's just something that happens.

[How deep must repetition still our movements, until even the air we breathe—]

It's stale.

She watches the second of her fingers join the first, a fog clouding over the pain. It'll end, and then it'll start again. Won't it?

She has been in this place for a long time, and try as she might, she cannot leave.

She looks up at Army.

When do we get to do something that matters, do you think?

[A body, dead steel, curled stiffly around a bird trapped in a basement.]

But here the culprit stands.

When will our actions start to be real instead of the same things over and over again?

The pain returns as she thinks of it, and it is as real as ever.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“Well... we still have each other, so it’s not like nothing matters.”

Again. “It’s just—— when we die, when aaall of this is just a memory, it’s like it never happened in the first place.”

“That’s why I avoid killing us. Let the scars stay. Let them mean something we’ll never forget.” Press.

“But you’ll still die. Maybe not from me, but something else. It’ll happen eventually.” Crack.

“And then all the scars are gone, like they were never there in the first place.” Snap.

“So that’s the question, isn’t it?? When will it all matter? Or is it not mattering the point??” And now she has three.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She takes in a deep breath. Dying. Living. Being reborn. It had always been happening around her, hadn't it? She drove a stake into his body, and he came back again to rescue her. It had happened to Army, even. But it had never happened to her. Perhaps it never would.

Maybe you can do something that matters now.

Her gaze drops to her hand, missing three of its fingers. Gone, still gone, and remaining that way until she one day dies. Perhaps remaining that way even past that point.

Army...

The cycle goes on all around you. Is this how you finally escape it? Or are you only tightening its grip on you with your every attempt to leave?

Would you kill me, if I asked you to?

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

As Army places her blades on the fourth, she... stills. The question gives her pause.

“It wouldn’t be the first time. ‘d be the first time on purpose, but still not the first time.”

“Are you asking me to? I thought we had a good thing going, doll.”

Something in her voice resembles hurt.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

I'm not asking you to get rid of all this progress you've made, I'm saying--

She takes in a sharp breath. If anything in the world had ever been difficult to articulate, this was worse.

Well, you said the bad thing about dying was that it doesn't stick, but...

There's no reason for your thought process, is there? It's an impulse. You're rushing ahead, barrelling off the edge of a cliff only because it popped into your head to try it.

I think it might. I think it could.

Won't you try?

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

She shouldn't be here. But here she is anyway, standing silent in the doorway. She is the line of chalk scored into the edge of the cliff.

[ @hea-lth-inspector-stp ]

Army is sweeping up the thoroughly dusty floor of her barbershop, flicking the lights on soon as she spots the woman in the doorway.

<the barbershop that now only has one main room and Army’s own because i’m retconning it>

She smiles at HEA that in another world would’ve been completely friendly.

“Heeeeey!! Come in! Fancy a cut??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Her fingertips move instinctually to the side of her face.

You do... haircuts? Is that right?

Her speech is hesitant. Treading over eggshells.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Army’s posture straightens, be it to give HEA attention or as a form of freezing up isn’t clear.

“Yyyyup!! Haircuts!! That is my job. The job that I do often, and do not forget is the case. I do it a perfectly normal amount, I do.”

“Trims, styles, shaves, I do ‘em all!!”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Her breath is uneven.

I think I need one.

Her fingertips trace the edge of the blade around her throat. She doesn't seem to notice the thin red line it elicits.

She hasn't moved.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“Well, come on in! The chair’s open, so what’re you waiting fooor??”

Army moves behind the chair in jerking steps and swivels it to face HEA.

She hasn’t looked away.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Right.

There are another few seconds of heavy silence before she moves, her footsteps slow and poorly measured. She sits herself down in the chair, blank expression staring at the reflection of blades in the mirror.

She traces her necklace.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Snip snip, go the scissors in Army’s right hand. Unlike the rest of the room, almost dilapidated with mold-like water damage coating the walls, her silver blades glimmer.

It’s not anywhere near HEA’s head, and yet much too close for comfort.

“Sooooo, what style we looking for?? Just a trim?? Maybe you want it all off?? I’m up for anything!!”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Oh... right.

She's distracted.

She pulls her gaze up to herself in the mirror, but all she can see there are the faint lines where her injuries used to be.

What do you...

...

Right. What do you recommend?

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“Hmmm...” Army drapes the cloth over HEA and clips it around her neck, “We haven’t met, have we?? I dunno if I know your vibe yet.”

Elated gasp, “Wait, you’re the lady from that Down place!! The one whose mouth I cut open; I can still see the scars now!! Guess you got stitches or something to close it back up.”

“I think I have an idea... do you tie your hair back??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She stiffens at the recognition.

Partially.

Her voice is strained, but she hasn't flinched away from the scissors.

She traces her scar, staring transfixed at it in the mirror.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“I’m thinking I cut it good for a bob, nice and neat. Some hair free to trail out in the front. How’s that sound??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

...

But she isn't listening anymore. Her attention is elsewhere, her gaze fixed unmoving on the faint scars across her face.

Completely lost in her own head. The lines of chalk cut across the edge of the cliff.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

The sudden chill of water, being sprayed into each part of her hair. It’s brushed out of its hiding places and out where Army can see them. The fluorescent light hums.

She’s closed the blinds.

“I’m taking your silence as a yes!!”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She doesn't move.

Doesn't answer.

Doesn't reject.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

And she gets a perfectly ordinary haircut in kind where nothing happens.

Army nudges HEA’s head a few times to get her in a good position.

She blow dries her hair and it feels cozy, until it doesn’t.

She leaves the room and doesn’t come back for a while unannounced, leaving HEA alone with hair rapidly cooling down.

“I’m gonna get a hair tie!! You wait here.” She said as she left. A rank smell emanated from the door when she opened it.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

For a while, she was too preoccupied to notice.

Until she wasn't.

Army...?

The name, in that tone, was foreign on her tongue. But she did not take it back.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

After much longer than it should take to find a hair tie, Army comes back clutching something small in her hand.

HEA’s hair is pulled back and tied into a bob. It hurts, but no more than one would expect. She was hardly gentle.

“There!! What do you think??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

The jolt of pain from the tugging at her hair snaps her back to reality at once, grounding her. She calms. She shouldn't.

She stares into the mirror.

It's different.

She doesn't get up.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“That sounds like a compliment!! I’m gonna take it as one.”

Army clips off the cloth, hanging it on a cabinet hook and dropping white hair all over the floor. She begins putting things away, eventually stopping right behind HEA.

...

A stabbing pain in the back of her neck, nary over an inch deep but so close to her brain, so close to her spinal cord...

Something disturbs the already fresh wound, sealing it as though to replace the blade that was removed. The new object twists in her spine’s direction.

It does not touch it, does not sever it, but is so, so close.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

The pain is akin to static. It shoots down the length of her spine and back up again, proving by force the presence of her body. She sits at rapt attention, holding her breath.

Her attention is all on Army now.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

With little fanfare, Army walks in front of HEA, holding a bloodstained pair of scissors.

Her skin is clammy against HEA’s cheek as she holds her head still, pressing a single scarlet soaked blade against her cheek.

She presses

and starts to slice.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She stares at the mirror, enraptured, watching the blade slide across her skin. Her gaze follows the blood, almost unblinking.

She forgets to breathe.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Other cheek. Army’s thumb rubs the leaking tear, though all it does is spread around the seeping crimson.

Old wounds are reopened. Not as gaping as they once were, for they do not reach the full way through, but still agonizing in their damage.

Army stands up straight, circling her handiwork.

“You really are a doll, arn’t you?”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She almost doesn't respond, only staring at her wounds.

But she moves then, lifting her fingertips to the reopened cuts. Wetting her hands with her blood. Almost moving her hand to her mouth, before diverting her focus.

What?

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“You sit here in complete silence letting me do whatever I want to you. You’re kinda like Ghostie when I brought her to my room, but she still talked, still did things. I get you’re in the chair and all, but really???”

“Would you say something if I cut your finger off??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She stares at Army as she talks. Still, there's silence before her response.

I... said a few things, didn't I...?

Her gaze slips down to her own bloodied fingers. It speaks for itself, doesn't it? The injury is the conversation, the dance, the disease. Words exchanged between the affliction and the cliff's edge.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“Barely, mostly when you first came in, though. After that??”

Army reaches for HEA’s left hand. Gentle, or... is it subtle?

She presses the scissors against her pinky.

“Maybe you just don’t talk much in general. That’s fine! Who needs words, anyway??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Her eyes lock to the point of contact, the blades against her finger. She takes a sharp breath in.

It- speaks for itself,

she says, voice quiet.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“I guess it does, doesn’t it?”

She presses down, but blood is still not drawn.

“Why are you letting me do this? All of this?” Her voice is not remorseful, not wavering or hesitant. Is it curious? Perhaps.

Yet it does not wait for an answer as the pressure increases.

“You let me pick your hairstyle. You let me stab you in the neck. You let me stick a key inside and twist it. You let me——” Snapping bone.

“You let me do this.” A pale finger in a pallid palm, held out in front of its owner.

“Why? Do you like it?”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She pales a bit at the sight of her own finger sitting there, detached. But still, she does not pull away.

I... don't know.

[Why don't you sit down? Wouldn't that be nice?]

Why haven't I...?

Why haven't you moved? Why haven't you protested? What are you hoping to find in these dark spaces?

Him? No.

But you haven't made a single choice of your own since you walked in the door. Doesn't that kill you, that this keeps happening? That you never make a choice?

You died. You came back from the dead.

She changes the subject.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Silence. Army’s smile falls as she studies the princess’ face.

It rises again, bemused. “That happens.” The finger is clutched in Army’s hand as she moves back to hers.

“It doesn’t happen to everyone,” press, “I haven’t seen any of the people I’ve killed come back.” crack, “But we do. We come back good as new.”

“It’s annoying.” The ring finger joins its smaller sister with a snap. “It’s like nothing that happens to most of us matters. Sure it’s fun to keep going forever, but... still.”

“What do you think? If anything.” She twirls the fingers in her grasp.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

They just come back. It's just something that happens.

[How deep must repetition still our movements, until even the air we breathe—]

It's stale.

She watches the second of her fingers join the first, a fog clouding over the pain. It'll end, and then it'll start again. Won't it?

She has been in this place for a long time, and try as she might, she cannot leave.

She looks up at Army.

When do we get to do something that matters, do you think?

[A body, dead steel, curled stiffly around a bird trapped in a basement.]

But here the culprit stands.

When will our actions start to be real instead of the same things over and over again?

The pain returns as she thinks of it, and it is as real as ever.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“Well... we still have each other, so it’s not like nothing matters.”

Again. “It’s just—— when we die, when aaall of this is just a memory, it’s like it never happened in the first place.”

“That’s why I avoid killing us. Let the scars stay. Let them mean something we’ll never forget.” Press.

“But you’ll still die. Maybe not from me, but something else. It’ll happen eventually.” Crack.

“And then all the scars are gone, like they were never there in the first place.” Snap.

“So that’s the question, isn’t it?? When will it all matter? Or is it not mattering the point??” And now she has three.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She takes in a deep breath. Dying. Living. Being reborn. It had always been happening around her, hadn't it? She drove a stake into his body, and he came back again to rescue her. It had happened to Army, even. But it had never happened to her. Perhaps it never would.

Maybe you can do something that matters now.

Her gaze drops to her hand, missing three of its fingers. Gone, still gone, and remaining that way until she one day dies. Perhaps remaining that way even past that point.

Army...

The cycle goes on all around you. Is this how you finally escape it? Or are you only tightening its grip on you with your every attempt to leave?

Would you kill me, if I asked you to?

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

She shouldn't be here. But here she is anyway, standing silent in the doorway. She is the line of chalk scored into the edge of the cliff.

[ @hea-lth-inspector-stp ]

Army is sweeping up the thoroughly dusty floor of her barbershop, flicking the lights on soon as she spots the woman in the doorway.

<the barbershop that now only has one main room and Army’s own because i’m retconning it>

She smiles at HEA that in another world would’ve been completely friendly.

“Heeeeey!! Come in! Fancy a cut??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Her fingertips move instinctually to the side of her face.

You do... haircuts? Is that right?

Her speech is hesitant. Treading over eggshells.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Army’s posture straightens, be it to give HEA attention or as a form of freezing up isn’t clear.

“Yyyyup!! Haircuts!! That is my job. The job that I do often, and do not forget is the case. I do it a perfectly normal amount, I do.”

“Trims, styles, shaves, I do ‘em all!!”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Her breath is uneven.

I think I need one.

Her fingertips trace the edge of the blade around her throat. She doesn't seem to notice the thin red line it elicits.

She hasn't moved.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“Well, come on in! The chair’s open, so what’re you waiting fooor??”

Army moves behind the chair in jerking steps and swivels it to face HEA.

She hasn’t looked away.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Right.

There are another few seconds of heavy silence before she moves, her footsteps slow and poorly measured. She sits herself down in the chair, blank expression staring at the reflection of blades in the mirror.

She traces her necklace.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Snip snip, go the scissors in Army’s right hand. Unlike the rest of the room, almost dilapidated with mold-like water damage coating the walls, her silver blades glimmer.

It’s not anywhere near HEA’s head, and yet much too close for comfort.

“Sooooo, what style we looking for?? Just a trim?? Maybe you want it all off?? I’m up for anything!!”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Oh... right.

She's distracted.

She pulls her gaze up to herself in the mirror, but all she can see there are the faint lines where her injuries used to be.

What do you...

...

Right. What do you recommend?

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“Hmmm...” Army drapes the cloth over HEA and clips it around her neck, “We haven’t met, have we?? I dunno if I know your vibe yet.”

Elated gasp, “Wait, you’re the lady from that Down place!! The one whose mouth I cut open; I can still see the scars now!! Guess you got stitches or something to close it back up.”

“I think I have an idea... do you tie your hair back??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She stiffens at the recognition.

Partially.

Her voice is strained, but she hasn't flinched away from the scissors.

She traces her scar, staring transfixed at it in the mirror.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“I’m thinking I cut it good for a bob, nice and neat. Some hair free to trail out in the front. How’s that sound??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

...

But she isn't listening anymore. Her attention is elsewhere, her gaze fixed unmoving on the faint scars across her face.

Completely lost in her own head. The lines of chalk cut across the edge of the cliff.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

The sudden chill of water, being sprayed into each part of her hair. It’s brushed out of its hiding places and out where Army can see them. The fluorescent light hums.

She’s closed the blinds.

“I’m taking your silence as a yes!!”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She doesn't move.

Doesn't answer.

Doesn't reject.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

And she gets a perfectly ordinary haircut in kind where nothing happens.

Army nudges HEA’s head a few times to get her in a good position.

She blow dries her hair and it feels cozy, until it doesn’t.

She leaves the room and doesn’t come back for a while unannounced, leaving HEA alone with hair rapidly cooling down.

“I’m gonna get a hair tie!! You wait here.” She said as she left. A rank smell emanated from the door when she opened it.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

For a while, she was too preoccupied to notice.

Until she wasn't.

Army...?

The name, in that tone, was foreign on her tongue. But she did not take it back.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

After much longer than it should take to find a hair tie, Army comes back clutching something small in her hand.

HEA’s hair is pulled back and tied into a bob. It hurts, but no more than one would expect. She was hardly gentle.

“There!! What do you think??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

The jolt of pain from the tugging at her hair snaps her back to reality at once, grounding her. She calms. She shouldn't.

She stares into the mirror.

It's different.

She doesn't get up.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“That sounds like a compliment!! I’m gonna take it as one.”

Army clips off the cloth, hanging it on a cabinet hook and dropping white hair all over the floor. She begins putting things away, eventually stopping right behind HEA.

...

A stabbing pain in the back of her neck, nary over an inch deep but so close to her brain, so close to her spinal cord...

Something disturbs the already fresh wound, sealing it as though to replace the blade that was removed. The new object twists in her spine’s direction.

It does not touch it, does not sever it, but is so, so close.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

The pain is akin to static. It shoots down the length of her spine and back up again, proving by force the presence of her body. She sits at rapt attention, holding her breath.

Her attention is all on Army now.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

With little fanfare, Army walks in front of HEA, holding a bloodstained pair of scissors.

Her skin is clammy against HEA’s cheek as she holds her head still, pressing a single scarlet soaked blade against her cheek.

She presses

and starts to slice.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She stares at the mirror, enraptured, watching the blade slide across her skin. Her gaze follows the blood, almost unblinking.

She forgets to breathe.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Other cheek. Army’s thumb rubs the leaking tear, though all it does is spread around the seeping crimson.

Old wounds are reopened. Not as gaping as they once were, for they do not reach the full way through, but still agonizing in their damage.

Army stands up straight, circling her handiwork.

“You really are a doll, arn’t you?”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She almost doesn't respond, only staring at her wounds.

But she moves then, lifting her fingertips to the reopened cuts. Wetting her hands with her blood. Almost moving her hand to her mouth, before diverting her focus.

What?

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“You sit here in complete silence letting me do whatever I want to you. You’re kinda like Ghostie when I brought her to my room, but she still talked, still did things. I get you’re in the chair and all, but really???”

“Would you say something if I cut your finger off??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She stares at Army as she talks. Still, there's silence before her response.

I... said a few things, didn't I...?

Her gaze slips down to her own bloodied fingers. It speaks for itself, doesn't it? The injury is the conversation, the dance, the disease. Words exchanged between the affliction and the cliff's edge.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“Barely, mostly when you first came in, though. After that??”

Army reaches for HEA’s left hand. Gentle, or... is it subtle?

She presses the scissors against her pinky.

“Maybe you just don’t talk much in general. That’s fine! Who needs words, anyway??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Her eyes lock to the point of contact, the blades against her finger. She takes a sharp breath in.

It- speaks for itself,

she says, voice quiet.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“I guess it does, doesn’t it?”

She presses down, but blood is still not drawn.

“Why are you letting me do this? All of this?” Her voice is not remorseful, not wavering or hesitant. Is it curious? Perhaps.

Yet it does not wait for an answer as the pressure increases.

“You let me pick your hairstyle. You let me stab you in the neck. You let me stick a key inside and twist it. You let me——” Snapping bone.

“You let me do this.” A pale finger in a pallid palm, held out in front of its owner.

“Why? Do you like it?”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She pales a bit at the sight of her own finger sitting there, detached. But still, she does not pull away.

I... don't know.

[Why don't you sit down? Wouldn't that be nice?]

Why haven't I...?

Why haven't you moved? Why haven't you protested? What are you hoping to find in these dark spaces?

Him? No.

But you haven't made a single choice of your own since you walked in the door. Doesn't that kill you, that this keeps happening? That you never make a choice?

You died. You came back from the dead.

She changes the subject.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Silence. Army’s smile falls as she studies the princess’ face.

It rises again, bemused. “That happens.” The finger is clutched in Army’s hand as she moves back to hers.

“It doesn’t happen to everyone,” press, “I haven’t seen any of the people I’ve killed come back.” crack, “But we do. We come back good as new.”

“It’s annoying.” The ring finger joins its smaller sister with a snap. “It’s like nothing that happens to most of us matters. Sure it’s fun to keep going forever, but... still.”

“What do you think? If anything.” She twirls the fingers in her grasp.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

They just come back. It's just something that happens.

[How deep must repetition still our movements, until even the air we breathe—]

It's stale.

She watches the second of her fingers join the first, a fog clouding over the pain. It'll end, and then it'll start again. Won't it?

She has been in this place for a long time, and try as she might, she cannot leave.

She looks up at Army.

When do we get to do something that matters, do you think?

[A body, dead steel, curled stiffly around a bird trapped in a basement.]

But here the culprit stands.

When will our actions start to be real instead of the same things over and over again?

The pain returns as she thinks of it, and it is as real as ever.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

She shouldn't be here. But here she is anyway, standing silent in the doorway. She is the line of chalk scored into the edge of the cliff.

[ @hea-lth-inspector-stp ]

Army is sweeping up the thoroughly dusty floor of her barbershop, flicking the lights on soon as she spots the woman in the doorway.

<the barbershop that now only has one main room and Army’s own because i’m retconning it>

She smiles at HEA that in another world would’ve been completely friendly.

“Heeeeey!! Come in! Fancy a cut??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Her fingertips move instinctually to the side of her face.

You do... haircuts? Is that right?

Her speech is hesitant. Treading over eggshells.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Army’s posture straightens, be it to give HEA attention or as a form of freezing up isn’t clear.

“Yyyyup!! Haircuts!! That is my job. The job that I do often, and do not forget is the case. I do it a perfectly normal amount, I do.”

“Trims, styles, shaves, I do ‘em all!!”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Her breath is uneven.

I think I need one.

Her fingertips trace the edge of the blade around her throat. She doesn't seem to notice the thin red line it elicits.

She hasn't moved.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“Well, come on in! The chair’s open, so what’re you waiting fooor??”

Army moves behind the chair in jerking steps and swivels it to face HEA.

She hasn’t looked away.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Right.

There are another few seconds of heavy silence before she moves, her footsteps slow and poorly measured. She sits herself down in the chair, blank expression staring at the reflection of blades in the mirror.

She traces her necklace.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Snip snip, go the scissors in Army’s right hand. Unlike the rest of the room, almost dilapidated with mold-like water damage coating the walls, her silver blades glimmer.

It’s not anywhere near HEA’s head, and yet much too close for comfort.

“Sooooo, what style we looking for?? Just a trim?? Maybe you want it all off?? I’m up for anything!!”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Oh... right.

She's distracted.

She pulls her gaze up to herself in the mirror, but all she can see there are the faint lines where her injuries used to be.

What do you...

...

Right. What do you recommend?

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“Hmmm...” Army drapes the cloth over HEA and clips it around her neck, “We haven’t met, have we?? I dunno if I know your vibe yet.”

Elated gasp, “Wait, you’re the lady from that Down place!! The one whose mouth I cut open; I can still see the scars now!! Guess you got stitches or something to close it back up.”

“I think I have an idea... do you tie your hair back??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She stiffens at the recognition.

Partially.

Her voice is strained, but she hasn't flinched away from the scissors.

She traces her scar, staring transfixed at it in the mirror.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“I’m thinking I cut it good for a bob, nice and neat. Some hair free to trail out in the front. How’s that sound??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

...

But she isn't listening anymore. Her attention is elsewhere, her gaze fixed unmoving on the faint scars across her face.

Completely lost in her own head. The lines of chalk cut across the edge of the cliff.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

The sudden chill of water, being sprayed into each part of her hair. It’s brushed out of its hiding places and out where Army can see them. The fluorescent light hums.

She’s closed the blinds.

“I’m taking your silence as a yes!!”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She doesn't move.

Doesn't answer.

Doesn't reject.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

And she gets a perfectly ordinary haircut in kind where nothing happens.

Army nudges HEA’s head a few times to get her in a good position.

She blow dries her hair and it feels cozy, until it doesn’t.

She leaves the room and doesn’t come back for a while unannounced, leaving HEA alone with hair rapidly cooling down.

“I’m gonna get a hair tie!! You wait here.” She said as she left. A rank smell emanated from the door when she opened it.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

For a while, she was too preoccupied to notice.

Until she wasn't.

Army...?

The name, in that tone, was foreign on her tongue. But she did not take it back.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

After much longer than it should take to find a hair tie, Army comes back clutching something small in her hand.

HEA’s hair is pulled back and tied into a bob. It hurts, but no more than one would expect. She was hardly gentle.

“There!! What do you think??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

The jolt of pain from the tugging at her hair snaps her back to reality at once, grounding her. She calms. She shouldn't.

She stares into the mirror.

It's different.

She doesn't get up.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“That sounds like a compliment!! I’m gonna take it as one.”

Army clips off the cloth, hanging it on a cabinet hook and dropping white hair all over the floor. She begins putting things away, eventually stopping right behind HEA.

...

A stabbing pain in the back of her neck, nary over an inch deep but so close to her brain, so close to her spinal cord...

Something disturbs the already fresh wound, sealing it as though to replace the blade that was removed. The new object twists in her spine’s direction.

It does not touch it, does not sever it, but is so, so close.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

The pain is akin to static. It shoots down the length of her spine and back up again, proving by force the presence of her body. She sits at rapt attention, holding her breath.

Her attention is all on Army now.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

With little fanfare, Army walks in front of HEA, holding a bloodstained pair of scissors.

Her skin is clammy against HEA’s cheek as she holds her head still, pressing a single scarlet soaked blade against her cheek.

She presses

and starts to slice.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She stares at the mirror, enraptured, watching the blade slide across her skin. Her gaze follows the blood, almost unblinking.

She forgets to breathe.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Other cheek. Army’s thumb rubs the leaking tear, though all it does is spread around the seeping crimson.

Old wounds are reopened. Not as gaping as they once were, for they do not reach the full way through, but still agonizing in their damage.

Army stands up straight, circling her handiwork.

“You really are a doll, arn’t you?”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She almost doesn't respond, only staring at her wounds.

But she moves then, lifting her fingertips to the reopened cuts. Wetting her hands with her blood. Almost moving her hand to her mouth, before diverting her focus.

What?

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“You sit here in complete silence letting me do whatever I want to you. You’re kinda like Ghostie when I brought her to my room, but she still talked, still did things. I get you’re in the chair and all, but really???”

“Would you say something if I cut your finger off??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She stares at Army as she talks. Still, there's silence before her response.

I... said a few things, didn't I...?

Her gaze slips down to her own bloodied fingers. It speaks for itself, doesn't it? The injury is the conversation, the dance, the disease. Words exchanged between the affliction and the cliff's edge.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“Barely, mostly when you first came in, though. After that??”

Army reaches for HEA’s left hand. Gentle, or... is it subtle?

She presses the scissors against her pinky.

“Maybe you just don’t talk much in general. That’s fine! Who needs words, anyway??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Her eyes lock to the point of contact, the blades against her finger. She takes a sharp breath in.

It- speaks for itself,

she says, voice quiet.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“I guess it does, doesn’t it?”

She presses down, but blood is still not drawn.

“Why are you letting me do this? All of this?” Her voice is not remorseful, not wavering or hesitant. Is it curious? Perhaps.

Yet it does not wait for an answer as the pressure increases.

“You let me pick your hairstyle. You let me stab you in the neck. You let me stick a key inside and twist it. You let me——” Snapping bone.

“You let me do this.” A pale finger in a pallid palm, held out in front of its owner.

“Why? Do you like it?”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She pales a bit at the sight of her own finger sitting there, detached. But still, she does not pull away.

I... don't know.

[Why don't you sit down? Wouldn't that be nice?]

Why haven't I...?

Why haven't you moved? Why haven't you protested? What are you hoping to find in these dark spaces?

Him? No.

But you haven't made a single choice of your own since you walked in the door. Doesn't that kill you, that this keeps happening? That you never make a choice?

You died. You came back from the dead.

She changes the subject.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

She shouldn't be here. But here she is anyway, standing silent in the doorway. She is the line of chalk scored into the edge of the cliff.

[ @hea-lth-inspector-stp ]

Army is sweeping up the thoroughly dusty floor of her barbershop, flicking the lights on soon as she spots the woman in the doorway.

<the barbershop that now only has one main room and Army’s own because i’m retconning it>

She smiles at HEA that in another world would’ve been completely friendly.

“Heeeeey!! Come in! Fancy a cut??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Her fingertips move instinctually to the side of her face.

You do... haircuts? Is that right?

Her speech is hesitant. Treading over eggshells.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Army’s posture straightens, be it to give HEA attention or as a form of freezing up isn’t clear.

“Yyyyup!! Haircuts!! That is my job. The job that I do often, and do not forget is the case. I do it a perfectly normal amount, I do.”

“Trims, styles, shaves, I do ‘em all!!”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Her breath is uneven.

I think I need one.

Her fingertips trace the edge of the blade around her throat. She doesn't seem to notice the thin red line it elicits.

She hasn't moved.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“Well, come on in! The chair’s open, so what’re you waiting fooor??”

Army moves behind the chair in jerking steps and swivels it to face HEA.

She hasn’t looked away.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Right.

There are another few seconds of heavy silence before she moves, her footsteps slow and poorly measured. She sits herself down in the chair, blank expression staring at the reflection of blades in the mirror.

She traces her necklace.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Snip snip, go the scissors in Army’s right hand. Unlike the rest of the room, almost dilapidated with mold-like water damage coating the walls, her silver blades glimmer.

It’s not anywhere near HEA’s head, and yet much too close for comfort.

“Sooooo, what style we looking for?? Just a trim?? Maybe you want it all off?? I’m up for anything!!”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Oh... right.

She's distracted.

She pulls her gaze up to herself in the mirror, but all she can see there are the faint lines where her injuries used to be.

What do you...

...

Right. What do you recommend?

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“Hmmm...” Army drapes the cloth over HEA and clips it around her neck, “We haven’t met, have we?? I dunno if I know your vibe yet.”

Elated gasp, “Wait, you’re the lady from that Down place!! The one whose mouth I cut open; I can still see the scars now!! Guess you got stitches or something to close it back up.”

“I think I have an idea... do you tie your hair back??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She stiffens at the recognition.

Partially.

Her voice is strained, but she hasn't flinched away from the scissors.

She traces her scar, staring transfixed at it in the mirror.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“I’m thinking I cut it good for a bob, nice and neat. Some hair free to trail out in the front. How’s that sound??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

...

But she isn't listening anymore. Her attention is elsewhere, her gaze fixed unmoving on the faint scars across her face.

Completely lost in her own head. The lines of chalk cut across the edge of the cliff.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

The sudden chill of water, being sprayed into each part of her hair. It’s brushed out of its hiding places and out where Army can see them. The fluorescent light hums.

She’s closed the blinds.

“I’m taking your silence as a yes!!”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She doesn't move.

Doesn't answer.

Doesn't reject.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

And she gets a perfectly ordinary haircut in kind where nothing happens.

Army nudges HEA’s head a few times to get her in a good position.

She blow dries her hair and it feels cozy, until it doesn’t.

She leaves the room and doesn’t come back for a while unannounced, leaving HEA alone with hair rapidly cooling down.

“I’m gonna get a hair tie!! You wait here.” She said as she left. A rank smell emanated from the door when she opened it.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

For a while, she was too preoccupied to notice.

Until she wasn't.

Army...?

The name, in that tone, was foreign on her tongue. But she did not take it back.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

After much longer than it should take to find a hair tie, Army comes back clutching something small in her hand.

HEA’s hair is pulled back and tied into a bob. It hurts, but no more than one would expect. She was hardly gentle.

“There!! What do you think??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

The jolt of pain from the tugging at her hair snaps her back to reality at once, grounding her. She calms. She shouldn't.

She stares into the mirror.

It's different.

She doesn't get up.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“That sounds like a compliment!! I’m gonna take it as one.”

Army clips off the cloth, hanging it on a cabinet hook and dropping white hair all over the floor. She begins putting things away, eventually stopping right behind HEA.

...

A stabbing pain in the back of her neck, nary over an inch deep but so close to her brain, so close to her spinal cord...

Something disturbs the already fresh wound, sealing it as though to replace the blade that was removed. The new object twists in her spine’s direction.

It does not touch it, does not sever it, but is so, so close.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

The pain is akin to static. It shoots down the length of her spine and back up again, proving by force the presence of her body. She sits at rapt attention, holding her breath.

Her attention is all on Army now.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

With little fanfare, Army walks in front of HEA, holding a bloodstained pair of scissors.

Her skin is clammy against HEA’s cheek as she holds her head still, pressing a single scarlet soaked blade against her cheek.

She presses

and starts to slice.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She stares at the mirror, enraptured, watching the blade slide across her skin. Her gaze follows the blood, almost unblinking.

She forgets to breathe.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Other cheek. Army’s thumb rubs the leaking tear, though all it does is spread around the seeping crimson.

Old wounds are reopened. Not as gaping as they once were, for they do not reach the full way through, but still agonizing in their damage.

Army stands up straight, circling her handiwork.

“You really are a doll, arn’t you?”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She almost doesn't respond, only staring at her wounds.

But she moves then, lifting her fingertips to the reopened cuts. Wetting her hands with her blood. Almost moving her hand to her mouth, before diverting her focus.

What?

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“You sit here in complete silence letting me do whatever I want to you. You’re kinda like Ghostie when I brought her to my room, but she still talked, still did things. I get you’re in the chair and all, but really???”

“Would you say something if I cut your finger off??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She stares at Army as she talks. Still, there's silence before her response.

I... said a few things, didn't I...?

Her gaze slips down to her own bloodied fingers. It speaks for itself, doesn't it? The injury is the conversation, the dance, the disease. Words exchanged between the affliction and the cliff's edge.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“Barely, mostly when you first came in, though. After that??”

Army reaches for HEA’s left hand. Gentle, or... is it subtle?

She presses the scissors against her pinky.

“Maybe you just don’t talk much in general. That’s fine! Who needs words, anyway??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Her eyes lock to the point of contact, the blades against her finger. She takes a sharp breath in.

It- speaks for itself,

she says, voice quiet.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

She shouldn't be here. But here she is anyway, standing silent in the doorway. She is the line of chalk scored into the edge of the cliff.

[ @hea-lth-inspector-stp ]

Army is sweeping up the thoroughly dusty floor of her barbershop, flicking the lights on soon as she spots the woman in the doorway.

<the barbershop that now only has one main room and Army’s own because i’m retconning it>

She smiles at HEA that in another world would’ve been completely friendly.

“Heeeeey!! Come in! Fancy a cut??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Her fingertips move instinctually to the side of her face.

You do... haircuts? Is that right?

Her speech is hesitant. Treading over eggshells.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Army’s posture straightens, be it to give HEA attention or as a form of freezing up isn’t clear.

“Yyyyup!! Haircuts!! That is my job. The job that I do often, and do not forget is the case. I do it a perfectly normal amount, I do.”

“Trims, styles, shaves, I do ‘em all!!”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Her breath is uneven.

I think I need one.

Her fingertips trace the edge of the blade around her throat. She doesn't seem to notice the thin red line it elicits.

She hasn't moved.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“Well, come on in! The chair’s open, so what’re you waiting fooor??”

Army moves behind the chair in jerking steps and swivels it to face HEA.

She hasn’t looked away.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Right.

There are another few seconds of heavy silence before she moves, her footsteps slow and poorly measured. She sits herself down in the chair, blank expression staring at the reflection of blades in the mirror.

She traces her necklace.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Snip snip, go the scissors in Army’s right hand. Unlike the rest of the room, almost dilapidated with mold-like water damage coating the walls, her silver blades glimmer.

It’s not anywhere near HEA’s head, and yet much too close for comfort.

“Sooooo, what style we looking for?? Just a trim?? Maybe you want it all off?? I’m up for anything!!”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Oh... right.

She's distracted.

She pulls her gaze up to herself in the mirror, but all she can see there are the faint lines where her injuries used to be.

What do you...

...

Right. What do you recommend?

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“Hmmm...” Army drapes the cloth over HEA and clips it around her neck, “We haven’t met, have we?? I dunno if I know your vibe yet.”

Elated gasp, “Wait, you’re the lady from that Down place!! The one whose mouth I cut open; I can still see the scars now!! Guess you got stitches or something to close it back up.”

“I think I have an idea... do you tie your hair back??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She stiffens at the recognition.

Partially.

Her voice is strained, but she hasn't flinched away from the scissors.

She traces her scar, staring transfixed at it in the mirror.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“I’m thinking I cut it good for a bob, nice and neat. Some hair free to trail out in the front. How’s that sound??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

...

But she isn't listening anymore. Her attention is elsewhere, her gaze fixed unmoving on the faint scars across her face.

Completely lost in her own head. The lines of chalk cut across the edge of the cliff.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

The sudden chill of water, being sprayed into each part of her hair. It’s brushed out of its hiding places and out where Army can see them. The fluorescent light hums.

She’s closed the blinds.

“I’m taking your silence as a yes!!”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She doesn't move.

Doesn't answer.

Doesn't reject.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

And she gets a perfectly ordinary haircut in kind where nothing happens.

Army nudges HEA’s head a few times to get her in a good position.

She blow dries her hair and it feels cozy, until it doesn’t.

She leaves the room and doesn’t come back for a while unannounced, leaving HEA alone with hair rapidly cooling down.

“I’m gonna get a hair tie!! You wait here.” She said as she left. A rank smell emanated from the door when she opened it.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

For a while, she was too preoccupied to notice.

Until she wasn't.

Army...?

The name, in that tone, was foreign on her tongue. But she did not take it back.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

After much longer than it should take to find a hair tie, Army comes back clutching something small in her hand.

HEA’s hair is pulled back and tied into a bob. It hurts, but no more than one would expect. She was hardly gentle.

“There!! What do you think??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

The jolt of pain from the tugging at her hair snaps her back to reality at once, grounding her. She calms. She shouldn't.

She stares into the mirror.

It's different.

She doesn't get up.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“That sounds like a compliment!! I’m gonna take it as one.”

Army clips off the cloth, hanging it on a cabinet hook and dropping white hair all over the floor. She begins putting things away, eventually stopping right behind HEA.

...

A stabbing pain in the back of her neck, nary over an inch deep but so close to her brain, so close to her spinal cord...

Something disturbs the already fresh wound, sealing it as though to replace the blade that was removed. The new object twists in her spine’s direction.

It does not touch it, does not sever it, but is so, so close.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

The pain is akin to static. It shoots down the length of her spine and back up again, proving by force the presence of her body. She sits at rapt attention, holding her breath.

Her attention is all on Army now.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

With little fanfare, Army walks in front of HEA, holding a bloodstained pair of scissors.

Her skin is clammy against HEA’s cheek as she holds her head still, pressing a single scarlet soaked blade against her cheek.

She presses

and starts to slice.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She stares at the mirror, enraptured, watching the blade slide across her skin. Her gaze follows the blood, almost unblinking.

She forgets to breathe.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Other cheek. Army’s thumb rubs the leaking tear, though all it does is spread around the seeping crimson.

Old wounds are reopened. Not as gaping as they once were, for they do not reach the full way through, but still agonizing in their damage.

Army stands up straight, circling her handiwork.

“You really are a doll, arn’t you?”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She almost doesn't respond, only staring at her wounds.

But she moves then, lifting her fingertips to the reopened cuts. Wetting her hands with her blood. Almost moving her hand to her mouth, before diverting her focus.

What?

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“You sit here in complete silence letting me do whatever I want to you. You’re kinda like Ghostie when I brought her to my room, but she still talked, still did things. I get you’re in the chair and all, but really???”

“Would you say something if I cut your finger off??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She stares at Army as she talks. Still, there's silence before her response.

I... said a few things, didn't I...?

Her gaze slips down to her own bloodied fingers. It speaks for itself, doesn't it? The injury is the conversation, the dance, the disease. Words exchanged between the affliction and the cliff's edge.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

She shouldn't be here. But here she is anyway, standing silent in the doorway. She is the line of chalk scored into the edge of the cliff.

[ @hea-lth-inspector-stp ]

Army is sweeping up the thoroughly dusty floor of her barbershop, flicking the lights on soon as she spots the woman in the doorway.

<the barbershop that now only has one main room and Army’s own because i’m retconning it>

She smiles at HEA that in another world would’ve been completely friendly.

“Heeeeey!! Come in! Fancy a cut??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Her fingertips move instinctually to the side of her face.

You do... haircuts? Is that right?

Her speech is hesitant. Treading over eggshells.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Army’s posture straightens, be it to give HEA attention or as a form of freezing up isn’t clear.

“Yyyyup!! Haircuts!! That is my job. The job that I do often, and do not forget is the case. I do it a perfectly normal amount, I do.”

“Trims, styles, shaves, I do ‘em all!!”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Her breath is uneven.

I think I need one.

Her fingertips trace the edge of the blade around her throat. She doesn't seem to notice the thin red line it elicits.

She hasn't moved.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“Well, come on in! The chair’s open, so what’re you waiting fooor??”

Army moves behind the chair in jerking steps and swivels it to face HEA.

She hasn’t looked away.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Right.

There are another few seconds of heavy silence before she moves, her footsteps slow and poorly measured. She sits herself down in the chair, blank expression staring at the reflection of blades in the mirror.

She traces her necklace.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Snip snip, go the scissors in Army’s right hand. Unlike the rest of the room, almost dilapidated with mold-like water damage coating the walls, her silver blades glimmer.

It’s not anywhere near HEA’s head, and yet much too close for comfort.

“Sooooo, what style we looking for?? Just a trim?? Maybe you want it all off?? I’m up for anything!!”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Oh... right.

She's distracted.

She pulls her gaze up to herself in the mirror, but all she can see there are the faint lines where her injuries used to be.

What do you...

...

Right. What do you recommend?

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“Hmmm...” Army drapes the cloth over HEA and clips it around her neck, “We haven’t met, have we?? I dunno if I know your vibe yet.”

Elated gasp, “Wait, you’re the lady from that Down place!! The one whose mouth I cut open; I can still see the scars now!! Guess you got stitches or something to close it back up.”

“I think I have an idea... do you tie your hair back??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She stiffens at the recognition.

Partially.

Her voice is strained, but she hasn't flinched away from the scissors.

She traces her scar, staring transfixed at it in the mirror.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“I’m thinking I cut it good for a bob, nice and neat. Some hair free to trail out in the front. How’s that sound??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

...

But she isn't listening anymore. Her attention is elsewhere, her gaze fixed unmoving on the faint scars across her face.

Completely lost in her own head. The lines of chalk cut across the edge of the cliff.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

The sudden chill of water, being sprayed into each part of her hair. It’s brushed out of its hiding places and out where Army can see them. The fluorescent light hums.

She’s closed the blinds.

“I’m taking your silence as a yes!!”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She doesn't move.

Doesn't answer.

Doesn't reject.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

And she gets a perfectly ordinary haircut in kind where nothing happens.

Army nudges HEA’s head a few times to get her in a good position.

She blow dries her hair and it feels cozy, until it doesn’t.

She leaves the room and doesn’t come back for a while unannounced, leaving HEA alone with hair rapidly cooling down.

“I’m gonna get a hair tie!! You wait here.” She said as she left. A rank smell emanated from the door when she opened it.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

For a while, she was too preoccupied to notice.

Until she wasn't.

Army...?

The name, in that tone, was foreign on her tongue. But she did not take it back.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

After much longer than it should take to find a hair tie, Army comes back clutching something small in her hand.

HEA’s hair is pulled back and tied into a bob. It hurts, but no more than one would expect. She was hardly gentle.

“There!! What do you think??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

The jolt of pain from the tugging at her hair snaps her back to reality at once, grounding her. She calms. She shouldn't.

She stares into the mirror.

It's different.

She doesn't get up.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“That sounds like a compliment!! I’m gonna take it as one.”

Army clips off the cloth, hanging it on a cabinet hook and dropping white hair all over the floor. She begins putting things away, eventually stopping right behind HEA.

...

A stabbing pain in the back of her neck, nary over an inch deep but so close to her brain, so close to her spinal cord...

Something disturbs the already fresh wound, sealing it as though to replace the blade that was removed. The new object twists in her spine’s direction.

It does not touch it, does not sever it, but is so, so close.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

The pain is akin to static. It shoots down the length of her spine and back up again, proving by force the presence of her body. She sits at rapt attention, holding her breath.

Her attention is all on Army now.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

With little fanfare, Army walks in front of HEA, holding a bloodstained pair of scissors.

Her skin is clammy against HEA’s cheek as she holds her head still, pressing a single scarlet soaked blade against her cheek.

She presses

and starts to slice.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She stares at the mirror, enraptured, watching the blade slide across her skin. Her gaze follows the blood, almost unblinking.

She forgets to breathe.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Other cheek. Army’s thumb rubs the leaking tear, though all it does is spread around the seeping crimson.

Old wounds are reopened. Not as gaping as they once were, for they do not reach the full way through, but still agonizing in their damage.

Army stands up straight, circling her handiwork.

“You really are a doll, arn’t you?”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She almost doesn't respond, only staring at her wounds.

But she moves then, lifting her fingertips to the reopened cuts. Wetting her hands with her blood. Almost moving her hand to her mouth, before diverting her focus.

What?

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

She shouldn't be here. But here she is anyway, standing silent in the doorway. She is the line of chalk scored into the edge of the cliff.

[ @hea-lth-inspector-stp ]

Army is sweeping up the thoroughly dusty floor of her barbershop, flicking the lights on soon as she spots the woman in the doorway.

<the barbershop that now only has one main room and Army’s own because i’m retconning it>

She smiles at HEA that in another world would’ve been completely friendly.

“Heeeeey!! Come in! Fancy a cut??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Her fingertips move instinctually to the side of her face.

You do... haircuts? Is that right?

Her speech is hesitant. Treading over eggshells.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Army’s posture straightens, be it to give HEA attention or as a form of freezing up isn’t clear.

“Yyyyup!! Haircuts!! That is my job. The job that I do often, and do not forget is the case. I do it a perfectly normal amount, I do.”

“Trims, styles, shaves, I do ‘em all!!”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Her breath is uneven.

I think I need one.

Her fingertips trace the edge of the blade around her throat. She doesn't seem to notice the thin red line it elicits.

She hasn't moved.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“Well, come on in! The chair’s open, so what’re you waiting fooor??”

Army moves behind the chair in jerking steps and swivels it to face HEA.

She hasn’t looked away.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Right.

There are another few seconds of heavy silence before she moves, her footsteps slow and poorly measured. She sits herself down in the chair, blank expression staring at the reflection of blades in the mirror.

She traces her necklace.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Snip snip, go the scissors in Army’s right hand. Unlike the rest of the room, almost dilapidated with mold-like water damage coating the walls, her silver blades glimmer.

It’s not anywhere near HEA’s head, and yet much too close for comfort.

“Sooooo, what style we looking for?? Just a trim?? Maybe you want it all off?? I’m up for anything!!”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Oh... right.

She's distracted.

She pulls her gaze up to herself in the mirror, but all she can see there are the faint lines where her injuries used to be.

What do you...

...

Right. What do you recommend?

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“Hmmm...” Army drapes the cloth over HEA and clips it around her neck, “We haven’t met, have we?? I dunno if I know your vibe yet.”

Elated gasp, “Wait, you’re the lady from that Down place!! The one whose mouth I cut open; I can still see the scars now!! Guess you got stitches or something to close it back up.”

“I think I have an idea... do you tie your hair back??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She stiffens at the recognition.

Partially.

Her voice is strained, but she hasn't flinched away from the scissors.

She traces her scar, staring transfixed at it in the mirror.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“I’m thinking I cut it good for a bob, nice and neat. Some hair free to trail out in the front. How’s that sound??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

...

But she isn't listening anymore. Her attention is elsewhere, her gaze fixed unmoving on the faint scars across her face.

Completely lost in her own head. The lines of chalk cut across the edge of the cliff.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

The sudden chill of water, being sprayed into each part of her hair. It’s brushed out of its hiding places and out where Army can see them. The fluorescent light hums.

She’s closed the blinds.

“I’m taking your silence as a yes!!”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She doesn't move.

Doesn't answer.

Doesn't reject.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

And she gets a perfectly ordinary haircut in kind where nothing happens.

Army nudges HEA’s head a few times to get her in a good position.

She blow dries her hair and it feels cozy, until it doesn’t.

She leaves the room and doesn’t come back for a while unannounced, leaving HEA alone with hair rapidly cooling down.

“I’m gonna get a hair tie!! You wait here.” She said as she left. A rank smell emanated from the door when she opened it.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

For a while, she was too preoccupied to notice.

Until she wasn't.

Army...?

The name, in that tone, was foreign on her tongue. But she did not take it back.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

After much longer than it should take to find a hair tie, Army comes back clutching something small in her hand.

HEA’s hair is pulled back and tied into a bob. It hurts, but no more than one would expect. She was hardly gentle.

“There!! What do you think??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

The jolt of pain from the tugging at her hair snaps her back to reality at once, grounding her. She calms. She shouldn't.

She stares into the mirror.

It's different.

She doesn't get up.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“That sounds like a compliment!! I’m gonna take it as one.”

Army clips off the cloth, hanging it on a cabinet hook and dropping white hair all over the floor. She begins putting things away, eventually stopping right behind HEA.

...

A stabbing pain in the back of her neck, nary over an inch deep but so close to her brain, so close to her spinal cord...

Something disturbs the already fresh wound, sealing it as though to replace the blade that was removed. The new object twists in her spine’s direction.

It does not touch it, does not sever it, but is so, so close.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

The pain is akin to static. It shoots down the length of her spine and back up again, proving by force the presence of her body. She sits at rapt attention, holding her breath.

Her attention is all on Army now.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

With little fanfare, Army walks in front of HEA, holding a bloodstained pair of scissors.

Her skin is clammy against HEA’s cheek as she holds her head still, pressing a single scarlet soaked blade against her cheek.

She presses

and starts to slice.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She stares at the mirror, enraptured, watching the blade slide across her skin. Her gaze follows the blood, almost unblinking.

She forgets to breathe.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

She shouldn't be here. But here she is anyway, standing silent in the doorway. She is the line of chalk scored into the edge of the cliff.

[ @hea-lth-inspector-stp ]

Army is sweeping up the thoroughly dusty floor of her barbershop, flicking the lights on soon as she spots the woman in the doorway.

<the barbershop that now only has one main room and Army’s own because i’m retconning it>

She smiles at HEA that in another world would’ve been completely friendly.

“Heeeeey!! Come in! Fancy a cut??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Her fingertips move instinctually to the side of her face.

You do... haircuts? Is that right?

Her speech is hesitant. Treading over eggshells.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Army’s posture straightens, be it to give HEA attention or as a form of freezing up isn’t clear.

“Yyyyup!! Haircuts!! That is my job. The job that I do often, and do not forget is the case. I do it a perfectly normal amount, I do.”

“Trims, styles, shaves, I do ‘em all!!”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Her breath is uneven.

I think I need one.

Her fingertips trace the edge of the blade around her throat. She doesn't seem to notice the thin red line it elicits.

She hasn't moved.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“Well, come on in! The chair’s open, so what’re you waiting fooor??”

Army moves behind the chair in jerking steps and swivels it to face HEA.

She hasn’t looked away.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Right.

There are another few seconds of heavy silence before she moves, her footsteps slow and poorly measured. She sits herself down in the chair, blank expression staring at the reflection of blades in the mirror.

She traces her necklace.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

Snip snip, go the scissors in Army’s right hand. Unlike the rest of the room, almost dilapidated with mold-like water damage coating the walls, her silver blades glimmer.

It’s not anywhere near HEA’s head, and yet much too close for comfort.

“Sooooo, what style we looking for?? Just a trim?? Maybe you want it all off?? I’m up for anything!!”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

Oh... right.

She's distracted.

She pulls her gaze up to herself in the mirror, but all she can see there are the faint lines where her injuries used to be.

What do you...

...

Right. What do you recommend?

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“Hmmm...” Army drapes the cloth over HEA and clips it around her neck, “We haven’t met, have we?? I dunno if I know your vibe yet.”

Elated gasp, “Wait, you’re the lady from that Down place!! The one whose mouth I cut open; I can still see the scars now!! Guess you got stitches or something to close it back up.”

“I think I have an idea... do you tie your hair back??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She stiffens at the recognition.

Partially.

Her voice is strained, but she hasn't flinched away from the scissors.

She traces her scar, staring transfixed at it in the mirror.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“I’m thinking I cut it good for a bob, nice and neat. Some hair free to trail out in the front. How’s that sound??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

...

But she isn't listening anymore. Her attention is elsewhere, her gaze fixed unmoving on the faint scars across her face.

Completely lost in her own head. The lines of chalk cut across the edge of the cliff.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

The sudden chill of water, being sprayed into each part of her hair. It’s brushed out of its hiding places and out where Army can see them. The fluorescent light hums.

She’s closed the blinds.

“I’m taking your silence as a yes!!”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

She doesn't move.

Doesn't answer.

Doesn't reject.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

And she gets a perfectly ordinary haircut in kind where nothing happens.

Army nudges HEA’s head a few times to get her in a good position.

She blow dries her hair and it feels cozy, until it doesn’t.

She leaves the room and doesn’t come back for a while unannounced, leaving HEA alone with hair rapidly cooling down.

“I’m gonna get a hair tie!! You wait here.” She said as she left. A rank smell emanated from the door when she opened it.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

For a while, she was too preoccupied to notice.

Until she wasn't.

Army...?

The name, in that tone, was foreign on her tongue. But she did not take it back.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

After much longer than it should take to find a hair tie, Army comes back clutching something small in her hand.

HEA’s hair is pulled back and tied into a bob. It hurts, but no more than one would expect. She was hardly gentle.

“There!! What do you think??”

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

The jolt of pain from the tugging at her hair snaps her back to reality at once, grounding her. She calms. She shouldn't.

She stares into the mirror.

It's different.

She doesn't get up.

[stp-mw-razorcuts]

“That sounds like a compliment!! I’m gonna take it as one.”

Army clips off the cloth, hanging it on a cabinet hook and dropping white hair all over the floor. She begins putting things away, eventually stopping right behind HEA.

...

A stabbing pain in the back of her neck, nary over an inch deep but so close to her brain, so close to her spinal cord...

Something disturbs the already fresh wound, sealing it as though to replace the blade that was removed. The new object twists in her spine’s direction.

It does not touch it, does not sever it, but is so, so close.

[hea-lth-inspector-stp]

The pain is akin to static. It shoots down the length of her spine and back up again, proving by force the presence of her body. She sits at rapt attention, holding her breath.

Her attention is all on Army now.