THEODORE.
why are her words barbed-wire things, trapping around him? rabbit hearts beat too hard in hearts, buck-boys with their legs spindled out and broken behind them, caught in a trap they ran right into, perhaps knowing, perhaps hoping for a better outcome than this writhing in the snow.
he is wrong, of course. hands stop, stutter in the air just before her skin for a moment, angry burns suddenly warning signs of things he shouldn’t have ran headfirst into himself, thinking himself worth something capable of a saving.
(and are they not one in the same like this?)
“i - “ words are caught in throats, barbed wire scratching at pink flesh, tearing. “they wouldn’t - w-wouldn’t have died, i - “ hands drop to his sides, as do eyes. “i would have known it first. t-there was no - no need to.”
words are quieter than the wind, something asking to be unheard. he wills himself not to follow her fingertips or those words, to be a foolish thing running straight into traps, like a foolish girl running into fires.
“i - i - “ his voice is scratched, as if inhaling smoke himself. “i’ll forgive you.” and quieter still, to be unheard and still known: “you know i will.”
(foolish, foolish thing he is)
her laughter is something that lives under his skin and eyes are looking just past her shoulder when he replies. close, but not quite. the only kind of distance he knows, a hovering. “why did you, then? you could have - have… stayed.”
Heart-sick, perhaps. Is that why she cannot rein in her callous, unsympathetic tongue when he shivers with anxiety-ridden concern? Is it the blackness against her own heart ( no longer shivering, no longer bleeding for a cause ) which makes her shallow in any show of kindness towards him, any affection which is unusually withheld? But he was selfish, just as she was — she can see it in him then, and it’s no less unsightly. And yet, he flinches away from her.
He was a timid, quivering thing, and she found part of herself ( stained glass girl, there are so many fragments ) hated him for that through some curious instinct for which she could not account, and which for that reason was all the more dominant in her. “So, we should let others suffer because we can?”
There’s a memory, felt. Fingernails traced red against skin — a possession, a comfort ( and violent intent doesn’t matter, not to her ). So, she wonders why he flinches away from chill-soaked bones, every claw-marked inch of flesh she has to offer. Flinches away, yet keeps hands locked on shirtsleeves. And really, she’s not sure what he’s holding on to. “Do I mean so much to you or do they simply mean so little,” and again, it’s an accusatory sort of sentiment — tailed by a small hum, rake of dark eyes over him in quiet consideration.
And it must feel divine, to force herself to moral high ground like this. She pays no mind to the way her heel has dug into his spine in the ascent, the way she wounds him when she climbs upward with claws outstretched. Then, maybe all that cruelty she had allowed people to love her with has finally cracked open some vein inside her heart — rotting from the inside out, turning something she doesn’t even recognize.
“Thank you,” the sweetest words she has said to him, she murmurs with a squeeze of palms over nervous hands — another apology in itself, for the viciousness unrelenting. “I really don’t mean to hurt you, Theo. You know that, right?” Call it penance if you like, little pixie — but it’s only ever been guilt.
“I just — I wanted to be useful, for once. I wanted to be good. Is that so bad?”
