@eyeish
It has not yet decided what it is going to do with her.
It has been with her for what must have been a very long time; forever; two or three days. It had watched the pharmacy burn with her, watched the smoke curl upward and out across the island-blotted sky as she curled in, and in, and in, taut with her gut twisting in fear of what would happen now that her prescription could not be filled, knowing things would only get worse. It had been there, too, when her therapy session that week was called off; it had watched her betray herself, tone amiable and placid, as her therapist cancelled due to loss of housing in the crossfire between two people of self-described opposing alignments; it had watched her as she was unable to recognize the voice coming from her mouth to answer the man, and then stroked her back with long, impossible fingers afterwards as she wailed to be left alone to someone she wouldn’t turn around and see wasn’t there.
It was not in any hurry, before. It had been forever, and she had barely begun, and it had barely begun itself, if it could be called itself. If it could be called anything. When it was like this before, it was called Michael sometimes.
Whatever it is or isn’t now is not particularly decisive, which is something it wasn’t before, too, before it wasn’t anymore. It can kill her itself; it can, yes, save her. It can do both. It is quite sure, at the least, it does not want to leave her to be taken by I Do Not Know You; something it is also sure she would agree with if she was not locked away, sobbing on the floor of the portable bathroom, praying to her own mind to let her free, even though what she had seen was very physically present, which would mean something to her, if things meant anything to her anymore.
It was an innocuous pile of something to the side of the empty park path; something she discovered was skin; an entire human skin in one piece, peeled and discarded like old clothes, and not far from it, the less-innocuous not-person-that-might-be-a-person, all red and wet, eyes a glaring, bright white, perfect and lidless and set too deep in a veiny, grin-split face.
She ran, of course. And now it is watching her cover her mouth to stifle a terrified sob as a gentle knock comes from outside.
It barely has to do any abstracting as it decides to be inside the box with her; it fits nicely along the wall to the right of the door she used to come in. And she finds it, as she looks around in desperation for anything; she looks at it, really, for the first time in all their time together.
It knows the expression she makes as she reaches for the doorknob, and it is pleased it decided to take her itself.