Fresh Perspectives // Solo
Takes place directly after Lark’s fight with Steffi making flash drives.
Mentions of Steffi Müller, Ivy Molotov, and Caroline Larsen
All Lark could bring herself to do at first was cry- break down and loudly scream into a pillow crying. She had no idea how long that took, but eventually, she settled down for long enough to eject the burned flash drive, and pull out her laptop and type up what she could remember from their fight. At first, she made the decision to write all of this down out of pettiness- to be able to construct a better argument when she inevitably ended up facing off against Steffi again. There was no doubt in her mind going into this when she started off that Ivy was literally the worst, and a friendship homewrecker to the worst degree. That it was unhealthy for Steffi to keep sleeping around with people that were such a terrible match. That if Steffi had just tried to have a normal relationship with someone actually compatible and decent, then everything would be all right.
Of course Steffi was cruel and callous, but... What if Steffi was right?
The idea was so completely novel, that it almost made Lark drop her laptop on the floor.
Luckily, she caught it just in time, and immediately set to looking over the words again. Lark backspaced a handful of times, and tried to reword them in a way that made herself look better. But that made her feel awful, so she undid the action, and sighed each time.
Lark filled in the gaps of what was not said during a fast, spur of the moment argument, and took notes. Well, maybe Ivy and Steffi had actually been friends for at least a few years and it was entirely possible that Steffi might have given Ivy permission to teleport in unannounced. If you didn’t need a key... It had felt lowkey special to be able to just pop into her friend’s apartment unannounced knowing that it was accepted. Maybe Lark’s boundaries were different than Steffi’s, weird as that was.
And maybe Caroline had broken up with Steffi first. If a woman like that that had broken up with Lark after... how long had those two even been together? Not that long. Did anybody really like being broken up with and then having that dragged out as some sort of moral failing?
Worse than Steffi being right... What if Lark had been wrong?
Lark shut her laptop, and went to go take a shower. She felt like a mess, and needed to think about some stuff. She had a lot to think over. Maybe Steffi had been right about some things, but Lark seriously had some trouble wrapping her head around the idea of sleeping around with terrible people. Or wanting annoying friends without boundaries or a personality beyond ‘chaos’ and ‘party.’ Was that unfair to Ivy? Maybe.
Sticking her face into the shower water was the most rewarding feeling in the world. She forgot about everything stressful for some beautifully unquantifiable time.
The one thing Lark was unwilling to budge on was that Steffi was unbelievably mean to her. Maybe she had been a little wrong about some things, but not all of these potential epiphanies were necessarily right.
Nope. She would bend on the break-up being a bad thing to mention and the friendship with Ivy not being totally a throwaway friend. But that was it. Steffi should definitely have told her about the teleporting in unannounced thing. Lark wasn’t going to budge on that.
Maybe all of her thoughts would muddle up on the argument later, but Lark had still saved the document. She wouldn’t delete what she had written just yet. There was so much to think about. But Lark wasn’t ready to apologize. She needed much longer than usual to dwell on everything. Maybe she'd dye her hair. Come up with some wild new cause to distract herself with. Anything but this.
