I sat alone, in bed till the morning
I'm crying, "They're coming for me"
And I tried to hold these secrets inside me
My mind's like a deadly disease
‘I’m fine, I'm okay. It's just classes and stress, but it's almost over. I'm almost free. ‘
She repeated the lies like a mantra every time Lucas worriedly questioned her. Every time a friend mentioned how pale she looked. Every time someone mentioned her being more quiet than usual – a feat considering she was mute.
‘I bumped into a table. I fell off my horse. I didn't dodge a spell. I tripped on a tree branch.’
More lies dipped in honey for the bruises that she could no longer hide under jackets, long sleeves, tights and other coverings.
The harassment was becoming more frequent and what had started as subtle pushes and shoves in the hallways had steadily grown into more brutal attacks on the witch.
In the beginning Katarina had fought back, sure that if she showed them she wasn’t some weakling they would leave her alone, but that only seemed to fuel their fire.
It was easy to hit someone who didn't make a sound to alert others of what was going on, and since they always moved in groups they could always warn each other if someone was coming so they could escape.
Katarina had tried telling her teachers about them but that was no help. If she reported them to teachers, they always managed to turn the situation around and make it seem like she was overreacting or misunderstanding thanks to the ‘language barrier’ after enough times of that happening teachers had begun to ignore the harassment all together leaving her feeling alone and abandoned.
I paced around for hours on empty
I jumped at the slightest of sounds
And I couldn't stand the person inside me
I turned all the mirrors around
No longer did she go on long walks in the forest after being attacked deep along the trees. No longer did she go for leisurely swims in the lake after being held under the water until she was on the brink of drowning.
She was almost always tense now, always in edge and uneasy. She jumped at the slightest noise, feigned laughter when tears came to her eyes when she was hugged and lifted from behind. She slowly began to shrink away from almost anything or anywhere they could happen to appear.
The only place she felt safe was in her dorm room, locked away behind the door, and there she stayed hoping it would help.
It didn't.
The attacks weren’t always physical.
Her books were stolen, her bag covered in paint , or drinks poured inside ruining everything.
The joy they got from constantly beating the witch down was worse than any bullying she had experienced, and oh, it was wearing her down until she had begun to just accept it, because fighting bad only made things worse and if she accepted things eventually they would get bored or tired and leave her alone.
Pride had always been a problem for Katarina and relying on others was the one thing she hated the most. She knew she should have told Suga, but she knew what he was capable of doing when people hurt the ones he loved and she didn’t want him getting into that kind of trouble. Lucas knew a little, he was at least aware that she was having trouble with a few students, but she had never admitted just how bad things had become. Namjoon had helped her but she had sworn him to secrecy and even he didn't know, couldn't know how bad things were because he would tell Suga and they would both get into trouble .
No, this was a problem she would handle in her own way alone. She could out last them, she would out last them, she had to out last them.
I'm bigger than my body
I'm colder than this home
I'm meaner than my demons
I'm bigger than these bones
And then one day she had enough.
She was tired of it all. Tired of the bruises, tired of the fear, tired of the laughter, tired of the damages. She was tired of running.
When the head of the bullies stepped forward to shove her, Katarina shoved her back, a new fire appearing in her eyes as she decided enough was enough. If this was to end in fire, they would all burn together!
The fight had started off well enough with just the two of them against each other, and backed by months of fear, adrenaline and the feeling of being backed into a corner Katarina had begun to win. Once they were aware that she wasn't going to back down, then the cheating started. In a fair fight she might have stood a chance, but fighting against multiple people she quickly realized she had made a mistake.
Face down in the dirt the witch curled in on herself trying to block as much of herself as she could from their beating. Her lips prayed for relief to come from somewhere anywhere and as one blow landed to her temple she was overcome by pain, and then there was nothing.
And all the kids cried out, "Please stop, you're scaring me"
I can't help this awful energy
God damn right, you should be scared of me
Who is in control?
She didn't know how long she had been out for or what was happening now but she knew it wasn't good.
Everything was dark, she was alone and her body felt heavy as if she were slowly sinking beneath the surface. She didn't know where she was, how she had gotten there, or why.
Faintly she could register the sound of voices, so many voices and they were loud, screaming, people were screaming and she knew the voices, each and every one of them. They seemed so close and yet so far from the witch.
‘Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!’ The thought ripped through her mind with a force she had never felt before and for a moment the screams were silent as if her wish had been heard. And then they began again, this time pleas for help, to be saved.
She laughed at how pitiful it all sounded, how terrified they were.
Pathetic.
‘No one, will help you now. Shut up, SHUT UP! You’re scared? You're sorry? You should have left me alone.’
But it was too late now.
For the first time in a long time she wasn't afraid. Whatever was happening she knew her bullies couldn't hurt her now. Their screams of terror had once again gone silent, and she felt at peace.
Slowly the heaviness left her limbs, the feeling of being under a strange surface disappeared and she found she could move again. Groaning, she hissed ashe could feel the rough ground beneath her, hear the still of the night and smell…blood.
Green eyes flew open , panic quickly settling into her soul as she slowly willed herself to sit up through the pain; there was so much pain. And then she saw it, her bullies flung around the area battered and bloody, so much blood.
Who could have done such a thing?
‘You, ‘ she froze as the one word continued to echo in her mind.
Had she…no, that was impossible. She wasn't strong enough to do any of this! She was just a witch, a healer, weak. And yet her hands were covered in blood…
She scrubbed her hands on her clothes wiping off as much of the blood as she could before slowly standing. She needed her phone. Her bag had been flung during the fight but after a while she found it dangling from a bush. Her phone was mainly in tact save for a large crack in the screen.
Shaking fingers quickly pulled up one contact as she dropped to the ground beginning to shake as she slowly put a message together.
🚫what is one thing my muse wouldn’t want someone else to know about them?
She is sometimes jealous of couples who can speak and communicate with words. The feelings only come up every now and then or at times when she’s extremely lonely but the feeling is there. She know’s she’ll never be able to say the words ‘I love you’ to someone and have them hear them. It’s something she’s come to terms with over and over again, but it still hurts her.
‘ Mae govannen, Adar,’ she signed into the camera with a smile as her fathers face came into focus. It had been sometime since she had last video conferenced with him and in his last letter he had been insistent on seeing his only child. She had been at the academy now a full three months and she didn’t blame him for being a little bit worried about her even if she did tell him everything in their letters...well almost everything.
“ Qwennig, mae govannen. Ci vaer?”
She nodded her head, she was doing quite well really. Adjusting the camera so he could see her from the waist up she began to sign in the way that was usual for them. She told him all about the school, about her new room and her room mate who happened to be a fairy. She told him all about her journey here, about the strange language they spoke and even showed him a notebook with the writings in Hangul amused when he tried to read the words and failed completely.
“And your classes? Tell me about your classes Katarina.”
Failing? She was failing?
Glancing at the sheet her adviser had handed her, the witch closed her eyes abd sighed. She should have known being called into an impromptu meeting was a bad thing. It would seem she was failing four out of the seven classes she was enrolled in and the reason? She couldn’t understand a word the professors were saying. Some talked too fast, some talked in strange accents, some just didn’t really talk. She was learning Korean but that didn’t bode well for actually understanding her classes. To be fair she knew she was failing the magical dueling class considering she had only shown up the first week and then refused to go after seeing the teacher face off against his students. He was crazy. The English teacher relayed the advisers message to Katarina, this wasn’t a normal school so failing didn’t mean she would be kicked out, but it wasn’t a good thing either and they wanted her to be tutored in all classes that she wasn’t doing well in. She had agreed to give it a try, but really she would have agreed to anything to escape that dreary meeting.
‘My classes are lovely,’ she lied, a little white lie. ‘I’m learning Korean, and they have magic classes here and I’m even in a class called magic for dueling.’
“It wouldn’t hurt for you to call me like this more often. I miss seeing you face to face, letters are good but they’re not the...what happened to your neck? There?”
In the letters she might have left out everything that had to do with being attacked in the forest - twice, in lieu of keeping her father from getting too upset. He didn’t need to know of the accidents that happened in the academy no more than he needed to know how poorly she was struggling with learning the language and getting around by herself. Moving to the academy had been quite a stretch for her and receiving his approval to be so far away had taken months upon months of arguments, fights, and the silent treatment -which wasn’t as easy as it should have been for her.
‘I fell from a tree trying to save a bird.’ Another small lie but this one was one that he had seen before and knew she had a horrible habit of doing. ‘I called to it but it didn’t answer and I didn’t check the branches to see if they would hold my weight.’ She sighed softly before tilting her head so he could see the bandaged area. It was certainly more healed now than it had been after the attack and though he looked a bit doubtful she could tell he had believed her story.
“And are you making friends there?”
Finally something she could tell him about without lying.
She smiled nodded her emphatically. Wouldn’t he be proud to know that she had made two friends in the short while she had been at the academy and met quite a few old acquaintances! One of his worries with her moving to a new place was the fact that she wasn’t going to know anyone there, but that fact had been proven wrong quite quickly.
‘I’ve made quite a few friends here in the academy, all sorts of people attend and they’re all very nice. We study together, eat together and they often help me with errands and things that I don’t know how to do.’
He seemed to be contemplating saying something, she could read the expression on his face as one that meant he was going to say something she might not like. “You look happy, your mother would have enjoyed hearing these stories.”
At the mention of her mother Kat could feel her eyes misting over with tears and she blinked them back smiling at her father. Her mother really would have loved this school, a place where a witch could be a witch with no one to tell her no.
They conversed for a while longer until the sun had faded on her end and risen for her father. Disconnecting the call she sat by the window idly petting Vanimelda with a full heart. She liked this place.
