How does Haru break? When the world gets to be too loud, too chaotic, does she explode? Does she shatter into a thousand pieces like a broken mirror, clattering to the pavement? Is it loud? Dramatic? Or does she allow herself to fade into the darkness with her pain deep in her chest? Does she bite her tongue until it bleeds, or combusts in a fiery ruination?
she is a perpetual light, always shining — an eternal flame. she has to be, after all, or the walls she'd built to guard her heart would collapse from the darkness and snuff her out. she can take it — your pain, their despair, her own failings. she sucks it in and clamps down and swallows it whole, all that dark doing everything it can to seep in and extinguish the fire in her soul. trying... and failing.
like water it begins to fill her, seeping into her veins, warm and inviting — tempting. the horrors she's seen call her to let the water overflow... to let her sink beneath the heavy weight of its pressure. she finds herself more and more alone, isolating, as the tension builds in her body and threatens to force a shutdown. she will start eating less, and sleeping less, and talking less. she will distance herself from anyone and everyone because pillars don't get to crumble before the eyes of man. she is the tree falling in the forest; no one knows if she makes a sound at her crashing... until she does.
the water overflows slowly at first — slow enough that no one notices. she's just having a rough day, they theorize, until that day becomes two. three. a week. the water is rising and beginning to boil, and no one catches on until they are being burned alive. when haru breaks it is a steady, slow decline — a denial she clings to with claws dug in, until there is nothing left to grasp onto. the levee fragments and deteriorates until that water comes flowing through, an unstoppable force. she screams and she cries and she wails in the darkness, a feral mass of violent dissonance. she is strong in the fight against the desperation tearing at her innards, but her shields wax and wane like the moon, sometimes growing too thin to bear the weight of the horrors in this world.
she'll disappear — take leave. she'll abandon everyone to search out somewhere safe to crumble and fall to pieces... alone. she dares not show another soul her weakness, that her heart is breakable. she'll suffer in private, a quiet place she can make loud with the throes of her anguish. and then she'll sort through all of it, building the walls again piece by piece, cutting herself on all the edges. and one day, sooner or later, she'll return as if nothing happened.
she hopes no one can see the pieces of herself held together with glue, duct tape, and sheer stubborn will.
