don't be so hard on yourself. ― @clericwoken.
A HEAVY GLOOM HAS SETTLED OVER HAWKINS, and it isn't only from the remnants of the smoke - stained stormclouds now dissipating over the horizon. it feels like failure. the kind of dread that twists tight as a knot in her gut and squeezes everything until it threatens to rupture. jane knows the others feel it too, if their tense quiet is anything to go by --- she has learned to read them well. but sometimes, she forgets that some of them have come to know her, too.
will's voice is soft in that way that carves out this space for a conversation between them alone, the way he learned in the doorway of her room and the hallways of lenora high, the unspoken sentiment of being seen. brown eyes draw up slowly from her mud-splattered boots, toes pointed toward each other, and meet will's from where he has dropped quietly onto the cushion next to her. jane sees it in him, too: the defeated slump of his shoulders even where he tries to pull hope from the darkest corners of the room. NONE OF THEM KNOW WHAT WILL HAPPEN, NOW. just that it's bad. “ i couldn't save max. ” not really. she still draws breath but sleeps motionless in a white-sheeted bed, and jane cannot find her in the void. unspooling the truth from her lips does not make the weight any lighter, the grief any easier. “ i couldn't stop henry. ” his name feels like a curse on her tongue. her gaze drops to her hands, nails biting unconsciously at the raised skin lining her cuticles. “ and now hawkins is paying the price. i thought ... i could be strong enough. ”
she has a feeling of what he might say, or what the shared feeling that ripples throughout the room would be: it isn't all her fault. others fought and failed, too. THE SHADOW OUTPLAYED THEM ALL. ( but would things have been different if she had been here, all along? if she hadn't believed and hoped that the threats were gone and she could finally live a normal life? it was never in the cards for her. she could never be anything more than what she is. )
