trinity santos - remember
“shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.” - brenè brown
or
trinity santos is reminded of her past (as if she could forget it)
c/w: references to child abuse and s/h
The text had been innocent.
Not intended to cause harm or distress or whatever the fuck this was. It had never been that, never been written to put Trinity here, in the bathroom stall at work, unable to unlock the door.
Baran texted her frequently; dumb videos she found funny, pictures of Omid or herself, some beautiful view she’d seen on her morning run, a dog she’d stroked, fucking quotes of the day.
Never anything bad.
Never anything like this.
She wasn’t to know.
Trinity had to remember that too.
None of this was ever supposed to reach Baran in the first place.
That was a funny thing about shame, the way it could follow you around, the way it could control you just when you thought it couldn’t.
Some people wore their heart on their sleeve, their shame pinned to them like a scarlet letter. Others kept it inside, letting it sharpen and fragment until it split to the surface, ripping everything apart like shrapnel.
Trinity…
Trinity Santos had shame but it was more than that.
It was physical, a faded mark here and there, scars that littered her thighs and her back, the smell of chalk that seemed to linger in her nose and on her hands, no matter how hard she scrubbed at them. Callouses that roughened her palms and stained her skin. Tensions in her muscles that never quite went away.
Trinity controlled her shame.
Carried it where she could keep it hidden, where she could keep it close and controlled, away from prying eyes.
Where nobody could see it.
Nobody but her.
And what she had buried, she didn’t have to look at either.
The text finds her six hours into a twelve hour shift, her phone pinging as she sits down to chart.
*baran <3 sent you a link*
B: Look what Omid found on YouTube! Baby Trinity!
It’s an old home video of some old gymnasium filled with bright colours and kids doing somersaults left right and centre. The camera’s shaky, handheld and all over the place, walking around the gym and finding kids to talk to.
Most of them are concentrating hard, back springs flawlessly executed, hops up to the bar sharp and precise.
But a loud laugh catches the camera’s attention and it swings to-
Her.
Of course, it’s her, the text had said as much.
Except it’s not the her she knows, not the her she remembers.
It’s a twelve-year-old girl, grinning and waving wildly at the camera, laughing so loud that it makes the audio crackle.
“Here! Here! Watch me tumble, Mads! Watch!”
A voice replies, so old and so known to her that it cracks her wide open.
“Okay, okay, I’m watching! Go!”
A smile, so unbidden and so happy that her own face had forgotten how to wear it. A body, so tiny and unharmed that it hadn’t even realised it needed protecting.
A backwards tumble performed atrociously that Trinity falls back onto the mat in a heap of chalk and limbs. Another laugh captures the camera’s attention and it swings to-
Trinity turns it off, her phone clattering loudly onto the desk. Her eyes were blurred and stinging, her lashes sharp and dagger-like as she tries to blink the tears away. It was as thought the entire ED had gone silent around her.
Huckleberry, of course, notices almost immediately.
“Trinity?”
The sound of his voice breaks something in her and she’s up and running out of the ED before she implodes entirely, slamming through a set of doors and into a bathroom where she can lock herself in and despair in private.
It all floods through her like a horror film on a never-ending reel.
Her face.
Her smile.
Madi’s laugh.
Madi’s face.
Alive and happy.
Trinity sank to the floor.
That was the other thing about shame, the way it lingered.
Forgetfulness and time could make the fondest memories softer and warm, a blur of images lost into an orange haze of happiness. Shame knew how to twist, how to darken and wrench, making the faces scarred and grotesque until she couldn’t bear to look at them any longer.
Trinity could feel shame taking this memory away, this one she thought she’d forgotten, twisting her smiling, baby-faced features into cracked, warped, horrors.
The sound of Madi’s laugh, turning to anguished sobs, cracked and alone.
She felt it being taken from her before she could even remember she had it.
