Chapter Text
You look like shit.
You know you look like shit because you always look like shit these days, circles set to bruise, eyes in the mirror reflected back at you dead, unimpressed and tired, maybe, though you don’t have much right to it, do you, with so much to do, so much on your fucking plate.
Your nose feels like it’s twisted impossibly sideways, but it’s hard to tell, already turning shades of violet and blue, red smeared across your face and in your mouth.
“Is it broken?” you ask, though you don’t really care, hunch forward over the sink as the blood drip drip drips down into the porcelain bowl, water flushing it pink, then clear, over and over.
The bathroom tile is icy against your feet, something familiar, something old, and your fingers are stiff and cold, though your body feels hot, like you’ve spent all day beneath the summer sun.
You guess you have. You guess you must have.
It’s probably a good thing this isn’t your favorite shirt.
Not that you have a favorite shirt, c’mon, what the fuck would that matter?
“Hard to say at first glance,” he says, and you don’t like it when he uses that tone, when he conveys something that’s almost worry, something that could almost be,
You just don’t care.
His arms are crossed over his chest, and he could sit down, you think, but instead he hovers there, staring down at you, and it prickles up your spine, discomfort, something,
Something burning red in the corner of your vision, you think, a twinge of anger or glee, or frustration, but you’re always a little frustrated, aren’t you, because you’re not a fucking kid, not really, and you have better things to do than worry about your – Jesus, that’s crooked – nose.
“I’ll set it myself,” you tell him.
“Kid,” he starts, but you press one thumb to either side of your nose and snap it (relatively) back into place before he can stop you.
A part of you screams, maybe.
Or it laughs, you can’t remember if he laughed.
You want to say, “FUCK me.”
You want to say, “Why did I think that was a good idea?”
Mostly you don’t really give a shit.
“I told you not to do that,” he says, grabs you by the hair, rough, but not cruel, and tips your head up so he can look at you, really look, and you squint in the sun, drop back against
red dirt, a bruise to the jaw, fresh last week, mouth so dry your tongue sticks to the roof like glue, but you’re panting, can’t quite seem to get a full lung of air, and every inhale punches sharp into your chest, like a needle, like a
Something is missing.
You turn when you hear his feet crunch against dry, cracked earth, whip around lightning fast and catch his sword with one hand, don’t flinch when it slices your skin wide open.
Your first thought is, “I knew it wasn’t that sharp.”
Your second is, “Coward.”
Your third is, “Ow, that actually kind of hurt.”
Shut the fuck up.
You’re not a pussy.
He balks, freezes on the spot so he doesn’t cut your fingers off. “Motherfucker,” he hisses instead, lets go when you curl your fingers around the blunt side and yank the sword towards you. You’re too tired to be relieved when it goes skittering across the dirt. “Are you fuckin’ insane?”
“You weren’t gonna kill me anyway,” you say, and here’s the part where you jump to your feet, the part where you swing wildly at him and he steps around you, hits you behind the knee and drops you down hard, so that the dirt buries itself in the palm, stinging all the way down.
You sit instead, exhausted out of your mind, so hot and dizzy your vision dances with stars. You know he wasn’t going to kill you, because he’s too soft, and you’re too young to tell him he should try. You draw your knees up and wipe your good hand across your mouth. Blood free flows from your nose, another hit you’re almost certain you blocked (everyone knows all serious fights involve punching and kicking) and you watch it dry on the back of your hand under the summer heat, thoughtful, how it reminds you of
Something missing.
He’s not here anymore.
The sun bears down on you, sweat pooling in all the worst fucking places. You guess most kids don’t spend their days out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, flipping out with their swords. You should have joined a club or some shit. Maybe taken up track like they asked you to, last month at the pep rally.
You don’t really have the time.
You don’t really have any time at all.
His face softens when you peer up at him, squinting against the bright light, easier than you remember, his shoulders slouching. He’s not disappointed, of course, never in you, you’ve been nothing but (trouble, for starters) exemplary, but you feel
Well.
Nothing, you guess.
Nothing new.
Same old shit, (different guy) different day. Don’t know why, sometimes, you have to bother this dude at all. All trying to live his life and what have you.
Because it’s necessary.
Because there’s only so much time left, ticking like a clock in the back of your head.
Maybe you’re rushing it, maybe you’ve already wasted enough of it, maybe one day none of this will matter at all, three years, it’s been three years, and you’re still learning, Jesus fucking Christ.
You hop to your feet, wobble a little, fatigue and the onset of heat exhaustion, probably. But you’re ready. You can do it again.
He takes one look at you, at the off-kilter way you hold your sword (heavy, was it always so heavy), and shakes his head. “We’re done for the day. Pack your shit, we’re heading back into town.”
No.
No.
It’s not good enough.
You need to be fasterbetterstrongermore.
You stay rooted where you are, feel the dirt burn at the edges of your cut. There’s bile that rises in your throat as he walks over, bending at the waist to grab his own sword. He turned his back to you. You feel the burn of humiliation soak through you.
He never turns his back on you, and you can’t go now, you can’t accept it because if you do, if you follow, it means you’re a
Failure.
He stops, a deep furrow in his brow. He’s never had a memorable face. You stare, balefully, cheap plastic sunglasses that do nothing at all to block out the Texas sun.
“I’m fine,” sticks in your throat, and you lick your lips, cracked and peeling. Keep your chin held high. “I can keep going.”
He puts his duffle in the back of a pickup truck, rusted baby blue, and when he speaks, it is gruff, but authoritative. “Dave.”
For a second you shudder, and two hands become four as your vision splits, searing pain behind your eyes, the cut on your palm flashing between bright red and caked brown, like mud.
No, not yet.
You roll your shoulders, tuck your chin, and trail after him, head bent and anger grinding between your teeth.
You fucked up.
You fucked up.
He’s usually quiet on the ride back. Never critiques your form outside of practice, even though a part of you desperately wants to, and another part of you could just barely handle it.
Shut the fuck up.
You’re not a fucking pansy.
You can take a little bit of constructive goddamn criticism.
“You can’t afford to be reckless like that every time,” he says when you get into the truck cab. He starts the ignition before you even close the door. You didn’t wrap the cut first, and it stings when you push the buckle into place. You think he’ll fight you on it, when you get back to the house.
“Got the job done, didn’t I,” you say, but he just grunts, doesn’t look at you, and you press your hand against your pants to help staunch the flow of blood. You try not to get it on the seat, even though you tell yourself you don’t really care.
Don’t really need another reason for him to kick your ass, do you?
He says your name, low and disappointed, and you feel your teeth click together, look out the window so you can hate yourself in peace.
He would be so mad at you.
He’s not here anymore.
It’s all scrubland out here, dried up grass and stubborn shrubs across a sea of flat, broken earth far as the eye can see, and you roll your window down when the glass begins to sweat, trails of water so much like a day in Washington you almost forgot happened at all, a memory of something lost, or something found, or something you’ve forgotten.
You roll a tiny blown-glass unicorn between your fingers in your hoodie pocket and don’t listen as she says, “You don’t have to take him everywhere, honey. He would have been safe to leave at home.”
“I can’t,” you say, zero inflection, fingers stinging as the rain falls harder and hits your hand, becomes hail. A summer storm. “It’s my responsibility.”
The scrub turns into long, meandering green lawns, blocked in on all sides by matching, cookie cutter houses and perfect, clean wooden fences.
“It’s weird,” he says, humor stuck to the corners of his voice.
You smell spring, then fall, then taste sand on the back of your tongue. Scrubland, red dirt stuck to your hands like clay.
“Well he’s not here anymore,” you tell them both, or neither of them at all.
You wiggle your fingers and don’t feel rain, curse all of western Texas for the homesick feeling of a place you never belonged. You miss home or,
The idea of home, perhaps, a back porch on a summer night, the roof on a day where the sun is hiding behind the clouds. A sky of blue, a sky of hazy red and orange.
You clutch a cold can in your hand and don’t think about the stinging pain in the back of your head; you left him upstairs because she asked you to, you shouldn’t have listened, but she asked you to.
“You can’t keep blaming him,” she says, with a voice so sad, so disappointed. “He has a job to do, sweetheart. You knew he wouldn’t stay.”
“I’m not blaming him,” you say, but the scar on your hand hurts, smarts like new, all over again. “I don’t give a shit what he does or doesn’t do.”
“Careful,” she says, sharper than she usually is, or not sharp enough.
You miss the city.
Maybe both of them.
But you won’t admit it. Can’t.
Images skate across your mind in a uniform line, a seamless shift from an old house on a tree-lined street to an apartment that might belong to you one day, if you keep your shit together. If he finally gives you the fucking money, after all, Jesus, you slept on that douchebag’s floor how many years?
Or,
Wait.
What?
He says something about school and you roll your eyes, grunt in complaint. June can’t come fast enough, and yet you dread that summer heat already, can practically feel it burn into the back of your neck, protected by a pair of floppy arms only until the training begins.
“It’s a waste of time,” you monotone, but your tongue itches to continue onward. You don’t, chin in hand as you watch the road change, from dirt to gravel and back again.
“The library,” he says, to something you must’ve asked, had to’ve asked, or should have said, or would have said if you were a better student. He’s as unmoved by your facetious antics as he’s ever been.
You,
You’ve never been particularly funny.
Maybe you would have been.
Before him.
He’s not here anymore.
“Odessa.”
“Okay,” you say, simple as anything. You’ve never been good at minding your tongue, neither, but even you know when to shut up. “Cool, I guess.”
At least the library is clean.
The dirt is caked under your nails, the blood dried fast and sticky to the cracks in your skin.
“I told you that you didn’t have to come,” she says, one hand on the wheel, knuckles bloodied and the hand holding yours still wrapped from her match. You’re lucky she hasn’t broken your fingers.
“I wanted to,” you say, even if it doesn’t feel true. He’s jealous. You don’t care. She needs you, or thinks she needs you, and it’s the longest you’ve ever let this go on, don’t really want it to stop, can’t explain why. Your arms are cold. You should have worn the sweater. You wouldn’t have bothered complaining, anyway.
“I don’t believe you,” she says, squeezing gently. It only hurts a little. “But I want to.”
“I know,” you say, don't grit your teeth when your hand comes back to your lap empty.
The engine sputters and kicks and you yawn, rub your eyes and lift your head to look in the reflection in the bathroom mirror, splash more water on your face.
You should have cleaned up before he dropped you off. You realize, turning your head and tipping your chin, that your jaw is already starting to bruise. Damn, you could have sworn
Again?
That you dodged it the first time.
The first time?
You wipe your face with a coarse paper towel and take a moment to smooth your shirt where no one can see you, fussing over the way it hangs off your thin frame, too big and too small, all at the same time.
It’s just one day, you think, and breathe again, don’t fucking dwell on the fact that it’s picture day at school because she always said you look your best when you’re not trying to, and you fight the urge to fix your hair, even though you know it won’t be that hard to get perfect, if you could just take five minutes to cut out of line to check it again.
He’ll keep the pictures, anyway, even if they’re terrible, because she always does, gives you that smile with blue eyes that sparkle like ocean waves, something you can’t (won’t?) understand.
She’s not your mom, kid.
But god, you wanted her to be.
You look at that bruise on your jaw again, hours old, then two days, the circles beneath your eyes. You haven’t been sleeping, heat-soaked skin and that burning cut on your hand, trying to scab over. Splash water on your face to rinse off the rest of the blood, appreciate the cool air that blows on the back of your neck as you settle properly into the far corner of the old library.
It’s late enough in the afternoon that the light hits the floor in rays of gold that scatter over the tables, just barely within reach of your little sanctuary. You’re the only one here, as far as you can tell, and quite frankly you’re happier that way, have always been happier when you’re
Alone? Please. As the fuck if.
Shut the fuck up.
You’ve always wanted to be alone.
You yawn again and stare at the weak winter light as it reflects off the table, don’t complain for how cold your fingers are, stiff and numb as the book slips away from your bored grasp, finding your way towards the window in the back of the room, arched and as wide as you are tall.
You loved it here, once, you think, folding your arms behind you in a thoughtful manner.
It meant something, once.
It’s snowing outside, fat flakes that stick to the mailbox in a heaping pile, drowning everything in a sea of white to cover earth of cobalt blue. The driveway is a distant memory of oil slick black, and you watch the license plate of your truck as it disappears inch by inch, til just the tip of the star peeks out over the edge. A fire crackles to your left and you feel the green fire at your back, trapping heat between your shirt and the ugly knit sweater, wool because it’s softer and she knows you hate itchy fibers. You know exactly what time it is, or you think you know that, right before you come up blank.
“They’re not coming,” she’s saying behind you, again, because you didn’t believe her the first time, or because you weren’t listening the second, didn’t want to hear what she had to say.
“I heard you the first two times,” you say anyway, like you’re reading lines off a script, words in your mouth the wrong color, but you’re thinking about how you need to leave, need to make it back before he forgets you, before he leaves town again without saying goodbye.
You can hear the sound of Roxy’s heartbreak in her voice, something so rare it nearly never bubbles to the surface.
You’ve really hurt her this time.
You were always going to hurt her, an inevitability you hadn’t prepared yourself for, because it didn’t matter.
“It hardly feels as though you’ve been listening at all,” she says, tempered. There’s a quiet kind of rage under her words, that current you’ve seen explode out of her only in her worst moments.
“I’ve just had a lot going on,” you sigh, drag a hand back through your hair. The strands don’t knot, don’t catch on your fingers, don’t come away with gel crusted under your nails.
It feels like a warning.
The fireplace crackles, red and orange, then shades of green, and you think you look tired, too-young face reflected in the glass, eyes bare and circles set to bruise. You look pale. You were going to dinner, you remember, you
came straight from the restaurant on a day like today, and she was mad at you, because you were late again, because you’re only ever on time when it suits you best.
Who gives a shit about that.
Fuck you, you do.
The driveway piles with snow, leaking rivers of black sludge that bubble forth from earth of cobalt blue.
Something is missing.
You’ll have to shovel again in the morning.
“Pretty sure I’m not cut out for it anyway,” you say, humor that doesn’t quite crack your facade, at least not in the way it’s supposed to.
She scoffs behind you, and you hear the sound of her heels click click click behind you across the hardwood, familiar 3-4 time, and you don’t flinch back at the way they echo over the empty, empty home, not the way you suddenly want to, guilt crawling up the back of your throat like a living thing.
She’s so alone, here. She’s always been so alone.
Not like you.
Or yes like you.
He’s not here anymore.
“I have a hard time believing you truly think that little of yourself.”
“You’d think you of all people would understand,” you say, but the words ring hollow enough that your fingers go numb, all the blood draining away form
Something is wrong.
He’s not here anymore.
So who cares?
“I am uniquely disqualified on account of being a horrible fucking person.”
The heels freeze at the edge of the rug, and you turn halfway to face her, curious as to why she stopped in the first place.
Surely it’s not that hard to play along.
Icy blonde hair curls around her chin, smooth and sleek, as if fixed by magic, and her lips, painted black, part in something like surprise.
You’d recognize her anywhere, now, though the surprise is new, and doesn’t suit her.
You cock your head. “What, you miss me that bad?”
“Dirk?” She says your name incredulously, as if you could ever be anything so ridiculous, and you blink twice, feel an eyebrow arch.
“Yes,” comes out first, followed immediately by, “No.”
She moves forward like a predator, all lean, terrifying grace, every step deliberate, and you see her hand lifting into the air before recoiling, like she’s going to
Oh boy yep okay there’s her strife deck, yikes. It’s been awhile, huh? For both of you.
“Well,” she says, standing there in a dress that drapes across her form and pools at her feet like liquid night, “which is it?”
This doesn’t seem very fair.
Nah, she's just like that.
You think this house could not possibly suit her, the sheer white walls and ceilings an oppressive force that seek to swallow her whole, leave an inky black spot where Rose should be, and the idea burns at a part of you that is so uncomfortable you could rip it straight out of your chest.
You clear your throat, but it feels gummy, and you’re mad, first, then frustrated, then confused.
“Kinda think that question answers itself,” you say against your will, regret it for how your stomach churns, like it’s going to turn against you. You seek to correct it, but your thoughts push up against a wall of fog a mile thick, and your words die there before they can make it half as far.
She’s surprised, shit, again, when you cough up blood.
“I,” you start.
“Dirk,” she says.
No.
Yes.
You spit pink on the carpet, but you don’t have time to complain, barely manage to hunch forward and pour red across the coffee table, all over your Xbox controller and some of Dave’s homework.
But by then you’re alone, shit.
You’re alone.
You drop back onto the futon, feeling, for an odd, displaced moment in time, completely fucking exhausted. Then you take a breath, sit up, and wrench your sword loose from your chest, where it had taken hold.
You had vaguely agreed, somewhere after the third cycle of canned laughter, that reliving your death over and over, to the point of shattering, was not your best idea, but she did concede that the moments following a bubble overlap were hard to control, like an old movie reel that was never switched over, and you press your hand into the space between your ribs until the skin caves and your fingers come away slicked in blood.
It’s hardly an affirmation that you’re alive, that you’re you, but it brings you peace nonetheless, and you recline there, feet crossed at the ankle, sword across your lap, and think you’ll finally have something new to ask Rose, if you ever get to see her again.