Work Text:
This is what was meant to happen.
This is what you want.
The way back from the school feels strangely long, today. A few last sputtering lights hang from the buildings, illuminating tiny points in the fog that's starting to roll in through the lake. There's a chill that sinks in through your sweater, raising goosebumps on your arms.
There's a chill in your chest, but you're used to that one.
The balloon bobs overhead, swaying in ways that don't match the wind.
You keep walking, step after step across cracked asphalt, and you remind yourself. This was the plan from the start. It was half the reason you kept your distance from her for those long few months after she came to school, even as you watched her from the corner of your eyes.
Hadn’t you been glad, back then, that she hated you with so much passion, so much fire? Hadn’t you been happy? If you were going to go through with the plan, you didn’t want to hurt anyone, and here was someone who would rejoice in everything that happened to you.
But then she had called you a friend, once.
And you had lost sight of the path.
You should be grateful, you think in a voice that is not your own, a voice that is colder than the wind outside your body. This will help you to stay on track with the plan. This will ensure the promise is fulfilled. No more temptations, no more warm voice under your window.
You’ll hurt her, sure. You can’t stop that. You let yourself get too close, and she cares for whatever she thinks she’s seen around the edges of red light. She has too big a heart to not care.
It’s why you love her.
That thought makes you stumble over the cracked asphalt, and for a second all you can do is tremble, folding over yourself. You can’t think that any more. You can’t feel that any more. There are things that are only for other people, and you are not allowed into them, not when you’re the one who walked away and shut the door behind you.
You think you love her, but you’re lying to her, using her, pushing her towards a tragedy that will hurt her. Love is what Susie feels, bigger than anything, something that would lead her to break any ill-formed promise, defy any cruel fate.
Love is what Susie feels for Noelle.
Love is what Noelle feels for Susie.
Whatever thing is left to pool at the bottom of your empty ribs, corroding and cold and bitter, is nothing like that feeling.
You think you never understood what it was to love at all.
You think you only know how to fill yourself with acid until you bleed.
You force your feet to keep moving. You can’t love her. She can’t love you, the broken empty thing that she’s only seen the barest edges of. So it’s better this way. She’ll be hurt, the same as Flowery hurt her today, the same as the loss of any of her friends would.
But she’ll have someone else to turn to, and they’ll comfort each other, fall into each other’s embrace, with no space between them for anything else, and in time the grief will fade.
It’s what you should want. It’s what you’ve hoped for. To disappear without a trace, leaving someone better to take back her own life, and be forgotten.
It’s what you want.
You grip at your chest hard, sinking fingers into cold flesh.
It’s what you want.
You don’t have a heart to beat or hurt, right now, but something burns in the empty space, and you claw, trying to dig it out.
It’s what you want.
A hoarse cry leaves cracked lips, too quiet to be heard, swallowed in the cold fog. You fall to your knees, still clawing at yourself.
It’s what you want it’s what you want it’s what you want don’t be stupid it’s what you want it’s what you want you’re so goddamn selfish it’s what you want it’s what you want don’t forget it’s what you want it’s what you want it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts–
The balloon bobs lower.
You stare at it.
You don’t want to move. You don’t want to go on. You want to stay like this, collapsed on the road, until someone finds you, asks what’s wrong. You want all the truths to spill out of your lips, and you want someone to tell you that you’ll be okay, that you’ll find a way out, that she’ll be there by your side and–
But no one’s coming.
You drag the balloon down, undoing your own hasty knot, and pull out the red thing within.
It glows through the fog, a dim light, almost timid.
You let it sink back into you.
After a little while longer, someone rises to their feet and starts to walk home.
And you don’t think anything else at all as the last lights go out behind you.