002 // text; username: grollschwert

[hauntedsavior]

cw: chronic illness, ruminations on death

Fun one for you tonight.

[this message comes in the middle of the night, when no one in their right mind should be awake. but that's never stopped anna. she can't sleep, and if flynn and ruby and everybody are right then she has to at least try not to keep this stuff inside her at all times. sorrow's silence we needn't bear, or whatever.]

You know a girl. Her body is breaking down and her meds are failing her.
She has years left. Maybe months, if it gets worse.
But something happens, and she gets access to amazing new technology. Things that prevent her body from attacking itself.
Things that stop her timer from ticking faster than everyone else's.
Great, right?
You get to know her better. You entertain her little crush on you. Maybe you like her back a little and maybe things aren't gonna be so bad.

But one day, you do something.
Something that sets off a chain of events that you couldn't have predicted. Not in a million years.
Small things collide into medium things collide into big huge massive things.
And after the butterfly version of you is done flapping its wings, she doesn't have access to that technology anymore.
She's back on the timer.

She doesn't know you did anything.
She never finds out.
You can't bring yourself to tell her, and she wouldn't believe it if you did.

She barely recognizes you anymore, by the end of it.
Her family finds your name on her phone and invites you to pay respects.

Do you still go to her funeral?

Did you kill her?

Comments

[hauntedsavior]

[goddammit. she knew it would only be a matter of time before flynn saw her wallowing. this is a bigger embarrassment than ange catching her on it, because flynn was supposed to make this stuff better. what the hell was the point of the whole conversation last month if she can't keep it together in front of him for four consecutive weeks?]

She would've thought I was really hot for doing it.
That's the same.
Evening, Flynn.

[thinkfirst]

[ He can't leave well enough alone, especially since he knows—he knows they have to talk about it at some point.

Perhaps sooner rather than later, because Flynn can't stop thinking recently about being left behind. He knows how that pain, made heavier with guilt, can sink a person. ]

Oh, well, in that case, it must have been worth it.

Good evening. The cold makes me think about my home as well.

Did you go? To the funeral?

[hauntedsavior]

Yeah.
I didn't talk to anyone.
Barely said anything to her even after they lowered her down. Didn't have much left to say that didn't feel stupid.
Not to a girl who didn't know who I was.
Who didn't know anymore that I cared about her the way I did.

[thinkfirst]

Just because she didn't know doesn't make it any less true, or important for you. Feelings are still feelings, even if you're the only person who knows about them.

[hauntedsavior]

Would it be too stupid to say some of that stuff now?

[thinkfirst]

Not at all.

Perhaps these are words I need to listen to myself, and so I'm less qualified to say them, but:

Just because she isn't here to hear them doesn't mean they're not worth saying. If saying them would have an impact on you, then they're worth it.

[hauntedsavior]

[there's a long delay on her end while she sorts through another bevy of thoughts. does she say them here, in front of literally god and jesus and everybody, or does she say them to her empty room and to the moon presence and keep them as private as she can? does she write them down instead, so she can remember them later?]

[if she doesn't do something now, she won't ever. so she writes, but only ever privately. never, ever to be shown to another soul. and when she's done, she returns here. at least now she knows that it's still possible to cry when you're missing an eye.]

That fucked me up, Flynn.

this disappeared when I left for thanksgiving times!!

[thinkfirst]

[ Flynn notes the pause—returns, in fact, to the polishing of his new-forged sword, a heavy pointless thing that he nevertheless loves because of the name and symbol it bears—and waits, knowing that this is sensitive.

More than that: knowing that it's deep, and that guilt threads its way through you and stays there like clinging ivy, strangling other feelings.

It's hard to hack through that brush and let the sun in. Flynn hasn't really managed it yet. ]

I suppose it will do that. There are words that, to be very honest, I am terrified to say.

I have been told that sometimes you have to cut a wound open in order for it to heal. It was brave of you to do that.

[hauntedsavior]

Don't know if I'd call it brave.
I just feel like I'm bleeding out.

[still. it's like she told him last month, which has been on her mind this whole time as well. she needs him. she's not ready to let rose go yet, no, but he can help her let other people go for now to build to rose. open these wounds up so they stop festering. so the bad blood can get out and be replaced with good blood. that's what the people here believe, right? ha. sure.]

I guess it's pretty brave to keep going when you are bleeding out.

[thinkfirst]

Brave or stupid, though they're often precisely the same thing.

There are so many things I wish I could say to people who are no longer here. Did it help?

[hauntedsavior]

Too early to tell.
I wrote it all out. Everything I wanted to say to her but I didn't have the chance to.
Maybe she'll see it, somehow.

But even if it made me start bleeding all over again, I think...
I think doing nothing was the wrong choice.
If you want to say something to anyone, then you should say something to them.
They might hear you.

[thinkfirst]

The people I want to speak to have been dead for years by now, but

I suppose, even so, it isn't about them. Perhaps they will see. Perhaps they'll wash up here, or their spirits really are around us like Hanks always said, but really it's more about us and not keeping all of that inside. Releasing those words, finally, could help us move forward.

Was it a letter?

[hauntedsavior]

I mean, is my notes app a letter?
Don't know if I want everyone else to see what I wrote.
It's kind of embarrassing.

[but it's not. off the table.]

You don't have to do it in public either.
If you do it at all.
You know.

[thinkfirst]

I don't think true feelings are embarassing, even if they are private. I won't pry, but.

Perhaps I really do need to take my own advice.

Would

how did you begin?

[hauntedsavior]

[this isn't. how she expected this post to go. she's tired already, but she isn't going to go anywhere until she's sure that flynn is also doing okay. besides, she can't get back to sleep anytime soon anyway.]

I started by talking about what we meant to each other.
Told her how much I would've done to save her if I had the chance.
Said I'm sorry that it ended this way.

I made sure to tell her I love her.
In case she didn't know, or in case she forgot.

[thinkfirst]

[ What they meant to each other. That she loved her—

Flynn doesn't know how to even begin with the people he has lost. He wouldn't have had the chance to save his father or his mother, and there is a part of him sure that he should be over it already, that it is nothing in the face of losing someone the way Anna did, because she had to watch...

Someone forget? ]

May I ask you something?

[hauntedsavior]

Sure.
Go for it.

[there's little holding her back now, honestly. this conversation is Happening.]

[thinkfirst]

Why did she barely recognize you? What happened?

[hauntedsavior]

[shit. has she gone this long without explaining it to him yet? she doesn't know if she can get into the nitty gritty of it right now. there's another pause as she weighs whether she has the brainpower to get into metaphysics with a sword boy.]

It's complicated.
The short version you could call, like. Rapid onset brain deterioration.
The long version involves soul magic.

Either way, she forgot all the time we spent together.
Or at least I was sure she did, until about twenty minutes ago.

[thinkfirst]

[ Well that is... highly alarming, and certainly something Flynn is going to ask more about at some point, but there is a more pressing matter here. ]

What happened twenty minutes ago?

[hauntedsavior]

I was convinced that there wasn't any other option but her forgetting everything.
But when they looked through her phone, she had hearts next to my name.

[thinkfirst]

[ A quiet intake of breath, heard only by Daisy beside him. ]

She remembered you.

[hauntedsavior]

She remembered me.

Or at least, I don't know that she forgot me.

There's not much difference to a desperate woman, I guess.

[thinkfirst]

That is what matters. The scrap of memory, assuming you didn't think you even had that—

Anna, I would find it very difficult to forget you.

[hauntedsavior]

Ha.

Careful, Flynn.
Don't think Yuri would want to see you flatter me like that.

[this is the kindest way she can think of to say thank you. because she is. embarrassed.]