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]

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.]

[thinkfirst]

Yuri can handle the fact that I have other friends. He's a big boy. Anyway, it's the truth.

[ Is he just not getting it? Is he being willfully ignorant? WHO KNOWS ]

[hauntedsavior]

Yeah, well.
It's the truth for me, too.

God knows that hasn't stopped anyone from trying before.
(I'd say ask me who Annalise is one of these days, but don't, actually.)
Let's just hope Trench doesn't take these things as a challenge.

[thinkfirst]

If you didn't really want me to ask you wouldn't have mentioned Annalise at all, and so at some point I hope you know that I will be asking.

If Trench, or whoever is in charge of the ticking machinery behind this place, tries to take it as a challenge then they will find themselves quite challenged indeed.

I did have a thought, which is, I feel that we have experienced a lot of terrible and sad things, and sometimes the best cure for that is to not think about those things, so if at any point you find yourself hoping not to think about loss and the people you love,

[ Wow it turns out it's quite hard to ask your cool friend "hey do you want to hang out or something" ]

Well. I am available. For that.

[hauntedsavior]

[she almost smirks at him over the phone. damn perceptive asshole. but she also gets at what he's trying to ask, because she knows what nerds look like and with all due respect, scifo, you're acting like a nerd right now.]

If you're saying it's okay to come to you and do fun stuff that isn't thinking about how miserable I am,
Then yeah.
I figure I could do that.
I still don't actually know what you do for fun.
Seems like we only ever run into each other when I'm in crisis mode.

[thinkfirst]

[ Flynn Scifo is a big nerd in a jock suit and it's only because of his bulky armor that no one sees it.

He is incredibly relieved that somehow, he got his point across. ]

That is precisely what I'm saying, although I have to admit that I don't do much for fun. I've been informed that I need to be better about that.

[ Please teach him how to hang. ]

[hauntedsavior]

Well.
The stuff I do for fun is either drinking or hunting lately.
And saying I do the first one for "fun" is a stretch.

I mean, I play music, too. Bass. If you wanted to come over and jam or something.
How's your singing voice?