#into millions upon millions of shards; dying over and over in every reality to save the doctor. compare to: the doctor choosing to spend

[dandelionjack]

i have a maybe lukewarm maybe hot take about this godforsaken show that some people could find mean, but i stand behind it, no elaboration (okay, some elaboration in the tags below… a lot of elaboration)

opinion: if you claim to like clara’s dynamic with the doctor and her character development in series 8 and 9, but simultaneously say you hate the impossible girl arc/elevenclara, you don’t actually understand anything about their relationship and what makes it the way that it is

[spookyspaghettisundae]

Show Me Your Dream

The skies rumble with thunder. Purple lightning rains down from dark clouds overhead, licking at the jagged crags that loom on the horizon.

A beast tramples down the vestige of a ruined city under its clawed feet, like a child kicking a sandcastle and stomping it into the mud. While the creature is a mere ant to you at this distance, you know just how colossal the monstrosity is. You feel the tremors all the way over here, reaching you where you stand, looking on in awe of the destruction this beast wrought.

Stones float in vortices, helix-shaped patterns, revolving around the crystallized anomalies that dot this blasted landscape. The metal fragments of destroyed craft continue to drift aimlessly through the air like debris on the water. Between stretches of landscape where reality obeys the laws of physics as you know it, gravity defies those rules and alien plants coil in strange patterns, shivering and shuddering without breath or wind to disturb them.

The creature, engrossed in devastating the city in the distance, roars. You feel it in your blood, in your bones. You feel how you are connected. How the hairs on the back of your neck stand up in reaction, for the beast calls to you. How something within you responds on a molecular level. How the very cells of your body split and mutate, changing you with each second of your exposure to this foreign place.

Changing you back to who you are meant to be. To what you are meant to be.

The raw beauty of these sights, they rob you of your breath and instill you with fear.

You want to wake up, but this is no dream.

And you must, under no circumstance, fall into dreaming again. You must see this through. Overcome your fear, and reach the pits torn open by the beast.

You must do this because you are its savior.

You have dreamt of the place you thought was real. Where people idly chatter of mundane things, of everyday things, oblivious to the infinite possibilities, blind to the reality to where you have now returned. You have dreamt of the sound of cars in traffic, of beeping horns and angry shouts.

You have dreamt of the smell of ozone when rain peppers asphalt, accompanied by the symphony of watery precipitation showering the dreamscapes around you.

You have dreamt of the taste of grit when wind kicks up dust and sand from the roads. Of alarm clocks that tear you from slumber, measure when you prepare to work and when you rest, of eating food from a microwave and how unreal it smells, of the scents of coffee and gasoline and many other a thing as they sting your nostrils.

That is all but a dream. A dream of normalcy. You go to sleep there and think you escape it into the fantastical worlds of your dreams.

But that is all wrong. It is the other way around.

You escape into a stable sphere that you call reality. Unreliably reliable, unpredictably predictable, and somewhat consistent in its rules, no matter how many questions and mysteries that it continues to spawn.

You run there, snapping out of true reality every now and then because the dream has infected you. It has led you to think that the real world is too strange to fully understand, though things are all upside down.

Your name, you believe, is something simple, something natural to you. Easily grasped, easily slipped on and off, like an article of clothing. Seeing it printed on papers and screens in that dream, it is easy to believe that it is your name.

Here, though, your name is Sanurakh. Inescapable, and unique. Permanent.

Removing this name would be like scraping your skin and face off with a knife. An impossibility, a law of nature more stable than the semblance of gravity that you see now breaking all around you.

The colossal beast roars again. It arches backwards, its three-pronged mouth lined with sword-sized teeth opening and closing, as if to curse the heavens. Then it descends, like a tidal wave crashing down on the world, vanishing between the valley of steel that many destroyed buildings once made up. Clouds of dust explode, rising and engulfing that ruined cityscape beyond the gravitational anomalies.

Among the metal shards that drift past your face, one of them catches your eye. Its shiny surface shimmers with diffuse reflections like a mote of light, and you pluck it from mid-air, pinching it in between finger and thumb.

As you twist and turn it in your hand, inspecting it from all sides, you read the label of the hull that it came from. Your mind fills in the blanks, your imagination completes the vessel’s name as The Sea Defiant. Your vessel, destroyed by the dream, trying to strand you there.

But you persevered. When you laid your head down to rest upon that pillow, when you thought you went to sleep, you awoke back into this reality. The beast’s roar had drawn you back here.

After all this time, you have finally returned.

In the dream, you are one of millions in a city, most indifferent and numb to the dream they live in. They yearn for places like the reality you stand in in now, no matter how frightening it may be pursuing it in the facsimile that fiction within the fiction of their dreams renders into their thoughts. They have deluded themselves into thinking that it is merely fabricated within their minds. Unknowing that their minds are gateways that could lead them back to this reality.

Unlike you. This time, your eyes are open. Your mind is clear. Your awareness complete.

This was all you had left. You had abandoned all belongings and wealth, left everybody behind. Everybody who might have spoken to you and reminded you of the dream, anchoring you there and helping to delude yourself into thinking that it was the reality, and this reality was the dream.

Withdrawn from that dream world, forsaking anybody who might remind you of that artificial name you once carried.

Sanurakh. Pilot of the Sea Defiant.

In the dream, you had shared your adventures in this reality, but all who heard it only laughed or dismissed it or appreciated it as entertaining tales, a yarn spun by a creative mind. Their need for stability and the poison of comfort made them blind to the way you showed them, the bridge back into the real world that everybody mistook for dream.

Sometimes, you saw a connection in those who dared write down and explore the real world, what they considered dreams. But such enlightenment always proved fleeting, soon dismissed as petty amusement.

Dulled to the safety of a dream that offered no security, driven to believe that they were the architects of their world out there.

You, Sanurakh, know better. You feel it now. You hear me.

You have broken free from the dream. Know that it fools you whenever it makes you jolt awake in bed, covered in a sheen of sweat. Reinforcing the notion that the reality is a nightmare, or merely something strange and nonsensical that you may ignore.

No more, Sanurakh. No more. You have broken free from what you are told is the opposite of reality.

It is infinitely easier to embrace the prison of consistency, to muse about reality and dreams and reverse the order in which they naturally fall or follow one another.

The people of that world of paper and concrete, they are the phantasms. The less they awaken to the reality, the more perfect and believable their dream becomes. They escape within the escapism, consuming fictions within the fiction, reaffirming the illusion beyond any shadow of a doubt.

But here you stand, awake again. You must vow to never sleep, never dream again.

The beast has gone silent in the ruined city. Burrowed deep, away from your prying eyes. The path through these murmuring wastelands leads you there, but you will walk alone, and walk for long without your vessel to carry you there in boundless flight.

The gravel crunching underneath your heavy boot snaps and crackles. It is crystalline and bronze in color. Shadows of the dead, bodies drift through the air overhead, mingling with the floating stones. The damned who perished within the dream, leaving nothing but lifeless husks in this reality.

Golden cliffs outline your unmarked road, sharp around the edges, guiding you where you need to go. The green sun does not shine upon you, it glows in a sickly hue with a radiance that never fully reaches the grounds you walk upon.

Listen. Crunch.

Listen. Whispers.

This world—this dying world, Sanurakh—only you can save it now. Yet you feel the pull of the dream, its tendrils reaching out like spidery legs creeping through the ivory gates where reality and dream meet, where you passed through to return here. Stretching out, blindly extending and shivering as they seek and feel around to find connection back to you; to grasp you and pull you back into the dream.

You dare not look behind you, for fear of seeing those tendrils, those horridly long and slender legs that feature too many joints. In the dream, they are real, but here only have as much power as you imagine them to.

The fate of this world rests upon your weary shoulders. So many times have you broken free from the dream, mistakenly believing this dying world to be the fabrication. If it dies completely, you die with it, and so does the other world, the actual dream.

You are the last one. You hear me.

The way to the ruined city meanders through a forest of thin, spike-like spires. The creeping plants crawl around them in spiraling shapes, jittering like caterpillars as they climb to dizzying heights. Never running. Always knowing.

The murmurs, the whispers, they come from here and beyond here. You hear my word, my certainty, cutting through their gibberish and entering your mind like the knife you need. Ghosts of those who perished, lost in the real world, severed from every last silver strand that once connected them to reality.

Sanurakh, you remember this dying world from your childhood. The farther you wander, the more vivid the memories become. You may have dreamt of a house in which you were born, but you, in reality, you crawled from the craters of the ivory sands here. You dreamt of the human teat, but the sinewy flesh of the creeping plants was what provided you with nourishment, mulched to a pulp in between your tiny sharp teeth.

The silvery moon descends, aligning with the green sun, yet never eclipsing it. Auroras of strange purple lights flare up, dancing along the path that snakes its way through this rocky valley, between the floating stones and hungry fern, guiding you to your destiny.

The dream is so enticing. So safe. The spider of it stalks behind you, silent and predatory. Waiting for you to turn and look upon its many eyes, just before it catches you and bites you and poisons you with that sweet, sweet comfort. Before your limbs go limp, and your heart fills with the sadness of that dream to which it will drag you back to. Drags you back out of reality, so that you may die in every world. So that reality collapses, and the dream with it.

Do not give up, Sanurakh. Do not let the spider win.

Remember the time before the fall, before the spider and the anomalies that it wove to deceive you, to make you think that this world makes no sense. The smells of butter and sweet perfumes are nothing but a dream, they are shaped from the spider’s web, things you desire to see in between the weave, and thinking of them only slows your steady progress.

The childhood you think you remember, with all the laughter and kindness and warmth that may have filled it—or not, depending on the variation of your dream—all just figments of your imagination.

Widen the abyss between that dream and this reality, Sanurakh. Leave behind you those small houses in which man dwells and restore the labyrinthine cities that the dreamers have forgotten.

Here, in reality, all the stars are dying. I sing to you, but whispers are all that remain of my last and dying breath, reaching you through the void. Echoes of the infinity we have lost, the innocence sacrificed by harsh dreams masquerading as truths.

Reach, now. Yes. Your hand outstretched, the ruined city so close now. The hungry beast slumbers below. You are almost home.

When you have restored this world, you may rest again. Dream again if you must.

But more than anything, you must pull reality back from the brink of oblivion. Pull it with all your might.

Pull, and pull, for all our lives depend on it. I will be there, in the shadow. I will take your hand.

You will take me to your dream.

I have showed you reality, Sanurakh.

Now I want to see your dream. Live it.

Taste it.

—Submitted by Wratts

[sterileflcwer]

Achilles - Eugene Sledge

Word Count: 1,352

Content Warning: Mentions of blood, death, trauma, and war. 

『』

ACHILLES

“Any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.”

-- Homer, The Iliad

When Eugene Sledge returned to Alabama, he felt horribly lost. So many things now felt so terribly pointless. No longer could he see things the way he saw them before he left for the Pacific. Almost everything was marred by the war. The smallest things from a slamming door to a sudden yell could make him jump. He could no longer enjoy hunting the way he had before being thrown into battle. When his father had taken him on a hunting trip soon after Eugene’s return, he had broken down at the thought of taking the life of another creature. 

Unlike most men, Eugene Sledge had very little to return to. Of course, he had his parents and his brother. But they were all consumed in their lives. Edward Sledge Sr. had his medical practice, and his son who shared his name was a decorated Army officer who soon started to work in the town’s bank. Mary Frank Sledge was consumed by the running of her home and social events with other women of the town. So, there Eugene was, left to pick up the pieces of his shattered life. He had the resumption of his college education to look forward to, though that was months away from his return. 

Sidney Phillips encouraged his dear friend to distract himself with a girl. Sid said that you could never forget what you saw in the Pacific, you could only distract yourself. But Eugene couldn’t feel right doing that. He couldn’t hurt some lovely girl just because he was running from his memories of the war, it just wasn’t right.

Before a young man is marched off to war for the first time, he is wide-eyed and optimistic. He believes that he will achieve glory unlike any man before him, that he will save all of his comrades and win the war nearly single-handedly. His chest is swollen with pride. But once he gets to battle, all misconceptions of glory die with each comrade. The rose-colored glasses he wears are shattered, and the shards stab out his eyes. All cries are trapped in his chest, and his heart aches as he begs with an awful God to grant his mercy to these ragged men. God’s mercy rarely comes. And for years, that unforgotten pain tortured him, even in sleep. As Aeschylus wrote so many years ago, “Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our own will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.” 

Eugene was among the ranks of these young men, men still in their youth who had aged decades by the time they left battle. Men who could no longer feel human, instead feeling like monsters for the acts of survival they committed while at war. Ghosts of his fallen friends always hung about his shoulders, begging in rasping voices to know why Eugene had betrayed them. To know when he would join the ranks of his comrades once more. To know why he hadn’t helped bring that hope from their graves on islands that Americans would soon forget the names of. 

In those almost hopeless months, he begged to get away from it all. To forget those battles, to forget the metallic smell of blood, to forget the names of those lost, to forget everything he knew about war and how he could kill another man. He just wanted to be a young man again. A young man who dreamed of war and glory but never had to actually experience it. To be a young man who could laugh so carelessly and could date a girl without worrying about how cruel battle may have made him. 

He wanted to forget about the world at war. He wanted to forget about the arrow shot into Achilles’ heel and the field report that only read “All quiet on the western front.” He wanted these to feel like mythologies once more. And yet, they would always be a reality to him. Even as he grew older, he never forgot the war that had stolen away the best years of his life, and the lives of so many other young men his age. 

Of course, during the early half of 1946, he couldn’t see that far into the future. He could only see how he was swallowed by despair and horror at what he had been apart of before he could even buy a drink. How the actions of some men who happened to hold lofty positions had killed millions of boys. Millions of families were ripped to shreds. And for what? Because they weren’t rich enough, because they weren’t powerful enough, because their sons weren’t old enough? The men who led the countries at war often said that the deaths of sons and brothers were necessary sacrifices, that it would lead to a victory for the right side. That instead of mourning, mothers and fathers should feel pride at the sacrifice that their sons had made. But what about the sons that had come back without medals and the title of a commissioned officer? Who instead only brought back memories of the worst things that man was capable of?

Eugene Sledge had returned home after all of the parades of victory had been thrown. He returned to a world that had returned to normalcy. Instead of being greeted with ticker tape and bands, he was greeted by the deafening silence of Alabama in winter. That was all the world could offer him. And that silence festered, almost choking the flame haired man. It screamed at his idling and hesitation, telling him to fulfill the role now expected of him. To go back to the man-- really, the child-- that Eugene was before the war. But everything that had existed before the war no longer existed. Sure, the same buildings stood. Children still played in the park near the town square. But none of it was the same to Eugene. All sense of safety that used to exist for him had disappeared. All of his illusions of home were gone with the war. Now he knew how easily it could all disappear-- how it could all be destroyed in mere moments.

People gossiped about Eugene Sledge. They talked about how he never seemed to be fully present anywhere, as though his mind was occupied by something far off. Most didn’t understand why he seemed so consumed by it all. After all, boys had come home last September with smiling and eager faces, ready to go back to normal. Why couldn’t Eugene Sledge?

Of course, none of them had seen what Eugene had. They hadn’t seen some of their closest friends die for what felt like no reason, they hadn’t heard the cries of dying men. Many of them still believed that it was gallant for a man to sacrifice his life for his country, as they had never had any reason to doubt it. 

But they had never seen those men, those whose sacrifices are often forgotten if not among a lofty list of those who died with him at a certain battle. They had never seen a rotting corpse, clothed in blood stained rags that vaguely represented a uniform. Those who felt the most suffered the most in war, and Eugene had certainly been one of the most sensitive.

In the end, there was nothing beautiful or glorifiable about war toEugene. There was nothing beautiful or noble about crying over a fallen comrade-- it was all just pure pain. Every myth he had been fed about war as a child was now so obviously a gilded lie. No matter what, there was nothing beautiful about the arrow in Achilles’ heel. There was nothing beautiful about what he had experienced. It was all horror that bled together. And he was left to piece it all together in the aftermath.

[morefinesse]

My muse is dead. How is your muse reacting to it?

My muse is dead. How is your muse reacting to it?

Reference to self-harm and suicide below, I reaaaaally wasn’t sure on how to post this, so I decided to submit it. I hope that’s okay!! TLDR: Ruby is a true friend and this drabble-meme thing is really tragic.

She stands there before his grave, solemn and quiet, a bouquet of flowers that she’s carefully collected in her hands, each with their own respective meaning. Ambrosia; amaryllis; bird-of-paradise; pink and white camellia; pink and red carnations; a white chrysanthemum; a dandelion; dead leaves; gloxinia; purple hyacinth; blue and yellow irises; lilly-of-the-valley; primrose; roses of dark crimson, dark pink, and red; sunflowers; sweet-peas, red and yellow tulips, blue and white violets and viscera. It’s late at night, the silver moon is high in the sky and the stars are twinkling like a million diamonds in the night sky; everyone else is asleep. Clementine visits his grave every night to pay her respects to the boy she loved with all of her heart.. or at least, what remained of it. She could still remember his dying moments, the blood that stained her fingers, as if it were yesterday.

Running at top speed through the forest, Clementine did not look back even once as she sprinted through the trees, even as her friends screamed for her to come back. It wasn’t fair, it just wasn’t fair-

Stupid girl. this world is unfair, don’t you see? You’re a weapon, girl, and weapons don’t weep, a voice said.

She had to get away. A violent roll of thunder and a clash of lightning danced across the sky, and soon, rain fell from the heavens. She slowed to a stop once she reached her destination: the school. Once she entered, she bolted toward her dormitory, pants and tormented breaths escaping her. Once she slammed the door behind her, every little movement Clementine Maria Jasmine Cree had made instantly stopped. It was like a clock, forever ticking, until all the gears had been shattered at once, and the clock had been stopped, frozen in time for an instant forever. The girl didn’t seem to be breathing for the longest moments, her eyes staring blankly at nothing. Voices, whispers, screams, nightmares, flashbacks, incidents, the scent of blood. The way he smiled at her, his vibrant laughter, the way he held her close to him at night whenever she was suffering from nightmares, the way he’d kissed her. He would never grow up to be a singer like he’d wanted, could never teach AJ piano lessons, or pick her up and twirl her around while they laughed before they leaned in for a kiss. tease Violet or Aasim or laugh his most wonderful laugh.

Everything rushed through her mind at once, like an infinite stream of memories that she couldn’t snap out of, that overloaded her systems and drowned out any reason. Louis was dead… and there was no more light.

She had wanted to laugh at her friends who told her the tragic news, who told her to let him go to the point where she’d felt a pair of strong arms drag her away from his body, so that they’d be able to get distance from the quickly approaching horde, claim that they were lying when they’d been telling her that he had been shot and bitten, that he’d lost too much blood, even while she held her dying boyfriend in her arms… but it all made sense. Everything made sense, and her senses never failed her, and she knew reality from illusion, deep, deep down. Her boyfriend was dead, and she could do nothing to ease his pain nor prevent his death. 

She could only prevent him from turning with her own blade.

It was happening all over again.

The first thing indicating that the clockwork that was Clementine was still capable of ticking, were silent tears running from the corner of her eyes. Tears without sound, loaded with more agony than one single person should ever bear. Tears that showed shards of her dreams that had just now been broken. Shards of the future that she had dreamed of, hoped for, longed for, wished for, all running down her cheeks in streams, dropping from her chin onto the floor where she would never be able to retrieve them again.

Clementine’s hopes and dreams were gone, and so was the light in her eyes.

From there, Clementine started ticking faster than she ever had before. Unable to contain the memories, the misery, the pain, she got on her feet in a movement so unlike the girl’s normal self, swift, without reason, without motivation. It was an action of fury, frustration, desperation. The girl had gotten hold of the desk in her room, violently flipping it to the side, sending papers and everything else on it flying through the room, as the desk hit the floor with a loud bang, followed by the loudest, most heartbreaking scream the girl had ever let escape her lips. Hyperventilating, the girl tried to remain on her feet, but got dizzy, almost fell over, but barely managed to sit down onto her bed, almost fainting from the pure overload of emotion. It felt like her heart was going to stop beating at any one moment.

How long do I have left?

That’s when something snapped, and Clementine froze again. It started with a breath that got pulled in so deep, demanding so much willpower, that it had seemed surreal for the girl to pull herself back from where she was. It was a gasp of air, as if she had been drowning, and only barely managed to reach the surface in time. A few deep breaths followed, Clementine kept her eyes closed and shut tightly. The tears were still streaming, but at least she wasn’t panicking anymore. Instead, she seemed hopeless, devastated, broken.

Though she had prayed for the shiny happily ever after that surely awaited the two of them at the end of the long, dark tunnel of conflict that hung over them, their brightest moments happened during the darkest times. Death’s urgency. Fear of loss. A common enemy and a shared comfort in the face of violence. They were born in an era of peace and prosperity and raised in an era of darkness and despair. Their darkest moments would likely happen during the brightest of times. 

It couldn’t last. 

It didn’t.

She would have done it. She would have broken every convention, and damn the consequences. Hell, she would have left the school, left everything behind if it meant keeping Louis alive. She would have given up everything. She would give him everything she had. She would have given him the love he so desperately wanted. She would have broken every fucking rule in existence, just to continue as they had been. She would have given him anything just to see him smile again. She wanted to see him smile at her one more time, the one that made her heart flutter, she wanted to hold him while he slept peacefully in her arms and she played with his locks, she wanted to dance with him when they were in the dark and alone, away from the cruel world they lived in.

He saved her life so many times, both in body and spirit… and she couldn’t even owe him her end as thanks. She sat upon the cold bed, no longer with him, with a piece of glass in her hands, scraped out and hollow. She felt sick. She might not have breathed for a long time. For her entire life she’d been chasing a fleeting flicker of firelight… a little chance at hope… and what had she gotten in return? Even as she rose and fell over the years, after losing so many people close to her, nothing, no one, not even Lee, compared to the loss of her boyfriend.

And there she sat, in the dark room. The light was out. Silently, she curled in upon herself on the floor. It seemed at last that her fighting spirit was gone. It seemed as if days came and went without her moving from that one spot. How long had she been here for? She couldn’t say, nor could she bring herself to care. What was the point in living when everyone she loved had died? At some point, there was a knock on the door. It sounded as if it were underwater. The voice might have been Ruby’s or Tenn’s. She shut it out. In time, whoever it was went away. She remembered every single moment of her life, trying desperately to forget. Everything she had ever loved was cruelly taken away from her. If she could turn back time and change everything, from the apocalypse to the meaningless deaths… by hell she would. On and on it went. The pointless thinking… She didn’t know how much time passed, but in the confines of her dark dormitory, it was eternal night.

She had been content to exist within Louis’ shadow, always protecting and adoring him, chasing the promise of the light on the other side. All her life, she wasn’t sure if she existed more in the light or the darkness.

Bopping her head up and down as she breathed, the warm salty tears dripped onto her own hands as she tried to speak. A voice so meager, so silent, without any shred of confidence remaining, the sentence itself torn to shreds every time the woman needed to take a deep breath.

“…What am I meant… to do now? What am I even…?”

It sounded as if she was speaking more to herself than to anyone else, at least until she sank to the floor, on her knees. Her face depicted the face of someone begging for mercy, for a little light of hope to cling onto, the face of someone asking to be put out of their misery. “…Help me.”

No one answered her.

Clem stared at her reflection in her broken mirror, in darkness. No one could see the puffiness around her eyes from crying too much. She’d entertained the idea of seeking out someone, but she had no energy to leave her room. She touched the glistening shard of glass which glowed in the moonlight diffusing through her window and clenched it tightly in her hand, despite the throbbing pain and the crimson rivers flowing down her hand and trickling down onto the floor. She soon began feeling dizzy.

She tightened her grip on the glass, whim whispering in her ear to crush it. Crush it, like the Delta and so many other people had tried to crush her. Like this war had crushed Louis and everyone else she had ever loved.

But it didn’t break, didn’t even crack.

“I didn’t… I didn’t—” she broke off, the knot in her throat constricting her.

i didn’t get to say goodbye.

Even in death, she felt the strength of their bond… the bond that she had never once felt in her life with anyone else. The longer he was dead from the world, the fiercer she held on, clutching the glass in place of flesh. Say a quick goodbye and get over it as quickly as possible, she told herself. She took a deep breath, opened her mouth. The words wouldn’t come. The tears did. At long last, the tears broke over like a wave. She grieved for him with the power of all the pent up grief that should have been dished over the years. Her tears were as silent as the grave. They weren’t for display, alone in her dormitory within the halls of this school for troubled youth.

She wept, her tears turning to frost. It was autumn, a world of fragile things. When she’d cried herself raw, still staring into nothing, she took the breath and said the words. “Goodbye, Louis.” It was a curious sound, to have finally cracked the silence. She tested the sound. Then she felt the silence. It didn’t work quite as it had before, with her dead friends, so she tried again, a broken little thing trying to figure out the indescribable. “Goodbye, Louis. Goodbye, my darling… Goodbye, my love…. Goodbye. Goodbye. Good-“ She stopped. 

It was a failed experiment.

She squeezed the piece of glass tighter. “I love you.” It was a push. In the other direction, and not toward the living. But it was movement, so she embraced it. “I love you.” She edged closer to a conclusion, “I love you.” Closer still. But there was no answer. I love you. She shut her eyes. She’d see him again soon.

Forever and ever.

And never.

Clementine squeezed the small piece of glass between her fingers, pouring her agony, her sadness, all of her into it.

Because unlike her, it could not break.

The last thing she could remember before fading into blackness was Ruby screaming her name as she’d burst the door open and rushed to her aid.

She would never, ever forget the way Ruby’s attempt at a gentle, comforting smile broke when she saw her lying there against her bed in a puddle of her own blood, brilliant blue eyes widening in realization as she saw her hand over her other bleeding hand with the shard of glass at her side, her skin sickly, and golden eyes lulling shut. She would never, ever forget the anguished scream that left her mouth, the way she desperately scrambled to reach her, the way she yelled profanities at her for being so stupid. Most of all, she would never, ever forget the way she looked at her as she worked her wound, like she was losing one of her precious things in the world in front of her very eyes in that one, single desperate moment.

It was one of the most heartbreaking things she’d ever seen.

“Ruby,” she’d rasped, wanting to wipe the tears away from her face but finding herself unable to move any of her limbs. “Ruby, I’m sorry.” She didn’t know why she was apologizing to her, she didn’t know what she was doing anymore at this point. Didn’t know what she was thinking anymore. I’m sorry, her mind whispered, despite herself. I’m so sorry.

“Don’t talk, you idiot!” She was frantic and scared, she could tell by the abnormally high pitch of her voice and the way sobs tore from her throat afterwards. Her hands were slick and red with her blood and she was shaking like a leaf, terrified of what might happen to her friend. “You are not dying on me now, Clementine Maria Jasmine Cree! You are not dying on me now! You went through hell and back, you are not dying on any of us now!” The way she was yelling desperately at her, like losing her was one of the worst things that could happen to her, made her sluggishly beating heart ache in the sweetest way.

“I…” She had to stop to cough, before wheezing painfully and panting desperately, trying to catch as much air as possible. Why was it so hard to breathe? Was her body failing her already?

I’m sorry, everyone. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry. She thought, looking at her through bleary eyes. I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t want to do this. I never wanted to leave you guys. I never wanted to leave AJ. She blinked, trying to clear her vision, and felt a sense of relief when she succeeded. Ruby looked so beautiful, crying over her like that. Like she needed her to the very last moment. Her eyes felt too heavy, then, and she let them fall shut. She was too exhausted to fight back. Thank you, Ruby.

She waited for the blackness to overtake her, waited for death to claim her.

But it never did.

She didn’t know how much time she spent there, unable to move a muscle and waiting for eternal sleep to steal her away—it could have been a minute, an hour, half a day. But slowly, steadily, her mind cleared itself. Her heart slowly picked up its pace again. Clementine, still sluggish but feeling a little bit more energized, snapped her eyes open and took a generous gulp of air, her chest jolting forward in shock. She didn’t even have the time to take in anything before he felt a pair of small, thin arms tightening their hold on her neck and became aware of the dampness on her shoulder and AJ’s soft sobbing. Her eyes softened.

“AJ…" she croaked, swallowing tightly as her tongue felt sluggish. She tried to pull him away so she could look at him, but he only clung to her harder while making a small cry of negation. "AJ, it's… it's okay,” she said hoarsely, resting her weak arms on his shoulders. He didn’t respond, and she waited a bit until she had a little more strength. “I'm fine,” she whispered reassuringly, turning her head in his direction. "I’m okay.“

She had to live for him, she knew, as she hugged him back just as fiercely. Ruby, Aasim, Tenn and James approached shortly after and gave her condolences while wishing her well, and Tenn had given her a drawing of herself with a “Stay Strong” message heavily emphasized in deep red crayon. When they’d all left, Ruby remained and scolded her on the great and foolish risk she’d taken, before sitting on the edge of the couch and gently reassuring her that they would get through this together, before embracing her friend.

They’d managed to get Louis’ corpse back and give him a proper burial that day. Throughout the whole thing, she didn’t even shake or sob or tremble. Tears just silently streamed down her cheeks. 

No one ever dared to mention that day ever again.

Clem placed the bouquet over his grave in silence before seating herself before his grave. Every night, she would come here and clean his grave and speak to his grave, as if he was still there with her.

“AJ’s been doing well in his piano lessons, he’s a natural, just like you said.” she whispered after a long time, a sad, sweet smile gracing her features, her fingers lacing around her Omega necklace that he’d given her all those months ago.“You gave me forever in those number of weeks… and for that, I’m eternally grateful.” She whispered softly, tears blurring her vision, before she blinked them away. “You made me believe that people can be beautiful, too. You’d brought me to life.” A hitched sob escaped her, then, she murmured, “There is no one else but you.”

She would never love another again.

The flowers in Clem’s bouquet and their meanings: Ambrosia– Your Love is Reciprocated Amaryllis– Splendid Beauty Bird of Paradise– Joyfulness Camellia General– Admiration Camellia Pink– Longing for You Camellia White– You’re Adorable Carnation Pink– I’ll Never Forget You Carnation Red– My Heart Aches for You Chrysanthemum White– Loyal Love Dandelion– Faithfulness Dead Leaves– Sadness Gloxinia– Love at First Sight Hyacinth Purple– I Am Sorry, Please Forgive Me, Sorrow Iris Yellow– Passion Iris Blue– Faith, Hope Lilly-Of-The-Valley– Sweetness, Return to Happiness, You’ve Made My Life Complete Primrose– I Can’t Live Without You Rose Dark Crimson– Mourning Rose Dark Pink– Thankfulness Rose Red– Love, Respect Sunflower– Pure Thoughts, Adoration, Warmth Sweet-Pea– Departure, Good-bye, Thank You for A Lovely Time Tulip Red– Declaration of Love Tulip Yellow– There’s Sunshine in Your Smile Violet Blue– Watchfulness, Faithfulness, I’ll Always Be True Violet White– Let’s Take a Chance on Happiness Viscera– Will You Dance With Me?

welp. i certainly wasn’t ready for this.