#kept relatively vague both for comfort and also bc how close/far from TheTM anniversary Date will massively change severity

[futurefind]

Mutuals Only / Open (Sasume, Traumaversary edition)

The breeze is fresh, summer sun warming the earth, nights bright with the wildlife. It fills her lungs with every breath, makes her skin buzz from the inside, and—

She hates this time of year.

Sasume lets her mind go fuzzy at the edges, muscles go mechanical, as she ignores the impending chorus of how she shouldn't be alive. The voices singing of the graveyard baked into her flesh. All the blood spilled just for her existence. How none of it was her own. The way she wishes it could've been hers, instead. Wants to try and pay for it, anyway, and pretend it's not rooted in selfishness. Hating herself all the more for it.

She cuts through one job after another, not even sure of how many she goes through or the new wounds she's gathered. She knows better than to worry about it, that she needs to drift away from noticing it, before she crumples under the weight of her own existence like a house of cards.

She can worry about anything else next month, when—

One blink. Two. Three. They don't disappear, either to places of actual import or the recesses of her mind.

"...Did you need something?"