( alisha boe. cis woman. she/her ). ⸻ rue carrow, a twenty - seven year old university library assistant, still wears last summer like a scar. they move through the heat as the genius burnout, each step a reminder of the role they've never quite outrun. carried like souvenirs from something they won't talk about, you'll recognize them by playlists full of elegies disguised as indie tracks — headphones always on but never loud enough to drown out the silence, coffee cups gone cold on cluttered desks — half-sipped and forgotten, lined up like gravestones to mornings that never fully started, and empty pill bottles rolled under the bed, rattling like dry bones when kicked. they've always been strategic and detached, depending on who's telling the story. the sand shifts, the shoreline whispers, and everyone pretends not to notice what's changed. but secrets rot faster in the sun & someone out there still remembers exactly what they did.
the before.
she was incandescent once — not in the garish way of things begging to be seen, but like candlelight at the back of an old church: steady, aching, inevitable. her eyes wore that kind of burn — the slow and sacred unraveling of a girl too brilliant to last. twenty - seven now, but something in her spine still rings nineteen, like a bell struck too hard and left to echo. she moved through lethe like a storm disguised as silence. people mistook her quiet for calm, her precision for peace. they didn’t see how her genius smoked at the edges, how every answer she gave cost her something she could never get back. she was strategy sharpened to a knife's edge, haunted by a mind that never turned off, only flickered between brilliance and collapse. gravestones of half - sipped caffeine lined her desk, each one a quiet monument to a version of her that tried. and when the silence came — the real kind, not just the pause between library pages or lecture halls, but the thick, buzzing quiet that follows — she didn’t run. she faded. people called her distant. some called her calculated. no one ever called her wrong. she made sure of that. but beneath the curated detachment, the beach was eroding. the sand shifted. the shoreline whispered. and she — she pretended not to hear it. pretended not to see the way people looked at her sideways, like a riddle they were afraid to solve. a ghost in borrowed skin.
the after.
walks through the world like a ghost scholar in a crumbling cathedral — a place once radiant with light and learning, now shadowed by stained glass fractured and bleeding dusk. the university is behind her, but its walls still echo in her bones, an architecture of thought and silence she can never quite escape. she is the relic now — darkened, worn, and impossible to dust off. that night — is a manuscript she rewrites in her mind, endlessly, each rehearsal an elegy and a confession braided tight with despair. she remembers the sharp scent of spilled wine, the cruel geometry of bodies tangled in reckless euphoria, the way the air snapped taut like a drawn bowstring, how gravity shifted, tipping toward oblivion. the moment when brilliance dissolved into panic. when the carefully balanced game crumbled beneath the weight of one too many secrets, one too many silences. caffeine pulses like bitter blood through her veins, small blue pills hush the static in her skull, but nothing silences the relentless replay — the murmuring echo of the moment she chose silence over salvation. drifts through days like a shadow tethered to an ancient text — beautiful and terrible, brilliant and hollow, a scholar of her own undoing.
occupation.
- quiet. order. isolation masked as helpfulness. surrounded by knowledge she used to devour.
- writes cryptic, brilliant notes in returned books, then forgets she did it.
no one recognizes her anymore — or if they do, they pretend not to. her name has faded from whispered reverence to polite indifference.
she shelves the same titles she once cited. scans student IDs. stamps return dates. wipes dust from the spines of ideas she no longer feels connected to.
- the library is still a refuge, but now she lurks instead of leads. the silence, once full of possibility, now feels like a muffled scream. she avoids eye contact with old professors and classmates who don’t know what to say — or worse, do.
- sometimes, when no one’s looking, she solves equations in the margins of checkout receipts or re-categorizes a philosophy section for fun. but she never finishes. she never shows anyone.
- finds her own old thesis in the archives, once requested by students. it hasn’t been touched in months. dust has settled over her own genius, just like on her.
a hand - crafted playlist. used to be someone worth knowing : grief - laced brilliance.
motion sickness – phoebe bridgers.
cigarette daydreams – cage the elephant.
liability – lorde.
numb – men i trust.
ribs – lorde.
not strong enough – boygenius.
bags – clairo.
st. augustine at night – dawes.
your best american girl – mitski.
junk of the heart – the kooks.
scott street – phoebe bridgers.
items found in her bag.
- a crumpled funeral program.
- a xanax in an altoids tin.
- an unread letter addressed to teddy.
- ink-stained index cards with half-solved theorems.
- a receipt with “you okay?” scrawled in the margins.
- a lighter with no fluid.
- a playlist scribbled on the back of an old syllabus.
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WHEN DID IT BECOME LIKE THIS? a question that echoes in juliette's mind as her friend comes into view. the harder juliette tried to focus on rue in the haze of the early morning, the more her friend blurred. before last summer, their friendship had been clear, a surety jules had felt worm its way in and dangerously begun to rely on. but now, it seemed an impossible distance lay between them, a winding path strewn with all that jules does not have the courage to speak, rendered by her own actions. when did it become like this? perhaps when juliette had made mistake after mistake, that summer.
she wants to touch her friend's cheek, take her gently by the shoulder and ask, what can i do? but jules can still feel the blood on her hands, the hilt of the dagger she had brandished, and it makes her hesitate — what right did she have, to ask that kind of question? her fingers twitch, lowers her gaze to the grass.
“ no, you're right, ” jules says instead, softly, delicately. like this will somehow preserve something that has already fractured. the best juliette can do is step closer to rue, look at her, search her face. for what , she wasn't sure — their friendship? forgiveness? a solution, for how to fix this? “ did you stay at the five too? ”
she stared at juliette for a long time, or maybe it only felt long because her chest wouldn’t stop tightening. the words landed — no, you’re right — soft, careful, like she was trying not to startle a wounded animal. rue almost laughed. as if there was anything left between them delicate enough to break. it had already shattered — rue was just walking barefoot through the shards, trying not to bleed.
she wanted to say something cruel, something final, something that would cauterize this ache in her throat. but all she managed was silence, because what could she say that wasn’t soaked in indifference? that she remembered last summer like a phantom limb, still writhing, still hurting? that every time she looked at juliette, she saw the ghost of what they’d been — and it was unbearable?
her jaw worked, uselessly. rue’s gaze flicked down, catching juliette's twitching hands, and for a heartbeat something inside her softened, old muscle memory urging her forward. she almost reached out. almost. but then the thought passed — if she touches me, i’ll disinegrate. if i touch her, i’ll forgive her. and i don’t know which would ruin me more.
the question about the five barely registered. it was so ordinary, it stung. a cruel reminder of how far they’d fallen. rue forced herself to look at her, though it felt like staring into the sun — too much, too blinding.
“ i don’t know why you keep trying, ” she said finally, voice low, hoarse with something she refused to name. “ but, no. ”
✶ open to. 〳 unlimited.
✶ time. 〳 approx. 6:45 a.m.
✶ place. 〳 [ext.] the five
THE SUN CRAWLS OUT OF ITS SLUMBER and rests its lazy gaze on juliette, who stares back into its embrace with equal tiredness. she had slept at the five, thinking she would get less sleep if she slept at her grandmother's, who would only ask questions that prodded all the wrong places. but the choice was meaningless. she had woken up over an hour ago, memories of the weekend still heavy enough to drag her out of any useful sleep. the photograph that had slipped into her path. coming back to the five to see what was scrawled onto the slats of the boathouse. and then: teddy's face before her, silent, eyes accusatory. every time she tried to go back to sleep, the sequence looped itself. the fifth time she saw his gaze, boring into her as if digging for the truth, she tossed her sheets aside, splashed her face with cold water, and headed outside. now, she turns away from the coast to face the house. in a moment of sudden sobriety, or perhaps in a moment inebriated by her insomnia, she had brought out a sponge and a bucket to scrub away the red that still stained the five, like getting rid of it could rid the accusation ( the truth ) . as she steps away from the water and walks back towards the house, she spots a figure approaching. “ what are you doing up so early ? ” she asks, as if dark circles don't lay under her eyes as evidence of anything. “ i didn't think anyone else was awake. ”
moved through the morning like a revenant, her silhouette wavering in the half - light — unfinished as a half - remembered dream. the dawn, all gaudy with its borrowed hues, struck her not with warmth but with a kind of cruelty — it unveiled her. every rotted ardor carved beneath eyes, every scar not quite fading under that sickly gilding. she wasn't illuminated by it so much as exposed, and exposure had always felt like violence.
she lingered at the edge of juliette’s gaze, spectral, dazed, the sharpness of beauty dulled by exhaustion. once, she might've come toward her friend with laughter. now she came hollowed out, every step carrying the tremor of too many nights gutted by memory, by substances, by truths too poisonous to hold.
“ awake, ” she echoed, almost to herself. “ if that’s what you wanna call it. ” she tilted her head, shadows pooling under cheekbones, and added — soft, sardonic, devastatingly weary. “ didn’t think anyone was sleeping anymore. ”
if rei was a different man , not exactly greater , just . . . different , reaching out and fixing what was blatantly glaring back at him would come easy . to which a muffled , much more contemptuous voice , calls upon all the occasions rue had stumbled onto his door step , tears streaking her face and hands as empty as her heart appeared to be . numerous of times spent in brief enclosure as emotions exchanged to substances . and in the grand scheme . . . rei liked to pretend that this was his way of helping her out . because , what else was there ? his fingers , too calloused to soothe . his mouth too tangled to comfort . but this . . . this was valuable enough to reach a set target . so , in all good faith , rei gave her yet another once over - maybe more careful this time . “ y'good for the night ? ” raspy and strange to even his own ears . frankly , he couldn't pin the moment he had spoken outloud last .
rue didn’t answer at first. didn’t blink, just stared at the cracked tile between her feet like it might offer her an escape route. the question echoed — faint, rasped, too human. she could’ve said yes. could’ve lied. she’d done worse with less. but instead, she breathed in through her nose, slow and sharp, like the air itself offended her. ‘ you good for the night? ’ she repeated, her voice low and thin. ‘ what the fuck does that even mean, rei. ’ there wasn’t anger. anger had long since burned out, curled into ash inside her ribs. what was left was quieter. meaner. like frostbite setting in on something already broken. she finally looked at him, eyes voided — tired, sunken, glazed in the way that said i haven’t slept and i don’t care.
her lip twitched. not a smile but something that might’ve been pity if she had any left to give — for herself, or for him. so she looked away. like she couldn’t stand the sight of either of them anymore. like maybe it hurt too much to look at someone who only ever watched her fall. but she didn’t leave. just stood there, radiating debility like heat off asphalt, a woman who’d already died a hundred quiet deaths and didn’t see the point in mourning them anymore.
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tommy finds rue alone, backlit by the harsh glint of the party inside, but untouched by any of its warmth, as if rejecting the notion that life will always continue to spin. he offers a slow smile in greeting, like he's trying not to disturb something, tinges of sadness buried in the corners of his lips.
“whaaaaaat,” he mimics lowly, playful enough in an attempt to ease the tension folded into the space around her. “it's nice to see you tommy, oh it's nice to see you too rue.” he ambles over, feet light and easy, as if it wasn't the third time he'd circled the place.
he wishes he could sculpt wings from the waves so she could fly somewhere far where the light returns to her eyes, where all her favourite books are hungry for their pages to be turned by her. instead, all he can really do is remain by her side. it doesn't really feel like it's enough. “how long have you been here? i've been waiting for you.”
rue stands just beyond the doorway like an afterthought, backlit by the vulgar, gold-stained glow of the party — its chandelier flickers like a dying star, casting shadows that move too fast to trust. the laughter inside is sharp, shrill, a chorus of people pretending they’re not circling the same drain. she doesn’t belong in there — never did — but tonight she doesn’t even want to try. she’s lit another cigarette she won’t finish. doesn’t look at him right away. just exhales smoke like it’s punctuation. ‘ didn’t have to come out here. ’ another drag. another pause.
and she shrugs then. could’ve been minutes. could’ve been hours. ‘ long enough to forget why i came. ’ a beat. a bitter half-smile. she turns her head, just slightly, and there’s a flicker of something — recognition or regret or maybe just the comedown. ‘ don't wait around next time. ’ soft. firm. final.
the silence settles back between them, thick and familiar. rue stubs the cigarette out against the stone and lets her hand drop to her side. she’s unraveling slow and quiet, like an old record bleeding through a wall. and still — tired and strung out — she says, almost gently : ‘ good to see you, tommy. ’ because some things still matter, even if they don’t fix anything.
“ just saying hi. ” there wasn't much to their voice — a flat tone, something that could easily be mistaken for something lifeless, had it not been rue at the receiving end. if you looked close enough, a microscopic-level zoom, you could see flecks — a kaleidoscope of the internal wildfire that is rue and misja. longing, regret, enablement, even grief. especially grief. her hands flex at her sides, empty, not a glass to cling on for comfort as it magnetically seeks out the warmth of a best friend. the movements mindless, ingrained in their psyche from days past. the silence isn't so comfortable anymore. instead, it feels more akin to a void.
she tries to fill it, lips parting, only air coming out at first, as if their tongue was truly clipped, just as rue's wings were. she couldn't fight it any longer, the magnetism, fingertips vibrating with the urge to just ground herself in reality — make sure her best friend is there, truly. instinct has misja pinching the strap, the fallen satin between the pads of her index and thumb as she draws it up to rest upon her shoulder yet again, “ you didn't need to come tonight, y'know. i could've just met you at the dock — played hooky. we're getting too old for this shit. the next time someone tells me about their promotion, or whatever, i'm gonna have an aneurism. ”
rue felt the weight of her own body like an afterthought, as if her limbs were borrowed. strings cut. her jaw slack, eyes sticky-slow. a breath. a heartbeat. the electric hum of something. misja. it was too quiet. there used to be comfort in the silence between them. that ache-less kind of closeness. now it just buzzed like feedback in rue’s ears — loud, empty, a pressure building behind her teeth. she parted her lips again, but nothing came. her mouth dry. the shape of words on her tongue, but her head too far behind, caught in static and loops and smoke. rue’s eyes traced the lines of them, blurred at the edges, but still : familiar. painfully. her fingers itched. then — laughter. maybe a cough. maybe both. ‘ old, ’ she repeated, voice low, lazy, cleaved with some kind of warped affection. ‘ speak for yourself. ’ she blinked slow, let her gaze fall to misja’s hand — her strap slipping. and misja lifted it, gently, like it mattered. like rue mattered. ‘ didn’t come for the party, ’ she murmured. ‘ didn't even remember whose fucking party it was. ’ a pause. the silence flooding back in, clinging to her like humidity. ‘ i came because, ’ her mouth opened. she let the rest rot there. truth stuck somewhere between brain and tongue. instead, she let her eyes do the speaking. or maybe just the drowning. her mouth twitched. something soft bloomed behind her ribs, ugly and lovely all at once. ‘ you always hated when people had plans, ’ she said, and she meant it kindly, but her voice came out quiet, raw. ‘ made you feel like you were falling behind. ’ she let her head lull back, eyes fluttering half-shut. she didn’t wait for an answer. knew misja wouldn’t give her one. never did when rue was like this — floaty and frayed and clinging to the world by her teeth. and she smiled at her best friend then — this strange, languid, secret smile. the kind of smile that meant : i love you, i just don’t know how to survive it. how to survive this.
in hindsight, she should've known better. what good will it do her to come out here to stand like some guard dog? even that's a generous comparison, she thinks, when she doesn't know what exactly she's protecting — the party in full swing inside against the great unknowns outside, or the untainted night air against the farce of a party meant to bury away a rotten summer. the thing is, alena's never been really good at leaving things alone. what, rue had said — devoid of anything real. he wrinkles his nose as he pulls to a stop next to her. he reaches over.
deft fingers pluck the cigarette right out of rue's hand. for a moment, she wonders if letting it fall to the ground and then stamping it out in provocation would pull something realer out of rue. alena lets it burn instead. her lips curl as she watches the smoke. "no need to fuck up your lungs if the goal's to get yourself killed," she says in lieu of a greeting, head turned halfway. it's a morbid joke, maybe, but : "there are faster ways to get that done around here."
rue doesn’t look at them, tone slipping out flat, indifferent, too tired to bother dressing itself in anything close to warmth. ‘ impressive, ’ she says, deadpan, like it costs her to acknowledge alena at all. ‘ you’ve cracked the code. slow suicide’s inefficient. ’ she watches the cigarette burn between alena’s fingers like it’s not hers anymore — like it never was. smoke drifts between them, thin and pointless. she lets the silence stretch just long enough to be uncomfortable. ‘ didn't ask for company. ’ blunt. apathetic. a pause, deliberate. then, dry enough to wither. ‘ but keep it. more smoke than skin anyway. ’ she finally glances over, eyes flat and glassy, pupils too wide, too black. her expression is unreadable. but maybe there’s nothing left to read.
it's a picture rei has seen before , has been before . something that should envoke some kind of reaction that most definitely should be unalike indifference . though , that may not be the correct term , either . years on years of practice woven around the man like a shell separating him from the outisde world and handing him a way out - apathy towards the users , distance between them and him . and in the back of his mind , there was also the tiniest voice reminding him just how similar rue's state of mind was to his own , so blatantly carved out from the inside . so , despite all that , rei stayed . both his hands settle in the abyss of the pockets of his pants , his own hazed eyes raking over her briefly . he sees the strap falling , he sees the smear on her cheek . telltale signs that she'd soon demand more and ultimately that felt like a divine calling . . . beckoning him to come closer . teeth find the already tender flesh at his lower lip , instantly gnawing the sore spot . he sees the endless pit in her eyes , he hears the blur in her voice . and , yet . . . a new cigarette emerges from behind his ear and towards rue . silent , understanding , unnervingly calm in it's given nature .
she takes the cigarette like an afterthought, like the universe handing her yet another inevitable thing to ruin. fingers brush his only briefly — an accidental, spectral thing — and curl around the offering as though it were bone, not paper. not a mercy. the motion is languid, dreamlike, the kind of slow that doesn’t come from grace but from a body too used to drowning. smoke spirals from her lips seconds later, lazy, indifferent, trailing upward like a prayer that neither of them believes in. the ember flares between her knuckles — a dim pulse, something alive in hands that feel otherwise dead. her gaze, when it finds him, isn’t sharp. it isn’t anything. just glass and shadow. but she doesn’t move. doesn’t tell him to go. she simply stands there, fragile in that wrecked sort of way people mistake for strength, letting the world slip further from her grasp — neither matter enough to fix. and when her eyes catch his, truly catch, for the briefest flicker of a heartbeat — something raw lives there. something cracked and sorrowful and utterly, devastatingly human. she looks away fast, like it cost her. the cigarette burns low in her hand, smoke curling between them in thin threads. and rue says nothing else. because if she opens her mouth again, she might say stay. and she doesn’t trust herself not to mean it.
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from the moment she sets foot into lethe club, hana knows. it's impossible not to notice that glimmering light tucked at the other's core: a spark that rue evidently wants to burrow in the shadows & one that once urged hana to fan it into a flame. something hangs between them now— not just the knowledge of last summer, but something new. the assumption that something has shifted, the clues that could equate to the what, the prior knowledge that should make that hypothesis invalid…
she had hardly noticed her feet moving until she was hovering pointlessly behind the other. it's nice that rue notices her presence too, she supposes, so that there's no room for her train of thought.
in a move that is entirely too comfortable for months of silence, she corrects the strap of rue's dress. “that's better.” a surface level smile crosses perfectly lined lips. it's like the final brushstroke of a perfect painting.
“you're late, you know.” her head tilts, curious. a moment of eye contact that begs her to read between the lines. (is it because of me? is it because of him?)
there’s something different now. she senses it, like a shift in the air before a storm breaks, like the way last summer’s memories stick to her skin, still bleeding into everything — but this isn’t just memory. it’s sharper. meaner. a reckoning neither of them have the language to name.
she doesn’t turn. she lets hana follow — lets her orbit, the way she always does, like her gravity is some cruel joke the universe keeps repeating. she doesn’t know what she’s waiting for. a confrontation, maybe. a knife between the ribs. or worse — kindness.
she feels the fingers before she registers the hand. hana’s touch : featherlight, obscene in its intimacy. straightening her dress strap, like they haven’t spent months in silence. like nothing’s changed. like everything hasn’t.
she breathes, shallow, disinterested. ‘ you always did care about appearances. ’ flat. detached. not quite cruel. worse, maybe.
she turns then, slow and deliberate, her gaze a dead thing when it meets hana’s. whatever light hana thinks she sees, rue has buried it too deep. ‘ doesn't really matter, does it? ’
it didn’t happen like a decision. it wasn’t deliberate, not an act of rebellion or poetry. it happened like decay — slow, silent, inevitable. like fruit bruising in the bowl. like teeth loosening in the jaw. one minute she was sitting in her apartment, surrounded by books she could no longer read, thoughts she could no longer silence, grief she could no longer carry — and the next, she was holding something small and wicked in her palm, something chalky and cruel. a mercy, maybe. or an execution.
she didn’t ask what it was. of course not. she didn’t beg for answers — it drowned in her.
the boy — if he was even real — said nothing. just looked at her like he knew. like he’d seen girls like her before : too brilliant to be loved properly, too hollow to be saved. she wanted to hit him. or kiss him. or disappear entirely. instead, she swallowed it dry, throat aching around the edges, and curled into herself like a burnt page.
at first, there was no change. just the usual screaming in her skull, the mathematical precision of madness tightening its grip, wrapping her mind in fractals and fever. her heartbeat a metronome of ruin. her limbs a catalogue of old bruises, old sins, old wants.
but then — it bloomed.
not gently. not sweetly. it didn’t lull her. it consumed her. like a fire dressed in silk. like molasses poured into her bloodstream. thoughts stuttered, then softened. colors smeared. grief melted into a kind of syrupy hallucination, gilded and vague. her mind — so sharp, so violent, always gnawing at itself — grew dumb and beautiful. the silence was obscene.
she lay down on the cold floor, cheek pressed to tile like she was praying to something beneath it. a god of rot. of forgetting. her eyes rolled up toward the ceiling and her mouth opened, slack and reverent. she started laughing — high and wet and meaningless — because her body was no longer hers. it was a suggestion. a rumor.
the world tilted sideways. her hands became metaphors. her skin sang. her bones softened into dust. somewhere, distantly, a version of herself was sobbing — but not this one. this one was incandescent. floating. dissolving into velvet shadow.
she was unmaking herself. gloriously.
her thoughts dripped down the walls like candlewax. her memories shattered into a flicker. the grief was still there, but it had become decadent, indulgent, almost erotic. she wanted to lick it off her fingertips. she wanted to sink her teeth into it. she wanted to die, a little, over and over again, in a lullaby of slow poison.
and in that sacred, syrup - soaked undoing, she realized :
this was only the beginning.
the nostalgia of living in your hometown as an adult can really make you sick. your childhood doesn’t exist anymore yet you can see it all around you all the time
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open to : four replies.
location : lethe club, 10 p.m.
she shows up late. always does. not fashionably, not even carelessly — just wrong, like a glitch in the night, like something lethe tried to spit out but couldn’t quite manage. her heels are mismatched. she lost one of the original pair days ago and never cared enough to replace it. there's a smear of lipstick on her cheek like she forgot where her mouth was, and her pupils are blown wide, black holes swallowing what little light’s left in her. she's wearing a white slip — something thin and askew and wrinkled from where she slept in it on someone else’s floor. it clings like humidity, like a fever, like guilt that never dried out. one strap’s slipping off her shoulder and she doesn’t bother to fix it. her ribs show.
she knows she doesn’t belong here — but the night is predatory, and it pulls her in anyway — slow and sweet like poison disguised as honey, like the way black mold grows behind wallpaper.
inside, the party swells. champagne towers glint like knives. someone laughs too loud. the music cleaves like a migraine. she doesn’t go in. not yet. she hovers on the threshold, shoulders bare, glitter clinging to her skin like fallout. a cigarette dangles between two fingers, already half ash. her lighter’s almost out of fluid, but she keeps clicking it anyway. eventually it catches. she inhales — like she’s trying to burn something out of herself. exhales like maybe it worked. but there’s a bitter punch — of caffeine. of nicotine. of something else she can’t remember taking. her hands twitch, her jaw locks, and her heart stutters in that way it sometimes does, like it’s trying to warn her. she ignores it.
footsteps approach — slow, cautious, like whoever it is already knows better. she doesn’t turn. doesn’t acknowledge them. just stares into the dark like there might be something in it worth finding.
‘ what. ’ there's no inflection — just flat. hollow. like a snapped wire, without urgency. the cigarette burns to the filter.
