infinite rebirth

DATE & TIME: FEB 20, 6:45AM LOCATION: LI HUA’S ROOM STATUS: CLOSED FOR @fire-birds

You’re not going to change your mind about falling in love with me, right?

It’s in times like this that he knows, understands, that love is a choice. That it demands sacrifice, patience, understanding; numerous qualities he wasn’t made to have an affinity for. And quite frankly, perhaps neither of them, for the two are too adamant on the fullness of a life of their own. This is my life instead of ours ( or is it simply because they have yet to learn the meaning of the latter yet? )

But it hurts to think, to willingly entangle oneself in a spiral. They’ve already done that one night. So Carter settles for laying here. Simply lingering. The soft hums of the fan in the background, sunlight dancing across bare skin; fingers trailing up and down her back. And though both pairs of eyes are closed, he knows she’s awake too. Knows that they both don’t want to wake up.

“If only we didn’t work for a circus of all things, huh?” he murmurs, eyes fluttering open ever so slightly now, just for his lips to brush against her shoulder blade. ( And yet they only pass glances under the eyes of security. Like strangers ). “Then we could stay here all day long.”

Waking comes slowly like the aching arms of sunbeams fighting across thin, cold night. But like sunlight, like morning—it comes, passing over in slow waves. And for a while, she lays there content in the darkness behind her eyelids, the warmth of Carter’s body beside hers, his breathing steady, consistent, unencumbered.

(Why think of the parting? Of how they would leave the room separately, minutes apart, would walk down different hallways, generating a distance that—while for show—would unsettle her stomach and hollow out her chest.)

So instead, so forcibly, so deliberately, she chooses to focus on the way he skates his fingers across the soft expanse of her back—lips pressed against her skin—only opening her eyes, hair a tumble around her to look at him, morning light, hazy glow, yawning through it all. “Do we really have to go? It can’t be that late.”

Li Hua laughs and it feels like a sun should, feels like something distant, feels like off from this side of the world, barely belonging here, but still warm, and it almost hurts to hear it, hurts to hear the weakness of Li Hua’s laugh while still remembered, expecting something greater. Hurts to give back a small forced smile, hurts to not look at her at all, but to the world beyond, as if through water, the world past water, a drowned body, floating lungs, eyes that sting. 

“Why not once? Why not this one time? Why can’t I choose what happens this time?” Her voice is weak when she speaks, maybe speaking to herself, maybe speaking to the sleeplessness, maybe speaking to so many long nights of grief held in the throat, like fists, like wishbones. “Then what’s the point of this?” Of herself.

She moves closer and Emme can almost feel it, like a diver finding the drowned body at the body of the sea, like hands that can’t reach, like pressure against bones, and Emme has to stop herself from wanting to back away at thought of any touch, from moving at all, not sure if skin or the guilt of thoughts hurt more. But she still looks at her, what feels like a first time, and she almost forgets to speak back, takes her a moment too long, “That’s not what I meant by that, I didn’t mean how they looked. I meant how they felt, I meant the hands that made them. It matters that it happened, pain’s different, it should be.”

Of course she doesn’t think Li Hua should feel guilty of anything, would rather it be only herself in flames, would rather burn up if it meant someone else with nothing to show of burning, done in a heartbeat. Her life has never been her own, that she’s always known, not her mind, not her life she lives, known before she knew these were visions at all. It’s an old voice to think she should give back what she takes, who would mourn?

So it’s genuine to skip over the question of pain, if her heart beats, she’ll survive, even if she can’t move now, doesn’t want to, and it’s genuine for her to ask, just as quiet, “Why? You’re here - you’re here and there’s nothing else needed.”

For once she wants to give—heart tipping over, pouring out hot liquid over skin—an unselfish thing. There is something about looking at a girl curled up and burned out in her bed—perhaps it is safe here to let the impossible flourish, to let this girl dream and rest.

“You can be whatever you want to be.” Li Hua says this softly, taking back her previous words. She can let Emme have what she wants, what she needs. Softer, yet—a dream she hasn’t even realized: “If you dream hard enough, maybe you could even fly away from here. We could go together even.”

(Uncomfortable at the thought of anyone wanting to be her, to put themselves in a skin that feels foreign and unfamiliar albeit god-like, golden, invincible, shining. Uncomfortable at the thought of being anyone other than herself, that Emme—fetal, bathed in a dull throb of pain—would rather remove her skin all together, dawn her own—yet who wouldn’t want to escape such pain, be birthed into a skin that rejects as at reforms?)

There is a slowness to the way that Emme resurfaces, eyes connecting with Li Hua’s, sighing, “I don’t know what the point of this is.” It is a question of antecedents, of what they are referring to—“Is it worse if there isn’t a point? That things just are?”

Cruelty, senselessness—is this what the world has taught her? Is this clipping a bird’s wings?

(Why talk of pain that’s already done? Why talk of things in the past? Is it context—the heart of all things—or an anchor, dragging across the seabed, trapped, lodged? An inescapable thing, dulled at best.)

Silence, thick in a dark room, light barely breaching, shades pulled tight. “Why?” Incredulously, “why?”

She knows Emme would cast herself into the mouth of the flames in a heartbeat, would pour herself out and over and let them tear her to shreds, to bear the brunt on her own and the thought boils over in Li Hua’s mouth—sears on her tongue.

“I’m here now, but what can I do now?” Something rises, stuck in the tightness of her throat. “I should’ve been there—me, the fire bird! Nothing would’ve happened to me, but I wasn’t there.” Hands clutch at stray sheets, quietness shed, frustration showing like a flash of lightening where she was her own lightening rod. “It hurts me too—seeing you like this—listening to you talk about how it doesn’t matter, that everything is okay, but it’s not. It does matter, this isn’t okay!”

Will those scars stay forever? Will Emme always look like she’s been peeled apart, skin pink and wrinkled?

Tired, something broken slowly turning. “I never wanted you to get hurt.” Tears, thin and hot slide down her cheek, falling to Emme’s arm, watering the burns that weep and bloom across her skin. “I promised I’d be there for you.” Tears come, steady, slow—unbidden, unrecognized—how long had it been since she had last cried? Another time, another bird with clipped wings.

“it wasn’t something you ever wanted to do, and yet, dear li hua - “

the words are curled in amusement, dipped in something cruel; like hands around throats, like an unwanted kiss, sharp like tongue running over lip. “i never took you for a liar, pretty bird. you didn’t want to - and you didn’t have to, no - you, out of us all, would have been safe, what with how your body loves you so - and yet, you still chose to kill. you, out of us all, had the least reason to, no?”

he smiles and it’s one she knows well, one he wears just for her, teeth nipping on pale skin of shoulderblades, eyes catching yellow in the artificial light. if there is guilt on his tongue for what was done, it is not his. if there is none at all, then he is laughing, laughing.

(if he catches her fire, then he’ll dance in it, waiting for hollow bones to become ashes. if her fingers pull away from him bloodstained, then he’ll bring it to his lips, a reminder of how things bleed. a blood moon thing, he is, and if he doesn’t look beautiful atop all the corpses he makes, bird feathers burning in between teeth and still grinning)

(what a game they play - this back-and-forth of bodies broken, of hunger gnawing. knives pressed to skin so delicately, just to see a wound close, just to see a scar made. fingers dig into flesh and if skin closes over them, let it be a reminder of a boy under skin, tying nooses with her veins just so she knows of the ache of a dead thing)

she pulls close instead of away, and is this not a submission to a monster, to a god?

(is there a difference?)

“and how have i been cruel, dearest li hua? have i not been nothing but ever-so-kind to you? i’m hurt, truly. and here i thought, what a special bond we have together.” eyes are too sharp, knives themselves that run over slopes of necks, lingering before flickering to dark eyes in the mirror. “and isn’t that what you like to hear? me, jealous of you - pretty,  perfect little bird.”

(is there a line in cruelty? his, bone and marrow. hers, flame and debris. are they damages encrypted in codes of catastrophe, levels of safe-not-safe?)

(to a survivor standing in the wreckage, i do not think any of it matters)

“do any of us? what a poor excuse. will the corpses you’ve made take confusion as an excuse for your creation and lay peacefully in their graves?” he’s leering now, pretty boys in the mirror with their reflection all twisted. “i would have hoped so, dear li hua. what a lovely joint show we would make.”

Did her body love itself? Did it revel in its power—the invincibility of youth, as if dipped in gold—otherworldly and untouchable? Did her body love her—something deeper than her skin, an intangible shadow that shifted in the light?

(It is too cruel to think of—for she did it love it back. Instead: tearing into it, shunning it, ignoring its life-giving magic, something for granted—a completely unrequited affair!)

It is unsurprising then when Soren’s words make her skin crawl, curdle, and sour. And as he touches her, it is as if he is dragging the pieces of her to the surface—pieces she had let fall away, that she had left unturned, purposefully, willfully. In this world he constructs—full of traps, switchbacks, and pitfalls—she is a monster or a liar and she begins to morph into something bright and glittering and moonlit. Destruction like him, wet mouthed and dripping tongue. In this world, she can only ever lose.

(It is a world she does not want to see born, an impossible one that slowly crystallizes, his thin hands wrapped around her ankles, dragging her down from her home in the sky—latched on, blood underneath nails.)

“We don’t have a special bond. There is no we.”

(Perhaps she is a liar, for some things simply cannot escape the orbit of another.)

He drags fingers against the slope of her shoulder blades, drags down spines like ladders—“There won’t ever be a time where we work together because I want to. No number of drinks or nights out changes what you are to me.”

Between them is something rotten sweet, like a carcass to the vultures. Drinks taken too fast, hands fisted in hair, and lips caught by teeth. Nevermind the history, the way bodies push and pull. Nevermind the haphazard way they handle their bodies—nothing sacred about it, knives at wrists or hands at hips. 

Her voice is hard in her throat and his curves around hers, a death dance, a mourning song, “Why try to drag me down to your level, Soren?” She tries not to focus on her bloodstained hands—the weight of the earth above a coffin, the screams of someone longing to live while they are slowly being stripped by fire. “Why can’t you leave me be?” He hovers and she sinks, almost skin-to-skin, intimate, twinned. She breathes heavy and it settles like fog, like bloated clouds, full to burst. “Or are you proud that I’m slipping—like you have anything to do with it.”

Carter’s first response is to protest. To argue that he was only absent a while, only confused for a while ( actually – even he doesn’t know; all the boy knows is that he’s never cradled other’s emotions with gentle hands ). But then she says it. Three words that he normally takes months to say at the very least.

And silence falls over them, because he knows he’s close to feeling the same ( knows he’s falling ), but he wishes it wasn’t like this. He wishes it wasn’t said now in the heat of a fight, and him still resorting, fumbling, with his thoughts in the background. He wishes he could return her words, make her smile with the softness to it, the pure honesty attached –

and now just isn’t that night. 

His hands move from her waist to her hands, holding her gaze. A ‘i’m not going anywhere’ to his touch and his eyes, even if he’s never been the best at conveying this with words. “I need you too. I’m falling in love with you too – but that’s fucking scary to me, and I’m telling you that now. It’s..” Carter cuts himself short, eyes downcast and brows bunching together; struggling with how strange vulnerability wears itself on him. “It’s terrifying knowing knowing that I can’t protect you, or everyone else, from everything. And I just have to accept that.” 

He means that it’s frightening to feel so deeply. Frightening to hold another’s heart in his hands, without letting anyone else - let alone himself - turn it to dust. Carter sighs as she does, and it’s clear by the heaviness of it that he knows there’s differences between them they cannot resolve. Her, tired of sacrificing herself. Him, considering it a habit even if it kills him.

Carter shakes his head solemnly, meeting her eyes now, voice wearing thin. “You don’t have to put me first. I’m saying that… just because I’m not here, doesn’t mean I don’t need you.” Just asking you to remember that I won’t leave. But he isn’t even sure if that’s enough to save this. 

But he does know where an apology is owed, so he continues, voice softer with the weight of his guilt, “I could’ve told you, though. You’re right.. and I’m sorry.” He watches his thumbs trace the tops of her hands, silently wonders how despite all their strength, the two still had so much to learn when it came to loving gracefully. “For that, and for always doing things alone. I just don’t like dragging people down with me, I guess. A habit.” 

Once, on a balmy summer’s day, ankle deep in the gentle tug of a river-bend, her Father explained why all the rocks there underfoot were smooth to the touch, almost slippery. It only takes the smallest of currents. Even if it takes years and years, Li Hua, the sharpest of rocks will be as smooth as an eggshell—patience, consistency, that’s the secret.

(How she had laughed then and picked up a stone, palming it. Sliding it across the smooth plane of her hand before tossing it back into the river, destined to become as flat and slick as an oil spill.)

But what is this tenderness—the exposed softness of his heart—but water rushing against the jagged edges of her frustration, the razor edge of her doubt? And so while the silence comes, a disconnect that she swallows before it rises back like bile in her throat, Li Hua softens, slowly, hesitantly. For she had already loved him (stupidly, frustratingly, half-blind, an angel in a nose-dive, headfirst with so little hesitation) and there he was, falling in love (stalled mid-air, held back by the inherent danger of vulnerability, of intimacy at its core), the dissonance is perhaps too painful to delve into—the missing space between future and past.

“It’s okay,” their hands clasped together, some sort of prayer, "You don’t need to be scared, nothing’s going to happen to me.” She laughs lightly, a joke that only tries to lighten the mood, “I’m immortal, you know?”

(They both must know this can’t be true, but sometimes words, dreams, unrealities must buffer them from the world that teeters around them.)

“Carter,” she starts, quieter, pausing, his fingers skating over the top of her hands, wearing patterns, chasing meanings, “You’re not going to change your mind about falling in love with me, right? Because I want to stand by your side, but I don’t want you to sacrifice yourself for me.” It is not anger that comes through, but something smaller, edged, a secret desperation for the fullness of a life all her own. “This is my life, too.”

He is trying—she sees it, the way the apology comes, brows furrowed, shoulders slumped, and so she tries too, pulling away from the heat the lies underneath her words, the sharpness under her tongue. Instead, moves to press her lips on his forehead, trying to ease away the tension in his brow—to the bruises that sit high on his cheek, like bloated lilacs, broken blood vessels—to the corner of his mouth, something sweet, something missed. “Habits are habits for a reason, but we’re trying. That’s what matters.”

And she smiles, a soft bloom that grows into a sliver of teeth behind a red mouth. “Is it selfish of me? I just wanted things to go back. Everything was so much easier then.” Perhaps it is easier to sink into this—to let her fingers curl around the shell of his ear, settling on collars, on buttons, falling into easy rhythms.

(But then is always in the past—isn’t it?)

DATE & TIME: February 15TH, 3:30AM LOCATION: Li Hua’s Sleeper TAG: @fire-birds

The pain doesn’t register across her face unless you look deeply enough, unless you see the eyes, unless you see the way she breathes, half a catch. Breathe like she doesn’t want to belong in this body, like she can’t look at hands without wondering if they are her own. Common thoughts in the aftermath of visions, of dreams, if this mind is her own, now to the aftermath of flames because it’s rarely her own body within the fire, maybe because it’s easier to wonder if it was herself at all that feels this pain, feels this raw, burned flesh. 

Know there’s pain because she doesn’t want to be alone, because it feels like a confirmation, because she thinks minds will fold in on themselves until there is nothing left, and Li Hua feels safe, curled into a spot on the bed, not holding onto blankets because hands reaching out hurt more than she wants to say. Burns mixed with new scars, both of them looked after too late.

“Do you think, if I dream of you enough my skin will think it’s like yours? It’ll do as yours does?” Words are quiet, barely there, given while she’s staring at Li Hua’s hands, “Think I could feel them so much I could trick myself into thinking I’m like you?” And her hands still won’t feel like her own, but we already know, that isn’t new. “I’m not worried how they’ll look, bruises don’t bother me,” think of a mother, think of a circus childhood. Pain, that is always the problem, the idea that few things heal, and she’s grown used to this thought, doesn’t think anything of it, but normalized doesn’t mean comfortable, or used to it along her skin not as a ghost.

She looks smaller than ever—curled up in Li Hua’s bed, thin sheets and tossed blankets. A fawn resting in a quiet glade, draped in early morning sunlight—nothing so beautiful, nothing so easy. Instead angry red burns that rise up like open mouths, skin that bubbles up, radiates heat like far-off stars, exploded and bursting, a bellyful of star-fire. A nebula destroyed, eaten.

So when Emme speaks, it’s as if she’s ever-so-far away. Perhaps it is Li Hua who is far away—the way she travels back through the flames, unable to find Emme even in her memories, to whisk her away from the hungry flames that devour. It is with weak laughter that she can respond to the girl before her, hair singed and eyes trained on her hands, blistered. “I—I’m not sure that’s how it works.”

(How she wants to touch her, to hold her hand, to cradle her—but won’t, knowing the pain that comes with tender flesh.)

“Weren’t you the one who told me that it doesn’t matter if there are bruises or marks? It still happened?” Small smiles, scooting closer to Emme, comfort without touching, presence with proximity.

But there is pain for her too—where had she been then? Before she know what it is—there exists guilt, desperation that comes in waves too late. Why hadn’t she been there to shield her? To bear the brunt of this?

(What would had happened if someone hadn’t been there at all? No body? Just ashes? Charred bone? A gaping wound in Li Hua’s chest, a hole in her history, her future? Things she would rather not think of, empty cages and empty rooms.)

Quietly, hands reaching out to graze the tips of her hair, “Does it hurt?” Pausing, lips parted as the words half-stutter out, “I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

Pattern or not, Li Hua does shine with a certain brightness that draws Laurel to her. This night, however, it is dimmed, folded in on itself and Laurel frowns, uncertain at the lack of luster she’s so used to. Confusion does not only turn to anger, sometimes it simply hardens into a shell that hold pinpricks of carefully crafted light, sharing only what is necessary, and taking in only what is wanted. 

She is surprised, a bit, by Li Hua’s own startle, but it manifests only in a curl of the lip, an eyebrow twitched sneer. You must learn to hide, little girl. Turn from the sun if it means you’ll glow brighter. She is pleased, however, by the way Li Hua straightens her spine, almost obedient. She looks out the window with a bare smile as she replies, brushes her hair away from her face. “Of course you didn’t expect it, dear, no one ever does. But surely you knew enough to anticipate some kind of… disruption? No?” Laurel settles in her seat as the bus starts to move, checks her fingernails against the moving neon lights. “Or are you just playing innocent,” she asks, turning her head slightly to eye Li Hua over long dark lashes. “Chaos can be beautiful, of course.”

“I was hoping—” What had she been hoping?

An easy night? A pause on the way her life slides out from under her? The result of a comic misstep, feet pulling out from under her, leaving her mid-air, falling and unaware of the ground below. A way to go back? A silly, impossible dream having tied herself to the grumblings of the rebellion in ways she could not help extricate.

(Hoping—let’s call it what it is, shall we? Denial, naiveté, childishness: a selective situational awareness, preferring the impossible, the unlikely, or the impractical.)

Li Hua stops, letting the rest of Laurel’s words filter though her systems, the rain trickling against the window beside her—the street lights casting a red halo against her skin, hazy through the bus window fog. Swallowing, voice harder, “I’m not playing innocent. You’re not surprised? You really thought something like this could happen?”

(Strange dreams, violent times. A beastly earth beneath the wings of this flighty, sun-drawn bird.)

Lenny watches idly as Li Hua slides into the bathtub. A small smile finds its way to her face at the remark, smoke billowing out from her nose while she laughs, softly, “I bet.” There’s something half-hearted to these motions; the two of them having seen more than their fair share of violence, worse, taking part in it. She had never been allowed to feel angry before. Her father, or had it been Metzger, never allowed it. It leaves a haunting in the bones. If she looks closely at Li Hua’s tired eyes, can she see the reflection of a man on fire? 

Her friend gestures to join her, knowing how her eyes are on the cuts. (And she knows, knows that even though Li Hua’s skin heals faster than any other, it doesn’t change the existence of those wounds in the first place.) 

She replies by leaning down and flicking water back at her. A pause. Finally, she slides the bathrobe from her shoulders, tossing it haphazardly to the side before she sinks in across from her. Lenore shivers. When Li Hua pauses to take a drag, so does she, exhale in unison. “I think we should talk about it,” Words are said quietly, almost on a whim. If she puts too much thought into them, then they might never be said.

“No judgment zone. Just… say whatever’s on our minds, you know?” They’ve known each other long enough to understand.

Leaning forward, Lenore pulls both knees to her chest, one bruised arm wrapped around them both. “Think of it as a tub talk.” There’s a quiet humor to her words, but the exhaustion in her eyes speaks volumes. She tilts her head a little, chin propped on top of her knees. 

She catches Lenny shiver as she sinks into the water across from her and Li Hua chuckles, “Too bad I can’t warm this water for you too well.” Jokes alongside the girl in front of her—it is easier to pretend they hadn’t been apart of it all, as if they had always been in this tub, half warm, smoke drifting up and out through the cracked door, shepherded away by the draft, the push-pull of the air through the room.

Looks at Lenny, the mismatched color of bruises forming on her skin—the way she pulls her knees to her chest, giving her something to hold. Another drag, thinks of the taste, the smell.

“Okay. We can talk—” Li Hua sits up, instead of lounging, letting her body stretch until it is nothing more. She pauses before she speaks, her mouth trying to keep up with her mind—piecing together thoughts and images into something coherent, not just flashes of light, scattered shots of the night that loop behind her eyes. Sighs, tapping ash over the edge of the tub, “They all kept talking about how we’re monsters—I’ve never seen it that way, you know?”

“But then I killed that man,” she looks away as she says this, as if it would lighten the load. “I didn’t even mean to, but then I kept thinking—were they right?”

fox with bird in between its teeth, broken wings dangling and soft stomach ever-so lightly pierced by canines, by a thing smirking. he is all too satisfied to see the girl with nothing less than a spark - and all too disappointed at the same time. he has enjoyed toying with flame far too much, almost misses the burn.

and still, still relishes in how skin under his fingers now burns cold instead of red-hot.

“dear li hua, is that not almost worse? you set fire to those bottles and merely watched as they caught on flame. doing nothing. a shame, pretty bird. at least with bottles thrown, there is an aim, a reason - the sin of omission is perhaps the worst one of all.”

he lets the words echo in between them. lets them settle on skin like a rain that did not come, like sparks or embers that eventually caught flesh; leaving a stench in the bar. it is a thing not easily forgotten, and boy almost licks his lips.

fingers sweep collarbones, trace lines at the backs of necks - a reminder of skin still unmarred, a reminder of what boys with knives in hands and in mouths could do to it. fingers settle on shoulders in a light clasp and it is almost possessive, almost protective.

like predator to its prey. there has always been a strange intimacy to it; the chase before the struggle before the devouring. it is a love of its own right, how a predator will lay its claim onto the death inflicted. it is almost romantic.

this is no different; bird between teeth and fox-boys slowly, slowly hovering, pressing jaws down onto feather like fingers onto junctures of shoulder and neck. there is an admiration for how red fingertip-imprints are embedded into skin before they disappear, touch still echoing.

“dear li hua, do you truly think me so cruel? what reason do i have to mock you when you’ve put on such a lovely show for everyone?” he smiles, sweet. he does not say which one. “can i not congratulate you on a job well done? really, i’m almost envious.”

grins have too much point in teeth, and eyes are dipped amber - men more foolish would blame it on the bright lights of the vanity, but they both know better. “did you not?” he breathes, almost teasing. “perhaps not. but you did not despise it either, no?”

“I’m not you. I don’t like killing people, I don’t enjoy that. I know that it gets you going, but this wasn’t something I ever wanted to do.”

Danger is a secondary stimulus to those who don’t know death, who live in the light, who feel their bodies stitch back together when their skin is opened up like a gift. Zipped tight, neat little tucks of the skin that leave no ugly seams—save one messy job, save one reminder of mortality, delivered with a steady hand and tongue at teeth, glittering, gleaming eyes.

(Girls should be more careful with boys who wear matching blood-stained shirts and lips. Boys should be more careful around a girl like fire.)

She turns her face to look over her shoulder at him, face to face, close enough to feel his breathing, subtle—unburdened. A boy made of white light, existing with enough force so she feels him bearing down into her skin before breaking the surface, feels a quiet creak in her bones.

This time, she lets him do so.

This time, she brings herself closer—what does she have to prove?

This time, she sees herself in his teeth, in the halo-light of the vanity behind them. Her chest rises and falls, her heart a steady rhythm knowing the type of animal before her. What were they but an unending cycle? An image of birth, death, and rebirth. A boy who would gut her, toy with her until she died in his arms, a warm, hot treat. A girl who would rise from his arms, steely gaze up at his shadowed face, who would walk away barely scathed. No love, only cycles, only rhythms of movement. Another day, another night. This is how things were.

“I do think you’re cruel and I don’t need your compliments.” Eyes drill down into his, an unflinching gaze, the front of strength, a façade you can feel your way through. “You—jealous of me?” She laughs, it echoes around her mouth, before skittering out between her teeth. “Of course you’d be.”

(She is only as cruel as she must be. Only as desperate as someone pretending they aren’t cornered and hurt already.)

“Since you’re so curious—I didn’t hate it, but only because I didn’t know what was happening. You want to make me out for a monster—go ahead—it’s not like I didn’t see you that night.”

She had seen him. A spray of blood—something feral about him, something she only knew the outline of.

“It’s.. as literal as it gets, yeah,” Carter sighs, brows knitting together as he watches her piece the parts together. And there’s a naive part of him that hopes that she’ll understand – that they can keep a safe distance, close enough, but not enough to warrant leering eyes. There’s a ruthless part of him that believes that if being away from Li Hua would save lives, then so be it. So it shall be.

But then she makes it personal, and he detests the flare of anger unravelling within him for it. Hates how it’s directed at her currently. 

He lets Li Hua hold him. He lets himself pull her closer, arms habitually wrapping around her waist. But he searches for her gaze with a desperation to prove a point, stressing through gritted teeth and only barely reigning in his vexation, “Getting out of here is important to me. Not sacrificing countless names - lives - is important to me.”

That’s what the rebellion is about, a collective thing; a saviour ( & it’s a blessing for a hellhound so used to fighting alone. For all who have been fighting alone. Doesn’t she see? )

“But so are you. You’ve got to remember that,” Carter adds, but there’s a slight tremor to it too. A fear of this being the end of them, so sudden, so soon. After all, who would want a boy who couldn’t put his lover first? Who would want a boy who can’t avoid a bloody revolution?

Now, he would argue that this isn’t him. That she would be her number one, if not for the circumstances around them. That out of anyone, he knows what loyalty means. But Carter will never know, for this is the hand they were dealt and they’ve never had the luxury to ask for otherwise. “I’m not saying we can’t be together at all. I’m just saying…”

He doesn’t finish. Be together less; stand with each other nearly never, is hard to form on his mind let alone his lips. Painful to say, for it signals the breaking of promises ( I don’t know what’s going to happen, tonight or tomorrow… but I’ll be with you, all the way )

So he settles for this. He settles for a single sentiment, voice soft yet somehow strong in its delivery, still refusing to break his gaze: “And what’s the good in a blood bath at our feet, because we chose to put each other first?” 

“I tried to remember that—” her voice is tight and high and hurt before trailing off, the tail of a comet stretching across the sky. “What was I supposed to think? I loved you, but you weren’t there and I needed you, even now I—”

The words are said too quick, admitted only between thoughts, shuttled between defenses and admissions. A girl’s first love is but an early spring bud—unprepared, a sweet treat, miraculous in its tenacity, its fragile heart.

(Obliquely, she is remembering how she had leaned to him in the dark of the train’s hallway at the start of it all—felt the layers begin to peel back—“If it’s someone I care about enough, I’ll try”—so where did that leave her?)

(Directly, she is remembering his absence, her empty room, the way they move around each other in practice, everything she had wanted to say to him, the words like stones that stayed lodged in her throat so she is stuck coughing them up now. Her hands tremble, the spotlight remains cold, stripping her armor until it comes back thin, flaky, punctured.)

“Do you think it’s easy for me to need you when you don’t need me?” How it hurts the way they look at each other as she says this. How it stings to offer up her heart’s secret depths. Too close, as if grasping at the sun. Through this, Carter holds her, his arms tucked under the delicate space of her ribs, wrapping around her waist in a movement that falls into a familiar cadence. But despite the way her body relaxes into him (coalescing stars, brighter for the collision), there is something painful about this embrace—nothing like the last, now only boundaries, barbed wire in skin, shrapnel fragments from their mouths.

Li Hua stands on the edge, barely reeling herself in—voice wearing thin, shaking and straining. But doesn’t she know? She is already waist-deep in murky water, already anchored to something within him that may prove unstable ground. She sighs, pressing her body back from his, hands to his chest, a small fire burns indignant, ashamed inside her, “What are you saying then? Because you’re already asking me to put you first, to do things the way you want them.”

Aren’t you sorry?

Weren’t we supposed to be better than this?

She is tired of sacrificing herself, of molding herself anew, shaping, bending, breaking for love, for acceptance, for something that bends nebulously as it arcs across the sky, a god in shadows, a boy with bruised knuckles.

“All I wanted was to know what was going on—you could’ve told me. No one would’ve died.” Pauses before looking away for a moment, before returning to his gaze, “Why do you always think you need to do it alone? It’s not just because of the rebellion, Carter—that’s you. I’m not that different, but I’m trying.”