#predulcis

✂ a vivid memory

The curve of his spine colours everything grey and he can feel the muscles strapping across it stretching painfully, not engineered for the sort of strain he’s putting on them.  His chest is heaving, lungs constricted by his breastbone—the branch beneath him is yellow-purple, when he looks up the spin of colours doesn’t match what they should be and it makes everything worse.  He can’t breathe and there is a bruise purpling on his back that is slate in his head and he wants to claw his arms open.

The nasty little echo of his father in his head is saying                                                                                      worthless                                                                                      worthless                                                                                      worthless

—he thinks he’s going to vomit, his throat is all yellow-grey and his stomach is a nauseous swirl of green and purple and granite and black.

His hands scrape over the bark of the tree, sun and silver, as it seems to shake about him, and it’s then he realizes he’s stopped breathing and is getting light-headed, and he’s the one who’s shaking, like a leaf.  None of his brain is turned onto humour at the moment, but he tries to laugh at that anyway, but he can’t breathe.

Grantaire is twelve and this is not the first time this has happened to him, but it is the first time it has happened to him this high up.  He is sitting in a tree, because his father can’t follow him there.  He is twelve and he is                                                                 worthless                                                                worthless                                                                worthless

and he knows it and he’s sorry but he feels like he’s dying, clinging to the trunk of the tree and praying he won’t fall out, or hoping he will, he’s not sure, his hands are quivering and the ground seems far away.

meme.status: accepting.

                         there’s a joke in here somewhere, it lingers in the consonants of her words,  w a i t i n g,   in the veiled shadows to jump out at him, and laugh :  it’s a well-worn joke about someone trying to instil hope into a cynic. and he meets it with a laugh of his own, DEFENCE by OFFENCE, a laugh that holds disbelief and pain above anything resembling true amusement. the tune is low and rough,  b r o k e n  by its lace of bitterness, and made only that much more heartbreaking by how rich and warm it may have once been, if only such song had been injected with optimism !

                ┇BLOOD OF THE BOHEMIAN. ┇           

                            cosette does not even flinch at the sight of                             blood,     but the gash whence the crimson                             liquid pours is worrying.

          " Have you ever left a place and come back to it,              and then been forced to realize it's no longer yours to go back  to? "

snuggles.