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charliexclayton · 2 months ago

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all things return to the fire || self-para Self-para for Hell Town. Word count: 5552 Penned by JJ, Roux characterization assisted by dia (@grxvebcnes)

TW: Major character death. Body horror. Blood. Fire. Death.

I. CHARLIE

The sun returned. Charlie wasn’t sure what she had expected. Maybe she had expected that the sun would rise and she would find herself where she had always meant to be. Maybe she would turn in her bed to snooze the ringing of her phone alarm, startle to a sitting position to find the last 10 years had been a bad dream and be filled anew with dread that she was late for work (something mundane that required folding the corners of documents when she ran out of paperclips). The sun returned, blinding in its announcement of a new day, showered her roommate from the skylight with a warm trio of golden colours. Looking at Roux, face relaxed (a break from its usual tension), dark curls splayed over the makeshift pillow of her bed, Charlie found that she was where she was meant to be. She had refused it too long, the thread woven around every limb that anchored her to Roux. Where there was space, there was Roux. The woman was more of a constant, of an assured thing, then even the promise of the sun rising every day. How could they live another moment denying themselves the inevitability of their collision?

It had always been Roux. First, as strangers, eyes catching and breaking at hunter meetings; then roommates, companions in the fear of night, something akin to a friend, but not quite; to tangling limbs and breath and sweat (somewhere in the touching and the kissing, the flourish of friendship); and now this —lovers. For there was no other way to explain it. Charlie loved Roux, of this she was certain. And she knew, though it had never been uttered, that Roux loved her. This terrified both of them to no end. To love was to gamble with loss, to surrender trust to the winds of fate, to accept that the outcome is not written in the stars (as many lovestruck fools might state) but a sort of mutually assured destruction. In the end, someone always goes first.

Even if it can withstand the batterings of life (especially in hell town), love does not stop the turning of the clock, the passage of time, the aging. Love endures, but it cannot save anyone from their fate. It cannot prevent the end of all things that live and breathe and utter words heard long after they’ve gone. Something strange occurs in the aftermath of death with love —a sort of hurt that feels empty, that echoes painfully the presence of something that cannot return. Love roots itself in the body, the mind, the heart, and when violently pulled by the clutches of death or life (as it often occurs when circumstances enable the departure of one person from the love of another), the spaces that the roots occupy are a void, to be filled with this unimaginable sort of sorrow. In its absence love will always hurt.

It had never been a risk either of them had been willing to take. Yet, much like you cannot stop the passage of time, you cannot stop the force of love when it crashes into you. Undeniably, they were tethered to each other now no matter how much space they attempted to put between them. Charlie had been fighting so much for so long, to capitulate to her fondness for Roux would be as elating as coming up for air after years of burying herself in the horrors of her mind. Charlie wanted to breathe.

She rose and padded over to Roux’s bed, knelt down and used her hand to gently rouse the other woman out of her sleep. Fingers curled around her wrist as Roux’s hand shot out to grab it. Blue eyes looked up at Charlie, so alert that she would have hardly believed Roux to be so deep asleep mere seconds ago.

“Charlie?” It was said with surprise, though the grogginess in her voice betrayed her exhaustion. Roux sat up, relaxed her hold on Charlie’s wrist to something more tender. She was guarded, this much Charlie could see in the cautiousness of her stare.

“What’s wrong?” Two words —three, if you counted her name. That was more that had been spoken between them since Roux had moved back into the radio station. Charlie hesitated then leapt headfirst into the whitewater of their relationship. She leaned forward and brought her lips to Roux’s, a tender kiss that was met with a warm sigh, as though Roux felt just as relieved as Charlie that their physical separation was over at last. Charlie pushed up and swung her leg over to straddle Roux, hands anchoring her to the woman’s face so that she never broke the kiss. Around her waist she felt the warmth of Roux’s hand as she wrapped her arm around Charlie. After a moment, Charlie pulled away, found Roux’s eyes searching her face. It was a familiar look as of late, one to see if Charlie was there mentally.

“Hi,” Charlie said.

“Hey,” Roux whispered back. Her shirt had ridden up and at the small of her back, she felt Roux’s finger gently tracing the exposed skin. It sent goosebumps up to her neck and Charlie leaned forward until her forehead rested against Roux’s.

“The sun is back,” Charlie said lamely.

“It is.” Her eyes stayed on Charlie.

“I was thinking,” Charlie started softly, eyelids closing in a moment of tranquility before she pulled away, dropped her hands to play with the collar of Roux’s shirt, “that we should go hunting.”

There was a pause to linger in the warmth before Roux nodded and then pressed forward to kiss Charlie again. Her hands gently tapped the side of Charlie’s thighs. It was as if to say best you get off of me if you want us to go anywhere. Charlie complied, broke the kiss to stand with a smile on her face.

“Last one dressed has to carry the kill back.”

Roux let her win. At least that’s what she’d claimed while doing a balancing act of bouncing on one booted foot while hopping down the stairs of the station and zipping up the other. Charlie contested it with whatever helps you sleep at night and then they had begun their walk out of town and into the forest that was so familiar to both of them.

They had never been big talkers and neither would bend to the unspoken things that remained between them. They were safer that way, the little affirmations of feelings protected in the shawl of silence. Still, Charlie found she could hardly keep her eyes from the back of Roux’s head as the woman led them both through the forest, felt the way her heart spiked every time Roux glanced over her shoulder to confirm that Charlie was still there, still with her.

They set up a temporary camp in a clearing and took the opportunity to recover from the hike by splitting a granola bar. Their quiet contemplation was scored by the melodic tweeting of birds who, like them, seemed to be enjoying the warm return of sunlight. The trinkling of a nearby stream, melted snow following the crevices in the ground in obedience to gravity towards a larger body of water, was like bells chiming. In the trees, branches clattered against each other every time a gentle breeze rolled through. They were careful not to disturb the immersiveness of it all. They had talked once, years ago, about how much easier it was to pretend they were anywhere else in the world whenever they were here.

A branch cracked in the distance, pulling their attention to their purpose: hunting for food. Carefully, Charlie grabbed her bow, Roux her knife as both visually sought out the source of the noise. About fifty meters away a deer munched on the ground where, no doubt, the snow had thawed to reveal something worth eating. Charlie and Roux exchanged a look and then nodded. They stalked closer, Charlie preferring a distance of 30 meters to accurately shoot. She felt Roux’s eyes on her as she pulled an arrow back with her compact bow, her body turned towards Roux but her head turned, eyes laser focussed, towards the target. She inhaled and exhaled deeply, trying to find the perfect moment to fire. On the next inhale, she held her breath, felt her index and middle fingers slowly releasing their pressure, and waited for the inevitable whip-like sound that was the hemp fiber slashing through the air.

“I do love you,” Roux said. It was unexpected. Her voice startled Charlie, whose fingers slipped so quickly that the momentum threw the bow off its initial heading. The arrow flew well past where the deer had been (the sound of Roux’s voice having long caused its rapid sprint away from them) and somewhere into the woods.

Charlie stared dumbly at Roux, who stared back with an unreadable expression on her face.

“You missed,” she stated, like it hadn’t well been her fault that this fact had occurred.

“What?” Charlie felt herself saying.

“The deer? You missed it.”

“No, before that.”

“Oh that? You knew.”

“I did– I do.” Charlie swallowed, let the hand holding the bow fall limply at her side. “It was just… nice to hear, that’s all.”

Roux stalked towards her then, closed a distance Charlie had felt immensely suffocated by. Her eyes dropped to the permanence of Charlie’s injury, to a memory they shared where the confession of their feelings had been swallowed up by the enormous jaws of insanity, the teeth of which had dug themselves so deeply into Charlie’s skin that they tore through flesh and left indents in the sinew of her muscles. What was left of the admittance of their desire was the absence of Charlie’s pinky. Roux’s hand followed her stare and she grabbed on to Charlie’s hand, thumb stroking gently the skin above where her pinky should have been. The wound had healed, but had they?

“If you want something from me, Charlie, you just need to ask.”

Charlie exhaled. They were not the kind of people that would demand love from each other. They had survived this place for nearly a decade and their relationship was forged from the small moments of intimacy and care that had occurred in spite.

“I don’t want to waste any more time,” she started, feeling emboldened by the heat of Roux’s touch. “I don’t want to wake up tomorrow and wonder why we didn’t do this –” she squeezed Roux’s hand, “– sooner. For years now I’ve been denying myself this, and I can’t anymore.”

Roux did not reply immediately, but Charlie could see a smile tugging at the edges of her mouth.

“Alright,” the brunette answered casually.

“And you can’t,” Charlie swallowed, “you can’t go months without talking to me, okay? It’s torturous.”

Roux looked at her then, hardened her eyes.

“I can’t follow you, Charlie,” Roux stated. “Where your mind goes. I can’t follow. So if —when it happens,” It was inevitable after all, Roux understood that about Charlie more than anyone else. “I’ll let you go, and I won’t go with you.”

There was a moment of silence as it sunk in. Roux would not watch Charlie amputate another finger, she would turn her back to insanity and would not suffer the hurt of losing Charlie to her mind. The birds chirped.

“And when I’m here?” Charlie asked then, cautious.

“When you’re here, I’m here.” It was accompanied by the gentle squeeze of Charlie’s hand.

“Okay, deal?”

“Deal.” Their lips met again, sweeter this time, yet less soft. It was a promise and an apology and an I love you wrapped up and delivered with heated ferocity. For Charlie, it was the commitment to be better, to be present, to fight the things that tried to bend her reality. For Roux, a fealty to protect, to care (even if it was difficult), to make a life where the universe tried very hard to break it.

It was unclear who was the first person to break away from the kiss, but Charlie found that their time hunting had run its course. There were things to do, warmth to be sought out, fingers to get reacquainted with. She wanted to fall onto the mattress of the radio station that never played and make their own music.

The only thing currently in the way was the sense of duty that had been fletched and knocked somewhere in the surrounding forest. Charlie considered leaving it, but resources were scarce as it was. She would find later that she had wished she had abandoned it.

Wordlessly they started looking for the missing arrow, starting from similar points and fanning out in different directions. Occasionally, she would seek out Roux through the trees and find those piercing blue eyes already on her and she would smile. As she walked, she thought of the symbolism of arrows, of cupid who had struck her so severely with one of his that she could barely stomach being apart, of knights who were felled by an arrow at the knee in their declaration of love. She thought of Apollo, a deity of light, disease, and prophecy, and she thought of Artemis, the Goddess the hunt and wilderness, and of their bows, how they symbolized life and death. She thought—

Her mind cleared. Around her a dense fog had settled so quickly that Charlie had missed its introduction. It was a plume of thick grey air that had seemingly deafened her to any other noise. Instinctively, Charlie’s eyes sought the last direction she had seen Roux, a futile effort in the heaviness of the air. She lifted her right hand out in front of her and could not see past the tip of her four fingers.

“Roux?” she called out, quietly at first and then repeated slightly louder. Her hand dropped as the other tightened around the bow. It was futile, she had left her bag and the arrows in the clearing. The clearing. Charlie turned to retrace her step. This too proved to be the wrong thing. The disorientation hit her so strongly, pulled air to and from her lungs in staccato breaths.

“Roux.” It was repeated louder, sharper, wrapped up in the panic that tore through her. From the distance and through the fog, Roux called back. It carried a tone with it that Charlie had never heard from Roux, even months ago when she had wrapped her hand around Charlie’s amputated pinky to stem the flow of blood and had had every reason to feel it: fear.

CHAAARLIEEEE.

Charlie didn’t think. She took off. Her feet struggled against the mixture of mulch and snow. She stumbled through branches as they whipped at her face, unseen in the fog, shouldered into the edges of trees she attempted to divert from in split seconds, stopped only when the echo of Roux’s voice faded from her ears. She called Roux’s name again, and heard her own echoed back in increasing agony from another direction. There was a part of her, small and insignificant in the urgency, that questioned how Roux appeared to have changed direction. But the fog was so thick, and it was possible Roux was moving all the same trying to get to Charlie. She ran and slowed only when the snow beneath her feet became wet.

“What the…” she let out as she looked down to find her boots submerged in water. The grass was vividly green, moved by a current that went unfelt. The water, oddly… warm. Her name boomed through the air, bounced against the trees, so close that Roux must have been mere meters away. Charlie splashed through with haste. And then there was no water and no snow, and nearly no ground for Charlie’s foot to catch. She fought to keep balance on the edge of a drop that she’d nearly bolted from. Beneath her the chasm echoed her harsh breathing. The vertigo caused bile to build at the back of her throat. The fog poured down and disappeared into the chasm.

“Charlie.” It came from behind her. The voice (recognizable). The smell of smoke (intimate). The crackling of flames (familiar). Charlie pivoted and came face to face with herself. The fire consumed her, flames licked up her body, turned her blonde hair to hues of orange, made embers of her eyes. “It’s time.” When she spoke, black smoke poured from her mouth. It was a horrifying mirror to be met with and fear took hold of her body.

“You’re not real,” she breathed out. She shut her eyes and held them shut as she counted backwards from ten. When she opened them again she was still there. Charlie diverted her eyes over her shoulders and tried to focus on things that were there, things that were real. Name five things you can see. Grounding techniques only worked if reality wasn’t rotten.

“I’m always with you, Charlie.” It, she, walked, closing the distance until her own face was inches away. The fire was roaring up close. Charlie wanted to scream but found that her throat was tight with terror and struggled with the simple act of breathing. She thought then of Roux, and where she was, and if she would find her on time, or if the screams had been real and she too was facing the horrors of her own self. A burning hand reached out and stroked the side of Charlie’s face. It singed her skin though she could not feel it.

“Don’t be afraid.” She leaned in and their lips touched and Charlie felt herself lit aflame from the inside. “All things return to the fire.” A push, one so gentle it hardly would have done anything at all if Charlie hadn’t already been backed to the edge of the precipice.

They say when you fall you have time to think about the fact that you’re falling. But one second Charlie was on the cliff, and the next she wasn’t. A crack of a tree echoed through the chasm as she landed and her vision went dark.

It pulled her to consciousness, the searing pain in her abdomen that caused groans and wet harsh breaths to cross her lips. Her head pounded. She tried to sit up but the pain sharpened and forced her back down. Charlie blinked up, tried to inhale, saw the height she had fallen from and wondered how it was that she was still alive. Her hand reached for the pain and met a wet coarse texture like tree bark. No, not like tree bark – actual tree bark. Two things became immediately clear to her. The first was that her fall had been broken by the carcass of a fallen tree, its extending decaying limb slowing her fall by piercing her through the stomach. She laid suspended, a little unnaturally, a few inches from the ground. The second, which really came when she attempted to lift herself off of the branch, was that Charlie could not feel her legs. Not even a little bit.

Oxygen returned to her lungs like she had just surfaced from a thunderous swell, panicked and gargled like she was about to be submerged again. Her lungs expanded and on the exhale a sound so inhuman Charlie hardly recognized it as her voice rang out through the chasm, echoed up against the rocks into the forest air.

“ROUX!”

II. ROUX

Something felt wrong the moment the fog wrapped itself around her. The forest, a moment ago so full of noises (birds, wind blowing through branches, the creaking of old trees, Charlie’s heavy footsteps, having long abandoned the pretense of hunting, on mulch) and of colour (vivid against the white of snow), dulled to quiet ashen gray. Immediately, Roux changed course towards where she had last seen Charlie, did not let panic grab her though she knew in the tight part of her stomach that something horrible was unfolding but, much like with the fog, Roux could not wrap her hands around it to stop whatever forces were at play. Charlie’s name died before it could cross her lips, shackled to the silence like breaking it would solidify the situation.

Charlie’s voice called to her then, gentle and calm, but not from the direction Roux was heading. It came from her right, and slightly behind her. There was no way that that was where Charlie was, and yet it made Roux pause in her steps. She had seen first hand the sinister way that this place could play games with your head. As hard as she tried not to let it, a fear began to seep in: She could see this facade for what it was, but she knew Charlie would not.

“Charlie,” she called out, an edge to her voice. She felt it swallowed up in the air, as though she was in a soundproof room. Roux closed her eyes and tried to listen for any sound that would indicate where Charlie was.

“Roux,” she heard sweetly from behind her now. It went ignored as she pressed forward, tried to call out again.

“CHARLIE!” Louder. Unanswered. She became acutely aware of the loud way her blood pumped in her ears.

The silence grew on her until it was violently shattered by her own voice screaming back at her. CHARLIE CHARLIE CHARLIE CHARLIE.

Then from further away, like a bullet piercing through the air and cutting through the fog like a blade, her name shrieked in such anguish that her tongue hit the back of her throat from the sheer way it startled her. Charlie, she thought. Roux committed the source to memory and began running in that direction. The fog around began to dissipate, the same way dreams did the moment you woke up. This was not a dream though, it was a nightmare.

Roux ran until she broke the tree line and reached a ravine. At the edge of it Charlie’s bow laid on the ground.

“CHARLIE?” she called out, knowing very well where the answer would echo from. It should have been wrong to feel any positive emotion right now, but when she heard her name screamed back at her in torture, relief emptied from her lungs sharply. Charlie was alive. She pushed past the way panic had cemented her legs and walked to the edge before peering down. At the bottom of the chasm her eyes caught the flash of a familiar blonde. Roux wasted no time, ran to the closest drop that could be trekked down, felt the sting of flesh ripping on her hands as she skid down to the bottom, footing uncertain on the mixture of snow and bedrock, and then ran over to Charlie’s body.

What she saw made her halt in her steps. It took everything in her not to pivot and run the other way, where she wouldn’t have to deal with this. Roux thought now, of the beast that this place was, with its tree branches in place of teeth, sunless days in the place of eyes, breath as chilly as a winter storm. And here Charlie was, caught in its mouth, and Roux could not see a clear path to pulling her out. The helplessness manifested in the pit of her stomach, afraid and sad, built up, moved through her chest where it turned to anger and burnt her esophagus. Roux bit her tongue to hold back the rage she felt towards Charlie. Could she be pulled off the branch? Had it pierced anything important?

It had, undeniably, saved the blonde from a more painless death. But Charlie was alive now, and Roux would do whatever she could to keep it that way.

“I’m s-sorry, Roux, I’m sorry.” The anguish in Charlie’s voice pulled at her heart. She had stilled it, ten years ago when she’d set foot in this place (perhaps even longer if she really thought about it). It had been Charlie’s incessant presence that had re-animated it. For that, Roux hated her.

“Shut up,” she gritted out through clenched teeth.

“I can’t feel my legs.”

“Shut. Up.” This was snarled and she came to Charlie, dropped down to her knees next to her so that she could slip her knees underneath and take Charlie’s head into her lap. The woman leaned into her warmth, and it made Roux swallow the knot building in her throat. She reached out and covered Charlie’s hand, the one wrapped at the base of the branch, where it seemed to sprout from her torso.

“You’re going to be fine. I’ll just,” She looked up to the sky, assessed the amount of remaining daylight. “I’ll just get you to the clinic. It’s fine.”

Charlie laughed then. It was distorted, gargled, pained. “I think this is one miracle that can’t be performed.”

Roux ignored the way Charlie’s eyes stared at her. “Shut up, okay? Shut up. I’m going to pull you off, and we’ll… I’ll carry you back. Just, stop distracting me.”

“Roux,” Charlie said quietly, “it’s not–”

“I have to try, Charlie. Please.”

The blonde nodded. Roux adjusted her position, moved so that she could put one hand below the small of Charlie’s back and the other underneath her knees. She didn’t bother counting her in, tightened her muscles to lift up. It wrenched a noise from Charlie’s mouth so agonizing Roux nearly faltered her hold. Roux felt Charlie’s hand as it dug itself into her shoulder. There was resistance in the bend of the branch.

“Roux, stop,” Charlie cried, wracking sobs causing Roux to abandon her attempt. From the wound in the torso fresh red blood poured out.

“Charlie, I have to pull you off.” As she said it she knew: Pulling Charlie off was necessary to save her life, but it would also undoubtedly kill her. Leaving her on it would kill her slower, but would it be gentler? And would it happen before nightfall? Would death beat the coming of creatures who would no doubt torture Charlie? No. Roux would not leave as long as Charlie was alive. Pulling her off the branch would kill her quickly, but her last moment would be excruciating. Whether she had wanted it to or not, the realization that Charlie would die had cemented itself as the outcome of the situation. Charlie’s cold trembling hand on her face broke her from her thoughts. In the green of her eyes Roux saw the same acceptance.

“You s-said that you would let me go.” Roux shook her head, even as Charlie’s stare went past her shoulder and towards the sky. “You said,” Charlie said, snapping her head back towards Roux with the last of her strength, “and I’m holding you to it. You should go back, b-before it gets dark.”

“I’m not leaving you here.” Alive. She moved herself so that she was sat behind Charlie, head and upper back cradled carefully in her lap. They had never been gentle with each other. This place had demanded the callousness with which they handled one another. Roux wondered what they could have been if the pretense of tenderness had been expressed more. She gently brushed away the tears from Charlie’s face with her thumbs as they sat in a silence occasionally broken by the pained inhales from the other hunter. Her eyes had closed, brows furrowed in pain.

“They were never wasted,” Roux heard mumbled. Charlie’s eyes opened again. “All these years with you, they were never wasted.”

“They weren’t,” Roux affirmed.

“I don’t want to die here,” Charlie cried softly. Roux shushed her.

“I know.”

“I’m going to die here.”

“I know.”

“I’m glad it’s with you.” Her brows furrowed again and when she blinked, tears fell from her eyes. She whispered, “Roux, it really hurts.”

There it was again, that feeling of helplessness.

“Can you make it stop?” The meaning was not lost on Roux.

“Charlie…”

“You said… if I want something from you I just have to ask.”

Anger flared up again. How Charlie could ask something like that from her was beyond the scope of Roux’s understanding. But then she thought of what she would want, if the roles were reversed, Roux reached a similar conclusion. But she would slice her own throat before she asked Charlie to do it for her. Then again, Roux had not suffered the onslaught of her mind the way that Charlie had.

She thought then, of how much Charlie had suffered at her own hands, how volatile her mind had been the last year, how she had raged against the hand of this place as it had held a blade to her throat. Roux killing her gently would be a mercy nothing else would offer.

“Where?” she gritted out softly.

“I can’t feel my legs.” Roux looked down, past the branch and to Charlie’s legs. In her time here Roux had bled out enough animals to know the conditions for it were perfect. Charlie was already stunned and would not feel the slice of a blade into her thighs. The loss of blood would lead to shock, and she would feel no pain, and it would be quick, and Roux would never forgive herself.

Roux grabbed the knife tucked into her belt. She reached down and placed the knife in the palm of Charlie’s hand. Charlie looked up at her then, watched as Roux pulled at the collar of her own shirt to expose the skin where her heart was. It was an unspoken request. She watched as the cogs turned in Charlie’s head.

“Oh,” the blonde let out. Roux traced a C with her index on the skin, helped Charlie bring her bladed hand to it. There was hesitance on Charlie’s behalf, but the negotiation had already occurred, and Charlie had nothing left to offer. She silently carved a C into Roux’s chest as they kept their eyes locked on each other. It was deep enough that it would scar, but not deep enough as to fatally wound her (though a part of Roux had wished briefly that it had).

Roux pulled the knife from Charlie’s hand and placed the hand back across the woman’s chest. She leaned forward then, concealed the trembling of her limbs and brought the blade to Charlie’s thigh. The knife cut through the fabric and then just as easily into the flesh. Charlie did not wince, for she could not feel it. Roux made an incision on each thigh, nauseated at the redness of the blood, Charlie’s blood, that came from the femoral arteries she severed. She sat back, dropped the knife and kept Charlie’s head in her lap.

There would be no going back now. Charlie grabbed her hand, intertwined their fingers.

“Thank you,” she said quietly. They would not taint the memory of their last kiss with this moment. They would not profess their love for each other because it had always been unspoken. They sat in the silence, as the colour of the world returned while it faded from Charlie. The birds sang again. The stream chimed. The branches up above clattered. Charlie paled, and her breathing slowed.

“Roux?” she mumbled with closed eyes.

“I’m here.” She squeezed Charlie’s hand. Those eyes she had grown to know looked up at her now, more grey than green.

“I have been afraid of fire my whole life,” she struggled, Roux thought, to find the words. They slurred together. “I don’t want to stay here.” Here in this place. “Will you burn my body so I can be with my dad again? So I can stop being afraid?”

“Okay,” Roux said lamely. There was nothing else she could say. It was always meant to end like this, she just hadn’t thought it would happen so soon.

“Roux?” So quiet. So faint. How gentle death could be, like falling asleep in the middle of a movie.

Her throat was tight. Charlie’s hold against her hand slackened. She cleared her throat. “Yes, Charlie?”

But Charlie never spoke again. Her chest stopped moving. Her hand grew cold. The colour had drained from her face. She looked at peace, and Roux thought that death suited her the way that life had ceased to months ago.

It’s summer time in California. The heat sticks to skin in a permanent layer of sweat. The door opens to a house. It’s familiar. Charlie walks through, traces the faint outlines of crayon on a door frame where height was immortalized. Dinner is simmering on the stove, abandoned to the gleeful screaming from the yard. She exits, stands on the deck overlooking the garden, watches a little blonde six year old swinging a stick at her father who collapses in exaggerated movements: A monster slayed by her blade. Her mom laughs, cheers at the pretend death, proclaiming to be rescued by a brave knight. Then her dad stands, young Charlie squeals as he grabs her by the ankles, lifts her up and swings her around. Her pigtails bounce. She giggles loudly. He pulls her back into his arms and hugs her, her mom joins in. And there is warmth. On the horizon, the sun sets. Charlie closes her eyes to the last of the light. This is what she remembers as the world fades away.

#self para #charlie act iii.#a privilege and an honour to write you to the very end <3 #tw death #tw blood #tw body horror #thank you thank you charlie for pulling me out of my depression when i needed you the most i will miss writing you

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