#very slight reverence to sex work tw

[bxnnybxtch-blog]

EVERYONE LIVES- No one has to die in my muse’s story, be it for Better or for worse.

TW: discussion of physical/emotional/verbal abuse, PTSD, self harm, suicidal tendencies. Alternate Universe: Hollow Happy

All things considered, this should have been the life she’d be ecstatically happy with. She had seen and done so many things that weren’t possible for her before. She’d saved lives, helped hundreds of others, done so much good to atone for her sins.

And yet, every day she awoke with bitterness on her tongue, and every night the rabbit felt the ugly weight of it in her stomach. She could not name the sickness directly, and the cure for it yet eluded her. The nature of a Tourist’s work meant that she had significantly more free time than ever before in her life, which she abhorred with vehemence. Being alone with herself was….unthinkable. Thumper didn’t want to see what she’d become, now that she had to own whatever pieces of identity were left to her. The reality of her lack of worth wasn’t something she cared to acknowledge directly. As long as she could maintain the facade for the few people she cared to impress, it was all well enough.

But that still left the issue of her free time. Multiple requests to be given more dangerous assignments had been denied, citing her history of having a death wish and self harm by proxy, and the fact that she was a literal bunny. The one in charge of that mess knew damn well she wanted to die in a blaze of glory and have her name go down in history as a hero and make all of her friends proud of her sacrifice and her enemy gnash his teeth that he didn’t get to crush her himself.

Because everything had to come back around to him, didn’t it. It had been YEARS and everything still had to come back to him why did everything have to keep coming back to him why was it that no matter how far she ran she could never escape him

why was he in her head

And so sleepless nights passed cruel days, and the mask she kept up to keep everyone else happy became more and more detached from the person behind it. She knew damn well why he wouldn’t leave her be. It’s because he was still alive, waiting for her.

And when he finally broke free, the only refuge would be a grave she’d make for herself, if she could dig it before he found her.

There were some in Fabletown who offered their sympathies to the rabbit when that ugly story got around town. Their words were kindly meant, but so many of them had their captors and abusers dead or truly beyond their reach. They made pitying faces and placed hands on her shoulders and told her that this was normal, this was a valid emotion to have. They recommended doctors and pills and potions and breathing exercises and mindfulness and journaling and yoga and a thousand other things that would never change the damn fact that he was still alive and waiting to take away all of this from her. 

“Then enjoy it while you can” Said one of them, perhaps a little tired of her doomsaying.

“I can’t. I’m trying to atone.”

“Atone for what?”

“To atone for the fact that a number of people with gentle hearts are going to be killed when he’s unleashed, and their heads will line the road to the afterlife I’ll walk. And for everyone who’s already there, who I could have saved if I had talked sooner. I could have…found a way, I could have saved them. I saw their dead eyes and smudged lipstick and fingerprint bruises and I did nothing.”

Their stunned look at the grisly imagery made something twinge in her heart. She was sorry to talk like this, to burden people like this, to be like this. 

Nerissa was the kindest of them all. She made tea in heavy chipped mugs as they sat on the floor of the mermaid’s closet of an apartment, a wind chime of sea glass strung with fishing wire twinkling in the low light of dusk by the open window. With her, Thumper didn’t have to explain the guilt, or the way that she still woke in cold sweats feeling the clammy skin of her throat. Nerissa didn’t judge her for talking too much as compensation for the words taken from her, or for being hesitant at talking about all of it again.

The mermaid looked down. “I know that it’s eating at you. Guilt, both for the past and what you imagine your future to be. But if he gets loose, that is not your fault. That’s Beast’s fault.”

“You mean it’s the Sheriff’s fault, for that fucking deal. I know, I know, we neededitanditwasda…” she trailed off under her breath but continued muttering for a while after. 

Nerissa half smiled, knowing that her companion meant Bigby, and not Beast, who was the proper Sheriff after the former’s retirement. Though never understanding why the rabbit had such a complex about using Bigby’s name, she wasn’t going to bring it up.

“You’re angry at so many things for everything that they took from you. Maybe you think you can get it back. You can’t. And you never will. Anger is….an easy emotion to feel. You can rile it up over and over again and have a good time of it. But it gets you nowhere. You have to mourn for the pieces of you that they took. Your innocence, your hope, your trust, your body, your dignity, whatever it is that they ripped out of you. You’re going to have to be sad about it at some point, if you ever want to get past it.”

The redhead continued when she didn’t get a verbal response. “The same goes for that which hurts your heart that doesn’t have to do with Jersey. You can be angry and bitter all you like, for as long as you’d like to be. But it is unhealthy to remain so fixated on wanting it. It’s a way you’ll never be, Thumper. Not in this lifetime. You’re going to have to mourn for the loss of the hope you built in your head, too.”

“….I wanted so little for myself.”

“I know. But you won’t have it.”

There was a reason she came to Nerissa to talk about this. Not just because Nerissa was one of the few people who knew what the ribbon was like, or what the guilt was like, or was familiar enough where she didn’t have to explain things. but on an intrinsic story level, Nerissa knew what she was talking about. Wanting something so very badly, and not getting it. Doing everything in your power and wanting, praying, sacrificing for something, and not getting it. The rabbit did not ask for as much as Nerissa did, but she took the blow of disappointment just as deeply.

“What did you really do, when all hope died?”

“I quickly found there were far worse fates than heartbreak.” Certainly, being forced by financial desperation into sex work and feeling responsibility for the deaths of two friends, that was a worse fate than a broken heart.

“Do you even sing, anymore?”

“No.” It was a whisper now, the redhead looking into her mug of tea. 

“Out of choice, or are there remnants of the spell?” They had gotten so invasive into her own story she felt the freedom to ask in return.

“I don’t know, anymore.” She blinked, and looked across at the rabbit’s folded legs. “Just another one of those things that was taken from me. I’ve made my peace with it.” The downcast gaze was clear. Making your peace did not mean no longer feeling its loss.

That day was a difficult conversation, but an important one. Though she hadn’t fully moved on from anger at anything, she reduced the amount of punching things. And people. That had to be something enough. The alcohol habit picked up significantly, but since she was never inebriated on the job or missed work, no one said anything. As long as she was functioning, it apparently wasn’t anyone’s business.

Thumper waited for the day to come when leather wings would eclipse her sun and the one thing that she didn’t want to have happen, would take place. The Jersey Devil, the demon that haunted her every moment, would finally slaughter her. And win.

Until then, the mask could smile enough for everyone else. She hoped everyone was happy.