That's the thing that gets her first, stupid as it is. He saved it, he picked it up and put it in his magic storage closet and that's right, his works different than hers, if it were hers it would've wilted the second he took it out but the magic is different, his is different, and it's as good as it'd been the day this all went off the rails.
After that, the other things start catching up. The fact that he looks the way he did the first time she saw him, crumpled in on himself in the bottom of the well like he's waiting for someone to hurt him. The way his own self-esteem is as broken as she is. The way that after a while he turns the dagger of his explanations in on himself the same way that she would've, the way they're both insisting in their own ways that they're the stupid one, the way they're both convinced that they aren't good people except that the eyes of the beholder tell a different story.
He's like her. He's like her and someday that's — someday that's going to be something, that the same rationales she uses to console him for his feelings will fit unsettlingly well against her own insecurities, and she'll have no excuse not to apply them. She needs him, and that's another way of needing him —
He reflects her, and she always has been a little too in love with mirrors.
But he looks so miserable that she's almost grateful, maybe, not because she likes to see him sad but because he gives her a way out of the way she's feeling herself by doing it. He gives her something to say in a moment when she has no idea what to say.
They're both so stupid, aren't they.]
Fuck them. Fuck anybody who's too stupid to see how much you matter.
[It's not actually anger at the girl, specifically, or even anger at his parents. It's anger at the injustice, anger on his behalf. Anger that validates his sorrow and says it's not right that this happened to you.]
...Prommy.
[It slips out subconsciously, the name she calls him in her head because right now there's no lag time between her mind and her mouth; she's living in the moment and running purely on the here and now, and she drops her cloak aside on the ground as she crosses the distance between them and takes his hands by the wrists, curling her fingers there so that he can feel her holding on.
She thinks about what he's hiding beneath the wristband. What she's hiding beneath her face.]
Tell me what you were thinking when you made it. Not what I told you they mean. What you made it mean.
no subject
That's the thing that gets her first, stupid as it is. He saved it, he picked it up and put it in his magic storage closet and that's right, his works different than hers, if it were hers it would've wilted the second he took it out but the magic is different, his is different, and it's as good as it'd been the day this all went off the rails.
After that, the other things start catching up. The fact that he looks the way he did the first time she saw him, crumpled in on himself in the bottom of the well like he's waiting for someone to hurt him. The way his own self-esteem is as broken as she is. The way that after a while he turns the dagger of his explanations in on himself the same way that she would've, the way they're both insisting in their own ways that they're the stupid one, the way they're both convinced that they aren't good people except that the eyes of the beholder tell a different story.
He's like her. He's like her and someday that's — someday that's going to be something, that the same rationales she uses to console him for his feelings will fit unsettlingly well against her own insecurities, and she'll have no excuse not to apply them. She needs him, and that's another way of needing him —
He reflects her, and she always has been a little too in love with mirrors.
But he looks so miserable that she's almost grateful, maybe, not because she likes to see him sad but because he gives her a way out of the way she's feeling herself by doing it. He gives her something to say in a moment when she has no idea what to say.
They're both so stupid, aren't they.]
Fuck them. Fuck anybody who's too stupid to see how much you matter.
[It's not actually anger at the girl, specifically, or even anger at his parents. It's anger at the injustice, anger on his behalf. Anger that validates his sorrow and says it's not right that this happened to you.]
...Prommy.
[It slips out subconsciously, the name she calls him in her head because right now there's no lag time between her mind and her mouth; she's living in the moment and running purely on the here and now, and she drops her cloak aside on the ground as she crosses the distance between them and takes his hands by the wrists, curling her fingers there so that he can feel her holding on.
She thinks about what he's hiding beneath the wristband. What she's hiding beneath her face.]
Tell me what you were thinking when you made it. Not what I told you they mean. What you made it mean.