She used to be good at hiding it.
She used to be good at burying her hurt and her pain beneath layers of light and false tranquility. She used to be able to face the day no matter how she was falling apart on the inside, and she doesn’t know when she began crumbling to the point that it felt impossible to keep up her own charade.
And so maybe it was fitting that this gift had been bestowed up on her. Maybe it was not a coincidence that when her own light was fully extinguished she had been given a newfound radiance that glowed from every pore and hid the hairline fractures that threatened to shatter her apart, and a halo to brighten her impossibly dark, broken eyes. She could hide behind her angel wings and ethereal glow and fool the world just like always.
Except sometimes she feels like she is getting so, so tired of hiding.
That could explain why any other day she would be fine with his somewhat caustic humor and teasing, because it is him and it is virtually impossible for him to offend her. And even today, it is not hurt that flashes in her sable eyes at his very last words, but rather something that mirrors fatigue. Like something she has been trying to hold on to, or hold together, has finally slipped from her grasp and she can’t be bothered to pretend anymore. “I would never assume that you actually care, Atrox, so the disclaimer is hardly necessary,” she says in words spoken so softly that it would be difficult to find even a hint of malice in them.
She pushed away the single soul that actually cared about her, and she was paying for it every day.
“The lesson is I don’t know why I go looking for something that isn’t there, in places that I know it could never exist.” Trying to manifest something viable out of the darkness had never worked in her favor, but it has never stopped her from trying again, and again.
“But,” she says after a pause, lifting her fragmented eyes to his with the barest hints of a smile on her pale lips, “Realizing I should stop and actually stopping are two incredibly different things.”
