Work Text:
You die after 17,614 days of life.
Well, not exactly– you've been dead for a while now, haven't you?
You've been alive for fleeting moments, seconds, lying on your stomach in Kaz's bedroom poring over your astrology charts, the first time Danny wrapped his little fist around your thumb, Allie looking up at you with big, hopeless eyes, begging you to save her from one hell only to cast her into another.
Never have you been so fucking afraid, you realize– not when Danny fell and broke his arm at barely three, not when that pigfuck dragged you into an alleyway by your hair.
Start wearing it up, sweetheart, Jacs hissed as she scrubbed you raw in the bathtub. Harder to grab that way.
This is the end comes the horrid realization, searing hot and sickening, coursing through your every nerve.
After all the shit you've been through, this is how it fucking ends, and you almost want to laugh– you haven't even made it to fifty, just like your son didn't make it to twenty– and it's not like you'd anticipated rotting in a convalescent home, eating pudding and shitting yourself all day but that'd be a better fucking deal than this.
There's no more cups of tea to be had. No more telly to watch. You will never again cry into your pillow for your son, Allie, Kaz, the girl you used to be and never got to be.
This is how it ends.
Lou has freckles on her eyelids. Her eyelashes are blonde, but her real hair is brown. She's dyed it six different colors.
You know her, you've come to memorize her– you know how the lines in her forehead get deeper when she's angry, how her face is never completely still, thousands of small expressions few can see because she's never learned to keep quiet, never learned to curl up and hide.
This is what you think about, force yourself to think about as you look into the cold, dead eyes of your sweetheart.
You're detached like you have been for so long, floating in a miasma of misery that you don't remember what it's like to feel.
You yearn to touch Lou again, but being torn apart by her knife is the closest you'll ever get.
Tonight when she retreats to her cell as you lay dead on the floor, you will coil around her sobbing form and whisper sweet nothings in her ear– that she did what she had to, she couldn't control herself, that her act of rage was an act of mercy.
You will stroke her hair, trace circles on her back, but you won't be there at all.
The pride in Lou's voice when she speaks of her brother, the boy she raised– he's better than me, Marie, he's a good bloke – you recognize it in yourself– My Danny's at the top of his class, he's ace at basketball, he is nothing and everything like me.
You forgot the evil lurking within Lou, the evil you were trying to subdue with every stroke of her hair, every old story, every night spent awake holding her tight as she heaved and hyperventilated into your chest.
In another life, you tie a rope around Lou's arm, inject into her veins. She's your best girl, a nineteen year old firecracker who's got nothing to lose. She'll do whatever you ask.
In yet another, you sleep beside her every night. She's the love of your life, the sweetest thing you know. She makes you pancakes in the morning, she knows you detest syrup so she doesn't bother. She is your sun.
Marie, you're a fuckin' Taurus, she said to you once. You can't just say you're a Virgo because you reckon they get a better rap. That's not how it works.
You're a Gemini, nobody likes you lot, you had retorted, and you had laughed, genuinely fucking laughed for the first time in months, and that was the moment you realized you loved her.
You realized you loved Lou suddenly, painfully, like the thrust of her knife between your ribs– there is no getting out of this, you are too far gone.
She said she loved you once, only once– her eyes going wide the moment the words left her mouth as if without volition, shaking her head, demanding you not say a word as she pulled you into a crushing embrace.
Fuck, fuck, she gasped, her chin hard against your shoulder. Don't say anything. Fuck, oh my God. Please don't say it back.
And you didn't, you never did, at least not out loud.
I love you, you mouthed silently despite Lou's demands, tears streaming down your cheeks as you clutched her desperately. I love you, please leave me. Please don't ever leave me.
I love you, you used to whisper during those terrible, beautiful weeks of the affair as Lou slept curled up against you. You refused to speak the words aloud when she was awake, knowing once the end came she would think it all a lie.
Lou's head in your lap, against your shoulder as she cried, sobbed, screamed, begged for you to do fucking something, put her out of her misery– You craved it, needed it, needed her.
Someone to take care of, to love. You're a childless mother, Lou a motherless child.
Your sick, twisted bond born out of a mutual desire for destruction, of grief was your beginning and ending– your reason for life and death.
What did Danny see when he was dying alone in that hospital bed? Did he see his mother, stroking his hair, feel your lips against his forehead?
Or was it his father, reaching out with a cold hand, telling Danny he has his eyes, that they're more alike than you'd ever expect?
Karen held him as a baby. Said he looked like you. Knew he'd do wonderful things. Lucky to have you as a mum. That she'd babysit for free.
But you were already a monster, she was already too good for you by the time Danny learned to walk. You were left alone with a son that looked too much like his father, a constant reminder of your past crimes and mistakes.
You're a cunt! you heard him scream one night, the word making your stomach twist. Creeping down the stairs, your heart in your throat, you saw your angel boy standing tall above a weeping girl the age you were before it all went wrong.
He punched a hole in the wall right next to her head, and you'd bit your tongue to stifle a yell as he ran out the house, slamming the door behind him just like you admonished him not to years earlier.
You'd attempted to comfort the girl, hold her head to your chest, sweetheart, settle down, let me give you a ride home, but she'd pushed you away with shaking hands, casting you an icy glare– I know what you are and why he's like this.
It all boils down to you.
Your son is your fucking fault.
And yet, you still love him. Always have, always will.
A girl with bruises on her face, track marks on her arms and a halo of filthy, peroxide blonde hair reaches out, presses her palm to yours.
I knew you'd come for me one day, she whispers.
She smiles, hot pink lipstick smeared against white and yellow.
You smile back.