She makes him more happy than the ever-expanding universe ever could. She makes him more happy than the stars and the sky and everything in between. The little raindrops and the little rainbows and the little milky way in her eyes that only he can...
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[TW: SELF-HARM AND BLOOD]
WHEN PIPER COMES BACK TO THE LIBRARY, SOREN IS NOT THERE, AND SHE IS IMMENSELY RELIEVED. She stacks and tidies and dusts and sorts books that have rainbow spines that crack when you open them and flow like pain-tinted rivers. When she is finished she sits down and picks up her encyclopedia and runs her fingers over the rainbow page markers and stops at the letters.
A.
B, C, D.
E, F, G, H, I-
She stops. She does not want to go back there, to that letter, where the pain lurks.
J. J for Juniper. J for her mother, the one who left her many years ago. She glides her fingers over J, a warm shade of mandarin, and lets out a quiet grunt when something dark blooms suddenly on her finger like a tainted stream, and then it spreads to her palm in a small sea of crimson. She presses her finger to her mouth and it tastes like metal and it is blood and wild and crazy and she sucks the blood off until her hand it pale and white again. Piper than puts the book away, sliding it onto the shelf in between The History of Math and Human Psychology: What Really Is The Mind? and tells Edith she is leaving.
"Of course, sandpiper, dear," smiles Edith warmly, her lips curving upwards, not bothering to invite her upstairs because he is there. Then, before Piper leaves, it's, "be careful, little sandpiper," and her eyes crinkle like star-dusted half-moons. Piper can only smile at Edith's polite face, cosmic grey-green eyes a world, a collage of exploding supernovae and hair the colour of the sun's white-hot rays and the deep, endless void of space's blackness combined.
"Thank you, Edith," she says and leaves and, instinctively, looks up at Soren's window. She hears quiet jazz music and, oh, she swears that she sees a pair of magnetic, blue eyes holding her gaze.
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THE SWING SEEMS TO POP OUT AT HER AGAIN, RED, CLIMBING METAL POLES WITH RUST FRINGING THEM LIKE A DECORATIVE LOOP OF BURGUNDY STRING TINGED WITH ORANGE JUMPING OUT TO CATCH HER GAZE. The black, plastic seat with scars of white and nail marks in the sides is comforting to Piper. She trails the tips of her fingers across the seat until they are raw and frost and rust bite into them with their sharp teeth. Slowly, surely, she sits down. Slowly, surely, she flies, and it is better than the first time.
She grips the metal chains like her life depends on it and pushes her weight against the sky until she is a rose blooming against the pressure of the tainted, glass cage named Night. Piper's pale colour blooms against the inky black of Night, a true flower beginning to be crushed by the human hand with every swing and kick into Night's black cape. Her hair flies, locks of flowing copper and auburn and coffee-brown, but lighter and milkier, and then she does, she nearly does, and, oh, it is beautiful beyond compare.
Eyes starkly open, surprised, but happy; pretty, rosy lips smiling quietly in pure and utter joy; her skin beginning to become an exploding supernova of flushed colour, rosy and then white as she leaps into the sky and faded, blackened porcelain as Night corrodes Piper's snowy skin. Piper is an angel, wingless, freedom ripped from her, impure, monstrous, a storm of a girl, corrupting not others' happiness but hers.
And, in that moment of utter stupidity, she lets go.
She flies, she actually, really, truly flies, hurtling through the sky in a breathless attempt of novel-like pain. Instead, she inherits a mouth of grit and gravel and more red blossoms across her cheeks and her face like murderous poppies. She laughs, bitter and toxic and sad and imperfect, actually fucking imperfect because that's what and who she is and she is anger and she is a storm because how, how, how, how can she hurt herself and wish for her to be happy but actually feeling happiness whilst she is in pain and how, how, how, how does that even make sense? What is wrong with her, what is so fucking wrong with her that every other time that she laughs, it is bone-chilling and eerie and frightening?
"What is wrong with me?" she cackles and seethes and scream, over and over again, a whirlwind of red words and black noises and white screams and orange and yellow and white, white, white, red, red, red and-
"WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?" And she is so strange, so scary and so mentally insane that she laughs when she presses her hand to her head and blood tumbles out like a sputtering volcano and the stones that are pressed against her skin are the ash clouds and it all hurts, hurts, hurts and she screams until people think that she is crazy and will not go near her.
When she gets up, people run away. She cries and sobs on the ground, blood everywhere and mind spinning, spinning, spinning. She is dizzy and heavy-limbed and ugly and a wretched monster, because it is not what is aching inside her skin and inside her mind that hurts her, but it is how she wants the pain and how she will never get it.
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WHEN PIPER DE LA TORRE WAKES UP, SHE CANNOT REMEMBER ANYTHING FROM THE NIGHT BEFORE, OTHER THAN HER MIND SHOULD BE HURTING AND HER SKIN SHOULD BE HURTING, BUT IT DOESN'T; NEITHER OF THEM HURT.Why she asks and what she asks and how and when and WHY, WHY, WHY fills up her head and she has to pound it against the headboard a couple of times for it to stop hurting so much, but that doesn't work, and nothing ever does. Nothing answers other than empty, unsaid words and hollow, broken bones and cracked, fragmented memories and WHY, WHY, WHY and she wants to see Soren, because he is her pain, her drug, her intensity and only him can make everything cease.
She does not drag herself out of bed. She does nothing but cry and cry and cry and doesn't go to the library. Later, she does drag herself out of bed, just to slit her skin and stain the covers and cry and everyone is scared because Edith hasn't heard from Piper and she promised Katherine that she would come over and Soren wants to talk to her because otherwise there is a loud and consistent humming that makes him want to break everything and every bone and then every city, then every country and building and then every human until he gets to her to give her a big hug and whisper in her ear, "It'll be ok," but it won't and he knows that so well and then he'll break himself afterwards.
Piper cries for a very long time and then when she stops, she whispers, "Why does it hurt?" and then she cries again and does not stop for a very long time because her storybook pain is non-existent.
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note :
oof. poor piper. very angsty chapter,this one is. sorry for that. comment + vote ! :))(it may get better from here (not, lol))
