Thnks Fr Th Mmrs [South]

She doesn’t know quite what to expect from him (Apologies? Condolences? Promises that he doesn’t intend to keep?), but no matter what fragile fantasy of how this encounter might have gone that ran on endless loop in her mind for days on end, none of them included the razor-edged bite of words just as inflammatory – more so, even – as her own, cutting through the space of the locker-lined corridor and sinking into her skin with red-hot precision. Corinne clings to stability and shuns change with every considerable amount of vehemence she has in her, and the knowledge that Goss Harlow isn’t that boy anymore (the one who would probably just roll his eyes at her fury, call her a drama queen, and ask where she wanted to eat lunch that day) feels vast and overwhelming, like drowning in a sea of unspoken regrets and a million things she’d never been weak (brave) enough to say, and she feels even closer to breaking now than she did moments ago. For some reason, the snarled verbal abuse is even more of an indicator that he’s no longer the same person than the healing damage that paints her skin in mottled purpleblackblue tragedies.

“And you think I ruined your life? Ha! That’s priceless! You didn’t have a life to ruin, hun. Come on, you have, like, no friends. ” Each word hits like another punch to the gut, robbing her of air and twisting her stomach into knots because as much as she lies to herself, Goss has never lied to her. At least something about their dynamic hasn’t changed. The unwanted truth settles hard and blazing in a tight knot in the center of Corinne’s chest, a searing sort of pain radiating outward from it as if one of her ribs has somehow found a way to re-fracture itself. She knows, she knows, she knows she’s alone in this world now that he’s gone, so why is he twisted enough to drag up the fact just to watch her squirm? Corinne is cold, cruel even, won’t argue with someone if they deem it necessary to call her on it, but she knows with a heavy certainty that she isn’t a sadist. And this, what Goss is doing, throwing verbal jabs with malicious precision into every chink in her armor, this is nothing short of sadistic, opening wounds she can’t let bleed freely because she doesn’t know how to, lacks the understanding of things like giving in or letting herself fall for once. He seems to almost delight in it, watching her struggle to breathe through lungs constricted by bruised ribs and a heart of stone with a chisel driven right to the core, and Corinne wonders what she’s done to deserve this even though she knows exactly what the answer is (I can’t believe I was stupid enough to fall for someone like you rings like a funeral dirge in her head and she wants to whispercryscream that It’s not my fault, I can’t be what you want even if it’s what I want too, you can’t possibly understand). “As for your forgiveness… Shove it up your ass, if it can even fit with the stick that’s lodged up there.”

“I… you… this is… fuck you,” Corinne hisses venomously, the lung-flooding pain warping into icy-sharp fury that licks sinuously along her veins and pulls her lips back over her teeth in a feral expression that is more animalistic than human. “You don’t know shit, you don’t know a damn thing about what I’ve been dealing with since that day. I’m a fucking laughingstock, I can’t go to school or training or even sit in my own damned bedroom without someone coming up and giving me a ration of shit. Don’t think I don’t see your stupid little game, Harlow. You’re just a whiny, butthurt little baby who threw a tantrum because I wouldn’t go out with you, and you trashed my life because of it. And I am done with your shit, you got me? I –“

The phantom tingles across the back of her neck whisper a silky almost-warning to her rage-fogged mind, tiny electric impulses prickling over her skin and up her spine until they wrap her brain in a sudden onset of dizziness. Corinne sways on her feet, a slender palm unclenching from its tight fist and pressing shakily over her forehead. She can see the tiny tremors dancing along her fingers, can feels the fuzziness settling over her mind, and underneath all of it an sharp stab of panic digs palpably into her consciousness. She has a minute, maybe less before it all goes dark and she’ll be powerless as to who sees her, and she knows full well by now that if her father withheld her medicine for losing a fight at training that he’d kill her for letting their family’s dirty little secret out into the public eye – Corinne’s used to being a source of shame by now, but only recently has she begun to wonder if she actually deserves to be.

“I… I need to go.” Her voice sounds garbled and far-away, as if she’s hearing it from under several feet of water, and the effort of wrapping her lips around the words is enough to send the world tilting on its axis again, the floor snapping to a sharp angle in her cloudy perspective and making her stumble as she tightens her grip on the straps of her backpack and shuffles with all the speed she can muster down the nearest hallway. Darkness eats teasingly along the edges of her vision and her hands are almost shaking too hard to function by the time they grasp the doorknob of a supply closet, yanking it open and stumbling inside. Corinne can hear every breath rattling weakly in her lungs as she shuts the door with a final-sounding slam, jittery fingers dancing over the cool metal surface of a shelf before finding a screwdriver and clasping the handle between her teeth (the last time she’d blacked out before she could get something in her mouth and had woken up to a mouth full of blood and a very sore tongue) as she slumps against the cold cement surface of the wall. She thinks fleetingly and inexplicably of Goss, probably still standing out in the hallway wondering what the hell just happened, and the world spirals away to blackness before she has time to wonder why he’s on her mind at all.