infernal edge | d3

She was gone by the time Fern got home; no note.

But she knew that she was gone gone because the picture of them that had been on the fridge was gone and so was her toothbrush. So she did a load of their laundry and watched Burdock's tank top tangle itself up with her bra straps and a leg of her jeans and she put her head in her hands and cried.

But that had only been for a bit because when the buzzer went off on the washer, her eyes were already dry.

She told herself that she didn't need Burdock anyway, that she hardly even loved her but it wasn't true. Fern could hear the sound of her heart cracking like glass beneath her heels with every step she took through their shitty little apartment.

That night when she laid down to sleep in their bed all she could feel was the absence of Burdock's body tangled up with hers and she wished she'd just fucking said something the night before when she could feel Burdock beside her, too quiet. She should have rested her chin on her shoulder and just asked her what was on her mind.

She hadn't.

Fern slept odd, kind of in half. It was too quiet, no gentle snores from Burdock beside her, no rolling against her in her sleep, just the moon slowly creeping across the end of the bed until it set and then the sun began to rise and she knew that she might as well get up.

The milk she'd bought at the market while Burdock had slipped off the day before still sat out on the counter in the morning. Fern stared at it for a long a moment, eyes falling on her keys sat right beside it. "BITCH," she yelled and punched the carton onto the kitchen floor where it then burst and spilt day-old milk all over.

She'd always been bad at goodbyes because she never knew how to say it. It was easier to just keep people at arm's length so it didn't matter when they left her but with Burdock, it'd been different. Fern loved her, had built a life with her even. Yeah, maybe the little kingdom they ran only extended as far as the end of the street and a gun had become a better piece of punctuation than a period, but it had been a life, it'd been something and Burdock had just left her, no. fucking. note.

Which was fine, she'd just have to go and get her right?

Fern gazed at the milk on the ground and watched as it slowly expanded towards her bare feet. She'd just get a stupid permit and go get Burdock herself. Not that she had any skills other than shooting a gun and smuggling shit through Three's underground. Burdock had probably realized that Fern couldn't follow her, she'd probably been happy for it.

But Fern had been born stubborn, had refused to come out of her mother for three extra days until her mom was cursing her very infernal existence. She'd been named eponymously. The woman had probably been happy to leave her on the steps of that orphanage and Fern didn't blame her for it, never had. The Matrons in the boarding house had been fond of telling her just what kind of little demon she was growing up.

Maybe that little demon was what made Burdock just leave her like that.

Fern stared at the empty spot on the fridge and then opened the freezer and pulled out the gun in the door. She took bullets out of the cutlery drawer and a granola bar from the cupboard.

Maybe she didn't have a permit, but there had to be spots in the fence that were dead zones and Fern wasn't afraid of a bit of a shock anyway.

Fucking Burdock, making her fucking work for her.