Work Text:
Forgive me, Anakt, for I have sinned by dreaming tonight.
But she always does. Grief is the blade that drives her into oblivion over and over again, and every moment she spends in the waking world is agony, renewed in the blood of her lover. She’d made Sua her religion and laid her on the altar— now, she walks free in the wake of her sacrifice. ( at what cost? )
Sacrifice , a word that tastes like poison.
Mizi curls her arms around herself, burrowing deeper into the blanket, and closes her eyes. The rest of the prayer dies on her lips.
In my slumber, she comes back to me in the stars.
“I know everything about you,” Mizi giggles, and is delighted when the edges of Sua’s mouth curves up.
“Not…everything…” she responds instead, halfheartedly. But she’s not bothered; instead, she holds her closer. “The important things, then.”
Mizi mumbles it against her hair, words blurring together, yet so achingly sure. Everything she likes. What she hates, too— why she’s become the thing she is—
“Though,” she pauses, haltingly, “I’ve never liked the way you refer to yourself as some…creature.”
( Even if they keep us like animals. )
“You’re a person,” she rasps. “You’re my person.”
Sua doesn’t move from where she’s enfolded within Mizi’s embrace, throat agonisingly tight. “Is that so?”
( Even if tonight is the last night that we see each other, )
Mizi bites her lip so savagely it bleeds, and nods.
“I make you happy,” Sua whispers at last, eyes half-lidded, fluttering. “don’t I?”
“…Yes,” she confesses, pulling back slightly, and her lover watches, half-adoring, half-confused, when the first tears slip down her face. “You do.”
And she will not move, yet. Not when she has to let her go in six hours. Mizi wraps her tighter in her arms, and does not think about how she’s holding her as tightly as a grave.
( I think I love you to death. )
There are times when Sua doesn’t respond to her.
Mizi’s fingers reach out desperately, a butterfly seeking her lover, and she aches, so painfully. Feels her heart pounding painfully against the lattice of her ribs, feels like she might die.
“You’re haunting me,” the confession blooms from her lips— the clematis flower she adores, breaking painfully past the shackle around her throat. She should’ve told her years ago. Perhaps it would’ve sounded less like a funeral chant.
Because I feel as if I am in love with a ghost.
Sua stares ahead, impassive. The blood pooling at her feet laps at the edge of Mizi’s shoes hungrily.
When you love someone, it never goes away.
“My Sua,” she tries to say, lips shaping the words— but blood swells up within the dark of her throat and she allows her lover to shush her, silken touch brushing the hair away from her face.
Sometimes, she’s the one who dies. And oh, it always hurts. No one said it was easy, after all, and she can still feel the ebb and flow of her breath shallowing, adoring gasp a painful rattle within her ribcage.
But Sua’s hands, pressed against her face—
—This doesn’t hurt.
“Can I…” she asks, heartbeat flickering, “stay here?”
She stares at her, dark eyes unreadable. Mizi’s blood drips from her hands. “Yes,” she whispers, “you can stay here as long as you want.”
This doesn’t hurt.
Slowly, her lips form a smile. Sua’s hands sweep over her eyelids, setting her at rest. Now, she never has to leave.
“You left me,” she accuses. Gentle, gentle , Sua gathers her in. The wordless question: is this okay?
She turns her head and presses her cheek into the fabric of her shirt. Swollen eyes slide shut and she struggles to breathe, clawing at Sua, grappling desperately at a phantom. “You left me.”
“...I’m sorry,” she croaks, throat aching and scraped raw from the confession, “I know it hurts.”
“ You left me ,” she repeats fiercely. Mizi knows she’s definitely dreaming, because she’s wearing her glasses, lenses blurring with the salt-streak of angry tears. “How could you? I needed you.”
Sua pulls back a fraction, and she watches as the words drag something up in her eyes; a hollowness, consumed alive.
She bows her head, and brushes her lips over Mizi’s forehead in a kiss— so soft, and it makes tears slip down their face. “I know.”
Mizi trembles, pushing forward into her lover’s embrace once more. Shoulders shaking, Sua holds her, a grief unspeakable shadowed beneath the line of her lashes when she speaks again.
“I’m sorry.”
A hand places the bowl down and Mizi acknowledges it with the slightest tilt of her head, dulled eyes flickering as she lifts the spoon to her lips methodically.
“Eat up,” the rebel mutters. Steely eyes scan her in something that could be concern— but Hyuna’s expression remains as an unknown till the end because Mizi does not attempt to seek it. Barely reacts, in fact; other than the robotic motion of feeding herself. In this agonising state of being seen , even if it is just by one person, she is as possessive of her grief as she had been over Sua, and so her face remains impassive.
“Hey.” Hyuna tries, valiantly, to talk to her sometimes. In other circumstances, perhaps Mizi would allow herself to feel guilt for closing herself off like this. She doesn’t mean to hurt the other— they could’ve even been friends, once. But she can’t bear this for much longer, already aching to finish her food to an acceptable degree and retreat to try and fall asleep once more.
Sua’s face gets blurrier every time she returns to her— she pushes the thought away, and swallows another mouthful.
“—you alright?”
I think I stopped breathing when you left.
“What would you even do without me,” Sua scolds mildly, though her voice softens impossibly when she reaches out to brush the tips of Mizi’s hair wonderingly.
“Why do you need to ask that?” Mizi huffs, golden eyes alight with all the laughter that her breath can’t spare. They’re lying on the grass again, and the frames of her glasses are slightly too big for her face, knocked askew by the force of her collision with the other. She’d tackled Sua over earlier, dizzy with delight at the both of them passing together again. “I have you. Right here with me.”
“And what happens when I leave you?”
Mizi’s embrace tightens around her, fighting the panic down. “I don’t know, are you going to leave me?”
Just let me have this. Anakt, please.
Sua opens her mouth, but Mizi drowns the response out and allows herself to smile. Here, in the space between her arms, there is heaven.
She wakes.
-end-