Work Text:
She wonders, tentatively, what it would be like; the knife, sharper than biting words, running down the other's veins. Silence, nothing but breathing, as she carefully slices in to find it all, to see everything; the tendons, the muscles, the bone and core; to get under the skin and truly see.
Or perhaps the other way around, bared more than naked? She wonders, tentatively, what that would be like.
Not the way reality plays it, blood and pain and mess and screaming. There's no point to that. Just peeling down, layer by layer, through the onion-skin of another person, trying to understand, trying to see. There's a thousand faces, a thousand masks, and she wants to peel them all away and keep them, and go deeper and deeper and find the core that binds all these impossibilities together.
But could they be put together after that, after ripping too deep? And will that not show it all, still leave her confused and desperate and lonely?
What would it be like to feel that herself, to be peeled away layer by layer and known that deeply? Terrifying, painful? Relieving?
Perhaps if she trusts them enough, cares enough. Perhaps then she can let them see.
What would it take to want to see? Not just the vague curiosities of do other people fear this? feel this? Is this normal, is this wrong? No, not those, not just those. Flaying open both light and shadow, the impossible twine of eternal greys, reaching deep into ancient pains and passing worries, forever loves and wants and the passing fancies of the moment.
It isn't the pain she wants. Pain is something to learn from; seeking it is something to be careful of. She wants the knowing. But if all things worth knowing cost pain, perhaps this would be worth the price.
What would that be, to know or be known? To cradle yourself in another, or to cradle in turn?