ooc im morphing this into a human au bc i should have specified that earlier but i didn’t, oOPS

Hazel would forever follow the sound of music.

She would forever love the way the sounds bathed sensation over her skin; guitar strings like honey and drums like a heartbeat. It flowed like water, fell like rain, broke like glass - the notes sang like birds and wailed like thunderstorms while the baseline crashed like lightning, and the melody rolled like thunder. Music created windows to new worlds, opened eyes to souls and set poetry in motion, and she would always, always follow it.

But this time, it just so happened that she was already outside the place where the sweet notes drifted from. It was possible she had followed it here, but...she didn’t know. All Hazel knew was that her hands were shaking and her forehead was pressed against the cool metal of Suite’s door, trying to remember what she was doing and collect herself enough to actually go through with it.

Because hell, there were pieces of her scattered everywhere.

Angry pieces, bitter pieces; pieces sharp with frustration and confusion and...and god knew what else. There was fear, awash with old memories, and there was relief. All-encompassing, consuming relief in watching their idiot Seraph suck in his first breath after a minue and a half of silence. After a minute and a half of just...nothing. After no pulse, afer being able to see the deathly stillness of his body. All this time, Hazel had been so frustrated with him; so upset at him for hurting Margaery and Suite and for drinking and acting like he felt nothing. She was still frustrated with him, really. But walking up to that border, Hazel had gone cold; felt it all drip like ice into her veins, felt it freeze over and she just froze.

There was the terror of never seeing him again - of never hearing him laugh, of never rolling her eyes at his sarcastic wit or listen to his voice drag over the words of ancient classics in the fading evening light. And it washed over her slowly, cruelly, wave by wave drowning her in this horror that was losing what she’d worked so hard to get. It was in that moment, of cold, icy realization, that she realized she wanted to help him, despite everything he’d done, said, or reminded her of.

Then he woke up, staring at her like a lifeline, and looked away. And then everything came rushing back, and Hazel wanted to yell at him.

But now she realized there was something else she needed to do. Something else that had been such a roadblock for her, she could hardly do anything. So she took her shaking hands and curled it into a loose fist, knocking against Suite’s door. When there was no answer, Hazel took a shaking breath, and turned the doorknob, pushing her way in ever so slightly.

“Suite? I...can I talk to you, please?”

★ — hazel — "speech" — eight months — the ascendants — tags — ★

Hazel swallowed as she inched further into the room, eyes tracking Suite’s hands. Her tongue felt thick against the roof of her mouth, unsure of what to do or how to start. She knew what needed to be said, but she didn’t know how to...get there.

Dragging her bottom lip beneath her teeth, Hazel pushed the door shut, listening to the small click of the knob before she turned around. Her eyes found Suite’s hands again, then the walls, following the twine clinging to the paneling. The photos that hung there seemed like such a Suite thing to do, even if Hazel had never physically witnessed her take a picture. The other baubles scattered about the room - seashells, gemstones, geodes - seemed to emit the same sort of Suite claim over the room.

Admittedly, her gaze snagged on the bookshelves, a bubble of bittersweetness rising in her chest even if a small, fond smile tugged at her lips. Everyone in the Ascendants seemed to have a bookshelf...except Hazel. She hoped to fix that one day. Her eyes roamed the spines of the books, hoping to spot something classic or Latin-written, but found nothing that stuck out to her immediately. Hazel let her eyes flutter shut, tipping her head back against the door for a brief moment. God, she missed Bastille and his book collection.

Standing up again and pushing away from the door, Hazel took a step toward the middle of the room, and hesitated. “Nothing. I’m - nothing is wrong.” She stumbled over the words, feeling her heart clog her throat. A fleeting smile appeared in a poor attempt to prove her statement. Find a distraction, find a distraction, a little voice whispered. Hazel blinked, feeling a bit more panicked than before now that she was actively wasting Suite’s time.

Eyes falling to the ukulele next to the other, Hazel’s focus sharpened. She’d always wanted one of those...had always heard they made the happiest sounds. She glanced at Suite, barely inclining her head towards the instrument. “Can - can I - ?” Hazel stammered, sitting down and reaching for it, hoping Suite said yes.

It was smaller than she thought. It seemed more fragile than some people said. Hazel held her breath, reverent, as she settled it in her lap and ran trembling fingers over the smooth wood. “I always wanted one of these,” Hazel murmured, voice hardly above a whisper. “but Mother said music makes her head hurt.” She didn’t look at Suite - just kept her gaze somewhere between the blankets and the instrument. The back and stem of it were still warm from where it rested against Suite, and Hazel clung to it in a way, feeling stupidly desperate as the heat seeped elsewhere.

She ran her fingers lightly over the strings, letting the ridges of the cords trail along her fingerprints. Then she pressed down, wanting to hear the twang of music. Her thumb nearly slipped, as nervous as she was; knowing that this wasn’t hers and she was inexperienced with it and could readily break it if she wasn’t careful.

As the sound escaped into the air, Hazel bit her lip through a watery smile. It was a ridiculous thing to get emotional over, but... “I never thought I’d get to hear it in person,” much less play it. “Never thought I’d get to learn. Mother hates the idea of me making “useless, obstructive noise” all day long.” She breathed, not quite ready to let go of the ukulele.

★ — hazel — "speech" — eight months — the ascendants — tags — ★

Hazel, I know you.

Hazel swallowed thickly, fingers stilling over the strings of the instrument. Did she tell her? Did she dare expose the rest of her broken, shadowed past? Hazel scraped her teeth against her bottom lip, worrying at it like her fingers worried along the lines of the chords. There was so much that could go wrong if she broke, if she gave in. There was so much at stake, so much that Hazel wanted to desperately cling to - so much that she wasn’t ready to lose yet.

Hazel’s gaze fell to the necklace resting against Suite’s collarbone. Her tongue felt dry, her throat raw; she felt that if she opened her mouth to speak, no sound would fall from her lips. “No...no, you don’t know me.” The girl finally whispered, voice hoarse and cracking.

“You think you know me, but you don’t. You don’t know the first thing about where I come from or why I came to the Ascendants, Suite.” She spoke quietly, unknowingly curling into herself. “I didn’t...Mother always said that I’d never be allowed to leave the house, that I didn’t deserve to see the world. I didn’t believe her for a while, y’know?” The ghost of a forced smile danced across her lips. “When she left for the night, and if I had finished my chores, I would sneak out the back door for a little while and touch everything I could get my hands on. Broken pots, dirt, grass, worms, caterpillars, tree bark. I got so many splinters from trying to climb the fence,” She huffed out a wet huff, curling her fingers into her palms. “Those were hard to hide from Mother. I learned pretty quickly that I wasn’t very good with tweezers. I must’ve been...seven or eight, I think.”

Hazel didn’t remember when she set the ukulele aside, leaving it in favor of curling her arms around her knees. She remembered her backyard so vividly: the five foot tall wooden fence, the young maple tree growing against the wall of their house, the assortment of broken flower pots hidden among the overgrown weeds and grass to the left of the back door. How many times had she drawn the small square of land? How many times had she laid there, late at night, staring at the stars and listening to the steady thump of music and drunken yelling from the house down the street?

“I stopped going outside when I was ten. Mother had locked the back door; sealed it shut with something. And I was too scared to go out the front door, because I figured one of the neighbors saw me and told Mother - the front lawn wasn’t any safer.” She shrugged, trying to tap down the memory of her last night outside for a very long time. “I didn’t get dinner for a week after Mother found out I went outside. It wasn’t...so bad, I suppose, because I still got breakfast and lunch. I pretty much made myself dinner anyway, because Mother was usually out. I think what really hit me was... uh...” The first time Mother took a kitchen knife to the inside of your leg. Hazel swallowed thickly.

“Mother used to spank me with the back of metal serving spoons. That started when I was seven and a half. By the time I was eight, she would - she would take anything near her and hit me with it if I did something she didn’t like. I had bruises everywhere...my knees, the backs of my hands, my elbows and arms, my stomach. I wish she would have stuck to the spoons and dull-ended household items.” She breathed, resting her forehead on top of her knees and squeezing her eyes shut.

“She started using sharper things around the time I was nine, I think. Kitchen knives, forks. Scissors. She’d just...she’d get so angry, and she’d grab me by the arm and drag me to the kitchen and open the top drawer and - and -“ Hazel’s breath hiccuped. She snapped her head up, opening haunted, unfocused eyes so she didn’t relive the horrifying memory. But she didn’t look at Suite, either. Just let her gaze fall over her shoulder.

Tears gathered quickly in the corners of her eyes. “The littlest things could set her off, it was - it was horrible. She’d be quiet, and then a floor board would creak and she’d start screaming, Suite, and if I ran, I just got twice the punishment. I spent so many nights teaching myself to bite my tongue, to bandage up my cuts and scrapes and hide them. They made Mother angry, too.” Hazel buried her face in her arms again, rocking back and forth ever so slightly. Suite must have thought she was an abomination, a freak by now, but Hazel was too deep into it to shut her mouth just yet. “I think the worst place she would put me was the coat closet, where we kept all the cleaning supplies. It was pitch black and dusty and cramped; it reeked of chemicals and I think that if you shone a flashlight in there during the day, there would be spots of blood all over the floor.”

For a minute Hazel just sat there, face burning with shame as she quietly sucked in breath after shallow breath, knowing Suite was looking at her with some sort of horror. “I’m so weak, Suite, I was so tired of being afraid...so I ran, ran as fast as I could and ended up here. Didn’t matter - I’m still weak and I’m still a coward and I’m still afraid; nothing’s changed!” Her voice was rising, the jittering in her fingers spreading to the rest of her body. “I’m still...” Her voice cracked. “I’m still covered in scars.”

Hazel didn’t register her offer; though if she had, she would have refused profusely, vehemently against taking something that Suite used so frequently for comfort. What she did register was the gentle rocking of her body and the utter despair and misery coursing through her veins, knowing that Suite would never look at her the same way again.

“But...there’s something you have to understand,” She croaked. Something that might make you see. “Mother wasn’t always mean. When I was little - really little, she’d take me out to the front yard and blow bubbles for me. She’d paint my fingernails. She’d bring me these colorful little toys from the store across the street. It went away gradually; started with the smell of alcohol that clung to her clothes. Then she started staying out every night, and would come home stoned and sloshed and how she didn’t die from overdose, I don’t know.” Hazel’s heart ached; ached for the old memories she could hardly remember now, for the memories she was starting to think were fever dreams. Her heart also ached in a new way: a way that was fresh and desperate, because someone else in her life had recently started coming back with the smell of alcohol clinging to his clothes...

“I don’t want to hate her.” Hazel admitted, jerkily wiping at the tears that slid down her cheeks. “I can’t hate her because it wasn’t really her fault. She was a good person once. She really was. I just...I didn’t help her. And now I’m just terrified, Suite. I’m so scared. I know people here wouldn’t hurt me, but every time someone lays their hand on me I can’t feel anything but her nails and the kitchen knife and hear her voice; it was always so angry at me, Suite, she was always so angry. I want to get better, but I can’t get the images out of my head - I don’t know how to get rid of them.” She cried quietly, letting her head hit her forearms. 

★ — hazel — "speech" — eight months — the ascendants — tags — ★