05-19-2018, 04:23 PM
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★ WHEN MY HEART IS MADE FROM GOLD AND FORGIVENESS SEEMS TOO BOLD
ooc human au because i have no self control. these will usually be in human au's because,, human au's, man; also this is hella long, so if you want to skip the intro, you can find the star and start reading from there : ) also trigger warning for verbal and physical abuse and a panic attack. If you're sensitive to that, skip the flashback written in italics. there will be a tl;dr at the end!
The sun was falling.
Its descent was gentle and consistent, graceful with the rotation of the earth. With it went the colors of the sky: blue to lavender, melting to rose and magenta and the barest hints of tangerine where the sunshine cut into the horizon like melted butter. It was delicious and mesmerizing with its clouds of cotton pulled thin over invisible pegs, their edges glowing with the sun's kiss.
Hazel had never yearned for art supplies as much as she did now. She wanted to paint the sunset over the metal walls in her room; she wanted to paint the peach of the skyline and the wisp of the clouds beneath the constellations spattered across the ceiling like freckles. She wanted to paint every square inch of boring metal with color, so she would feel warm and comforted instead of imprisoned.
She decided that she would paint one wall at a time, so that she could let the paint dry and then move about the filing cabinets and other assorted organizational tools she had sorted. Hazel desperately wished that none of the cabinets were there at all, and that she might instead have a bookshelf like Bastille did. That one day, she might be able to keep a small library, as opposed to the drawer she had cleaned out and stored the borrowed leather-bound classics in. She also wished that the cabinets would never leave, as she had never felt such a purpose in her room before. Her old room was stricken and bare with the exceptions of her crafts and jewelry lying about on the wooden panels.
Altogether, her room was far from the perfection she had so idealistically imagined. The project itself would be an evolution, and Hazel was near certain it wouldn't come out the way she envisioned. It didn't matter, though - not really. Any sort of project that took up vast majorities of her time were about the journey more than the final product.
From where Hazel sat now, the sunset was supposed to be wonderful end to a long, exhausting day. It had taken the majority of her morning and afternoon to teach Arion that he had his own room (one which Hazel wanted to paint a mural of Utah's plateau's on) which had a softer floor. The Thoroughbred seemed intent on sleeping in Hazel's room, which involved recklessly stumbling down the staircase several times a day. The rest of her time was occupied by shuffling through the last of the debris in the corners of her room, including broken lamps, deteriorating binders, folders, and more old notebooks and paper.
Her arms and legs were covered in dust and bits of grime from her time spent kneeling on the floor. Her hair, burning molten gold in the dying sunlight, was frizzier than usual; the curls she tucked behind her ears popped out within seconds like a box spring. Her body felt tight and cramped from being in her room all day, and yet she still sat with her arms hugging her knees to her chest and her chin resting in their valley. Her mind and body were tired, but she dropped her head back against the observatory wall as the frustrating twitch to be productive tingled at the base of her skull. There was an itch starting just under her skin, crawling between her muscles and bones and making her fingers clammy and jittery.
★ Hazel's teeth scraped against her bottom lip as her irritation with her own mind and body grew, her nails curling into her skin. She rationally wanted sleep, and irrationally wanted to work until her vision blurred. Screw it, she thought, it won't matter if I work late. Partly because Mother wasn't here to yell and lash out at her for making a ruckus all night, and partly because there was no way for her to be conscious of the time.
Mother never would have let her out at this time of evening, anyway.
The sixteen year old pushed herself up and the thought of Mother away, making her way back inside, mind ruffled and bordering on something she couldn't quite name. There were NPC's talking in the hallway and lounging on the stairs, and each of them hardly looked her way when she passed, settling a drop of discomfort in her stomach. It wasn't that she was unfamiliar with being ignored that made her uncomfortable, but instead that she was too familiar with the sensation that set her out of ease.
Hazel swung herself around the corner of her doorframe, out of sorts and unsatisfied. Her room was still bland and post-apocalyptic looking, the fluorescent lights above radiating a harsh, unearthly glow. Until Hazel could find another light source, she was forced to use the overhead lamps, or face working in complete darkness. She hated it.
Fingers curling against her palm and jaw set to grind her teeth and drag them harshly over her bottom lip, Hazel made a noise of utter frustration. It came out warbled; she could feel the irrational anger bubbling hot in her chest. It wasn't a foreign feeling - after all, she hadn't been born as a child that would submit at the first step. Hazel had to train the anger out of herself, or risk Mother's nails and kitchen utensils scraping against her skin. Risk the taste of copper in her mouth and the streaks of red against the sink bowl; the drops of crimson on the hardwood floor and the bitter fear infecting her every nerve that would follow her while she slept. Risk the hurtful words that would pour from lips painted with whiskey and gin; the tears that would stain the stolen bandages as she wrapped stinging wounds with shaking hands.
Breathe, her mind whispered, urging her fingers to uncurl. Breathe. In - two, three, four - a shaky intake of breath, slipping past her rapidly closing airway - out - five, six, seven, eight - ease back, shoulders falling, eyes closing - nine, ten. Jaw relaxing, muscles softening. Leave it. Move on. Hazel told herself, forcing her feet to cross the room.
Mind distant, she reached for the last lamp that sat on top of the tallest filing cabinet. It was an ordinary desk lamp, its spine flexible and light bulb coated with dust from lack of use. Hazel had to stand on her toes to reach it. When her fingers curled around the stem, she pulled, eyes glassy and movement slow. Gravity tugged when the lamp slid of the edge of the cabinet - and then, the barest stutter in movement, where the plug caught between the back of the structure and the wall.
Hazel frowned, and tugged harder; too hard. She jerked, the lamp slipping out of her grip and crashing to the floor. Glass splintered, spinning in every direction. Hazel shrieked, stumbling back until her shoulder blades hit the opposite wall. Her ears rang with the sound of shattering glass, pulse skyrocketing and heart slamming against her chest as her vision blurred and her mind fogged over - carried her somewhere old and painful.
She was reaching for the faucet handle on the sink, leaning on the cold counter top with her other arm. She wasn't tall enough to reach it without standing on her toes, and Mother hated it when she left the water running. Her fingertips brushed against the handle, pushing it back. There was a split second where she glanced at the window, blinking at the reflection of a dark-skinned little girl with bushy hair the color of peaches and a bruise on her jaw.
Then she was rocking back on her heels, ready to dry her hands off and start sweeping, when her elbow knocked into the glass vase filled with dead flowers next to the sink. Hazel watched in horror as the vase tottered and slipped, shattering on the tile floor beneath her feet. Water and long-dead flowers and glass spilled in every direction, and Hazel felt her heart jump into her throat.
She had just destroyed Mother's favorite vase. The vase she nonsensically kept by the kitchen sink, only refilling it with living flowers every month and a half. The vase that was practically religion. Hazel was never to touch it. She wasn't to clean it, or even look at it. And now...it lay in pieces on the kitchen floor.
"I can fix it before Mother gets home," She whispered to the deathly still air. "I can fix it." She couldn't; there was no way in hell. But the terror rising in her chest was overwhelming, because Mother would be home soon, and find Hazel. She moved frantically, heedless of the glass bits biting into the bottom of her feet. Nobody was around to tell her to be quiet, but she stifled the noises of pain anyway.
She bent, reaching out to pick up the largest bits of glass, when the front door opened and slammed shut. Hazel froze, her heart seizing. There was a thump of something dropping against the floor - probably a coat, which meant the person was inebriated to the point where she missed the coat rack - and then Mother stumbled around the corner. Her brown hair was a disheveled mess, and her pale skin looked greasy with makeup. She leaned heavily on the door frame, and Hazel could see the bright pink nail polish chipping on the tips of her fingers.
Then there was the low rumble of her voice, hoarse and dangerous: "What," she slurred, "did you do?"
Hazel didn't move, didn't say a word. It would only make it worse. The barest slip of a whimper escaped her lips, and she felt the blood drain from her face as Mother started towards her, unsteady in her red pumps.
Her vision blurred (whether it was from tears or holding her breath for so long, she didn't know) and then Mother had her by the arm, glass crunching beneath her heels and nails digging into Hazel's skin. "I feed you, and clothe you, and this 's what you give me?" She hissed. "This 's what I get? You, breaking m'favorite flower pot? You're a brat - useless 'n greedy 'n...selfish." Mother frowned, lips pressed thin with her anger. Hazel shrank back, the stench of her breath overpowering and the fear rising so far she could taste it on the back of her tongue.
She cried out when Mother's nails raked down her arm as she bent down to Hazel's eye level. If the tears and pain etched into the child's face affected her, she showed no sign of it. "Do you know that you're - that you're -" She paused, drunken mind too slow to find the right word. "- adopted? You're not even [i]mine, brat. Someone just left you on my doorstep. Be grateful that I picked you up, b'cause you would have died if I hadn't. You owe me your life, but instead of thanking me you whine and bitch and cry and complain." She seethed.
Hazel's heart twisted. "P-Please, Mother, I didn't - i-it was an accident, I was cleaning the dishes like you -" The startling [/i]smack that rang through the air interrupted Hazel's plea, stinging her cheek as her head was whipped to the side by the force of impact. She cried out, shock dripping like the blood from the scratches on her arms.
"Quit begging, you miserable girl. I know it wasn' an accident. Doesn't matter, because you can go to your room after you clean this up." Mother yanked Hazel closer to her face, fingernails only digging harder as the little girl squirmed. "No dinner for three days, you hear? This is what you get, you waste of space." With that, the woman shoved Hazel away from her, sending the girl crashing into the glass. Hazel bit her tongue, trying to keep from shrieking as she gingerly raised her shaking hands to pick out the shards of glass from her palms, fingers slippery with her own blood.
She kept her gaze averted while Mother stared disdainfully at her. Everything hurt: her arms, her face, her legs, her feet, her head. She was already hungry, but knew better than to try and steal food from the pantry. So she waited, bloody and obedient and trying so hard to be the daughter that Mother wanted. And later that night while locked in her room, she would bandage her wounds as best she could in the pitch black.
Hazel ripped herself out of the memory, trembling and unsteady as she slid down the wall, the latches on her overall shorts scraping harshly against the metal. Tears dripped, steady and fast, down her cheeks as she curled in on herself, hands sliding into her hair to scratch uselessly at her scalp. Eyes squeezing as tightly shut as they would go, Hazel felt the prickle of those glass shards in her skin, and the sting of Mother's nails against her skin. The sound of glass against the floor echoed off the walls, the crunch of broken pieces under Mother's heels ingrained in her brain.
The sounds got louder, closer, had Hazel pressing herself as close to the wall as she could get and slapping her hands over her ears to get away from it, to block it out. Her body felt like it was on fire, burning with the glass embedded in her feet like all those years ago and flickering with her pulse speeding through her veins.
"Leave me alone!" She yelled into the noise that roared in her ears, borderline desperate and panicked. "Leave me alone!"
tl;dr Hazel is in her room, and it's pretty late in the evening. She's cleaning up and breaks a lamp, which triggers the memory of a very bad experience she had when she broke her mother's favorite glass vase. Now she's in the middle of a panic attack. Also, I really suck at tl;dr's. Apparently. 2278 words.
The sun was falling.
Its descent was gentle and consistent, graceful with the rotation of the earth. With it went the colors of the sky: blue to lavender, melting to rose and magenta and the barest hints of tangerine where the sunshine cut into the horizon like melted butter. It was delicious and mesmerizing with its clouds of cotton pulled thin over invisible pegs, their edges glowing with the sun's kiss.
Hazel had never yearned for art supplies as much as she did now. She wanted to paint the sunset over the metal walls in her room; she wanted to paint the peach of the skyline and the wisp of the clouds beneath the constellations spattered across the ceiling like freckles. She wanted to paint every square inch of boring metal with color, so she would feel warm and comforted instead of imprisoned.
She decided that she would paint one wall at a time, so that she could let the paint dry and then move about the filing cabinets and other assorted organizational tools she had sorted. Hazel desperately wished that none of the cabinets were there at all, and that she might instead have a bookshelf like Bastille did. That one day, she might be able to keep a small library, as opposed to the drawer she had cleaned out and stored the borrowed leather-bound classics in. She also wished that the cabinets would never leave, as she had never felt such a purpose in her room before. Her old room was stricken and bare with the exceptions of her crafts and jewelry lying about on the wooden panels.
Altogether, her room was far from the perfection she had so idealistically imagined. The project itself would be an evolution, and Hazel was near certain it wouldn't come out the way she envisioned. It didn't matter, though - not really. Any sort of project that took up vast majorities of her time were about the journey more than the final product.
From where Hazel sat now, the sunset was supposed to be wonderful end to a long, exhausting day. It had taken the majority of her morning and afternoon to teach Arion that he had his own room (one which Hazel wanted to paint a mural of Utah's plateau's on) which had a softer floor. The Thoroughbred seemed intent on sleeping in Hazel's room, which involved recklessly stumbling down the staircase several times a day. The rest of her time was occupied by shuffling through the last of the debris in the corners of her room, including broken lamps, deteriorating binders, folders, and more old notebooks and paper.
Her arms and legs were covered in dust and bits of grime from her time spent kneeling on the floor. Her hair, burning molten gold in the dying sunlight, was frizzier than usual; the curls she tucked behind her ears popped out within seconds like a box spring. Her body felt tight and cramped from being in her room all day, and yet she still sat with her arms hugging her knees to her chest and her chin resting in their valley. Her mind and body were tired, but she dropped her head back against the observatory wall as the frustrating twitch to be productive tingled at the base of her skull. There was an itch starting just under her skin, crawling between her muscles and bones and making her fingers clammy and jittery.
★ Hazel's teeth scraped against her bottom lip as her irritation with her own mind and body grew, her nails curling into her skin. She rationally wanted sleep, and irrationally wanted to work until her vision blurred. Screw it, she thought, it won't matter if I work late. Partly because Mother wasn't here to yell and lash out at her for making a ruckus all night, and partly because there was no way for her to be conscious of the time.
Mother never would have let her out at this time of evening, anyway.
The sixteen year old pushed herself up and the thought of Mother away, making her way back inside, mind ruffled and bordering on something she couldn't quite name. There were NPC's talking in the hallway and lounging on the stairs, and each of them hardly looked her way when she passed, settling a drop of discomfort in her stomach. It wasn't that she was unfamiliar with being ignored that made her uncomfortable, but instead that she was too familiar with the sensation that set her out of ease.
Hazel swung herself around the corner of her doorframe, out of sorts and unsatisfied. Her room was still bland and post-apocalyptic looking, the fluorescent lights above radiating a harsh, unearthly glow. Until Hazel could find another light source, she was forced to use the overhead lamps, or face working in complete darkness. She hated it.
Fingers curling against her palm and jaw set to grind her teeth and drag them harshly over her bottom lip, Hazel made a noise of utter frustration. It came out warbled; she could feel the irrational anger bubbling hot in her chest. It wasn't a foreign feeling - after all, she hadn't been born as a child that would submit at the first step. Hazel had to train the anger out of herself, or risk Mother's nails and kitchen utensils scraping against her skin. Risk the taste of copper in her mouth and the streaks of red against the sink bowl; the drops of crimson on the hardwood floor and the bitter fear infecting her every nerve that would follow her while she slept. Risk the hurtful words that would pour from lips painted with whiskey and gin; the tears that would stain the stolen bandages as she wrapped stinging wounds with shaking hands.
Breathe, her mind whispered, urging her fingers to uncurl. Breathe. In - two, three, four - a shaky intake of breath, slipping past her rapidly closing airway - out - five, six, seven, eight - ease back, shoulders falling, eyes closing - nine, ten. Jaw relaxing, muscles softening. Leave it. Move on. Hazel told herself, forcing her feet to cross the room.
Mind distant, she reached for the last lamp that sat on top of the tallest filing cabinet. It was an ordinary desk lamp, its spine flexible and light bulb coated with dust from lack of use. Hazel had to stand on her toes to reach it. When her fingers curled around the stem, she pulled, eyes glassy and movement slow. Gravity tugged when the lamp slid of the edge of the cabinet - and then, the barest stutter in movement, where the plug caught between the back of the structure and the wall.
Hazel frowned, and tugged harder; too hard. She jerked, the lamp slipping out of her grip and crashing to the floor. Glass splintered, spinning in every direction. Hazel shrieked, stumbling back until her shoulder blades hit the opposite wall. Her ears rang with the sound of shattering glass, pulse skyrocketing and heart slamming against her chest as her vision blurred and her mind fogged over - carried her somewhere old and painful.
She was reaching for the faucet handle on the sink, leaning on the cold counter top with her other arm. She wasn't tall enough to reach it without standing on her toes, and Mother hated it when she left the water running. Her fingertips brushed against the handle, pushing it back. There was a split second where she glanced at the window, blinking at the reflection of a dark-skinned little girl with bushy hair the color of peaches and a bruise on her jaw.
Then she was rocking back on her heels, ready to dry her hands off and start sweeping, when her elbow knocked into the glass vase filled with dead flowers next to the sink. Hazel watched in horror as the vase tottered and slipped, shattering on the tile floor beneath her feet. Water and long-dead flowers and glass spilled in every direction, and Hazel felt her heart jump into her throat.
She had just destroyed Mother's favorite vase. The vase she nonsensically kept by the kitchen sink, only refilling it with living flowers every month and a half. The vase that was practically religion. Hazel was never to touch it. She wasn't to clean it, or even look at it. And now...it lay in pieces on the kitchen floor.
"I can fix it before Mother gets home," She whispered to the deathly still air. "I can fix it." She couldn't; there was no way in hell. But the terror rising in her chest was overwhelming, because Mother would be home soon, and find Hazel. She moved frantically, heedless of the glass bits biting into the bottom of her feet. Nobody was around to tell her to be quiet, but she stifled the noises of pain anyway.
She bent, reaching out to pick up the largest bits of glass, when the front door opened and slammed shut. Hazel froze, her heart seizing. There was a thump of something dropping against the floor - probably a coat, which meant the person was inebriated to the point where she missed the coat rack - and then Mother stumbled around the corner. Her brown hair was a disheveled mess, and her pale skin looked greasy with makeup. She leaned heavily on the door frame, and Hazel could see the bright pink nail polish chipping on the tips of her fingers.
Then there was the low rumble of her voice, hoarse and dangerous: "What," she slurred, "did you do?"
Hazel didn't move, didn't say a word. It would only make it worse. The barest slip of a whimper escaped her lips, and she felt the blood drain from her face as Mother started towards her, unsteady in her red pumps.
Her vision blurred (whether it was from tears or holding her breath for so long, she didn't know) and then Mother had her by the arm, glass crunching beneath her heels and nails digging into Hazel's skin. "I feed you, and clothe you, and this 's what you give me?" She hissed. "This 's what I get? You, breaking m'favorite flower pot? You're a brat - useless 'n greedy 'n...selfish." Mother frowned, lips pressed thin with her anger. Hazel shrank back, the stench of her breath overpowering and the fear rising so far she could taste it on the back of her tongue.
She cried out when Mother's nails raked down her arm as she bent down to Hazel's eye level. If the tears and pain etched into the child's face affected her, she showed no sign of it. "Do you know that you're - that you're -" She paused, drunken mind too slow to find the right word. "- adopted? You're not even [i]mine, brat. Someone just left you on my doorstep. Be grateful that I picked you up, b'cause you would have died if I hadn't. You owe me your life, but instead of thanking me you whine and bitch and cry and complain." She seethed.
Hazel's heart twisted. "P-Please, Mother, I didn't - i-it was an accident, I was cleaning the dishes like you -" The startling [/i]smack that rang through the air interrupted Hazel's plea, stinging her cheek as her head was whipped to the side by the force of impact. She cried out, shock dripping like the blood from the scratches on her arms.
"Quit begging, you miserable girl. I know it wasn' an accident. Doesn't matter, because you can go to your room after you clean this up." Mother yanked Hazel closer to her face, fingernails only digging harder as the little girl squirmed. "No dinner for three days, you hear? This is what you get, you waste of space." With that, the woman shoved Hazel away from her, sending the girl crashing into the glass. Hazel bit her tongue, trying to keep from shrieking as she gingerly raised her shaking hands to pick out the shards of glass from her palms, fingers slippery with her own blood.
She kept her gaze averted while Mother stared disdainfully at her. Everything hurt: her arms, her face, her legs, her feet, her head. She was already hungry, but knew better than to try and steal food from the pantry. So she waited, bloody and obedient and trying so hard to be the daughter that Mother wanted. And later that night while locked in her room, she would bandage her wounds as best she could in the pitch black.
Hazel ripped herself out of the memory, trembling and unsteady as she slid down the wall, the latches on her overall shorts scraping harshly against the metal. Tears dripped, steady and fast, down her cheeks as she curled in on herself, hands sliding into her hair to scratch uselessly at her scalp. Eyes squeezing as tightly shut as they would go, Hazel felt the prickle of those glass shards in her skin, and the sting of Mother's nails against her skin. The sound of glass against the floor echoed off the walls, the crunch of broken pieces under Mother's heels ingrained in her brain.
The sounds got louder, closer, had Hazel pressing herself as close to the wall as she could get and slapping her hands over her ears to get away from it, to block it out. Her body felt like it was on fire, burning with the glass embedded in her feet like all those years ago and flickering with her pulse speeding through her veins.
"Leave me alone!" She yelled into the noise that roared in her ears, borderline desperate and panicked. "Leave me alone!"
tl;dr Hazel is in her room, and it's pretty late in the evening. She's cleaning up and breaks a lamp, which triggers the memory of a very bad experience she had when she broke her mother's favorite glass vase. Now she's in the middle of a panic attack. Also, I really suck at tl;dr's. Apparently. 2278 words.
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WITH EVERY HEARTBEAT I HAVE LEFT
i will defend your every breath; i'll do better