Bittersweet - Bubbline AU

Chapter Twenty Six - Petals/Flowers for Flames

He, for not knowing how to forget the  love of his life. Her, because she wanted to stop panicking for everything else, but she didn't want Simon himself to disappear. Maybe she was just too young to understand that it was not the best strategy.

I wonder if you ever quit

Like you wanted

I bet you did, I bet you did

I bet you did, I bet you did

How you're doing

The chords died little by little in the wide space of the room, until they died for good. The remaining sound was the unstoppable noise of the city, permanently alive outside.

As usual, she leaned on the balcony and watched the city below. In a way, she was no longer so distressed by the frustration of having seen Simon hallucinate. It had been a lot easier to deal with that with Bonnibel present all the time, in a way.

But she was still in agony over the next few days. Even though she wanted to avoid looking, even though she didn't want to watch the movement, she knew very well that people were already arriving at the neighbors' house.

This time, it was much more angry than sadness that the situation caused her.

She couldn't say whether it was good or bad.

[...]

It was on Saturday when she arrived from therapy. It was a scene that she already knew well.

When she entered the kitchen, the first thing she saw was Marshall Lee throwing a piece of paper in the trash, completely upset. When he darted into his room, she could see his hands trembling. He avoided acknowledging her presence, but that's okay. She knew that he would simply collapse if he had to look her in the eyes.

Then there was the sound of something breaking glass, and her mother's hard steps up the stairs to her office.

She didn't need to read the contents of the letter, because it was the same every year. Sometimes it was several times a year, with a space of a few months, but at that time of the year, it was a certain. Even so, she went to the trash can, recovered it and read it anyway.

Every beginning of the year, a letter was left in the Abadeers correspondence, signed by the Smithes. Their family met at the neighboring house every year and held a memorial in Ash's name on his birthday. And every year the same letter arrived: another apology, another attempt to offer some kind of compensation. Often an offer to pay for the girl's psychological treatment expenses.

Meghan no longer knew how to make it clear that she just wanted them to leave her family alone, to stop reopening the wound, that it was too heavy to imagine a group of people celebrating the life of someone who had completely dismantled their own.

The first time, Marceline had a hysterical fit. She ended up at their door, screaming at the top of her lungs that she wanted them to have the same fate as their son if they thought they could buy her forgiveness. She still had a scar right at the height of her uterus, a considerably deep cut, the result of what she did when she was finally alone in her room, still terrified of the very recent memories being relived so suddenly.

Over and over again, the reactions were just as obscure. Days locked in her room. An incident that ended up in the hospital for the incredible record of four whole days without eating anything. A guitar broken in a fit of rage. And a lot of sadness in general.

But this time there was only the feeling of exhaustion. She was tired of that repetition. She had already been sick of equal days, with equal problems, equal relapses and equal attempts to forget that in the least healthy ways possible.

So many things had changed, but his ghost was still there, hidden in the corners, trying to ruin everything in some way.

But she knew where she still allowed him to wield power. She knew where the breach was.

She went into the room, picked up something that was buried in the dresser drawer, and left the house again.

It was past time to put an end to it.

[...]

""What's up, you piece of shit?"

The mere image of the boy's headstone made her stomach churn. She wanted to dig, open the coffin and punch him in the face. Even if it just meant hurting her knuckles on the exposed skull.

The withered rose in her lap made her skin tingle, even over the thick layer of her winter pants. She was sitting on the floor, facing the headstone, her cold gaze glued to the name engraved on the stone.

"I should never have accepted that. Much less kept this shit until now" - she murmured, throwing the flower on the floor in front of her. The flower he had given her when he asked her out for the first time.  "I shouldn't keep a lot of shit that I keep because of you."

She continued to look at the dried flower on the floor. She had kept the plant between the pages of a diary on the day she won it, and after all that had happened, she was never able to gather enough strength to put her hand on it, or even look at it so she could throw it away. This was the first time she had touched the flower without freaking out.

There was a strange sadness in looking at that withered plant. It was a blue rose. Her favorite type of flower. Resigned in the worst possible way

But then she remembered something else. The deafening sound of the doorbell early in the morning. The stumbling steps to the door, the head exploding with a hangover.

And then open the door and find a worried Bonnibel, three blue roses in her hands. The rest of the bouquet spread in the bathtub in her suite.

Quietly, Bonnibel took that bad memory and turned it into something else. In fact, there was so many things that she had resurrected without knowing it, without even saying a word. Just being who she was, simply genuinely caring.

Marceline was silent for a long time.  Anyone who saw the scene from afar would guess that she was digesting a moment of mourning. But it was the complete opposite of that.

It was the moment when she finally recognized her own restart. She closed her eyes and watched around herself: the walls she had built almost all fell down, and the world outside was no longer so terrifying. She had a chance to start again.

No, she was not what Ash had tried to turn her into. It was much more than that.

She looked up at the headstone again and opened her characteristic, crooked smile. The poison shining in her eyes. That poison that she had used for years to ward off anyone who wanted to pull her out of the hole she had drilled into. All that time, used in the wrong place, while she was shaking with fear just imagining Ash's face. Now, she lets the poison spill over the right idea.

It had a single wall still standing, already cracking, fragile, swaying slightly. One push, and it would fall.  She took the lighter from her pocket.

"I'm sorry, bud, but your plan didn't work" - she whispered, slightly bent over the headstone. Then she set the rose on fire and tossed it over the other flowers recently left there by relatives and friends. "You won't be able to finish me off."

She gets up, walks away. Head up, and the sun opens slightly in the icy sky of the beginning of the year. She lights a cigarette and leaves the cemetery, smiling. She already knows what she needs to do.

Behind her, delicate petals twitch, redouble, drop to dust. Exactly what is left of Ash is left of them: useless organic matter.

But not in Marceline. She is a new born bud. She just needs to bloom.

----------------------------*------------------------------

Well, that's it for now. I'll try to be back as soon as possible!

Don't forget to comment and leave your vote if you liked it. See you soon!

- Tersy ♥️