burning at the stake | o.r.

chapter 5: butterfly?

"Ow ow ow." Mariposa winced as Olivia patted at her cut cheekbone with a gauze doused in alcohol.

"Stay still." Olivia said, biting her lip in focus.

"Stop! Shit, that fucking hurts." Mariposa shook away from Olivia and jumped off of her place on the bathroom counter.

Olivia sighed annoyedly as she watched Mariposa limp over to Olivia's bed, eventually sitting herself down, albeit painfully slow.

She looked at the girl expectantly, waiting for her to get off her ass and come back to finish getting cleaned.

Mariposa frowned at Olivia's awaiting expression, unknowingly causing a rupture in the cheerleader's heart. "Who knew vampires were so strong?" The girl joked as she looked down at her fiddling fingers.

Olivia gave into the girls' stalling as she plopped herself down on the bed next to Mariposa. "You, of all people, should know. I mean, anyone else's ribs would be broken after that." Olivia attempted to comfort her.

"Yeah, but we're not anyone else, are we?" Mariposa's voice cracked with the rhetorical question.

She was answered with silence as she continued. "We're cursed." A few silent tears traveled down the girl's bruised face.

"What about yesterday?" Olivia brought up the previous day, remembering the way she had been the most fun she had had since... well ya know.

"Yesterday was 'fun' because it was fun to forget that we're stuck as these monsters forever." Mariposa looked up at Olivia, giving up on trying to hide her anger.

"Today was nothing but another reminder that we're better off dead." She stood up from her spot on the bed, limping over to Olivia's window.

Olivia knew there was truth in what she had said, but she also knew that it was no way to think about yourself, it's certainly no way to live... to constantly berate yourself with the fact that you should be dead.

Mariposa fumbled her fingers with the latch on the window, unable to get it undone as she could hardly concentrate on the task at hand with dried blood coating her fingers. Tears continue their stream down her cheeks as her frustrated grunts turn into quiet sobs, her head leaning defeatedly against the window.

Olivia slowly walked over to Mariposa as if she were a piece of broken glass. Her hand lifted to lay rest on the crying girl's shoulder, "You weren't always like this... We weren't always like this."

"Just because we're not human doesn't mean we've lost our humanity." Olivia consoled her, watching with doe eyes as Mariposa turns to look at her.

Olivia swore that her heart, although no longer beating, was crushed in that moment. The once impressive eyeliner that sat effortless on the lines of Mariposa's eyelids was now in wet black streaks trailing down her cheeks.

Her eyes held hopelessness, empty of any emotion that merely resembled joy and the smile that Olivia had just been getting used to (and was really beginning to adore) was nowhere to be seen, not likely to return.

Mariposa didn't speak as she buried her face into Olivia's shoulder, her arms wrapping tightly around the cheerleader's waist.

Her sobs were muffled as she held onto her as if for dear life... if that's what you can call whatever it is that they have.

Olivia was taken back by the gesture, but leaned into it nonetheless. Being the person to comfort a friend was her idea of comfort. Plus, she couldn't help but revel in the smell of the vampire girl's shampoo. So, they stood like that for a moment, Olivia's hands had found their way into Mariposa's hair as she soothingly brushed through the soft tangles.