Luna(tic) (Marauders Era)

19. Dancers Standing Still on a Stage

Luna was hardly paying attention as she wandered into the first empty room she could find on the fifth floor. Her head was stuffed full of all the too many synonyms of crazy she had heard over the years, mixed in with a pitiful, repeating whisper that it didn't matter. It shouldn't have mattered. People called people weird all the time and it didn't matter.

Or it shouldn't have.

The problem was that what didn't matter was people saying 'weird' when all it meant was a little off. A little strange. A small, forgivable, overlookable idiosyncrasy that could be ignored most of the time.

And if that had been the only thing 'weird' had ever meant when leveled at Luna, she thought she probably wouldn't have minded it so much either. It might have stung. It might have hurt. But it was a hurt that could be healed. A papercut. An annoyance. Not this pressing on old wounds that had never properly healed.

Because Luna had been called weird when what it meant was impossibly, incontrovertibly, incurably different. When it wasn't a passing comment, but a condemnation. A dismissal. A promise that weird was all she was and all she would ever be. That weird meant worthless.

And that hurt in ways that went deeper than the skin. It was a stab wound. A gunshot. A gaping, grotesque gash in her side that never seemed to stop bleeding.

It was a foolish thing, but sometimes, Luna wondered if people might be able to see it. If despite all her pretending and careful words, she would walk out of these halls and someone would ask what all the blood on her chest and her clothes and her hands was from and she wouldn't know how to answer. If it really did mark her like the brand it had always felt like it was.

"Luna." Her name was a snap. A crack. Something sharp and loud enough to startle the thoughts from her head. She looked at its source, at Sam, her eyes wide and round as they found him. As they watched him sigh. Watched him shove away the something like resentment that burst for a moment in his face like the last blaze of a setting sun.

Luna almost flinched at the sound. At the expression. At what she knew they meant.

This was not how Sam wanted to spend this evening. This was not how Luna wanted to spend this evening. This, she was sure, was one of those things that was best left alone. One of those things neither of them was going to talk about. One of those things neither of them even wanted to think about.

Which was perhaps why she was so surprised that the next words out of Sam's mouth were, "He's wrong. You know he's wrong."

They shouldn't have surprised her. It was what Sam had always said when the accusations came. When they repeated in Luna's head, a million whispers overlapping into a hum of condemnation that filled up her ears and drove her mad. Or, at least, more mad than she already was.

But they did surprise her, enough that she looked up, even knowing she looked desperate. Even hating it. But she was desperate. She was desperate to believe him. Desperate for him to be right. But not so desperate that she could trick herself into ignoring the truth.

"No he's not," she whispered.

Sam sighed again. The sound was heavy. Tired. It pulsed against Luna's ears and added unneeded background noise to that hum of whispers in her head. And though she didn't look at him, Luna knew the expression that came across Sam's face. She'd seen it before. She would see it again.

It was an expression that said he knew she was right and hated it. That said he was tired of this argument. Tired of this life. Tired of her. And she was too. But neither of them had ever gotten the luxury of walking away from the madness Luna had been cursed with for as long as either of them could remember.