She's My Collar - Katya x Reader

34: Star-Crossed

"But I'm a fire, and I'll keep your brittle heart warm
If your cascade ocean wave blues come
All these people think love's for show
But I would die for you in secret
The devil's in the details, but you got a friend in me
Would it be enough if I could never give you peace?"
-Peace, Taylor Swift

Katya woke the next morning before you. She sat up slowly, trying not to jostle you and wake you, clenching her teeth at the dull ache in her side, her shoulder.

You looked so peaceful in your sleep. The past week had worn you thin, made your eyes shadowed and your face lined with exhaustion. Maybe you had looked like that before Katya had ended up on your doorstep. She didn't know, didn't want to think about the ways that your separation had physically affected you.

She watched you, watched your chest rising and falling slowly, evenly, the sweep of your lashes across your cheekbones, your mouth slightly open. You had migrated towards the center of the bed as you usually did, and your hand was draped across her hip, as if you were reaching for her in your sleep but didn't want to get too close, even unconsciously.

Katya didn't move your hand, wanting to let you sleep. You had done so much for her, and even after she had made you promise to stop sacrificing your own needs for her, you had still done it, like it was something you couldn't help.

You had always been like that, always made excuses for Katya and laid yourself on the line for her. She didn't think she'd ever done anything to deserve it.

She definitely didn't think she'd done anything to deserve someone who would literally drag her back from the jaws of Death after she had treated you the way she had. Katya thought if she was in your position, she would have just left her on the doorstep to bleed out. Instead, you had dragged her up the stairs and poured your heart and soul into fixing her, putting your own trauma to the side to do what you were best at. It was psychotic, and almost terrifying, and she didn't understand it. She didn't know if she ever would.

You had given her the sketchbook, too, though. Katya hadn't been sure of it at first. She was so used to only seeing weapons when she looked down at her hands, and to see them holding a pencil instead of a knife was jarring.

Now, her hands were covered in charcoal and graphite smudges at the end of the day, instead of blood. Her hands were creating something that wasn't evil, wasn't awful or fatal. She remembered what it had been like to be a kid with her heart so full of darkness and hatred and to pick up a pencil and feel her mind go quiet as she channeled all that rage onto the paper in front of her.

Katya felt like she was letting out years and years' worth of bloodshed onto the paper. She drew the demons that perched on her shoulders and whispered in her ears, she sketched out scenes of bloodshed and murder, blood spattered on walls and limbs dangling, wide open mouths screaming for mercy.

She wrote out all of the last words she had heard, like a confessor, writing them all out until the letters all scrawled over each other, Cyrillic and English all melting together until they covered an entire piece of paper front and back.

Katya had never been able to do anything except hurt people. It had never served her to do anything else. She had forgotten that her hands were good for something other than bloodletting. She didn't think she was capable of it anymore.

Getting everything dark and angry out of her head and putting it on the paper was like a release, like putting leeches on a bruise. She always felt lighter when she set the pencil down.

Ars longa, vita brevis. Art is long, life is short. Or whatever the quote was. She couldn't remember. It was something one of the nuns had said often about the paintings and statues of saints that were always Katya's favorite thing about Mass.