17 – Scars
Michiru feels relieved, the first time she’s wounded in a fight. There’s finally something that will make it real in the daylight, something that will separate actual battles from nightmares and visions.
In the morning, she’s horrified to find it healed perfectly, without so much as a scar. She runs her fingers over where the skin was broken, where the daimon tore into her arm. The memory of pain is still there, but nothing else. Soon, she knows, that will fade, and it may as well have never happened at all.
When Haruka joins her, she takes a shameful solace in how they hold each other’s scars. She sees every injury she takes reflected in Haruka’s eyes, in the way she sometimes stares at skin that should be marked. For years Haruka’s fingers trace lines across Michiru’s back, following the claw marks that didn’t linger a day past that first battle. Michiru feels grounded, greatful, guilty, that there’s some chronicle of her pain in Haruka’s heart. She needs so badly for it to be real.
SittingOverHereDreaming 