Irhaboggle Pride (2022) Gaylor Swift's Version

Hoax, Peace, The Lakes

AN: CW for depression and implied suicide attempt. It's not graphic, but this whole fic is just kinda sad (as if the chosen songs didn't give that away, lol), so feel free to skip it if it might be upsetting or triggering in any way. Tomorrow's fic will be happier, I promise!

Sonorhc sat on the cliffside staring unseeingly at the endless gray that seemed to surround her on all sides. The sky, the sea, the very cliff itself, were all gray, just like her mood. Inside and out, there was no pitch black or blinding bright, just fog and mist and misery, a hazy, cloudy gray. It was like a smoking gun or an eclipsed sun. She was breaking down like the rocks at the base of the cliff, worn away by the ocean waves.

She was tired, so very tired. She wanted nothing more than to join the dead she used to bring up from their graves. An eternal dirt nap beside them, that sounded nice...But someone kept pulling her back. Interestingly enough, it was the girl known as Reaper, associated with the scythe. She twisted her metaphorical blade into Sonorhc's shirt and back, preventing her from leaving.

Reaper kept her in a sleepless, eternal night. Without the black of the night sky or the white of the moon, Sonorhc was left with nothing but a gray that felt too dark to be awake in, but too light to be asleep in. She couldn't move forward or backward because of Reaper. Reaper took all the wind out of her sails, leaving her in a windless flight. How much longer would she be able to last like this?

She flashed back to just a week ago when she was standing on the cliffside rather than sitting on it. She screamed into the stormy void below, "Give me a reason!" A reason to jump, or a reason to stay? She wasn't sure. She heard both of her voices, singing from above and below, then Reaper cut through like a knife, leaving her frozen to the mountain.

Although Sonorhc didn't say it at the time, there was only one thing she could think about later: Your hopeless love's the only hoax I believe in.

Her carefully laid plan to slip away when no one was watching, and to leave an impact as small as possible, came crumbling down like the stones on the cliffside. With just a slight movement of her hand, Reaper reached out, grabbed her by the back of the neck, and pulled her away from the edge. Now all that was left of Sonorhc was a barren, planless, plotless land, much like the top of the gray, empty mountain itself. If Reaper was a fire, Sonorhc was nothing but the ash, both weaker than the inferno and all that was left once it was done raging through.

But, she supposed, if she had to see a world in only shades of gray and blue, she didn't want any other blue than Reaper. Sonorhc was glum, despondent at yet another winless fight, but she supposed that if her bad mood had to come from anywhere, at least it was from Reaper saving her life. Granted, though, she wasn't sure if that was a victory or not. She never had the courage of conviction, so maybe that was why she failed.

Even though Reaper wasn't there, Sonorhc spoke to her. "You know I left a part of me back in the past. You knew the hero died, happy ends never last." It was a death even she couldn't recover from and resurrect. "You knew it still hurts underneath my scars from when they pulled me apart..." Sonorhc fingers curled around the edge of the cliff as anger and anguish flood her mind in a sea of memories. God, depression was a bitch.

One of the most annoying parts was that she didn't even really have a "reason" to be. That was something else she'd stood on the cliffside, screaming for. She wanted to know why. She was just so sick of the endless gray! In her opinion, that was true despair. It was a sadness so deep and profound that no matter where she went or what she did, the endless gray followed her around. It felt like she could never escape it, not that she had much energy to even try anymore. Now, she was almost willing to stay in the gray, because trying to move was just too unbearable.