𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐈𝐑𝐄𝐋𝐘 𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐄

ᴇɪɢʜᴛʏ - ᴛʜʀᴇᴇ

𝗘verything was cold.

Bubbles rose and swam past her closed eyelids in streams of oxygen she shouldn't have given up. Drenched and dumped into a frozen tundra that had been crafted and shaped by the hands of mother nature herself, she couldn't tell if she was still in one piece. The tips of her fingers and the edges of her toes lay dormant as the buzz in her mind droned on, alerting her with feigned freedom.

Further and further, deeper, and deeper, she could feel herself slipping from the surface of the water and reaching the depths of this lake. The only thing before her misshapen eyes was a black abyss—a series of coated lines, each a different shade of the same color, there to remind her that she was still, in some way, a figment that belonged to Earth.

If she so wished, she could shove open an eye and rejoin the living creatures above her. An attempt shy of that thought, she felt the guiding hill of death to be much easier. She'd been here once before, yet there she laid on one-ply sheets, kept alive by machines.

Now, she had the power.

If she wanted it.

—which she realized she didn't.

Underneath layers of forgotten streams and above acres of soot and dirt, there in the middle, she rested—floating, sinking. Her body was screaming at her to keep fighting, to react against the thoughts her mind was convincing her of—to give up.

She had read once that when a Dolphin reaches the end of its lifespan, they touch the surface, inhale a final breath, and escape reality by falling to the ground, never returning for another one, inherently killing themselves. She felt a lot like that animal now.

Part of that idealism made sense to her.  

There's nothing left to do.

After being born into a family that wanted nothing to do with her from the moment she exited the wound, the kind that blamed her for the most mundane problems that couldn't possibly have been her fault, this type of rest seemed nice to her. Stuck between countless, difficult battles with men that preached for her wellbeing, yet only wanted to destroy it and her—the desire to continue breathing floated away with the oxygen bubbles.

Her own mother had chosen to abandon her family—to leave them with an abusive monster if it meant that she was free of his ill will. If anything, taking her life the way she wanted it to be taken from her was a birthright that belonged to her. 

Every single day, even now, years from the days that were now purely memories to her, she found the simplistic idea of opening her eyes every day harder and harder. When she threw herself off the balcony of insanity with Enzo, she almost wished she met her demise then. After all, the only thoughts on her mind during it all were making him pay and seeing Matteo—nothing else mattered anymore.

She liked to think she accomplished hurting her elder brother—she knew she accomplished seeing her younger, twin brother, and now—everything was coming full circle.