Nothing But Bones

38: XOXO, Go Piss Girl

It hits her, sitting back down in a pool of what should be inside her, looking out at a trio of people gathered around the book Fred gave her, trying not to feel despondent, assholish, left-out, and oh-so-shaky, letting her arm fall to her side because she can't be assed to hold it over the hole anymore: it's just going to keep going. She didn't even know before mid-March, after she heard Dr. Deseret was assuring Kay that she could not die on the table and went to go ask New Greg about it. The reality didn't set in back in June, and it didn't set in last week. It's setting in now.

It never ends. It's the thing she realizes while she's pushing her glasses up into her hair. It isn't going to stop. She's going to bleed every drop from her body and keep living; and the frame, which is ostensibly human, is going to be weak and anemic for a while, but it's going to keep moving. She isn't even a person anymore, is she? She's just a thing. She could lose every organ and still keep walking until someone divine pulls the plug. How wondrous; how deserving of study and care; how deeply, truly horrific.

And it hurts. It's never going to stop hurting. Functionally human, realistically immortal— she is going to keep waking up paralyzed, going to keep feeling every aching bruise. going to carry the guilt with her like memories of broken arms and demolished eggs. Where is the hope in that?

She should look to the sky, she knows. She should look up and find it wide and beautiful, should find it wondrous, should remake the vow and rekindle some sort of faith. She's going to outlive everyone she knows and loves, but she still has time with them. The disparity will be sixty years off. She has years. She has time for birthdays and museum visits and camping; she has time to hold her friends' children, to see them happy, to be there for those milestones. She can see the sun, can't she? She can stand in it.

But, god— Does she even want to?

She does, doesn't she? Shouldn't she want to live beyond the point she was supposed to? She can't shake it, though; whether it's through the intervention of others or the literal power of the universe, it feels like she has been living on borrowed time since she was sixteen. It's never going to stop. It's never going to let her go. What's the point? Is it just loving the people around her and protecting the boundary? Is it just wonder and delight in the face of cosmic and mortal threats alike?

She looks down at her chest, at her still-beating heart. It's still out of control and probably close to pumping nothing, but it hasn't stopped beating. As long as it's still there— won't it be enough? A symbol of something? She rubs her nose before she realizes she's started to cry.

Trying to sound like she isn't sniffling, Tiff announces, "If we have a solution, we should probably do it quickly. I'd like it if my heart didn't die and my organs didn't fail. They've been through enough."

Elton cranes his head to look into the bathroom. Seeing her there, he whispers to the two men to give them a moment and heads into the bathroom. She looks dead, kind of— oozing blood and tears.

"Come on," she murmurs. "Don't come in here."

"Too late. I'm in here." He sits on the edge of the tub.

"Don't..." She can't form the rest of the sentence. Maybe there straight-up isn't one.

"Come on, talk to me." When she looks at the wall and doesn't say anything, he cocks his head to get back in her line of sight and says, "You're not in this alone."

"I mean— On a rational level, I know that. But when was the last time the goddamn Gnome did anything other than explode and reform?"

"Would it help if I threw eggs at this Gnome?"