The Bird And The Worm (Violentine)

Chapter Fourteen: Things We Shouldn't Forget

One.

Two.

Three- no, was it three…? It was three. Wasn’t it...?

Clementine’s face twitched as the water smacked her in the face. Her chest rose as she took in a deep breath, head twitching with the fall of another water droplet. Her eyelids felt like cement. They hadn’t been kidding about the whole “no sleep” thing. She couldn’t even think right, her brain was so dead.

Another droplet hit her face, head twitching once more. God, she was going to go fucking insane.

“Hey,”

Brown eyes snapped open at a clap in front of her face, the woman she recognized as Dorian standing over her.

“Do you want your dinner or not?”

When had she closed her eyes?

She moved to shake her head, only to find she couldn’t. Her limbs were heavier than bricks. Dorian stared down at her, letting out a sigh and setting what she could only assume was a food tray down on her torso. She felt the woman’s hand grasp her jaw, opening it; the other hand moving down to something on the tray.

“Don’t be breathin’ through your mouth or you gon’ choke. It’s oatmeal.” She grumbled, lifting a spoon to her lips. Another spoonful was dumped into her mouth before her jaw was pushed shut. “Swallow.”

She couldn’t remember how long that had gone for, or what else had been fed to her. Another drop of water smacked her forehead, causing her head to twitch again. By the time she had registered the lapse in time, someone was standing over her with a scowl on their face.

“Keep your damn eyes open.”

-

“What if we play Go Fish?” Mitch offered, nudging AJ’s shoulder. The boy merely frowned, shrugging.

“I don’t wanna play card games...”

“What if I made a giant pillow fort for you and Tenn to read in?”

Not even a hum.

Violet stared at the boy from across the room, arms around her knees. Her eyes shifted briefly to the window, watching the mass amount of snowflakes falling from the sky. She glanced back to the boy, then once more to the blankets and pillows being used to insulate the windows.

Her bones cracked as she stood, Mitch glancing in her direction as she moved to the window. Her hand reached out, grabbing at the blanket, and pulling.

“Violet, what the hell are you doing?”

Aasim’s scoff didn’t even register in her brain as she pulled the covers from the pane of glass, sitting down in front of it.

“AJ, come here really quick, bud,”

Green eyes scanned the snow piled up against the glass, moving up to the snowflakes that stuck to the frigid panes. A small grunt escaped AJ’s lips as he sat next to her, legs crossed in front of him. Green eyes stayed focused on the snow.

“Remember how you always used to ask Clem if you could come with us…? Outside…?”

She could hear Mitch’s shoes scuff up somewhere not too far behind them.

“Yeah… She never let me come with you guys…”

Violet pointed to the glass. “We were looking at the stars.”

AJs face scrunched. “Why…?”

“We liked to find shapes out of them.”

The boys face contorted in confusion. “Stars don’t have any shape,”