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Day Five//

Clerise emerges from her dream with a soft exhalation borne of regret. She doesn't have it in her to open her eyes, doesn't have the strength to move from her indent on the bed. There's someone pounding on the door, her mouth is parched, her clothes are dirty.

She doesn't have the capacity to care. She is awake and unmedicated and it is awful: the thought of moving makes her physically nauseous, so she doesn't.

They can afford her this. All she wants is some time. They surely understand. It's been four days since she's left this room, and five since she left the infirmary with nary a scratch on her. Overnight for observation, they'd said, and Clerise had laughed until she'd cried.

She hasn't said a word since she came through the portal with a body in her arms and a tablet in her pocket, grief-stricken and absolutely silent. The Infirmary had let her go, because she was physically healthy, and Sunny had said a broken heart hardly counted as a malady worth treating.

Painstakingly slow, Clerise turns and looks at her phone in the charger. Slowly, like she's encased in molasses, reaches out for it. Flips it open, ignores the numerous accumulating messages and looks at the time, instead.

Eight twenty six PM.

The slight movement saps her energy, and she just barely resists the urge to fling it at the wall. She smothers herself in the white comforter stained by tears. Her throat hurts and her eyes burn and there aren't any tears left in her, just dry, quiet sobs into a pillow that still smells like her.

She clutches it close, but it doesn't fill the void. Clerise misses her so much it's heavy in the air, and she wishes she had been the one.

Nausea overcomes her and Clerise staggers to the bathroom, dry heaving into the toilet. The light is fluorescent and it tints her skin green, and she does the best to avoid seeing her own sunken eyes.

They're accusatory.


Day Fourteen//

They keep telling her how sorry they are, and it makes her stomach churn and her fists clench. She can keep it down, now, so she swallows as she nods without a word. Not a single ******** word, because there's nothing to talk about, not to them, not to anyone outside of her own head. Balthazar is the only one left, now, who needs her like she needs them.

It is selfish and it is awful, but everyone else's pain is but a thin veneer of her own. Theirs ends where hers begins, all encompassing, draining her of the will to live.

Everyone else who relied on her have their other halves to fall back on, have the support they need to carry on. Harrison has Rep and Jordan. Robert has Petra.

Clerise has someone buried six feet under on a hill. So she doesn't say anything when others are upset, or when they cry, or when they try to say they understand, because they don't.

Her mouth tastes like ash.


Day Eight//

Bony fingers tighten around the sheets, and her stare at the wall is blank and glassy. She tries to decide if today will be the day, and it still hurts so bad, down in a dark place inside of her, where she is furious and hopeless all at once, a mire of anguish.

She stands up, and it's with a sway in her step, vision blurry. Inching to the bathroom, Clerise draws herself a bath and tests how long she can hold her breath under the surface.

The water gets cold.

She weeps.


Day Twenty Six//

Clerise floats in the ocean, and it's cold and unrelenting. Her coat's heavy and her wet clothes weigh her down, and Balthazar is a quiet presence in her mind. Comforting. Out here, in the sea, she hums to herself.

The grief has been quietly tucked in between each of her ribs, and with every breath, she feels it, a rattling in her chest. It's a thousand fiberglass splinters, it's a knife scratching against a bottle, it's the slow coagulation of the blood of a gaping wound.

She thinks of the Horseman Island. Of walking towards Home, of the ghosts, of the memories, and she wonders what was on the other side. Would she be there, or would it merely be oblivion?

Floating in the brine, Clerise's tears mix with the sea.

She is still in love as much as she was a year ago. It does't matter that she's gone.


Day One//

She screams and she screams and she doesn't stop, screams until her voice is gone, gets put under, gets cuffed to the bed again. She screams in her dreams and cries in her sleep, because while she's fine, Clarice is not.

She's dead. She's dead. She's dead.

Nothing else matters, in this moment, in this torturous moment that doesn't want to end. Maybe it's a dream. Maybe she'll wake up. Maybe the universe wouldn't be so cruel.

(She's dead.)


Day Thirty Three//

A gentle hand to her arm and the advice that she needs to move on. We're hunters, we lose people all the time. It's been over a month. She wouldn't want you to be this way. We need you back in the field.

She doesn't say anything in return. A curt nod, a pursing of lips.

She doesn't smile.

I love you, Clerise thinks. I love you, I love you, and the grief is as piercing as it always is. She's moved out of the room, and spends most nights in the sea or wandering in the halls.

Otto sits beside her in the labs, a quiet reassurance. Eva smiles, and it's hopeful. Dakota holds her without a word. Rep offers to spar.

It's reassuring, and it would have helped her maybe, if things had worked out differently. It feels as though a piece of her was hurriedly removed, a surgery without any sutures done to close her up, an open heart surgery. They took the heart out for a transplant and left her to die on the operating table.

They've stopped trying to get her to talk, at least.

It's not much of a comfort.



Day Sixteen//

Her dreams are warm and pleasant, full of blonde hair and blue eyes and adoration. Clerise traces the outline of her face, remembering the planes of her cheeks, the jut of her jaw, the curve of her brow, the bow in her lips. A voice, sweet and soft, and over and over again Clarice whispers that everything is fine.

Clerise wakes up, runs to the bathroom, and retches.

She wishes she was dead. It is childish and weak, but she does. Recovering from a broken heart seemed so much easier the first time, but now the damage is insurmountable. Balthazar wraps around her but Clerise is still so, so, unbelievably cold. She lays on the bathroom tile, eyes tightly shut. She gropes for the bottle of rum she leaves on the counter, ignoring the empty bottles around her, and drinks until she dreams again.



Day Zero//

Clerise staggers through the portal, limp body in her arms. Her red eyes are wild, face streaked with blood, her fingers moreso.

"Please," she wants to say, but can't. "Someone, help her," gets caught in her throat.

The medics approach with grim determination, they pry her out of Clerise's arms and she watches them. There's so much blood, her fear shield completely gone, Raeg little more than a tablet in her coat pocket.

"Time of death," Sunny declares, looking at her phone for the time, "Is seven twenty nine pm."

Clerise falls to her knees.


Day Forty Five//

Clerise has been licking her wounds for a month and a half. Putting herself back together, gathering up the broken pieces and smushing them into place. She wraps herself in duct tape, holding the jagged edges together.

She dreams of her, still. They don't stop, and waking up alone has yet to cease being painful. It's a repetitive kind of pain, familiar by now. There is no one left to hold, she reminds herself. She isn't even a corpse, just a jar of ash beneath the ground.

"You're fine," Clarice whispers to her, every night. "I love you."

Clerise communicates via text, now, her stark handwriting on paper or the shorthand she uses on twitter or in text messages. She hasn't smiled once so far, and she eats to avoid scrutiny. She's making good progress, or so everyone says. They treat her like she's made of glass, and she might as well be. The smallest things set her off.

She remembers what she knows about hunters, and what they do to the ones that can't be repaired, and makes a decision.

It's not as difficult as it should be.


Day Forty Eight//

Clerise walks into the sea and does not surface. She lets the water overtake her, sinking to the ocean floor.

They do not recover her body or her tablet. She leaves a note, plain printer paper, folded up on her bed.

It's blank.