She was doing everything wrong this night. Everything. Why not something more? 

She wasn’t certain when she grew aware of his presence or the weight of his arm around her shoulder. She sobbed for so long that time felt meaningless. She felt as if her body had poured out every tear it ever could make and still she cried more. Her mouth was a desert from all that she had cried and her throat was raw. She was certain he had been there for a long time before she noticed, too lost in living her nightmares while awake, too deep into self-flagellation that left her bleeding and raw emotionally to notice him. He’d said nothing. Why? 

So why not compound the mistakes then? Why not speak to this grinning man who would surely mock her for her faults. She had many and she deserved it. She wanted to bleed and so she opened herself up to him, turning her face to his like the night bloom turned to the moon. Her face was certainly red enough to match the blooms. As she unfurled herself from the tight knot, never letting his arm be jostled off of her shoulders, the blood on her arms was revealed. Dark strips on the cuffs of her shirt, peeking past the dusky rose of her jacket, matching half-moons of blood rimmed her nails revealing how past good sense she was as she’d scratched at her flesh. 

Even then as she looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes she didn’t seem to notice the ragged flesh she’d left behind. 

“I’m broken.” She said her honeyed voice raw and ragged, almost painful to hear in its contrast to her normal register. “I’m broken and I cannot be fixed. I thought I could be, I thought I could hold myself together and hide the broken edges but I can’t.” 

A little whimper slipped from her and yet another tear fell over her ruined cheek. She pushed her hand against her mouth as if trying to push back in the despair that was choking her words. She dropped her eyes to the pond and its lovely burden but she did not see it. She saw nothing but her own flaws, blown up to gargantuan proportions.

“In my dreams I knew how I would be when I saw him again. I knew that I would be brave, I would be defiant. I would show him that he did not break me. But I didn’t do any of that.” 

She looked back to Jax, her eyes so full of blackness and loss and madness that there seemed to be almost no blue. 

“I ran.” She said and it rang out like a nail being driven into a coffin. Final and done. “I ran and I showed him all the ways he had hurt me. I showed him that his lessons worked. I let him break me, again and this time all he had to do was be there and I crumbled.” 

At her waist her hands were moving again, unconsciously. The nails seeking out softness as if she could pierce her skin and let out some of the pain that was building up inside her.