The many lives and times of Lin and Ezerella

Three years (snippet) but angst au

So, I was thinking. How could I completely and utterly ruin the previous chapter's happiness? The answer was this. The perfect counter to my fluffy introspection. My entire main story's kryptonite.

Guess I gotta go put that unhappy ending tag up, now.

Note: Ama is not... whatever she is in this au, in the main story. She isn't evil, or malicious.

Enjoy, I guess? Turn back if you prefer the happy ending to be unsullied?

Tw// mentions of vomit, mentions of blood, descriptions of self harm? (Lin pulls her hair, wants to peel her skin off) heavy derealization, manipulation, one mental breakdown, and an unhappy ending.

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Lin wakes up and it takes only one moment and a look around the room for her heart to plummet. She doesn't know how she feels, maybe sick. Does she want to throw up? Is that how she feels?

Instead of vomiting, she gets to her feet. She has always been good at moving on even as her world crashes down.

Her bedroom is empty of her photographs and Ezerella's bed and anything that made her room hers. It's all gone and in its place is the dream she long since gave up and moved on from.

Everything she's grown to love is gone. All the scars are gone and Lin want more than anything to take it back.

She's been here before. Stood in her room and lived this exact situation, only then she had been ignorant and now she knows all too well.

Once more, Lin is thirteen. How many times is she going to live this? Why can't she go home, doesn't she deserve her peace? Doesn't she deserve to be free?

Bits of her long hair falls in her face and Lin urges to rip the strands out of her skull. Tear at her skin until it peels away and she's free from this nightmare. Until she can finally go home.

Home is with Ezerella and Ama, in their little house with their flowers. She wants to be in her house. But this isn't her house, her house is gone. She's failed, nothing matters and now it's all gone.

Everything is gone except for the memories. Maybe it would be better not to have them at all. It hurts.

Lin leaves the room silently. Her nightdress is green with red, she sees it only as moss and rot splattered with blood. A drop of blood for every person who will never to be the same.

It's cold, oh so cold. Nothing feels real, her own mind feels like fragile glass. She glides down the stairs, not even a single stumble.

When she was here last time, she tripped. Now she doesn't.

"Oh, hi, Lin." Ama stands in the kitchen, her back turned. Her voice is honey sweet, sticky and happy. On her head sits a brown hat. It stands out a rock against a sea of fire. The syrupy smell of pancakes wafts thickly through the stuffy air.

She wants to throw up.

Ama turns. There's a grin on her face, sadistic and gleeful with far too many teeth before it flickers into one of perfect cheerfulness.

"Awfully clumsy today, aren't ya?" she grins. The glass shatters.

Lin sinks to her knees. Her hands fist in her hair and she yanks it, tugs as if it'll change anything. "No. No, no, no, no, no, nononononono-" she's screaming. Lin had barely breathed, yet this scream is all her breath matters for.

Ama's distorted laughter wrings in her ears; loud, sadistic, and hideously delighted.