She's My Collar - Katya x Reader

57: Fortune's Fool

"What died didn't stay dead
What died didn't stay dead
You're alive, you're alive in my head
What died didn't stay dead
What died didn't stay dead
You're alive, so alive
And if I didn't know better
I'd think you were singing to me now
If I didn't know better
I'd think you were still around
I know better
But I still feel you all around
I know better
But you're still around"
-Marjorie, Taylor Swift

Life passed you by like a movie that was happening to someone else - great stretches of it going quick, and then crawling slow as molasses, as if you were stuck in place like an aphid trapped in amber.

You existed in a state of perpetual twilight, like you were waiting for either the sun or the moon to rise, but neither ever came. Everything stayed grey and sullen and cold, as if Katya had taken the sun with her when she died, and nothing would ever be warm or sunlit or bright again.

Trixie stayed for a while, spending time at your apartment, trying to get you to talk to her, trying to share her favorite memories of Katya with you. You mostly ignored her. You could feel her growing frustrated, and you might have felt guilty about it, once. You knew she was grieving, too, knew Katya had been her best friend, but you couldn't find it in yourself to care. Eventually, she left you alone. You wished everyone else would take her lead.

Bob made you sleep in either her bed or Monet's, understanding that sleeping in the bed you had shared with Katya was too painful and knowing you well enough to know that you couldn't handle it. You cried yourself to sleep for weeks, your sobs muffled in the pillow, Bob's hand sleepily patting your back. Eventually you felt like the well dried up, and you had no more tears in your body, like you were a dried-out, dying flower, one touch away from crumbling into dust.

During the day, when Bob went to work, you would crawl into your own bed, wrap yourself around that pillow that smelled like Katya, still, and close your eyes, visualizing her in front of you. You visualized her smile, the little crinkles around her eyes when she would smile soft just for you, the curve of her nose and the shadow of her cheekbones, the spill of her blonde hair on the pillow in the moonlight.

You knew Bob suspected that you spent your days rotting in your own bed, but she said nothing about it. After the first month, she and Monet took it upon themselves to wash your sheets, saying that it was getting disgusting and that they were way past overdue to be washed.

This made you fly into an absolutely incandescent rage, throwing plates against the wall and screaming until Ivan had to be called to physically subdue you. You clutched at the sheets, burying your face in them and desperately trying to find the scent of her that had been washed away, feeling the tears soaking the sheets when all you could smell was laundry detergent.

Bob and Monet stayed constant and watchful at your side, letting you work it out in your own time. You were grateful for them, for their presence, but you barely noticed them. You haunted the apartment like a ghost, drifting sightlessly from room to room and existing as nothing more than a specter.

At first, you felt nothing. There was nothing but a vast, empty oblivion within your chest that stretched on into eternity, nothing but dust and ashes and emptiness. Your soul was a decaying, festering thing in your body, eating you alive and leaving you a decomposing husk of bones and soot.

It didn't feel right, that the world could keep spinning and life could keep going on as usual without her. Didn't they know Katya was gone? Didn't they know that your world was ending, that every second of every day you could feel every atom in your body imploding and the fragile glass of your heart shattering over and over and over?