Eight Intertwined

154 - Young

Alfyn and H'aanit had been working overtime ever since Primrose was first stabbed. They had been the ones to pull her out of the darkness when she finally regained her consciousness, and they had soothed the aftermath of her injury too. If anything changed in terms of the dancer's condition, they were always the first ones to know about it. Primrose didn't know how much either one of them had slept over the course of the night, but she didn't want to ask about it. In her eyes, it would have crossed every line she had been trying so hard to draw for herself as of late. She had been enough of a burden to them both already, and Primrose wasn't about to drag them down even deeper. 

When Alfyn and H'aanit decided to take a bit of time to themselves away from the Forsythe home, Primrose was admittedly relieved. She would have never said such a thing out loud, of course, but she needed the time to herself. Sleeping off her feelings could only take her so far when Simeon seemed to constantly haunt her mind and body, and she needed a bit more time to breathe and work through everything Cyrus had told her the night before. With Alfyn and H'aanit no longer looking over her shoulder, Primrose could finally rest as she needed to. 

Well, she didn't know if she would have called it rest. Her mind had been racing ever since Cyrus told her what he had uncovered about Simeon. Primrose's first instinct had been to shove everyone away, but it hadn't worked as well as she would have liked. She wanted to be alone, but her friends wouldn't let her push them away entirely. They were too stubborn to leave her be for any longer than was absolutely necessary, and they knew how bad of an idea it was to abandon Primrose with the ruthless shadows of her own mind. Primrose had done her best to hide her darkest impulses around them, but the truth was bound to slip through the cracks sooner or later. Of course it was. 

Primrose hated herself. She really did. She had struggled with her self-esteem many times over the course of her mission to pursue the men of the crow, but she didn't think she had ever sunk this low before. Primrose had worked for Helgenish for years, but even that felt like nothing compared to the darkness that threatened to swallow her now. At least Primrose had volunteered to work for him... But how much could she really put upon herself as her own responsibility when she had still been a child at the time? Sure, she had been a teenager, but she was still a teenager who was being exploited by the older men who passed through Sunshade for their own twisted desires. Could she really say she agreed to anything like that?

She had once thought she agreed to what Simeon was doing with her too. 

Primrose had wanted to pretend none of this was happening. She was desperate to push the world away and just retreat to that old daydream of spending the rest of her days with Simeon. He made her happier than anyone else, and he had been the faraway ideal for her to pursue even after House Azelhart fell. Simeon had been her world... But she had been nothing to him. She couldn't tell if that hurt more or less than knowing just what he was. 

She should have known better. Primrose knew she had no way of telling her past self just how dangerous Simeon was, but she couldn't help thinking that she should have figured out sooner that something was wrong. Of course something was wrong. Simeon had looked the same ten years ago as he did the moment Primrose set foot into Noblecourt and saw him again after so much time spent apart. He had been an adult all along, and he should have known to keep his distance from someone so much younger. Instead, he pulled her in close and let her believe everything she wanted to about him. It was all in the name of making her fall apart one day. That was all it ever had been. Simeon had used her from the start, and she had been a clueless child who watched him with wide, admiring, youthful eyes. 

Primrose felt dirty. At one point, she had thought Simeon was radiance, a cleansing light that would allow her to forget her past sins in the favor of a bright future where none of this mattered anymore. These days though... She knew he had been muck from the start. He was ooze that got caught in her hair, quicksand that tried to suffocate her beneath the sands of the desert that had stolen her innocence so many times over. Simeon had been just like the men of Sunshade, far older than her and exploiting a child for his own sick gains. Sure, the benefits had been different, but that did little to help Primrose distinguish the two.