¹ SOME KIND OF DISASTER ─ oliver wood

[ 032 ] a problem that doesn't want to be solved

*before you read: ok look i know these past couple chapters have been upsetting / difficult to read because sawyer is backsliding, but i promise it does get better. truly, it will get better.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
a problem that doesn't want to be solved

"WHERE'D THESE COME FROM?" Oliver asks, tracing the scars on the back of her hands.

They're lying on the grass, backs damp with sweat, their skin dewy and flushed from the run. Breakfast wouldn't be for another hour. They have time to kill.

By now, the bandage had come off, now, and the cuts completely healed over with new scar tissue running like a many-fingered river branching through a valley. Which also meant her new burn scars were visible, angry and puckered, pink and white ridges so thick you couldn't see the veins on the backs of her hands anymore. In time, they'd flatten and fade when new skin replaced the tissue. He pressed a finger against one of the burn scars, a concentric circle in the centre of her hand from when she'd put the flame to her skin and waited until she couldn't take it anymore. She remembered the smell of her own burning flesh, the pus that it'd wept for days after until she'd been forced to go to Madam Pomfrey for antiseptic cream, and was bitched at again for being stupid. Oliver's touch sent a phantom tingle down her wrist.

"Doesn't look like abrasion burns from your Quidditch gloves," he says.

"That's because they aren't," Sawyer says, the clawed hand of her emptiness gripping her heart, stilling it as Oliver swept her with a look so intense she felt as if she might be crystallised.

"Who—"

"I did," Sawyer says, not really knowing why she's telling him all this. Nobody (with the exception of Wyatt, that one time in fifth year) had ever asked about her scars before, mostly because they don't pay that much attention where she doesn't want them to. Maybe if Oliver knew, he'd leave. Maybe if he knew now, what he was signing up for, he would walk away before the attachment grew terminal. "Some people are cutters, some are hitters, some are burners, like me."

Oliver frowns. "Why?"

Why do you do it? Why do you hurt yourself, Sawyer?

Unsavoury questions want unsavoury answers.

How to answer this, Sawyer thinks, in which they don't think I'm a coward?

Why do people knock over such carefully organised things on tables in the heat of the moment? Why do children push a tower of carefully constructed building blocks over? Why do people turn to tall buildings when things on the ground get too much? In a world where stepping forward is harder than stepping backwards, where creation comprises of complexities, destruction becomes a form of catharsis. Unmaking something is always easier than making it. In a world where everything is so hard, everyone just wants something easy. Something to tell them that life isn't so complicated after all. Pain is easy. Blood is evidence. The relief is instant.

Humans are complex creatures. But sometimes, the only way to deal is to uncomplicate things.

Most people call that cowardice.

Sawyer thinks it's a lack of understanding. But how to communicate all this without being committed?

"Because I don't deserve to live," she says, flicking her dead gaze to meet Oliver's. "But I don't want to die either."

"Does you psychiatrist suck or what?" Oliver's voice is sharp, but not cutting.

"Wyatt told you," Sawyer muses. Of course. "He didn't tell you that I've told Dahlia more than I've ever shared with him? No, Dr Josten works for me. Last year I had almost no relapses, so I suppose I should thank her for doing all the heavy-lifting."