Keeping Your Promise

CONNECTION LOST

Summary: When it rains, it pours. And then the world starts to explode. So it's all just a giant mess.

WARNINGS: Rape (bow out if you need to, I will include a brief summary in the end notes), graphic descriptions of violence, graphic descriptions of trauma.

Excess saline dripped in crimson creaks toward the floor, a bog forming beneath a shaking foot onto a towel. Two empty flushes laid in their respective positions, remaining diagonal to each other as they'd landed earlier. Another towel was set below your thigh as you propped it onto the bathroom counter with your knee bent over the edge, choosing to remain standing rather than chance losing the ability to crawl up from the floor if you'd sat. With every thumb-push of the syringe plunger new streaks of liquid agony soaked into the red, throbbing, raging wounds; each lick of searing solution reminding you of their harbinger, your tongue stained in acrid remembrance of the words which had fallen from it.

I hate you. The phrase you'd feared most had turned out to be the least insidious, its existence lighthearted in relation to the ones that came quickly after. The simple statement had catalyzed the catastrophe, its memory burning what remained of your heart, ashes now dormant and gray within your chest, each beat superficial in the way it sustained a life you no longer wanted. It was difficult to name what you were feeling, the uncertainty rooted in the fact that you were twisted in the clutch of grief and guilt while also floating in a nebula of numbness, the contradiction dissonant and dizzying.

With each haunting phrase, each sharp with a venomous bite, new collections of misery scathed into the scarring tissue, each tear acidic in its salty existence. A recoil was earned whenever recalling the wrath that inhabited Kylo Ren's tone when he called you a liar, its mental presence ricocheting between your ears and setting your skin aflame with goosebumps, each wave of heated chills revitalizing the blistering burns as they settled into their intentional permanence.

Upon your left thigh, bright and belligerent and baleful, sitting just above the hem of your uniform, stung the evidence of Kylo Ren's indignation. Staring down at the welts – two pointed, laser-sharp letters – shame accompanied the initial longing regard you held for the brand. You now bore the undeniable truth of your time with Kylo Ren, a raised K set in finality next to a partnering R, the pain-inked initials tied to a turmoil laden conflict you didn't want to acknowledge. It was too pitiful, too pathetic and disgusting even in the infancy of its consideration.

At the fringes of your mind, the dark corners of consciousness you rarely visited, sprung an aching truth that thrashed against every belief you thought you'd once held. Yet, with each shiv of shaky air, every dagger of dread pitted in pain, you came closer to accepting it. Barely below the surface now, even as the injury pulsated with piercing torment, smarted in sync with the blatant beat of your heart, you could not deny the fact that you felt deserving of its detriment and relieved by its reality. As you tended to the wounds, using whatever scrapped supplies you'd accidentally brought home from the med bay, you fought to react in a way that would be appropriate to this situation.

The malice-born mark should have tinged your blood with fury. In its wake, the aura of red which bled outward from each initial should have filled your lungs with an indisputable hostility towards their maker. Right now, suffering in solitude, you were supposed to be cursing Kylo Ren, spitting his name and screaming hellfire over him as he'd singed into you. There was an overwhelming presence of heavy self-set expectation to sink into an unrivaled hatred for the creature you'd left in that room, the same who'd left less permanent proof in the past. Though, while the targeted tissue throbbed below your trembling hands as you attempted to apply an antibacterial protectant, you found it impossible to feel anything but misery for him.