Work Text:
When you bury the past, always dig a grave for yourself.
You’ll dig three graves. One for her, one for him, and one for you.
You’ll lie down in it, or consider it at the least. Your mind will already be halfway in. You’ll toss your old outfit inside, hear the chains clink against the rubble and rock, feel the heat of hell against your back. Those white shutter shades will glare back at you, and you’ll know you could’ve done more.
Three graves.
The names etched onto them burn and smolder in the heat. The damning flames will wrap around you like the only embrace you’ll ever earn. The only embrace you’ll ever get.
The smoke will coil around you, wrap around that coat that isn’t yours, that body you don’t deserve, and you’ll breathe it in, in and out. Choke on the fumes. It’s what you deserve.
Three graves.
Fill in your grave. It’s the only one without a name- isn’t that what you wanted? The other two don’t matter, your eye has long squandered the right to read their names. The right to have your own burnt up with them that day. The dirt and soot stain your bloodied hands even further.
Your eye bristles from the stinging smoke of remorse, a weathered tear escaping its confines and smudging your ruined face. It drips down your charred chin and mixes with the blood on your shirt. Is it yours? Is it theirs? It’s someone’s blood, and someone will always have to bleed.
Somewhere in the distance, the stars bleed.
Somewhere in the distance, you die for the millionth time.
Somewhere in the smoke, you hear a clock ticking, the fluttering of torn fabric in the smog-filled wind.
Somewhere, you can save them.
Somewhere, there are three graves.
Two have names, one is ravaged and burnt, desecrated and abandoned.
The faded, scratched-out letters are all too familiar amidst the rubble.
“Quincy”.