Title: Here Is No Why
Author: Madraykin
Rating: R-ish I think. Self-mutilation, eating disorders and destructive mania.
Summary: "He knows her name she knows that. After all, it would be discourteous of him not to. But he doesn't know a thing." Self-mutilation, eating disorders and destructive mania.
Disclaimer: The characters belong to J.K. Rowling. Not me. I'm just playing.
A/N: So, my first piece of fanfic. Scarily I knocked this up in half an hour, despite all the other pieces I've been working on for ages. The title sucks, but my excuse is that it's 4am and Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was sitting right in front of me. Please be gentle.
A/N 2: this has now been edited. Much thanks to Niuserre for beta-ing
She watches his hands. They're smooth and white. His fingers dance as he explains.
Sometimes, watching him, she thinks he can explain everything. He can rationalise everything with his long dancing fingers.
She knows it isn't true. Knows that he is just human, like everyone else. Like her. Though sometimes she forgets that she is human, that she is alive.
Once she forgot to breathe.
She lay there, that night, and she forgot to breathe. She can't remember when she noticed she wasn't breathing, but when she noticed she remembers that she started again.
Sometimes she wishes she hadn't noticed, or that she'd forgotten how to breathe at all.
Sometimes she lies there in the dark trying not to breathe, like that night. She's never managed it again. Her lungs always betray her, forcing the air in and out. After each failed attempt she lies there listening to the quiet broken only by her rattling breath.
She doesn't sleep anymore.
She tries not to breathe, or she lies there in the dark tracing patterns on her skin with a razorblade, then painting pictures with her blood.
Or she sits hunched over her desk writing manically. Stories and poems about death, and loss, and insanity.
Sometimes she goes running. She runs and runs and runs until she sees the sun come up. Then she sneaks back in to restart her charade as a 'normal' girl.
They don't see her. They don't notice as she sits there picking at her food, or how she constantly reads. Reading stories and poems, or teaching herself things she'll never need to know. They don't see the glint of mania in her eyes; the part of her that really isn't quite all there. They don't notice how she never speaks unless she's spoken to, or how she never even attempts to keep a conversation running. They don't hear the squeaking of the floorboards when she creeps out at night, or when she creeps back in the morning.
They don't know that she doesn't sleep. They don't know why she doesn't sleep; that when she sleeps, the voices have control over her. They tell her things, those voices. They tell her what she really is.
Some people might call them nightmares. But she knows they're real. Sometimes if she doesn't pay attention she can hear them when she's awake, so she keeps herself busy; she reads, and reads, and reads. She doesn't let herself run or hurt herself during the day. From the books she's read she knows these things are considered 'behaviours'. And if someone notices it'll all be taken away from her, all of her ways of coping. Then the voices will take over.
At night, when she's in, she sits there pretending to be asleep. She hugs herself and grips her razor in her hand. She cuts and cuts and cuts. Sometimes, just for variety, she pinches her arm, or she pulls a silver cigarette lighter (the one she had bought on a shopping trip with her family and it had looked so shiny and she knew that she had to have it, so she'd waited until they were distracted and ran back to buy it) out from under her pillow and holds it too close to her skin.
Once she punched a wall.
She was glad she'd put up a silencing charm so that no one outside could hear anything. It made a loud crack. And she felt pain zinging up her arm. She flexed her fingers and felt the pain again. She did it again. She thought she might have broken a bone. But she never got it looked at. Now she only lets herself punch the wall on special occasions.
Once she found a knife. She tried using it one night. But when she used it she heard the voices berating her loudly and cruelly. So she threw it away and went back to her razors.
She looks so thin now. She can tell when she looks at herself in the mirror. Her eyes look too big for her face, and her cheekbones are razor sharp. She giggles at that metaphor. She counts her ribs, and she runs her fingers over her jutting hipbones. When she looks at her back she sees the line of vertebrae. She moves her shoulders back and forth to see her shoulder blades wriggle under her skin.
They look like small wings. She giggles quietly to herself. She's a scarred, emaciated angel.
But at least it makes the voices go away.
She knows she's living on borrowed time. She's living off the mania. She hasn't eaten anything but sugar for the past month. She knows that some day soon she's going to crash.
Maybe when she does he'll come to her and make it all come clear with his entrancing fingers.
But she doesn't think he will.
He doesn't see her, the same as all the rest of them. She doubts he even really realizes anything about her. He knows her name she knows that. After all, it would be discourteous of him not to. But he doesn't know a thing.
He doesn't know how dead she feels. Or how, in some strange twist of fate, she also feels so alive. None of them do.
They don't know how she sits and cries at night. Rocking backwards and forwards, mourning what she's lost.
She's not innocent any more. She knows she's not. Someone like her can't be innocent. A scarred, emaciated angel can't be innocent. And she likes being a scarred, emaciated angel. She clings to it; identifies herself by it.
She knows it's all she's got. And she knows it's all she'll ever have; this scarred emaciated body.
A/N: So the girl I had in mind when I wrote this was Ginny. Although I guess it could apply to Hermoine too. I have no idea who 'he' is though. I just can't decide. Any ideas?
Feedback will be loved and cherished, especially as this is my first attempt at fanfic.