After minutes (hours? she could not tell), she found herself in her old room. Her room. That phrase seemed wrong - this was no longer her room, but simply a space that had been invaded, captured by a force she could not keep out. But, right now, it was all she had. And, Hollandaise thought as finally tears gathered in the black-gold pools of her eyes, it was what passed for home. Breathing deeply, she felt it building, like an unavoidable tsunami rising in her chest, and her cold, narrow bed welcomed her as the first sobs came. Hollandaise buried her head in the pillows, hands grasping onto them as though they were her salvation. If she closed her eyes, it almost felt as though nothing had changed at all. A lie. A pretend, a fancy: that she was merely waiting for Deszeld to return. Everything had changed. She had taken the ghoul's presence for granted: like a rock, or a tree, unchanging and steady to lean upon. Hollandaise had never thought about how or why she needed Deszeld. She was like water, something only the absence of was noticed. Hollandaise felt things swarming her, emotions she was not used to, things too strong for a warder's deliberate type of thought. Fatalistically, she wondered if she could cut out this part of herself, if would she be good enough then? The idea sent her into more spasms. It was hard to breathe, to think of anything but a downward spiral of all the ways she'd done things wrong. Even then, confusion lingered. Was this really what it meant to need someone? Her mind raced; she was not herself, but some creature defined by her tears and involuntary hiccups. It overwhelmed her.
Order. Order helped her think, to concentrate on something other than just feeling. Her breath rasped noisily in her throat, the creaking wheeze of it interspersed with small whimpers: like those of a small, wounded animal. Hollandaise turned her head, forced her eyes to focus, the tear-bright gold of them traced the window panes. One, two, three, four. Again. One two three four, one twothreefour one- Her vision blurred and Hollandaise was left gasping as another sob wracked her body. No, she could not let herself be this weak. She would not. Slowly, her thin fingers trembled and stroked at her leaves. Grasping at one stem, she paused a moment as another panicked sob tensed her muscles and fat tears rolled hotly down her face. On an inhaled breath, she pulled. Her body jerked and Hollandaise bit down on her lip to keep from crying out, white teeth sinking desperately into that swollen curve. The skin split and the earthy tang of her sap-like blood feathered onto her tongue. That and the burn of losing a leaf sharpened her, shocked her tears into stopping, if only for a moment. It was like pressing a glowing hot wire into her skin, sharp and immediate, with a long, lingering burn. It pulsed with her heartbeat and finally she gasped, hand dropping the leaf like so much trash onto the floor. She could do it, she decided, she could make it through tonight, she could take out her emotions and turn them over in her awkward hands and try to find how everything had gone so horribly wrong.
_ _ _ _____➷➸➹_____ _ _ _
Wearily, she padded through the dorm, the cold arches of her feet aching as they stretched with each step. Her head hurt, her eyes hurt; daylight was a bleary mess brought on by fitful snatches of sleep plagued with worse dreams. Hollandaise felt as though she creaked with each movement - like she were some weak, human fairy-tale princess just awakening after a hundred years' sleep. But she was no royalty and there were no princes stretching their corpse-pale thin limbs up to worship her. There was only cold sunlight in patches from the windows, dazzlingly cruel and intermittent. As if she deserved a happy ending, Hollandaise thought, disgusted with herself. As if she wanted a happy ending. No, what she wanted, thought she needed, was an ordered ending: one where she was a perfect warder, inoffensive and full of quiet thoughts and sleep-slow movements (slow as growing, slow as moss' breath).
Hollandaise paused outside the dorm's kitchen, breathing slowed and subtle, forced. Things, she needed things, tasks to distract, to force her wayward mind on the path she desired, to stop it from spiraling into more confused tears and the kind of sadness borne from losing something she had not know she possessed. Her wooden heart beat fitfully. Luckily or unluckily, she had no more tears - she was hollowed out, dry; a desert lived in her lungs and cast sand into her eyes, ringing them with a swollen redness even as she tried to blink the grit away. The metal pans in the kitchen gleamed cleanly at her, cheerily, and she curved her lips into a placid smile, a polite smile, the kind she might make if someone were watching her and judging and she was found wanting. And perhaps someone was watching. She shivered and the smile dropped from her lips after a mere second. Once, someone had told her that it looks less energy to smile than to have her face shift into a rictus of sadness. She remembered, suddenly, like light shifts and reflects against heretofore unseen dust motes in the air, how the Elders all had formed gently sweet, meaninglessly saccharine smiles on their tree-bark faces when they had told her to leave. No, she thought, smiling was more difficult, but Hollandaise would do it because it was what would be expected of her. These were the things she told herself in the morning light - she was, she could be a Warder, no less. She felt like she was lying to herself.
Softly, she pressed cool fingertips to her eyelids, sighing at the feel of them against the heavy hotness that spoke of more tears to come. She had come here for a distraction, on a half-remembered promise of food. And so, Hollandaise forced herself to concentrate on only that and nothing else. She would not think about the words carved into her door, or the things Deszeld had said (this was a lie - they always rang in her ears, hissed low in the spaces between heartbeats), and she would not think of how she had been cruel to Aisha, one of the few friends she had managed to make. And in this not-thinking, long-fingered hands moved: measuring, mixing, sorting. Deliberate, precise, even-handed: in this moment, she was very much like a Warder.
She made spookies.
_ _ _ _____➷➸➹_____ _ _ _
Hollandaise had thought that, after a night's sleep (although she did not sleep in more than minutes and merely whiled the hours away with tears and what-ifs), that she could return to Deszeld's room, make some sort of apology. Fix things. She still did not exactly understand what had gone wrong even now - it simply felt as though the two of them had left far too many things unsaid. So, she had left the food, untouched, in the kitchen and now she stood at Deszeld's door, her feet easily following the unforgettable path. More nights had been spent here, she thought, instead of in her own room - when she was lonely, or wished to be surrounded by growing things, or simply could not sleep, she had come here. Her presence had been persistent in the way only trees are; each time Deszeld entered and Hollandaise was already there, each time the Warder had stepped into the room, refusing to knock, she had seen the wariness that tightened Deszeld's shoulders lessen. And the dragon had tolerated her, eventually. Claimed to own her, though that still did not sit well with Hollandaise. But a Warder took what was given and examined it and accepted it. Plants did not require anyone's validation to grow in the smalls spaces of soil between concrete, so why did she? But now, she must remember to be hardy like one, and not hope for anything more than she deserved, although she did not know what that was. With deft fingers, she picked the lock, letting the door swing smoothly inward.
It was empty. Relief mixed with disappointment flared to life as she scanned the room - a uncomfortable revelation, that she felt relief. It felt like a betrayal. But, now that she was here, and despite Deszeld's absence, she could not turn her feet back towards the door. Everything in this room was familiar to her, there was no spot she had not run her twig-like fingers over, no plant she had not spoken with. But the echoes of the hissed words after the dance still haunted the corners of the room, threatening to force the remnants of tears from her painful eyes. Her brown-green hair swung heavily at her hips as, unable to stop herself, Hollandaise walked towards the bed. She touched things as she went, as if the familiar textures could bring a kind of reassurance to her unsteady heart. Here - Deszeld's desk, scratches worn into the top, likely put there by impatient claws. Hollandaise's shin sported a dark bruise from it. There - the smooth coolness of the wall that she had been shoved against. Snatching her fingers back as if burnt, she touched them to her lips and wondered how Deszeld's kiss would've tasted if it had happened at the dance, if she had gone with her, if Deszeld had not bought Aisha, if, if, if... Hollandaise shook her head and moved towards the bed. With shaking hands she lowered herself onto it, feeling the soft, fine sheets - another familiar texture. In that familiarity was a finality she refused to acknowledge, instead tucking her legs up on the bed.
The bed smelled like Deszeld, soothing and dark, like sunlight in a dimly lit forest. Hollandaise curled into it with a heaving breath, squeezing her eyes shut. But no tears came. It was good this way, she supposed, because to leave damp spots on another's pillow would be horrible manners. The sharp laugh that twisted out of her at that thought turned into another sob, a desperate gasp for air - Hollandaise was drowning in nothing more than the absence of another. She was weak, so weak, but she let the dry sobs come, hands fisting in blankets and sheets not her own. Later, Hollandaise told herself, she would work up the courage to leave. She would go and not come back, try not to impose where she was unwanted, and the only traces of her presence would be mussed sheets and the lingering scent of leaves. Everyone truly was fickle, after all.
