For the Harry Potter Femmeslash Project on HPFC.
This is… dark. Consider yourself warned.
she says she's broken
you tell her she's beautiful.
she hates herself
you will never stop loving her.
she's so afraid
you tell her that words only hurt if you let them.
.
you hold her tightly on the nights she can't sleep
you whisper in her ears
words about love
words about forever
this is what matters, you say.
she trembles in your arms.
.
you kiss the scars on her face and you tell her she's perfect.
she cries, tells you not to lie.
"i'm not," you swear to her
"i cannot imagine anyone more perfect than you"
and you kiss away her tears.
.
you hate the world for what they've done to her.
you hate them for stripping away her confidence,
stripping away her pride.
because no matter how hard you try to build her back up
she is falling down the other side
you are losing her
and that is the only thing you are afraid of.
.
she's slipping faster than you can shore her up
she's crumbling faster than you can build
you patch her with kisses and hold her together with your arms
but you know you're fighting a losing battle
and it's killing you
.
"i am nothing," she says.
you tell her she is your everything
she spits back, "you don't count"
you flinch away as though she's slapped you
she might as well have.
.
you tell her she's perfect
beautiful
clever
wonderful
amazing
more, so much more than anyone knows
.
but all she hears, all she feels is alone
broken
foolish
ugly
worthless
like she matters less, so much less than anyone else
.
she is slipping
slipping
slipping
.
and then one day she falls
and you aren't there to catch her
and you watch her, lying there, still, too still
and your world crumbles
and all you can think is that your words weren't enough
.
they broke her, and you couldn't put her back together again, no matter how hard you tried.