This is obviously in no way canon. It's also somewhat dark. Just a warning.
Hope you enjoy though! - ish
Title: This Love (Will Be Your Downfall)
Disclaimer: I don't own anything really. Shame. Title from the Ellie Goulding song.
Summary: When life doesn't go as planned; you take matters into your own hands.
"One weakness is enough, and love is the deadliest."
Bertolt Brecht
.
His little sister is the first to ask to touch your stomach. It's weird, and – alright, not completely unexpected; but it's a complete invasion of your privacy. So, you look at the girl with your signature raised eyebrow because why would you ever let another Puckerman that near you again? Their mother is bad enough when she's slapping your hands away from the packs of bacon at the market.
"Can I feel her?" she asks, so innocently you could be fooled for the moment into wishing your child will turn out like her.
"What makes you so sure it's a 'her'?" you inquire, for some reason half intrigued, for another half amused, and your voice shows it.
"Because boys smell and you don't. So, unless the baby comes out like that boy you're friends with – the singing one – gotta be a girl," his little sister tells you matter-of-factly, nodding her head as she speaks.
"My daughter's going to be scented with rose petals," you reply decisively, and she smiles at you.
You wonder how she could look so proud when she's achieved so little.
.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, however, and now you wonder if she had the intuition to know what was going on in your heart as her mouth stretched wide across her cheeks, her eyes growing brighter as the rays of sun drowned the shadows she cast behind her.
It was the first time you referred to her – it – the baby – as anything other than a foreign concept. First time you really admitted she belonged to you as much as you belonged to her. First time you felt she'd be a part of you forever.
.
You think rose petals are overrated, especially red ones.
When the sporadic Lima heat doesn't kill them, you take the garden hose to his mother's favourite bush at an unforgivable velocity. It's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment, when the gush of water separates petal from stem.
You stare with mild interest when you catch their trail towards the storm drain, and you can't help the renewed vigour that overtakes you when they get caught in the rungs. You think about letting them gather there – letting his Mom see them as the first thing she comes home to – but that thought gets flushed away with the stream of water that leaves but a faint line of pink in its wake.
There are a few leftover petals trailing behind, random smatterings of blood on an otherwise plain surface.
Blood changes everything. Makes things matter, or not.
You watch the petals fall between the cracks and pretend you don't remember what life was like when they were part of a whole.
.
You know suicide is a sin, but you think murder ranks higher.
It doesn't matter if the others blame the universe and God and everything that can't be answered in between, and not you.
You killed your baby, and you really did love her; so how can killing yourself be any worse when you don't even like who you've become now without her?
.
There are pills for pain and pills for sleep and pills that aren't even meant for you.
This baby wasn't meant to have you as a mother, but she got you, and you didn't protect her; so what's stealing a few pharmaceutical drugs going to do now?
You wrench off the tops of each of the containers, line them up, and pour the contents onto the tiles. Six little white capsules spill out of each flame-orange holder.
Six-six-six.
The numbers flash before your eyes and you wonder if this was God's punishment all along? Gifting you with something so precious only to take it away.
And then you remember. You drag it up from the deep recesses of the hole that's replaced the organ that once pumped so vigorously there, and you remember.
God loves you.
God loves your child.
You sweep the pills into your hand and stare into the mirror at the reflection that is given to you in return. You already look like a ghost, no longer an angel; might as well take to the skies.
You pour the pills down your throat, bend to fill your cupped palms with a basin of water and chase the little tablets of sin down.
You don't bother moving to the bedroom, instead falling to the floor, leaning your head back against the cool side of the bath. You want to be close to her; succumb to Life's greatest adversary in the place you stole the breath from your daughter's lungs, drowned her in her own blood and life-force.
You don't have to wait long.
.
It's impossibly bright, but it doesn't burn your eyes, just opens them further.
The silence should be overwhelming, but it resonates from somewhere that releases the feeling of nothing, but pure serenity from your very core.
The stillness is everywhere; you no longer have vertigo, you can breathe at last.
.
Somewhere a child cries.
Four alphabet fridge magnets spell out a name.
Arms are weighed down with love the size of a newborn.
The heart is a heavy thing.
.
"I just couldn't live with myself knowing I had just killed myself."
Unknown
The End.
Well, that was… different.
I want to stipulate that this is not me hating on Quinn or anything. This came to be during my 'angst-phase' and I just found it again like an hour ago and got the urge to finish it.
Nonetheless, I hope you enjoyed it, and please let me know what you think – it means a lot!
Steph
xxx