Notes: possible triggers included herein (alcoholism, self harm, attempted suicide.)
"You're my hero."
Her whispered voice is weakened and lost in the fabric of his shirt. His neck smells nice. Her fingertips brush against the lines of his abs, but the gesture is gentle, innocent.
He's like a pillar to her, his arms like tree limbs. She's never felt someone so strong, sturdy, stable. She's never had a place where she can build something. All her life, she's collected nails and pieces of wood out of her path and saved them up to build something with, something she can look back and be proud of. It will be built out of pieces and shambles and it will be beautiful.
She lays the first piece of wood down on him, the boy that smells spicy like unfinished wood and cologne. The knight who's armor isn't shining, but cotton with a v-neck, and a steed that's an old used truck procured with stolen currency. She pounds a few nails in. They fit in a way that tells her it's either going to be perfect, or it's going to give way to a train wreck.
She lets herself trust him.
"You bastard!"
Her scream is lost to the night as she tears at his shirt. The muscles in his neck tense as he turns away from her. (He can't even look her in the damn eyes and say it.) She reaches out, wishing she had the solid surface of his abs to pound on.
He's still a pillar, but he's crumbling, tree limbs being surrendered to the tempest that's rising from beneath their feet and from their mouths. Every piece she's hung on him falls away. Every nail rusts and shrivels until it but an old dime, ground into the pavement as people walk all over it. He's quicksand, he always was. She just couldn't feel herself sinking until it was too late.
She doesn't surrender herself to gravity. She doesn't let this once beautiful boy, shrouded in a black hoodie, suck her down into the abyss of lies and deceit and betrayal that he's so expertly crafted. She doesn't know why. One last fragment of herself, still stuck in the frame after all the other glass had shattered and crumbled away. She runs from him because she doesn't know how to give in.
She will never trust again.
"Get away from me."
It's the mantra she's repeated to everyone that's tried to help her. She wants to hurt. They need to let her hurt. She buries herself in his shirt, which still has that same spicy, raw wood scent. It reminds her of when things were better, simpler, and she didn't loathe herself for falling for yet another person's lies.
She forgot how dangerous living in the past can be.
"Fuck off."
She wants to be alone. That's her punishment after all, for letting him so close. Her family barely notices how she doesn't leave her room except for school, and sometimes not even for that. His ghost still haunts the halls, walking alongside Jenna, pulling shaving cream from his locker with disdain, falling against the chemistry shelf, glass breaking against his back. (She wonders if that hurts as much as he hurt her, but she can't imagine anything that would hurt worse than this.)
Her friends are surprisingly easy to drive off. Emily's the first to leave her alone, Aria next, which surprises her, but then again, she never expected her to sacrifice her relationship with Ezra for any one of them. In a way, she doesn't blame her. The worst thing that's ever happened to her is a first grader whose mother had a lesbian haircut. She doesn't understand.
But Hanna is a different story.
"Why are you still here?"
The first thing she sees in the morning, through her thick headache, (she's still clutching the empty bottle when she wakes,) is blonde hair spread across her pillow. Her first weak thought is panic – what had she done – but then she remembered the phone call at three in the morning where she couldn't even understand herself, she was that drunk and crying that hard.
Hanna doesn't speak. At first Spencer thinks she's sleeping, and she's about to roll over and try to sleep through her hangover, but Hanna rolls over. Her eyes are rimmed red, the light blue a mirror to the night before, to all the hurtful things that spilled from Spencer's mouth when Hanna tried to help her, tried to stem her bleeding.
The bandages burn. She has never felt more guilty.
"I'm sorry."
It's something Hanna assures her that she never has to say, although she says it in her head plenty of times anyway. Without fail, Hanna helps her every time she calls. Without fail, she resists her help, even though she's the one who called her. She feels like there are two people trapped inside her body, their polarizing passions tearing her apart, and Hanna too.
She wishes she'd just leave, just like everyone else had. She tells her so. Hanna tells her that there's no chance in hell. She knows what it's like to be tricked by someone she trusted, but she also knows there's no way she can ever understand what Spencer is going through. And that just make her the perfect person for the job.
She resents being seen as a profession. Still, it's nice to know that someone still cares.
"It's positive."
The nausea started exactly one month after she'd seen him in that wretched black hoodie. At first she thought it was just the universe making her their bitch again, or her body trying to expel the memory. At any rate, she didn't think anything of it. Not until three weeks later when she realized the packet of tampons in her top dresser drawer had gone untouched for quite some time.
She tried to tell herself it was stress, and that it would go away, and she was fine, but her rational side was calling Hanna before she knew what was going on. She took one last swig of vodka as there was a knock on her bedroom door – might as well enjoy it while she could.
She makes Hanna look at the stick. Pink is her favorite color after all.
"You can do this."
Hanna's quiet assurances have continued throughout the night, muffled by Spencer's intermittent sob fests and her fits of self-loathing. Toby's name has been cursed a few times, but then she remembers how much it hurts to say his name. She doesn't know where he is to tell him. She doesn't want to.
She's too weak to do anything but listen to Hanna now, but it's all a strong of optimistic bullshit and it's pissing her off, and her arms around her waist, which is pissing her off too, and all she wants is to get her mind off of the stupid parasite inside her that's ruining her life, she turns over to tell her off, but in the dark room, under the cover of a storm that has hit Rosewood, veiled by the gale force of the emotions wearing away at her last shred of sanity, she kisses her instead.
It shuts her up.
"We can do this."
It's a week later, and she's already done as much with Hanna as she had in six months with Toby. She has to assume that it's her fragile emotional state. Or that Hanna is just as crazy as she herself feels. Either way, she can't deny the way it makes her feel when they kiss under the canopy of her bed, or when Hanna holds her hand in public. (She always used to do it, but now it means something different, something more.)
Hanna is soft. She's all smooth skin and fluttering lashes and lips like rose petals. Such a stark contrast to all of her own sharp lines and jagged edges from where she'd been ripped at the seams. She's malleable, she's wonderful, she's optimistic, she's terrible.
Hanna is different than Toby. Spencer isn't sure if that's a good thing.
"I need to make an appointment."
She isn't sure why the words are so heavy on her tongue and on her heart as she discreetly flips to the 'A's' in the phonebook. Maybe it's because Hanna bought her a onesie the other day and made her an appointment with an obstetrician. Maybe it's because Hanna doesn't know she's making this call. She doesn't really owe Hanna this, but she owes her something, and going around her back like this feels wrong in so many ways.
Hanna sees the heaviness in her eyes and tastes it on her tongue, and with whispered words, she asks what's wrong, but Spencer can't bring herself to tell her. Instead she kisses her to shut her up and stop that thought process. It really shouldn't have been that difficult to tell her, but then again, she's in uncharted territory with her, and she doesn't know which way to turn.
The instruments are painful and cold.
"I took care of it."
She isn't prepared for the ice in Hanna's eyes when she says it. She already feels empty, not that she misses the little parasite or anything. She was never ready for a child, not Toby's child, and they both knew that on some level. And she knows Hanna just wants her to be okay, for whatever reason, but she's not okay, she's the furthest thing from it right now, and Hanna's constant striving is making it worse, because she knows she's failing her.
So she drinks too much and calls her and tells her off and there's yelling from both ends of the line, and Spencer just hangs up to end it all. She should be relieved. No one to pretend for, no one to please, but instead, she just feels sick to her stomach.
She wishes it was morning sickness.
"I can't do this anymore."
Her world is blurry, the only solid thing is the concrete slab beneath her and the cool glass bottle in her hand. She can hear the water rushing from underneath her, and all she wants is for it to rush over her body. She even put stones in her pockets for poetic purposes.
She'll always swear her phone dialed Hanna while it was in her pocket, but even in her faded memories, she can feel the touch screen under her fingertips, sticky from tears. She'll never know what really happened, but she knows that Hanna was right there on the bridge next to her for hours and hours until she decided that it was too cold and she needed to come down.
She probably would have fucked it up anyway.
"Get away from me."
The walls in this place are white and cold, and the sheets are just as white and cold but they're also stiff. Her clothes are white, her skin is pale from lack of sunlight, everything is cold and clear and white and it hurts her eyes. Her emptiness is palpable, painful. So much has been taken from her. (Some at her own hand, she'll own that.) No amount of medicine will fix it.
The only thing that eases it is the one person that visits her. Instantly, the room brightens up, and as she leans over to hug her, her hair sweeps over her and she's enveloped in her scent. It reminds her of sunlight and outside, and even though some days, the thought of the outside world is enough to drive her to tears, Hanna is a much needed catharsis, a reminder of who she used to be, a goal for her to be that person again. (At least a shadow of her.)
As much as she pushes her away, Hanna always comes back.
"You're my hero."
Her whispered voice is lost in the delicate fabric of her top. Her neck smells like perfume. Her fingertips skim the waistband of her skirt, drifting over her silk smooth skin.
She's like a pillow. She cushions all of the blows, envelops all of the bad thoughts in herself (she still has them) and takes them away. She still drinks and she still hurts and once in a while, a different sort of emptiness fills her, originating in her womb and seeping up into her chest. She still has nightmares. (Every time she sees someone in a black hoodie, she feels like her heart is sinking down through her body and into the sidewalk.)
Spencer has finally figured it out. She's the quicksand in the equation. Things sink into her and through her and get sucked down into her abyss. People get sucked down into her abyss. Hanna is one of those people. But instead of her sand slipping Hanna's fingers, she manages to hold onto her, somehow. Or at least enough of her that she can put a few nails in and stack a few pieces of wood.
It isn't something she can be proud of yet, but it's a start.