All he can see is pale, slim shoulders and a long mane of golden hair. Golden, when it's wet, red when it's not. The lights plays on it, making it look shiny and non-significant. He knows that this is not the case in the day.
She is flushed; hot and red. Upset, although she does not cry. She never cries.
Every night, she comes in here, to the prefect bathroom. The bath is huge, and she is so, so small.
Every night, she comes in here to wash away her sins. All those dark thoughts in her head. She shouldn't have them, she thinks, and she tries to make herself pure and untainted again.
It never works. He does not know why she keeps trying.
The bubbles prevent him from seeing anything else of her; but he can see everything. In her eyes. In her expression. In her life.
She's so easy to read, and yet nobody does. Perhaps they are just incapable of it, so caught up in their own lives, or perhaps they just ignore it because they only want to see the good things. Either way, they only see her act; this smiling, carefree, innocent girl, small and pretty, useful when she needs to be, able to disappear when she's not.
She starts innocently. Washes her hair. Then she applies something to her face; a mask of some sort to cleanse her skin. Then she seizes a puff and rubs it over her shoulders. It does not take off the dirt only she can see. She always seems to grow frustrated.
But there's something different in her demeanour tonight. Her movements are a bit more fluid; final.
He watches; he always does.
He touches her body, everywhere. Not sexual; just an examination of the damage that has been done. She is not happy with what she sees. She sees her imperfections, and hates them.
She never cries; not with tears, anyway. But they are there, invisible.
She stops, eventually. A moment of despair. There's no point anymore, she tells herself. She closes her eyes, and sinks.
Sinks into the hot water, sinks into the darkness that calls out to her so loudly. She can breathe better under the water than she can when with her friends.
He watches, and does nothing.
She comes to the surface again. Her expression is startled. She blinks. So close... she's so close to what she needs. She blinks again. Tries to clear her head. Her hair looks darker now, contains more water, he supposes. Some of the bubbles are caught in it. Almost absently, she wipes them away, showing him more of her pale, skinny arm, showing him more of the pain she inflicts on herself.
Did she find her peace under that water? Did she run from it? Or did she just find herself faced with the realisation that she was drowning again?
She lies there for longer than usual. Then he sees something that he's never seen before. Tears. Long streams fall from her eyes. He can see the trails.
He moves. He does not watch any longer.
He does not watch any more; just this once. He does not rush. he returns to his sleeping place he shares with the Head Girl. She's up, of course, reading. He is glad to see her friends have not accompanied her.
She looks up at him with poison in her eyes as he sits opposite her, and stares.
After a few moments of wringing her hands, she simply gets up to depart to her room. She does not speak; she hasn't in a very long time. She'd tried, when she'd learned of his new found position opposite hers, to make a truce between them. He hadn't accepted it, nor would he ever, and now she doesn't think it was worth her time to even greet him.
But he stops her before she leaves him properly. "You'd want to check on her in the prefect bathroom."
She freezes, her hand on the doorknob. Slowly, she turns. Awkwardly, her hand is still on the doorknob, still ready to leave. "Why?" she says and her voice is unfamiliar, yet the emotion is one he has dealed with many times; from many and her. "What have you done?"
"Nothing," he says and, almost lazily, he stands up and goes to his own room. With the door open, he doesn't face her but tells her, "I think she might try to kill herself tonight."
He doesn't turn, but he hears her scuttle forward. He steps over his threshold, back into his own life, and goes to bed.
He does not stay awake to hear whether she survived the rest of the night or not.
Not expecting many reviews for this, as it's dark, sort of disturning, and not particulary that great. But... poetic license, eh? I can't help what comes out...
Will be updated daily, for 8 days. There's 8 parts. Very, very small parts. Some are only a couple of lines - it was supposed to be a one-shot but, well, it didn't make sense that way.
Sorry about the high rating - that was just being careful.
See you tomorrow!