warnings: self-harm, mentions of blood, mention of past rape, mention of past abusive relationship

Chapter 21: Riley & Sun

In which Riley talks to Sun

It's dawn, and Riley is outside by Luna's grave, and her arm is wet with blood. Time passes slowly. Birds are chirping.

She goes back inside.

The others, mercifully, are still asleep. She digs through the backpack where Wolfgang keeps first-aid supplies as quietly as she can.

She finds a roll of bandages easily enough, wrapped in plastic, but she can't seem to open it. Her hands feel too heavy to work properly, and her mind feels too foggy to think straight, too clouded with shame and self-loathing and sadness.

Maybe that's why she doesn't register the sound of footsteps until it's too late, until Sun is already knelt down beside her.

"Shit," Riley says, yanking her sleeve down to cover the cuts on her arm, though she knows that Sun already saw. "I'm sorry," she breathes. "I thought you were asleep, and I just— Shit. I'm really sorry."

"Why would you have to be sorry?" asks Sun, wide-eyed and frowning slightly.

"I don't know." Riley looks down and starts fumbling with the bandages again. Her fingers are shaking. She wants to cry.

"Here," offers Sun, leaning over and prying the roll from Riley's trembling hands. She tears the plastic open in one smooth motion and says, softly, "Let me help you. With your arm."

Riley stares at her, unsure what to say.

"Please," says Sun.

So Riley pushes up her sleeve.

Sun surveys Riley's arm, and Riley watches her face, waiting for her to turn away in disgust or something. She doesn't.

"Did you clean them yet?" she asks.

"No."

Sun rummages in the backpack and pulls out a bottle of Bactine and a package of Kleenex. She wipes the cuts clean. Then she starts to wrap them.

"I'm sorry," Riley says again, watching the bandage coil around her arm under Sun's deft hands.

"You don't need to be sorry."

"I know," mumbles Riley. "Just, my boyfriend, he'd always—" She inhales sharply at the thought of Jacks. Most days she tries not to think of him. "He used to get mad. When he caught me doing it."

"I hate him," Sun asserts, eyes focused on her work.

"He overreacted a lot," Riley says quietly. "It's ironic, he'd get so upset about me hurting myself that he'd hurt me even more."

"I wish he were here right now," mutters Sun. "I'd break his arms and give him a concussion."

Riley smiles a little. "I guess he would deserve it," she says. But something in her fights against the statement, makes her clear her throat and add, "He wasn't always so horrible though. Sometimes he could be sweet. I mean— I wouldn't have stayed with him if he was, like... bad all the time." She's not entirely sure that's true, but it makes her feel better to say it, to believe that she'd chosen to be with Jacks out of something other than pure desperation.

"No one is bad all the time," Sun shrugs, winding the bandage around Riley's arm. "I still hate him."

Riley presses her lips together. "You know, the guy who got me pregnant, it wasn't my boyfriend." She's not sure why she says it, since she doesn't want to talk about this. Or maybe she does.

Sun stills for a moment, then continues wrapping. She's reached Riley's wrist now. "I know," she says. "You mentioned once."

When they played Truth and Truth, Riley recalls. She nods. "I wasn't sure if you remembered," she mumbles, picking at the hole in the knee of her jeans.

"I remembered."

Riley nods again, this time more to herself than to Sun. "I don't know if I said or not," she says, though she knows for a fact that she didn't, "but it wasn't really consensual."

Sun looks up. Riley looks away.

"That's when I started the— the cutting. After that." She stares down at Sun's fingers frozen around her bandaged arm. "But I know that I should stop," she says. "I know I need to stop. I promise I know."

Sun ties off the bandage and rips away the excess and takes Riley's uninjured hand in both of her own. "It's hard to stop," she tells her. "Even if you want to."

Guilt, hot and painful, coils in Riley's stomach. "Sun," she whispers. "I don't know if I want to." She hesitates, then continues: "Sometimes, I think about how I'm sure I could wake up any of you and tell you I want to hurt myself and— and you wouldn't let me. And that's why I never wake anyone up. Because I don't want to be stopped. I want to cut myself. It feels good." She twists the hem of her sweatshirt around her bandaged hand and chokes back a sob. "I know that sounds fucked up," she finishes, but Sun shakes her head.

"It doesn't," she says. They sit in silence for a moment. Then Sun speaks again, without any real inflection to her voice. "I used to do it too. Not cutting. But I used to punch walls. I punched them as hard as I could. The more it hurt, the better. My hands were always bruised. Sometimes they bled. That was best."

She meets Riley's eye for a moment, then shrugs and looks away. "Finally I punched a hole in the wall," she says. "I was sent to a different foster home. And there was a girl there named Min-Jung. We shared a room. When I tried to punch the wall it woke her up and she came and held my hands until I felt better. She did that every single night. Then one night, I didn't want to punch the wall anymore."

"So you stopped."

Sun nods.

"See, I don't think I'm like you," Riley admits, swallowing thickly. "I don't think I can just stop."

Sun rubs her thumb over Riley's knuckles. "You can," she says. "Maybe not yet. But you can."

"Maybe not yet," repeats Riley.

"Alright," says Sun. Then, softer, "That's alright." She sounds, Riley thinks, almost disappointed.

"I'm sorry," Riley whispers.

Sun hugs her.

Riley hugs her back, mostly with one arm, and cries.