Lavi

[scrapdraught]

this time there are no otome points only deep concern

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2/2 (EXCERPT) ((SPOILERS, CW: parental/caregiver abuse, self harm, autonomy loss, sadism, exposure))

[scrapdraught]

((SCREAMS I CAN'T BELIEVE IT DIDN'T POST!!! anyway NOTE: while not written explicitly Lavi will be able to see that Camille has self harm scars. She has cut words into every part of her body save for her face, hands, and most of her neck.))






"Camille. Open up." My mother, but not angry. Coaxing. Nice, even. I remained silent. A few more jiggles. A knock. Then silence as she padded away again.

Camille. Open up. The image of my mother sitting on the edge of my bed, a spoonful of sour-smelling syrup hovering over me. Her medicine always made me feel sicker than before. Weak stomach. Not as bad as Marian's, but still weak.

My hands began sweating. Please don't let her come back. I had a flash of Curry, one of his crappy ties swinging wildly over his belly, busting into the room to save me. Carrying me off in his smoky Ford Taurus, Eileen stroking my hair on the way back to Chicago.

My mother slipped a key into the lock. I never knew she had a key. She entered the room smugly, her chin tilted high as usual, the key dangling from a long pink ribbon. She wore a powder blue sundress and carried a bottle of rubbing alcohol, a box of tissues, and a satiny red cosmetic bag.

"Hi baby," she sighed. "Amma told me about what happened to you two. My poor little ones. She's been purging all morning. I swear, and I know it will sound boastful, but except for our own little outfit, meat is getting completely unreliable these days. Amma said it was probably the chicken?"

"I guess so," I said. I could only run with whatever lie Amma told. It was clear she could maneuver better than I.

"I can't believe you both fainted right on our own stairs, while I was sleeping just inside. I hate that idea," Adora said. "Her bruises! You'd have thought she was in a catfight."

There's no way my mother bought that story. She was an expert in illness and injury, and she would not be taken in unless she wanted to be. Now she was going to tend to me, and I was too weak and desperate to ward her off. I began crying again, unable to stop.

"I feel sick, Momma."

"I know, baby." She stripped the sheet off me, flung it down past my toes in one efficient move, and when I instinctively put my hands across myself, she took them and placed them firmly to my side.

"I have to see what's wrong, Camille." She tilted my jaw from side to side and pulled my lower lip down, like she was inspecting a horse. She raised each of my arms slowly and peered into my armpits, jabbing fingers into the hollows, then rubbed my throat to feel for swollen glands. I remembered the drill. She put a hand between my legs, quickly, professionally. It was the best way to feel a temperature, she always said. Then she softly, lightly drew her cool fingers down my legs, and jabbed her thumb directly into open wound of my smashed ankle. Bright green splashes exploded in front of my eyes, and I automatically tucked my legs beneath me, turned on my side. She used the moment to poke at my head until she hit the smashed-fruit spot on its crown.

"Just another little bit, Camille, and we'll be all over." She wet her tissues with alcohol and scrubbed at my ankle until I couldn't see anything for my tears and snot. Then she wrapped it tight with gauze that she cut with tiny clippers from her cosmetic bag. The wound began bleeding through immediately so the wrapping soon looked like the flag of Japan: pure white with a defiant red circle. Next she tilted my head down with one hand and I felt an urgent tugging at my hair. She was cutting it off around the wound. I began to pull away.

"Don't you dare, Camille. I'll cut you. Lie back down and be a good girl." She pressed a cool hand on my cheek, holding my head in place against the pillow, and snip snip snip, sawed through a swath of my hair until I felt a release. An eerie exposure to air that my scalp was unused to. I reached back and felt a prickly patch the size of a half dollar on my head. My mother quickly pulled my hand away, tucked it against my side, and began rubbing alcohol on my scalp. Again I lost my breath the pain was so stunning.

She rolled me onto my back and ran a wet washcloth over my limbs as if I were bedridden. Her eyes were pink where she'd been pulling at the lashes. Her cheeks had that girlish flush. She'd plucked up her cosmetic bag and began sifting through various pillboxes and tubes, finding a square of folded tissue from the bottom, wadded and slightly stained. From its centre she produced an electric blue pill.

"One second, sweetheart."

I could hear her hit the steps urgently, and knew she was heading down to the kitchen.

[bookpapers]

[Lavi watches the memory, no, he feels the memory. He is Camille, ill, crying, and trapped, covered in scars. It's a lot, because this isn't something he's felt before -- only tangentially, but that had been more trapped inside his mind. And he gained the autonomy that he'd lost, however briefly.

This feels like a lot longer. This feels like history.

He blinks rapidly when the memory recedes, and his head swings around to look at Camille.]

What was that pill?

[scrapdraught]

[The memory makes her sick enough without the tagalong. This week is hell. She's been laid bare, literally and otherwise. Before coming here she stripped for no one. Now she's a personal peep show to anyone walking nearby.

That's not even touching on her family.]

...I think those were the anti-malarial pills. Discontinued. Some unpleasant side effects. [Camille won't look him in the eye. She hugs at her middle. Scratches through the sweater.] I can't remember what all the toxicology reports said. It's been a while.