But No-One's Laughing
Wallflower Blush stood at the edge of the park bridge, looking at the gently flowing water of the river in front of her.
It was a pretty big drop down to the riverbank. Not enough to kill her, but enough to do damage. Give her a broken ankle, maybe a broken leg or a concussion if she fell awkwardly or was just unlucky. Two out of five.
Would anyone even notice if she jumped? Wallflower smiled to herself. She always managed to live up to her name, even before the Memory Stone had given her a more direct way of becoming invisible. A face in the background, the kind of person someone could talk to for an hour and not remember a single thing worthy of mention. She deserved it, honestly. She deserved to be forgotten, deserved to be unloved.
Speaking of deserving it… Wallflower cast her eyes downwards as she rolled up the sleeve of her sweater, revealing dozens upon dozens of hair-thin cuts. Delicate lines of scar tissue traced across her forearms, the dancing marks intersecting at odd angles.
It was a strange coping mechanism that she had fallen into, and to be honest she still wasn’t sure why she did it. Each time she’d come up with a different justification: That she hated herself, that it gave perspective to her anxieties, or just for the sheer, physiological endorphin release. Eventually, they all started to sound like excuses.
Wallflower stared at the off-coloured, healing skin as her other hand slipped into the pocket of her jeans, closing around a familiar plastic cartridge. It was an odd comfort to ponder how easy it would be, on this quiet summer evening, to open up that cartridge, pull out one tiny, insignificant, impossibly sharp little guilty indulgence, bring it to her forearm just like she had done so many times before, and-
“Hey Wallflower, what’s up?”
Wallflower jumped with a terrified start at the voice behind her, cramming the cartridge deep into her pocket before pulling her sleeve back down in a frenzied blur. Her breaths came in ragged gasps and the sound of blood rushing through her ears was so loud she barely heard the voice’s next sentence.
“Wasn’t expecting to see you in the park this late in the day. What’re you up to?”
Wallflower’s head turned to see a recognisable red and gold head of hair come into her peripheral. The familiar sight eased the adrenaline flooding her veins, but only just.
“Just watching the sunset.” Wallflower’s voice was calm, but internally her mind was on fire. That was way too close. What a stupid idiot, almost letting slip to her one and only friend the horrible things she did to herself. Wallflower just had to keep calm and not give anything away, and soon enough she’d be on her own again.
Sunset Shimmer just smirked playfully, as cool and collected as ever. “Which one? Is the ‘Sunset’ interrupting the sunset, or perhaps the other way around?”
Wallflower giggled politely. She didn’t want to, of course – she wanted to curl up and let the Earth swallow her whole. But she had to keep the act up, for Sunset’s sake if nothing else. The other girl slowly joined her at the edge of the bridge, the pair looking out at the river, arms resting on the railing.
She glanced over towards her friend. Or at least, the closest thing to a friend she had. As soon as she did, Wallflower knew that she didn’t deserve Sunset’s kindness.
Sunset just met her gaze and smiled warmly, before her eyes trailed downwards and her expression turned to one of shock.
“Wallflower, what… what’s that on your arm?”
Wallflower stopped breathing. She’d pulled down her sleeve, but apparently not far enough. She could only stand there, frozen, as Sunset stared at her exposed scars. Powerless to stop Sunset grabbing her arm, sending another spike of adrenaline shooting through her veins. Powerless to stop Sunset rolling up her sleeve fully, exposing her shame. Powerless, finally unable to hide from what she’d done.
Only when Sunset released her grip did Wallflower’s instincts kick in. Immediately her hand snapped back against her chest, as though she’d been holding it over hot coals. She might as well have been.
“How… Wallflower, how long have you been doing this?”
Wallflower couldn’t even answer. Sunset’s voice grew from concerned to panicked as she stared not at her, but at her sweater sleeve. Through her sweater sleeve. For the first time in a long, long while, Wallflower wished that she had the Memory Stone again.
“Wallflower, answer me, how long have you been doing this? Wh-why have you been doing this?!”
At that, Wallflower found her voice. As quiet as it was, it was filled with certainty, with a grim resignation that to anyone properly listening demanded no argument.
“I… I really think that I deserve it. What I’ve done, with the Memory Stone, to you and your friends… I’m awful.”
Sunset, however, was past listening. “No, you’re not, Wallflower, that’s absolute nonsense!” But beyond the panic, beyond the worry, there was genuine hurt in Sunset’s voice.
Wallflower was hurting her.
Eventually, Sunset calmed down, though the horrified concern remained etched onto her face and threaded through her words. “Wallflower, you can’t do this to yourself. You… you need to stop, okay? Please.”
Was Wallflower about to lie to Sunset? Look her dead in the eyes and spit out some evasive, non-committal half-truth?
“I’ll be there to help you, Wallflower. I promise.” Sunset continued. “We all will. Both me and the girls, we’ll always be there for you whenever you need us.”
At that, Wallflower’s world stopped, and her vision began to blur as the first few tears formed in her eyes. “You… you really mean it? After everything that’s happened?”
Sunset could only smile. “Of course.”
Finally, the timid girl fell into Sunset’s embrace. As she clung to her friend like her life depended on it, she finally realised that everything would be okay, and Wallflower Blush closed her eyes.
.
.
.
.
Against every instinct, Wallflower Blush opened her eyes.
In place of a beautiful sky overlooking the river, she was greeted with a dusty bedroom and piles of crumpled laundry. Instead of the warmth of a friend on a summer evening, there was only the cold, choking must of unwashed bedsheets in an unheated apartment. Plants, their stems long since withered and died, lined the mildew-coated windowsill. And in the middle of the floor, among the detritus, lay her phone. She’d barely touched it in weeks.
Slowly but surely, Wallflower had pushed away every one of the acquaintances that had made the poor decision of taking her on as a charity case. One by one, the messages, the check-ins, became less and less frequent until they stopped altogether, friendship bleeding into reminiscence, compassion bleeding into apathy.
Good.
Wallflower didn’t deserve friendship. Wallflower didn’t deserve compassion. They were better off without her.
But, as always, there was one who clung on. Sunset Shimmer hadn’t given up on her quite yet, and with it came the occasional check-in that was read and promptly left unanswered. A blinking blue light on her phone caught her eye – Sunset had probably sent her another message while she was asleep.
It was okay. She would learn eventually.
But with Sunset stuck in her thoughts, Wallflower’s mind wandered back to her dream.
Of course it was a dream, of course it wasn’t real, she knew that from the start. But the way her subconscious taunted her, insulted her, was impressive even by her standards.
That wasn’t how it worked.
Wallflower thought on the dream with mounting self-disgust. The cliché 'edge of the bridge' setting was laughable, while the mere thought of cutting herself in public, completely out in the open was enough to make her cringe. Her dream-Sunset’s trite hero complex was bad enough, but worst of all was what she did when she saw her scars.
The thought of Sunset grabbing her arm like that almost sent Wallflower into an anxious spiral all over again. Whether she would’ve frozen, or bolted, or resorted to something more extreme, Wallflower knew two things. Firstly, that nothing good would have come of it, and secondly, that Sunset would never have been that reckless, that stupid.
Sunset would never have made such a vain, heat-of-the-moment commitment to ‘always be there’, because of course she wouldn’t always be there. She had her own commitments, her own life. Implying otherwise just to placate Wallflower’s own pathetic sensibilities was bordering on the dangerous. Besides, the thought of anyone making sacrifices in her name just made Wallflower feel even more like a parasite.
Sunset would have been caring, would have been understanding. Sunset wouldn’t have made a big deal out of her self-harm, would have supported her few successes rather than attacking her many failures. But most importantly, Sunset would have let Wallflower control the direction and pace of the conversation, as uncomfortable as it might have been, instead of ripping agency away from her when she was at her most vulnerable.
Wallflower looked over to her phone, its blinking light still reminding her of the messages she’d left unread.
Not that any of it mattered anyway.
Wallflower rolled up her sleeve, and a wretched, twisted smile overtook her mouth. The hideous, mangled flesh of scar tissue covered her arms from wrist to shoulder, errant, criss-crossing lines defiling her skin. Wallflower smirked despite herself. As insultingly shallow as it had been, her dream had managed to conjure up that particular detail just fine.
How many years had it been now? Did it even matter? The progression was inevitable enough. Bruises turned to scratches, turned to cuts, turned to gouges in the skin, deep enough to leave permanent scars. Complex, warring emotions she couldn’t face head-on, secrets she kept not just from others, but from herself. Something like that doesn’t get fixed with tear-filled eyes and a heart-to-heart.
In silence, Wallflower reached out towards a small orange cartridge – one of the few things in her bedroom that saw regular use. It was habit that made her open up the cartridge, pull out a single razor, and carefully remove the paper it was wrapped in. It was morbid curiosity that made her admire the blade in the dim light of her bedroom, the brand’s logo etched onto its surface. But it was a vile surge of self-hatred that made her do what she did next.
Wallflower picked a spot partway up her forearm – away from the wrist, away from any recent scars or prominent veins – and rested the razor blade against her skin. She may have been worthless, she may have been broken, she may have been hideous and beyond help and deserving of everything she did to herself. But she wasn’t stupid. She knew where not to cut to minimise the risk of serious injury. She knew how to clean, bandage and conceal a wound. She knew how to avoid going too deep.
Or maybe she was just desperately trying to convince herself that she knew these things, waiting for her first major fuck-up to scare her senseless.
Her skin split along the razor’s path, the familiar twinge not even eliciting a response from the girl any more. Wallflower gazed into the wound without a hint of emotion as it slowly filled with blood, the white, spongy layer of skin giving way to crimson bubbles before the excess began to seep down her arm. She brought the razor to her arm and slashed again, slightly harder this time. Wallflower sucked in her breath as she felt it, a burning, stinging sensation that shot through her forearm.
But as quickly as it came, it faded, her whimpers easing into slow, relaxed breaths as the pain subsided. A tired, hazy calm slowly swept over her, and she hated herself for it.
Wallflower Blush sat on the edge of her bed, looking at the gently flowing blood that trailed down her arm.