Chapter Text
“It just means that Beatrix sacrificed herself for nothing.”
Stella stood there, still as a statue for a beat, unable to comprehend. To process exactly what Sebastian had said.
“What? Beatrix sacrificed herself?” Even before she heard the confirmation, she knew. Her ears started ringing, and she felt the edges of her vision grow fuzzy. An uncomfortable, yet unfortunately all too familiar feeling that let her know her consciousness was hanging on by a thread.
Stella turned towards the corner of the room, where Bloom was looking, as if in a trance. Her limbs didn’t quite feel like her own, like she was moving through water, or honey even, pushing with every limb against some invisible resistance.
Until she saw the girl, crumpled on the ground. Her drinking buddy, her confidant. Her… friend. The word didn’t quite do it justice, not after their talk in the forest not after Stella all but confessed her feelings to Beatrix. “You had me” she had said to the other girl. And it was true. Beatrix did have her, even if she didn’t know. Didn’t believe it.
And now she was lying on the ground, a pool of blood spreading like a halo around her head. The sight of it sent a sharp pain through Stella’s heart. Nothing could have prepared her for it. This wasn’t the bruised ego of rejection when Skye turned her away. This wasn’t the dull pain of never quite living up to her mother’s expectation. No, this was something else entirely, and as Stella rushed towards the redhead crumpled on the ground, she realised the power it had.
They had to embrace the good and the bad emotions, Miss Dowling had said. Well, Stella had never felt an emotion this painful, this utterly, incomprehensibly bad. She tried desperately to draw on something good, to balance it out, and all she could think of was Beatrix.
Beatrix laughing with her over Rosalind’s stupid helpers. Beatrix teasing her about her crocs, her eyes soft, her insults lacking any bite. Beatrix passing her a bottle of her best booze, that knowing look in her eye. It was almost too much, the juxtaposition. The pain and the love, all because of this one girl. Lying there, lifeless on the floor.
But Stella couldn’t fall apart. Not yet. She had to hold on to these emotions, she had to finish what they started before she could allow herself to fall apart.
And they did. It felt… Well, there were no words to describe how it felt when they transformed. It was like, she wasn’t just wielding magic, she was magic itself. Pure light. And for a moment, nothing mattered.
But it didn’t last.
It’s what Stella imagined the crash after the high must have felt like, if she ever did drugs. It was somehow, incomprehensibly worse. Because now there was no distraction, there was no higher purpose to channel her pain into.
Now there was just Beatrix, lying in a pool of her own blood. Distantly, Stella heard a commotion around Skye. Bloom was saying something, she sounded relieved. Stella felt like she was under water, all sounds muffled, her own movements sluggish as she finally rushed towards Beatrix.
She was crying, she was pretty sure. She never cried.
Stella fell to her knees near Beatrix, her pristine dress landing right in the still warm pool of blood. For once in her life, Stella didn’t even flinch at the implication of looking anything less than perfect.
She felt a hand on her shoulder, someone trying to console her, maybe get her away, but she couldn’t leave her. She couldn’t move.
Stella’s hands shook as she reached out to gently touch Beatrix’s forehead. She moved a strand of her beautiful red hair out of her face. Something she had stopped herself from doing many times over the last couple of months. Suppressing the urge, ignoring it until it went away.
Now she allowed herself to indulge, to run her hands through Beatrix’s hair, pushing it away from her face. To touch her face, still warm. She almost looked peaceful like this, like she was sleeping.
If it wasn’t for the blood that had soaked all the way through Stella’s dress, was now on her hands from cradling Beatrix’s head, pulling it onto her lap, she would believe that the other girl was just sleeping. Like she was after they rescued her from the blood witches. Asleep in Stella’s bed, more pale than usual, covered in lacerations from the scrappers that took her magic. But safe, and peaceful, by Stella’s side.
Now she was cradled in Stella’s arms, just like she wanted to do back then, but didn’t allow herself to succumb to that weakness. Beatrix would have woken up and it would have been weird.
It won’t be weird now, so Stella indulges.
She’s crying into Beatrix’s hair now. It still smells like her, like the forest right after a lightning strike, tinged with the metallic stench of blood that they’re now both covered in.
Full on sobs are wracking Stella, it feels like she can’t quite get enough air in before the next one comes. She’s soaking Beatrix’s hair with her tears, maybe if she cries hard enough, it’ll wash away the blood.
She chokes on a hysteric laugh. What a stupid, stupid thought. Nothing will ever wash away Beatrix’s blood. It has seeped into the stones of this school, it has ruined Stella’s dress, it is caked under her fingernails, permeated her pores. Beatrix is a part of her now.
It should be a comfort. Stella only cries harder.
“Fuck you, Beatrix,” she chokes, swallowing angry tears. “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.” It’s a mantra, falling from her lips, scorching her throat. It’s easier than saying I love you.
Distantly, she is aware of movement behind her. Gentle voices calling her name, soft hands touching her shoulder. She should be embarrassed; this is an embarrassing show of weakness for someone who betrayed them. Someone who has never truly been in their side. Her friends are probably confused, but how does she explain this to them? How does she explain it to herself?
How does she put into words that she fell in love with the enemy.
Someone pries Stella away from Beatrix, so gently as if she might break. And she might. She wants to rage, to scream, to hold on to Beatrix and never let her go, because if she lets her go now, she will never get her back again. This is it.
But she doesn’t. There is no more fight left in her. Stella goes limp, and someone lifts her up, out of the pool of blood she was drowning in. Away from someone she only knew she loved once she lost her.
And isn’t that just so fucking tragic.
And maybe tomorrow, or a week from now, she will pull herself together. She will shrug off her friends worried glances, and she will put on her best dress, and she will don her makeup like armour, hiding the bags under her eyes. And she will bury this feeling until its nothing but an echo, ricocheting off the walls of her cavernous, empty soul.
Until Beatrix is nothing but an ache, deep in her bones.
But for now? For now, Stella lets herself slip into oblivion as she is being carried away.