Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Does the girlheroine know that the girlprop knows?

Photos taken in secret, hiding behind half-open doors, a letter that shouldn’t be shown to anyone beyond its intended recipient.

It’s hard to tellhard to remember, sometimes. What she is and isn’t supposed to know. When she is and isn’t supposed to die, hopping back and forth between versions of the same tired old story.

The girl will never grow tired of it, though. Her counterpartThe boy who was cut in half might, and she pities him, but a prop harbours its own affection for the actor who interacts with it most, and the girl knows she has more of a chance with this blooming love than the boy.

But one can’t make 1 from 0.

She’s not allowed the spotlight as a protagonist—the only time she gets to catch the audience’s eyethat girl’s attention is her one moment as a narrative device. An inciting incident, a catalyst to action. The girl is just a prop for her heroine.

The girl loves ither all the same. She loves the moments in between, the behind-the-scenes, when the audience isn’t looking but the camera’s film still rolls.

Like the heroine, she too takes pictures, snapshots saved in the camera of her heart. The heroine’s blushing smile, her shyness when the prop treats her as a friend. Poor thing. So obsessed with her perfect, ideal doll, knowing that the doll’s eyes are set on another hero.

What a sad game this is“Hello? Is there anyone else out there?, of eyes looking at thingsCan’t anyone see me? they shouldn’t seeWon’t anyone see me? and not seeing thingsPlease, look at me too. even as they’re being looked atSomeone, anyone, please―”.

The prop understands, though. The prop sympathizes with the heroine, hiding out of sightout of mind as the heroine hides behind her own closed doors, watching and waiting and wanting.

Love running in parallel lines. The girl understands; she has less than zero chance at ever catching her heroine’s heart.

And as everyone knows, zero can’t become one.

But for one brilliant, shining moment—

The heroine looks at her and only her.

And the prop is satisfied.

Let its role be fulfilled though its love might never be; every time the spotlight shines on it for that one singular transient moment, she carves lovestrikes fear in the heroine’s heart. Like a wound, scabbed-over and scratched open again and again every time it heals.

Maybe one day, the heroine will look at the scar it leaves behind and remembersave her, too.

But until that impossible day comes, the girl will continue to look at the girl, taking her own photos behind her own half-open doors, another line of love running secretly in parallel until it ends up wrapped tight around her neck like a noose.