Chapter Text
At night she finds herself lying in her bed, memories flooding her mind and threatening to overwhelm her. She feels the pull of the past around her throat and wonders if she’ll choke on it, if tonight she’ll finally lose the war she’s been fighting since she was a child.
But she never loses, never falls under, never gives in. She lives to see the dawn and she remembers herself. She may not have faith in much, may not believe in a god, may not even have faith that the universe will play fair -- but she believes in herself.
Most of the time. There are times when even that falters. In the dark, in the dead of night, when the sun’s been gone for too long and it’s colder than she’d like. There are times she wonders if she’ll make it through that night, when she wonders if she’s haunted.
And sometimes she remembers the words she spoke, the claim that love is for children. Maybe she got it wrong; maybe it’s faith that’s for children. Maybe it’s both. Maybe she’s too far gone for any of that, for faith and love and other silly notions that people talk about. Maybe she’s far beyond them.
And yet.
Yet she lies in bed at night with her eyes closed, forcing herself to claw through her nightmares and muttering hesitant words to anything that will listen. It’s not praying, she refuses to think of it as praying, but it’s something. It’s pleading with something to be just a little kind, a little gentle.
She knows her words will fall on nothing. She knows that she won’t get a response, won’t see a miracle. She doesn’t even believe in such things but sometimes, just every now and then, she finds herself wishing she did, finds herself longing for the belief that she sees in other people. Belief in humanity, in a god, in themselves.
She’s looking for something that never falters, that pushes on like a heartbeat. She can’t think of anything like that, can’t rely on love or faith or identity, doesn’t have anything that stays steady except the ever thrumming comfort in her chest.
She wonders if she ever had it, ever believed in anything so fiercely that nothing could make her falter. There was never an answer she liked. She never found something she could point to and say “yes, this is what captured my faith as a child”.
Five nights spent awake thinking on the topic -- imagining what it would be like to have that, to believe, to be soft and small and something that was not so sharp and jagged -- and she knows that she wants it. She wants to grab hold of that part of her, that careful little part she keeps tucked away, that part that wants belief again, and let it see the sun.
Then it just becomes a matter of what she’s going to do with it. Even knowing what she wants, she finds it hard to put into words. They get caught in her throat, tangled in her mouth. She can’t say ‘someone make me believe again’, or ‘make me feel small and loved and cared for’.
It isn’t that easy, it’s far from easy.
She’s always gone after what she wants, pounces on it with claws bared. She attacks and drags it back to her hiding place, takes whatever she craves. But this is the opposite of that, this is something gentle and sweet, this is something she wants to be careful with.
And maybe that’s how it starts because she needs something to remind her to be gentle, to keep her claws in and relax a little.
That’s how she picks up the little stuffed fox. It’s nothing impressive, nothing she’d expect to pick out for herself if, for whatever odd reason, she felt the compulsion to buy such a thing. It finds her, hidden in a bargain bin at a store she happens to be passing through. She looks at it, runs her hands over its fur, strokes its tail and finds herself drawn to it.
That night she’s in bed, her eyes closed and her body curled around the little stuffed animal. She says sweet words to it, comforting words she means for herself, promises that she’ll wake up in the morning, assurances that the little toy will be there too. It’s silly, stupid even, but she takes a surprising amount of comfort in it. She relaxes just a bit more, lets her defenses down when only the little fox can see.
And when she sleeps well, at least for a night or two, and dreams of woods and stories and falling back into a world she’s hardly ever visited.