The Black family bathroom is too cold and silent, all marble and silver, everything hard and sharp, a room built to keep secrets rather than offer comfort. The walls hum with silence, centuries of Black ancestors watching with carved eyes, their judgment soaked into the bones of the house.
Rhea sits on the closed lid of the toilet, back straight, hands fisted in the black silk of her robes. Her hair is longer than it’s ever been—longer than she ever wanted it. Back when she still felt like a her, sure she loved it. But now… now it was a weight on her shoulders, metaphorically and physically. The weight of it clings to her like an unwanted memory, strands curling against his collar, her cheekbones, his throat. The individual strands strange him, making her unable to peer into the mirror for more than 18 seconds before feeling like she’s drowning in tears.
Pandora stands behind her, holding a pair of golden shears that glint in the candlelight. She is barefoot, the hem of her pale white dress brushing the tiled floor, her hair a halo of pale light. Despite looking ghostlike with her pale gown, her silky smooth blonde hair, and her pale-ish complexion (except for her round rosy cheeks,) is not undead in feeling. She’s the “light of your life,” as her brother Evan would say. Always caring and never cruel, except if you hurt her family, biological or chosen.
"Are you sure?" she asks, voice barely above a whisper.
Rhea nods, once. “Yes.”
She says it like a spell, like a tether holding her to something real.
Pandora exhales, lifting a section of her hair between her fingers. It is soft, midnight-dark, curls springing loose like it has a will of its own. Rhea wished it sprang loose and never came back again.
“Close your eyes,” she murmurs.
Rhea obeys.
The first snip is loud in the hush of the room. The weight falls away in uneven pieces, locks of ink-dark hair sliding down her shoulders, pooling at her feet. They both stare at it for a long, hard minute. This was the beginning of a new her- wait. No. Not her, not she, but him. This was a new person, of not “Rhea,” but Regulus.
The room flickers.
For a moment, Pandora is not standing in the Black family bathroom, her hands dusted with fallen strands of hair. She is somewhere else, somewhere wrong.
The air is thick with salt, so heavy she can taste it on her tongue, feel it clinging to her skin like a second layer of flesh. The sky overhead is not a sky at all—just a vast, endless void, black as ink, speckled with stars that do not shine but burn. Beneath her, the water churns, restless and hungry, swallowing the light before it can reach too far.
And there—there—is the boy.
His limbs move in a slow, desperate struggle, pale hands reaching, grasping, slipping through nothing but the endless weight of the sea. His mouth is open in a silent scream, bubbles rising like shattered pearls, bursting before they can reach the surface. His silver eyes are wide, wide, so impossibly wide, and they find hers through the water, locking onto her like a hook through flesh.
He is drowning.
He is always drowning.
And Pandora—she is always watching.
She wants to reach for him. Wants to scream his name, but she doesn’t know it, not yet, not in the dream. She wants to tell him to swim, to kick, to fight—
But she knows he won’t make it. He never does.
The water folds over him, swallowing him whole.
Pandora chokes—
And wakes.
Except she doesn’t, not really.
She is still standing in the bathroom, still holding the golden shears in her trembling fingers, but the taste of seawater lingers, the burn of salt still clings to her throat, her breath still shudders like she is the one who has been drowning.
She blinks, and the bathroom flickers back into focus—the silver mirror, the marble floor, the boy sitting before her with his newly shorn hair and a question in his eyes.
"Panda? You okay?"
His voice is gentle, uncertain, but it lands like a crack of thunder in her ears.
She sees him now. Not just in front of her, but truly sees him—the sharp cut of his jaw, the way the dim light catches on his cheekbones, the familiar silver of his eyes.
The boy from her dreams. The boy who is always drowning.
She does not tell him this.
She does not tell him, “I see you drown every night.”
No. She will never tell him.
Pandora inhales, slow and steady. She presses a hand to the crown of his head, grounding herself in the warmth of him, the proof of him, solid and real beneath her touch.
She felt his very breath being taken away, and now, for a moment, she feels the exact same way.
“Panda? You ok?” Rhea- no. Regulus asks, seeing pandora in the mirror.
Pandora looks at herself in the mirror, and now, she looks deathly pale. She looks like a ghost- almost an exact replica of a girl from her years boggart.
“Yeah-“ Pandora says with a slight strain. “Just… admiring how manly you are.” She smiles, a little bit forced, but a lot a bit proud.
Pandora moves carefully, deliberately. Each cut peels back a layer, each strand severed feels like she is carving something truer out of him.
She works in silence, save for the rhythmic snipsnipsnip and the almost silent tears of the boy in front of her. The air smells of candle wax, old magic, and the faintest trace of salt.
When it is done, she steps back.
Regulus opens his eyes.
He reaches up, fingers brushing the nape of his neck. The hair there is short now, unfamiliar, but right. No longer drowning him in locks of hair, but it’s still there. It’s more of a comfortable embrace than a strangle. A slow exhale shudders out of him.
He meets Pandora’s gaze in the mirror. She is looking at him like she knows him—like she has always known him.
“You’re beautiful,” she says, simple and quiet.
Regulus swallows.
Pandora does not say, “I saw you drown.”
She does not say, “I think the universe is trying to warn me.”
She definitely won’t say, “you looked better as a girl,” or “you’ll always be a girl” like some of the pricks in their classes will.
She only kneels beside him, gathering the fallen pieces of him in her hands like they are something sacred.
And outside, the sea crashes against the cliffs, restless, waiting.
They say “hair holds memories,” don’t they?
Pandora looks down at the severed strands pooling at their feet, at the pieces of Regulus that no longer belong to him. A transformation, a shedding of old skin. A boy being carved into existence with every careful cut.
If only it were that simple.
If only she could cut away the images that cling to her mind like seaweed around an ankle, dragging her under. The silver eyes swallowed by the deep. The desperate hands reaching, reaching, reaching—
If only she could sever the dream from herself as easily as she severed Regulus from Rhea.
Pandora swallows, forcing the lump in her throat to dissolve. She watches as Regulus touches the back of his neck again, fingers ghosting over the newly shorn hair. His expression is unreadable, but she knows—she knows—that this moment matters, that this is the first breath of something new.
But all she can think of is water and silence.
All she can hear is a scream swallowed by the sea.
A thought curls around the edges of her mind, sharp and insistent. What if this isn’t a warning? What if it’s a promise?
Pandora clenches the shears tighter in her fist.
If only she could cut off her hair and forget it all.