There’s lights going off, blue and red, unsettling colours blaring so loudly. It’s a crime scene with no bodies, only the blood from where two people fought. The first thing that stumbles is Gigi’s legs, alongside the warm porcelain that holds her steady. There’s concern in the air, even greater in the green eyes watching her limp, bruised and stinging.
“Expensive,” is all the gremlin could reason, a half-truth, her mind hazy with every step further away from the sirens, currently carrying a body.
Not dead… unfortunately.
She tumbles, her weight dead and slumped against Cecilia’s frame. Her feet feel like jelly and liquid all at once. Only now does anything register—the night air is cold, biting at her bruises. She could feel how swollen her cheek was, could feel the sting on abraded knuckles.
“What happened?” Cecilia asks the question softly, a softness Gigi was never aware existed. So when she twists around too fast and almost falls headfirst, she notices the way porcelain features frown. Has Cecilia always been this soft? This… this scared? This disapproving?
Maybe she has a concussion. That would explain why she feels so out of it. Her head feels heavy, and her body refuses to cooperate even with a simple command like "walk."
Her legs find no comfort, no perch. But at least they were numb.
Gigi could still sense it, concussion and all. She could still feel the tension in the vicious air, the watchfulness of Cecilia’s gaze lingering on her and nothing else. The tightness of porcelain hands on her lower waist signals an emotion.
An emotion the gremlin didn’t want to confront right now. But what else is there to do, in this moonless night, where the clouds dare not part? The clouds cover what the moon wants to hide. Could she say, metaphorically, that she’s kind of the moon? Cowering behind mist and fog, to conceal what she fears to face?
Worry, and not just any kind—Cecilia’s worry.
The bane of Gigi’s existence, the sword at her heart, the inferno that dares to consume her. The clouds would be doing her a favour if she were actually the moon. But she wasn’t the moon; no, she was a gremlin, a gremlin with far too many complex emotions. If she’s not the moon… at least she shares some traits with it.
If she could get poetic she would say—
“Why did you punch that guy?”
It’s a sentence Gigi expects, just not when. She doesn’t account for how maddening it would feel—a small question that shouldn’t make her blood boil just a little.
The guy... the guy who was now in the back of an ambulance, not dead. Gigi regrets it.
No, she regrets that she didn’t kill him.
Cecilia’s fingers steady her trembling legs, but all Gigi wants to do is float away from this conversation, to ward off the complexities of what supposedly was a simple question.
“He started it.”
The words come out slurred, weighed down with the exhaustion that crawls through Gigi’s bones like lead. But even she can hear how childish they sound, like the defence of someone caught with bloodied hands and no excuse but their indignation. Cecilia doesn’t say anything at first, her eyes dark and steady in a way that cuts deeper than words ever could.
“Doesn’t mean you had to finish it.” Her voice is low, not scolding, but carrying a disappointment that settles heavy in Gigi’s chest. Cecilia shifts, hoisting more of Gigi’s weight, her touch firm but gentle, like she’s afraid too much pressure might make her shatter completely. “You don't have to prove anything like this. Not to anyone. Least of all to me.”
For a moment, Gigi wants to laugh. The irony of that statement. As if proving herself to Cecilia isn’t the one thing she’s spent years chasing, even if she’s never been able to name it out loud. Instead, she swallows the bitter lump in her throat, focusing on the cold pavement beneath her feet, her voice barely above a whisper.
“He deserved it.”
That’s where they leave it at. The rest of the walk is silent, and Gigi just hopes she doesn’t fall head first into cracked concrete.
The cool cloth on her face is the first real sensation Gigi feels since the fight. Everything else is a blur—lights flashing, her body betraying her as she stumbles through the night—but this? This is real. It’s a sharp sting, a reminder that she’s here, still breathing, still alive.
Her head feels too heavy, like it’s filled with cotton, and her body won’t quite listen, movements sluggish, disjointed. Maybe it’s the concussion, maybe it’s just the aftermath of the fight, but nothing feels right.
She doesn’t mean to flinch, doesn’t want to expose the weakness she feels, but the coolness of the cloth feels like too much. A jolt straight to her raw skin. She feels the soft, steady rhythm of Cecilia’s touch and hates how much she wants to melt into it.
Get it together, Gigi thinks, but it’s not working.
“This might sting,” Cecilia murmurs, the words somehow gentle, even when they carry the weight of annoyance.
Gigi doesn’t reply. She’s too busy focusing on the soft, unyielding pressure of Cecilia’s fingers against her swollen cheek. And for a moment, it’s like the rest of the world disappears. There’s just Cecilia, and the quiet hum between them.
She tries to concentrate, to gather her thoughts, but the fog in her brain is thick, almost suffocating. It’s hard to tell where she ends and the darkness begins.
“You’re such a handful,” Cecilia mutters, more to herself than to Gigi, but it carries something else—a tenderness that makes Gigi want to hide her face, to curl up and disappear. The kind of tenderness she’s never known how to handle.
Gigi opens her mouth, maybe to protest, maybe to say something sarcastic, but then the words die on her tongue. They always do, don’t they? Every time Cecilia looks at her like that—like she sees her. And Gigi can’t stand it. She’s not some open book to be read. She’s a mess.
But then... then she blinks, her gaze trailing from Cecilia’s furrowed brow to the delicate curve of her lips. Without thinking, she says it—soft, almost a whisper: “You’re beautiful when you’re annoyed.”
The cloth hovers near her knuckles, Cecilia’s hands still for a moment. Her eyes flicker up, and there's that little quirk at the corner of her mouth, just barely there. “You’re such an idiot.”
Gigi wants to shrink, to disappear, but the sound of Cecilia’s exasperated breath, the tiny whirr of the machinery that hums beneath her touch, makes her heart swell. She can’t help it. Even when she’s a mess, even when she’s all rough edges and bruises, Cecilia still looks at her like she’s something worth caring about. Like she matters.
It’s enough to make her forget the sting of the antiseptic entirely