Pearl spins the shiny metal in between her fingers, thinking on whether she really wants to do this. She doesn’t, but she needs to, it’s a part of her now.
With a deep breath, Pearl pushes the blade into her skin, layers slowly splitting open to spill blood and absorb any sort of feeling. She drags it across her wrist horizontally, slowly at first, going faster and deeper with each cut.
Eventually, blood stopped beading at the openings of her cuts and started running down her arms. This is Pearl’s least favourite part, because it’s when she feels the most aware. The sensation of liquid trickling off her skin, the sound of it dripping onto the floor, it makes her incredibly aware of what she’s done, but never of why.
Pearl often thinks back to the first time she cut herself, and the second, and random snippets after that. They all have something in common, the crimson blood, but they all lack reason. Maybe it’s Pearl’s fault, but she can never really remember what caused her to pick up the blade in the first place.
She thinks about this much too hard, staring into the tiles of her bathroom floor rather than cleaning them. She thinks so hard that she doesn’t realise she’s still covered in blood, so hard she doesn’t hear the door open, and so hard she doesn’t realise she’s crying.
“Pearl.” Gem states.
Pearl doesn’t know why she says this, they both know that she is Pearl, but she can’t dwell on it too long. She wants to turn and look at Gem, but she’s much too aware of that stupid trickling sensation, and she feels too ashamed to look at Gem. She doesn’t need to, because she never does and Gem has never once complained.
“You need to stop doing this.” Gem says as she sits down in front of Pearl, grabbing a dirty towel from the rack at the same time.
Gem always says this, most people do when they find Pearl after another relapse, but no one has helped her stop yet.
Pearl watches Gem wipe her blood off the floor, she can’t help the growl that crawls out of her mouth. Gem pauses to look up at her, but Pearl still refuses to meet her eyes.
“Do you want me to stop?” Gem asks softly.
She says this softly because Pearl is still crying and she must think Pearl’s weak. Pearl is anything but weak, but she can’t find it in her to say that. She thinks that maybe, just maybe, Gem could take pity on her. If she begs and cries and whines then maybe Gem won’t take away her blood.
Gem is still looking at her, waiting for an answer.
“Please.” Pearl replies, her voice cracking. “Please, just leave it there. Don’t take it away from me, please.” More tears spill out of her eyes, Pearl makes no attempt to stop them.
Gem lets go of the cloth and leans closer to Pearl. She brings her hands up to her face to try and wipe her tears away.
Pearl stays there, letting Gem have whatever she wants. As one of Gem’s thumbs brushes under her eyes, she breaks into sobs, shaking in Gem’s hold. By instinct, she leans away, trying to take away the feeling of Gem’s skin on hers. Gem notices and pulls her hands back, folding them neatly in her lap.
Gem has never seen Pearl like this after a relapse. Pearl is always cooperative in these situations, whatever will get her out of them faster, but now Pearl wants to stay. She wants to stay here and she wants to stay herself, she can’t have someone else take everything from her, she just wants to have her own place with her own possessions.
Pearl grabs her own face, trying to brush away the feeling of Gem’s hands. It doesn’t work, and instead her blood began to dribble down her elbows. She immediately switches tasks, now clawing her blood off of her arms so she doesn’t have to feel it anymore.
“Hey! Pearl, stop that. Pearl!” Gem grabs her wrists, pulling them away so Pearl can’t possibly hurt herself more.
Pearl whines and tries to pull her hands out of Gem’s hold, shaking her head back and forth at the same time. “Let me go, let me go!” She cries, tears and snot falling into her mouth.
“Not if you’re going to keep hurting yourself.” Gem replies, her eyes wide like she can’t believe Pearl would even ask her such a thing.
“Please.” Pearl begs. She wants the blood off of her, but she can’t have Gem take it. She needs to do this herself but Gem won’t let her. Intentionally or not, Pearl’s not sure, but one of Gem’s fingernails starts to dig into one of the cuts. It makes more blood fall, and Pearl can’t take it anymore.
“Get it off! Please, get it off, get it off.” She repeats, her mouth moving even when the words stop coming out.
Gem’s grip tightens as if she isn’t even listening to Pearl. Pearl screams as her nail digs even further into her flesh and Gem still won’t listen and the blood is still dripping. It’s a loud scream, loud enough that another hermit probably heard, but it’s enough for Gem to let go, probably in fear.
As soon as Pearl’s arms are free, she scoots away from Gem, shoving herself into a corner. Her fingers immediately find her arms again, smearing blood around rather than actually getting rid of any of it. “Get it off, get it off…” Pearl continues, while Gem springs into action.
It must finally click in her head that ‘it’ is the blood, rather than her, because she approaches Pearl with the wash cloth in hand. “Pearl, I can do that for you, just take a breath for a moment, alright? Stop it.” She, with a little bit of force, pulls Pearl hands into her own, only letting one go so she can start wiping blood off of Pearl’s wrist.
Pearl shakes her head and tries to pull away as if she wants her to stop, and she does, but all she can repeat is those same words; “get it off.”
Gem moves carefully and slowly, Pearl’s never hated precision so much. As time goes on and Gem goes through cut after cut, exhaustion slowly climbs over Pearl, trying to pull her down.
Pearl does not want to fall asleep, she needs to stay awake to stop Gem from taking away her blood, she needs to watch Gem because she does not know what she’ll do if Pearl isn’t watching. A part of her believes that her very gaze will keep Gem in line, but another part knows that Gem isn’t like that.
As painful stings begin to fade so does her vision, her head hitting the wall with a light thump as her eyes slip shut.