[ If Shadowheart felt exposed in her shame through their messages alone, it’s nothing compared to the stony face that greets her—the weariness she can feel in Stephen, the loneliness that doesn’t wholly dissipate with her presence. Saber goads and pokes and prods, feeds off her defiance and drinks deeper when she bends and then breaks for him. There’s always a fight, with him.
She doesn’t want to fight Stephen. She’d thought, in their splintering last month, that maybe that’s all they would ever do again; that they’d meant nothing to each other (that she’d meant nothing to him, realized too late that she wanted to mean something).
It hurts more, to mean something now. If Shadowheart has ever loved anyone in her real life, separate from Saltburn’s implanted memories, she doesn’t remember it—not the feeling, nor the person, whether it lit her from within or she had to smother the fire before it caught. When she thinks the word love, it’s knotted roots in her belly, Stephen’s memories of Christine and Tony’s of his wife. Black nothing where she should have her own to match theirs.
She feels and doesn’t feel. She wants and feels sick with the wanting. The scar at her breast chokes the feeling from her, and maybe that is a kind of love—the kind Shar taught her, bringing only loss with it.
Shadowheart holds Stephen’s gaze, at least, eyes reddened as her hands move to the ties at the front of her dress. It should be Stephen and Tony’s hands in tandem, lifting her hem for her, kissing her shoulder as they undress for bed. She knows by now what happens without their help: her fingers fumbling the knots, tangling them further. Still, she forces it, her jaw closed tight, until something rips—the seam of a strap, slipping off her shoulder.
She pulls sharp, then, to get the rest over with, more seams tearing until gravity does its work for her, and the dress is pooled around her feet. Her body exposed to him, used and dirty. ]
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She doesn’t want to fight Stephen. She’d thought, in their splintering last month, that maybe that’s all they would ever do again; that they’d meant nothing to each other (that she’d meant nothing to him, realized too late that she wanted to mean something).
It hurts more, to mean something now. If Shadowheart has ever loved anyone in her real life, separate from Saltburn’s implanted memories, she doesn’t remember it—not the feeling, nor the person, whether it lit her from within or she had to smother the fire before it caught. When she thinks the word love, it’s knotted roots in her belly, Stephen’s memories of Christine and Tony’s of his wife. Black nothing where she should have her own to match theirs.
She feels and doesn’t feel. She wants and feels sick with the wanting. The scar at her breast chokes the feeling from her, and maybe that is a kind of love—the kind Shar taught her, bringing only loss with it.
Shadowheart holds Stephen’s gaze, at least, eyes reddened as her hands move to the ties at the front of her dress. It should be Stephen and Tony’s hands in tandem, lifting her hem for her, kissing her shoulder as they undress for bed. She knows by now what happens without their help: her fingers fumbling the knots, tangling them further. Still, she forces it, her jaw closed tight, until something rips—the seam of a strap, slipping off her shoulder.
She pulls sharp, then, to get the rest over with, more seams tearing until gravity does its work for her, and the dress is pooled around her feet. Her body exposed to him, used and dirty. ]