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It had started swept up in a crisp morning. Tangerine sunlight cascaded over verdant blades thriving off of last night's rain. She padded through the grass, shoes pressing the lush vegetation down. This was the first time in a while that the grass had grown here like this, coincidentally making today the perfect day.
"Tubbo?"
It had been simple. Yet she found the words bubbling in her throat as if they were choking her. Someone had wrapped their hands around her heart and was jostling it violently around her chest. But it was too late now, the words were suspended over the air. All she had to do was drop them.
"I'm a girl."
Tubbo, of course couldn't help but grin from ear to ear. Their smile was infectious. She knew it would be nothing but love from them. Still, stepping into the world again like this was not nearly as simple as the morning breeze, and she was aware of this. She was lucky to have them. Lucky to have love in her life that wouldn't eat her alive from both inside and out. Someone she knew had not been so lucky.
She held these memories gingerly underneath the moon, enjoying the young night's solitude. The moonlight was far too faint to spill onto her face, but just right to be caught in her eyes, stars swirling around the twin icy blue pools like soup. The grass was as plush as that morning. She felt like she was back home, on that very day. The earth was welcoming her.
She knew somebody who had not seen the earth in quite a while.
He had been returning often to her mind. She bet his ears were on fire. She could not find why she cared so deeply. She hated him, after all. She wanted to see him torn from limb.
No. Tommy wanted him to be torn from limb. Not Clementine. Clementine understood, Tommy hated.
She knew why Tommy hated him. Tommy simply was having complicated feelings about death. His selfish desires screamed that he did not want to die, but he was yet to realise that being Tommy until eternity's last breath was a fate worse than dying. Clementine bloomed from Tommy's grave.
She understood that a fraction of Tommy's hate sprouted from a jealousy he did not yet realise lurked on his shoulder. How come when the wind blew on Dream's skin, it felt like a reward to him but a punishment to Tommy? A reminder of the prison that was his home.
In a way, she understood him. He understood her. Yet still, they remained distant as Clementine could not care for Dream as she did Tubbo. Dream could not care for Clementine as he did George. Yet maybe there was an effort to be made, a ceasefire to burn if only for a while. She knew dead boys could not come to terms with these things, but living girls could.
He looked like a nightmare. Nearly fresh crimson glistened in the light. Scars, bruises, wounds of all inflictions were littered across his body. He was gaunt, contrast to the man he had left the sunlight as. He terrified her.
He narrowed his eyes. "What the fuck do you want," he spat. She bit her tongue.
"To say sorry," she responded simply, allowing her words to marinate smoothly in the air.
He burst into laughter as if she had told a joke, and she could tell a laugh of any life hadn't bubbled up his throat in months. "Sorry for what?" he cackled, tears rolling down his face. He wiped them, and his face became less grey and dusty along the paths that smeared onto his skin. "You'll be here for fucking hours if you say sorry for everything."
She hated him. But she knew who lived behind his eyes.
"For that one time," she said after his laugh had fizzed out. His face scrunched. "That one time..."
Tommy hated him. Tommy hated how nothing he could do or say seemed to so much as nick his skin. He wanted to hurt him. He hated how his body seemed nothing like a prison, despite the things they had in common. He couldn't see what was so worthy of envy about Dream.
"Why do you think you're a boy, huh? You can't be a boy just 'cause you want to."
She cringed when it crossed her mind. She didn't want to think further. Clementine knew better than that.
"That one time," he recalled. She could tell he was on the right page.
"Yeah. Sorry." She stared at him with solemn eyes. He stared back. She couldn't tell what he was staring back with. "You are a boy."
"I don't need anyone to tell me that to know what I am," he scoffed. His eyes caught on an obsidian wall and did not move for fifteen seconds. Then, they met hers. "Thanks, though." She thought she could see the beginnings of a smile curling up the sides of his lips.
He didn't understand her like he wanted to. His hatred for her burned hot in his veins. But he understood her enough to know why she was standing before him. She understood him enough to know why she was standing before him.
Perhaps an ingredient for his hatred was jealousy, too. She was wrapped in love and fuchsia satin ribbons upon stepping into the world for the second time. He had gotten bruises and December wind slicing his skin along with seeing golden-lit homes with dolled-up Christmas trees and families on the insides as the snow crunched beneath his feet and he wondered where to go.
"I'm trans," he'd said. This, apparently, was unacceptable. He could easily recall the flash of horror, followed by his belongings hitting the snow. His most beloved one finally chucked unceremoniously into the pale winter. Once he bounded after it, he realised the front door had been locked. His bedroom window, too. Every window, every door. The winter was his home now.
How could she accept every honey embrace, every pink chocolate kiss when she knew all he'd gotten was a face full of winter wind and a hollowed-out heart? How could she live?
He knew now she couldn't help it.
He ran his fingers over the two scars he loved. Some of the oldest on his body. He reminded himself he was home at least. He wondered if she was, too.
She walked closer to him. He didn't think he wanted that at first, neither did she, but the air brought her to his side. His face twisted again, she must be mocking him with her free wrists and ankles and her unmarred skin with no crimson crust (at best) lining it and her clean clothing that she chose herself. But she did not taunt him. She did not stir her words in with the bubbling lava or the occasional tick of the clock. She was silent, yet he understood that better than he could any piece of spoken literature.
They were likely to forever be entangled in weeds of mutual hatred, but this moment spoke instead. Maybe, they both decided secretly, it was a little bit okay.