Another one-word prompt! Do what you'd like; I just like doing prompts. Will once again be putting my story as chapter two.

Harley has long been obsessed with it. 'It' is what they call it now, because any other iteration of the word will get them sectioned. They have learnt this the hard way. those punishing four months spent locked up in a crude room that barely passed for liveable, devoid of all sensory input, supervised with skin intact and the beautiful liquid leaching out of them the way water evaporates from stone and leaves it brittle and breakable. It was beautiful, tethering, a physical manifestation of the world entering under the skin through the sharp tip, a metal intrusion of all the world into the sterile wasteland of the blood beneath skin, the slow creep of liquid pooling beneath the dermal veil and spreading into designs and patterns beyond articulated understanding.

And with one word, the doctors had torn it all away.

Now, released back into a world that hits their bare skin like a truck, Harley moves through the world feeling like a martyr. Their clothes were the ones they had arrived in, soft jogging bottoms and a stained t-shirt. Their legs had regained feeling from the detox, and the sensation of the weight of their torso upon their feet bordered on painful unfamiliarity.

The needle artist understands wordlessly, the months-long ghosting wiped from collective consciousness the moment their face appears at the door, ringing the small bell affixed to the frame. Harley slumps into the reclining chair that holds them like this might be a medical procedure. The artist barely looks at them before picking up the pen. This one has a new face, more piercings, purple hair. A name-tag that reads Brennan.

Harley shows the sketch and leans back. The needle is not a violation when you're choosing it. This is what the locked room took from them and what they're taking back: the small, radical autonomy of marking their own body on their own terms. Not crude self-infliction, though they crave the clandestine feeling of a pen taped to needle, the prison-style repetition of jabbing into themselves that the hum of the machine pales in comparison to, but they've learned the difference between compulsion and intention. The line remains gossamer-thin anyways, a scar they trace with their tongue sometimes.

The blood comes dark and clean, pooling slightly before being wiped away. The ink pools like a second blood in blues and blacks, like a bruise that will never know the luxury of fading. The infection that follows, the body's rebellion against the intrusion with childlike petulance, the fever and sweating doing naught to wash away that which has been stitched into their skin feels like a small victory.