He woke with a jerk and a jolt, a sharp intake of air as he sat upright in his bed, staring around the room like it didn't belong to him, as though it hadn't been his home for the last several months. One hand scrubbed over his face, crimson staining his fingertips when he finally got a good look at his hand, and yeah, that was strange. Why did he have blood on his hand? What had happened last night?
Nothing came to him immediately, just a white fuzz of confusion as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed, stretching, a rustle of feathers as he stretched even those, and oh, that hurt. Another sharp breath, the ache sliding down the length of one wing, though it remained centered at his back, where skin met feathers and the strange appendages began. But everything seemed to be working fine, so, there was that.
It wasn't until he was in the bathroom, cold water running from the tap and his face wet with water, that everything came back. The red dress, those heels that had been so strange but good in the same breath. Good things, good things, and then it all went dark and sour when he had forgotten. His fingers curled around the edge of the sink and he stared into the mirror, and he remembered.
The bitter taste of Clean Slate was still oh so vivid, and the lightness that followed. But of course it didn't last. Nothing lasted with him, and he let out a long, ragged breath as he lifted a hand to the phantom memory of a knife slitting his throat, of one burying itself beneath (not his) the breast. Ragged breaths came quicker because he remembered dying, and oxygen wasn't quite making its way to his head the way it should as he sat down hard on the tile floor of his bathroom, against the door. There wasn't much room for the wings in here, but they came in close around him, a feathery wall against the world, and he tried to put his thoughts and emotions in order.
He remembered forgetting, remembered dying, and he ached for that blank time in between.