you're still afraid of the dark {vepar and sun} blitz

[maverick hale 🌧️ d5 [nyte]]

vepar azrael

It's back, oh good god it's back. I can feel them, greedy legs bursting the vessels laid so fragile underneath. Mouths tear away at my skin, ripping me apart from the inside out and no matter how many desperate, bloody lines I have scraped into my skin they are there. They won't come out. More. More is what I need, the release, the escape.

I need to get them out.

There's a knife laid next to me, blade already caked with the bodies of decayed maggots and twitching spiders, those I have manages to squeeze from the sensitive skin upon my forearms. That of which has been effectively torn to shreds. (More. More. More.) The words echo, forcing their way into my skull as flies stow their eggs away in the folds of my skull. And I can feel every last one. Hatching. Growing. Burrowing. Scratching. (More. More. More.) They're hungry now. Angry. (More! More! More!)

Its hilt is black, intricate flowers very carefully engraved into the wood. Great care had surely been put into this work of art, the one now caked in an oozing substance that paints the roses red as I secure my palm around splintering wood. They're going to kill me. Oh god they're going to kill me soon; I can hear the bees burrowing into my ears, the centipedes tearing off my finger nails as they force themselves from the raw, bloody beds.

(More.) I plunge the blade into my stomach, force hitting me like a train as I twist and twist and twist. As though the steel were a poison, the disgusting things escape. They're coming in waves off of my tongue, out of every gaping wound that I have town into my flesh. But it's not enough. They still chant a hungry tune, jaws cracking against my bones as they work even harder to destroy a ship already set to self destruct.

A bit of my stomach is hanging off of the blade when I next pull it out, sliding onto the floor with a sickening splat. (More.)

The blade draws itself across my throat and-

The sheets are tangled within my fingertips, chest heaving and falling with desperation as panic slowly seeps into the waking world.

They aren't here.

I wait a long while just to make sure.

Once my legs have stopped feeling as though they were made of grape jelly, I mange to stand. (Thoroughly surprised that my legs to not break beneath me, given how bad they are shaking.) The wooded floor is cold, sending shards of ice into my bloodstream with every stilted step I take. I need Venus, I need to find Venus because he is my big brother and he will made everything better. Venus will make everything better.

Three gentle knocks rattle what must have been Venus' door. At least I think it was. I'm sure it was?

"Hey uh..." My words are heavy, tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth with every jumbled syllable "hey I had another nightmare can I lay with you tonight?"

[gamemaker kelsier]

S U N Three weeks come and gone and they haven't touched me like that yet. When Nathanial bought me he already had his hands on me in the car ride home. I keep waiting for it, sitting up in bed all night long wondering when they will come and touch me, when they will hurt me but it's always quiet. It doesn't help me sleep any better. The night has always been the worst time. Monsters hide in the corners of my room, watching me, built out of the darkness and made the colour of midnight with flickering tongues that hiss and catch at my ankles if I lie down. Sometimes Nathanial would come in the night while I was sleeping and I'd wake up and he'd be on top of me and I wouldn't be able to breathe and his breath smelled like old things and it would hurt and I would try not to cry because Nathanial hated crying and the world felt like it was red. It was always so red. I sit with my knees tucked up to my chest on my pillow, staring down at the things that my masters have given me. I don't know what to do with them. Sometimes Nathanial would give me things because he liked to watch my face when he destroyed them later. There's the colourful sweater that Vepar gave me on the first day. I've been bad, sneaking it into my master's washing everyday when I do the laundry. I like the lavender smell it leaves on the soft wool. It's not as good as the soft smell from before but it's good still. It calms me down, reminds me of yellow. Then there's a small soft thing wearing a tiny sweater. It has black buttons for eyes that stare deep into me like it sees all and everything at once and I am scared of him but he is soft. Third, there is a tiny electric thing that whirs and makes hot come out of it. Vepar called it a heater when he presented it to me. They are my things. I prefer to think of it as just watching over them, then when they decide to destroy them it hurts less. I like to take them out and look at them in the dark. I reach out to brush my hands over the soft of the small thing when a knock comes at my door. I freeze. There is my heart, in my ears like a drum. Thud. Thud. Thud. I scramble off of the bed and take my things, hiding them beneath where they might not think to look. I take the blanket and toss it under there too, my mind pure panic. I don't want them to take away the soft wam things. I open the door then and lower my gaze to the floor, tugging on the bottom of my sleep clothes. Please don't hurt me.

[maverick hale 🌧️ d5 [nyte]]

vepar azrael

The relief is tangible when my brother opens the door. I can feel the fear built up so intensely somewhere in the pit of my stomach vanish in a presence that has always meant safety and love. My breath shakes as I let out a long, drawn exhale and tip my head into a shoulder that seems much to small to be my brothers.

Surely that's my imagination.

"Venus..." I mumble, voice teetering somewhere between a sob and hysterics. "Venus I know I'm a bother and this is probably such a hassle I'm sorry. I'm sorry just... they keep coming back. In my dreams they keep coming back and I don't know how to get rid of them or to get rid of mom because she keeps dying in my head with the gun to her head and she's mad at me and..."

My breaths are ragged, throat burning as I tangle my fingers in the hem of my big brother's shirt and I cry. More than anything, I need to know that I am safe. I need to be warm and safe and loved so that I can forget the world around me and focus on how quiet Venus' breathing is when he sleeps, and only that.

There would be no dreams in the company of another. That's why I so often crave a night with another man, limbs tangled together with a soft head laid on my chest. For just a moment, to have someone need me as much as I need them is a relief, a wonderful intoxicating feeling although I know Venus doesn't agree with it. As hard as I try to impress my brother, he is his own person and I am my own. We are very different people, in the end.

"Can I please just come in? I really just... I can't be alone right now."

I don't trust myself.

[gamemaker kelsier]

S U N My breath catches in my throat as his head tips against my shoulder and I stumble back, the scent of cinnamon and cloves filling my ears. I turn my head to the side, facing away from him. Maybe it'll be fast. Maybe he'll do what he wants with me and he'll just leave. I try to stop my shaking my clenching my hands into fists, to steady myself. If I upset him it will be bad. I don't know what he'll do. I know what Nathanial does when he's angry but I don't know what Vepar and Venus do yet. I haven't seen them mad. Sometimes Vepar seems angry but when he's mad I hide and then I'm safe. No one can hurt me if I'm hiding because they can't find me. I'm a good hider. Nathanial hated it when I hid. If I hid he'd storm through the house screaming for me. If he was high it was worse. He'd forgot that he wanted to keep me alive. I squeeze my eyes shut. There's no lips pressed against mine, sucking my lungs right out of my throat. There's only the sound of a scared boy speaking right at me like I know him but I don't, I don't, I don't and he doesn't know me. He doesn't know me so why is he here why did he buy me and why does he act like he knows me? No one knows me. No one knows my name here. What is he doing at my room? My name isn't Venus. My name isn't Venus. My name. No one knows my name. He calls me Venus. If I'm Venus then he won't get mad so I put my hand on the back of his head and my hand shakes as I put my fingers against the soft of his hair and the feeling is smooth like yellow buttered toast. He asks if he can come in and sleep with me tonight and I wonder if he remembers now that I'm not his brother but his Avox and the fear has never really left me and it has always been there like the way my name has always been but no one knows it. They don't know it like I know it. Please let him leave me alone. But he asks me to come in. I am his Avox. I step aside.

[maverick hale 🌧️ d5 [nyte]]

vepar azrael

The hand through my hair does not feel like Venus. These fingers shake, are nothing long the long and steady things that my brother uses to flatten dark locks tied to my skull. These fingers shake too much. They are uncertain as they trail down the back of my head. It's definitely not an unpleasant sensation, the smaller not-Venus is soft; almost as comforting as we stand in silence.

Eventually Not-Venus steps aside and I am so desperate for the company of another (even a stranger) that I stumble into the room, knees refusing to carry me anywhere but the wall my head soon splinters against. My body sticks to the wall as I slide down it, fists pressed into my eyes to stem the oceans crawling from between the gaps in my fingers. I can hear my bones rattling around, loud against thick plaster as I freeze from the inside out.

I can no longer hold in the sobs that consume me, bouncing off the walls of this strangers room as I spiral down and down and down. Into a darkness that I can never see there being an end to. Not any time soon. There's this emptiness in me, one that is frigid and one that is shattering like glass, killing me. Surely the blood is staining my shirt by now, pooling around me. I'm going to die right here, without Venus. I'm going to die in a stranger's house. But I don't even know how I got here.

I must really, truly be going mad. And I can't do that again. I can't do that to Venus and I cannot let the little, scared thing that we have taken into our arms see me so pathetic and so broken. It's not worth it.

"Just kill me please." the words come out in a desperate rasp, choked by tears as I slowly drown. "I can't live like this any more. I don't want to. I don't wanna see my mom dying and I don't want to see the scars on my wrists. I don't want to be here anymore so please just fucking kill me."

Words so sincere have never left my lips.

[gamemaker kelsier]

S U N I don't know how to read or speak. I can barely make eye contact with others. At the pens they wrote letters on my information sheet, calling me 'skittish', 'unsociable', 'likely to hide', 'likely to attempt suicide'. Andrew said that this was just incase, so they'd know to keep an eye on me and not let me have anything sharp. I am too scared to try and escape like that. My grandmother would call it bravery. She said to live was the bravest thing. I hesitate as my master shakes against the wall of my tiny room. If he turns his head and looks at the wall he will see the tree that I have been growing out of the paper with stolen pencils from Venus' desk. Stealing is bad and punishable. I don't want him to see it. I don't think he will, he is crying too loud. His sounds make my skin buzz and he looks very dark yellow, like the sun when it's setting. His sodns smell like raspberries plopping onto the floor one by one. "Pick them up, you're hungry right?" I shudder. If I reached to pick up the berries then Nathanial squished my fingers under his boot. The taste of raspberries makes me sick. The door shuts by itself or maybe that's my hand closing it. I am afraid. I haven't been this scared since my new masters purchased me. It was only a few weeks ago. Now I am scared that if I do this wrong, they'll send me back to the pens and Nathanial will find me again. I don't know which master is better yet, but they have not hurt me. This master is hurt though. He just smacked his head on my tree. I squat down in front of him, pressing my chest against my knees to make myself small and not threatening. "Just kill me please." I don't know how to do that. It isn't an order so I don't have to try and figure it out. All I have are the stolen pencils and the things I've hidden underneath my bed. He liked it when I put my hand on his head so I do it again, hands shaking bad as I reach out, wondering if he will hurt me for doing something he hasn't commanded. It is dangerous to make your own choices as an Avox. It is scary. I rest my hand on his head and a soft 'coo' slips from my lips. I slap a hand over my mouth, eyes widening. If I am lucky he did not hear it. If I am lucky I will not be punished.

[maverick hale 🌧️ d5 [nyte]]

vepar azrael

He is soft. Soft like a blanket fresh out of the dryer. Soft like a kitten's cheek rubbed against my own as loud rumbles bubble from somewhere deeper than its chest. My eyes are swollen, near shut as I rub harder and harder to make the pain go away. Perhaps I might even tear my eyelids right off and then I can bleed to death upon this stranger's floor and I will get my wish.

A wish that I guess this stranger is unwilling to grant.

Movement. The sound of cloth rubbing against itself as he wilts before me. In front of me. I can see him now, the longness of his jaw and eyes that make it seem as though he can see through me. Into the congealed mess of fabric and guts and loneliness. There was something that drew me to this avox, this person, who was once a huddled mess in a cage. (Once was not really too long ago.) I think I'm still figuring out why I wanted him, needed this specific avox.

I don't know why I was so sure he would be perfect, but I think he is.

My eyes take a while to adjust to this darkness, the lights that travel along the wall behind us making it far too difficult to focus on him. We are completely alone here and yet my head has never been so busy. There are screams and whirs, sounds that plague me the more sleep deprived I become. There is a party within my skull, one to which no one was invited and yet they all came anyway.

Then, it stops. He reaches out, hand like a ghost upon the top of my head. My screams are quieted, tears deciding to roll silently down my cheeks as my chest heaves in a desperate attempt to find air. Any air. I was suffocating.

But not anymore.

I lean into the touch, closing my eyes as my heart takes to slowing. And when he speaks, it is the most beautiful thing I have ever heard. When he speaks it damn near takes the breath I had only just caught away. When he speaks, I am peaceful.

But it doesn't last long, I have heard that paradise never does. Something has ripped the quiet away, my eyes once again opening into blinding darkness to see that the small and scared thing is once again small and scared, hand clapped over his mouth and eyes that of a deer caught in headlights.

"Why did you stop?" There are frogs and horses caught in my throat, bubbling up to the surface with every syllable. "Have I done something wrong, Friend? Please don't stop. What did I do?"

I don't understand how I have frightened him so bad simply by existing. A madman I am, but I have always thought myself a rather unintimidating, softspoken one.

[gamemaker kelsier]

S U N "Next time I will cut them off if I ever see that from you again." For a moment I am back in that darkness, the floor hard and damp beneath me as Nathanial takes my fingers and breaks them one by one with the hammer he holds in his hand above my splayed fingers. He brings it down on each one with precision and I can hear the crack, crack, crack in my mouth again. The pain had been hot and green and made me damp, I wet myself. The floor was covered in my blood from jutting bones and I had wondered if I would be allowed to die. He had set my fingers within hours, holding my hands gently in his lap, pinching my skin sharply whenever a tear of pain fell from my eyes. He had hates tears. Sometimes I wasn't sure if I was even allowed to breath. "Why did you stop?" The words command me back to the present and I am lost and confused in a small space that I hardly know with a man that I cannot read crouched in front of me. For the briefest of moments I miss Nathanial, his easiness. He was not difficult to please because he made clear what he wanted from me from the very first moment, there were no questions because there was no need. It was simple, if I did something wrong then I received pain. If I did something right then I did not. This master uses words. He speaks to me as if I am a human being and that is wrong, so wrong. I keep waiting for his fist to come flying at my head but it never does. I am on edge wondering when it will come. "Have I done something wrong, Friend? Please don't stop. What did I do?" His words are so blindingly soft. I do not understand his question. I have sinned by making a noise. It is something that I have done and I will be punished for it, I know. he will hurt me. Maybe he is similar to Nathanial. Sometimes he would pretend to let things slide and then he would hurt me moments later. Don't stop, he said. I wonder if that is an order. If I reach forwards to touch him again he might hurt me. It is alright if he does, it is correct. Maybe I will be more at ease here if he does, things will be restored to their proper system. Things will make sense again if he would just punish me. I find myself craving the sting of his palm across my face if only to break me out of this strange dream where everything isn't always hurting. Somehow the nightmares seem more real than waking life and I've begun to think I'm dreaming while I wake. I yearn for some order. My hand makes a decision for me and it drops from my mouth. I marvel silently at the sound it made. I didn't know I could make sounds anymore. Sometimes at night I'd make small sounds to myself, just to see if I still had a voice. That was before Nathanial had me in his bed every night and I had to lay still and quiet. I shake as I press the flat of my palm against his forehead and curl my fingers softly over his scalp. His skin is warm and wet.