08-12-2015, 02:07 AM
If this is to end in fire then we should all burn together
Nothing was getting out of here alive.
Drow could still hear the shrieks and moans of the hungry dead, could hear behemoth’s bellow of rage and pain and the sick sound of shredding flesh as he jerked awake, his heart racing, lungs heaving, legs flailing and scrambling for purchase on the landscape of his nightmare. He opened his eyes to the faint light of dawn filtering through the trees, his body shaking from a dream more real than any he’d ever known. Well, any that hadn’t involved the interference of a certain few family members with the gift for walking in dreams. But that had not been his mother’s dreamscape, and little Strange was not so dark in her dreaming. Hadn’t been. Who knew what dreams came to the dead?
Any rush of relief he had felt escaping his newest nightmare vanished into the last whispers of night clinging to the sky as he remembered. The worst of his nightmares was still real. The fire, all his family dead. The end of the world, for all but a ragtag dozen. That part was still real, right? God, he couldn’t even tell anymore, countless nightmares inside nightmares inside dream worlds ending in nightmares, all jumbling together until none of it meant anything anymore.
Maybe he was mad. Maybe this was the darkness that lived inside Dröm’s head, finally come to claim him in Dröm’s absence. But this still felt like the end of the world. Echoes of the fire still tingled in the air, stroking smoky fingers along his skin and setting it to shuddering with the blurry-sharp blend of pain and pleasure he couldn’t sort out anymore. This was danger’s world, and Drow needed to ground himself in it, to sink himself back into the body that kept losing its hold on him. He heaved himself to his feet, his legs still a little too shaky. Took a deep breath of air that still smelled like a world burned beyond the saving even though the fires had died down long ago. And looked around for the man who’d been helping him keep his shit together for the last few weeks.
It was too quiet. Sure, there were only twelve of them left—no, thirteen. Behemoth had not been devoured. It was just the dream. Thirteen. But even thirteen made a little noise, even as they slept. Even thirteen shifted in their sleep, breathed, sighed. Dawn wasn’t a particularly unusual time to hear the old grey and his girl panting and moaning, or the bay’s little bitch crying out in that oh-so-familiar delicious agony alongside bay’s rhythmic grunts and the creepy little toady’s heavy breathing as he watched his master at work. Not that Drow gave a damn what they got up to, even if that tiny little fucker did make his skin crawl. Everyone had their kinks, and if toady’s was watching without touching and it worked for the three of them, well…more power to them. Who was he to criticize?
It was too damn quiet, was the point.
And quiet was never good.
Drow had taken to sleeping alone, a little distance from even danger. He didn’t want to wake up all cozy and happy, wrapped up in a lover’s embrace, only to remember…everything. And he didn’t want to do something stupid like falling in love with yet another someone he was only going to lose. He was done with love. If Zurry hadn’t taught him that, losing Jay had. So no, he wasn’t about to make the extremely stupid mistake of falling asleep next to danger, letting the thud thud, thud thud of his heart start to feel like home in a desolate wasteland. So it took a little searching through the early light of morning before he stumbled across the first body.
Behemoth. Too still, no rise and fall to his massive chest. Drow nudged him, barely registering how cold the chestnut stallion’s body felt as he started to shake. The man wasn’t torn apart and devoured by the hungry dead, but he was still and cold, no breath left in his great lungs. Quiet green eyes clouded over. Just a few feet away, the boys and the wary-eyed girl, twined around each other like lovers crossed by the stars and all unmoving. All still as death, even when he nudged them, even when he shoved them, pushed them, untangled them and pulled them apart just to make them wake up and scream at him for disturbing them. But they didn’t wake. They didn’t scream. No restless spirits shrieked at him for shattering the hold they had on one another.
Sad eyes and green. Cuddled up and cozy nearby, dead in each other’s embrace. He shook them, snarled at them, begged them to get the fuck up, but they didn’t listen. Grey and his lady, coupled up in death just like everybody else, even as he tried so desperately to bring them back. God, he even tried to wake the bay and his bitch and his creepy little toady, all tangled up in each other and all just as dead as everyone else. Cold, so fucking cold, not a mark on them. All just dead.
And danger. Oh god, danger was the only one of them alone, the only one not nestled against a lover, not wrapped up in someone’s embrace. Danger had died alone in the dark, and it was Drow’s fault. He shattered all over again, falling to the ground and pulling his dead lover into him, rocking the dead man’s body as the tears started to fall. If he hadn’t been so fucking stubborn, if he hadn’t been so damn afraid, he could have been there. Could have held him, could have whispered I fucking love you as the light faded from his eyes, could have—done nothing. He could have done not a goddamn thing, because he’d been asleep. But danger wouldn’t have been alone. And maybe whatever had killed everyone else would have taken him too.
But no.
Nothing was getting out of here alive.
He started to laugh, his sobs quickly shifting to hysteria as he rocked back and forth, back and forth, holding his dead lover’s head in his lap. I don’t even know his name. The thought was fleeting, in and out of his mind in an instant, swallowed by the sensation of rocking, of muscles contracting and relaxing, the rhythmic motion and the way danger’s head flopped against Drow’s chest with every repetition. Nothing was getting out of here alive. And no one else.
He stilled. Rested his head on danger’s big, stupid chest and listened to the silence where a heartbeat should have been. And he finally started to understand. Home was in that silence. When home settled into someone’s chest, it chased away the heartbeat. He chased away heartbeats and turned the whole damn world into silence.
He stayed there, listening to the silence of danger’s chest for days. Even as danger’s body bloated and distended, even as he began to decompose, Drow stayed there, holding him and listening, committing the sound to memory. His own muffled heartbeat as blood flowed through the ear that was pressed against danger’s slowly rotting chest, and the profound silence of his dead lover’s heart. Home was in the silence.
And you cause the silence, don’t you, precious?
The voice didn’t come until after the reek of a dozen rotting corpses finally pushed Drow to his feet and set him wandering aimlessly away from the dead. But the moment he walked away, it came to him, devouring the silence with its vicious crooning. You make your home in their chests, little nothing. You take them over and you squash their heartbeats. Every last one, everyone you love, everyone you have ever called home has turned into that silence. You do it to them. Your love does it. Your need, the way it latches onto them, it sucks the life out of them, sucks the beat right out of their hearts, little nothing. Empty little nothing, stealing the lives of those stupid enough to love you. You see it now, don’t you, precious, how you drain them dry? So empty, even draining the whole world dry didn’t fill you up. You were the hungry dead, little nothing. You were the one devouring the living with an insatiable hunger. You’re the one who turned them all into silence. Isn’t it delicious? My precious little nothing, all grown up and taking lives.
It wasn’t always so bad. But there was no one left to drag him back to reality now that he’d killed danger. It wasn’t always the Voice, though. Sometimes it was crimson eyes in a vibrant orange face, all framed in black. Gentle voice, quiet wisdom, and the love of an older brother who had known him from the start. Or mismatched blue and brown with a cheery yellow forelock draping down between, sometimes covering up the brown one and reminding him so much of the sun when she was shining and happy. She’d been shining and happy once. And Xero had a lot of that sunshine in her. He remembered those eyes smiling down at him, her special brand of love and sass and big-sister-cuddles. His very first don’t-hurt-the girl. I miss you. I’m so fucking sorry. Swore my life to protecting you, and look what happened. Never thought I’d fail so badly, sister-mine. Can you ever forgive me?
She would never answer him again.
Fire, he remembered fire. His family was fire, his blood was fire, they all lived to burn. They’d all burned in the end, even the firstborn, the prodigal, the brother whose loss had shattered them and whose return had made them whole again. If only for a moment. The first one he’d turned to when the hurting got out of control. His brother, but his friend almost more than his brother. The one who okay sure, maybe bitched him out when he took things too far (he always took things too far, why did he always take things too far?) but put him back together again without a moment’s hesitation. The one he talked to, the one he turned to for advice, the one he’d thought would always be there, god, what was he going to do without his big brother?
crack
And Dare, he’d failed his daring little sister, let her burn to ash before she could find herself again. Those sad, lost eyes as dark as the midnight sky had been so fearless and alive once, and he’d wanted so badly to watch her find her adventurous little girl self again. God, and Nish. His Nish was gone, burned away in the fire but the fire was his fault always your fault, precious, snuffing them out one by one. Little Strange always knew it, didn’t she? Called you her volcano from the start, told you herself that you’d be the end of them in her cryptic little way. She always saw right through you, always saw so much more than you wanted anyone to see. She knew you’d erupt, and you’d take the whole world with you but it didn’t make sense. The fire was in his blood, but he didn’t wield it, not like the Sun did. Not like Gendry did. His was inside, and it only ever hurt him and everyone who ever loved you, little nothing. Watching it burn you up from the inside tortured them, just like it tortured you to see the Sun burning for so long. You think you were the only one you hurt? Oh, darling. You’re so much bigger than that. So much more devastating.
Silver and brushed gold eyes, framed in black black black that swallowed the world, swallowed the Voice and the memories and all the pain and made everything else quiet. Eyes the mirror of his own, flashing with hunger. Where did you go, Drow? Come back to me. I need you. I need to be inside your skin, need to feel you pressed against me, need the taste of you on my tongue. It’s been so long, and we need to put the halves of us back together. We fit together, Drow, always have, and I need you. Need to touch you. You want someone to hurt you, love? I’ll hurt you so good you’ll beg for more. We killed them all, Drow, it’s just you and me in the whole world. Just like we always wanted. You wanted it too, didn’t you?
Something was wrong in those mismatched eyes, or maybe he was just seeing all the way into them for the first time. Something dark and twisted and broken, and endlessly, ravenously hungry. Drow could feel his touch, could feel the fire waking up inside him, and he gave in. Flashes of the night they’d spent together swam through him, shuffling and rearranging and repeating, repeating, repeating. Lips and teeth and sharp bursts of pain that kindled the fire, stoked it and fanned the flames higher, higher. He didn’t want it, not really. He’d never wanted it to be just the two of them. But they’d never been about want. He and Dröm had only ever been about need. And Dröm had always known when Drow needed him too much to say no.
It was all in his head. It had to be, because they were all dead, even Dröm. But it felt real. Maybe more than ever, now that Drow could see the darkness in his eyes, eyes that flashed black with something more than hunger. Obsession. Possession. This time he understood how fucked up they were. How deeply they were broken. And he did it anyhow.
Because there was nothing else left.
It’s okay, Drodro. Strange’s voice found him in the aftermath, soaking into him as best it could through the burning and the shattering. We love you. Always. But it hurt, when he’d failed them all so badly. It hurt, seeing those blue, blue eyes looking at him with love when he was…when he was Nothing. When he had to be Nothing, because it was the only way to survive them all being gone. She saw that it hurt him worse than danger ever had, worse than Dröm ever could. She saw, and she stayed away. The others came back, flashes of faces he’d loved so ferociously, and it hurt too fucking much to bear. All their eyes, all the colors boring into him, so heavy, stabbing right through his chest and dragging him down, pinning him down to the earth, to the mountain, to wherever he had ended up after he’d left danger’s bloated, rotting corpse in the dirt.
crack
They hurt, god, they hurt, until they flashed black and the pain eased, erasing the weight of his failure. Time passed, though he could only tell it by the way the flesh wasted off his bones. He couldn’t eat, couldn’t stomach the verdant green that had begun to grow back from the ashes of the old world. He couldn’t bear the thought that those plants grew from the remains of his dead loved ones, or might have. He couldn’t eat them, couldn’t take them into his body and turn them into piles of shit steaming in the sun. Not Nish, not Gendry, not Dare. Not Xero, or Hallows, or Dremmy, or Strange. Not Mom. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. So he wasted away, getting lost in the silence and the sounds of their voices, and the sound of the Voice haunting him. It twisted them up together, until the words they said were words they would never have said before he’d killed them all.
They would never. Right?
I don’t know what went wrong with you, Drow. You were such a sweet kid, and you got so fucked up. So twisted. Tearing your face up, all those fights, sleeping with Dröm? How could you do that to your brother? Begging him to hurt you, when you of all people knew how messed up he was? And you put all your self-hate and your violence on Gendry, too, making him patch you back up and keep you from killing yourself when he’d just come home. Too busy breaking yourself to help out with that baby sister you wanted so much, and then look what you did to Nish! That bullshit training, all you ever did was teach him to beat the shit out of you, told him you were toughening him up when all you were doing was hurting him and warping him. You’re a sick fuck, Drow, and I can’t believe I ever called you my brother but Xero would never have said that. She loved him. Didn’t she? God, but how could she when he’d destroyed the whole family like that, ruined everything she’d ever loved. How could she have loved him still, after all that he’d done?
They should have killed him. The Moon should have killed him before he could draw his first breath. They could have killed him. The Sun, or Gendry, or Nish. Any of them could have killed him, why hadn’t they stopped him?
It wasn’t our fucking job to stop you, asshole. Your bullshit creed, family comes first, don’t hurt the girl? It was your fucking job to stop you. But you never could, could you? Couldn’t kill yourself or you’d be just like Her. But you could try. Over and fucking over again, you tried to make something else do the job for you. And every fucking time, Drow. Every. Fucking. Time. You came to me. Begged me to put you back together and fought me the whole damn way, didn’t you? Do you have any idea what you put me through? What you put US through? And that tiger? That was the night Mom died, you selfish son of a bitch. The night she fucking killed herself, and you’re pulling some bullshit stunt trying to prove you can be just like her. God, you never know when to quit, do you? Even now, you can’t fucking quit. Dragging us back from the dead, sinking your sick little claws into our ghosts and making us dance around you but I’m done dancing to your fucked up little tune. I’m done, Drow. Do what you want, I’m not putting you back together again.
Drow fell to his knees as Gendry disappeared, screaming as his brother’s words tore through him., echoing in the silence with more crack, crack, cracks, leaving gaping wounds in his chest that Gendry would never be able to heal from wherever he’d gone. Drow stared in numb horror at the ground, ignoring the way his throat burned raw as if he’d been talking forever, ignoring the way his siblings’ voices didn’t quite sound right, sounded echoed and undercut with gravel.
You were supposed to teach me, Drow. You were supposed to take care of me and look out for me, and set an example. You were supposed to be my role model. I was the baby sister you always wanted, and you were too wrapped up in your own drama to be there for me. You were a terrible brother, Drow. And I loved you anyhow. Gendry was my favorite. Gendry’s always been my favorite. And do you know why? Because he was there, Drow. Because he cared enough to pull his head out of his ass and be there for me. He’s the one who looked out for me. He’s the one who taught me what I needed to know, even if he did teach me the hard way. He kept me safe. Where were you, Drow? Where were you when I needed you? If you’d been there, maybe I’d have lived my life, Drow. Had friends. Lovers. Adventures. I turned into a hermit, alone and terrified of life, and that’s on you. You failed me, Drow. And you can never, ever fix it. I never even lived, and you killed me. His Dare-baby, night-dark eyes full of venom and pain flashing a few shades darker before she disappeared too.
They all disappeared. Nothing was getting out of here alive.
He was Nothing. But he was stuck, anchored to a body that should never have lived. Not when all it left in its wake was devastation. All he had left to hurt himself with were his teeth, and he started in on the ragged holes all their words tore into him. He bit down on the skin of his chest, and as he tore a bit away the pain cleared his mind, drove the ghosts away for a little while. Left them content in his suffering for as long as he was suffering. And because he was so hungry, and because he of all of them deserved to be turned into nothing more than the shit that he should have become around seventeen years ago, he swallowed the mouthful of skin as blood trickled down his chest.
It sat wrong in his stomach, but he was the perfect combination of desperate and apathetic. So he carried on, gradually picking away at his skin and reveling in the hurt, in the quiet trickle of blood, in the nausea and the bile that rose in his throat, and the way the blood crusted on his skin and the wounds turned wrong somehow, turned angry and red and inflamed. Gendry couldn’t heal him now, and wouldn’t if he could. It was right that the parts he left behind as he slowly devoured himself turned putrid and rancid and infected, because it meant he could no longer hide his toxic nature from anyone he met.
Good timing, now that he was the last one on earth.
The infection triggered a fever, and the only reason Drow even noticed was that he started to flash between hot and cold, and he kept shaking, and the world felt a little too wobbly. But still he slowly ate away at himself, offering each bite up to the ghosts of his family to show them how goddamned sorry he was, and how sorry he would be for the rest of his hellish existence.
He was mid-bite when a new voice tickled the inside of his brain. Pick a number. Female? Maybe female, it was a little too quiet to tell. Not soft, not gentle, just quiet. Coarse, sardonic, distant, but with a hint of amusement. The new voice was fire and brimstone and pillars of salt, and once upon a time Drow might have been intrigued. Instead, he just turned dull, mismatched metallic eyes toward the direction he thought the voice was coming from. Pick a number? Fine. Easy. Hallows, Gendry, Xero, Dröm, Dare, Nish, Strange. Seven siblings lost to the fire. “Seven.”
Drow could still hear the shrieks and moans of the hungry dead, could hear behemoth’s bellow of rage and pain and the sick sound of shredding flesh as he jerked awake, his heart racing, lungs heaving, legs flailing and scrambling for purchase on the landscape of his nightmare. He opened his eyes to the faint light of dawn filtering through the trees, his body shaking from a dream more real than any he’d ever known. Well, any that hadn’t involved the interference of a certain few family members with the gift for walking in dreams. But that had not been his mother’s dreamscape, and little Strange was not so dark in her dreaming. Hadn’t been. Who knew what dreams came to the dead?
Any rush of relief he had felt escaping his newest nightmare vanished into the last whispers of night clinging to the sky as he remembered. The worst of his nightmares was still real. The fire, all his family dead. The end of the world, for all but a ragtag dozen. That part was still real, right? God, he couldn’t even tell anymore, countless nightmares inside nightmares inside dream worlds ending in nightmares, all jumbling together until none of it meant anything anymore.
Maybe he was mad. Maybe this was the darkness that lived inside Dröm’s head, finally come to claim him in Dröm’s absence. But this still felt like the end of the world. Echoes of the fire still tingled in the air, stroking smoky fingers along his skin and setting it to shuddering with the blurry-sharp blend of pain and pleasure he couldn’t sort out anymore. This was danger’s world, and Drow needed to ground himself in it, to sink himself back into the body that kept losing its hold on him. He heaved himself to his feet, his legs still a little too shaky. Took a deep breath of air that still smelled like a world burned beyond the saving even though the fires had died down long ago. And looked around for the man who’d been helping him keep his shit together for the last few weeks.
It was too quiet. Sure, there were only twelve of them left—no, thirteen. Behemoth had not been devoured. It was just the dream. Thirteen. But even thirteen made a little noise, even as they slept. Even thirteen shifted in their sleep, breathed, sighed. Dawn wasn’t a particularly unusual time to hear the old grey and his girl panting and moaning, or the bay’s little bitch crying out in that oh-so-familiar delicious agony alongside bay’s rhythmic grunts and the creepy little toady’s heavy breathing as he watched his master at work. Not that Drow gave a damn what they got up to, even if that tiny little fucker did make his skin crawl. Everyone had their kinks, and if toady’s was watching without touching and it worked for the three of them, well…more power to them. Who was he to criticize?
It was too damn quiet, was the point.
And quiet was never good.
Drow had taken to sleeping alone, a little distance from even danger. He didn’t want to wake up all cozy and happy, wrapped up in a lover’s embrace, only to remember…everything. And he didn’t want to do something stupid like falling in love with yet another someone he was only going to lose. He was done with love. If Zurry hadn’t taught him that, losing Jay had. So no, he wasn’t about to make the extremely stupid mistake of falling asleep next to danger, letting the thud thud, thud thud of his heart start to feel like home in a desolate wasteland. So it took a little searching through the early light of morning before he stumbled across the first body.
Behemoth. Too still, no rise and fall to his massive chest. Drow nudged him, barely registering how cold the chestnut stallion’s body felt as he started to shake. The man wasn’t torn apart and devoured by the hungry dead, but he was still and cold, no breath left in his great lungs. Quiet green eyes clouded over. Just a few feet away, the boys and the wary-eyed girl, twined around each other like lovers crossed by the stars and all unmoving. All still as death, even when he nudged them, even when he shoved them, pushed them, untangled them and pulled them apart just to make them wake up and scream at him for disturbing them. But they didn’t wake. They didn’t scream. No restless spirits shrieked at him for shattering the hold they had on one another.
Sad eyes and green. Cuddled up and cozy nearby, dead in each other’s embrace. He shook them, snarled at them, begged them to get the fuck up, but they didn’t listen. Grey and his lady, coupled up in death just like everybody else, even as he tried so desperately to bring them back. God, he even tried to wake the bay and his bitch and his creepy little toady, all tangled up in each other and all just as dead as everyone else. Cold, so fucking cold, not a mark on them. All just dead.
And danger. Oh god, danger was the only one of them alone, the only one not nestled against a lover, not wrapped up in someone’s embrace. Danger had died alone in the dark, and it was Drow’s fault. He shattered all over again, falling to the ground and pulling his dead lover into him, rocking the dead man’s body as the tears started to fall. If he hadn’t been so fucking stubborn, if he hadn’t been so damn afraid, he could have been there. Could have held him, could have whispered I fucking love you as the light faded from his eyes, could have—done nothing. He could have done not a goddamn thing, because he’d been asleep. But danger wouldn’t have been alone. And maybe whatever had killed everyone else would have taken him too.
But no.
Nothing was getting out of here alive.
He started to laugh, his sobs quickly shifting to hysteria as he rocked back and forth, back and forth, holding his dead lover’s head in his lap. I don’t even know his name. The thought was fleeting, in and out of his mind in an instant, swallowed by the sensation of rocking, of muscles contracting and relaxing, the rhythmic motion and the way danger’s head flopped against Drow’s chest with every repetition. Nothing was getting out of here alive. And no one else.
He stilled. Rested his head on danger’s big, stupid chest and listened to the silence where a heartbeat should have been. And he finally started to understand. Home was in that silence. When home settled into someone’s chest, it chased away the heartbeat. He chased away heartbeats and turned the whole damn world into silence.
He stayed there, listening to the silence of danger’s chest for days. Even as danger’s body bloated and distended, even as he began to decompose, Drow stayed there, holding him and listening, committing the sound to memory. His own muffled heartbeat as blood flowed through the ear that was pressed against danger’s slowly rotting chest, and the profound silence of his dead lover’s heart. Home was in the silence.
And you cause the silence, don’t you, precious?
The voice didn’t come until after the reek of a dozen rotting corpses finally pushed Drow to his feet and set him wandering aimlessly away from the dead. But the moment he walked away, it came to him, devouring the silence with its vicious crooning. You make your home in their chests, little nothing. You take them over and you squash their heartbeats. Every last one, everyone you love, everyone you have ever called home has turned into that silence. You do it to them. Your love does it. Your need, the way it latches onto them, it sucks the life out of them, sucks the beat right out of their hearts, little nothing. Empty little nothing, stealing the lives of those stupid enough to love you. You see it now, don’t you, precious, how you drain them dry? So empty, even draining the whole world dry didn’t fill you up. You were the hungry dead, little nothing. You were the one devouring the living with an insatiable hunger. You’re the one who turned them all into silence. Isn’t it delicious? My precious little nothing, all grown up and taking lives.
It wasn’t always so bad. But there was no one left to drag him back to reality now that he’d killed danger. It wasn’t always the Voice, though. Sometimes it was crimson eyes in a vibrant orange face, all framed in black. Gentle voice, quiet wisdom, and the love of an older brother who had known him from the start. Or mismatched blue and brown with a cheery yellow forelock draping down between, sometimes covering up the brown one and reminding him so much of the sun when she was shining and happy. She’d been shining and happy once. And Xero had a lot of that sunshine in her. He remembered those eyes smiling down at him, her special brand of love and sass and big-sister-cuddles. His very first don’t-hurt-the girl. I miss you. I’m so fucking sorry. Swore my life to protecting you, and look what happened. Never thought I’d fail so badly, sister-mine. Can you ever forgive me?
She would never answer him again.
Fire, he remembered fire. His family was fire, his blood was fire, they all lived to burn. They’d all burned in the end, even the firstborn, the prodigal, the brother whose loss had shattered them and whose return had made them whole again. If only for a moment. The first one he’d turned to when the hurting got out of control. His brother, but his friend almost more than his brother. The one who okay sure, maybe bitched him out when he took things too far (he always took things too far, why did he always take things too far?) but put him back together again without a moment’s hesitation. The one he talked to, the one he turned to for advice, the one he’d thought would always be there, god, what was he going to do without his big brother?
crack
And Dare, he’d failed his daring little sister, let her burn to ash before she could find herself again. Those sad, lost eyes as dark as the midnight sky had been so fearless and alive once, and he’d wanted so badly to watch her find her adventurous little girl self again. God, and Nish. His Nish was gone, burned away in the fire but the fire was his fault always your fault, precious, snuffing them out one by one. Little Strange always knew it, didn’t she? Called you her volcano from the start, told you herself that you’d be the end of them in her cryptic little way. She always saw right through you, always saw so much more than you wanted anyone to see. She knew you’d erupt, and you’d take the whole world with you but it didn’t make sense. The fire was in his blood, but he didn’t wield it, not like the Sun did. Not like Gendry did. His was inside, and it only ever hurt him and everyone who ever loved you, little nothing. Watching it burn you up from the inside tortured them, just like it tortured you to see the Sun burning for so long. You think you were the only one you hurt? Oh, darling. You’re so much bigger than that. So much more devastating.
Silver and brushed gold eyes, framed in black black black that swallowed the world, swallowed the Voice and the memories and all the pain and made everything else quiet. Eyes the mirror of his own, flashing with hunger. Where did you go, Drow? Come back to me. I need you. I need to be inside your skin, need to feel you pressed against me, need the taste of you on my tongue. It’s been so long, and we need to put the halves of us back together. We fit together, Drow, always have, and I need you. Need to touch you. You want someone to hurt you, love? I’ll hurt you so good you’ll beg for more. We killed them all, Drow, it’s just you and me in the whole world. Just like we always wanted. You wanted it too, didn’t you?
Something was wrong in those mismatched eyes, or maybe he was just seeing all the way into them for the first time. Something dark and twisted and broken, and endlessly, ravenously hungry. Drow could feel his touch, could feel the fire waking up inside him, and he gave in. Flashes of the night they’d spent together swam through him, shuffling and rearranging and repeating, repeating, repeating. Lips and teeth and sharp bursts of pain that kindled the fire, stoked it and fanned the flames higher, higher. He didn’t want it, not really. He’d never wanted it to be just the two of them. But they’d never been about want. He and Dröm had only ever been about need. And Dröm had always known when Drow needed him too much to say no.
It was all in his head. It had to be, because they were all dead, even Dröm. But it felt real. Maybe more than ever, now that Drow could see the darkness in his eyes, eyes that flashed black with something more than hunger. Obsession. Possession. This time he understood how fucked up they were. How deeply they were broken. And he did it anyhow.
Because there was nothing else left.
It’s okay, Drodro. Strange’s voice found him in the aftermath, soaking into him as best it could through the burning and the shattering. We love you. Always. But it hurt, when he’d failed them all so badly. It hurt, seeing those blue, blue eyes looking at him with love when he was…when he was Nothing. When he had to be Nothing, because it was the only way to survive them all being gone. She saw that it hurt him worse than danger ever had, worse than Dröm ever could. She saw, and she stayed away. The others came back, flashes of faces he’d loved so ferociously, and it hurt too fucking much to bear. All their eyes, all the colors boring into him, so heavy, stabbing right through his chest and dragging him down, pinning him down to the earth, to the mountain, to wherever he had ended up after he’d left danger’s bloated, rotting corpse in the dirt.
crack
They hurt, god, they hurt, until they flashed black and the pain eased, erasing the weight of his failure. Time passed, though he could only tell it by the way the flesh wasted off his bones. He couldn’t eat, couldn’t stomach the verdant green that had begun to grow back from the ashes of the old world. He couldn’t bear the thought that those plants grew from the remains of his dead loved ones, or might have. He couldn’t eat them, couldn’t take them into his body and turn them into piles of shit steaming in the sun. Not Nish, not Gendry, not Dare. Not Xero, or Hallows, or Dremmy, or Strange. Not Mom. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. So he wasted away, getting lost in the silence and the sounds of their voices, and the sound of the Voice haunting him. It twisted them up together, until the words they said were words they would never have said before he’d killed them all.
They would never. Right?
I don’t know what went wrong with you, Drow. You were such a sweet kid, and you got so fucked up. So twisted. Tearing your face up, all those fights, sleeping with Dröm? How could you do that to your brother? Begging him to hurt you, when you of all people knew how messed up he was? And you put all your self-hate and your violence on Gendry, too, making him patch you back up and keep you from killing yourself when he’d just come home. Too busy breaking yourself to help out with that baby sister you wanted so much, and then look what you did to Nish! That bullshit training, all you ever did was teach him to beat the shit out of you, told him you were toughening him up when all you were doing was hurting him and warping him. You’re a sick fuck, Drow, and I can’t believe I ever called you my brother but Xero would never have said that. She loved him. Didn’t she? God, but how could she when he’d destroyed the whole family like that, ruined everything she’d ever loved. How could she have loved him still, after all that he’d done?
They should have killed him. The Moon should have killed him before he could draw his first breath. They could have killed him. The Sun, or Gendry, or Nish. Any of them could have killed him, why hadn’t they stopped him?
It wasn’t our fucking job to stop you, asshole. Your bullshit creed, family comes first, don’t hurt the girl? It was your fucking job to stop you. But you never could, could you? Couldn’t kill yourself or you’d be just like Her. But you could try. Over and fucking over again, you tried to make something else do the job for you. And every fucking time, Drow. Every. Fucking. Time. You came to me. Begged me to put you back together and fought me the whole damn way, didn’t you? Do you have any idea what you put me through? What you put US through? And that tiger? That was the night Mom died, you selfish son of a bitch. The night she fucking killed herself, and you’re pulling some bullshit stunt trying to prove you can be just like her. God, you never know when to quit, do you? Even now, you can’t fucking quit. Dragging us back from the dead, sinking your sick little claws into our ghosts and making us dance around you but I’m done dancing to your fucked up little tune. I’m done, Drow. Do what you want, I’m not putting you back together again.
Drow fell to his knees as Gendry disappeared, screaming as his brother’s words tore through him., echoing in the silence with more crack, crack, cracks, leaving gaping wounds in his chest that Gendry would never be able to heal from wherever he’d gone. Drow stared in numb horror at the ground, ignoring the way his throat burned raw as if he’d been talking forever, ignoring the way his siblings’ voices didn’t quite sound right, sounded echoed and undercut with gravel.
You were supposed to teach me, Drow. You were supposed to take care of me and look out for me, and set an example. You were supposed to be my role model. I was the baby sister you always wanted, and you were too wrapped up in your own drama to be there for me. You were a terrible brother, Drow. And I loved you anyhow. Gendry was my favorite. Gendry’s always been my favorite. And do you know why? Because he was there, Drow. Because he cared enough to pull his head out of his ass and be there for me. He’s the one who looked out for me. He’s the one who taught me what I needed to know, even if he did teach me the hard way. He kept me safe. Where were you, Drow? Where were you when I needed you? If you’d been there, maybe I’d have lived my life, Drow. Had friends. Lovers. Adventures. I turned into a hermit, alone and terrified of life, and that’s on you. You failed me, Drow. And you can never, ever fix it. I never even lived, and you killed me. His Dare-baby, night-dark eyes full of venom and pain flashing a few shades darker before she disappeared too.
They all disappeared. Nothing was getting out of here alive.
He was Nothing. But he was stuck, anchored to a body that should never have lived. Not when all it left in its wake was devastation. All he had left to hurt himself with were his teeth, and he started in on the ragged holes all their words tore into him. He bit down on the skin of his chest, and as he tore a bit away the pain cleared his mind, drove the ghosts away for a little while. Left them content in his suffering for as long as he was suffering. And because he was so hungry, and because he of all of them deserved to be turned into nothing more than the shit that he should have become around seventeen years ago, he swallowed the mouthful of skin as blood trickled down his chest.
It sat wrong in his stomach, but he was the perfect combination of desperate and apathetic. So he carried on, gradually picking away at his skin and reveling in the hurt, in the quiet trickle of blood, in the nausea and the bile that rose in his throat, and the way the blood crusted on his skin and the wounds turned wrong somehow, turned angry and red and inflamed. Gendry couldn’t heal him now, and wouldn’t if he could. It was right that the parts he left behind as he slowly devoured himself turned putrid and rancid and infected, because it meant he could no longer hide his toxic nature from anyone he met.
Good timing, now that he was the last one on earth.
The infection triggered a fever, and the only reason Drow even noticed was that he started to flash between hot and cold, and he kept shaking, and the world felt a little too wobbly. But still he slowly ate away at himself, offering each bite up to the ghosts of his family to show them how goddamned sorry he was, and how sorry he would be for the rest of his hellish existence.
He was mid-bite when a new voice tickled the inside of his brain. Pick a number. Female? Maybe female, it was a little too quiet to tell. Not soft, not gentle, just quiet. Coarse, sardonic, distant, but with a hint of amusement. The new voice was fire and brimstone and pillars of salt, and once upon a time Drow might have been intrigued. Instead, he just turned dull, mismatched metallic eyes toward the direction he thought the voice was coming from. Pick a number? Fine. Easy. Hallows, Gendry, Xero, Dröm, Dare, Nish, Strange. Seven siblings lost to the fire. “Seven.”
Watch the flames climb high into the night
Drow