i’ve been both a saint & a viper
The shadow thing is inching forward on silent hooves - moving as if it is only pretending to be real, an act almost. It attempts to appear how it should but cannot truly do so because it is made of darkness and shadow, pieces of him spiraling from the center in inky tendrils - like fingertips, Balto muses, that perhaps wish to stroke the gaunt skin of his face. He wonders if he’d let it and for one wistful moment, he almost hopes the beast would.
It smiles at him and Balto finds himself hoping that it is pleased with him. The thought brings a furrow to the stallion’s brow, dark creases of shadow falling across his confused face, hating himself for desperately wishing for the approval of this thing that has no name. Behind the comforting twist of it’s shadows, Balto can hear the familiar chittering of his own demons who giggle excitedly over his plight, for they have always found his inner battle to be the most delicious part of torturing him.
He tries to think of Keeper - her soft skin, warm and welcoming while her lips press into each of the cold parts of his body, bringing light into his darkness - but his icy blue gaze falls onto the piercing yellow and she is forgotten, a dream of a dream in the back of his broken and blurred mind. It speaks as it closes in on him, feeling uncannily like prey being cornered, shivering but frozen in place. They stand before each other - one a shadow of the other - and Balto cannot help but feel he is staring at his own reflection, his true self; all blackness and shadow and darkness.
“You’re me,” he tells it weakly, lips trembling. The part of him that he denies, the part of him he fights every single day. “You’re darkness.” Not evil, not wicked, not immoral. Simply the embodiment of darkness and shadow, twisted and broken and weak; the mere absence of light. Closer still Darkness comes and Balto’s eyes flutter closed, a rattling sigh leaving him - not in fear, no, but in hopeful resignation that Darkness would swallow him whole, engulf him until he too is nothing but shadow and pitch. Please.
I don’t want to fight anymore.
‘Whose puppet are you?’
They whoop and cackle in his ears, brushing themselves against his trembling body that is theirs to control.
Balto knows Darkness does not wish to know so that he could save him, but he cannot deny him. “Theirs.” The stallion’s eyes wearily open and fall into the deep blackness of the forest behind, where he can hear their gallivanting and howling. The Darkness may not be able to see or hear them, much like everyone else, but Balto stupidly hopes that maybe there would be a knowing look in the yellow irises - compassion, even. He doubts he will find it there but he meets the sharp gaze desperately, remaining perfectly still despite the want (the need) to reach out and bury himself beneath the shadows like a cloak; to succumb to the willowy and intangible darkness.
Balto
@[jamie]