restless {eos!oneshot}

restless {eos!oneshot} Jan 15, 2015 4:20:58 GMT -5

Post by [nyte] on Jan 15, 2015 4:20:58 GMT -5

e o s g r e e n e

Night has become a demon. I dread watching the sun sink below the horizon, dread retreating into a large empty rooms with cold sheets and nothing to keep the nightmares away. When I was unhappy, sleep was the only release. Bleeding upon the concrete I would close my eyes and as tears warmed my cheeks, I'd hope that maybe sleep would be more than just that. I hadn't the will to give up nor the will to hold on. And I thought it would be that way for forever. I thought that the cutting out of my tongue would only strengthen the hate of the capitol fed into my veins. For a while, it did. When I had the will to fight and when they beat me down I hated them because I fooled myself into thinking I was still a human. I thought myself a martyr and I thought every single pain was worth it because I would soon be watching the whole fucking place burn down. But Achilles wanted me sent here, he wanted to be rid of me. The more I was beaten, the more I understood why. Because they tied the collar around my neck and as their pet I was not allowed to hate them.

Every passing day I grew more indifferent to the justice I once bled for. Soon it was about avoiding the pain, about backing away from every raised hand and for begging like a coward because their fists stung so terribly. It was about surviving because I knew how to do nothing else. I couldn't sit and die and I couldn't fight either. And by the time they sent me away I knew I deserved it. I was fucking sure I was the little bitch they'd painted me to be and I was sure that wherever I went next would be just as bad.

I still do not hate the people who marred the flesh on my back so terribly. They are humans and I am not. They are my superiors, my masters, and therefore it was their right to do what they wished with me. It was their right to hurt me. To scar me. Their right because I deserved it all.

I do not deserve this. Waking in the morning tangled in blankets with sunlight spilling into my room. No matter what terror has visited me the night before I can bury my head in the pillows and be wrapped in the scents that are Kelsier's home. Disinfectant and tidiness. It's a better aroma than I'd ever have thought. But they do not chase away the black nights that leave me shaking and sweating and leave me wanting to scream. I do not deserve this happiness but I can't go back to how things were.

I've been trying to stay awake as long as I can. Retreating into my room and counting the seams in my pants or tapping an old nursery rhyme mother once sang when I couldn't sleep. Had my tongue still existed, maybe I'd have sung it. Achilles said I was tone deaf and I probably was but the words were all that mattered. I just wanted to hear them again. It's sobering to then realize I never will. I will wrap my legs around a pillow, try to feign that someone holds me as I drift into unconsciousness but the terrors come anyway.

And they sell me. They always do. I've got nothing left, got the clothes on my back, as I'm shoved out of the house. It's Eva who does it because I am too dirty. I am too dirty and they must get rid of me. I'll cry and I beg even though I cannot speak. Pitiful whines are all that leaves me and I'm so ashamed but I do not care because I can't go back to how things were. I cannot leave here.

And I'm on the bus again. Pressed against other avox whose eyes are as dead as mine. (But they are not dead anymore, they are bright with grief, diamonds falling from the bridge of my nose and landing on worn shoes.) They look like me. Beaten and broken. (But I am not beaten or broken anymore. The scars on my back have faded into angry red wounds or thin white scars.) Their lives must have been as terrible as mine before ending on this bus. (But it wasn't! But I was happy!) The bus always halts, my name called once more and I shuffle to the entrance. I hop upon the dirt floor and they remove the ropes around my wrists.

I'm taken to a door and the driver knocks and leaves me. And he opens the door. A boy much taller than me with annoyance in his gaze and he asks me what I want. A woman pulls me into the house and she tells me to take off my shoes and she raises her hand but I don't flinch because I think she's going to take my temperature.

I scream when her hand buries itself in my flesh. It burns and stings and I want it all to stop but I cannot say a thing because I've forgotten what it was like to have a voice. It'd been so long.

When I wake the whole of my body trembles. Tears warm and fast down my cheeks as I sit and I realize that I am home. That my room smells of disinfectant and tidiness and that I will see Kelsier in the morning and we'll eat a breakfast that Eva prepared. And I'll have to eat carefully and move the food with my fingers but I'm eating. Food still tastes so magical, no matter how long I've been getting it regularly I cannot help the way my heart races when a plate of fresh breakfast is set in front of me.

Sometimes my terrors have woken me long before sunrise. I don't know what to do then, so I sit and I stare at the ceiling because I feel so empty. My heart thumps and skips within my chest, slowing gradually, but it all seems surreal. Like this was the dream and the pain of my nightmares the reality. Because that is what I deserve. It's not what I want but avox cannot want. The minute a peacekeeper took a blade to my tongue I became something less than everyone. Before Kelsier I was regarded with disgust because I should be. I am a criminal convicted and doomed to punishment for the rest of my life.

There is no way Kelsier is not a fluke or a wonderful dream. But I've pinched the skin on my forearm so often that it's turned a violent purple and I still remain.

I'm still happy.