poet valmont | six; fin

He loved the silence so much that he became it: a shadow of a boy. The only sounds came from his careful steps across the crisp snow and some labored breathing. Medically, there was nothing wrong with his voice. He could speak when he wanted. When he was injured or surprised, instinct still forced him to gasp, and sometimes when he was certain no one was around to hear them, he'd whisper whichever words he wanted to hear. Not really in sentences, just words he thought sounded nice.


"Gum. Feather. Chore. Garnet. Plump."

("Please. Take whatever you want and go.")

He'd keep his head down and his hands in his pockets: one clinging to a writing pad and the other a writing utensil. Just in case. The side of his left hand was so regularly coated in ink or granite stains that it may as well have been tatooed there- one of the downfalls of writing his responses when someone asked him a question. But he was fine with it. Kind of liked it, actually. At the very least, he'd grown to accept it but to be fair, he would have taken pretty much anything if it meant keeping himself quiet.

("Poet! What are you doing?! Run! Run!")

It is easy to see the quiet one as weak, and sure: it makes sense. No matter how relentless the bullies are, how insensitive the teachers, Poet never defends himself with anything more than a sticky note with the words, I can't scribbled over it.

("And where do you think you're going?")

He hasn't always been this way, that's the thing. People who used to know him remember a boy who spoke. A boy who was in the choir, in fact. But after everything that had happened with his parents, after he'd moved in with his older sister and started to triple check all the windows every night to make sure they were locked, he made a vow to himself. No one would ever hear him speak. No one would ever hear him laugh. No one would ever hear him—

("I want to hear you scream.")

Period. And it wasn't because he was weak. It was because he was afraid. The two weren't mutually exclusive, or at least that's what he liked to think. He'd seen plenty of people go completely mad after losing someone. He'd seen some people turn to alcohol, others to drugs, and those were the lucky ones. The ones who could still get up every day, even if it was just to find their next fix.

("LEAVE HIM ALONE!")

He hadn't ever spoken about what happened. Not to the peacekeepers, not to his friends, not even to his sister, Sailor. A blur of candle light’s coppery glow reflecting off of something silver and the screams the screams the s c r e a m s. They alone were too much for him to handle when he tried to remember everything. Tortured. Guttural. The kind that would never leave him. The kind he heard in his sleep, the kind he heard every time he saw the matching urns above Sailor's fireplace in the den. His hands went to the scar on his neck and he cringed.


"Metric. Wander. Divine. Coarse. Sapling. Comet."

("I said  S C R E A M!")

He closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe. The sun was pale gold and devoid of heat above him but he turned his face to the light and inhaled through the scarf around his neck and mouth. He could feel his heartbeat slow to a dull roar. In through the nose. Out through the mouth.

("NO- N- AH! AHHH! MOM! HELP M- RAAAAAH!")

Part of him wished he could at least explain it to Sailor. She deserved to know what happened and he knew it. And more than a couple times he'd taken a seat at his desk and began writing out the story but it never sounded the way he wanted it to sound. There was always a little voice in his head telling him that maybe he was misremembering, or maybe he'd forgotten so much that he'd invented his own events of that night up in his head. And it never sounded right. Never sounded complete. Of course, he always omitted the parts that she was really asking for in the first place. What happened to them was obvious, but what had happened to Poet remained a mystery.

("Fucking let him go! Please! Take me instead!")

It always would.

("Go now!")

He snaked his hands from his pockets, clicking the pen open and hovering the tip of it above his writing pad. His grasp was unsteady and he cleared his throat. YOU ARE He bit his lip in concentration. He was what? Safe? Free? Going to be okay? He hesitated for a moment. Cowards were never safe, and runners were never free, and he had no way of knowing for sure if he would ever be okay.

("Don't look, Poe! Don't look!")

ALIVE...

("I love you, son.")

That, he was.