ᴘᴇʀᴄɪᴠᴀʟ ᴅᴇ ʀᴏʟᴏ ɪɪɪ (godimclever) wrote in valloic, @ 2020-10-08 00:46:00 |
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Entry tags: | !: action/thread/log |
So no. He hadn't intended to go confront the Overlook, much as he wanted to hurt the thing that hurt his sister. As much as he wanted to lash out against something to avoid facing the fact that he hadn't been able to protect her. Yet again he hadn't been able to protect her.
But he had needed to get out of the Keep. Get out of his own head, if only for a little while. The longer he stayed there the more he thought about how he should have been able to keep Cass safe. How he should have been able to do something to help her. How no matter what, he was always so useless to the people he loved. Only able to bring death and never anything else.
He didn't remember heading to the hotel. Didn't even register where he was until he was there. He wanted to leave, but his feet just kept taking him forward. Until, at last, his hand rested on the handle of a door. He didn't want to open it. He knew without a shadow of doubt that he didn't want to open that door. He would give anything not to open that door.
His hand moved, turning the handle, and the door slowly opened in front of him.
It was the smell he noticed first. Cold air and a hint of damp and earth. Something sharp and metallic and a sour, rotting smell underneath. He remembered it all too well. The smell had lingered in his mind for months after and he still caught whiffs of it now and then when his thoughts wandered. It lodged in his brain and he choked on it. Looking down, he saw his father, eyes cloudy and distant. He'd been dead for days and the smell was overwhelming.
He hadn't actually seen the bodies in his cell, unable to get a good look around from where he'd been tied down, but he could smell them. The scent had permeated everything. Now he could see his parents. His father, disapproving even in death. His mother colder than she had ever been. Her skin was graying and the blood soaking her gown was stained brown with rust-colored blood.
Julius was mostly in one corner, though his arm was across the room. Vesper looked pristine and that was almost worse. He collapsed to his knees next to her, brushing her hair from her face, hoping that maybe she was just asleep and that she would wake up, but her head fell to the side, her hair spilling away and over her shoulder and revealing where her throat had been torn out. He wanted to scream but all that came out was a billow of smoke.
"Percival."
His hands shook as he forced himself to his feet.
"Percival, we need to go. We need to get out of here."
It was Cass. Looking as she did now, not as she did then. He wasn't sure he could have handled seeing her so young and fragile. He wanted to go with her, but instead, he felt his arm raise. The List was in his hand and he could feel smoke and shadows coiling around him. No. Not this.
Cass stared at him with wide, pleading eyes, and he wanted anything but this. He tried to move his arm. To raise the gun to his own temple like he had before. To blow his brains out before he could hurt her, but he couldn't do anything but shift his finger to the trigger.
Bang.
Cass's gaze turned hurt and accusing as blood spilled out of her mouth and her legs went out from under her.
No. No no no.
He stood stock still, hand trembling even as he still held the gun up.
Bang.
A string of shots. Hands moving to reload without any thought. Without any control.
And then hands settling on his shoulders, a warm weight at his back and a soft, gentle voice speaking to him, lips brushing against his ear.
"Oh, well done. I am so proud of you, my darling boy. You've exceeded my expectations."
The tremor of his hands turned to shaking so bad he nearly dropped the gun. He wanted to rip away from her touch but he couldn't make himself move. He couldn't stop her hands from stroking his hair. The side of his face. He felt the overwhelming urge to be sick as she just kept touching him.
He hated being touched. He had learned to tolerate it, and in some cases even appreciate it, but it was not something he enjoyed. Not any more. She had ruined him. She had ruined so much about him.
"So clever and vicious," Anna's words rang in his ear, loud for all that she spoke barely above a whisper. "Your capacity for violence, for cruelty, it's inspiring. You're everything I ever hoped you would be. And I made you, didn't I. Everything you are is thanks to me."
She threaded her arm through his and led him along, though he barely registered the journey. His head was spinning and he couldn't even think of opening his mouth because all that would come out would be smoke and screams. And if he started screaming, he wasn't sure he would ever stop.
He jerked to a stop as she suddenly halted their journey, and her hands were on either side of his jaw, tilting his face up.
"Look," she said gleefully. "Look at what you've accomplished. Look at your beautiful handiwork. Isn't it just incredible? You really are a marvel, Percival."
Once, he had looked up into the withered branches of the suntree and seen a body painted red like a dragon born. A woman with red streaked through her hair. Two children made to look like gnomes.
There was no paint here. No children. No artifice. Just horribly familiar bodies. Each with a perfect bullet hole between their eyes. Except for one, the bullet instead going right through her heart. He wanted to look away, but Anna held him in place, and even if she hadn't, he was fairly certain he couldn't have moved away. The image of those bodies in the branches burned itself into his mind and he knew that he would never be able to close his eyes without seeing them.
He wanted to scream. He wanted to die. Anything but this. Anything but becoming the monster he had always known lurked under his skin. And he had known. Of course he had. He'd known deep down that he could bring nothing but ruin and death to the people he loved. That he would destroy everything good that he touched. Because he was broken.
Anna's lips pressed to his forehead like a brand and he finally managed to move, flinching away from the contact. He immediately recognized his mistake as her expression shifted into a frown.
"Oh, that won't do at all," she said with a sigh, as though scolding a troublesome child. "And you were doing so wonderfully, too. But no matter. You just need another lesson. Or maybe several. It's all right. You need a reminder is all. It's been so long since our little lessons. But you'll learn. You were always such a good student."
He felt bile rise in his throat as she dragged him along, pushing him down and back, and suddenly he could move, but that hardly mattered with his wrists strapped down and Anna standing over him, scalpel in hand. He was suddenly painfully aware of the cold of the stone against his back, his shirt and coat gone.
"Now then," she said with a smile that sent a shock of cold down his spine, or maybe that was still the stone, "let's begin." She carved into his chest and he gritted his teeth against the desire to scream. It was just pain. He could live with pain. "What are you, darling boy? Answer quickly now and don't dawdle."
He refused to speak, shaking his head and pulling against the bonds. She laughed, a sharp, mocking sound that cut almost as deeply as the scalpel. "Oh, I do love it when you're willful." Another cut. Another. Sharp pain that curved down his chest and along his ribs. Until she put the blade away and pulled out a vial of bright green liquid. She tilted it carefully and he gave a pained hiss as the acid dripped down the column of his throat, burning and constant. He wouldn't scream. He wouldn't give her that. He wondered idly if he would see bone if he looked down.
"Oh, I forgot how fun these lessons are," she said, taking a clean blade - because it was important to be sanitary when doing experiments - and carefully bringing it down his forearm until a strip of flesh peeled away. And another. And another. "You can make this stop. Just tell me what you are."
He shook his head, eyes stinging and throat burning with the desire to scream. She tutted and carried on, pausing to change gloves and picking up a metal rod. She turned away from him, heating it in the nearby fire. When she came back, she stroked her hand through his hair and he was ashamed of the way he leaned into the brief moment of contact that wasn't painful. That quickly faded as she drove the burning metal into his shoulder and a sharp, shocked noise escaped. Not a scream. Not quite. He was still stubborn.
Now we're getting somewhere," she said, breathless with delight. "I think we're really making progress. You really can't know someone until you strip them down to the most basic parts. Don't you agree, Percival?" He didn't respond and her hand shot out, slapping him with a sharp crack of pain. I said, don't you agree?"
He was embarrassed by how quickly he spit the words out.
"Yes, Doctor Ripley."
Her answering smile was like knives and his heart pounded out a rabbit fast beat in his chest.
"Good boy." Something in the back of his mind eased at her proud tone and he hated himself for the way she could still affect him even now. "Now for that question. I think we need to look deeper. Much deeper, my dear."
He shook as she took her blades and cut into his chest, through skin and muscle. It was agony and he wasn't sure anyone could blame him for the pained whine that escaped his throat as her hands slid between his ribs, up through viscera and into his chest until she was bloody to the elbow.
"Now would you look at that," she said with a laugh. "Oh that is fascinating. You haven't got a heart at all. But that shouldn't be a surprise. Not to you. You've known that all along haven't you. No heart. No soul. Just that clever, clever brain that devises horrible things. Now what are you. Come on. You can say it."
The words slip from his lips.
"I'm a weapon."
She beamed at him then, so proud. "That's right," she said, pressing another burning kiss to his cheek. His jaw. His slack mouth as he gasped for air. "You're a weapon. My weapon. I made you. Forged you myself. I'll always be a part of you. Right here in the hole where a heart would be. You'll never be rid of me. You'll never be free of me. I'll always be right here. And every time you hurt someone, and you'll always hurt them, you'll have a little bit more of me inside you. Because deep down we're just the same. You can play at being a person all you like, with your friend and your sister and your love, but you'll never leave me behind. You'll hurt them and you'll ruin them and you'll bring their deaths. Because there's nothing good in you. There never was."
He can hear himself screaming even as he blacks out.
He's back at the Keep, back in his workshop when he finally comes back to himself even a little. The space doesn't hold the comfort it usually does. He wonders if it ever will again. He expects to find himself covered in blood and Ripley's marks but there's nothing there. That brings him little comfort. The things in his head are often crueler than the things in the world.
He didn't even realize the List was in his hands until he was staring down at it. Staring at it, he brought it up to his temple, resting the barrels against the side of his head. It would be so easy. Just a twitch of his finger and he could quiet all the chaos in his head. Keep everyone safe.
Maybe you should, came the whisper of his mind. Maybe it would be better. You could never hurt anyone again. They'd all be better off, wouldn't they? Safer. Happier. What good have you really done? Wouldn't this be better? Wouldn't it be better to rest? You should have died with your family. You should have died instead of them. Any of them would be better than you.
He holds the gun there a moment longer before dropping his hand to his lap. He's always been weak.
He sits there on the floor of his workshop, staring at the gun, for a span of time. Maybe hours. Maybe minutes. Time slips away and everything goes hazy at the edges as he retreats from himself.