[Mad Muses] October 4.5. Fright
Nov. 2nd, 2010 11:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thepainted_lady[ooc: Sylar is ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
heroslayer and Peter is hadtobeahero and both are used with love and permission. Based on RP with them and offering_hope. John is of_highdegree.]
Words wouldn't come. In truth, Lydia was afraid if she opened her mouth she'd start screaming again. The host of the Gasthaus had come running, pounding on the door, sure they were all being murdered in their sleep, and Sylar's assurances that she'd only had a nightmare had barely reassured the man when he'd seen how distraught she was. Only having seen them always happy together probably gave his conscience any ease to leave. If she started screaming again...?
A nightmare.
The word seemed too vague, too ephemeral for such a visceral experience. She was used to nightmares. Life had been a constant one for three years, a time when, honestly, sleep had been a semi-escape, but one from which she could be awakened at any time by searching hands wanting things that made her heat with shame for giving, sure she was damning them both to Hell, and God was going to punish her for the Devil living in her like he must. After waking life improved, sleep was less of a haven, and she got as little of it as necessary, as the monsters from her childhood returned in her dreams to torment her still. She learned some tricks, found some teas that helped, figured out if she were utterly exhausted physically, sometimes he didn't come...she lived her life to avoid the dreams as best she could.
Joseph told her she wasn't damned, and she tried to believe him. She stopped believing in God. Mostly.
Dreams of a bullet, of a kiss, of a cold place (that might have been Hell), a gasping return...they'd intermingled in the last year, and no wonder. She slept lightly, woke frequently, and mustered on as best she could. Sylar returned and she let him provide any comfort he could, even if it was to push her into oblivion, when she was too tired to dream, and that was a sweetness and no burden at all.
Last night...
No, to call it a nightmare was to call those other dreams some sort of unpleasant reveries.
She shuddered, whimpered, and Sylar was almost immediately on his feet, moving from the bed where Peter had lapsed back into an unnatural sleep, back over to her side, though not touching. After the initial shock had worn off, the need to know she was okay, alive, safe--for now--she hadn't wanted to be touched. She could still feel him there. The worst part of that was...it wasn't the later part that lingered in touch, wasn't the horror. Nineteen years of compartmentalization let her lock the binding of the corpse's fingers and the press of dead flesh away in her head in the box where she kept the memories of every other coercive and molesting touch.
But she could feel the softer touches from warm fingers pulsing from life, the could-have-beens-but-weren'ts, the happiness-that-never-was. Tears formed, because part of her could swear she could still taste him on her tongue, summer-warm with love and honey-sweet words, without that hateful final secret, the kiss that should-have-been. She could hear his laughter still, and everything was right in the world. No one died. Not her, not him. And then he changed, and the gaping chasm of horror opened up and what he did then...her mind skipped over it, pushed it away, moved forward to the terror she couldn't lock away, because if she could feel the ache of the loss of the one, she could still feel the horror of this, the panic that had her heart still racing and showing no signs of slowing down.
Every few minutes she checked her skin, sure she would see it still smoldering, blackening. Over the softer heat of his caresses, she could feel the searing pain of the sun after he stripped away her only protection, and Hellfire itself claimed her damned soul, lit by the sun's pure gaze. It burned, hurt like nothing she'd ever felt, until she was begging for that cold place she'd been before, because surely it was a blessing, maybe even heaven, and this, this was Hell.
Just thinking about it, she felt the scream rising up in her throat again, and she pressed her lips tighter together. The fingers of her left hand had not unclenched since she woke up, as if she would keep her ring on by sheer force, though there was not an ounce of sunlight in the room.
She looked up at Sylar now, mutely, trying to assure him through thought that she was...something. Not all right. She wasn't anywhere nearly all right. But she was alive. And she was still here. And he was here, and Peter was here, and that...had to be something.
The shudder turned into a shiver, and she closed her eyes, dropping her head on her knees. She felt his hand, tentative, on her hair, and didn't pull away as tears started to fall. Though she tried to keep the wish buried, not wanting to hurt him, there was a part of her that just...wanted John. Joseph was gone, but there was a monster lurking in the closet and under the bed, and John was the closest thing to a father she had to come and get rid of it.
Unless, like the other monsters she carried, this one was just a very loud echo resonating off the broken pieces in her head.
heroslayer and Peter is hadtobeahero and both are used with love and permission. Based on RP with them and offering_hope. John is of_highdegree.]Words wouldn't come. In truth, Lydia was afraid if she opened her mouth she'd start screaming again. The host of the Gasthaus had come running, pounding on the door, sure they were all being murdered in their sleep, and Sylar's assurances that she'd only had a nightmare had barely reassured the man when he'd seen how distraught she was. Only having seen them always happy together probably gave his conscience any ease to leave. If she started screaming again...?
A nightmare.
The word seemed too vague, too ephemeral for such a visceral experience. She was used to nightmares. Life had been a constant one for three years, a time when, honestly, sleep had been a semi-escape, but one from which she could be awakened at any time by searching hands wanting things that made her heat with shame for giving, sure she was damning them both to Hell, and God was going to punish her for the Devil living in her like he must. After waking life improved, sleep was less of a haven, and she got as little of it as necessary, as the monsters from her childhood returned in her dreams to torment her still. She learned some tricks, found some teas that helped, figured out if she were utterly exhausted physically, sometimes he didn't come...she lived her life to avoid the dreams as best she could.
Joseph told her she wasn't damned, and she tried to believe him. She stopped believing in God. Mostly.
Dreams of a bullet, of a kiss, of a cold place (that might have been Hell), a gasping return...they'd intermingled in the last year, and no wonder. She slept lightly, woke frequently, and mustered on as best she could. Sylar returned and she let him provide any comfort he could, even if it was to push her into oblivion, when she was too tired to dream, and that was a sweetness and no burden at all.
Last night...
No, to call it a nightmare was to call those other dreams some sort of unpleasant reveries.
She shuddered, whimpered, and Sylar was almost immediately on his feet, moving from the bed where Peter had lapsed back into an unnatural sleep, back over to her side, though not touching. After the initial shock had worn off, the need to know she was okay, alive, safe--for now--she hadn't wanted to be touched. She could still feel him there. The worst part of that was...it wasn't the later part that lingered in touch, wasn't the horror. Nineteen years of compartmentalization let her lock the binding of the corpse's fingers and the press of dead flesh away in her head in the box where she kept the memories of every other coercive and molesting touch.
But she could feel the softer touches from warm fingers pulsing from life, the could-have-beens-but-weren'ts, the happiness-that-never-was. Tears formed, because part of her could swear she could still taste him on her tongue, summer-warm with love and honey-sweet words, without that hateful final secret, the kiss that should-have-been. She could hear his laughter still, and everything was right in the world. No one died. Not her, not him. And then he changed, and the gaping chasm of horror opened up and what he did then...her mind skipped over it, pushed it away, moved forward to the terror she couldn't lock away, because if she could feel the ache of the loss of the one, she could still feel the horror of this, the panic that had her heart still racing and showing no signs of slowing down.
Every few minutes she checked her skin, sure she would see it still smoldering, blackening. Over the softer heat of his caresses, she could feel the searing pain of the sun after he stripped away her only protection, and Hellfire itself claimed her damned soul, lit by the sun's pure gaze. It burned, hurt like nothing she'd ever felt, until she was begging for that cold place she'd been before, because surely it was a blessing, maybe even heaven, and this, this was Hell.
Just thinking about it, she felt the scream rising up in her throat again, and she pressed her lips tighter together. The fingers of her left hand had not unclenched since she woke up, as if she would keep her ring on by sheer force, though there was not an ounce of sunlight in the room.
She looked up at Sylar now, mutely, trying to assure him through thought that she was...something. Not all right. She wasn't anywhere nearly all right. But she was alive. And she was still here. And he was here, and Peter was here, and that...had to be something.
The shudder turned into a shiver, and she closed her eyes, dropping her head on her knees. She felt his hand, tentative, on her hair, and didn't pull away as tears started to fall. Though she tried to keep the wish buried, not wanting to hurt him, there was a part of her that just...wanted John. Joseph was gone, but there was a monster lurking in the closet and under the bed, and John was the closest thing to a father she had to come and get rid of it.
Unless, like the other monsters she carried, this one was just a very loud echo resonating off the broken pieces in her head.
