Work Text:
There was a spool of thread inside of you
Somewhere along the way you had swallowed it
And it fell, unwinding, tangling into knots,
Spreading across your subconscious
A sort of odd physical poison,
That now infected you, spreading.
The thread moved with your blood,
Dividing your body into sections
Each fragment warring and pressing,
The splinters piercing into you, pain with each movement.
The trails found their way into your core,
Tightening, a vice around your heart.
Your fingers dug into your chest
Tight, burning,
Maybe you could pull this pressure out
It ached and pulled and hurt and you just wanted
it all to go away.
Maybe it would come out, glittering golden and beautiful
Or maybe it would be darker, a quiet suffering violet, shimmering only in the corner of the eye
But you just needed it out
It ached and hurt and if you didn't do something
you'd shatter
It hurt and pulled and you couldn't breathe
The thread caught in your throat, and your breath
shuddered
Oh please, oh please,
The longing whispered
Do something
The thread forced its way up your throat,
Crawling out of your mouth,
Pulling inside, even as it rose,
It wrapped around your neck
Stopping you when you tried to talk
It wrapped around your fingers, limiting,
Forcing you to hesitate and struggle,
to backtrack and give up.
You were a mere marionette, moving only
as the strings permitted.
Years of this,
You knew the pressure as much as you knew yourself
Which was really, not at all.
You never did anything.
Time turned the thread
into sharp steel cords
cutting and pressing and slicing
Bleed you from the inside
Your heart, weeping
The red dripping down,
gathering inside.
Silver to red to brown to black
The cords dangling from your lips began to dissolve
Age and rust and they tasted like iron and spit and something you wish you had the bravery to name.
You never really slept
But now you laid with your own arms wrapped
around yourself
Wishing that they were someone else's
But they were always yours.
You take that feeling. The hopeless helplessness,
the hushed desire that pulls
And you heat it up until it's white-hot, sparking,
And you forged it into a weapon that
fits into the stone mold of your hands.
It burns you, a heavy weight, but,
You feel stronger than you ever have.
The longing becomes a blade in your hands.
Weaponized suffering to rend your foes in two
An electric power, fueled by your core,
That weeping heart, turned
to
steel.