Chapter Text
This time, Six is the one who’s falling.
In her dreams, she’s always the one falling. She opens her hand, and she falls. She watches her own face get swallowed by the darkness as she plummets. And then she wakes up. She wakes up and pretends the damp on her cheeks is from the water that is somehow omnipresent inside the Maw. If she doesn’t feel, if she pretends she can’t, it won’t hurt.
It does, but she can pretend it doesn’t for a short while. She can pretend it’s the hunger.
Always the hunger. It gnaws at her, never truly gone. It consumes her from the inside like a dark thing. A dark her. The echo of something left behind. She’ll see it sometimes, when she loses control, when she feeds that pit her stomach. Her own ghost mocking her.
It’s better to pretend, to let the world eat her memories before they consume her.
Six brushes the crumbs off of her face and sits with her back to the wall, head pressed into the bars. The other child, the stranger, sits on the other side. The room fills with their breath, a hollow reminder that even here they’re alive.
“How long have you been here?” the stranger asks.
“I don’t know.”
“Do you remember before? Before you were taken?”
“Yes. Do you?”
“No.”
They fall silent for a time.
Somewhere above, something leaks. Liquid drips onto Six’s bare knee, a steady rhythm. She misses the rain. The drumming on her skin, the damp on her skin, the smell of it on cracked pavement or naked earth.
“Could you tell me? About what you remember?” the child asks.
“Maybe.”
“You’ll forget, if you don’t. Saying things out loud helps. If you make your memories real, they won’t fade away.”
“What if I want to forget?”
“You won’t have to wait long. This place will eat you whole.”
It would be so simple, she thinks, to focus on this child. Wouldn’t surviving be easier with two? Two children against unknown monsters would always be better odds than one. Some time and exploration and she could get them out. The two of them could get out together. She and Mono would be free, and then…
Six stood up. She had to go. Now.
She was halfway up a stack of crates up to a hole in the wall when she paused and looked back at the stranger, who had only moved their head to watch her go.
“Thanks,” Six mumbled, feeling the words tumble out unbidden.
“Good luck.”
||
Sometimes, at the end of the fall, in the darkness that surrounds her, she sees a face. A mask. A tall woman with her back to Six slowly turns, and when there should be a face, there is only a white expanse with cold dark eyes. And even in the fear, even waking up shivering, sweating, alone, Six thinks of Mono. Thinks of the shadows beneath the paper bag. Thinks of the one time she saw his eyes with her own.
And then she tries not to think.
In the darkness you can almost trick yourself into believing your memories are nightmares. To imagine something better. To hum until the drone of your own hoarse voice becomes a blanket against the world. To pretend that the sound of your own comfort isn’t tainted by guilt. By regret.
But the Eyes are everywhere. They always had been, beyond the scope of Six’s memory. But now the sight of them sends waves of nausea through her. Her hands grow sweaty and her heart races so fast her body can’t catch up.
The prickling of stone forming on her skin feels like static as she stumbles into darkness once more. The Eye sweeps away, looking for another. Hands shaking, she lights an abandoned lantern. And she sees one.
A Nome slipping through a crack in the wall, hidden by a broken cage.
Six followed, clambering over the metal meant to trap her. Inside the wall is a cozy space. Little bits of broken things, lost things tucked away to form a home. She remembered many similar hideaways tucked inside the Nest. The sight of a Nome was a sight of safety. A moment of respite. This Nome seemed more frightened than the ones she’d met before.
“Hey,” Six whispered, stretching out a hand to the shaking creature.
It shrunk further away.
“You don’t understand me, do you?”
She crawled forward, slowly, low to the ground. The Nome didn’t move away, just stayed meekly still. Once again, she reached out her hand, and she could swear the Nome was now looking at her with eyes she could not see.
She hugged it.
It was a stupid, impulsive gesture. But the Nome made a cooing noise that sounded happy, and it stayed close to her when she let go.
“Hey, hey. Look.”
She looked over the dresser, back where they had come in and where the bag headed boy had just reappeared. He was wearing a tall white cap that covered his entire face with its size.
“I’m a Nome!”
In spite of herself, she giggled.
Six gave the Nome a friendly pat.
“Stay safe,” she mumbled.
It chirped at her. She left.
||
Hunger made Six do stupid things.
This dark hunger that wasn’t her own, the echoes of her monster form. The monstrosity she still was on the inside. That she always had been. And monsters belonged in cages. Deserved to lose their friends. Their friend. She’d only ever had one. And she’d dropped him.
No. She’d let him go.
Now, she crawled towards the smell of meat. Strong, rancid, but meat nonetheless. Her mouth watered even as her mind rebelled. But she needed to eat. The static along her skin spoke of her dark self-watching. Waiting for her to feed it.
Hunger made her do stupid things.
Six crawled into the cage and ate the rotten meat, the darkness inside her curling and consuming her mind until the sharp metal snap of the cage closing in on her.