Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I hate smiling.
It’s never the truth.
I was born to be gold, but my gilded exterior rots from the inside, never faltering in its shine until it crumbles completely. My mouth is the worst, twisting ever upwards at its own will whenever the situation calls. I smile when I cry and I smile to the harsh drop of rage and only then is it genuine.
But I haven’t cried in years and I have no memory of being prompted to anything beyond petty anger. I’m filled with holes like these, a faulty foundation to a poorly written story.
And no one knows.

I am the son of power and wealth and natural talent. I am what everyone wants and no one deserves to be. I’ve accepted this with no option not to. I will smile all they want.
Until… what? What else is there? What am I missing?
I never stop asking myself this. I don’t think I ever will. I wait, as I always have, for that Something to find me. Or a clue as to where to look. I will travel the world on foot and boat until I find the force pulling me to nowhere.

But I have responsibilities, duties. Fake pleasantries to hand out to the richest in the room and champagne to offer their wives. Meaningless conversation is my greatest talent. In my head I run away. I speak real words rich with emotion. I scream and sing and laugh so hard, and sometimes I make no sound at all. In my mind there is more, there is intimacy waiting to be shared with the same Something I’m searching for. Someone.

I have a boat. Many, actually, but that means nothing to me at this point. I’m sick of pride. The boat is my escape. I’ve planned it for months.

I go to my father, the man who knows pride like he knows himself. A sickness, I think to myself. I beg, a first for me, for the chance to leave, to sail the world under his funding. I grab his face and kneel. I cry real, sharp tears out of wide eyes that speak more words than I am capable of. He does not understand, he was never smart in the ways of emotion the way I seem to be. He doesn’t see the world in poetry. But he loves one thing. So he agrees out of careful compassion.

I leave in the night, sail away, become myself, finally searching the world instead of empty crowds. Searching and searching and searching and hoping for the first time.

Purpose finds me.

Nothing else does.
For months, years it feels, I travel the globe, seeing and learning. The pull guides me to nowhere as it has before and will again.

I feel love, almost, for the world. For the first time. I love the wind and the sight of land in the distance, the hope it brings. I start to hate less harshly than ever. I hate rope burn and lonely weeks, splinters and sunburns. I’m allowed frustration. That is the first sign of freedom, really.
I don’t smile, but my soul swells with warmth. I sleep in the uncomfortable cabin and in small hotel rooms, I eat simple meals that I make myself.
In my newfound freedom, thorough and unbound, a bubble of empty space forms. It was always there, but never as defined, as identifiable, as it is now. The Something takes a new shape and my desperation grows claws. It has gravity and pulls me under for long episodes. Breath isn’t guaranteed.
I keep sailing.

Chapter Text

I was born with a mark on my chest.
All my life it remained. Never fading, always stubborn, pale and silver against the dark of my skin. Raised and ugly where the rest was smooth. Sometimes it burned so hotly I feared I would die, but it usually numbed quickly enough.
I never let anyone see. I hid it away as I did the rest of me. The horrors of being known always on my mind. Those fears constantly reinforced by the words of my father.
His poetic dialogs of anger shot from the bow of his mouth never once missed their target. They landed, always true, somewhere deep within me, beneath the victim of their intent, the scar for which they were aimed.
This hatred started early, before I had the capacity to question it. His furious existence always rang as truth to me, though I never let it bitter my soul. I absorbed it, internalized it, but never redirected it. The thought of becoming him, of hurting others the way he never failed to, was the biggest fear of which I held. If his words were the truth, I would simply lie.

And I did.
I lied to teachers about the purple and green flowering below my arms and across my collarbones. “Sledding…” I’d say sometimes. “The tree in our yard is taller than it looks,” I’d laugh.
I lied to the student who asked me to play. “I’m tired today,” or “I haven’t any toys.”
I had to protect them from myself. The thought that my father was wrong about me never had a chance to present itself. I’m a bad person. He would love me if I wasn’t. Do better.

This is how I lived my life, never allowing myself simple joys like friendship or hope. I simply didn’t deserve them.
It wasn’t until moving to university that the bright, terrifying glimpses of change began to shine through, in the silhouette of a girl. Her name was Brie. And she was beautiful.
Brie was kindness and calm, a part of myself that I’d been missing always. Best of all, she liked me. And she didn’t stop. She ignored my lies and encouraged my stories. She had fast, strong hands and long eyelashes like mine. Her defined nose crinkled when she was angry and she crocheted me a hat the first month we’d met. She was easy to love and fast to laugh. She made me myself, more than I ever had before.
But in gaining back a missing piece, I became painfully aware of the existence of another. This mysterious loss was all mass and emotion.
Sometimes I couldn’t leave my bed for days as my scar burned and the emptiness within me deepened and filled the space around me until I felt the world would fall in. Brie was flowers and herbs and water, but the sun was missing. Maybe it had never existed and it was only now that I realized I missed it. I was alone in my mind, without lies to comfort me, reaching for unreachable memories. A cave, a boat, twirling skirts, the cry of a name no longer mine, blood and sand and love and pain, a spear- And then I’d wake up. Drown in nothing. Waiting.