Chapter Text
She stares down at him. He stares back up.
Her hand loosens. He knows where this goes. He wants to close his eyes, but he can’t stop staring up.
Her face is cold. It has always been cold. But he thinks he understands her well enough to find her feelings past her stormy eyes and hard-set frown.
She is afraid.
She is afraid of him.
Why is she afraid?
She lets go. He’s lived this so many times now, every night when he closes his eyes. She drops him again, and again, and again. He falls again, and again, and again. He lands, and he wakes up in the darkness, surrounded by flesh walls, flesh floor, and countless unblinking eyes.
He is in the chair again. He thought he finally got away from the chair. But he’s in the chair. Everything is cold. The chair is warm, but only barely. Just enough to keep him there. There is darkness ahead, but he knows the eyes are there.
They are staring at him. They won’t stop staring. They are always staring. He shied away from their gaze before, but it’s all he knows now. There is no getting away from it. They will stare at him in his ugliness, his monstrosity, and his deserving loneliness.
Now there’s another chair, and another person. They are big, they are tall. In a suit, with a hat. They are an adult. They are an adult he knows. He has been through this part, too. He knows by now there is no point in running away. He has tried.
The adult in the chair stares down at him. He stares back. The adult’s eyes are dark and heavy.
His eyes are dark, but not yet so heavy.
The adult has nothing to say. He has nothing to say. They sit facing each other in silence, under the oppressive gaze of the room itself. Tears burn his eyes. There is nothing to hide his face, and that only makes him want to cry more. The tears roll down his cheeks, and he doesn’t fight them. There is no need to stay quiet now. He is alone with the eyes and the towering adult. The need to stay quiet is for children who are not like him. He can be loud. Monsters can be loud.
In a time before this, a time living this nightmare so many times has made hard to remember, he had felt strong taking off the mask. Then she saw his face. She saw his face. It scared her. She dropped him.
His face does not need to be seen anymore. But now, there is nothing around him but eyes to see it. The adult knows, like they always seem to do. They lift a thin arm and take their hat from their thin head with thinner fingers. The hat is placed on his head, falls over his ugly and watery eyes, and fills his nose with the stink of smoke.
He does not want this hat. This hat is Bad.
A spark flies through the air and, like every time it has happened before, it makes his head pulse.The world warps and shakes like static on a screen.
A screen. He lifts his head, and there is a screen. There are many screens. The adult has left their chair and there are many screens. They are all static. The static is loud. It presses down on him like it wants to crush him, like it’s trying to squeeze his brain.
He sinks into the chair. His fingers twitch toward the screens and the air around them pulses, but he doesn’t bother with moving. He’s not going to try and stop it. He knows it doesn’t do anything.
When he sat here the first ten times, he thought he understood his powers. Now, he’s not so sure.
The screens flicker. Her scream carries through the room. The adult is back, staring at him from their chair again. She is in their hand, kicking and flailing like she did the first time she was caught. The adult holds her up and dangles her over him like they are presenting a great gift.
He can see her eyes under her yellow hood. She is not looking at the adult. She is looking at him. Her eyes are wide with terror and beading with unshed tears, because she is looking at him. She disintegrates then and there into a swirl of crackling darkness, like a screen being turned off at the click of a remote.
The adult’s power has taken something from her. He does not know what, but it is something important. The static has cleaved her in two and it is wielded by hands capable of the same things his are.
They are Bad hands. His are Bad hands.
Static swells around him and he hides his head. She will be back soon. He remembers how this part goes. He will see her shadow, the unknown part of her the Bad Man ripped away. He will look at it, and he will remember what he’s done to her. What following him has caused. The eyes will remind him if he tries to forget.
The adult is standing over him again. He cannot see them, but he knows they are there. Their hands hover over him. He hears the static hum and feels the world bend. And hide his head all he can, this part he can’t avoid.
He is standing over the chair now. The chair is small. The darkness is empty. Truly empty. He can’t feel the eyes there anymore.
There is a child in the chair. No matter how many times he has this dream, he cannot recognize them. Perhaps they are not meant to be recognized. The static buzzes around his head and his hands move on their own. They are not his hands. Not the hands he knows. They are long and thin on arms that are longer and thinner. He lays them–or they lay themselves–on the back of the chair and the child begins to sob.
He wants to sob, too. But the only thing that is there is more static. He cannot cry anymore.
Bad Guys don’t cry. Monsters don’t cry.
The hands that aren’t his reach further out to take the formless child by the neck. Again. Again, again, again, again. He doesn’t know who he is hurting or why. He has stopped caring.
Monsters don’t care.
He can’t deny it anymore. It’s happened too many times, and it is the truth. He is Bad. He gets it. He knows. The eyes do not think he knows, though. They will tell him again.
”Mono?”
His Bad hands stop. The static fades. That is not part of the dream.
That is his name. He never even realized he almost forgot it.
Who said his name?
He looks up. And he gasps. The crumbling stone is up there, far away and framed by light. He fell from there. He could not see it before. His name echoes in his head.
Was it an accident after all? Is she up there? Is she calling his name? His mouth falls open. She didn’t mean it. She really didn’t mean to drop him.
“H… hh…”
He tries to call out to her. His voice is so weak, he can’t call like he used to. His voice, he thought, was Bad. She was afraid of it like she was afraid of him. Even when she was the monster. That’s what his voice did. That’s what he did.
“Hhh…”
It takes so much effort to push even the tiniest sound out. But he can see where he fell from. He can see it for the first time. Is this not a dream after all? He knows he heard her voice.
“Hnnhh…!”
He feels something swell in his chest. The world around him warps and crackles again, but he does not care. He won’t let the Bad in him win. She came back, so he must not be so Bad.
”HEY!!!”
His voice rings and echoes upward and the static assaults his ears. He is so high up. The chair is so small. He is louder than he thought he could ever be. It makes him stagger back onto the small, small chair where his legs (that were never supposed to be that long) buckle and he falls back.
She’ll hear him!