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Hugo doesn’t expect Sylvia’s visit, but it doesn’t take long for him to readjust himself. He’d been hoping to have a quiet day playing his piano, but as soon as he saw Sylvia through one of the manor windows, he began heading in the opposite direction. After what happened last time, Hugo hardly wants her anywhere near his music room. He still remembers the jangled clang of keys that rang out as he instinctively backed away from her, the droplets that tainted his wonderful piano. Needless to say, he has no desire to repeat the experience.
She sees him soon enough, of course she does. He follows her to one of the unused rooms in the mansion, because Hugo may have thirty siblings but he’s convinced that Father’s mansion would be large enough to accommodate three hundred. The room contains nothing but conveniently maroon walls and a bare wooden floor, and he clasps his hands in front of him as he waits for her to start. They have a routine. He knows what’s going to happen.
But nothing does.
He looks up, suspicion and confusion in his eyes. Sylvia’s just… Watching him. The door is shut, the yellowish light above them illuminating her face. Hugo waits anxiously for a moment before speaking. “Aren’t you going to… I don’t know,” he tugs on the edges of his sleeves. At least he knows he got to Sylvia first. Nobody will be looking for them. Nobody else is going to get hurt. “...Do something? Hurt me?”
“...No.”
“ What ?” Hugo blurts out, his eyes widening with panic– no, no panic, of course not, he doesn’t want this , he’s just in too deep to turn back now and Sylvia’s dangerous when she’s unpredictable, even more so than usual, he just– “What do you mean ‘ no’ ?”
“I mean ,” Sylvia’s gaze flashes dangerously, that familiar, awful smirk creeping up her face, “that it doesn’t seem like you really want this. You’re always so distant when you come to find me. Remember, Hugo, you’re the one who asked me to do this. And now it seems like you don’t actually enjoy our arrangement at all.”
“I– what does it matter to you?” Hugo asks, expression guarded and wary. He’s used to Sylvia’s many manipulations, though he can’t quite decipher what she hopes to achieve from this. “ You want to do this, don’t you?”
“Be that as it may, there’s no fun in a boring toy, Hugo,” she drawls, and he can’t help but recoil at the demeaning term. “What I’m saying is that you need to convince me.”
Hugo pauses, a sickening feeling stirring in his gut. “...Convince you?”
“If you want me to keep up this little game of ours,” she runs a finger over her silver blade, her nails as red as the blood Hugo had expected her to spill by now. “You have to persuade me that’s the case. After all, you want to bleed. You need this. And I’m the only one willing to provide that for you.”
“And… If– if I say no,” he proposes the notion uncertainly, his stomach twisting further. “You’ll just… Stop? And we won’t do this anymore?”
“Precisely,” she nods smoothly, and the response sends equal parts anxiety and relief through his gut. Subconsciously, Hugo’s hand drifts to last time’s still-healing gash upon his upper arm. His grip tightens when Sylvia continues. “Of course, if you do decline, I’ll be free to let everyone know just where you’ve been sneaking off to every time I come to visit. Oh, I’ll tell your family everything. I’m sure they’d be more than happy to listen.”
Hugo’s mouth runs dry. “You can’t,” he responds instinctively, and this time, he can’t hide the panic in his voice. “Sylvia, they’ll–”
“I can do whatever I please,” Sylvia raises an eyebrow at him, entirely unbothered, and Hugo despises with every ounce of his being that she’s right. “Or have you forgotten? One of the terms of our deal is that I keep this a secret.” Her mouth twists on the final word, amused and derisive at its childishness. “If you choose to bring an end to said deal, so ends my silence.”
Hugo bites his tongue, hard enough to hurt, but not enough that the bitter tang of copper has a chance to overwhelm him earlier than it should. “...What do you want me to say?” He asks weakly, defeat lining every inch of his tense shoulders.
Sylvia scoffs at him. “Have a little creativity. I’m not going to put words in your mouth. It’s your job to convince me. You want this? Say so. ”
His stomach sinks, his mind racing as it struggles for something to say, but amidst his sea of alarm is a tiny, awful drop of relief. He’s grown… Used to this. Used to having the burn to distract him, the goal of hiding it in mind to keep him from losing himself around others. Sylvia tells him he’s pathetic, and while Hugo knows she’s right, at this point he doesn’t know what he’d do without her help.
“I…” Hugo doesn’t know why he’s so embarrassed. Isn’t sure why his face flushes red and he glances to the floor, his nails digging crescents into his palms as he waits for this to be over with. He managed to ask her the first time. Why is this any different? “...Hurt me.”
Sylvia looks at him, simultaneously expectant and aloof. She waves a hand, not so much as deigning to ask him to continue. Hugo takes a deep breath, steadies himself, and follows the silent command. He’s grown good at that over the years.
“I… Want this,” Hugo says, forcing the uncertainty out of his voice. In all honesty, Sylvia was right. If Hugo didn’t want to be hurt, he never would have approached her in the first place. “I– Sylvia, I really want this.”
“And what is ‘this’, Hugo?” She draws out his name like it’s an insult. Hugo supposes that to her, it is one.
“I want you to… Hurt me,” he says carefully. Sylvia waits for him to keep talking. After that first sentence, the words spill out in such a torrent that Hugo couldn’t stop them if he tried. “I want you to– to use your knife, and to get under my skin, and make all of this just go away. I want you to… Fix things. Or to just make them feel less broken. To make me feel less broken. I… I just… I want a distraction.”
Sylvia sighs, and Hugo’s brow creases in worry. “Awfully demanding, aren’t you?” She takes a step closer, the knife point directed lazily towards him. Hugo’s eyes focus on it like it’s the only thing in the world that matters. “You wanting something is hardly worth my effort. You make this sound like a treat. I’m not indulging you, Hugo. Not until you come out with something better than that. ”
Hugo grits his teeth. This would be so much easier if she just told him what he was supposed to say. There’s a right answer here, he knows there is. He just needs to find it. Then, everything can go back to normal.
Suddenly, it hits him. “I… Need this,” he says slowly, and feels something adjacent to pride bloom in his chest when Sylvia’s mouth curves up in satisfaction. “I need you to remind me I’m alive.” That’s something he can say with confidence. His limbs are heavy and his skin is cold and his irises glow in a way that they shouldn’t. Whenever he awakes from the usual nightmares, it’s like he’s returning from the grave they never left him in all over again. At least the sting lets him know he’s still capable of feeling something. “And– and to do that, I need you to hurt me.” Hugo looked at her, tilting his head ever so slightly to see the anticipation on her face. She’s still waiting. He’s given up enough of his dignity that saying what she wants to hear is no longer a struggle. “...Please,” he finishes softly, voice barely louder than a whisper.
Sylvia pauses. Her gaze slides from the tip of her weapon to Hugo’s uneasy expression, and she waits a few seconds before finally responding. “Well,” Sylvia adjusts her grip lackadaisically, as though she has all the time in the world. When she continues, her voice is laced with the sickly sugar of condescension. “Since you asked so nicely.”
Hugo stays statue still as she makes her way over to him, his feet rooted in place just as they have been so many times before. The gentle caress of a knife against his skin is no longer unfamiliar, but he finds himself tensing nonetheless as the flat side drags along his jaw.
“Nobody can know,” he reminds her, voice more subdued than he intends for it to be. “You can’t–” As the tip presses ever so slightly against his throat, Hugo remembers her earlier words, stopping himself. His voice threatens to break when he speaks again. “...Please don’t leave marks anywhere visible.”
“Better,” she nods in approval. The knife moves down to the top of his collar. “You know what you have to do.”
And he does. The movements are like clockwork, and he goes through each one with a sort of mechanical apathy. He stares ahead like there’s anything to see, stays silent and compliant when a white hot sting erupts across his icy skin, and mentally adds another scar to his gradually growing collection. This isn’t a punishment, or an attack; it’s a reminder. If he can scar, he can still breathe. Hugo has control over his body. It can change. He’s still alive.
“I think,” Sylvia tells him from somewhere around him. Hugo wouldn’t be able to place where, not when his mind is already drifting and his gaze has been drawn to the wooden floor. “That when you die a second time, I should be the one to bring about your death.” Hugo freezes further, his breath catching in his chest. Ice floods through his veins, and his eyes dart back up again with a sharp sort of renewed alarm. “It would be so easy to kill you right now.”
“...You wouldn’t,” he breathes out, though he can’t stop the way his heart picks up. There’s a knife in Sylvia’s hand, and there’s a trickle of red running down his skin already, and Hugo’s never liked to feel vulnerable but he’s somehow surrendered all power to her. Sylvia’s right. She could kill him right now, and nobody would know.
But he knows she doesn’t do this with anyone else. Knows the rest of his family aren’t broken enough to consider offering themselves up, knows that Sylvia likes to research and once-dead blood isn’t something she can find anywhere else. She’ll use him up and toy with him until nothing remains, and only then will she consider killing him. For now, Hugo’s safe. He hopes with all his heart that his logic hasn’t failed him again.
Sylvia scrutinises him, eyes narrowed and searching even as her face stays relaxed. “But I could,” she reminds him. Hugo acknowledges that. It would be hard not to when the incision she made moments prior is still throbbing dully. “And one day, I will. I’ll press in here ,” she lets the knife rest against the tip of his collarbone, then lets it descend diagonally over his shirt. “And carve all this apart like I’ve been doing for months. I’ll finally be able to bloody your face,” her smile sharpens further at the thought. “And I’ll watch as you slowly bleed out. Nobody will help you. Nobody will want to. Anyone who sees how far you’ve fallen will reject how pathetic you’ve become.”
Hugo focuses on his breathing. Five seconds in, more to hold, then release. Repeat, and repeat, and repeat. He can almost tune Sylvia out if he focuses hard enough. Almost.
“I did enjoy when you still had a little fight left,” she muses, and Hugo can’t help the gasp that tears from his throat as she cuts again without warning. “It made this interesting. But I have to say, I do prefer you like this. What’s the use in a fight when I’m always going to win, hm?”
Hugo shuts his eyes. He just needs to focus on the burn in his side. Only on the scarlet leaking from his wounds, sliding down pale, damaged skin and sticking to the inside of his clothes. Blood is thicker than water, Hugo remembers reading somewhere. Absently, he wonders what Sylvia thinks of the phrase.
“Don’t ignore me,” she says coldly, using the tone of voice that has him straightening automatically. It’s the tone his father uses when disapproving or disappointing. (It’s the tone his father used when admonishing him for his careless demise.) “I thought you needed this. There’s no fun in hurting you when you don’t offer any response.”
“Sorry,” he manages to murmur, looking back towards her. He focuses on her nose rather than the space above it. He doesn’t want to look at those shiny eyes just then.
She begins speaking again, and Hugo simply pretends to listen. Inside of his head, he’s going through his scars– every one, even before Sylvia started to give him more. One on his knee, when William and Humphrey taught him to sneak out and he fell a little too hard. A tiny rat bite upon his arm that he’d been furious with at the time. Chicken pox scars from when he was young– William had fretted over him more than ever the week he got it. Scars left by his father, scars left by his death. Scars left by Sylvia, mapped out across an already marred canvas. She pays no heed the the ones already there, replacing them with marks of her own like they mean nothing. It would be freeing to see some of them go, if not for what they were being substituted with.
Hugo doesn’t know why he keeps coming back to her. There are other ways, he’s sure, of reminding himself his heart still hearts and his innards are still warm. Sylvia’s knife is fire against his perpetually freezing skin, providing the sort of twisted warmth he hasn’t been able to find anywhere else. He’s so tired. He still doesn’t understand why his father didn’t just leave him to die. A sour part of him sometimes whispers that he never should have been brought back.
Death is meant to be final. Yes, Hugo’s was unfair, and lonely, and careless, but it was supposed to be the end. He should be six feet under, rotting but peaceful, his pale eyes shut and his skin still unmarked by the piercing press of his eldest cousin’s blade. He’s–
…
At first, Hugo thinks she’s punched him. His breath escapes him in a rush, the force enough to startle him out of his thoughts. Choking on air, his head slowly turns to look down at where he’s been hit. Dread rises within him, and in a way, he already knows what he’s about to see.
Sticking out of his side is the dark handle of Sylvia’s knife.
Stars split across his vision, tiny flying specks of every colour he can imagine, and a newfound panic surges through him because he can’t do it again. He can’t. He’s not supposed to die again, not like this, he can’t have Father bring him back and he can’t pretend that nothing ever happened and what if nobody brings him back, what makes him think he deserves a third chance when he’s already wasted his second. Sylvia told him she could kill him. Hugo must have used up the last dredges of her patience.
“I did warn you,” she shakes her head disappointedly, as though the knife in his side is nothing more than a minor inconvenience. Hugo barely hears her over the ringing in his ears, he’s not sure if it’s from the injury or from his fear, but he can’t breathe and he can’t see and the pain hasn’t kicked in yet but it will, he knows it will, and all he can do is stand still and stare at her with toxic green eyes that are already glassy. “The only benefit this gives me is entertainment. Now look at what you’ve made me do.”
The knife is silent as it slips through his skin once more, and that’s when Hugo feels it. White hot agony rips through his flesh, and through the tears that flood his eyes he sees his legs start to buckle beneath him. A strong grip on his arm stops him falling further, and distantly, Hugo realises her nails are digging into the same place she cut into him last time. He thinks he’s going to be sick. He desperately hopes he won’t be.
Sylvia looks into his eyes, sadistic enjoyment sparkling in her own, and there are tears running down Hugo’s face but he couldn’t stop them if he tried. “That’s better,” Sylvia whispers, her other hand slipping Hugo’s watch off of his wrist before pressing his own hand to the tear in his side. She watches his blood drip to the floor, and once she’s sure Hugo’s hand won’t stop applying pressure, she moves hers to catch and observe some of the droplets. There’s so much of it. The vermillion of it is tainted by a viridescent tint, and further nausea roils in his stomach.
At some point, she goes through her pockets, uncaring of the stains upon her fingers, and begins dressing the wounds earlier than usual. It’s not often that she bothers, not often that they’re bad enough that she sees helping him as a necessity. She guides him to slump against one of the walls, and he sinks as easily to the ground as if he were made of liquid.
She wraps the area with a bandage. It’s tight, restrictive. He can’t afford to zone out again, not after her reaction to it the first time, so instead he focuses on the pain he asked for. There are a thousand tiny needles in his side, and to prevent himself from crying out further, Hugo bites his lip hard enough to bleed. What’s a little more damage after all of this?
“You– you said,” he struggles to get out, his voice hoarse and breaking. “You would only…”
“You never said I couldn’t stab you,” Sylvia tells him, a warning note in her voice, and Hugo’s brain is working too slowly for him to remember if she’s correct. “In fact, you told me that you wanted me to get under your skin . Your words, not mine. That’s precisely what I did.”
Hugo can’t think of anything to say to that. He stays quiet, and hisses in pain when she continues to ‘treat’ him, until the fire has quelled enough for him to breathe and he no longer has to feel his blood drip from the gash. She stands, admiring her handiwork, and slips the watch into her pocket. Sylvia waits for Hugo to shakily get back to his feet, his knuckles white as he forces himself upright.
“Well?” She urges, and Hugo’s thrown right back to the start of their conversation. His hand lingers over his side, still pressing down despite the burn that erupts from him doing so. “I helped you, just as you asked me to. Do you have anything to say?”
Hugo pauses, looking into her expectant eyes. “...Thank you,” he manages. The words are poison on his tongue.
“You’re welcome,” she replies, voice dripping with condescension. “Remember, Hugo, you’re not the only one capable of ending our deal on a whim. This game of ours? It’s on my terms. You asked for this, you begged for this. I help you because I find it fun . Try not to be so boring next time, would you?”
Hugo nods weakly, too tired to argue. His legs threaten to give out again, but he steadies himself, unwilling to show further weakness. The room spins slightly, and he leans heavily against the wall, focusing on staying conscious.
Sylvia watches him with a mixture of amusement and satisfaction, her gaze flicking to the bandage she had wrapped around his wound. “You should get that looked at," she says casually, as if discussing the weather. “Privately, of course. It should be easy enough. Wouldn't want it to get infected, would we?”
Hugo swallows hard, knowing she’s right and hating her for it once again. He forces something akin to a smile, though it feels far more like a grimace stretched awfully across his face. "I'll manage," he says, his voice strained.
“Of course you will,” Sylvia replies, her tone dripping with false sympathy as she finally slips the knife out of sight. “You're a survivor , after all.”
Hugo recoils, watching her. Sylvia’s usually so careful to not get any blood on her clothes. Typically, the cuts aren’t deep enough that seeing it is a concern. This time, the brown of her trenchcoat has been stained deeper with dark, dark red. It’s impossible to miss.
“Aren’t you going to change?” He asks quietly, grimacing as he looks down at his own clothes.
“Why should I?” She smiles back at him, all teeth and no warmth. “You know how messy your siblings are. As long as we blame it on a small incident with Aaron, nobody will question us.”
“But he’ll get in trouble,” Hugo can’t help but point out, his words carefully measured as each one sends a stab through his side. “You know he will.”
“Good,” Sylvia says carelessly, moving her hair behind her shoulder. “He needs to be taught a lesson or two. Perhaps your father will finally have an effect on him.” Hugo pales, and he makes to protest only to hiss in pain when it aggravates his wound. Sylvia smiles at the sight, turning to leave. “Hope those don’t heal up too soon,” she tells him before she goes. The same words, every time. By this point, Hugo’s grown indifferent to them, a gaping emptiness where there used to be fear.
She shuts the door behind her, leaving him alone. Hugo slumps back against the wall, head tilting back as he squeezes his eyes shut. His breaths are shaky, heaving with the effort of staying controlled and laboured from the pain. He doesn’t want to cry. It won’t help him. He still finds his eyes growing wet again nonetheless.
A harsh, bitter laugh finds its way out of his throat as he gingerly lifts the edge of his shirt, seeing the poorly applied bandages Sylvia left behind. “Pathetic,” he murmurs to himself, feeling another stab of pain. He asked for this. He wanted this.
And he knows that when Sylvia next comes over, he’ll crave it all over again.