Work Text:
“Do you trust me, Sara?”
Joe is holding out his hand. Red. Bloody. Shredded. Cracked. Hollow pits lay where his eyes once were.
Sara still swallows her fear.
She does.
She never hasn’t.
She always will.
Sara places her hand on Joe’s.
“Of course I do.”
“Good.”
She feels it. The way microscopic tendrils split into her skin. Uproot it and find their way into it. Living in it.
Nothing is done to fight it, just, accept it.
Joe, the thing that looks nothing like Joe, the thing that she knows isn’t Joe, pulls her in for a hug. She melts into it without any fear, she’s too broken to fear her own broken mind and it’s machinations.
Just let this last.
Please.
Just a little bit longer.
Even if she doesn’t come back up again, she’ll risk it.
She’ll stay.
He’s warm and stiff jointed and everything about him isn’t Joe except for the fact that it is. He melts into her, a carnivorous sludge. Cannibalizing her own mind.
But it’s alright. This is fine. She’s safer here anyways, lost in a shattered and ruptured mind.
It’s just nice.
Dropping into the darkness.
Raising out of it.
Leaving him behind.
Gasping for air.
Everything is too bright.
Safalin is standing by her, ever present crocodile tears streaming down her face.
Sara doesn’t move nor does she speak, she just looks at Safalin, barely blinking.
“I was worried we lost you for a moment, if Keiji didn’t get you in any sooner you wouldn’t have made it.”
Sara gives a forced, “Thanks,” as she reaches in her pocket for the dog charm Gin had gifted her, letting herself settle further back into that same spiral.