Work Text:
June 28th, 2014
So, you know, the funny thing about being impossibly and foreverly broken is that as hard as you try, and as much as you wish it all would mend, or get better, or even just go away, you stay the new ruined shape. You stay the shattered thing you’ve become, and you scare everyone in your death spasms, which get louder and bigger every time you manage to take a new and frightening gasp of air.
Peter wasn’t this broken as a kid, maybe. Didn’t have this sort of wrong-in-all dimensions air to him.
Or maybe he was, though. Maybe he was. Secretly. Subtly. Shy-awkward-thing choking on his own words in library events, hidden backwards and away. Or maybe he was in tearing himself from his mother’s hands, Rabbit’s hands, The Spine’s hands as he went and hid somewhere small and away and not-bothering-anyone to wreck himself frantically again over nothing.
Maybe he’s always been like Wanda. Because that’s what this always has been about, maybe His dad looking at him and seeing his aunt, who fell apart at 24 and never really got any better, and he’s 27, now and–
And the somehow-worse thing about being impossibly broken is that it only ever decays into more rot, because there is no wound to excise, no pus to drain, because you are the wound, and the entirety of him is forever-always-festering.
…And even if he always had something wrong with him, he’s getting worse.
Rotting out from the inside.
Decaying.
Or, well, and, possibly perhaps maybe it’s the fact he doesn’t sleep for days, sometimes. Lately. How shaky he gets laying down. How any sort of prolonged stillness makes him feel like there are things slowly crawling around down and through his bones. Or how he’s passed out at his desk several times now, ever since he started even trying to be productive or useful again – bleary awareness of his neck throbbing, his spine bent awkward, slumped over papers and notes, or the dizzy spells he gets, narrowing vision and vertigo. Or the fact that he can't eat right, and the fact that his head never slows and his mind never quiets.
Or maybe it's the fact that he’s broken himself far worse than he thought was possible.
“Petes, psychosis runs in the family.” his dad said, a few days ago. Caught him in his office – red handed in having fallen asleep over his work, over his work he should not have been doing, right then, probably. Take-it-easy orders from various doctors and his mother. He’d half-snapped awake to Peter Walter the Fifth leaning over and against the doorframe to his office. His words like watercolors into the mix of exhaustion and half-floating thoughts.
Wanda’s been on pills his entire life. Lithium or stronger. Stitching herself back together into the shape she was before her life turned into a 24/7/365 zombie carousel parade.
He knows.
He’d said he was alright, maybe, as he sat up, forced himself to be alert-or-more-awake. All turned around to not look at his dad, and Peter doesn’t honestly remember what he said, but he remembers staring at the wall, turning away, not wanting his dad to see anything but his back, because the back of him at least isn’t—
Burnt and ruined and gone and–
And that was days ago. And his Dad’s been watching him more, or worse, since Peter called him, two weeks ago, to bring him home. From that nervous fit he had had, driving.
And Peter’s not entirely sure he’s slept since that conversation in his office. But Peter is entirely sure he’s been avoiding a lot of things. Like eating. And resting. And telling anyone he can't lay down without his skin trying to crawl off. And the fact that he maybe sort of gets why Wanda sometimes stays up nearly all night now, as he looks in the mirror and wants to rip his face off again by the scar lines and hope that somehow beneath the scarring he’s still there.
It’s been a year and a thousand surgeries and he looks like a mash-potato-replica of a memory of a person.
But what Peter can be at-least-mostly sure of is that he’s in his room. He’s not fully certain how he got, entirely, to his room. Only that he is here. Now.
Maybe he was going to lay down?
….Losing time is new.
And well, the thing about breaking yourself is that it can only ever be your own fault. He did this. He did this to himself. There is no way out of the fact he did this to himself.
He’s sitting on his bed. And things are spinning a lot more than they usually do. And his heart feels all weird in his chest. Which is probably quite bad. He bled neon blue for weeks after his accident. Irradiated. And things only spun half this much then. For science he looks at his hand, moves his fingers, one by one, and isn’t that funny? He keeps mixing up what muscles do what.
He is supposed to inform someone when he experiences different or worsening symptoms. Blue matter poisoning. Halfway to delirious.
This is probably new or worsening symptoms.
“Petes, psychosis runs in the family.”
He’s not sure if it's that, though. His…this. Wanda gets paranoid, suspicious, convinced someone is trying to kill them all. Starts talking more about inherent curses and sometimes as much as digging up his great uncle to test the body for arsenic.
Then Wanda gets better when Dad brings her to a psyche appointment, again, or she gets betting at hiding it maybe, or–
He feels like he is in a blender of electricity. Or too restless to stop. Or too much potential energy in his limbs –
PETER. Buzzes his phone. I KNOW U HATE WHEN I WATCH U BUT U R BEING W3IRDD
QWERTY has lit up his phone screen. And Peter stares at it.
Oh.
Hm.
AND MOM TOLD ME 2 KEEP AN EYE ON U.
Oh.
He’s never struggled this hard to snap into a voice that feels normal in his mouth, and there’s nothing normal about his mouth, anymore, so maybe that makes sense. So he stares, and stares longer, then just:
“Yep.” He agrees, because there aren’t any other words in him. For a talking about this. About whatever is happening to him right now.
DO U WANT ME 2 GET DAD?
No, of course, is the immediate response biting up from beneath his molars. Because three weeks ago Dad already had to spend a whole day sitting with him as he cracked to pieces over nothing. And Dad doesn’t need to worry about him when he’s fine. And–
MOM IS FURTHER BUT SHE WOULD BE GOOD 4 U I THINK. I AM GOING 2 GET 1 OF THEM THO. PICK.
And it's awful.
And he folds over his arms.
And Dad already saw him like this three weeks ago. And Mom will worry too much when she realizes he hasn’t been even trying to sleep. And hasn’t eaten. And Dad–
(and Peter Walter the Fifth knows exactly why he is like this. He’s seen how their family is, in a way Mom never could, because she wasn’t born Peter A. Walter The–)
“Dad.” Peter says, to QWERTY, because there’s nothing else that works on his throat, now.
QWERTY probably says other things, Peter can feel his phone buzzing about it, hear half garbled words, and he should listen, but he can’t focus or bring himself to try to focus, really.
He folds forward over his legs, chin to his kneecaps, fingers threaded to his hair as he just…
Waits.
At some point later the bed dips beside him. His lungs twist knots in his chest. He doesn’t look up.
His mask hides the tears, at least.
“Pete,” Says his dad, and there are more words after it, but everything sort of dulls to a droning sound, as he folds around himself, folds worse. Threatens to bend himself further out of shape than he’s already managed to contort.
There’s an arm wrapped around him, physical, and he can notice that. Warm and heavy and not in his head. Dad shifts beside him, leans back against the headboard, maybe.
“Pete,” his dad definitely says, for in the very least the second time, “You should lay down, I think,”
He shrugs around his hands.
His dad guides him down.
‘Guides’ - hm - guides is perhaps too passive a word. He is tugged sideways, more horizontal than he was, his dad pulling him into his arms. Like he used to when Peter was little enough to still be picked up, or cared for, like this.
When he was little enough to let himself be cared for like this.
He lets go of his hair, though, and instead turns his head into his dads shoulder, too miserable for anything else as his dad just holds him.
Mom would be asking questions he can't think about right now. The last thing he ate, if he’s slept and how much, how much he hurts, why he’s swaying like he is, and if it could be new symptoms.
Dad just keeps a hand to his back. Just keeps him there. As Peter finds anything in himself to use to hold on to him.
He would be lying if he said he did anything other than cling. Thoughts melting, a bit. He tries to think a sentence to say, a sorry, probably, some sort of useful sorry. Or a useful thank you, or a you don't need to help me, I’m fine, I’m alright, I'm okay, or an anything, but all he can think to do is to stifle something like a sob, as something wretched breaks itself open in his chest.
And minutes-or-more crawl on, he doesn’t know how many. And his head spins, as his heart warps in his chest, as unrest grabs at him and he tries to say an maybe-encompassing apology.
Probably.
Time still doesn’t feel right. Too loose. And every blink lasts an hour as he tries to come up with an explanation for how-where-why-sorry i’m like this, sorry you need to do this, sorry, sorry, sorry.
But his dad doesn’t leave. And he doesn't break apart entirely into nothing words and rambles.
And his body feels a bit more right. After a while. After enough words spin through his head unsaid and miserable.
And, probably, after he’s been laying down long enough that his body remembers things like thinking and blood circulation and not-constant pins and needles in his fingers.
His dad’s thumb traces circles into his shoulder, insistent. His dad’s shoulder is warm against his face–
…his face?
And oh. Hm. When did he take off his mask?
He was wearing his mask, wasn’t he?
…But he feels more real in his body, perhaps, or more aware that his body feels awful, perhaps.
He grumbles something unhappy and illegible to even himself into his dad’s shoulder, and doesn’t move, not really, as even as his dad shifts slightly.
“Are you actually awake this time, Peter?” his dad asks, which- is a confusing question, because the this time is non-intuitive.
He keeps his face pressed exactly how it was into his dads shoulder.
“I’ve been awake.” he manages, and his throat creaks dry and sticky around the words.
His dad laughs. Like that's a funny thing to even say. Squeezes him, a bit.
“You have not been, Pete.” and he does turn his head then, wanting to see the time on his clock, to argue it’s been perhaps a half of an hour, maybe, but–
But it was not half past eight at night, he doesn’t know what time it was, earlier, but it was– it was still day, before.
He turns his head back and just.
Alright.
He supposes his body threw him into unrestful sleep time that just made him skip some number of hours into the future.
“You fell asleep two hours ago, half woke up once or twice, but no. You’ve been asleep.” His dad awnsers like he heard Peter think ‘some number of hours’ aloud.
…A nap has probably only killed very few people.
His dad rubs circles into his back, and Peter doesn't quite-entirely know what to say.
Sorry isn’t quite right.
But the silence isn’t uncomfortable, really, as he breathes, a few minutes. Just breathes.
“Pete?” asks his dad, then, “I… Son,”
His dad’s voice is doing the thing it does where he’s picking each word one at a time, trying to phrase things well,
“We’re going to look into a psychologist, for you,”
And Peter says nothing. Can’t, really.
He’s known that - that whatever is wrong with him is only getting more wrong, and every crack in him is only getting deeper, and that whatever is happening is only going to get worse, and worse, if he doesn’t fix it–
“Your mom has a list she’s gotten together, over the last few weeks. Of doctors you could go too. Talk to. People who… Who could figure out how to help you better.”
And he only turns himself closer to his dad. Because there is nothing to say other than fine, I’ll go see another doctor, I’ll be more broken - and–
“...and I’m worried, son,” his dad says, finishes even, maybe.
And Peter doesn’t know anything, anymore. He feels like everything he’s ever worked towards, reached towards being has fallen out of his head through the holes in it.
Like anything he could have maybe amounted to greater than someone before him has spun out. Any ambition, aspiration, any being anything. Not just another tally in the line of men named Peter Walter. He’s screeched over the barrier, and shattered himself sideways with the brain damage.
He doesn’t know anything, anymore. Not really.
Not really at all.
He hasn’t been certain of anything in weeks. And anything he works on makes no sense the next time he looks at it, and he used to be so good at these things, at his job, at everything, and–
And he just drowns, now.
“I don’t know the last time I ate.” says Peter, instead of arguing, or disagreeing, or admitting anything at all about the depth of the badness of it all.
“Do you want to do something about that?” his dad asks
He doesn’t want to move. And eating has been— different, and worse, and distressing, and worse, now that he’s had surgery to get around the fact his throat doesn’t let him swallow anymore. And all sorts of a hassle, and–
“No.” he says, and his dad squeezes him tighter.
And he’s still so tired.
“Alright.” Says his dad, and–
And maybe he’s crying again, fingers digging into his dads shirt, wretchedly.
His dad’s other hand finds his hair.
“Peter, how about we put on something, and you try and sleep some more?”
And that’s–alright, maybe.
It’s alright. But it's what you'd tell a child fighting bedtime. It's what you'd offer as a compromise to a thrashing and sobbing toddler refusing to take a nap.
He is 27 years old and crashed into his dads arms, being offered a movie and nap to solve the fact that something is very, very wrong with him.
But at least he doesn’t have to go anywhere, for a movie.
“Okay,” and it maybe comes out more of a sob than a word, but his dad doesn’t comment, only snags the remote for his television from the nightstand and starts picking through their collection of movies, internal servers, internal files.
“Peter,” he says, as he clicks through movies, “You’re not always…you’re going to be alright, son,”
And Peter knows he isn’t going to be.
That's not the sort of thing you tell someone who's going to be alright. You don't start saying things like promises of an eventual okayness to someone who will ever get there. You say that at a hospital bed of someone already far too gone, if only to convince yourself of its trueness.
No one has ever assured anyone who is going to be alright that it’s true.
“When all's said and done,” his dad continues, less halting, “I’m here for you, your mother is here for you, the robots are here for you, Wanda and Norman are, and I’m sure Wanda would know what you’re–”
“It’s not like Wanda,” he says, too sharp.
And his dad sighs,
“I’m not– convinced of things, delusions. I haven’t locked every door in the house, or.. Or anything like that,” He doesn't push himself away, he can't but– but he hates it.
And then he’s being squeezed close, and he really wants to just break, and–
“Peter, son, breathe,” says his dad and he can’t. His lungs don’t want to, and all he wants to do is stop.
Just for all this to stop, already. For everything to end, to stop hurting, to stop breaking, for whatever this is to stop wiring its way deeper and deeper inside him, rotting through whatever was left from before all this.
His head hurts. Throbbing all through him, his body hurts, crunching himself around his arms, breath coming in some wretched knot, and–
And self destruction is a continuous thing. Done again and again to grind yourself smaller and smaller, to smaller, more fragile chunks of what you used to be. Self destruction’s only end point is when you are six feet under, and fuck, he’s already the sixth, and he was supposed to die in May of last year.
He can’t fix any of this.
And his dad’s hand finds the back of his head, holding him in shape as he shatters all over again. Shaking too hard for someone pretending to be fine. Shaking too hard for it to ever plausibly be fine.
He’s only ever been drowning. For months now, he’s just been drowning.
(His grandfather drowned, maybe, crashed his car over a cliff, maybe the impact did it, or maybe the water did–)
But as his dad holds him just as close, he breaks all over again.
He’s a mess.
He’s just such a mess. He didn't used to be like this.
But it’s not as bad, really, as it could be. He could be alone and falling apart. At least he’s not alone. A stray and strange positive thought stabs through his head as he finally takes a real breath that isn't stunted by the tears of it all.
He could be alone right now.
“I think I need to take my medicine.” Peter says, finally, when he can finally speak and do more than just shudder. Opening his eyes makes his head sear like skin against a robots’s boiler. He feels fuzzy all over, pinpricks down his neck in jolts. Mom would tell him to write down new and unusual symptoms. He constantly has new and unusual symptoms. He could fill a book with them. “My head hurts.”
“...Alright, Peter,” His dad says slowly, words behind it unsaid, and–
And he’s not okay. He’s not okay at all. And his dad knows it, and they’ll need to talk about it and–
“QWERTY,” says his dad, and there’s not even his activation chime, so he’s been here, and– “Tell your mother to come up here, that we do need her, alright? And to bring Peter’s medicine,”
And his dad just smooths back his hair, as he turns into him, and–
And nothing is ever going to be okay again, but he’s really glad he’s not alone right now.
Mom was clearly waiting. It’s obvious. She’s upstairs in so quickly that he doesn’t even have time to gather himself enough to even suggest trying to look less like he just—
Had another episode of this. Less like he’s been sobbing himself sick, or all but fainted, apparently, and–
And his mom is holding a mug in one hand, and bottled water and his calorie-dense-food replacement formula in the other. It’s most of what he ‘eats’ now, because his throat doesn’t let him eat.
“It’s tea,” she says before he even asks if its coffee, sitting down next to them, “Too late for caffeine, Peter,”
And he hears the ‘and you haven't slept’ - sees it in her eyes, as she sets his tea aside.
And now both his parents are in here fretting over him.
And he– He can’t really open his eyes, honestly, with how light is running like watercolors and his head sort of feels like it's splitting again, along the new seams of him they’ve tried to hide across the plastic surgeries.
His dad helps him sit up. Which is, objectively, mortifying. He hooks an arm around his back and pulls him more upright, and Mom presses the bottled water to his hand.
He drinks. Slowly. The water is good. Even if he has to drink in sips so small it's frustrating.
He can do his own medicine, at least. Mom says something to him about how she is refilling his prescription next week, to which he nods, half out of it, half listening as Mom then tells Dad about how she might go visit his aunt, in a few weeks, way up in San Francisco, as Dad nods along.
His medicine is all liquid medicine now. Directly to his stomach through the feeding tube. No having to swallow pills and choking on them anymore. It’s better than it was.
Then food. After his medicine. Or whatever the equivalent of calories is for him now. At least he doesn’t have to chew and swallow or think about it.
Once he’s gotten everything connected his dad bats away his hand to set the feeding tube pump up, because it's finicky and specific and his head hurts, and he’s–
Tired. Maybe. Swaying absolutely. And then once the thing beeps on he’s leaning back.
Mom says something lost to the pounding of his head, and he looks at her, “Peter, go to sleep,” she says, for, he guesses, the second time.
She leans forward and kisses his forehead. Sits down, as Dad stays next to him and–
And maybe he feels a bit better. Than he did. Maybe.
Just maybe.
He goes back how he was, before, settles back against his dad and a pillow, and–
And maybe, y'know, maybe his dad puts on a movie, or QWERTY says something stupid, or his mom and dad start talking about whatever they talk about, which is mostly nothing it feels like, but his pain management is kicking in, and he–
He’s really tired. He still really doesn’t know when the last time he really slept was.
Mom’s sat down in his desk chair, and her and dad talking about Marshmallow, maybe, or maybe brunch tomorrow, or maybe something else, he’s hearing every third word. Then he hears about half of the Paramount opening, perhaps, but his head hurts, and his brain hurts, and well?
He falls asleep.
He doesn’t really know what happens after that. He’s a little bit busy being asleep.