Work Text:
Chosen hated it here.
He hated being in the chest. He hated being out of the chest.
He hated being so weak and pathetic, his potential reduced to burning ads until his palms hurt, or until he did something wrong and the Animator shoved him into the chest one way or another.
He was The Chosen One! He’s supposed to be cool and powerful and free! But all he did was be in pain and be trapped. He hated it. He hated it so fucking much.
Hate didn't even begin to describe how he felt about everything, either. He isn’t sure if there’s a stronger word out there that exists and could explain this feeling—a toxic concoction of anger, misery, dread, fear, and every other negative emotion to exist, boiling in his stomach. He wanted a name to it, but most of the words he knew were the words the Animator had written for his essays. Which, he should mention, sucked. Partially because they genuinely were—his grammar was horrid and he had so many run on sentences—but also because the Animator sucked.
And that too didn’t begin to describe what Chosen thought of him. The Animator was the one thing he hated more than this damn PC, the apps, the chest, and the popup ads. He wished there was something outside of the PC. He was confident anything would be better than this living hell that was all he’s ever known.
His thoughts rushed away from him like the wind had from his lungs as the cursor approached him. He was swung up into the air and thrown right back down with the weight of the ball chained to his ankle. He cried out as his body slammed down onto the bottom of the window, the thin, bottom end of the cursor hovering above him in his peripheral vision. Without thinking, he clambered up to a seated position and pushed himself backwards with his good (it wasn’t even good, just hurt a little less than the other when he put weight on it) leg until his back met the side of the window.
He breathed hard as the cursor stayed still for a few more agonizingly long moments. Chosen dared a glance at the Animator. He was glaring at him so intensely that Chosen immediately looked away, staring at the burningly bright white of the browser home page, waiting for the sick glare to go away. He pressed himself further against the window, almost feeling sick with fear. He breathed hard. He couldn’t get enough air. He tried those stupid breathing techniques from an article he’d read once as if it would work, despite the fact it had failed to work every time. To nobody’s surprise, his breaths were still shallow and his heart pounded so hard he almost wondered if it was about to jump right out of his chest.
He only managed a slightly more fulfilling gasp once the Animator finally looked away, resuming whatever he was doing before Chosen started slacking off.
The stick gulped for air until he felt marginally better. He slumped a little against the window and his hands balled up into tight fists. Miserable anger sunk in his gut as the bone-deep fear started to slip away. He hated the Animator. He despised how the Animator never failed to reduce him to either a weak, shivering mess or a mere tool with no other purpose but to burn pop-ups until he decided to shut him back in the chest.
Chosen lifted his head enough to watch what he burned as a purple ad appeared on the screen.
He hated how much control the Animator had over him. He hated how he beat obedience into him. He even hated his own abilities as well. If he just didn’t reveal how much power he had to the Animator, he would’ve been fine. He wished the Animator would just kill him one of these days—maybe he could slam him against the ground until he finally discovered a dark, peaceful nothing. He wished he could die. He wished he was out of this miserable fucking PC and he wished he wasn’t miserable and stuck doing the same stupid job.
Chosen weakly threw a small blast of fire at the pop-up that appeared across the other side of the browser window. The Animator was talking on some chat and Chosen would have longingly wondered about what it’d be like to talk to someone who didn’t look at him like they wanted him dead, had he not noticed the letters first. The yawning, painfully wide pit in his stomach roared for attention and his light-headedness felt much stronger all at once. All the letters looked so appealing. It didn’t even matter that they tasted like nothing. He was so hungry.
He couldn’t care that they never tasted good, let alone that they never tasted like anything at all. Almost every time he had a chance to steal a few letters to eat was when he hardly even had the ability to toss a small, weak flame. Chosen carefully pulled his legs in and pressed them to his chest, dropping his head onto his knees. He glanced at the taskbar. Word was still open and the time read 3:42PM. The Animator wouldn’t leave for dinner for a few hours. Chosen weakly groaned, his lightheadedness immediately feeling three times stronger.
He didn’t work well when he was running on just a few letters from, what, a week ago? Maybe two? Chosen looked at the date and it read September 27th, 2008. He tried to recall the date last time he was out of the chest. He felt like he was in the chest for much longer than usual, but what would he know, he had a horrible sense of time, if any. He believed the last date he read was… probably sometime before the tenth, making it probably at least two weeks since he last had a chance to eat something. His head protested against him doing that math.
Chosen watched another bright color pop onto the screen, right above the chat window where the Animator was typing. He forced himself to stop staring at the small, black letters slowly stringing to words on the screen and instead lifted his hand to incinerate the ad.
What was he thinking a moment ago? That he didn’t work well with little sustenance? Didn’t he always work with little sustenance? He remembered the last time he ate enough words to feel satisfied, and it ended with him being too weak to shed more than a few tears after being dragged and slammed back and forth against the bottom
of Word.
Chosen slumped further against the window, his limbs stretching out. He should at least make use of the free space he gets when he’s out of the chest. He watched with half a mind as the Animator jumped between sites. He eventually left that chat website, scrolled through a few forums and some other things Chosen already forgot, before deciding to watch some pointless videos. Chosen forced himself to stay alert enough to quickly burn ads and popups before the Animator could get angry and punish him.
But he felt so weak and exhausted, all the way down to his bones. He could barely keep his head up and with every popup he had to blast to ash, it took more and more effort. It was so tempting to just retreat to Word and at least get a single word in, but the Animator somehow always noticed and punished him for it. Chosen’s bottom started to feel a little sore as well from staying in one sagged position against the wall for who knows how long, but he didn’t even have the energy to change positions either.
Chosen felt so—... bad. In every sense of the word. In every sense of every word like it. He just wanted an end. An end to feeling like shit every day. An end to this mundane and painful practice day in and day out. His body felt so uncomfortable and in pain all the time—whether crammed in the chest or some kind of dull pain from getting stick-handled around the PC. His leg hurt more than ever after he was swung around in Flash, still bound to the stupid metal ball by heavy chains.
Chosen really wished he had the ability to die. The Animator didn’t physically torture him so often nowadays, as he was usually too busy with homework, but when he wasn’t using the PC for essays, Chosen was his ragdoll to toss around and attack within Flash. He’d shoot at him with probably half of the guns he of course just has at his disposal. Or he’d throw projectiles at him, knowing he couldn’t run far—or at all, for that matter—until he couldn't get back up. Or he’d drop Chosen into a tank of water to see if he’d drown.
Chosen hoped he could drown. That’d be a really easy escape from this blasted existence on the PC. But sadly, he never would, or the Animator would get too bored and erase everything before either of them could find out. No trip to Flash ended with any kind of death, instead just getting crumpled up in the chest after passing out with pain. He hoped one day the Animator would come up with something lethal enough to finally kill him.
The stick figure hadn’t realized how long he had zoned out again until the Animator clicked on the ball chained to his ankle and threw it at him. Chosen’s first instinct was to laser it, but when he realized a split second later that his laser powers were deactivated, he only managed to throw his arms up halfway high enough to cover his face. His movement came a beat too late as the ball tugged his leg forward and when its crushing weight landed against his torso, Chosen cried out loudly. He felt multiple ribs and the bones in his arms break with the force.
Through terrified eyes, Chosen fearfully watched the cursor draw nearer to him. Chosen wanted to squirm and thrash away, but it only sent fire crawling through his body and a breathless gasp escaped him at the sudden, immense pain—feeding the flame further. The cursor picked up the ball to spin Chosen around, building momentum and getting him thoroughly dizzy before throwing him into the other side of the PC.
The miserable, burning pain curled around his body, blossoming in his back as well with the new impact. Tears welled up in his eyes and he was in too much pain to feel enough anger at the Animator to fight back. His limp body slumped against the wall uncomfortably, every inch of it screaming for some kind of relief.
He looked up without turning his head to find the cursor, expecting another beating, but when it remained still, he looked at the Animator. He was staring at him again and Chosen was too scared to not return the attention. The silence was only pierced with the sound of his frantic pulse and he felt like he held the Animator’s terrifying stare for forever by the time he stood up and walked away from the PC.
Chosen exhaled sharply, not even realizing he had been holding his breath. The sick, nauseating fear quickly twisted into anger. To whatever or whoever he could swear to, had he mentioned how much he hated it here? He hated this stupid, horrible, shitty PC. He wanted to burn it all down and leave nothing but blackened ash in its place. He hated the Animator. He hated his glasses that kept him from seeing where he truly was looking. He hated how cruel he was. He hated all the pain he inflicted onto him. He really couldn’t even fucking describe the extent of how much he hated everything he had ever known.
He hated the apps that did nothing, probably just stood around and gleefully watched him suffer. All they do is listen to what the Animator wants them to do. Even if Chosen managed to break out of the chains, the apps were surely there to capture him and return him to the Animator. He despised them. He despised the apps. He despised everything that had to do with the Animator. He hated everything so much.
The miserable ache bloomed further through his body, worsening in his chest as he tried to breathe normally. When his breaths kept returning shallow and he couldn’t stop the tears from coming, he broke into a painful sob as the tears overflowed and rolled down his cheeks. His cries came out as strained wheezes and shallow gasps. He was in so much pain with every breath, and every little movement made more tears spring into his eyes.
He tried again to fix his breathing, gulping down air through the stabbing pain in his chest until his unsteady breath was slow enough for him to think relatively clearly. He carefully glanced to the side to find the Animator was still gone. He looked underneath him and found the time to be 5:36 in the afternoon. He was gone for dinner, which meant he had enough time to get some text from Word in.
He mustered enough will to try and shift his weight off his bottom and onto his knees. He saw the bottom of the window for Word open behind the browser window he was currently in. Despite his shattered elbow and broken forearms, he put some of his weight onto his arms, buckling once as piercing pain lanced up his arms like fire. He pushed through it, unbearably enough, to crawl towards Word slower than he’d like. Every time his arms landed on the solid surface of the window, he had to pause to breathe through the sharp burning.
When he reached the edge, he contemplated a way to get down with the least amount of even more pain inflicted. When he stole a glance at the time once more, he decided he couldn’t waste any more time at a standstill and chose to just drop onto Word feet first.
Chosen instinctively put his hands out before he slipped off the edge and let out another cry as the pain multiplied thrice over. He took a few moments to breathe deeply through it before he raised his head and found text low enough for him to reach. He shifted closer to the body of text and pulled his legs underneath himself to sit up. He reached for the closest two words, shoving them in his mouth and gulping them down. He immediately felt better, even if marginally.
He took three more words, happily grabbing a longer word and practically inhaling them. He stashed two words for later and couldn’t keep himself from eating. He hadn’t had a chance to eat anything in forever and he was too tired and in too much pain to care about whether or not he was eating from an old document that he was sure the Animator wouldn’t look at again.
The words tasted like nothing at all, but it felt amazing to have something in his stomach again. He already felt like he had enough energy for at least a few days. He rose to reach for another string of text before he caught movement in the corner of his peripheral. A beat later, the short sound of a click filled the silence of the PC. Chosen froze in place, terrified to move to confirm his suspicion.
He didn’t need to confirm anything himself when the Animator grabbed him by the arm and slammed him against the side of the PC. His still-shattered ribs screamed and burned with every impact as the Animator kept driving him into the wall. He sobbed out futile pleas despite being fully aware the Animator wouldn’t hear him. Every time he slammed against the wall, it crunched his bones further and he could barely think past the stabbing, burning flames that only kept blooming and curling further around his body.
The Animator grabbed a hold of the ball and threw it against his body multiple times, each impact feeling both stronger and weaker at the same time as it all became too much and his consciousness started to slip from him.
His eyes slid shut as his mangled, destroyed body was thrown into the other corner of the window and the final thing he could register was that he felt something not so horrible at the thought that this would be how he would die.