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Now darkness swallows me alive
Don’t know what’s the matter
Who cares cause it doesn’t seem to matter nowI’m not coming home
(We are worthless, we are lost)
There’s nothing left there at all
Lourd had learned a good many skills from the months he’d spent in bars, learning to support himself on the turn of the card. The most important of those skills was acting.
For days, maybe even weeks, he’d acted as though he’d given up. Lying still instead of struggling within his bonds, no longer tracking movements with his eyes. Yes, he still had his heart, but he clung to that out of sheer spite. It was easy to make it appear as though that spite made him too tired for anything else.
And then at last–
–at last–
His efforts were rewarded.
The treacherous apprentices relaxed their guard.
It wasn’t much – Even (Vexen) didn’t bother to strap him down to the lab table as tightly, didn’t bother to call in one of the Guards to watch him when he stepped out to consult a report – but it was enough for a clever boy.
By hearing alone, he’d determined the approximate location of the instruments Even (Vexen) and Ienzo (Zexion) used on him, and when he was strapped in, he’d held the arm on that side stiff, hoping for a little extra give–
And it was granted.
With care, he worked his arm free, and then quick as lightning he snatched one of the tools –
Dame Fortuna was smiling on him. He’d grabbed a scalpel.
Lourd wasted no time in cutting himself free and rolling off the table, where he collapsed in an undignified heap. He was weaker than he liked, testimony to the long bouts of inactivity he’d been forced to undergo.
Well, no matter; he’d escape anyway.
He lost all track of time as he edged his way out of the laboratories, stopping whenever the choices was rest or collapse. It happened all too often, and yet Vexen (Even) never came looking for him.
Just as well.
Minutes, days, hours later he found the stairs leading to the palace proper. He all but collapsed against the bottom few, dreading the climb to freedom. But he would make it. There was no other choice.
He laid there, trying to gather the strength to start crawling climbing, when he heard the faint scuff of a tennis shoe against tile. Adrenaline brought him to his feet, though he leaned heavily against the nearest wall, and hatred kept him upright when Zexion (Ienzo) came into view.
“Any belief you have now that you can escape from your fate is a delusion.”
The decision to lunge at the child was not conscious. He was just suddenly moving–
–in the opposite direction.
His back slammed into the wall hard, forcing a cry of pain past his lips, and he fell–
Was raised.
He hadn’t even seen Aeleus (Lexaeus), and now the man held him a good three feet from the ground, one hand around Lourd’s throat, the other by his side.
Zexion (Ienzo) smiled.
“You’re not allowed to leave, Lourd,” he said in that quiet childish voice of his, flat and emotionless like the monster he now was.
Lourd said nothing – could say nothing, not with Aeleus’ hand tight around his throat.
Empty blue eyes observed him, then drifted away to the no-longer-a-child. “This one’s outlived his usefulness by now,” Lexaeus rumbled, and his hand tightened just enough to make breathing difficult – and words impossible.
Zexion pouted like he’d been denied ice cream, and Lourd’s heart wrenched. “We need to run more tests, Lexaeus,” the boy said calmly. Dead eyes landed on Lourd, and the pout twisted into a smile.
“The tests have all been inconclusive,” Lexaeus (Aeleus?) said. “He’s already broken. There’s no point to continue.”
The debate went on, as Lourd dangled silently from one giant hand, struggling to breathe, trying to cover the mounting horror that his cousins, people he’d known and loved, were now arguing between simply ending his life, or continuing to use him as a test subject.
He thought he caught Zexion arguing that there were still more tests to be done, that Lourd still held on to his heart when even those two intruders had fallen, but the words were turning to babble in his ears. What did it matter? His older guardian-cousin wanted him dead, and his baby cousin wanted him for a lab rat.
The world spun around him, snapping him out of his bleak despair, and he realised that Lexaeus had slung him over one shoulder. So Zexion had come out the victor.
As Zexion strapped him down again, tighter, it occurred to Lourd that he shouldn’t have expected (hoped for) any other outcome.
Aeleus could deny Ienzo nothing.
(Scream out)
Til your lungs fill up with blood
Shut up and wait for the breakdown