Chapter Text
"I want," he breathes into your neck, "to cut you."
You squirm a little, because his breath tickles and it's gross, but then you remember he gets mad when you do that, and you stop.
"No, not just cut you. I want to flay you. I want to strip the meat off your bones. I want to tear your skin off with my teeth." There is a pause. Then you feel a kiss, delicate and light and cool on your neck, that turns your guts cold. "There's such lovely white bones down there, after I wash off the filthy yellow blood. I want to show the world what I can do, turning your garbage body into something beautiful."
You can't suppress the shiver, and of course he feels it too. You wait for it, but he just chuckles. "I know," he says, "I know you don't wanna be here with me, Chief, but just. Be still."
You aren't used to him calling you that when he's like this, when he's got you shoved against the tree and there's no one else to yell to. When there's the stink of liquor on his swamp-ass breath and he's telling you his secrets, he doesn't ever talk to you like a person. Usually you're "Peasant" or "Filth" or "Little Shit". Sometimes he uses your visor to admire himself. Once, and you are so ashamed of the memory that you think you might cry just thinking of it, he even made you call yourself "Slut." He slapped you when you couldn't get the sibilant to come out right. He doesn't call you anything friendly.
It's so much worse this way.
"The way things ought to be, I should be able to just walk up and take you in front of everybody." Okay, you think, we're getting back to normal, you're on script again. You relax back into your usual merely terrified state. "They should applaud when I put you in your place, when I show you off, they should be grateful. Do you think those assholes are ever grateful to me? Every last one of them should kiss my feet. They should cheer. They should offer themselves to me, that's how it's supposed to go." He kisses your ear to punctuate it. His breathing is getting heavier. "But they don't, because of you."
He wraps a freezing hand around your neck, finds the pulse in your throat. "Calm down, Chief," he says, and squeezes. You can't breathe.
"I deserve so much better," he says. "I'm a great guy. I'm a genius, and no one cares. I make music no one listens to, because they hate me. I do so much to make them love me, and they just love you more."
You've heard his music. He played it for you, once. At the beginning, when you didn't know him as well as you do now. You didn't like it much, but you said it was cool because he seemed so sad and self-deprecating about it. That was the day you learned your first lesson, when he backhanded you for pretending like your retard opinion mattered.
If only you'd run away right then, before he could trust you to tolerate anything he did, if only you'd had your psionics and could have blasted him out of his shoes. If only you'd known.
"I'm so special and I want them to see it," he sniffles. "I want them to see there's so much more to me than they could ever understand. Joke's on me, huh? They're all too blinded to really see past their pre-conceived notions of who I am, what I can do. Especially you!" His voice cracks on the higher notes as his complaint turns into a sob, and it would be funny but you cannot laugh, not ever, not ever, he gets so mad. "You only saw a loser!" His hand clenches tighter, digging his nails into your throat. You bite down on your lip to stifle a grunt of pain. You are seeing stars and you can't breathe."They only see a chump! They… did you just say something?"
Everything is icy terror. He heard you. You shake your head frantically, as hard as his hand around your throat will let you. Sweaty hair flies into your face where you'll never be able to brush it away, not with your hands tied behind you. You'll be peeling it off your skin later, dried like seaweed with that salty tang that always tastes like him.
"Yes you did. You fucking did. What did you say? Who gave you permission to open that shit-spewing mouth of yours to me?"
You shake your head harder. You didn't, you never, you'd never dare.
"Look at you. Flailing around like a fucking retard. Durrh-durrh-DURRHH!" he smacks you across the back of your head with each mocking noise. It doesn't really hurt, but the shock and humiliation and shame send tears rolling down your burning cheeks.
Why do you let him do this to you? Why do ever you let him near you? Why don't you just run? Well, that last thing, you can answer. It's because your legs are two miles away, down there where he's unbelting his pants for that other thing you don't want to think about. You don't want to think about anything below the waistline, but the point is that you are stuck here until he's finished with whatever he wants from you.
"Oh yeah, right on time, here come the tears. Aw! Big meanie Cronus is picking on innocent little Mituna again. Run and tell Dad!" He smacks you again, and you are seeing geometric patterns under your eyelids from the pressure in your head. "Why do you do this to me? Why won't you leave me alone? I wouldn't have to do this if you'd just stop rubbing it in my face how much better you think you are than me, just because everyone likes you more."
You want to tell him you were only out here to walk to Kurloz's house to play video games.You didn't know he was going to be in the trees, dressed in his wizard costume, angry and ranting and pretending to be the Orphaner. You didn't know you were interrupting anything, you just wanted to go hang out with Kurloz.
But of course, you don't have permission to speak. Or the air for it, either. Your lungs are burning. Dimly, you wonder if maybe he was waiting for you, so he could yell at something other than a tree. It seems like something he'd do.
"It's like you go out of your way to piss me off and make me look like a fool," he raves, "Making your disgusting moron DURRRRR noises and drooling all over yourself."
That's not true. You don't drool. It's weird that this comment can still hurt, considering the rest of what he's said to you tonight.
"You're so sure you have everybody fooled into thinking you're so perfect and nice. No one would even question precious wee brain-damaged Mituna! Even when you're telling nasty little lies about me, your literal only real friend, the only person who really knows what you are and still gives you the time of day, no! Everyone's just so happy to eat your shit with a smile because you went and scrambled your brains and now you've got carte fucking blanche to treat me however you fucking WANT."
You lose the thread of what he's trying to say. He's squeezing your neck so hard your head feels like an overfilled bucket about to tip over. You are floating.
"Well, not me!" he snarls. "I know what you're really like. You're a nasty little tease, and you know perfectly well what you do to me. In the right version of our world, I'd keep your skull in my toilet so I could show you how I feel about you every goddamn day."
Why does he always talk about your bones like this? Why can't you run? Everything is going very hazy and far-away. You realize this might be the time he finally goes too far, and maybe he does too, because he lets go of your neck.
The blood rushing back to your head is like all his slapping put together. Everything is going sideways and upside down. You slide down the tree, the bark scraping your face, wondering if you are dying. From very far away, someone seizes a fistful of your hair and yanks, hauling your head back to look him in the face. You feel very calm watching those raging purple lips (painted again, he always paints them, he thinks it's his best feature) stretch and contract as he snarls into your face. Spittle rains onto your skin, but you're not entirely there to feel it.
"I WANT WHAT'S MINE, YOU FUCK! I WANT THE FRIENDS! I WANT THE HAPPINESS! I WANT THE RESPECT! AND I DESERVE THEM! YOU DON'T DESERVE SHIT, YOU UPPITY LITTLE PISS-BLOODED LIAR! EVERYONE JUST HANDS YOU ALL THESE THINGS AND NO ONE GIVES ME THE TIME OF DAY! WHY DO THEY ALL LOVE YOU AND NOT ME? I'M BETTER THAN YOU! I CREATE THINGS, AND YOU ONLY BREAK THEM! I WAS BORN TO RULE AND YOU WON'T EVEN LOOK ME IN THE EYE!"
Your knees buckle and you slip further down the tree, almost dangling from his fist until, with a scoffing noise, he lets you go. Thump! you are on the ground. Exposed roots are digging in to your hip and ribs, but they don't hurt.
From somewhere nearby, you hear bellowing."NO MATTER WHAT I DO THEY ONLY SEE WHAT THEY WANT TO SEE! WHY? WHAT'S WRONG WITH EVERYONE?"
You rest your face against the cool bark of the tree. It's very wet.
"I HAVE SO MUCH TO GIVE AND ALL ANYONE WANTS IS YOU!"
He kicks you, hard, in the ass. It's a dull shock that doesn't quite reach all the way to your brain. His next words make it through, but you wish they wouldn't.
"I'm better than all of you. And someday, when I'm ready, I'm going to crush every one of you."
You hear fabric jostling as he fumbles with his pants. You're pretty sure he got too mad to do the other stuff he was planning on, and for that you're grateful. A belt buckle clicks a few times, and then there's just the crunching leaves as he walks away. You don't move until the sounds are totally gone.
The first thing you notice is that your helmet, which he took off you so he could be sure you were looking at him when he kissed you, is nowhere to be found.
"Tens appedend." you tell yourself, furiously. The sounds come out all tangled up, nonsense syllables, retard babble. "Resember tins yoFUCKINGGGKk." What you meant to say is, this happened. Remember this. He did this. He'll do this again. Don't forget.
Except the problem is, he's right. Your brain is scrambled.
The next morning when Latula asks why your face is all shredded, you aren't really clear on exactly which skateboard trick you fucked up to get so banged up, so you just tell her you fell down. She points out that you aren't wearing your helmet, and you tell her about how you can't find it anywhere. You've looked all over your hive already. You want to go ask Kurloz if you left it at his place, but something about the woods today is giving you the creeps. Maybe Cronus can go look for you. He's got a pretty big weapon collection. Monsters wouldn't stand a chance.