[drp/solo] a rich red murmuring -- [alexis]

[Daekie]

Quote:

alexis is not necessarily a happy or pleasant character -- below content contains self-harm, mention of prior self-harm, unhealthy idealization, violence, psychological manipulation, dehumanization, gore, minor amputation, and murder. lmao

She shows up, every now and again, throughout their captivity to give updates - to tell Alois, taunt and tell Alexis sweet as anything, what and why she’s done how she’s done. What she’s stolen from Autumn, and how Autumn hasn’t noticed. Things she’s taken, people she’s hurt --

Alexis can’t stand it, once, and tries to hurt her and she breaks their wrist again, leaving them on the ground, cowering.

(Alexis does not interrupt her many more times after that. It -- it hurts too much. There’s no need to add extra punishment to their schedule.)  

[Daekie]

Alexis can put together some things about who their fetch was, before - well. Before she failed and became a fetch. (They won’t. They made a vow. Besides -- they’re too stubborn by half to half-die.) Her manner of speaking, her half-body dried and sunken before she had taken their form -- long, sallow fingers, the way she held herself ramrod straight, so sweet, so polite -- they know how to pick a mark. Before Rill lost to her fetch and took its’ place, she was the sort of woman Alexis would have stolen from and never given a second thought.
It’s not charming, even without the haze of her masquerading perfectly as them. They hate people like that.  

[Daekie]

Alexis keeps waking up clutching their throat, their fingers tattered and red -- they keep bandages on hand, now, proper bandages to treat the mess they make of their hands. They don’t remember doing this before -- before -- they don’t remember doing this --
their legs heal right --


They don’t know what Alois has done to them but they know -- they know -- what do they know, what do they know, they can’t they can’t -- they keep wanting to scream but they don’t know why --
it’s not much longer now, please, please --  

[Daekie]

She can sound like their mother, and she uses it to her advantage; mocking them ever so sweetly, telling them to perfect their form, to study harder and be less of a disappointment. They try to ignore her. (They really do try. They’re not good at it. After all, they're no good for anything, Alois says it and he's probably right - he owns them at the minute, for the minute, after all.) It hurts, to hear their mother’s voice coming from their own face, to see what they can look like all poised - when the fetch visits, she stands less like Alexis and more like whoever she was, once.
(She says her name is Rill. It doesn’t sound like much of a name. Alexis keeps their judgement to themself and watches her with distant eyes, keeping themself apart from all of this.)

Their neck aches. Their back. Their throat is raw. They are not perfect, yet.
 

[Daekie]

(the woods are just trees, the trees are just wood -- wolves are like dogs, but werewolves are like people -- a jumble of incoherent thoughts --


i am not who i was but i wish i could be again -- no. no i don’t, you foolish, stupid child, i would never. i was so weak back then.
i couldn't have helped anyone if i wanted to.)  

[Daekie]

They don’t cry in response to pain anymore, actually, not when it's so very mild. They don’t know when that happened. Or why. But it did -- and now their eyes are clear all the time. It is an idle curiosity that strikes Alexis one day, when Alois is away and they are to be patient and study and think, and they run their teeth along the back of their hand and watch the skin part underneath them like paper. Bandages will hide the damage well enough, but that hand is already broken, anyways - it will never function the way it did before. There is no harm in scientific curiosity - it is the way they have been taught to think, to walk facefirst until their fears are scalding up the back of their skull.
It’s nice, not feeling so much. (They think. This is the problem with not feeling the way you did before: it’s a difficult comparison to make.) So easy to think, this way. So unbelievably simple.

Blood is blood. Pain is pain. There is nothing emotional intertwined with either if you don’t make it so -- and, slowly but surely, they have learned to stop making it so. It hurts less when you think of it as only something that can and will be fixed -- just like them. Just like them, in the overall scheme.
 

[Daekie]

i did this i did this i Wanted this, i did this, i’ve done this, i can’t stop now i can’t. i have to. i’m doing this for

who am i doing this for

I don’t remember --
 

[Daekie]

You are not a human. You are not a human being.
They will be scared of you if only you tell them to be.
You are not a human being. You wear the face of one and you can pretend to be one, but what you have done, what you think -- you nasty little child -- you can never be human.


Stand at your master’s side like a proper dog. We don’t need to muzzle you if you’re good.


(alois does not say this - at least, not in these words - but alexis thinks it anyway all the same, like a mantra behind their eyes.)  

[Daekie]

alexis will not give this thing the honor (isn’t that funny - them and honor, them and honor - like they’ve ever had any, will ever have any) - the honor of their pronouns, their face -- when the fetch stands at the door faux-meek, her hair (Alexis’ <******** Hair) cut into a messy boy’s cut, ten dollars or less spent in an act of desperation to be something Else (they know it, they know it well, they’ve thought about it so often that it’s no surprise she’s done it for them) alexis does not look up and does not acknowledge her.

she will make the first move.

and then, at some point after that, Alexis will kill her. or disable her. or win. they will kill her and her blood on their teeth will be f r e e d o m, probably, for all they know because - alexis has never killed like they want to/dream of/think about but this will be a first. hopefully a last (they don't want to think about what it means if they don't want it to be a last, but hush, good little pets don't think for themselves)

(The months of captivity have not helped their planning. Their mind is honed, yes, but -- well. Not, perhaps, the way they’d have wanted. But it doesn’t matter. What they want didn’t matter then, and it doesn’t matter now, and it never ever will.)  

[Daekie]

“Your life,” she says, sweet as sugar with a smile that’s just disconcerting to see on their own mouth, “is really no good, isn’t it, darling? Well, even with what I’ve done, of course. But you’ve always been no good, haven’t you, Alexis.” she waits for them to speak with a tilt of the head, lips poised, and then huffs (and that one’s familiar -- it’s their voice, of course, it’s their shoulders shaking with the force of it, it’s still their face on her even if the hair is all wrong -- too short, and the eyelashes are a tiny bit too long, the face very very slightly more symmetrical --
well. Alexis wouldn’t notice it, if it wasn’t their own face she wore.)

it’s annoying, to see them-but-not, and even though they try to school their face to stone Rill sees something on it that makes her smile even wider, fanged maw stretching to display e v e r y s i n g l e t o o t h. “It’s nothing like what I had, of course,” she bemoans, “but it’ll do, I think, once I get rid of you. You made such poor use of it, sweetheart, with your pretty face that you never use. You poor, sweet, little frightened child.”

Alexis bites down their anger again and again and feels nothing at all anymore, and the world flutters grey and brown under their eyelashes --
 

[Daekie]

she laughs like she has the advantage, she thinks she’s winning, she thinks she’s winning just because her hands are around Alexis’ throat and there is a knife in their side, metal glinting against the blood - but they push her back and bite down on her fingers and she cries out, wounded, bleeding. there is the c r u n c h of bone under their teeth and she goes wide-eyed for a half second of silence, both flawed mirrors contemplating what they have done, but --

Alexis spits out the top part of a finger, and the fetch tries to run, cradling her mangled hand to her chest. (she does not get far, because Alexis is lean and wide awake and their thoughts have been pared down to kill kill kill, and because her grasp of how-to-be-Alexis is slipping in her panic and pain and theirs is not. it's all they know how to do anymore, and they are very, very good at it.)
 

[Daekie]

-- “help me,” the fetch cries out beneath their fingers, her pupils blown-wide, heart fluttering like a birdlike she is caged under alexis’ hands, “lord alois, help me - please -” she is crying out to a lord who is not here and who will not listen, and she is so brittlebreakable under their hands, her bones grinding together, her blood on their lips -
alexis angles themself right and bites her throat wide open, and there is so much blood in their mouth and it doesn’t taste like freedom. it tastes like they’re going to drown and nobody will ever know what they have done. (they don’t know what they have done either but they don’t think they have the capacity to be scared anymore nor the right -- it has drowned with their regrets in this place)
 

[Daekie]

(she doesn’t look like them anymore she looks like a drowned corpse in clothes too big for her, her throat an abstract painting, streaks and shades of red covering their skin and her skin and everything else)

(there’s no use in letting her - their - her - their clothes go to waste -- she is dressed nicely, for what she is; a parasite, a scavenger, a thief. alexis knows how to recognize quality when they see it. she did not buy these clothes, because neither would they, and she was perfect at being them but better. but their mind is rambling, and their movements are simple, calm, methodical - strip the body. bind the wound. tie their hair back with itself.)

(alexis gets dressed, just like they have always done. there is nothing different about this time at all.)
[fin]