Escape

by justsomewords

We've always been together. I thought we'd never be apart. Sometimes things change. Sometimes people change. If you love someone, let them go. Gift for kumaharem on tumblr for the DMMD Secret Santa 2014

Rhyme was like a dream.

I always felt that way. I can remember it back from the old days. I could remember how it felt to fall, the thrill of letting go and losing control, the sensation of my body crumpling away below me as I was pulled in. It was like drifting to sleep or succumbing to drugs, the exquisite feeling of floating and the haze that blurred the edges of my senses to keep them dull and gauzed.

Back then, I lived in Rhyme. I never wanted to be in the real world. I thought about it constantly, sought it out like a junkie looking for a fix. I wanted to be there, to cast aside the necessary veil of humanity and to do things just because I wanted to. I wanted to destroy, to unravel and stamp out everyone in my path, and only there was it permitted. It was encouraged. It was home.

And he was there beside me.

He was always beside me.

It was the only place I could truly see him. I feel like some part of me craved having him there, that I could see what we'd both lost when our eyes met. Our battles were effortless, my orders all but anticipated, our minds in total sync. It was the first time we felt connected. There we all got along. There we might have been whole.

I guess now we will be.

When I stopped playing Rhyme, I turned to sleeping instead. It wasn't much of a change. I would sleep hours beyond what most people would, whole days if left completely undisturbed. I could feel him on the edge of my mind when I slept. He was stronger then and I was weaker. My dreams were always real to me, always vivid and full, even when I was disappearing into a black void. They always felt real, just as Rhyme always felt real. Maybe, in some way, it was.

I can hear him stronger than ever now. I can hear his voice, both vindictive and cold. I can feel his rage and his self-righteousness. I know I deserve it. I know that I swallowed him down and dulled him with drugs. I know I avoided everything that made him happy, everything he wanted and craved. Everything he needed.

I know that this is what I deserve.

I can hear them both, one inside of me and one out. Ren has been nearby this whole time, just out of my range of sight. His breathing has been a constant white noise, gurgling and sick, ragged and uneven. I know it's the core of him fighting against the impulse. I know it's overtaking him like a poison, I know it's pulling him further within and drowning him. I know he's suffering and I can hear it in every sound he makes.

And I can hear him crying.

It's a soft, broken sound. It's the kind of sound you hear from grown men in hospitals, from parents at their children's funerals, the sound of a heart that has been shattered and thrown to the wind. It's undeniable, penetrating, dying your very soul with the purest sorrow. It will drag you down too, if you let it.

And it has dragged me down.

I want to reach out to him, but he's everywhere and nowhere at once. I've barely moved since he left me, my body stiffening and growing cold on the dull, virtual grid. I thought at first that I must have died, that this is what it felt like to feel rigor mortis creep in. It wasn't until I tried to move that I realized I was wrong.

I'd lost sensation as I'd lost blood, as my circulation slowed, as oxygen failed to reach my brain. My nerves had overloaded, maybe, and they had shut off on me. The pain had numbed me completely.

But then it came back.

It came back as I reached for him. I could feel my skin resisting, held fast to the false floor below me by something sticky and pungent. It pulled at the torn, frayed edges, peeling them back just as his teeth had done. I could feel the blood welling up freshly where it tugged, a sharp, white pain spreading in pinpricks across the exposed flesh in a thin line. I could hear my own rattling breath echoing around me, the subconscious sounds of pain leaving my lips effortlessly.

And then I saw it.

I saw my arm.

I saw what was left of my arm.

I knew then that I'd dreamed of this very moment. I knew I dreamed of being here, of being eaten, of seeing my limbs slowly disappearing one by one. I know I screamed. I know I tried. I know it was a wet, strangled sound. The sound of a wounded animal dying in a trap.

My arm was a ragged mess of gnawed bone and ribbons of hanging flesh. My hand was gone completely, though I was sure my fingers had been outstretched to him only moments before. I could feel them then where the pain had ended. I could flex them and claw the ground for purchase. I could touch him if only I knew where he was.

My other arm came up as well, skin pulling just as the first had, fused to the translucent tile. I realized now what it was that held me in place and felt the sob heave my chest, the same substance gluing my shirt below me. It was blood. My own blood. The blood I was sure would've killed me to lose. The blood I thought would've saved me eventually. The blood that was supposed to carry me away from this suspended life.

He heard me, I know. The crying had stopped and the field was deathly quiet. The breathing I heard was my own, a faint keening of pain curving every exhalation, a tinge of that acute sorrow on my lips. I could hear him moving, the way his breath shifted, the soft sounds of his claws on the floor. It had been a comfort, once. It had reassured me once. He was here, I knew. He would never leave me.

And now I would never leave him.

The pain reignited me, the fresh bloodflow licking at my wounds, my heart pounding in my chest. I didn't see him then, even as my eyes searched for him in the darkness. I could feel how close he was. I feared the feeling of him being so close. I feared how he would pull me up from the floor and how my punishment would resume.

He stalked around me but did not touch me. Not that time. As the fear pushed me and the adrenaline flowed, I felt as if I should try to escape. I felt as if I should, but the instinct to flee wasn't there. Instead, I heard him in my mind, his voice low and rich and dangerous. I deserved this, he said again. I deserved this for choosing him. I deserved this for all of my years of denial. I deserved to have the creature that I'd created.

And I do.

That's how it's been for hours now. Maybe days now. Time has no meaning here. For all I know, I've only been asleep minutes and no one has even found us yet. For all I know, we're still waiting in that dark room, still on the same floor we left off on. For all I know, it's been years outside. For all I know, I am on life support and kept in this perpetual purgatory.

It doesn't really matter what the situation is.

What matters is that I can hear him again.

The sound of his claws sends a pulse of fear into me. It's not nearly as strong as before, as if my body refused to continue feeling it just like it stopped feeling pain. I try to move and my skin holds fast again. The last attempt to move just further cemented me to the ground, the fresh blood reforming the bond I had broken. I can feel it starting again, the thick, congealed blood giving way to new. My arms, what's left of them, slap against the floor in front of me, each time sending a horrible jolt of pain seemingly straight to my heart. It hitches my breath and my heart races in response. I can hear my own thin whimpers as I pant.

I know he can hear me now, too.

His hands pull me up without warning, peeling me from the floor like a scab. I can feel my legs dangle beneath me, or what's left of them. I should be panicking, I think in the back of my mind, but I'm not. There's a resignation in me that I know I felt before already seeping into my bones, rendering my muscles useless.

And I know why.

He carries me effortlessly, his breaths still audibly escaping his curled lips, the sound somewhere between a growl and a sob. I can't help but imagine him like an animal like this, carrying its half-dead prey elsewhere to resume its meal. I should fight back, but I know I couldn't escape even if I managed to break free.

'I can help you,' I hear him say. His voice is low and rich, his tone arrogant and exquisite. He's enjoying this. He's been enjoying this since the very start. But his words are different now.

'I can help you,' he repeats, purring in my mind. 'I can set us free.'

The promise makes my heart beat faster, my unseeing eyes widen. I hear a soft whimper escape my lips.

'But you have to kill him.'

I can feel my throat tighten at the suggestion, my heart stopping its erratic pounding for a full second at the thought.

Kill him.

Kill Ren.

The moment I hear those words, it feels as if someone has thrown a rock through my glass heart. I can feel the spiderweb cracks spreading across it, revealing the black void that rests just below. The cracks spread down my limbs, up my throat, piercing my very mind. My chest heaves, my breath catching and rushing in hyperventilating bursts.

No.

I can't.

'You can,' he insists, voice thick and sweet and dripping with poison. 'I can help you. I will give you the strength to do it, but you have to give yourself to me. All of it.'

I can feel Ren slowing. Where we've gone, I'm not sure, but he seems satisfied here. He turns a few times as if cementing this spot in his mind and sits, dragging me into his lap.

'You owe it to me,' he says simply. He always speaks with such conviction and it makes me sick. It doesn't matter if it's right or wrong, he makes it true the moment he speaks it aloud.

'We can be happy again,' he assures. I can feel the shirt peeling up from my skin, my body limp against Ren's chest. I find myself searching for his heartbeat, wishing I could hear it and calm myself with it. Something to give me measure. Something to counteract the venom pumping into my mind.

'It was fun, wasn't it? Back in those days?'

No. It wasn't. He can't remember, but it was miserable. He's lying to himself. What we did wasn't fun, it was just an escape from ourselves. We hurt people so we didn't hurt ourselves and we hurt ourselves when there was no one else left. It wasn't fun at all. It was miserable.

'It was fun,' he soothes. 'We were fine without him. We can be that way again. Just let me help you.'

I can feel Ren moving me, my head lolling back and forth as the weight shifts. I can't resist him if my energy is focused internally. I can't stop him when I have more important things to fight.

'Stop lying to yourself,' he snaps, knowing what I'm thinking. 'Why do you care about him anyway? Look at what he's doing! I'm the only one who cares about you. I'm the only one who never wanted to leave you. I'm the only one who never did.'

I can feel the shards falling away, the void inside me growing and sucking them in as his voices rings clearly in my mind.

It's true, isn't it? He's the only one that never left me. He's the only one who's never left me. Even when I was suppressing him, he was here. He was fighting to be with me. He saved me before. His voice came out when mine failed. He was ready to protect me even when I denied him.

'I'm the only one,' he states firmly, and I can hear the hint of a sneer on his voice.

Ren's tongue brings me back to the pseudo-waking world before me, terrible shockwaves of pain spreading across my skin where he licks me. I can feel the dried blood flaking away, the faint scrape of his teeth when it doesn't yield. His breath is calm and hot against my neck, his hold on me firm. I can feel breathless sounds of pain rising in my throat, released into the air just beside his ear. If he can hear me, he doesn't seem to care, and continues to clean the terrible, rough-edge wound he left in my shoulder.

'You can make this pain stop,' he cuts in, dragging me back. 'You can go home. It's easy. It's so fucking easy. You know what you have to do.'

I know what he means. I know exactly what he means. He means Scrap. He means using his voice- our voice -to destroy Ren once and for all. He means to do what he's always wished he could do.

'To free us,' he clarifies, as if it changes anything.

Maybe this time it would.

It was never this way before. I felt trapped by them but it wasn't like this. I never felt free when I was alone. It was just an escape. They were my friends, the only ones I had, the only ones who never left me.

'The only one who never left you was me. He abandoned us.'

The cracks are getting worse. I can feel the shards of my will falling away. The last defense I have is crumbling. I can feel the tears in my eyes. I know they're not from the physical pain. They can't be. This hurts so much more than that.

"Aoba…"

His voice is soft and broken. It's immeasurably sad. Defeated. Pained. The whisper of my name against my ear twists me inside. I can feel the tears spilling past my lashes and down my face. I want to align them with the marks on his cheeks, press us together there. I want to whisper his name back but the sounds come out only as strangled peals of pain.

'He did this to us. He did this to himself. Look at what he's doing now.'

He's crying now.

'He's lying. He has no remorse.'

That's not true.

'Yes it is, and you know it. He's fucking eating you alive and you're feeling sorry for him. What a joke.'

I can feel his tongue again on my neck, tracing the grooves left by my collarbones, licking my cold, torn flesh with seeming care and gentleness. I felt it before, too. I've seen the glimpses of it. I know it's comfort. I know it's care. I know it's an apology he cannot put into words. He has to do this. He can't avoid it. To him, this is the only way.

'Listen to you,' he snarls, sounding genuinely angry at the concept. 'Why does he get excused for this shit? Why have Inever gotten excused? Why am I the demon and heis the one you forgive!?'

I…

…don't have the answers to his questions. It isn't fair, is it? That I've let Ren do this to me. That he's slowly consuming me. That we're both tortured here like this, physically and emotionally. That we're stuck in this loop of hurt and comfort, of pain and desperation.

Why do I forgive Ren…?

The question splashes red across the blackness inside of me, a blooming flower of pain under the shards of glass, filling the void. I can feel it physically, growing and twisting. It presses back against the cracks, holds them in place, twists out of the holes and across the surface.

'He doesn't love you!'

His voice shakes me to my core. It's so loud that I'm sure it echoed beyond my skull and across the vast expanse of darkness around us. I'm sure Ren heard it too, though he doesn't react to it.

What he reacts to is me.

What he reacts to is my arms pushing him back, the sharp edges of my bones pressed against his faintly glistening chest.

I don't know whether it was me or him that moved my arms between us, but Ren reacts accordingly. His touch is no longer soft and remorseful, instead sharp and fierce, a familiar, wheezing growl beginning in his throat. My arms are pulled apart, the gashes in my chest tearing open again from the strain. I can hear my own voice ringing out, a familiar, breathless cry torn from my lungs.

This is how it has gone each time.

I know how this time will end.

My back hits the floor suddenly, my body arched back until it meets the digital tile. The wounds there tear as well, the friction and twisting too much to allow them to stay closed. He is bending me and forcing me down. He is asserting himself again. He must have control.

He must be my restraint.

'He doesn't love you.'

I can smell the blood in the air again, hot and fresh, and my cries dissolve into sobs. He looms over me, growling and snarling above me. He wants me to give in. He wants me to give up. He wants me to let it happen. He wants me.

'I love you.'

The words bring a howl of sorrow from within me that I scarcely realized I had the strength for. I can feel Ren bristle at the sound, his grip on me tightening at his perception of resistance. My body is trembling from the strain of the position and the trauma it's endured but I don't fight him. I can't fight him. I won't.

'I love you like no one else loves you.'

His voice is low again, dangerous and dark, but with a note of sadness I've never heard before. It sounds like the bitterest defeat, an assurance of sincerity and a desperation for understanding. I can hear it in him just as I can feel it in Ren. I know it's the truth.

'I love you and I want to be free with you.'

My breath hitches as Ren leans close, my face turning away from him instinctively. Did I do that? Or did he? Am I losing control of myself to him? Is this just a final bid for dominance? Is he tricking me?

I can't let this happen.

It's too late to stop it, though. Ren sensed the rejection, reacting immediately with fangs and fury. The familiar pain of his teeth jolt my body, twisting it beneath him as he strengthens his grip. He tears at me, pulling long strips of skin and meat from my shoulder, swallowing them greedily without even bothering to chew.

I can hear the echo of my own shrieking sobs and nothing else. Every ounce of air inside me tears out in a terrible wail, my throat raw and bloody and my voice hoarse and shrill.

'Let me free us. I can stop the pain.'

I can hear him as I struggle for breath, gasping and wheezing like a fish left on the dock. The blood seeps from my shoulder into my hair, sticking it together with syrupy warmth and adhering it to the ground below.

'I can stop him.'

No.

'Let me stop him.'

No.

'We can be together.'

No.

'Let me love you.'

"REN-!"

It's such a wretched sound that for a moment he stops breathing, his feral yellow eyes staring down at me. A thin string of drool drips down from his curled lips, landing on my chest. I dissolve into hysterical sobbing, my body wracked with the ragged, horrible breaths I need to fuel it.

Slowly, the pressure subsides on my arms. He is watching me carefully, holding tightly onto me but no longer pressing me down. I wish I could feel relieved but there's little difference. All I can feel is the pain, both inside and out, and the void of despair slowly dragging me down. The blackness reaches for me, clawing past the barrier keeping it at bay. How long can it hold?

'Why won't you let me love you…'

I can hear the question in stereo in my mind. That's all they want. That's all they've ever wanted. I can understand it now in my deepest despair. It's the same as it's always been, pushed down and fought over, a prize to be won. They've always been this way. They'll always be this way.

Is this what love feels like…?

Ren is lifting me and my body is limp again. I feel cold all over, disconnected and detached, washed over with numbness. I don't resist as his mouth presses against mine, the blood and viscera sticking to my lips. I can taste myself on his tongue as it probes inside, sharp and metallic. He swallows the sound between us.

We're both fighting ourselves, aren't we?

Animal and instinct, longing and indulgence.

He doesn't know what that's like, does he?

He's shaking, trembling with a whine in his throat.

This is Ren. The real Ren. The one that loves me, not the one that wants to swallow me whole. The one that wants to protect me, not the one that wants to destroy me.

The tears wet our cheeks as he kisses me, his claws dragging across my back and down toward my hips. I feel myself flinch and jerk as they rake across the wounds, the shivering itch that they leave in the drying blood as they scratch it off. He pulls me against his hips, rocking me against him with soft desperation. He needs me. We need him.

'No.'

His voice is inhuman, less so than even Ren's.

'NO.'

Pain splashes across my mind, a sharp twinge to put me in my place.

'He is the reason we're like this! He's the reason we are suffering!'

I gasp against Ren's mouth, arching and writhing in pain.

'I love you!'

He growls, his gore-spattered lips moving down along my jaw.

'And I will destroy him to prove it to you!'

The bitterest acid is in my throat and all I can taste is blood and bile. It's as if the words are forming in the pit inside of me and boiling up to spill out of my mouth. I swallow them back with each hitched breath, with each cry that threatens to escape.

I can feel the blackness spreading, dissolving everything inside of me like acid. My will is breaking again and nothing can keep it together. The shards fall, disappearing along with the tendrils of control that held them up.

I can feel Ren pressing against me from below. I know what he wants. I know what he needs. I will accept him. I will give myself to him if it means this torment will end. Whatever he desires, I will fulfill.

'What about mydesires!?'

Sudden pain overwhelms me and I cry out again. I feel like I'm being dragged inside myself, crushed inward and plunged into the darkness. I feel Ren press inside me but the sensation is dull and far away. He holds me against him as he thrusts upward. I feel like I'm going to vomit.

'Give in to me!'

I won't do it.

I won't do it.

The trembling, ragged stumps of my arms reach up to him and I can feel the jagged edges of the bones scraping his skin. I pull him to me, even as his body lurches unsteadily beneath me, even as his coppery breath pants against my face. I can feel my lips pulling at the sides, a grimace forced into a smile, my gritted teeth showing and flecked with blood.

'Destroy him!'

I press our foreheads together and he slows momentarily. Our noses rub and I feel my tears sticking our cheeks together again. My breaths bubble spit out between my teeth as I bite back a sob. He allowed it, if only for a moment, his clawed hand at the back of my neck, holding me close.

My head rolls limply in his hand, the hairs at the back of my neck tugging painfully in his furred fingers. I pull him down, down, can feel his breath on my skin, my bones scratching against his cheeks as I pull him to me. His lips press readily to my throat and I can feel the slickness of his teeth sticking out from between them. His mouth opens, his hot breath spilling across my skin as it encircles me.

Ren understands me.

Ren knows what I need.

I'm not scared.

I can feel him protesting. I can feel the tug of my body, the instinct to recoil, the way he panics and pulls at me. I can feel the words rising with the bile to stop both of us where we sit but when my mouth opens and my smile twitches, I only have four words to say.

"I love you, Ren."

And then all the pain went away.