Title: Pain
Summary: Sometimes Celaena doesn't remember what it's like to feel. But she can never forget pain. It has become a part of her, every time she opens her eyes she remembers Nehemia. Celaena's descent into madness after Nehemia's death.
Rating: T
Sometimes Celaena doesn't remember what it's like to feel. Her body and mind go numb, and all that's left is fear and anger and madness and blood so much blood and mutilation beautiful body never to rise again and anger and fury and red red red.
Then she takes a shaky breath, willing herself to forget Nehemia, get rid of the pain, but that's so selfish and lonely and how could she forget Nehemia, bright, wild, passionate Nehemia, her only true friend and she's so selfish to want to forget her and awful and selfish and mean and lonely so lonely without Nehemia to comfort her.
And without feeling, there is no love, no light. And there comes the darkness. Creeping in through the bars of her jail cell, creeping and crawling and devouring her until she is screaming with rage, whites of eyes showing. That's the insanity, it's dark and red, splotches and blinking and screaming and hoarse throats and choking, choking drowning and drenched in blood and ripping apart and apart and apart and slowly Celaena Sardothien falls apart inside.
Then the tears come. They hurt so much and Celaena tries to forget, and not feel, become a stone monster. She doesn't want to remember what it's like to feel, it hurts too much. But Nehemia deserved more than that. She deserved tears. And so Celaena cries. And it's twisting, curling, rocking on the floor, body wracking with sobs sobs sobs and tears and screams of loss, of being torn apart inside, of something precious missing, and wetness slipping down your faces, and bawling and crying, so much crying, and sadness creeping in and then rocking, back and forth, slowly, on the floor, curled up, a ball of sadness, whimpering and and moaning. But then another wave hits and it's streaming, wetness, tears everywhere, and eyes shut and loss, ripped apart, and torn, broken, and crying, and screaming and sobbing, writhing, doing anything to forget.
Forgetting. Each drug is a blessing, and a curse. Every time she drinks the water it's peace. Dreaminess. Forgetfulness. She's subdued. She can sit and stare and everything is okay because every time she drinks the drug Celaena Sardothien and all her pain is forgotten. Celaena is gone, and a shell remains with no loss and no tears. And so she drinks and it's floating, calm and blank and there's nothing left and Celaena is gone, with all her baggage and tears and sadness and anger is all gone and it's white, blank, nothingness, nothing , nothing and all gone. All gone.
But the drug is also pain. Dizziness and head spinning, and screams of agony and agony and pain and head being torn apart and cravings, she needs more, to stop the pain but it only brings more and then the world spins and it hurts hurts so much and she's dizzy and whirling and spinning spinning and spinning.
And then, inevitably with the drug, comes the sleep. And with that the dreams, horrific images flashing in her mind, nightmare after nightmare and she can't escape, can't awake. She's trapped. Celaena tries to fight it, to keep her eyes open, awake, yes, awake, don't' sleep. Can't sleep. It only brings pain and horror. But she can't. And then the sleep comes and it is drifting falling climbing, trying to get back up, to awake, but no, she's falling, deeper and deeper, until she's in the pit of horror where bodies taunt her and Nehemia, beautiful Nehamia is there, staring, ghoul-like, asking, asking, why didn't you save me, save me, save me? And it's pain and fear and blades stabbing, stabbing, blood blossoming, deadly toxic flower of red and red and blood, so much blood and screams and torture, and pain, so much pain and crying and horror and mutilation and bodies and arms and torn apart and it's gruesome and throwing up and slashes of red and skin, and beheaded and smashed and mashed and face broken and body eaten and guts and organs spilling out and skin and insides and pain and disgust and hurt and anger and finally she awakes.
And it's gasping, sitting up, the gruesome images of Nehemia's mutilated body stuck in her mind. If she's lucky, she doesn't remember her dream. But since when is she lucky? So then she relives it, the images flashing in front of her mind again and again. And it's flashes of blood and skin and bodies flitting across and it's pain and moaning that her mind is showing this and why oh why and screams and screams and tears spilling down and flashes of things so awful, and why is the world so cruel and heartless and then there's pain and it overwhelms her the sorrow and anger and pain and madness.
Why does she drink the drug? Celaena sometimes wonders. If it causes sleep which causes dreams which keep flashing images in her head which hurts. But deep inside, she knows why. For all it makes her remember what emotions are, how to feel afterwards, what sorrow is like, what everything except anger is like – but never love, never ever love – she knows she drinks it because for a sweet, fleeting moment there is the bliss of forgetfulness. And that is calm and no more and she doesn't know what happened and that's okay it's okay and all okay and she's fine and she doesn't know the tear marks or why the red rimmed eyes are so, just nothing and quiet and peace and forgetfulness.
But there's also selfishness, so much selfishness. The drug is a killer, each sip is poisoning her blood, she's killing herself, poison ripping through her veins, toxic, toxic, toxic red, and fire burning inside and it hurts but this physical pains stops the pain in her head, even if it's red and burning and so so deadly and poisonous.
She doesn't want to live because if she lives, she remembers Nehemia. And that makes her feel. Sometimes she thinks it's better to die and then she will never feel pain and sorrow again. Does that make her evil? She wonders. She tries to stop, to do Nehemia better, but it's hard, and she fails again and again, and she drinks, gulps and sometimes she is aware enough to start out of her daze and realise how she's doing wrong and how selfish she is, and how she's thinking only of herself just herself not Nehemia never what she wanted just killing herself so she doesn't feel the loss so keenly and she's so selfish to want to forget Nehemia and awful and selfish and mean and so mean so selfish and now she's all alone with no one to love her all because she only thinks of herself.
Celaena doesn't remember what it's like to feel. But she can never forget pain. It has become a part of her, every time she opens her eyes she remembers Nehemia. The drug has taken away sorrow. The tears that once streamed out, relentless and unending have gone. The hollow ache in her heart is still there, but she can't remember what it's like to feel loss and sad that you will never see someone again. She can't even remember anger, anger that Chaol didn't warn her, anger that the King ordered it, no. It's gone. The made light of fury in her eyes has been dimmed and instead she looks hollow, exhausted, hurt. Only the dullness of pain can be seen. Everything else was long gone, emotions scattered and lost forever the moment she burst into Nehemia's room and found her beautiful body mutilated and lifeless.
Only pains remains. Eating at her, devouring her. Conquering her spirit and consciousness. Taking away her ability to think, her mind is numb, taking away her ability to feel emotions. She is lifeless and soulless inside. All that is left is agony. Tearing at her, breaking her. Agony. She is empty, every fibre of her being nothing except never ending pain and soreness. Agony. Her skin is screaming and red. Agony. The pain is devouring everything else, everything that made her Celaena.
She is struggling in a losing battle.
One day she opens her eyes. Looks up at the stars through the window covered by bars. She gasps, and smiles, it is the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. She doesn't take her eyes off it as she opens herself up to the sky and screams. Pure, pure, agony, sorrow, everything she has ever been through reflected in that one scream. Long and into the night it echoes. People shut their windows, blocking their ears, trying to do everything to get that scream out of their heads for it makes you want to cry and rip yourself apart. It is pure agony, and sadness and anger and madness, and pain. The scream of a soul dying.
Then Celaena is gone and a monster emerges.