I have found that I tend to write better stories very late at night. It's weird, actually. More inspiration, or something.

Oh well.

This is AU. Sollux isn't half-dead, or whatever, just blind. And the voices are very much still there.

Footsteps

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

I hear them. All the time. Even above the voices. It seems like I shouldn't be able to hear anything over them... Always screaming, always begging for attention, always wanting to be heard. It seems as though that ever since I lost the distraction of sight, they've only become more apparent, more demanding.

I see why people avoid me, now.

Darkness, darkness, flash of color, back to prison. Nothing stays, nothing goes. I don't leave, no one enters. But always with the footsteps on floors much above mine. Always heard, always a distraction. A way to forget my mental agony.

I don't understand how such a common sound could help me in so many ways. A simple tap can make my entire day, a single word, my whole sweep.

But words are a luxury. No one talks to me. I sit here in my isolating darkness and mourn the loss of people I don't even know. Always pessimistic, always sorrowful. I don't listen to reason, I can't. The voices drown out every little detail of life.

Everything but the footsteps.

The footsteps mean someone is coming, someone is near. A presence. A person. A being. Someone to communicate with. It almost makes me happy.

But I can't be happy. Not until the voices are gone. Screaming their sorrowful rage at me is the only thing they have left to do before they depart. Torturing me is their favorite passtime. An olympic sport, if you will.

They rally in my brain, scream in my ears, flash behind the darkness in my eyes, snap beneath my fingertips, sit on the edge of my tongue, beg to be said. I deny, I deny, I deny as best I can. Hollow whispers, meaningless screams, they all add to my solitude. No one wants to come near the bipolar psionic freak. No one wants to risk death.

Death.

That sounds lovely.

An end to my misery, a way to destroy this hell fate made for me. How quaint. Such a wonderful idea, I can't believe I didn't think of it sooner!

But I can't bring myself to that. I won't be that pathetic, that weak, that spineless. I won't join the voices. Who would listen to them then? I couldn't possibly be cruel enough to give the burden to someone else. That would just be borderline sadistic.

And maybe that's why I'm alone down here. I just reek of desperation and crave any kind of attention, almost like a wriggler. No, exactly like a wriggler.

I can't do anything for myself now. I haven't bathed in weeks, eaten in days, or even changed my clothes in a week. I can't feed myself, can't sleep at night, can't live with the sack of depression I have become. I'm so lonely anymore, I'd even settle with Eridan as company.

I just don't see how the humans' 'gods' could have messed me up so badly, because these extra horns, extra tongue, discolored eyes, they couldn't have been intentional. I wasn't supposed to come out like this, I know it.

I know it.

But I can't change it, can't change things, can't do anything, because I'm so worthless. I exceed the expectations for that of a failure. I'm such a screw up that I broke the metaphorical mold. Gog only knows how life was even breathed into me in the brooding caverns.

But I'm alive, and I guess that's what counts. I'll live, I'll make it through this life with minimal scarring, with minimum scathing and bruising.

I will live to reach the footsteps.