This was a DeviantArt commission someone asked of me. It's my first attempt at a reader-insert. ***BE WARNED, I DO NOT KNOW HOW TO PROPERLY SAY THIS, BUT IN ACCORDANCE WITH KADAJ'S CHARACTER HE SAYS SOME THINGS IN THIS FIC THAT MAY NOT MAKE YOU FEEL VERY GOOD! THIS IS VERY ANGSTY, SO THIS MAY BE TRIGGERING TO PEOPLE WITH LOW SELF-ESTEEMS. I DONT KNOW, I HAVE NEVER BEEN IN A SITUATION LIKE THAT, SO IDK IF THIS IS THE RIGHT WAY TO SAY THIS, BUT JUST KNOW THAT MY INTENT IS NOT TO INSULT ANYONE OR MAKE THEM FEEL BAD! I JUST WANT TO WARN EVERYONE.
Kadaj is not mine. He belongs to his respective owner, and you belong to yourself!
"That's why," Kadaj yells, "it's wracking our bodies with pain, and filling our hearts with doubt!" You look up sharply, raising your eyes for the first time since you were brought here to the Forgotten City.
It's apparent you're the worst case there. There're kids who just have maybe a spot of the stigma on their arms, or a trail along their neck. Some kids' stigmas have only infected their faces and heads, and stopped there. You were just unlucky, you guess. Not even any of the kids your age have it as bad as you. Starting at your left palm, it wraps around the heel of your hand then leads up your wrist to the inside of your elbow, weaves back out to your bicep like a globby, poisonous snake, shelves your shoulder and finally trickles up your neck to your hairline on the side of your face.
And, God, does it hurt.
Your family wanted to follow you around with a pillow ever since that one time you blacked out from the pain. Even so, you're one of the lucky ones in SOME ways, you guess. There're kids whose families have cast them out, rejected them and kicked them out, were afraid of them, leaving them to die on the street.
Tch. Could be worse. You guess.
That one singular line has been your mantra. Your saving grace. It is that ONE thing that REFUSES to allow you to resign yourself to your grave. It took a while of saying it every. single. day. before your heart allowed it to take root and thrive. But once it id you were filled with this odd sense of inner peace. Like, if you were going to die, so be it. But you weren't going down without a fight.
You can't leave your house without seeing them line the streets. The kids who gave up. They lie there, in silence and depression like you used to after your first spasm and when your disease first started to spread. It's a difficult struggle. Every single day, every single moment you spend in pain, every child of every age you see lining the streets, cast out, ready to die, is another temptation to give up like they did. Every flare of pain is another plea to your sanity from your body and your heart. Another scream that you refuse to yell to your pain.
You vowed to fight until the end. And it was always more exhausting, physically, emotionally, mentally the next day.
Talk about temptation. Was he really saying there was a way out? Could you really end the fighting with yourself and with the disease?
"Now, I shall heal you," he says, suddenly quiet, but with a fresh, passionate intensity. His eyes glow a mesmerizing, vibrant emerald green, and you can't help but feel drawn to him. "And we will go to Mother together! We will join as a family and strike back at the Planet!" His aura surges with the raw power he has, magnified by the materia he has coursing under his skin.
What was it like, you wonder, to have vitality and strength spreading through you like wildfire instead of grief and anger and pain and every manifestation of misery?
"Do as I do," Kadaj says. He silently walks forward into the water, and his form bleeds black into it, corrupting the clear, beautiful, crystal water.
He can heal you? You don't even remember the half of the other stuff he said; the word "heal" stuck out to you like a sore thumb despite your stretched security in yourself.
Kadaj stops and scoops the blackened water into his palms. He touches it to his lips and tips his hands back, spilling the water into his mouth. He lets his hands splash back into the pond when he's finished. Some water spilled down his face when he drank, trickling down the corners of his mouth, giving him the look of a vampire that just drank his fill of blood.
The other kids start to wade in after him and some start cupping the water to drink immediately. Even the people your age seem eager to leave it all behind. You follow them into the water, and almost immediately it has a calming, soothing feeling on your stigma where your arms drop in the water. The ache set so deep in your skin you could barely move some days is alleviated in the pool, and you relish the relief.
You scoop the water in your hands. Could it really be this easy? Do the slow, silent ripples in the shallow pond represent a tidal wave of relief and comfort from the agony of the disease?
Am I desperate enough to need to find out?
"No," you whisper aloud. "No, I'm not."
You drop the water, letting it splash unceremoniously back into the pool. Right as you raise your head, Kadaj's eyes slide directly to yours. You freeze, unsure what to do. Your breath catches in your lungs and your spine begins to tingle. Your heart leaps inside your chest and for a moment all you hear is its steadily increasing pounding.
Thump. Thump. Thump! THUMP!
Involuntarily you take a step back, our subconscious mind seizing control and SCREAMING at you to get away, break his gaze in any way possible, remove his prying from your soul. You know he's reading you like a book. But you cover your reaction as best as you can by averting your gaze, glaring instead at the water to peer at your reflection. Ashamed that you let him intimidate you, but too fearful to at least hold your ground against him, you watch the ripples in the water as all around you, kids drink to Kadaj's cause.
You hear gentle splashing coming towards you and you try not to look up in alarm. Is he coming over here?! Crap crap crap-
He deliberately slows down as he comes up to you, and stops inches from you. You try to control your breathing and not allow your chest to heave with ragged, half-scared half-anxious breaths.
His globed hand cups your chin and gently raises your face to look at his. This time you do so without flinching, more surprised than anything else that his hands could be so tame and tender.
Time doesn't move. Both of you are frozen in position. You calmly resist the itching in your eyes telling you, PLEADING with you to look away, and you just hold his gaze. Just as you pride yourself for not backing down, your nervous habits kick in. Your proximity to him and the fire in his eyes makes your teeth slide over your bottom lip and clamp down. But you hold his eyes, careful of this connection you have to him.
The corners of his chiseled mouth upturn ever-so-slightly. His somewhat twisted version of a smile. But it never reaches his eyes.
"Still not convinced?" he snidely asks you. "Still not breaking? Haven't resigned yourself to your death? I'm the only one that can help you."
You shake your head a tiny bit, but otherwise he has you stock-still.
"Maybe I should fix that."
His emerald eyes flare suddenly, and narrow at you. Fire erupts beneath your skin. Your geostigma twinges, pain shoot up your whole arm and radiates deep into your shoulder, piercing your lungs so every breath is painful. You cry out and go to grab at your arm, like that'll do anything, but Kadaj's grip on your chin tightens until you can't twist away and his other hand holds your arm down at your side. You clench your fist against the pain but that only causes more agony to radiate up your arm. It sears up into your neck, and then you remember just HOW unfortunate you are to have the stigma on your face. Stabbing pains tear through your jaw, throat, cheeks, head. That's the worst part. Your temples burst with the splitting headache, and your vision even goes black around the edges. Tears well up and sting your already aching eyes. You struggle against Kadaj's tight grip on you, but he just continues to stare at you. He cocks his head slightly, and another surge of terror and pain almost brings you to your knees. You can feel your stigma bubbling, oozing, gumming up your hair and dripping thickly into the sacred waters.
Finally he relents, ending your pain and withdrawing his hands. You don't relax, though, you can't relax. You're too afraid your weak knees would collapse.
"NOW do you see? Do you REALLY wanna feel that for the rest of your life?" He chuckles, "I-hi mean, you won't make it that much longer. You'll end up like those other kids: lost, rejected, hated. Forgotten. I wouldn't let that happen to you. Mother wouldn't either. You're holding on to sentiment for all the wrong reasons. You expend all your energy on surviving when it could be used in so many different ways. Be as defiant as you want! In the end you're just another terminal case. Another sick kid taking up perfectly healthy space unless you join me. I can help you."
His silky, wolf-in-sheep's-clothing voice is wearing you down, more so than his violent attempt, and you know it. But you already refused to be beaten by the disease and by despair, and now by him. He wouldn't break you down, either.
But yet, he understood. He knew what it was like to fight and fight and never move forward. He was treading water, just like you were, trying to learn how to swim, just like you were. The only difference is he was willing to sink for the sake of his agenda, even if it was at a cross-purpose with his very existence. It would save you in the process. It would save you. . . He would save you. . .
You scoop a handful of water back into your palms.
Is it worth it?