A/N: Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, B62 – write a fic with no dialogue.


Flimsy Mosaic

At first, it was just a gaping hole.

Everything echoed confusingly in the inner reaches of his soul. His eyes could find nothing concrete to reflect; they showed instead a mosaic of blankness, trying to show an image where no image existed. Perhaps someone should have handed him a brush and let it run its course, rather than the fine tip of a pen begging precision, begging concrete answers.

He had no answers. Just a gaping hole.

And then the hole began to fill with things. Simple things, at first. Childish sketches that began to grow, become more refined as time wore on and the vague, unconnected things floating in space increased. And those things began to connect. Form more detailed sketches – then things that could be called picture: photos, drawings, paintings…

They began to make a coherent tale.

And the whole began to fill.

But it was wrong. All wrong. Like a black rim filed with white sealant – milky, translucent and entirely the wrong colour. But nobody noticed. Not at first. They were just happy bits of glass were slowly fitting into the empty frame, creating the mosaic of the soul.

Even if it was a poorly crafted mosaic, trying to cover a truth that wasn't there.

Nobody noticed – until what truly filled the whole appeared, and crossed paths with that hole.

At first, it crashed against a barrier and bounced back, leaving only foggy marks on a windowpane. But that was enough. Like acid, it corroded the seal, began to dig, began to take apart – Like a scalpel, it tore through the flimsy layer of paint and left gaping scars…that began to fill anew.

And, this time, the filling was different. Instead of things being poured in, things were sucked. A drain that chugged down dirty water and all manner of other pollutants, who did not distinguish between clear and viscous, blue or green or black. Disgusting, dirty, immixing – except they did mix, in the end. They all became black.

The hole filled anew, and this time it filled with black befitting of that rim.

They gaped at him, at first. Feared. Tried to coax those eyes of his back to white. It was a hopeless task. That flimsy mosaic had already been torn down and a new one, permanent, true, made in its place. This was who he was. Who he'd been before he'd lost that self, before he'd carried that hole of his with him, before they'd tried to fill it, to mould him –

He could not be made into that which he never was, especially now that he knew what he was.

Except…something itched. Like an infection in the eye. Something he couldn't lose. Something that burnt, slowed, irritated beneath and around and above –

He was perfect now. Whole. What was the problem?

Why did he long for that childish, false and flimsy mosaic again? That wrongly plugged hole?

They called to him. Still. Pleading for that white sealant to plug the whole again. For him to dig out what belonged: those pieces of the puzzle that fit so perfectly into the picture frame except for all the new refuse there –

But wasn't all those senseless colours becoming black the refuse? That which now plugged the hole?

The two halves fought for the hole. The black, for all how easily it fit, was just as easily removed and it was a back and forth struggle after that.

Until they both shattered into pieces that could not be fit together again, and it was an empty, blank, echo once more.