A/N: Here it is, my first published fic ever! I hope it's not too bad :s it's probably trash but nonetheless I hope you enjoy (suffer)
Warnings: Mentions of abuse, use of drugs and alcohol, rape, mentions of suicide, suicidal thoughts, LOTS OF ANGST.
Pairings: One sided Max/Nathan
Remember reviews are love. Please review!
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Life Is Strange or any of its characters, If I did Caulscott would totally be an option in game and also I'd make a DLC from Nathan's POV.
This Isn't Everything You Are
You stare at her as she walks by.
Big blue doe like eyes.
Freckles scattered across the bridge of her nose and her cheekbones.
Messy brown bangs falling in front of her face.
That silly hipster style of hers you and Victoria make fun of that even shows on her clothes.
Maxine Caulfield is the name of the girl.
She's really nothing special.
Not compared to the rest of the girls and especially if you compare her to Rachel's blinding beauty.
Despite that you find yourself thinking she's easily the most beautiful girl you've ever seen.
But like everything you've ever truly wanted in your fucked up life, Max will always remain a far away dream.
An unattainable wish, just like every unanswered prayer you have ever offered to a God you used to believe in. After all, if there's actually a God up there he would have definitely spared you from the hell you're trapped in.
That's how you know, you tell yourself, when Max Caulfield is already a few steps ahead that you and that beautiful girl are walking different paths that shall never cross. She belongs to another world, a world full of light and hope, naïve and innocent while you walk, no, drown in darkness and hope that someday you'll be able to be on the same road as everybody else around you.
You don't need to remind yourself that's even more of an unattainable wish as you tear your eyes from her thin figure.
Curled up in the bed, frozen from the pain, aching all over, you wonder what you could have possibly done to deserve something like this.
Bandages are all over the floor from when you failed (too many times) to apply them on your wounds.
You refuse to go to a doctor. There's no need for one, you tell yourself. What for, anyway? There's nothing they-or anyone for that matter-can do for you.
So you swallow the pain like you've been doing, patch up what you can even though it's a mess and try to keep it together.
He didn't hold back this time.
You breathe deeply, cursing the man who caused this to you, cursing his ancestors and whatever descendants he might have. If the fucker ever decides to stop being a psychopath and become an actual member of society, that is.
Even thinking of his name activates your gagging reflex so you try not to, but the stinging sensation of your injuries and the constant pangs coming from your lower back won't let you.
Won't let you forget what happened just a few hours ago.
You try not to feel disgusted with yourself. Not anymore, not after everything he's done to you on a daily basis. You try. You fail.
No matter how many times he humiliates you over and over, the shame, the disgust, and the self loathing never go away. At least not completely.
There are days where you think it would be better if you just got used to it.
There are days where you think it's actually good that you haven't, you're content in the knowledge that he hasn't managed to break you.
I'm not too far gone, yet.
You whisper, staring blankly, not really seeing the images being projected on the wall.
Your cheeks feel wet.
Every single time you talk to her, pure venom comes out of your mouth.
Every single time you talk to her, insults and threats are piling out on the tip of your tongue, ready to come out.
It's like a knee jerk reaction.
You can't stop it.
You can't control it.
It just happens, like some kind of self defense mechanism.
You don't want it to be like that. You want it to be just like that.
You're a living contradiction.
The distress of having to deal with the shit of your father and that asshole has made you this way.
The only way out, the only way out that seems more plausible to you is retaliating against the world with rage. Rage at your situation, rage at your family, rage at Mark Jefferson, rage at your friends. Rage at poor unsuspecting Max. Max who is getting way too close to the truth. Max who is drawing the attention of a certain bastard.
Perhaps, in a twisted way that personality of yours will finally work for something asides from pissing people off. That's why you excuse your inability to talk to her like a normal person would telling yourself you're only doing it to keep her away. Perhaps the drugs-and the pills, those fucking pills-make you this way.
You're a fucking liar, Nathan Prescott.
And even so, you know it's just a pretty lie.
You can't remember the last time you interacted with someone out of the Vortex Club without being rude or an ass. Or just acting plainly psychotic.
Hell, you can't remember the last time you were capable of talking with Vic without a care in the world, without being afraid of saying too much or too little.
Max stares at you with cold fear and condescending hatred.
Maybe you are too far gone.
Maybe you have always been.
rachel in the dark room. Racheinthedarkroom. Rachel in the dark room. RACHELINTHEDARKROOMRACHELRACHELINTHEDARKDARKRCHELINTHEDARKROOM. RACHEL IN THE DARK ROOM. Rachelinthedarkroomrachelinthedarkroomrachelinthedarkroomrachelinthedarkroomrachelinthedarkroom.
I'm so sorry.
Your reflection in the mirror is haunting at best.
Flat stomach. Potruding ribs. Hipbones jutting out. Sickly pale skin marked with green, purple, yellow and red. No bandages this time.
Your body is like a canvas, and the bruises are the paint.
You're dangerously skinny. Apparently, the only thing working out in your life are the diet pills. So lucky.
Trembling fingers trace the wake of bitemarks just below the collarbone. You feel sick.
The diet pills were supposed to be for your sudden-yeah, right-lack of appetite, just as for making you look less 'desirable'.
Sadly, it had the opposite effect.
The more shattered you looked, the more beautiful and whatthefuckever other bullshit Jefferson spewed about, you supposedly were.
That itself should have been a reason to stop.
But the thing is, you don't feel hunger anymore. The sight of food is enough to send you throwing up in the nearest bathroom.
In conclusion, diet pills are a must. That and some part of you likes the way you look now, likes how your exterior is just as damaged as the inside.
The more reasonable part of your brain tells you, screams at you, you're only doing it so others notice. Notice how hurt you are, notice and help you pick up the pieces of your sanity.
The other side, mocks the sane one. And with reason. None of your proclaimed friends have shown an ounce of concern for your well being. Not even Vic. She just acts like everything's fine and dandy. Couldn't she see how alarmingly unstable you've become?
No, she couldn't.
Just like everybody else, she is immersed in her own reality. A reality where things like rape, abuse, murders and pain do not exist.
You remind yourself you want it to stay that way. It's for the best, your mind says.
The marks on your thighs burn ominously.
You're sweating pinballs and not exactly from the heat.
A hand pulls on your hair.
Pushes your face against the cushions.
All you see is white.
Your clothes are off in less than what it would take to scream 'rape'.
Offending hands run across your skin in a mockery of gentleness.
You've never wanted to throw up so much in your life.
His weight is on you, his clothed chest pressed against your naked back.
His voice is soft, crooning in the shell of your ear and you can't hear a thing.
You have zoned out long ago. Turned off that alarm that makes you give a fuck.
After it's done you will freak out, you will cry, you will scream and you will do every step of the self-disgust ritual.
Right now, you don't feel anything. If you were to look at yourself in a mirror, vacant blue eyes would stare right back.
You don't react when he thrusts into you without warning. You don't cry out like you did the first time. And the time after that. And the time after that.
You just embrace the familiar hurt. All you feel is the white, hot, searing pain and you don't let yourself dwell on it. You just take it.
Not even a peep comes out of your mouth.
Your mind is in a faraway place. In a place where dirty old guys don't screw teenage boys for their own sick amusement. In a place where parents care.
If you mutter a silent (useless) prayer when a trail of blood mixed with his cum slides down your legs… well, who could blame you?
"Did you rape her?"
"You are fucking EVIL, Max. No way are you asking me this. I didn't touch her and I wouldn't. You just crossed my red line you little-"
You know it's gotten worse the time you go to the cinema with Victoria.
You don't remember the movie you were going to watch even.
You just know it got worse.
Everything was fine. She bought popcorn, you bought the refreshments. You sat down.
Perfectly normal.
Until that scene.
The main character was cornered in an alley by the villain.
The guy grabbed her by the shoulder.
Smashed her agains the wall violently and when his lips met hers in a bruising kiss, swallowing her scream-
You just lost it.
You tensed up in your seat immediately. Goosebumps all over your flesh, you felt you were trapped again in that disgusting white prison. Your vision got blurry Your heartbeat picked up and you just couldn't stand to be in that place any longer.
You left Victoria with an excuse, said you were going to the bathroom before jetting out of the movie theater.
Standing alone in the middle of the empty street, taking gulps of breath, hands scratching at your clothed arms, you know you're probably having a panic attack.
The clawing fear that surrounds you, the heavy atmosphere making your chest ache; they're all sings that you are not fine.
Victoria finds you minutes later emptying your stomach's contents on the floor.
You tell her the popcorn didn't sit well with you.
"Everybody… is trying to hurt me."
"I didn't hurt Kate"
What you like the most about the drugs is the numbing of the senses they bring.
When you get high, everything else stops being important.
It's only you and the universe.
When you get high there are no problems, no appearances to maintain, no sadness, no responsibilities, no dark rooms, no demanding fathers, no Mark Jefferson and no snooping Max.
You just exist.
You just are.
It's in no way similar to the hazy stupor you get in whenever you take your prescribed meds.
You know you're being over medicated on purpose.
You stopped trying to rebel and not take the meds a long time ago. Everytime you did, father dearest would beat you up until you couldn't get up-never on the face, though, people would see then-so you gave up.
You rebel in other ways, like getting your own medication, the diet pills, the outbursts, trying to steal that stupid totem, getting bad grades. All kinds of stuff to show the world your discomfort.
The world never answers back.
Sometimes, because of that lack of response, you just want to inmerse yourself in the suffering, the angst.
So you drink.
Alcohol is quite the opposite of drugs, you know, alcohol brings out instead the emotions, raw and strong.
You drink to make your insides burn.
You want it to burn.
You take a drink for every moment wasted in this shithole.
You drink for every girl that has fallen in the webs of Jefferson
You drink for your unrequited love.
You drink for your lost innocence.
You drink knowing you are forever marked as dirty and impure.
You drink for the day you'll get out of Arcadia Bay.
And most of all you drink for the day you will finally be free.
Art, they say, is a reflection of the soul.
Art, they say, represents the author's point of view, the way the author perceives his surroundings.
You stare at the photographs you've taken all spread out on your bed (pointedly ignoring the one hidden in your drawer).
Black and white.
Death.
Loneliness.
Darkness.
You have to ask yourself.
When did I start seeing the world this way?
When did I stop seeing the world in colors?
When did I start to feel so alone?
When did I start wanting to die?
"Everybody is waiting for the storm"
"THE STORM IS COMING AND YOU'RE ALL GONNA DIE"
The doctor is scribbling something in his notepad.
You can't bring yourself to give a fuck.
You've done this thing so many times before, you can literally recite the words you are sure the man will say in a few minutes.
Nathan, you're extremely ill. From what you've told me and your records you I think you might suffer from schyzophrenia and bipolar blah blah blah hut I can't tell you with certainty what your illness is blah blah blah I'll prescribe you some useless pills blah blah...
And the guy just like you predicted delivers like he's reading from a script.
You tune out his chatter, stare at your shoes and press your lips tight.
You resist the urge to yell at the new shrink how any of his shit will not work on you because you are not fucking ill or whatever.
You resist the impulse to tell him the truth.
Tell him you were born a normal boy.
Tell him how the one who changed out of the blue was your dad.
Tell him he's the one who needs real help.
How suddenly when you turned eight he started taking out his frustrations on you.
How he started demeaning you, abusing you, taking your self esteem and confidence down to zero.
Tell him about the time he pushed you down the stairs and you dislocated your shoulder. How that was the first time you used youtube to learn how to put a dislocated limb back to its place.
Tell him how that wasn't the last time.
Tell him about how you were a perfectly normal child until your own father messed you up.
Tell him about how it got way worse when dear daddy put you under Jefferson's "guidance"
Tell him about how sexual abuse thrown in to the mix can fuck a person's mental health.
Or how watching the things he does in the dark room can shatter your soul for eternity.
Tell him how the feeling of being hopeless screws a mind.
But you resist. And you don't say a word.
Because once you made the mistake of confiding in one of these assholes and he ended up being the same as the rest.
You told him your biggest secret and he turned it into a delusion from your supposedly delirious mind
That secret made every psychiatrist regard you as a basket case.
Screw them, you think, cause if there's one thing you know it's one hundred percent legit in your life, as legit as the abuse from your father is the fact that you have visions.
Since you were able to remember you've always seen the same scene play out whenever you close your eyes . At first you thought it was just dream but soon changed your mind when it became a recurring thing, always the same., every single day of the week.
Arcadia Bay. A storm. The biggest tornado you had ever seen. And it always felt so real:the rain prickling your skin, the wind blowing your hair, the fear buzzing in the air. It couldn't be just your imagination.
Of course, fucking doctors didn't think the same.
Now,you're prescribed with whatever and dad forces you to take an exaggerate amount of pills just so he can push you around while you're out of it.
The guy in front of you does exactly what you expect.
You walk out of his office feeling like you've been reliving the same shitty day for a really long time
You can't wait for the storm to wipe out Arcadia Bay.
You're in your room, staring at the ceiling hoping it will give you a revelation of some sort.
The gun in your hand feels heavy.
Kate Marsh tried to commit suicide today. You still remember the image of the girl standing on the rooftop, ready to die, ready to leave this world. And Max, beautiful, brave Max who managed to save her.
You raise the gun, press it againt your temple.
Your lip trembles.
It's not fair. It's not fair how a side of you was horrified, guilty for what was happening while a much larger part of you ached for a camera, longing, wanting to preserve that moment forever. A part of you thought it was beautiful, how desperate she was to off herself. You found beauty in that and you hate yourself for it.
Self-hatred consumes you.
The gun presses harder and you wince.
That is when the thought strikes you.
What if I could put an end to this nightmare?
You actually consider it.
Your whole body shakes with tremors.
How easy it would be...
You throw the gun across the room, curl up in a ball and you finally let go. Your sobs are the only noise filling the air.
That night you dream of jumping off rooftops, and what would have happened if you had been brave enough to pull the trigger.
"Everybody hates me"
A/N: *whispers* review pleaseee