Lost.
That was a bit of an understatement... Three years had passed since the beginning of this nightmare. Since then, the nightmare had only grown in nature. Sepending life on a knife's edge, slipping into maddness or giving in to the monsters who had helped put all of this into motion. After getting out of there, he honestly hadn't expected the world to shift completely under him. His life was gone, very much a mess both on the outside and the inside.
Something...lingering...had followed him out.
He was aware of it from the world inside the experiments...the voice tugging at the back of his mind. He'd kept it at bay, suppressing it and blocking out the feelings that stirred with it. Healing, time, he was sure plenty would say that was what he needed. Trauma from what had happened was an understatement, the feeling that someone was following him never completely went away. What would they do if they ever caught up with him? What would he do if he ever caught up with himself...?
Most of the time the 'disturbances' were kept to times of sleep, though rare they'd become. Dreams, memories...nightmares. The faces of those he knew, the destruction of bonds he had built what felt like so long ago. Blood and beasts were not uncommon in these, even the worst beast of all...himself. Giving into the feelings, the abandonment and the pain, rage and fire burning down the forms of those he'd once called comrades...friends.
To cage something like that is impossible forever, it seeps out through the cracks and makes its presence known. Simple loss of time, an hour or two lost with no recolection, always to wake back in his bed. Over stressed and over worked with trying to piece together the mysteries and the questions unanswered after the departure of MOBIUS... Or the 'supposid' departure that is. Perhaps that was his problem, chasing ghosts. A strength as well as a weakness, he couldn't let something go once his mind was set, something did not sit well with him.
But the closer he got, the more he pushed...the more it stirred. The closer he got to them...the more old feelings rose and the pressure inside of his head threated to burst. He couldn't explain away the tendancies, the lack of feeling during times of accidental injury. More than once he'd gotten lost in a train of thought, only to discover he'd cut himself during cooking...or was clenching his hand to tightly around his pen. Separating himself from the action, from the result and the bite of pain, or the growing urge to induce it... He did not want to give in to such thoughts, such actions.
But he felt more like he was losing something important.
Chipping away at the pieces of him, MOBIUS had made sure to target what made him him, made him human. He'd thought he had remained strong, kept going and pushing forward in order to get out...to stop this all and to find them...
Yet he had yet to really confront either.
Another weaknes...bottle up what was going on inside, put on a mask and a smile, despite the darkness behind it. Putting others before himself, the 'bigger picture', this was not something uncommon for him to do. When it came to those who held meaning to him, he'd put everything else aside for them. Perhaps that was a bit of why he did this...to ensure these monsters could not harm them once more. Perhaps he'd rather shoulder the weight of it all on his own, then burden them once more with something that had already taken so much from them both...
Each deserved to be happy in their own way, find a future where they could let the past be...find new beginnings and something truly for them. But the moments of darkness were growing... He was slipping, further into a suffocating black that he was afraid he could not pull himself back from. Once the light went out, could it ever be ignited again? Was there even any way to truly get rid of what had grown inside of him? It was sparked from the intial dive, STEM and the madness within... but it had not ended there.
It had been poked and prodded during his time trapped with MOBIUS. He was sure in a sense they were trying to push him to such. Break him into the beast...try to control the monster that they had helped to create. He was not sure they could control it however...he was not sure he could control it himself either. Could it really be considered something separate from himself though? People could tell him all they pleased that he needed to fight it, that it wasn't him and it was something that could be overcome...
But could it?
People changed.
What happened throughout their lives could mold someone into beauty or something...morbid. He'd worked his whole life to be something better, something he could be proud of and someone who could do good within the world. Now however, he wasn't sure what he wanted. Who he was, beyond this desire to stop the threat behind the scenes. Everything he'd once known was gone. Those he'd once called special to him, his family, had moved on and were rebuilding. Still he was trapped, escape non existant at this point in time.
Though he was fighting for them, there was no one to stand beside him. He could not drag them into this, there was no one he could truly share this point in time with...someone to bring him out of this darkness. To heal and to rebuild, he would have to do it alone. Chanses of succeeding like such however...were slim. No one person could conqure the world alone. Even in small ways, others had to touch their lives or help. He'd been through unspeakable things with certain people...things he would never forget, which had helped him grow just as much as broken him down.
It was a mess, a disaster waiting to happen. All odds were stacked against him at the moment, yet he continued to push forward. A fool's errand, a death wish in the making to be sure...yet there was no turning back. There was no telling what would become of him, whether it would be the man or the monster that emerged on the other side. Even less was telling if anyone would be standing with him on the other side as well, or would those he'd once stood beside himself fall to the beast he could not keep inside...
Only one way to find out...