Title: Too Many
Author: stangerine88
'Verse: Heroes
Characters: Niki Sanders
Rating: PG
Warnings: Season One Spoilers
Disclaimer: I do not own Heroes, it belongs to NBC and Tim Kring.
Summary: Niki reflects on her many selves…..
Table/Prompt: Mental Illness Table/ Multiple (Dissociative) Personality Disorder
Too Many
When the thug sent by the Company suddenly turns up in pieces in her flower garden, Niki knows Jessica has broken down the locked doors in her mind again.
When she finds strange names and numbers in her coat pockets and the men-married or not- shy away from her gaze at PTA Meetings, Niki knows Jenna has slipped in with all the finesse of a dancer.
There are times, when she walks a certain way or says a certain phrase, and Micah will pause and ask timidly "Niki?" as if she'll say no- because she obviously has said no before.
People talk about looking in the mirror and seeing a stranger- someone wearing your face, claiming your identity, but you know that's not you. Niki wondered what those people would say to the idea of looking in the mirror and seeing that stranger wink at you. Talk to you. Become you.
It's the last that scares her the most and she knows it's crazy but the fear is real. The horrible, actual threat that one day Niki will loose herself to her selves as Jessica and Jenna and whoever else is lurking around up in her head slowly chip away at everything she is.
It's almost as if the gaps they cause in her mind, like a sieve, slowly drain her away until Niki knows what's left is a jumbled incomplete mess. Never a whole person but the broken, jagged pieces of many- like she's this ugly, deformed Frankenstein of a mental case; pretty on the outside but if you just look a bit closer you'll see how scarred and evil she really is. Stitches and seams everywhere until that's all there is.
Everyday, Niki knows it's worse when she blinks to find the mirror a cracked mess; when she's kicking another stranger out of her bed. It's like watching her own descension - which each blow a step back to the person she was before disappears.
And in the end, all she can do is wait.