And here we have some more dark!JC...aka what I live for. As usual this feels unfinished, but whatever, I tried.
And now all your love will be exorcised
And we will find you saints to be canonized.
-Seven Devils
There were nightmares and then there were nightmares.
For three nights straight, he'd been plagued with them. The only way to evade them was to lay awake as an insomniac might, snapping himself to attention if his eyelids so much as shut a centimeter. But the lack of rest was taking a serious toll on him. There was only so much he could handle.
The days wore on and he grew less patient. He snapped at his friends, was extremely caustic towards Cindy (more so than usual), and worked himself to the bone to distract himself from the fatigue. As it got worse and worse, he finally succumbed to slumber while drawing blueprints in the lab on a hazy afternoon. Exhausted, he yielded to the horrific pang of the night terrors...
As it so happened, Cindy was often the star of these dreams.
Cindy wrapped in a cloak, her pale skin glowing, her serpent like eyes sparkling a mean hue of emerald. There was an ethereal beauty to her...something untouchable. Her golden hair, stick straight and long as ever, draped down her back elegantly; held back only by a pair of crossing pins. Her nose was sharper, her lips darker, her figure fuller.
The mere sight of her sent him into an emotional frenzy. Her gaze pierced him mercilessly, and there seemed to be no escape. The absolutely dreadful thing was that he wasn't sure he wanted to escape, as scary as she looked. Like a siren, she beckoned him, tempted him towards her, and he had no choice but to give in.
He drew closer against his better judgement, noting the self satisfied smirk on her face.
She faced him and tipped his chin upwards with a single manicured nail.
"What's the matter, Neutron? Trying to steer clear of me?" Her usual barking tone had evolved into some kind of sultry hellscape of its own, he noted.
Like that was even possible.
He didn't say anything, and he didn't push her away as he might have one time or another. Now- everything was different now.
"What are you doing?" She sneered. She finally let go of her one hand hold on him.
"I don't know anymore." He admitted. "I wish I did."
She let out a laugh that sent a shiver of chills down his spine.
"No more tin rockets, boy genius? No more play time in the lab?"
"I'm not a toy maker, Vortex." He puffed his chest in indignation. He still had a sliver of pride left.
"Funny, I seem to recall you were at one point." She arched her eyebrows and smiled. "A little bit of fun-demonium is a given with you running around Retroville."
"What do you want from me, Cindy?" He grew exasperated by the minute.
"You tell me what else I could possibly want." She sniggered and gestured around her as the landscape grew frighteningly dark.
The palette of colors that gave his life its beauty and structure had disappeared. As had every trace of his intellect. No inventions. No metal, no hammer, no circuits. No Goddard. Nothing but raving desperation.
"Without your giant head, you're just like the rest of us." She spat. "How does it feel to be normal?"
He reached out to touch her hand but she pulled back in disgust.
"Cindy-please-"
Scenes of a life spent in mediocrity flashed before him. He was sitting at Cindy's desk, test after unsatisfactory test in a heap in front of him, eyes red from the tears she'd cried each night as her mother berated her over her inability to beat a wunderkind. And then Carl trudging along, hurt on each new expedition, Sheen constantly electrocuted and called an idiot.
As soon as they'd come, the images dissipated into thin air.
"Why?" It was all he could say not to fall to his feet.
"I want to see you suffer averageness."
"Do you really hate me that much?"
"If only I could merely hate you." She shook her head, a twinge of sadness making its way into her tone. "No I-loathe you. Getting by on your luck of the draw brilliance while the rest of us abide our normalcy like a curse. "
He woke up in a cold sweat. That she demon would ruin his life if he let her. She would take everything he held dear and burn it to ashes. It wasn't safe to love her, it just wasn't. She was jealous of him, that much had always been clear. There was no doubt that one day she would drag his heart through a pulverizer, smoke him out. She already had him good, and there was hardly anything he could do to stop himself from engaging in their usual banter. There was a magnetic pull drawing him to her- like a moth to flame.
Later, on his way to school, he saw her sporting her customary swishy ponytail. When she noticed him she did a double take.
"Whoa there, Hyde. What's wrong with you?"
"None of your concern." He remarked snidely, pushing past her.
She was persistent. "Did it finally happen? You spent so much time holed up in that lab that you turned into a ghost? Because you look like one."
"Lay off, Cindy."
"What's your problem, Freaktron?"
He stared at her for a cold, hard minute.
"You are." He retreated leaving her with a bewildered expression frozen on her face.
They can keep me out
'Til I tear the walls
'Til I save your heart
And to take your soul
For what has been done
Cannot be undone.