One Letter Stand
A/N: Oh, geez. I'm sorry for disappearing, guys. I was grounded. Sorry. Here's N, and hopefully we'll be running smoothly from here on out.
On a lighter note! I'm breaking the humor trend! (Actually, I guess that's not any lighter.) I tried to get a funny way to write Neurosis and couldn't come up with one, so I tried making it darker. And here's the result.
Disclaimer: Um… I like pancakes? What am I talking about, that's not a question. I LIKE PANCAKES. There, better. I give this disclaimer my stamp of approval.
N is for: Neurosis
By Tassel630
Foolishness. Idiocy, some voice seemed to hiss in my ear. Stupid girl, to tell him! Never reveal your weaknesses!
"It's Fang," I muttered to myself out loud. "It's not like I – that's not a weakness. Turning into an Eraser – not me. It's something they're doing to me."
Stupid, stupid, the menace in the corner of my mind snapped. They could be tracking him, he could be bugged!
"So?" I challenged the voice out loud. I wondered if this was some new horror, another voice in my head that would try to turn me against the Flock. But the menacing whisper was sounding more and more like my own paranoia.
What if something terrible happens, and I know something he doesn't, and I can't tell him and I'm an Eraser and he attacks me? What if I hurt someone? What if –
"Shut it," I told myself, talking out loud again like a freak. What the hell, I was a freak. I rolled over and pulled my backpack, a makeshift pillow, over my heard as though that would silence my own fear. I was sounding less paranoid now. Less paranoid – more realistic. What if something actually happened?
What if I'm the bug? What if they're hearing everything we're saying, following us everywhere? Can they hear inside my mind? The Voice can, oh God, the Voice –
They're following us, everywhere, we'll never get away, we can't, and they know everything, everything –
And Angel was there, angelic and innocent. I leapt toward her, but a hand held me back. Fang beckoned solemnly, so I stepped toward him. The world melted – we were alone, and he motioned me down an ally, backing in front of me so that his subtly panicked eyes never left mine. And then his face split somehow, and he wasn't afraid anymore, he smiled. His mouth was filled with teeth, huge, shark-like, wicked incisors, his grin too wide for his face and his teeth too many for his grin.
I tried to spin on the spot and run, but it was like jelly around me, moving in slow motion, terror flying against the boundaries of my too-slow body. My wings dragged uselessly on the ground behind me, and he dropped from nowhere in front of me, and I seemed to glimpse Ari snarling in his face. His foot crashed onto my useless, dragging wing, and I twisted in pain, falling at his feet, and the data stream flew before my eyes, strings of numbers and blueprint sketches and photographs and words, meaningless words, and more numbers, skimmed across my face contorted into a silent scream and seemed to cram themselves into my mouth, tearing at my face, stuffing themselves into my head until it exploded –
I thrashed free from my blanket and threw myself at a wide-eyed Fang, who was on watch and tending the remaining coals of our fire, and I clung to his shirt and bit my lip against a scream. There was no sound except crickets and the low breathing of the others, strewn about the small clearing. I pressed my face into his shoulder and his arm curled uncertainly around me.
He said nothing while I tried to steady myself, my deep, shuddering breaths disturbing the calm. Finally he whispered, "Bad dream?"
I shivered. "I'm going mad, Fang," I whispered to his shirt. "I can't do this. I can't take it. My brain is unraveling."
He pulled my hands away from his shirt and shifted me so that I sat awkwardly next to him while he still held me against his chest with one arm. I gazed miserably at the fire.
"We can do this," he whispered to the top of my head. "We haven't been attacked in four days now. We'll survive, the six of us. We'll – "
"No, you don't understand!" I cried, turning my face to look up at him. "I can't do it, I can't – They'll find – I'm going mad!" I said again. "I'm going mad, and I can't – "
"Shh," he muttered, and I realized my voice had been rising with hysteria. "We'll be fine. We'll survive this, we always do. Together. And you are not going mad." The firelight shone in his eyes. "We take care of each other. We'll be fine. You'll be fine. And you are not going mad." His eyes flashed. "I won't let you."
And he said it with such conviction that I believed him.
A/N: I feel better now. One should always write angst when feeling angsty. Though this wasn't exactly angst… whatever.
Trivia fact! Neurosis is the old name for Anxiety Disorders. Hence the paranoia here.
And up next (hopefully soon… sorry again!) with O is for Offensive is LostInTheDarkVoid!
…I should probably say something to close now, eh? Um. See you guys later.
I am so witty.