tw: this chapter contains depictions of severe physical and sexual abuse, mentions of suicide, themes of mental instability, substance abuse, forced prostitution and patricide. do be conscious of these warnings.
i. envy
Go ahead and mold me, bought me and they sold me - I was smiling upside down.
Now I'm all used up, ready for my close up; am I pretty underground?
Vionei Achlys - District Four
...
When Vionei was a child, his mother would take him down the cliffs at the edge of the wharf to watch the tumbling of the ocean waves.
He can remember walking with her along the beach, little hand secured within her big one, as they wandered under the sun, not a care in the world beyond the present, here-and-now-and-everything's-okay. They hadn't had much then but their broken hovel – the tent in the middle of Sector Sixteen, made from waterlogged blankets and sticks they'd pulled from the mud, hardly big enough to house his father, let alone a family of four. Still, a collapsing home was better than no home at all…
Or, at least, that's what his mother would have said.
Vionei supposes he can't fault her. Even the tent was better than what they'd had in the later days, after Aisha was born and the Peacekeepers ran them out, left them to walk on bloody feet down cobbled streets, too-hot sun beating down on their backs. He and Isosei had been four years, then, and they'd already been taught to beg because that was the only way they knew to put food on the table… the only way to buy the morphling that their father so desperately craved.
Mom had been there, for awhile. Trying her hardest to make ends meet, looking after the three of them so she could wipe away their tears and remind them they were cherished, even when it was untrue. She'd tried to keep them in pretty places… let them sleep on the same beach where she took her walks, keeping guard over them at night while Zanren slipped off to the gambling dens, looking, as always for an opportunity to make it rich.
(The old bastard was a loser even then.
He has never been anything but.)
They got a house after a few years. Kana paid the bills to rent the space, but even she couldn't keep the lights on in their ramshackle tenement, and eventually the strain became too much. He was the one that found her, hanging from the ceiling by her fucking neck, three feet off the ground and dead as a fucking doornail, the traces of melancholy still clinging to her flesh… darkening her eyes, hollowing her mouth…
His father had been sad for maybe a day. Then rage and greed replaced the grief, and Vionei was the one he decided to drown.
Addiction.
Prostitution.
Endless waves of endless rapacity.
He was ten when he started shoplifting.
Eleven when he first got whored out.
Thirteen when he started drinking, and fifteen when he decided to dabble in other shit, because the higher he was, the easier it became to sleep at night, even though he was never anywhere for more than a short period of time.
He didn't kill until he was seventeen, and by then he'd earned the right to murder. Lost everything that made him human and then lost some more, which is why all the pain no longer hurt him, because Vionei had forgotten how to feel.
(No, that's a lie.
He feels more than he could ever say,
more than he can ever show
because his body is a mess
and his mind is worse.
It is not the absence of feeling
that ruined Vionei Achlys,
but a surplus of it,
emotion in extremis
bold enough to fracture
not simply his head
but also his heart.)
He was seventeen when he left, too.
Left his sister with a box of money, the only fortune he had ever gotten from the array of abuses he was made to endure.
Left his brother to rot in prison, after saddling him with knowledge of their father's body and fleeing before the Peacekeepers came to call.
(Who cares
if he tipped them off?
Isosei will be out
in a couple years,
and two years
is much less than six.
Aisha's pregnancy
was her own damn fault;
he left her enough contacts
that she can handle it –
the responsibilities
of being a mother
because she's kind,
like their Mom was,
and Kana wasn't that much older.
The only one that Vionei needs is himself.
He's the one that the world let suffer,
the one that everyone tried to ignore,
hoping that eventually
he would stop screaming,
stop trying to make himself heard.
He is the one
that was most easily broken,
even if
he doesn't want
to actually go
and fucking admit it.)
In the end, it didn't really matter what anyone else thought. District Four can call him a killer, mark him as a slut and a junkie and a mirthless madman, but he's worth more than any of them.
He's their fucking green-eyed monster:
the incarnation of envy
who covets all
that others have.
And one day, Four will pay for what it's done to him.
(Just
like
his
faithless
father.)
Vionei is good at putting on an act.
So good, in fact, that he sometimes forgets how to exist without it. There's identity to be found within his makeup, autonomy nestled into the honeyed words he uses to ply potential clients out of bars, make them think he's cute and flirty and interested, even when he's anything but. He may not want to be a whore, but at least being a whore makes him something, when otherwise he'd be left to drift in an endless abyss, bereft of personality entirely.
(It's not his fault he's stuck here;
left to cry and beg and run on nothing,
given away as a toy
made a slave and a slut and a punching bag
all for the sake of another's greed –
greed, fucking greed, his father has it in spades
and he could have had a family
but he decided to ruin it,
just like he ruins everything.)
(Vionei ruins everything.)
(Always has, always will, and isn't that why he's here?
Because everyone that knows him
knows he's fucking worthless,
knows he's beyond help and beyond saving
beyond loving because his love is glass,
twisted, broken shards
that can cut and maim and even kill under the right circumstances?)
After awhile, it becomes easier to tolerate the abuses. He learns tricks to cut himself away from his body, how to tamp his feelings down inside his fractured mind and swallow the words that are in his throat. His value is contingent upon the satisfaction of his father's betters, and they don't like to hear him speak. He's not a human in the eyes of his society, he's an object - a doll, a toy, a thing to be played with and discarded once he's lost his ability to be amusing.
(Maybe that should hurt him, but it doesn't. Nothing does.
Not the objects shoved into his holes, forcing his body to contort into a tool to please whatever fills it.
Not the crates that he's forced to haul around on the daily without recompense or reward, all the while enduring the spewing venom and insults from his self-proclaimed overseers.
Not the drugs that are injected into his veins, making his mind slip away into something hazy and distant and warm, pleasant enough that he can forget about whips cutting into his back and knives carving marks into his legs.
Not the way his siblings frown when they see him, wearing pity in their eyes as they throw disingenuous condolences at his back.)
(They don't know him. They don't see him.)
(His father sells him off for weeks at a time, and tells the others that he ran away, because it's the easiest excuse.
Vionei's always been troubled, always been a mistake, a child that had no value or purpose -
not like his golden boy brother or angelic baby sister.
They're beautiful and he's disgusting,
the scum of the fucking earth
born and raised to be an animal,
without a voice
or mind
or existence to call his own.)
(He has no personhood. He's a slave -
to his father's addiction,
to his own weakness,
to the cruelty of others who just want
a dog to kick around
because they like to feel they've got power,
and what is power but control
found by stepping on the necks of those that can't fight back?)
He hates the way his family looks at him. Hates the way his father always says, in that smarmy fucking tone of his, "well, well, look who came crawling home?" and laughs at the bruises coloring his throat like his life is a godsdamned joke.
He hates how his sister follows him around the house, trying to make small talk like it'll repair the rifts between them, even though she has no idea what to say and hasn't for fucking years now, so self-absorbed and naive as she is to the wicked ways of the world. He hates how his brother pretends to care, stopping him in the hallway when he inevitably tries to flee, one hand on his arm and that sadness in his eyes, so potent it makes Vionei want to scream.
"Are you okay?" He asks, time after time after fucking time, and what choice does Vionei have but to snap, ripping away his arm and shoving Isosei aside, caustic words spilling from his lips as he tries to contain his hatred.
"Do I fucking look okay?"
"I… I just wanted to –"
"What, come offer to patch me up like the goody-two-shoes you are, all so you can give yourself a pat on the back for being the helpful one? Don't pretend you give a damn about where I've been or what I've been through, I don't mean shit to you and you bloody well know it!"
"... Nei, I was only trying to -"
"What? What's your problem, Sei? Are you afraid to look at my scars? Do you think I'm disgusting? That's it, right, you think you're too good for me now that I'm 'damaged goods'?"
"Vionei, no! Of course not, you're my –"
"Then don't you look at me with that fucking pity, look at me like I'm still a person!"
Look at me like you used to, before I was this.
I'm still your brother.
I'm still a fucking person!
...
...
Vionei wishes he could say that dismissal didn't sting.
He wishes he could say that everything he's been, everything he is, doesn't matter and is fucking fine, because it's easier to lie than it is to accept the truth. When he's stuck in somebody's bedroom, drugged up out of his mind on something that'll make him compliant, he doesn't have the mind to care about what's happening, or to do anything beyond play the part he's been given. Honestly, it's simpler that way; simpler to just lie back and think of the Capitol, keep his eyes closed, keep his mouth shut, say only the words that have been scripted for him by others' hands because so long as he's not himself, all of the trauma becomes bearable.
(That's part of the reason he hates going home;
part of the reason he would rather avoid
a place where he is known and once felt loved,
cherished by a woman that was too much of a coward
to stick around for her children –
treated like a king by his softer twin,
who would follow him around as a child,
splashing in puddles and making statues out of sand.
Even baby Aisha had looked up to him,
seen him as a role model - a protector, a brother,
not the one in need of saving, but the one who could be strong,
who carried the weight after Kana died
and bore Zanren's insults in silence to spare his siblings the pain.)
(He doesn't know when he started to hate them, he just knows that he does,
that everything and anything he may have been was dismantled piece by piece, hung out on a line to dry
and eventually decay, the way Vionei wishes his body would.
He hates feeling trapped in the confines of his own skin.
He hates being seen as the pathetic wretch that he is,
desperate, damnable, demanding veneration
when the only place he's ever belonged is in the fucking dirt -
on his knees in the muck and grime of Four's alleys
or on his back in a stranger's bed,
wasted, groveling, and
beautiful.)
He doesn't mind being a slut. Some people might even say that he likes it, for his body certainly responds to the pain and the ache and the stimulation, regardless of whether or not he means to. Getting showered with drugs and drink is simply an added bonus on top of a preexisting pleasure. He's filthy, disgusting, debauchery at its fucking finest -
(And he hates it.)
As Vionei sits before the vanity in his sister's bedroom, drawing lines of back around his dead eyes, he forces a smile to his lips.
"I'm beautiful," he says, glad for once that the house is silent - that the only creature around to hear him speak is his father, who neither listens nor cares for what words might leave his lips. "I'm beautiful and I deserve better. I deserve money, I deserve power. I deserve validation."
His black-stained lips stay fixed in place, an implacable expression of false brevity. It doesn't matter if Vionei doesn't believe the words that he's saying - nobody else is able to tell him what he needs to hear, so he might as well do it himself.
He may not be worthy of anything, but he is worth more than nothing.
He is. He has to be.
(The fact of the matter is this: nobody cares what he has to say. Nobody cares what he thinks or what he wants, so long as they can get their money's worth, because isn't that what really matters? Vionei could die in Four's backwater ditches and the world wouldn't even realize he was gone. His whole life has been nothing more than one crapshoot after another, suicides and gambling and drink and drugs, sex lies filth transience and all the tumult in between.)
(The fact of the matter is Vionei Achlys is tired of being treated like he's nothing. He's tired of coming in second in every aspect of his life - being the lesser twin, the lesser child, the lesser person, a cheap-ass whore with a broken body, secondhand clothes and makeup dug out of the trash, fed less, washed less, loved less, meant for less. Unable to continue with his education, barring the work he made for himself – cast out of every space he entered, his existence nothing more than a temporary delight for those who saw him as desirable. Untrained, though his siblings both got slots at the Academy. Unemployed, because everything of value he earned went straight into another person's pockets, and all he got from selling his own autonomy was another insult, another beating, another bloody cage where he could be sequestered away from the people that had actual personhood, like a blight that would ruin anybody who so much as looked at him.)
He stands to his feet, pushes the chair back, and turns toward the door.
There's no point in sticking around in a place where he isn't wanted. He has work to do.
(He has a future to secure.)
The bar's rarely busy this time of night.
It's a relief, as far as Vionei's concerned - the less patrons there are, the less likely it is that he'll get saddled with work. And the less work he has to put up with, the sooner he can get home.
There's nothing more he wants than to just collapse into the embrace of his bed, rest his aching body for a few hours before he has to come out again tomorrow night. He's still bleeding from the last person that had him, cuts lining his spine all the way down to his ass and bruises ringing the thin flesh of his shoulders. The marks she left on his skin are sore with the reminder of closed fists and unwieldy metal, not to mention wandering hands that he couldn't deny even if he tried.
His eyes begin to sting. Bile wells in the back of his throat, surging against his uvula and curdling his tongue with acid. Fuck her, he thinks, his aching back and tense shoulders stinging from the welts he knows must line them. Though Vionei has come to expect pain with his line of work, he cannot help but resent his customers for perpetuating it, for daring to mar his once-beautiful skin with scars he neither wanted nor asked for. Fuck her, fuck him, fuck them all, I never wanted this. I never wanted to -
Vionei wraps his own arms around his body, suppressing a shiver. It doesn't matter what he wants; objects like him don't get a say in how they're used. He should be grateful people are even willing to pay for his services, given how utterly worthless his body is.
(Not that he's seeing a dime of that money. Even though it's his body getting fucked, his skin that's being bruised and bled, Vionei's never gotten a cent of profit from what he's owed. He's not the one holding the leash.)
His eyes flit back toward a table, set into the wall in a small alcove sequestered from prying eyes. Any longer spent on Zanren's errand, and he might start to think something's up.
Vionei bites his lip. If there's one thing he doesn't need tonight, it's another beating. Best get the drinks before he incites any more of the bastard's ire.
Slowly, he walks over toward the bar counter, ever mindful of the eyes that seem to be fixed on his back, still raw and bloody beneath the mesh of his shirt. He wonders if Zanren likes what he sees, his lithe frame and bloodied skin, his split lip and messy hair. The bastard's never tried to have a go at Vionei himself - in fact, the only time his father's ever touched him were during fits of anger, his rage brought on by a mixture of drugs and terrible luck - but Vionei's almost certain he gets a kick out of watching him suffer.
Disgusting pig. To think he has the gall to call himself a father.
Vionei has to stifle a laugh. He's not a father.
(In fact, the thought of Zanren Achlys acting in any sort of paternal manner is as hysterical as it is nauseating.)
The bartender eyes him as he saunters up to her station, leaning forward in a manner that Vionei's well aware is provocative. After a moment, he cocks his head to the side and greets the attention with a playful smile. Coy. Charming. Coquettish.
The bartender smirks and shakes her head. Vionei has to actively keep himself from seething at the rejection. It's not personal. He's just playing a part - acting like a slut because that's what he's supposed to do, what he's supposed to be, it doesn't matter what he feels or wants, this is what he is, so he better stop whining and deal with it.
His fingers curl into the flesh of his palm, biting deep into the skin. Hard enough to draw blood. Hard enough to hurt, and that's what really matters, because pain makes his head clear, keeps him…
Stable?
No. Sane.
"Shady guy with the red shirt wants a drink. Usual, says to put it on his tab." Vionei braces one elbow on the counter, props his chin up on his hand and keeps right on smiling like a sycophant. "You look stressed. Bad night? Anything I can do you for?"
"Save it, kid," the bartender huffs, but there's amusement on her face, Vionei can see it. She goes over to knock something that's on tap into a shiny glass, tosses a dash of tonic in, a spritz of this, a spritz of that. Vionei hums and straightens himself up, pressing his lips together as the bottom of the glass hits the counter.
"Thanks," he says because he's supposed to, because that's what people do. "You're a gem."
He pulls back, grabbing for his father's daily dose of poison just like he's supposed to, knowing it's best not to wait too long before getting back. Only, there's a complication - a stranger's arm bracketing his waist, not moving even as he starts to turn around, throwing the (ugly) man a withering glare from over his shoulder.
"Can I help you?" Vionei doesn't even bother to cover up his annoyance.
"Maybe." The bastard's got an arrogant voice. Probably one of the entitled pricks Zanren likes to play cards with. Just my luck.
Vionei wouldn't be shocked if his dear old Dad lost it big again. It's happened so many times he doesn't even bother keeping track. And the end result's always the same; Zanren gambles, he loses, he tosses away his money, and he decides to try and offer the winner an alternative prize. Because naturally he's too much of a troglodyte to just keep away from the poker table in the first place.
Disgusting.
"You Zanren's boy?" Bastard asks, and Vionei shrugs one shoulder, neither confirming or denying the question. His assailant just leers, like he'd expected nothing different. He shifts forward, and Vionei can feel his breath on his ear.
"The wannabe Career? Or the whore?"
Vionei's eyes wander to his father-that's-not-a-father, casually watching from his little hideout across the room. He grits his teeth, trying to ignore the way Bastard's groin has been rudely shoved up against him, the way the hand that was blocking his path out is now touching him, close enough to make his skin crawl even as it heats. There isn't any question which son he is, not really; Zanren never brings Isosei to the bar, not since he got his fancy sailing job down at the harbor. When he goes out drinking, it's Vionei he drags with him. Not Isosei, not Aisha. Not poor, dead Kana, the despondent wife who's got to be turning in her grave every time her name gets invoked.
(And it's a lot. A hell of a lot.)
(Because even in death, Mom can't have any peace. Zanren's still cursing at her, blaming her for all the bullshit that's only ever been his fault, his problem. And Vionei hates him for that, hates everything about him, but hates that the most, that the demented douchenozzle he calls a father can't take responsibility for anything, won't do fucking anything, because he's a waste of space, a waste of air, a waste of skin, he deserves to die and the world would thank Vionei if he did it, because some people are just meant to rot, people like Zanren, people like -)
(... you?)
Vionei forces himself to smile. Bastard's still there, still touching him, waiting for the answer to a question he already knows.
"What do you think?" He asks simply, spinning around and looking the john straight in the eye, refusing to just acquiesce to the humiliation he's sure the inquiry was meant to invoke.
Surprise crosses Bastard's face, but only for a second. He settles his hands on a set of slim hips, the grip of his fingers blazing trails of white-hot fury through Vionei's veins.
"You're a feisty thing, aren't you?" He shakes his head. "Heh. Guess I shouldn't be too shocked - can't expect a drowner bitch to have any manners."
"What do you want?" Vionei asks again, more snappish, more bitter. There's coldness in his chest, a hollow sensation that's creeping up towards his head, leaving him desperate to disappear, desperate to dissociate.
(I don't want this.)
(I don't want…)
"Ooh. Touchy." If Bastard can sense his ire, he doesn't show it. "So, how much?"
It's a question he's been asked a dozen times, but it never feels any less demeaning. Vionei wets his lips, presses up against his client's body, his father's drink momentarily forgotten. This is what Zanren wants him to do, anyway, so why would he be mad?
"Fifteen for my mouth," he pauses, shooting a furtive glance to the bartender, cleaning glasses a few feet away from them, doing her best to turn a blind eye to whatever transaction she probably knows is occurring.
"And for the other end?" The john presses, and Vionei orders himself to stop shaking, just stop shaking, it's fine, this is nothing new, just go with it.
"Thirty." The word is decisive.
Just not decisive enough.
"Is that a price hike?" Bastard looks faintly amused, and he can't help but bristle. "Knowing your old man, I'm not sure your trash ass is worth that much…"
"Thirty, and that's not negotiable."
His sharp tone seems to catch the bartender's attention, because before Bastard can try to mock him again, a gruff voice is saying sternly: "Take your business outside, Hurley."
There's a pause as Vionei glances back, only to find the aforementioned barkeep shaking her head at his look. She's not interested in helping. She just doesn't want a scene.
"You too, Achlys," she says, and there's something strangely sad in her voice, something that sounds like pity.
Vionei doesn't want pity.
(He wants an out.)
Fuck you too, he thinks, but doesn't speak as Bastard wraps an arm around his waist and pulls him toward the door, dragging him out into a dim-lit alley that reeks of smoke and unwanted sex. He lets the man press him back against the wall, lets rough hands strip him of his shorts and hike up his legs, not managing to get anything past his lips beyond a hoarse "money first-" before there's fingers touching at his body, trying to pry him open, trying to make him beg.
"Money after," his client responds, smashing their faces together.
(Vionei doesn't like kissing, doesn't like anything near his mouth. Five years in, the scars on his lips still hurt from where the gag cut into them, so much that he can hardly bear to touch them without screaming. But even though he doesn't like to kiss, to choke on the pressure of somebody else's tongue, swapping spit with his own in a way that's got nothing to do with love, he's glad for it now. He's too emotional. Too angry and hurt and vulnerable, wanting his father dead, wanting himself dead, and why is it me that has to do this, why am I the only one who has to suffer, why am I such a worthless fucking whore, why am I such a disgusting bitch, why why why why why…)
He lets the bastard kiss him all the way through that first awful thrust, the burn of it tearing him open, and closes his eyes, doing his best to just deal with it, enjoy it like he knows he ought to.
(this is nothing compared to what it could be nothing like what you deserve they hurt you and you should be thanking them for it you're trash you're nothing you're trash you're pathetic you deserve this you deserve to be hurt you deserve to be used like the disgusting slut you are did you ever think that you had value, Vionei, you're a wretch born to a clan of wretches and you deserve to suffer you useless little…)
At least this way, nobody can hear him cry.
Zanren dies on the day of his seventeenth birthday, and all Vionei can feel is giddy.
It's mania, he knows that much - mania from being rid of the worst part of his life, his father-that-wasn't-a-father who cut the goodness from his heart and made him into a villain – something for which Vionei is oddly grateful, because villains don't have to live restricted by morality, and the title gives him right to be as selfish as he wants.
(It's nice not to care about the ending of a life. Just as it's nice not to get bogged down by sympathy for his pathetic little siblings, who will probably grieve their own loss before they grieve Zanren.)
(... if there's one positive thing that Vionei can say about Ai and Sei, it's that they never loved their wretched father.)
Selfishness is in his blood, has been since his birth. Him and Isosei and Aisha and Kana… not to mention the deadweight seizing underneath his feet.
"Not so tough now, are you, old man?"
His foot jams into Zanren's side, nudging carelessly against his ribs. The body doesn't roll, just flops around like a fish, which Vionei thinks is a perfect look for it.
… good fucking riddance.
The saddest part, Vionei thinks, is that the old fuck hadn't even noticed the broken seal on the bottle when he poured his glass –
Didn't notice the smell of almonds hidden beneath the cap.
Didn't taste the arsenic burning on his lips, obscured as it was by the taste of ageless wine, bitter and strong as it washed down his throat.
He didn't even realize he was dying until the blood started bubbling in his throat, and he looked up with wild eyes to see his firstborn, worthless son, grinning like a demon with the tainted bottle still in his hands.
Well, he considers, looking down at Zanren's rotten body, laying rigid on a red-stained ground, I guess it doesn't really matter how pathetic the death was. Daddy Dearest is finally getting what he deserves –
A chance to waste away in an oblong box. Gods.
(I hope the maggots take their time to carve out his insides and fester.)
The wine feels strange against the soles of his feet, slick and wet and cool against his skin. He can feel traces of it sticking, pruning his pale skin for no reason more than prolonged exposure, and yet he doesn't bother to pull back from it, even as he reaches down to cup his father's goblet and lift it from the mess.
Wine, blood. It's funny how they look so similar. Both red, both spilt and sickly. If he couldn't smell the fermentation, would he be able to tell the difference?
Zanren was a drinker, but liquor is far from the only vice he kept. It wouldn't be farfetched to imagine him drowning in a pool of his own blood… making a mess of things in death, just as he had in life. No matter what he did, he was always a fuck-up. Always a disgusting, vile piece of shit, making promises he couldn't keep and betting money he didn't have, using his own family for fucking collateral like he thought he had the right—
(He can still feel his last client on top of him, straddling his thighs, trailing long nails down and into old scars, opening his skin up so beautifully it'd been hard to stand. Their fingers had found his back, tore open the recent lash marks from a flogging weeks ago, and Vionei couldn't take it, the way they kissed him and pushed their fingers into his cuts, cooing in his ear like he was fucking property, a body made just for the sake of being used.)
(Why? Vionei thinks as he sets the spilt glass back atop the nightstand,
the scent of poison pungent across the spit-stained rim.
Why did you hurt me? Why did you make me? Why, if your only use for me was to –)
"I hope you know… I've always hated you," he hisses, looking into his father's cold, black eyes, anger bubbling up through his throat and spilling loose in the form of a sob. "Even when I was a child, I knew you were sick. The things you said to me… what you did to Mom, let her fucking kill herself… hooks and sails, but you've always been a piece of shit."
He shakes his head, feeling oddly foolish.
"If I was smart, I'd have done this sooner. Killed you and kept the spoils. Watched you die and let you rot. It's no less than you deserve you venomous fucking toad."
I HATE YOU
I HATE YOU
I HATE YOU
I HATE YOU!
He wraps his arms around his torso as his legs finally give, and he falls unceremoniously down on his side, the chill of the cement floor almost unbearable against his ashen legs. Though his body is clean and free of blood, he cannot help but feel smothered, crimson streaks tattooed upon his skin, embedded in his lungs and every inch of his atrophied muscles. The breaths he takes are labored, made worse by the ache inside his heaving chest.
He feels… empty.
(No, not empty.
Empty implies a loss
that can be replaced,
and Vionei does not possess
enough heart to imagine
what he is
can ever be fixed.
He is not empty,
despite the way his body gapes,
open and sick with endless want;
enmity and envy,
two halves of a whole -
he's hollow and he covets,
yearns for the childhood he was denied.
The life that his father stole.
The body that was sold for profit.
It isn't his -
it never has been.)
Vionei's fist slams into the floor, once, twice, thrice again – he can feel his knuckles busting open, can smell the acrid tang of bile creeping up his throat, the urge to vomit growing stronger every time he looks at Zanren's hideous fucking face.
(He's losing it. His mind, his heart; doesn't matter what he calls it, but there is an it, and it's gone, crushed beneath a mass of probing hands and writing bodies and feelings he can scarcely name. Vionei Achlys is dead, and in his place there stands a monster, barely able to look at the people around him without thinking of heads cut from their necks, guts spilling out of their stomachs, bodies mutilated with limbs severed and nailed to the walls of his bedroom—)
He should be happy the bastard's dead. Happy he's good and gone, because gone means that he's free from paying off debts, free from being caged and collared and tossed around like chattel. Isosei and Aisha be damned, Vionei has found his liberation, and no matter what his siblings wish, he refuses to bind himself to the threat of consequence.
Six years he's spent in bondage.
Six years he's spent as a slut, a masochistic punching bag hung out to dry for his father's mistakes, made to be beaten and punched and cut and assaulted, ruined, sodomized, raped and he's sick of it, he's sick of everything, it could've been any of them but his father chose him, sold him off and forced him to debase himself, fuck him fuck them fuck it ALL I deserved better
I deserved reverence, respect and adoration
I deserved everything (!)
and it shouldn't have happened, it shouldn't have been like this!
(nothing you're nothing have nothing need nothing
broken worthless useless aimless
disgusting sickly piece of shit
loathsome monster
fucking whore
never should've been here
doesn't deserve to live
so pitiful even your family couldn't love you
even your clients didn't want you
who could ever desire damaged goods -
damaged goods, that's all you are
all you have been all you will be
unlovable undesirable valueless and BROKEN)
"No."
"No, stop it."
"Stop it."
"Stop. Talking. I said I'm fine, I'm fucking fine–"
"- fine and perfect, so just shut up."
"Shut up!"
"Shut the fuck up, it isn't true –"
"You don't know what you're saying, you don't–"
"It isn't like that. I never wanted it."
"He did this to me."
"He broke me."
"- broke me, isn't right -"
"No, that's not right, I'm not - I wasn't -"
"That's not true, I didn't –"
(No. No, he can't think like this, he's losing it, he's losing everything…! He can't look at his hands without thinking of how pretty they look when they're covered in red, can't stare at his reflection without feeling the blood in his mouth, across his cheeks, staining the backs of his (hideous, putrid, filthy, fucking filthy!) thighs. His father's skin is hiding under his nails, stuck beneath the cuticles and sewn to the fucking beds. Vionei can feel it festering, just like the bruises ringing his neck, down his legs, up his arms, every inch of his worthless body…!)
"SHUT UP!"
shut up, shut up shut up! you're wrong, i'm not useless – not useless, not worthless
not TRASH the way they say i am i was meant for more than this I AM more than this, District Four be fucking damned -
"I'm not broken," he mumbles, shaking his head.
No matter what they tell me, no matter what they say…
"I AM NOT FUCKING BROKEN!"
In the abysmal dark of his father's bedroom, Vionei Achlys slumps to the floor, arms curled around his malnourished body.
(In the abysmal dark of a dead man's chamber, an envious boy begins to laugh.)
A/N: Punching Bag by Palaye Royale.
An unexpected story has appeared and I could not be more excited to work on it. This will be a side project, set within the DWD verse approximately three years after the events of Floccinaucinihilipilification - I will not be entering the Capitol phase until the Flocc games have come to a close, but I will be working on intros for my main three characters, along with reapings that may be done from the POVs of assembled escorts and mentors (whom I have cameo submissions open for on discord).
As you can probably already tell, this story is going to touch on... a lot of difficult subjects that I'm sure can cause discomfort, so I will be posting trigger warnings at the beginning of most chapters to keep everyone in the loop. If you've made it this far, it means a hell of a lot, and if not, I totally understand - this is not just a sensitive topic, but a personal one, for me and a number of other people, so make sure and watch out for your own health first and foremost.
Love all you amazing people in this community, and I should be getting more DWD content out soon!