Warning for depression and suicidal thoughts. For "The Competition That Must Not Be Named" by Lily F. Lux on the HPFC forum. No names allowed.
There is an art in falling apart.
It's something she tells a lot of people, but she, like many before her and many after, rarely follows her own advice.
It's why, she muses, she's sitting where she is today. Broken and breaking and bleeding and bruised, she stares at the only light source with an empty mind and shattered heart. Harsh breaths echo beside her, and she feels for the goblin, she really does, but in this moment, she can't bring herself to care about the pain emanating from the creature beside her. Her captors tell the truth: it all would end if his gave up what they want, and she knows it's wrong, but she thinks that he has brought his misery upon himself.
There is yelling and screeching from the floor above her, and she doesn't even flinch when the sound of breaking glass silences the voices. She isn't sure if it's an improvement or not. Instead she curls up against the freezing cold wall beside her and longs for death.
…
Before her, a young man danced an ugly dance along a thin line, as frightened as she and so much weaker in all the right and wrong ways. They are equals.
He is a prisoner in his own mind and in the home where he grew up and he can finally understand why his brother abandoned this and them all those years ago. The pain of it is still as sharp as it ever; ready to cut as readily as glass, but at least it isn't fatal anymore.
He should be grateful for small mercies.
The wand and the knife fall from his hand when a crack echoes in the distance, and for one brief, startled moment, he fears for his life. He relaxes when he forces himself to remember that he'll be dead in an hour anyway and that he has to keep going to make sure that his life doesn't end in vain, that he can prove to his uncaring, ignorant brother that he isn't as worthless as he believes.
Why it matters, he doesn't know, but he's always heard that the most irrational of thoughts come to mind when a person's run out of hope and faith. And as he destroys the wall in front of him, he wonders if that's why he's always been insane. He never had hope or faith.
…
Many years later, people call her a freak and a crazy lunatic, but the ache in her heart is unnoticed. They see only the superficial, but never what's really important. And some days, she's okay with that, because her father always told her that people's opinions don't matter anyway, but it's hard to think about that when they beat her down.
Clear, translucent tears trace pathways down her face, eroding their roads without an issue nor a word or protest from the person they're destroying. She encourages it, blinking frequently when she remains in a silent vigil under the light of the moon. It seems like a hopeless endeavor, trying to make friends, so she resolves, then and there, on the night of her thirteenth birthday, to stop trying.
Loneliness bites at her insides and her sanity, and she forces herself not to care. She distances herself from everyone and everything, blending herself into the shades and tints of blue and bronze, telling herself that she lives in a world of aches and everyone has problems. No one appears to have as many as she, but…
That's untrue and selfish, she knows. One of her year mates had nearly died two years ago, and the contestants of the tournament this year have it worse.
She ignores the voice in her head that whispers tha she's as close to dying as they are, that the only difference between them is they would die from accidents or murder, but the knife would enter her weakening body of her own accord.
…
Two decades earlier there is a boy who isn't bullied, necessarily, but is forced to do things under threats. He is alone in a crowd while she is just alone, and he never forces himself to believe that it is okay. He knows it isn't.
Because he's not blind. He can see the happiness in his brother's face, and the twisted delight in his cousins'. He knows that he's the only one who cries at night, the only one who wishes that he had been born to someone else, in another time, another world, even. He's the only one who wants to leave and never, ever return.
They would kill him if they knew, so he keeps it a secret and washes his face clean of every waterlogged path on his face every morning. It's only because crying helps him sleep and brings immeasurable relief that he doesn't stop altogether.
…
Her friends don't come to save her, and she disintegrates slowly, leaving little parts of herself behind in a cell in the house of people who hate her more than she hates herself.
…
He dies alone in a vacant state of mind far away from home, betraying everything he has ever known and hoping he has made a difference.
…
No one realizes for several months, but search parties come too late.