Hi! I'm sorry I've been gone for so long. First everyone had the flu, then we went on vacation, then our computer entered a coma and we may take it off life support. This is from my friend's laptop. I've been thinking about Black Swan, which I really want to see. Then I heard someone mention a cross-dressing lady sent to an asylum. That got me a-wonderin' about Deryn going insane. This is really dark, but I felt I've written too much fluff.
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She's not losing it. She's made of sterner stuff than that. Keep your head held high, stay away from the other loonies, and act as normal as possible. No, Deryn Sharp would not go mad.
Five months later, she is not so sure. Deryn can't sleep anymore, because her dreams are filled with gore and blood and various war horrors. Someone mentions her screaming in her sleep, which leads to medication. The pills make her feel numb all over, but her dreams are now nothing but black. To make she she is still alive, still feeling, still sane, she digs her nails into her palms until she leaves red cresents of blood. Soon, however, that is not enough for her. She takes to playing with flame, scalding her fingertips until they take the candle out of her room. This isn't a sign of madness, surely. It's just like pinching yourself to stay awake. Fire, it killed her father, it killed the Leviathan, it killed Alek. She knows she must master it.
A little seed of doubt is planted in her mind. What if she is mad? No, no, of course not. It's like when she didn't speak for a month when her da died. A normal reaction to tragedy, no matter what the aunts had told her. For the next week, she doesn't hurt herself at all, and she hides her medicine under the mattress. Deryn would rather be tortured by nightmares than morph into something she's not.
Oh, and tortured she is. Always, always, Alek haunts her dreams. He is the doctor who institutionalized her. He is her father, pushing her out of the blazing balloon. He is simply a man on the street, but with blood trickling down his lovely face. In one dream, Deryn tears his heart out simply because his gaze is too hurtful. She wakes up shivering, and she holds up her hands and squints at them in the darkness. The more she looks, the more convinced she is that they are covered in blood. At first she thinks this doesn't necessarily make her mad, but then she washed her hands four times, feeling like her fellow Scotswoman Lady Macbeth.
What if she will be in this hell for the rest of her life? It's too awful to even consider. Maybe they will let her out if she behaves as normal as possible. She even asks the maid if she can wear a corset. The answer is no, as corset reinforcements have been used as weapons in the past.
Three years. Three bloody years of perfection, of acing examinations, of obedience, and saneness. They have to let her out. They must, because if they don't, she kill herself before she goes mad. A shard of mirror, perhaps, or the peaceful death of an overdose. But she will never, ever, let herself go mad.
That night, she wakes herself up with her own screams. Alek. Why is he not coming to her rescue? Where is he? What happened?