Chapter Text
She misses the times when she was able to kill time through knitting--poking purple yarn in a steady rhythm, accompanied by the ceaselessly reliable click of needles. It was repetitive, it was soothing. It was slow going, but mindless and mechanical and it did the job of turning long stretches of quiet into short spurts of productivity, and by the end she had something useful and beautiful and imperfect more often than not.
There is nothing to do here. Nothing to pass away the time.
Not even mindless things.
Picking the healing scars does not help. Twisting her hair around her finger until the tip turns rich and plum does not help. Tracing grooves into the walls as she paces around the cell does not help.They are not mindless things. Not even. They are mind-numbing. They are mind-killing.
She feels she is being slowly lobotomized through isolation that for a change is not self imposed. There were times when she enjoyed being alone, but this does not constitute being alone. This is loneliness she has no control over. This is a loneliness that she can no longer fill.
Memory alone serves as a pastime for her. Memory of the activity she enjoyed with her friends before they were captured and put in here. Memory of a full and busy and bright house. Memory of knitting sweaters for the only Christmas they and their paradox parents had spent together.
The psychosurgical pick pricks her brain and the bubble is ready to burst.
They seem to value her for her augural abilities here, which have become much more sporadic and, strangely, rather unpredictable. Perhaps that was another consequence in the postgame world.
That had been their award, in addition to the creation of a new universe. Residual shadows of once godly powers. More of a consolation prize than anything else, but proven adequate for pretty parlor tricks.
Unfortunately, even this had been too much to hide. It had been enough to draw attention. Enough to measure curiosity, and warrant study. Enough to be a threat, enough to contain.
Enough to deserve quarantine and violation and--stripped of clinical trappings--murder. Killings that exponentially swell the ghosts of whispers in her head.
The horrorterrors are dead, but she knows that they are not completely gone. They are not gone in the enveloping quiet, they are not gone when the lights click off one by one and leave her alone to trace the walls of the enclosure in endless concentric circles. They are not gone when she and John are brought in for the macabre testing, they are not gone when he's held down by straps across his forehead and arms, they are not gone when she is rendered helpless through the selfsame restriction, they are not gone when he's stabbed one two three times in the chest with far too much precision they are not gone when he screams to her and she tremblies they are not gone when white clad walls do nothing as a child cries and bleeds they are not gone they grow louder when he chokes on his own throat and her pupils constrict into nothing they scream when John screams and the butchers scream they're not gone when she she tears into punctured eyes with twin pens and rips the pearl fruits of retribution--
They are not gone. Unless she is simply going mad.
Which, given the circumstances, is entirely possible.
She sighs to the walls and wonders how long it will be before they do take the knife to her head.
And whether that relief would be welcome.