❝I'd rather die kind and forgotten than be remembered for being brutal.❞
( *undergoing slight formatting tweaks & adjustments -- the story itself will otherwise remain readable and unchanged! )
⠀⠀⠀⠀ Had Bellamy not volunteered, he wouldn't be sent o...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
( ミ☆ ) TWELVE house of cards
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀Bellamy's dream ends with a scream. Only it doesn't really end — it follows him into the real world, too.
⠀⠀⠀⠀He comes to now with a start and inhalesfor what feels likethe first time in his life. He chokes on oxygen, coughs it back up, then drinks in more until his lungs burn with a pain so fierce, his first thought is that of pure fire.
⠀⠀⠀⠀The screaming ceases. Bellamy knows his body is moving, but it seems to move without him; arms and hands and legs pressing himself up as if by string, like a marionette on wire. From where he sits in bed, blinking through darkness, specs of white rocket through his vision; remnants of his fading nightmare. He tries to move again — tries to claw his way out of the dark — but there are hands on his face, in his hair, in his way. Whoever those hands belong to must be trying to calm him down. But in his panic, it feels like an attack.
⠀⠀⠀⠀❝Bellamy!❞ Comes a shout. Holding him by the wrists now, his limbs writhing. Their featureless face hovering close to his, hardly recognisable. Not even the moon, it seems, wants any part in this — it's very far away, very high in the sky.
⠀⠀⠀⠀It isn't until then, with the fog of sleep clearing and all his thrashing finally having stopped, that Bellamy realises the screams he once heard had been his own.
⠀⠀⠀⠀He chokes out, ❝M–Mom...?❞
⠀⠀⠀⠀With a shudder, a voice answers: ❝Oh, sweetheart... I'm sorry.❞ But it isn't just any voice — and it isn't his mother's. It's warm. It's full of concern. And it's smooth. A voice, of course, like honey.
⠀⠀⠀⠀Seedy.
⠀⠀⠀⠀She cups his cheeks with her hands again. There's a twinkle of something in her eyes — something between a great sadness and a deep understanding — and she looks strange; strange as in, oddly normal. Gone is her makeup and her usual glamorous outfits, replaced by a plain white nightgown that makes her look more phantom than person in the dark.
