certified insanity // henry creel x reader

FOR YOU

Pain. It splits your soul in half. It tears at your bones until they crack and bend. It drags you deeper and deeper until you can't breathe. Pain is staring at the person who thought you betrayed them. Pain is staring at the person you cared most about who stares at you with no recognition. 

It's been four days in this world. Four days in this fake-universe where Jane/ El is my cousin, Terry Ives is my aunt and Quinn is safe at home. I am safe at home. But I can never be safe. I can be safe from Brenner, but I can never be safe from myself. My own thoughts that bring the most pain. 

Especially when I am constantly face to face with him. 

And it is only a matter of time before the pain makes me break. 

"Y/N, have you made any progress with Henry?" Brenner asks me as I sit in his office. Plain. Boring. He inhales. "I'm worried that I've put you in too deep with our most difficult patient." 

I shake my head. "No. I'm making progress." 

Brenner taps his fingers on the desk. "Hmm. I'd like to see proof of that." He pushes a voice recorder across the desk. 

No. 

"What's this?" I ask, knowing very well what it is. 

"I'd like you to record any progress that you make this session," Brenner's expression is stern. "Otherwise I will have to move you to an easier case. Find out what makes Henry Creel tick. Why he killed his family." 

I have no choice but to take it. Placing it in my back pocket. 

Walk down the hallway. 

Sit in the chair. 

The guard leaves. 

Peter—no—Henry, stares at me, his eyes dark. I pray that he doesn't give up on this game that he's been playing for the past four days. This game that is the only thing that keeps his soul attached to mine. Perhaps not his soul. Maybe only his mind. Neither of us have powers in this world. This world is ordinary. 

I am not sure if that's a good thing. 

"You are awfully quiet today, my love," Henry says, staring. Blinking. His chair is closer to to the bars this time, and his hands lack their cuffs. His feet are still chained to the ground, but this freedom of his hands allow them to dance recklessly along the chair arms. "I'd ask you if something's the matter, but I'm sure you wouldn't care to tell me." 

There is no logical reply to him. But in order to keep him entertained, chained here, I have to say something. I have to keep him talking because if I don't, Brenner will fire me and then I will lose my second anchor to this fake-universe. The first one being Quinn. 

"Reading into my expressions, are you?" I say, though my tone sounds fake. Distorted through my ears. "I'm fine, Henry." Dry. I would like to try again. "I'm absolutely fine." 

Henry leans forward with interest. "I'm fine," he repeats my words back to me as if I couldn't hear them. "Yes, of course you're fine. Why wouldn't you be fine? Spending your time locked in a mental hospital with an insane serial killer should not have any effect on your mental health." 

"God, Peter, is everything about you?" The words slip. Slip of the tongue. The second time I've done this in the past few days. "Henry." 

He smiles. And then he exhales. "There it is. I remind you of someone? Is that it? A past lover? Your first love who didn't quite work out?" Henry narrows his eyes. "Does the pain kill you, Y/N? Are you forever damaged by heartbreak?" 

"You speak rhymes, Henry Creel," I say coldly. "Take a second to stop guessing my past, and tell me of your own." 

Henry slams his hands down on the chair arms. They rattle in the empty space around us. "You want the truth, do you?" He laughs, an insane laugh. "Take it, my love. Take it."

I sit there as he continues. Click the button on the recorder behind my back. 

"I didn't fit in with the other children. Something was wrong with me. All the teachers and the doctors said I was... "Broken," they said. My parents thought a change of scenery, a fresh start in Hawkins, might just cure me. It was absurd. As if the world would be any different here.

But then... to my surprise, our new home provided a discovery. And a newfound sense of purpose. I found a nest of black widows living inside a vent. Most people fear spiders. They detest them. And yet, I found them endlessly fascinating. More than that, I found a great comfort in them. A kinship. Like me, they are solitary creatures. And deeply misunderstood. They are gods of our world. The most important of all predators. They immobilize and feed on the weak, bringing balance and order to an unstable ecosystem. But the human world was disrupting this harmony.

You see, humans are a unique type of pest, multiplying and poisoning our world, all while enforcing a structure of their own. A deeply unnatural structure. Where others saw order, I saw a straitjacket. A cruel, oppressive world dictated by made-up rules. Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades. Each life a faded, lesser copy of the one before. Wake up, eat, work, sleep, reproduce, and die. Everyone is just waiting. Waiting for it all to be over. All while performing in a silly, terrible play, day after day. I could not do that. I could not close off my mind and join in the madness. I could not pretend. And I realized I didn't have to. I could make my own rules. I could restore balance to a broken world. A predator...but for good." 

His words echo. Louder and louder than before. 

"I learned the truth. I saw my parents as they truly were. To the world, they presented themselves as good, normal people. But like everything else in this world, it was all a lie. A terrible lie. They had done things, Y/N. Such awful things. I showed them who they really were. I held up a mirror.

My naive father believed it was a demon cursing them for their sins. But my mother somehow knew. Knew it was I who was holding up that mirror, and she despised me for it. She called a doctor, an expert. She wanted him to lock me away, to fix me, even though it wasn't I who was broken. It was them. And so she left me with no choice. No choice but to act. To break free." 

My breath has become silent. Fully silent. There is nothing but him talking. 

"I killed them all, Y/N." He says. "I killed them all because I wanted control over their fate. It is much easier to control them, before they can control me."

I click the recorder off, putting it back in my pocket. Hesitate. 

"You once asked me if was scared of you," I say. Quietly. "But Henry, you're the only person in this world who makes sense to me." The words scare me more than anything else. Because I am letting him see me. "You could never scare me. You don't need fixing, because you are not broken. You—" my voice breaks for a second. "You're the most incredible person I've ever met." 

Henry looks frozen with shock. He actually shows me his true expression. His icy eyes stare at me. Straight through me. 

And then he breathes again. "There was always the horrible possibility that you would be the twelfth to fall in love with me." His hands lay still for the first time. "I never considered that it would be me....falling for you." 

_ 

Cheesy? Maybe. But what is Y/N going to do with that voice recording? 

I sense drama.