Ao3 story (Why would you ever kiss me)

Part 21

Her pain was excruciating. All of her worst nightmares playing over and over again as he pleased them to. The worst horrors she'd witnessed and imagined compiled together in a sickening loop. None of it was real, but nothing could convince her otherwise.
That's how he fought her. Not with words or weapons. No. With her own mind.

The worst feeling is to be lost in a place that's familiar. To feel like you know something backwards and forwards but not be able to name it or place it. That's how she felt exactly. Because she was in the lab, the halls which seemed to twin a map of her veins, and still she could not know it.

All at once she was a young girl. Running. Running. And running. Going somewhere, but knowing in her bones that she wasn't really getting anywhere. Then she would get older. Eventually to an age that she'd never glimpsed in the mirror. Too old to have ever existed. She was every age of herself simultaneously.

She was always running towards a door. Sometimes they would be single. Sometimes double. She's looking for something she will never find. Frantic. Desperate. Chest burning with every breath she manages to yank into her lungs. Opening door after door only to find each and every one of them absent of what she was looking for. If she was lucky, the rooms would be empty. If she wasn't, perhaps she'd find a room full of dead children waiting for her. What's worse? To recognize the bodies? Or to not know them at all, to find that you were more okay with it? Sometimes her memory twinged at the sight of their hollow faces. Long forgotten children. Rotting. Maybe they would've been easier to remember if they'd had real names.

Sometimes the room was full of children wearing her face. And sometimes they would be wearing the faces of her friends. Though their names alluded her.

Sometimes she knew what she was looking for. Mama.

Sometimes she believed herself to be running towards her, that she would be within arms reach on the other side of the door. A lie. Why do our minds lie to us? And she would run towards this door on wearied old bones. Towards this final door, the last one, the one that never seemed to get any closer.

Mama's on the other side. I know it. Mama. Mama.

She always died before she was even able to touch the handle.

Aging beyond her years in a matter of milliseconds. Disintegrating. I don't want to die here anymore. Why do I keep dying here?

And it would start all over again. Trying to outrun the end of her life within this hospital--wait no-- lab. I'm in the lab.

She screamed a name that felt like a foreign word. Instinctual. It only confused her more.

But this was her fight. This was the headache. She knew subconsciously that none of this was real. Henry was just trying to make her let go of him. So he could...what?

What am I even fighting for? What's the point of running?

And so she'd stop running. And a rush of cold would meet her back. Like an unwelcome chilling draft, that creeped into even the most minuscule crevices of her skin. Cold fear. Panic that would drive her feet forward, until she was running again. Sprinting to make up for the ground she'd lost.
Don't stop running. Open every door. Don't close your eyes. Don't close your eyes. Don't stop. This is the game. This is the fight. He wants you to give up. You won't. You won't ever. Even if you can't remember why.

You will-- the details would become fuzzy. Why am I running? Oh that's right. Mama.

That's what the youngest version of her would fasten to remember. To look for Mama.

She must be behind this door.

No.

Little El screams. Because it's all gore. She's been fooled. And then she's running again, barely giving herself enough time to recover from the sight of all that blood. Familiar unblinking blue eyes, turned milky by the violence of death. Red hair, redder than normal. Just a dead girl. Not a matter worth crying over. I don't know her. But there are others. More children she's yet to meet. Their skin twisted tightly around cracked bones.