The Fault is Not In The Stars But In Ourselves

To Break Things, Hoping The Pain Stops You From Breaking Too

A/N Warning:  There is some small moments of self harm, mention of suicidal thoughts, and negative views of the self. As always, take care <3

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There was something... freeing, about the feel of blood seeping through his fingers and the rough unhealed-healed-unhealed bruise of knuckles. Something absolutely therapeutic about being able to break, smash, shatter, completely obliterate anything in sight without the worry of hurting someone else. This had been what he was raised–what he was built–to do, after all.

He was built here, with some of the very equipment that he was crushing against his fists. He might have been born human, but that was a long, long time ago. Now he was barely human. Barely. He wasn't even sure what part of him was still human–still him. His heart was still human, but it wasn't his–it didn't belong. And everything else...

There was this paradoxical thought experiment, about the ship of Theseus: if you replace a ship's parts, piece by piece, until all of the original pieces are removed, is it still the same ship it was at the start?

... Theo didn't know the answer to that question. Or, rather, he didn't know the answer to the hidden question there, for him: was he still the same person he was before, now that the Dread Doctors had changed his eyes, his hands, his body, his very DNA?

He wanted to say no–wanted to believe that they had dismantled every part of him, stripped him of his childhood and his very personality... But he killed Tara, before they ever laid a hand on him. He was a sociopath, from the very beginning. Maybe manipulating his body didn't change him much at all.

Even still, he was built here. ... Replaced. Torn apart, ripped apart, just to be put back together. Over, and over, and over. Completely remade, just to bring about chaos and destruction.

It was fitting, really, that he would use the destructive strength they had built into him to destroy everything they used to do it. It was fitting that he was destroying everything that had destroyed parts of him.

He would enjoy it more, if Liam wasn't absolutely screaming his head off in the background, letting out a stream of curses that Theo was honestly impressed he knew. Liam was getting creative with it, now, like he had officially decided that it was going to be his new life's mission to annoy Theo until he caved into breaking the barrier. The curses, Theo didn't mind. He kind of enjoyed it, actually–those hateful, hurtful words cutting into him just as the metal cut against his palms and his knuckles, reminding him of who he is. What he didn't like was that Liam wasn't shouting, or talking loudly; he was practically screaming.

If Theo wasn't careful–if he lost concentration of the exact words Liam was saying–it stopped sounding like curse words and vague threats. It sounded... it sounded like actual screams. Violent, pained, terrified, blood-curdling screams.

Those screams, they were digging into his mind, digging into his fucking memories, tossing up loose pieces of events like loose dirt, sparking small maybe-memories into the front of his mind. Maybe-memories of teens begging for help, teens demanding the Dread Doctors to stop... Maybe-memories of teens simply screaming without words, without form, as machines dug into flesh and bone.

How many times had he stayed in this back room, or back rooms just like this one, while the Dread Doctors experimented on–while they tortured–some unsuspecting victim? Too many to count, probably. Definitely too many to remember.

He never helped with the experiments, never got in the middle, but he was just as responsible as they were for those screams. After all, he never bothered to help–never bothered to try and get the Dread Doctors to stop. Hell, he barely even cared. At the time, he thought that they were all just whining–he sat through the Dread Doctors' surgeries all the time, and he never screamed like that. Granted, he knew about the Dread Doctors'. Granted, he had chosen to be there... but at the time, he didn't care.