The Wise Child (BNHA x OC)

19. Crazy

I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. 

The world was spinning. I barely acknowledged where I was, My heart was thumping. 

My footsteps sounded against the ground, but there were no voices to be heard. No, no of course that would be too comforting. Noise was a comfort. A fire amidst the cold. And chanting and screaming and yelling could burn but oh how that burning became my home. 

But now it was gone, and that certainty was gone, and that feeling of sturdiness in my legs, arms, and body was gone too. It was all gone. 

“Gone,” I mumbled to myself, only to fill the silence. 

My fingers found their way into my hair as I found I no longer cared about neatness. My nails, so long, so sharp, dug into my scalp. 

I Felt myself lean over, crushed against a wall, as I could barely find it in me to breathe. The world was swirling but the pain slowly narrowed my thoughts. 

‘Not here.’ A voice directed, resounding around my skull. It didn’t feel like my own, but I knew it had to have been, because there wasn’t anyone else around. There was no one else left. 

My throat hiccuped at the thought, and a cry of pain left me as I quickly covered it with my hand. 

I felt myself crumble and with what little sanity I had left I found my way into an empty bathroom. I slowly hunched over, coming to face a mirror over the sink. I held my stomach and sobbed, barely holding myself upright. 

‘Stop it.’ the voice in my head demanded. 

I quivered at the thought, at the sharpness, the cruelty I so knew in its words. But something in me felt grateful. For the reminder of warmth. Of fire. Of cruelty. It was home. 

‘Stop crying.’

I hiccupped, covering my mouth and feeling hot tears continue to leak from my eyes. 

‘I told you to stop. Look at yourself. Not only have you failed but you have failed disgracefully. You can’t accept victory, so you refuse to accept defeat. It’s pitiful. It's ugly.’

My hands found the edges of the sink and my knuckles turned white from the effort of holding myself upright. My breathing slowly began to focus, and I looked around myself as if the world I was staring at was not my own. 

The colors were bright. Were they always so bright?

‘Focus. Breathe. Or can you not even do that right?’

The words felt so far away when I heard them. As if I were underwater. I stepped backwards, and the world shifted slower than I moved. And I almost found it funny. 

I felt myself growing further away from myself. I stared at the sink, at the miss shaped figure that was supposed to be me reflected on its pearly surface. 

I let my finger circle its cool surface and barely felt it at all. 

Where was I? Did it really even matter? It was all so far away. 

***

“And in the winds I remain. I am nothing at all. And everything too. And in my uncertainty I see that both are positively true.”

I looked up at my mother, having curled up against her on her favorite reading chair, looking at the book she held in her hands. A book of poetry. She loved her books. She loved her stories. I thought, sometimes, that maybe she was them. A piece of all the wonderful tales she told to me. Of all the soft moments, and all the harrowing details, and all the splotches of ink on the cold white paper. 

“I don’t understand it.” I said, looking up at her. Her face looked calm, she so rarely looked calm. But she loved her stories. “How can a human being be both nothing and everything? Aren’t they opposites?”

“You aren’t supposed to understand it. You’re supposed to feel it.”

***

My hands shook violently as I felt myself return to the present. The weight of my memories coming crashing down as a tidal wave. The air slipped through my lungs just as if it was stolen from me. 

I didn’t want to think of her. 

I didn’t ever want to think of her. 

I held my forehead as I slowly turned to look up at the mirror. My eyes latched onto my silver gaze, but stopped as instead of my own face, I saw my mothers. 

Her eyes were sunken, large black circles underneath, as if bruised. Her lips were thin, chapped. Her skin clung onto her as if it were preparing to rot from her bones. She was so pale it was ghostly, and she slowly opened her lips, frowning so deeply I was certain it hurt. 

“Monster.”

I stumbled back against the wall, feeling it's hard surface resound around my skull. In the mirror I saw myself raise a hand over my mouth in a vague attempt to quiet my cries. I slowly fell to the floor, curling my knees against my chest. 

“Monster.” My mother’s voice repeated. 

Please stop. 

“You’re just like him. Just like him-”

Stop it. 

“You hurt me like him, and you became him-”

No. Please.

“You begged to be used by him and hurt people like he has-”

I didn’t- I didn’t-

“All in exchange for a little warmth.”

My brain stilled. I felt the truth of the words run down my spine in a chilling ache. 

“Monster.”

Finally I felt something in me break, and I finally let the ice clawing at me release, painting the room in shimmers of acidic cold. 

“Jesus, your brother was right.”

My head snapped in the direction of the new voice, only to find a head of spikey blonde hair and sharp red eyes. I blinked, slowly trying to understand what he was doing there. 

“You really are crazy.”

(Super short chapter today y'all, my apologies, school is hectic but I will be updating a much longer one next time! Also I'm nearly at 60k views and I just want to thank all of you wonderful readers for getting this far and promoting my book. This means so much to me, and I really do have the sweetest comment section. Take care of yourselves and have a good night/ day!!)