Monstrous Things (Crowley x Reader)

Prologue - Slaves

tw: domestic abuse, suggestions of self-harm, depression

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        She never hit you. Never kicked you. Never laid a menacing hand on your body.

        The closest she ever got to physically hurting you was the one time she harshly tugged at your hair, frustrated with your whining as she braided it. The closest she ever got to physically hurting you was the one time she giggled, swaying and half-naked in her bed, as she leaned over and brushed her teeth against the flesh of your arm.

        She never hit you. Never kicked you. Never laid a menacing hand on your body.

        But that didn't mean she was innocent. Although the only visible evidence of her destruction was the way you cowered at the sight of alcohol, and how you cried over movie scenes with a missing parent, that didn't mean she was innocent.

        Because your earliest memories of her include her having sex with a man in the same room you were trying to sleep in. She had told you to just pull the blanket over your head and close your eyes. Because your earliest memories of her include strange men filtering in, and then disappearing. One had lectured you about how to treat a woman, but the things he taught you led to an out of school suspension after you strangled a child at the simple age of 5.

        But that didn't mean she was a monster, either. She had made bad decisions, and she had inflicted wounds that any regular person couldn't see. But she was your mother, and you cherished the moments when she treated you like her daughter instead of a piece of property.

        Because your earliest memories of her include the way she painted a sky scenery upon your nursery walls. At the time, you had still been in a crib, but the beauty was uncanny. Because your earliest memories of her include the glow in the dark stars she helped you stick onto your ceiling so that you wouldn't be scared of the dark.

        She had loved you, even if some believed that she had done monstrous things to you. Even if you wrote poems of her words being your demise, she had loved you. And even if you hid from the person she became after your eleventh birthday, she had loved you.

        She had loved you in ways that most couldn't see. In ways that only you could see. Because nobody else experienced her worst night and then woke up the next day to pancakes that smelt like genuine "I'm sorry"s. Because nobody else experienced her when it was just the two of you - when she was small, and open, and she looked at you with soft, sober eyes. She had loved you in ways that were so miniscule, it was no surprise when people didn't understand why you couldn't just hate her.

        Because she never hit you. Never kicked you. Never laid a menacing hand on your body.

        But she destroyed your dreams, and your ego. And when you admitted that you wanted to be an author, she told you to remember that she liked extra salt on her fries. Those words stuck with you as you filtered through writing contests that you could enter, each one echoing, "You think this will be a good income?" You were only 13. And when you told her that you wanted to seek therapy, she scoffed and muttered about how teenagers were so much weaker than they had been in her time. You had been sleeping 40% of the day, for two months, and you had been skipping meals for five. In three weeks, you lost six pounds, but gained twenty new scars. You had been crying yourself to sleep for four months, and secluding yourself from her for four years.

        Because she never hit you. Never kicked you. Never laid a menacing hand on your body.

        But your therapist found the situation so desperate that she encouraged you to move in with your biological father, whom had been divorced from your mother since before you were born. When she had asked you to draw all the people you would take on a boat that would sail to a happy life, you left your maternal counterpart out of the picture. When it came down to the very broad source of your various ego and mental issues, you noticed she scribbled down something small in her notes, but underlined it three times. It was one word, and it was, "Mother."