Bad Guy

Seven??? ((TW!!))

His head ached, an ever present buzz violently pushing at the inside of his skull. It made everything fuzzy, and his body tingle with phantom pins and needles crawling up his spin, the ghost of pain he had once felt pulling his body in every possible direction. His mind ached as memories tried to forced their way through a mental barricade Anxiety could not remember constructing.

It wasn't until he was asleep however that the floodgates open and he drowned in memories best left forgotten. His mind was submerged in freezing cold water, and with no escape from the clutches of his own past, and he gave in to the agonizing pain of memories and old wounds being mentally re-opened.

Virgil. Virgil. Virgil.

He remembered being three and screaming for help as he watched his family walk away from him, scared and full of regret, walk away from where their son was being taken to his death, a gun held to both of their heads as they trembled like leafs. Because he died that day, the years spent in suspenseful torture and constant pain could never be classified as 'living. He remembered hating them, but now all he could feel was a certain numbness to the people that had abandoned him to the deepest darkest part of Hell.

Virgil Virgil Virgil.

The first day of training flashed through his mind, the constant demands and rules burned into his brain like the hot metal branded his stomach. 'Property of Depression', a permanent reminder that he would never be free from the clutches of Depression; that he was nothing but a disposable solider to fight in a never ending war.

Virgil-Virgil-Virgil.

He remembered the snow, being left out their in nothing but thin pyjamas when he was six. He remembered the way his skin turned blue and the shadows wrapped around him - trying to provide comfort and warmth - only to retract when he was screamed at by Depression.

Virgilvirgilvirgil.

Pranks and Missy sprung to mind, though the thought was quickly warped by pain and fear. Instead of their first meeting, or the times they shared a cell, fighting its way forwards, he remembered the knife in his hands and the blood under his feet. The cold, dead, eyes and the slight smile of understanding on their blood-splattered faces.

VirgilVirgilvirgil.

The drip drip drip of water from a tap. The frantic scrubbing of his hands in scalding waters as his own reality warped around him; showing their dead bodies wherever he went. The punishments for his 'distracted state' where nothing compared to the horror on their family's face when they found the bodies in a ditch a mile out of town.

VirgilVirgilVirgil.

All of these horrible memories rushed into his mind at once, warped what should've been a peaceful slumber into a rest filled with nightmares and the corpses of two that should've lived. The haunting smile of Depression and the hours of being forced to manipulate the reality that other had built inside of their own heads, days spent changing someone's whole life and driving them insane when they refused to give up the information that his Boss needed.

Virgil.

Years of torturing and being tortured, of having a metaphorical gun pointed at his head; he finally knew how his parents felt all those years ago.

He remembered his name.

A scream tore from his throat and pulled him from his own mind. He curled up onto his bed and rocked back and forth, his hands tugging at his hear and tearing into his scalp in hopes that he could rid himself of the memories he never wanted to return. Blood rolled down his hands, causing Anxiety to scream again as it spread; coating his whole hand. And suddenly there was a knife, and the pillows on his bed where the corpses of people who where once his (more than, so much more than) friends.

The screaming was distant now, and he tried to go into the bathroom to wipe the blood off only to trip over the black-sock-clad foot of Missy. Scrambling back he started rocking himself again, mumbling incoherent words as he failed to separate his warped reality from the real one; the pillows flickered from corpses to pillows repeatedly yet he noticed nothing.

A door faintly slammed open, and the screaming stopped and instead turned into hyperventilating, his eyes where unfocused as the others - when had they arrived? He had no idea - tried to calm his panicking form. The breathing exercises from earlier and the comforting weight of a warm - alive - hand on his shoulder grounded him and allowed him to return his own sense of reality to normal.

No Pranks, no Missy and hardly any blood. No Depression, no snow and no burning hot irons melting his skin. The air smelt of lavender, the opposite of the sizzling sent of burning (human) flesh.

Instead there was a familiar face with a red sash, a grey cardigan, and a black shirt with a dark blue tie. Prince, Morality, and Logic. Roman, Patton, and Logan. Heroes.

I'm safe, he thought as he curled into Romans chest.

I'm not there, he reminded himself as he held onto Patton's hand like a lifeline.

He's gone, he chanted mentally as he listened to Logan's soothing words that coaxed him from his panic attack.

"It's my fault," he said out loud.