Delirium (Creepypasta x reader)

•Prologue•

Out of all the decisions she had made in the past few months, Kate knew that this was the least rational one of all.

She should be breaking her silence and confessing her sins to her Family, letting lose the mistakes and allowing them to be fixed - why she had grown cold, taken mission after far away mission; why she had almost literally estranged herself from her fellows to live in a godforsaken shack in the middle of nowhere, hanging on with the thinnest thread of hope that it would work, somehow, and undo what had been done.

Unfortunately at this point, she couldn't even pretend to care. Her own carefully placed locks rusted shut, chains too tight to unbind by now. Her grave (she chuckled, three sharp hacks out of her lips) was emptied of its dirt by her own hands.

As she roamed further and further from home, she wondered if all that had come before was worth it.

The Proxy had returned a few scant hours ago to her Family's house, unannounced and quite abruptly. The house itself even startled as she entered the perimeter, lattice trembling on its walls. It didn't take long for everyone present to gather and see her, contacting those who were out to come back, quick, Chaser was finally home!

Her Bondmate, Nurse Ann, was the first to return from her hunt, panting from how fast she ran to leap into Kate's arms. She hovered by Kate's side as a party quickly formed, jubilation spilling through the halls and sweeping everyone into a frenzy.

Kate had smiled and talked as she was expected to, ate and drank as needed. Her mask, however loosely placed on her face, stayed; and after everything had been cleaned up and the Family had settled down, she separated herself from Ann's arms and slid out the side doors.

The mansion's forest was the same as she remembered, so different from the forests that grew outside the Centre, and it welcomed her with every step. The faint sound of barely-there footsteps stopped as she finished wading deep into the brush and paused. With a slow, practised movement she raised a hand to her face and slipped her mask off.

The feeling of air hitting her face was instantly refreshing, and she let out a sigh of relief as the ache in her body eased; if only by a small amount. Her attempt at distracting herself from her ailment made her feel drained and awful all the time - asking to be assigned tougher and tougher tasks by the Lord, running herself ragged in the process of completing it, rinse and repeat. It was nice to take a break, one last reprieve from everything.

She tucked her mask into her fresh hoodie pocket and raised her left arm up, knuckles just peeking from the crisp sleeve. Ann had insisted on Kate changing from her dirt and blood smeared outfit into an identical, yet fresh pair. Kate had accepted the clothes from her Bondmate, and raised her mask enough to plant a kiss on Ann's cheek. It was the least Kate could do to give her Bond one last good memory before leaving.

She pulled the sleeve down to her elbow and regarded the black veins in her skin with a resigned expression. She knew it was futile to try to stall Corruption - no one in her memory was able to stop it without a Cleansing - but she had entertained a fools thought that she could avoid her Family forever, drop in occasionally, and be fine. Keep it suppressed by running her body into the ground and toeing the limits of her innate skill.

But all of her planning had been for naught. She had wanted to slaughter them all as soon as she had stepped in through the doors.

Kate pulled her sleeve down and placed her mask over her pallid face, beginning to walk again. The back of her mind screamed at her, begging her to turn around and stalk back to the mansion, to convince her Bondmate to step out of the building and spill Nurse Ann's blood on the front steps.

Kate focused on her surroundings instead, grounding herself by analyzing the landmarks.

Her internal map was constructed on years of tending to the forest and its secrets. Before she had left, Kate had been the one tasked with maintaining the entrances riddled through the forest. Marking their locations, where they lead to, keeping them from closing up. She had memorized every location of the 134 total entrances that the Lord had commandeered for his Family. She had once felt pride for this task before her ailment took that away from her.