CURSED [D.M]

-(25) perhaps sort of like you

ZILLIAH sees Sirius- but it isn't him. No. Sirius always had this warmth to him. Always wore a much charming smile. But this man before her- with ghostly eyes and a scowled up face- it isn't Sirius. She knows it isn't. But somehow, it is.

"You could've saved me", he hisses, right at her face, his eyes terrifying and his voice seething. She couldn't seem to move at it- couldn't seem to breathe. "Yet you made no real effort to do anything. And why is that my darling, Zilliah. Would you please tell me, why is that?"

"I-", she tries to choke out, the darkness around utterly unnerving. "I tried.."

Sirius bursts out laughing at her tear streaked face- his maniacal voice pounding off the invisible walls of the void she was trapped in- and it clogs up her mind even further. A shake of the head and a 'tch tch' sound of disappointment that echoes through. "Poor Zilliah, always trying and trying. Yet never seeming to be good enough."

Her heart was hammering inside her chest, threatening to burst out at any moment. But even that falters for half a second as the words drill deep in.

Suddenly, there was a cold hand on the side of her face, and a low and squeaky voice comes- that one that never fails to daunt her. "Never good enough. No matter how much you try. I feel sorry for you, young girl."

"Pl- Please..", she mutters out, shutting her eyelids, her whole body shaking as she feels the woman's breath on her shoulders and Sirius' eyes on her features. "Please let me go."

The pair of them laugh again as she feels more presence walk up to where she was fixed, unable to move a fucking nerve. "We're not the ones trapping you, dear. You are the one who has penned us down into the deepest parts of your mind", the woman's icy voice drawls. "Yes", Sirius chimes, cruelly and unmercifully. "You're the demon of your own mind. You see my dearest love, we-" another round of shrill laughter, from more people- she doesn't dare open her eyes to see. "We are just the ragdolls you've created for the sake of your dying sanity."

And she shakes her head frantically at those words, denying them, her mind howling. Cold and sharp nails dig into her shoulders, sending her into a tremendous overload of pain, and she screams- she can't help but scream- her throat and even her stomach paining with the intensity of it- almost like it would tear apart into two. It would be better if it did.

"Zilliah- open your eyes!", a familiar voice shouts through her unbearable agony, and she just barely makes out the anxiousness of the beholder. "Zilliah, for fuck's sake, please just wake up!"

No, she isn't going to open her eyes. Even despite all the pain, she isn't going to open her eyes. Because she can't face the horror that awaits her if she does- she can't.

"Zilliah, listen to me. I need you to wake up-", she hears the voice again but it feels so.. distant. Like it was a thousand light-years away. Far from her grasp. And now, there were hands coiling around her throat too, surely dragging her back to that room- that fucking room where it all starts. "Baby, just please wake up. Zilliah, please."

She can feel the man's hands on her thighs. ("Do something!"- "We can't!") Fear, she tastes fear. Utter and devastating fear. ("She's not stable Ivan"- "I don't fucking care-"). A sudden surge of hope. ("-too dangerous."- "It's the only option.") Drowning anguish. ("Snape is the only person who can help her, you know tha-") She is falling and she is running. She is screaming and she is writhing. And suddenly, her body gives out and she can feel herself falling to solid ground with an echoing thud.

And she finds herself thinking, at last, this is it. This is mercy.

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