phan one shots

magic shop

Summary: Dan is safe in the magic shop.

TRIGGER WARNINGS: depression, anxiety, suicide attempt

Dan swallowed the cry building in his throat. Raising his hands before him, he studied the scars running along his once soft palms. Palms that had been worn so thin, they collected all of the shattered glass, the gravel scattered across the roads, the rocks, and the screaming that awaited him in this wretched thing he called his life. Through his eyes, washed out and faded from nights of endless sobs that stained his pillows with his sadness, he could hardly see the world. He could faintly remember that it had once been drenched in colors he couldn't begin to describe. But now, all he could think of was the blackness in his heart where everything was meant to be, until the plushies he held at night could no longer ease his loneliness. They smelled too much like his tears. His arms were full of fear. No matter what he tried to replace it with, it weighed down heavy on his chest.

He felt like his words...they had been scraped out of him. He no longer had any voice to say a single word. He could not even scream.

And that was why he stood on the edge of the world. He couldn't touch the sky, could hardly scrape it with his tired fingertips. So, he could not begin to find its end, to follow the clouds, which also held onto quiet sobs, to the last stretch of blue. Where it turned black.

If everything turned dark at the end of time, his time had gone a long time ago.

And what reason did he have to keep holding on?

What hope that anything would brighten once more?

How, when he couldn't even recall what the light felt like on his skin?

No. He had been waiting for a single shred of hope for years. Hope, his only friend. But his only friend kept leaving him behind. And now, it was never coming back.

Never.

The pain of living had paralyzed him. He was trapped, bound by chains, which bloodied his wrists and his ankles whenever he took another step forward, while everyone else walked freely. His life had been thrown off of the rails long ago, and he had no idea how to get back up again. He felt that he was no longer a living person, but rather a ghost, withered away by his own misery. His mind was sick. But there
was no way of fixing it, and no reason to look for a cure.

So, he closed his eyes, toes hanging over the edge of the bridge, and imagined what it would feel like to finally join the stars. Even stars died one day. The wind swirled in the cool evening air, softly caressing his flushed cheeks, nipped at by the cold, and filling his beaten lungs, kissing his lips, his countless bruises. The last thing that would ever touch him lovingly. He swallowed that last breath, and held onto it as tightly as he could, before it could fall through the holes in his chest, and leave him drowning again. As the wind combed one last hand through his hair, left in curls, its natural state, he let his arms splay out by his sides, an embrace of the world, before it slipped away.

And he breathed.

Tears ran freely down his cheeks, running in despairing rivers from his eyes. Painting him the darkest of blues. He was crying for the boy who never got to live.

And crying for the boy who was about to die.

Silently, as though the air itself was delicate, he whispered, "Goodbye."

And he fell.

But-

"No! No wait!"

No, no, what are you doing?

Panic seared through him as those words pierced the fragile night, his aching numbness subsiding quickly upon its burning presence. He felt a pair of deft, warm fingers curl around his shoulder, another palm raising to his wrist. He squirmed in the unfamiliar grasp, a high pitched whine escaping his constricting throat, but the stranger did not let go, only tightening their grip on him.