The Universe Listened | Kiribaku

My eyes are damp from the words you left

N/A: RECOMMENDED THAT YOU LISTEN TO THE SONG WHILE YOU READ<3

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Chapter Twenty-Three

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Here's what happens after you manage to find the strength to out your uncle for the horrible things he's done to you:

First, you have to find the right words to say. You have to find the right time to say the words once you've found them, and then you have to actually say those words. Clumsily, your brain stumbles around words and thoughts and ideas, and you decide that maybe words aren't your best bet with such a tender situation. Besides, words have never been your strong suit anyway.

You go through your father's toolbox in the laundry room, the very toolbox he left after he told your mother they needed to take a break, and find a screwdriver. Not the flathead kind, but the kind that's almost shaped like a cone and divots line the side. Quietly and in the dark, your young mind mulls over what you're about to do. It mulls over the pain you're going to feel and the nasty scar you know is going to be left behind. Pain, you've always been good at handling pain, but you're not sure as to what the aftermath is going to be. How the people in your life are going to handle such news, or if they'll just clock you as unstable like your mother, and lock you up, unlike your mother who still gets to live in the world.

So you do it. You hold the screwdriver up to your face and you start to carve, carve, carve into your skin as your own final cry for help because you don't know how much longer you'll be able to endure such acts. So you carve

and you carve

and you carve

until blood starts to stain your shirt and hands; Until it starts to pool on the hardwood floor underneath you. Until it's all you can smell. In the deepest parts of your brain, you're hoping and praying this cry for help is taken seriously.

And it is. Your mother finds you. Moments before, she was yelling at you from down the hall because you needed to get your ass up and ready for dance practice, and then she's kneeling before you, holding your blood-covered face in your hands, asking you what the hell happened. She's close to tears; they pool her eyes and make the coral colour glisten.

You tell her everything. Everything her brother did to you during family gatherings and when he stayed the night at their house because his wife kicked him out for the night.

In her eyes, you see your reflection. Your messy blonde hair and the pieces of flesh hanging on by mere bits of skin. In her eyes, you watch as she slowly breaks apart. An agonizing process for both of you. Her interior, or what her mental health hasn't already destroyed, breaks apart, and once everything inside has chipped away, her exterior goes, too.

Her touch his gentle, the most gentle it's been in years, as she holds you against her chest, unfazed by the blood staining her shirt, and she tells you, "We'll get through this, Katsuki. You and me, we're strong. We'll get through this."

There was no we.

Your face is bandaged and your mother is doing her best to be strong. She's acting like nothing happened. She's constantly yelling at you to do better, to not mess up or you won't make something of yourself. When she said we'll get through this, you were under the impression she was going to give a shit for more than a millisecond. You thought she was going to give you time to gradually piece yourself back together with her help.

But she didn't. She abandoned you with your inner turmoil so she could act like nothing happened, because if she acts as if her brother hasn't touched you in unkind ways, then she can make herself believe it. She can convince herself that he wasn't checked into a maximum-security prison. In doing so, she's left you alone, stumbling around the dark with pieces that didn't fit anymore because when she abandoned you, she shattered the remains with her feet.