Ruin Maketh Me

95 - A howling darkness

     Not true.
     True.
     My feet step a half-pace back, dragging Ralph's arms with me. The throat that's supposed to spout out truths and half-truths and the things that'll redeem me, things that'll make it all right seizes up and dries, until all I can do is bend and clutch the base of my throat and escape the purple orbs I liked to look at so much.
     Say something!
     Say anything!
      His eyes shake and search my face for something he can't quite seem to find. Tears bleed from the corners of his eyes, and time slows, the clear droplets painting their lines down his cheeks becoming greater than the universe.
     "Please say something!" He begs, strength, desperation, every thread of his existence - the passing of 95 summers - seemingly melding into the ends of my shirts into extensions of ourselves.
     Everything sways, blurs, loses focus, all except those glistening tracks. The Pit curls its tender hand over my head and plays with my stray strands of hair, the way they all do. And yet, it no longer speaks, not to me.
     "Cynder!"
     Not the tone one would use to their lover. Too harsh, demanding, a loss of patience. My feet shake and step another half-pace back against my every command.  Coldness collects and pries through my blood. Surely... he'd accept me? He wouldn't do that to me, not him, not my gentle, loving demon, Ralph. He'd still love me, yes? Like the way I love him.
     His head bends, white hair flopping over, and there's nothing but the crown of his head faced towards me.
     "Tell me no." His deep voice is scratched yet monotone, as blank as an empty canvas.
     There's nothing left. No hate, not anguish, no sadness, no desperation, and its cold and empty sound resounds through my chest.
     I'm scared.
     I'm so scared.
     I don't want to be here anymore.
     "Now."
     He'd accept me?
     My lips tremble, jagged, upwards, "I'm not, really, believe me." I laugh, every ripped note tearing through the ceiling, "I'm not an Otherworlder. Believe me, I'm not lying. Really Ralph, you have to believe me."
     "Cynder how could you?" Someone, Leonard, Hoplin, maybe Jacques, I don't care, whispers, pauses stunted.
     But Ralphus says nothing anymore. He slumps to the floor, hands crashing from my shirt to the hard floor.
     My breath whither from my body. He'd stay with me right? He wouldn't leave me. How many times has he saved me? From the Kades, from Desmond, from everything, everything, even when I never asked. But now, please, please, I'm begging you, just save me this once, just this once. I won't ask for anything more. Please.
     The swollen tendrils covered with deformed eyes place pulsing kisses along my cheek.
     I'm the only one who won't leave you. I'm the only one who really loves all of you, Cynder the slut, Cynder the liar, Cynder the fool, Cynder the fucking egocentric, arrogant, ignorant child. They murmur, a monstrous unity. They can't help you. None of them really care about you. You don't even know who they really are. Does Eirwen truly love YOU, or is he just seeing this shell of Elijah? And Sol, hah, that's—
     "Ah." I gasp, grabbing onto my chest and the clenching pain throbbing deep in the place I can't cut out.
     I'm burning.
     I'm burning from all these broken threads.
     Ralph shifts, awakens upwards like a growing lump of dead meat. And it hurts. It still hurts. This is wrong, all wrong. Where did it go wrong? He's supposed to accept me.
     "Of course you're not." Ralph chuckles, drawing his palms over the floor as he rises, "I shouldn't have believed them. They're all liars aren't they?"
     My hand wavers towards him.
     But before I can process any of his words with his incongruent, jerky motions, a hand latches onto my wrist and I'm flying backwards, away from everything.
     BAM!
     The wall behind where I was standing crumbles with a tremendous shake. My mouth falls open, eyes shaking over the wall and the fist without truly realising anything. What's happening? What hell is this?
     Ralph pulls his fist from the wall with his other hand, veins popping through the fragile skin of his wrist, tendons straining.
     "I'M NOT A FOOL CYNDER!" He holds onto his fist, shaking, "Don't treat me like a fool."
     The world crashes down.
     I choke, hands grasping for something, anything, Eirwen, "No, it's not like that, Ralph, please—
     "DON'T CALL ME RALPH!" The windows shake in their panes, and he looks up slowly, white hair sliding from his face.
     Supernovas of purple and grating darkness and everything's wiped clean like I've never known him before. Hollow ink, empty face, headless body, spilt blood, drowning time.
     My fingers dig into my chest, and I bend, fighting for breath, eyes still latched with his. Why? Why is he looking at me as if I stole something priceless from him? I never stole anything from him! Never, never, please, no. I can't take this. What in all hell did I do wrong?
     How can I be wrong for wanting to live?
     Weren't you the one who told me it was ok, and I needn't feel guilty about it?
     Weren't you the one who said you'd always protect me?
     "Why are you like this?" His voice, lower than a whisper, louder than a scream, "Why are you doing this to me?"
      Why are YOU like this? Why are YOU doing this to ME?
     "WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?" He shouts again, slamming his hand against the wall, "Everything was so perfect. This love." His hand scrunches his shirt above his heart, "You, an Otherworlder— I can't. You knew my mother was killed by an Otherworlder!"
    Pastel hair, lilac eyes, a twirling figure in a dress pushes between the ripping space, "Um, wait, it really isn't fallen Luchus's fault! The Prince, his soul's unstable, because um, he's falling apart, and he couldn't control his powers. Lady knight wanted to kill him to protect the King and Queen, but well... The Queen wouldn't allow it, he's her son and she couldn't—
    "Shut up." And now, there's truly nothing left in his voice but coldness and a threat of death.
     Lily shakes, eyes wild and erratic colliding again and again with me, "Sorry."
     Skirt and hair fly beyond my sight— sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry...
     Echo upon echo, everything crashes and ignites and pierces me.
     "What did you expect me to do? Fall out of love with you?" I laugh, screaming.
     Wrong answer, darling. The Pit coos, stroking my ear.
     "Fall out of love?" He mutters, becoming numb and limp, "You didn't love me. You didn't, I know that."
     My feet stagger backwards. I didn't, I didn't, but I did, oh, so much, I did and did and did, and sourness bursts over the edge and all parts of my soul is leaking out along the wetness.
     Sol steps forward, hands outstretched,"Ralphus, I know you're angry, but—
     This life too. This life too, nothing will go well. ANd PaIn and pAIn and pAiN and why does it hurt so much?
     See, no one can ever love you back, because you're just a selfish lying piece of shit. And the people who did accept you, what did you do to them? You threw them away like trash.
     Snap.
     "Is it wrong to want to live?" I shout, banging the wall with my fist, "So what if I'm an Otherworlder? I'm a living being as well! I want to live like anyone else! I want to love and be loved and have children and have a good job and have somewhere to live just like any normal person! SO WHY IS THAT SO HARD TO ACCEPT?" I gasp, "I WASN'T THE ONE WHO KILLED YOUR MUM!"
     "Accept?" Ralph pushes Sol to the side, "You wouldn't accept the other half of me either!"
     A laugh bursts from my mouth, drawing lines up and down, side to side, no more repression, oppression, loose, free, wild, "I have."
     That blood drenched beast, those naive animal eyes, that undying WILL. 
     "I've accepted you."
     He shakes his head slowly, "No, I don't understand. I DON'T!" Darkness pokes from his fingertips, and razor sharpness cuts his shirt into bloody smithereens.
Wildness paints his face a broken wilderness, "I don't know what's wrong, what's right! I love you, I love you so much! But I hate you, Merlow, I hate you... I feel like I'm dying."
     His body folds inwards, shoulders convulsing, like two forces are trying to tear him apart from inside.
     Too.
     I'm being torn apart.
     I didn't do anything wrong.
     I'm not the one who's wrong.
     And so, kind, gentle, loving Ralph is wrong? It condenses, squeezes into my ears, squeeze by painful squeeze. It's all your fault.
     "I DON'T KNOW!" Not butter anymore, not even burnt butter.
     REd LikE BlOoD, ThE WaLlS, tHe FlOOr, tHE FAcEs, THe tEarS,
                                                                                                                            but something muddier pours out from below Ralphus. A dark tide. A pool of shadows. A howling.
      "Shit." Eirwen's cool voice penetrates the congregating night.
Flesh wraps me back, tugs me away from this nightmare. But this nightmare's still continuing. Again, again, again, his accusatory gaze, it's never ending.
Light, layers of it around us.
But I can still see the birth of the demon outside. Darkness bleeds from Ralph, a liquid without life, without death, viscous, like the one surrounding us in those dreams. It seeps through the floor, up the walls, the windows, around Ralph.
A cocoon. Tendrils like my Pit loosening, stretching, curling and wrapping round and around. No more white hair, tan skin, handsome features, just a mummy clouded in shadow liquid bandages.
I gag.
I think I struggle.
The flesh tightens around me until the bone collides into me.
Then, darkness.
Silence, except for our mingled breath.
This greater cocoon twitches, threatening to engulf us.
Maybe, it's better that I die now.
There's an OPENING. This space is timeless, thoughtless, completely empty and completely full, and it all rips apart.
Sinkhole - red invades, the red of Julius's eyes, the red of blood, the red of the curtains in Julius's office, the red of Ralph's sheets, the red of the setting sun, the red of the magic warp light,
The dark and the red tear each other apart with the want to mingle. So they do, into a dark swirled sea into a pinpoint of white above—

-

AN: As you can probably see, Cynder has a character flaw of selfishness, but I believe every human has a segment of self that is undeniably selfish, even Ralphus. And if you've watched beserk, you can probs envision the cocoon part in darkness hehe.