TW: CHILD ABUSE & EXPERIMENTATION
What Nicholas didn't know couldn't ever harm him either. The more the idea of what Conrad did to him was done to others, what humans had done to his kind.
Nicholas would never know what it's like to hear and feel each and every explosive death of his people, each time they writhed and screamed yet still were happy to help their humans. Nicholas would never feel the agony of his brother's hands lacerated to stop a tiny child, barely a year of life, trying to end himself because of what humans had done.
He'd never know the physical assault, the filthy things adults did. He'd never feel himself connect to a sister, torn apart yet still alive. The pain still lingers, he has to check himself every day, touch limbs and his eye- always his eye always the eye.
No, he will never have a place to speak, he didn't deserve to try and bond over the abuse, he was the cause of it. Even if he didn't know, Conrad was under his rule, he gave the man whatever he asked for, the serum made from his own blood given willingly because he was told to.
He trusted the wrong human.
He jerks as he's tugged, flinching as hands raised to protect himself as he whimpered in fear. Now left to think, the idea another human might harm him had him terrified, he wanted to run, to flee, to escape and never leave his room-
He's staggering slightly as he forces himself to properly stand. When had he fallen back? Why did the other even care if he stood or turned to mulch? Why was he telling him to live his life?
Why isn't he hurting him?
"What...." His head hangs, but he's standing now at least, blue blood trailing to mark his fine clothes as the tug had his hand cut his skin open, deeper, longer than he'd intended.
He got his pain in the end, even if it was his own doing.
"You hate me, I won't ever expect that to change. But you speak and act like you care. You won't let me die or even suffer, your hand or my own, you seem to hate the idea yet-" he struggles for words, brows furrowing before finally looking up, the tears never stopping.
He looked destroyed, anguish and fear tangling in a dance that once shone there, hidden beneath pain turned anger, now pure. He was afraid. He'd always been afraid. Of nothing, but humanity itself.
"What do you want from me? You hate yet you care, you're aggressive yet you don't want me to suffer. I don't get it, I don't understand you or your people." His voice wavers, pain blooming in his eye, blue gleaming in the droplets now.
"You only ever use my kind until they die a burning blaze of a death. Your kind tortured my sister that came before me and left her as shards, still alive. I am trying to learn not to be afraid, to help, to be anything but terrified. I just-" His voice shatters then, a sob building as he gingerly holds the wrist that yanked him up.
"I don't know what you want from me. I can't give, I can't-can't do what is expect of me, of my kind, if I don't know." A plant, always only ever a plant, a provider for humanity, a giver to his dying breath, even if he's terrified. "I already killed myself once, yet it's not enough, but it's too much." He looks past those shades best as he can, pleading with every ounce of his useless self.
"What do you want from me, Nicholas?"
