[Wardrobeverse] And I Grow So Weary Of The Sound Of Screams
This is for @twistedxsaiyan, as part of my birthday thank-you fic series.
FANDOM: Nightmare Dork University / Wardrobeverse
CHARACTERS: Icicle Jack, meta!Proto, Jack Sickle, Piki Black
SUMMARY: A switched POV from a scene in Somewhere Deep Inside of These Bones.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: To the absent-and-deeply-missed Dildarium, to @marypsue and to @emeraldembers who have written such wonderful NDU meta!verse Nightmare Kings, and to @hurtanminttu who created this playground.
WARNINGS: Angst. So Much Angst.
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You watch from your corner as the man who mirrors your lover sweeps your own mirror image into his embrace.
That clasping looks so much warmer, so much more solid, than the fierce and spiky couplings you and your lover subject one another to.
The devotion in the dark-haired human’s voice makes you weep when you think about the desperation you hear in your own voice, when you respond to similar devotion from your lover. You hear the same desperation in the voice of your human doppleganger.
You do not understand why neither can hear the common threads of fear and loneliness that bind each other’s speech, the inchoate terror that marks the cadences of each other’s words.
“Oh, but they do hear themselves, little stalactite, but they’ll never admit that they do,” murmurs an unwelcome voice behind you. Without turning to look, you know there will be a tall, smokily indistinct shape with too many limbs, a pale smooth unfurrowed face, and eyes of a violently incandescent blue, hovering at your shoulder.
Without being either booming or scratchy, the voice of that most dreaded, that most inscrutable and indefinable companion in your shadowed world reminds you, as it is meant to do, of the loud silence of anticipation of the next thunderclap as the last one rolls away, of the frantic skittering of insects as they flee from the disturbed safety of overturned loam in the forest. That voice is meant to be feared, and fear it you do… but not as much as you fear the sound of disappointment in your lover’s voice.
You make an effort to suppress a shudder and to act as though your unwanted companion is not there, as you turn your attention back to the humans, one tall, one small. The murmurs of “stop, hush, of course I’ll…” are a counterpoint to “thank you” and the hitching of breath that usually presages sobbing until emptied.
The familiarity is painful. Your lover commands as often as he comforts. You acquiesce far more often than you protest.
You want these two to be different, but the odds are that they will trace the same path of futility that you find yourself on.
You sigh and turn away, noticing as you do so that your dreaded companion has disappeared.
You do not know why that leaves you aching and lonely.
