the woods were ravenous around this time of night, trying to stave off his baser impulses while the tree roots writhed around him, warding off the occasional team or two. he knew he couldn’t stay here long, couldn’t afford to get too cocky about it, but the reality ( if you can call it that anymore ) is that division 3 wasn’t as much of a threat to him as either it should be or he gave it credit for, neither of which would keep him awake at night. still, he cautions himself ( it’s not exactly you, though, is it―no seriously, is it? what’s real, what’s make believe―it’s all in the sea of his mind, swimming, bobbing, drownin g mayhaps . . .without anyone to make sense of it―I’M RIGHT HERE, YOU KNOW―he doesn’t want to talk about it― ) god, these voices in his head . . . he wonders if they’re not just there to torment him in stead . . . instead? in his stead.
ugly, awful, vile thing, a snake that clings to life without its head ( so we hoped ), writhing in its body as it flailed . . . god, it could have been him. it could have been finished. once and for all.
how can you hope to trust anyone anymore?
maybe it’s because she lied, and that’s what hurts the most. because it means admitting that he did, too, and he didn’t! . . . he didn’t . . . he did. ( not our best moment―no, we shouldn’t have trusted them in the first place! that’s how we got ourselves INTO this mess― ) nothing ever feels safe, sound, no structure for him to lean on. his foundation is shaky at best, if indeed he ever had one.
and it’s further complicated by this . . . fracture, this mess of humanity he’s barely holding onto, grappling with a snake still wriggling inside his head. they’re both so strong, so real in his head like nothing ever has been that it starts to ache like a phantom limb ( maybe not phantom per say, but fractured, gabriel offers, wanting to ignore it altogether. why did they have to have names, creating a reality behind them? it wasn’t the first time he’d been lied to― )
you need to back off, michael interjects, louder, more clearly this time. the intention lingers in his fist, clenched in an emotion both his own and not his own. he feels like an intruder in his body, minus the apathy of everything else that’s sought to occupy it. ( david please― )
and there’s the devil to consider, and the god who let this happen. he drags the forest behind him in a quiet uproar, shaking the earth with every step, barely holding on like he thought he could. the most dangerous thing about schizophrenia is convincing yourself that you don’t have it. the most dangerous thing about schizophrenia is convincing yourself that you don’t have it. you’re not sick, you’re a mutant. i’m not sick anymore.
it appears . . . that you are both.
david groans, itching in his skin. he tries to drown them out in the riot, clinging to any of the pieces with his name, HIS name. david. not michael, not gabriel, not whatever was left of raphael that seemed to speak through gabe from time to time―no, he clung to the pieces of david, struggling with them in his hands as he cried, trudging through the moonlight, shaking the very imbalance of nature within the radius of his powers. he could stretch it farther if he tried, but he didn’t have to, because he didn’t try to dictate it anymore.
i don’t have the strength to do this anymore, he cried with his own voice, unable to make it past the collapse of his throat. he felt well worn within the shackles of his skin without it feeling like his own, one step closer to the spiritual realm where the demons all leered and jeered at him, suspicious of the shadows as much time as he spent under the stars. he felt perpetuated by clouds, but not because he was flying. the anticipation of it all was too much . . . it was too much.
no one had ever let him say it was too much before, and now there was simply no one left to hear him, crying out to the moon, to the clouds, to all the stars that never said a word when he asked them to.
WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME, he cries out in his soul, aching in his teeth where they’ve grown sharper, evidence of the snake within him. the snake was writhing inside of him, still there, still living. all around him, demons cackled, watching from the shadows of the trees. the moment he tore his eyes away from the sky david was intimately aware of the spiritual realm, many of them subservient to the thing that stretched his shadow.
he ends up straying from the path ( how stupidly fucking ironic ), stripping himself of all his notions of godhood, vulnerable to everything he’s spent so long trying to fight. he can’t do it anymore, he can’t do this anymore. he’d risen from the compound only to come crashing down into the earth he churned with absentee thoughts, stumbling over his own two feet as he curled into the knots of a tree, hearing whispers in the dark. washing over him. there was no sense of familiarity here, no comfort, no willingness to forgive himself for it. he struggled against his own mind, shoving michael and gabriel away as best he could with all the noise . . . oh god the noise.
i’m sorry, he thought, sending out a prayer to whomever, whatever may be listening. destroyer of worlds curled up on knobbly roots, overshadowed by branches that seemed to stretch out further than they were . . . was it real? was he summoning demons to his aid? was any of it real anymore?
and he cried, in the dark, under a starless night, waiting for something, anything to take him when he finally closed his eyes.
