Cage
A silver dagger, sharp and gleaming. It was wet, drenched in a shade of red he could scarce describe. It dripped downwards, a small puddle forming below his hand. Said hands were stained with the color, filling in the indents and lines. Garbled, gasping breaths echoed in his ears. Like sweet, sweet music. It whispered him him, danced around prettily in his head. The thick, metallic scent enraptured him. It kissed him, like an old, but familiar, lover.
Charade smirked wickedly, like monsters and demons did. They were his greatest of friends, the monsters in his head, he meant. Like the moon and the shadows, who told him what the meanings of the whispers were. He looked to the dwarrow that lie on the stone, a dark pool of something forming around him.
Charade laughed until he was sick.
Nori screamed until his throat was raw.
The darkness of his own mind, of his own madness, kept him trapped within. Shaking the bars formed of shadow and pain, he snarled and sneered. Cursed any Gods he could imagine, Gods not even his own. Nori despised Charade, but not for the reasons one would expect.
Nori hated him because his other half held no value on life, taking it when the fancy struck him. Charade drank, fucked, stole, and murdered because it was fun. Charade was instinct, animalistic and primal. He was everything Nori kept hidden away, under heavy chains of fear.
But fear... Fear is easily broken because it is cowardice. And strength, something Charade had an abundance of, chased fear until it died. Died like a crying, whimpering, weak animal.
And so Charade has risen from the shadows he had been kept in for too long, festering like an infected wound. With blood on his teeth, he smirked and was reborn.
Most of all, however, Nori hated Charade because Charade was Nori. His darker thoughts and needs. Horrific satisfaction filled him when Charade ended lives and had sewn chaos. It terrified him to his core, shaking everything he knew and was.
Because Nori liked it. The pain, the death, the blood, and shadows in which they lurked.
However, Nori could not bring himself to lay the blame at Charade's feet. Nori has created him, albeit by accident. Betrayal, shocking and terrible, had caused him to shatter. To change. To become a monster, to keep himself safe.
... Charade had been born because Nori was hurt and Nori was afraid.
When the fear has passed and Nori still lived, Charade had not faded away. No, he stayed in his heart. His mind. Tingled beneath his skin and cooed in his ear.
It became harder and harder to keep him away, in those fragile chains of fear and shadow. Laughter like a demon echoed in his ears when no one was around. A sickeningly sweet voice whispered comforts to him, though Nori was alone. Charade passed on dreams of blood and death, fantasies of people he had never met. Faces spattered with vermilion liquid, shiny and hot.
Nori would wake retching.
But Charade... Charade knew things, had too much time to think and explore. To change and grow, into something more than he ever should have. He once had no name, no reason. All he had known was fear. Anger. Betrayal. His first sight was his own blood, his first feeling pain. Was it any enigma why he became a monster, a murderer?
Even his name was an accident. Charade, he had heard a guard say, the first time he was arrested. Apparently, he had arrested Nori before... Before he was born, he supposed the term would be. Told him to end this 'charade'. With a cock of his head and a crooning finger, he asked what a charade was.
It was a farce, a lie. A deception, the guard said.
He smiled when he snapped his neck, having found his name. Charade. This was what he was, hiding within a mind that carried two instead of one. His name was Charade, to match his nature.
Charade felt everything strongly, for he was born of emotions strong enough to break a man's mind. Loathing, lust, rage, and... On only the rarest of occasions of course, love. But Love was a cruel, fleeting thing and it made him weak. Made him think. And Charade did not like to think on such things, because it made Nori stronger and Charade hated the cage he was left in. Cold, lonely. Too dark, even for him, and too silent.
Slowly, Charade pulled himself from his thoughts and looked to the dying dwarrow. He smirked and laid a boot on his throat, listening to the desperate gasps and pleas for mercy.
'Mercy?' He whispered, tilting his head in an almost childlike way, 'Sorry, darlin'. All out o' mercy. Perhaps ye' would like death instead? 'S jus' as good, ye' know.'
Charade was a monster. Charade was unnatural and emotional. And Charade was just as much a dwarrow and a person as Nori was.
Pressure and slowly, ever so pleasingly slowly, his chest ceased to rise. The fingers grasping to his boot grew slack and Charade laughed. Laughed like a demon, the scent of blood and death on the wind.
And if Nori laughed a little too, in his shadowy little cage, well.... That was no one's business but his and Charade's.