morbidial (fatui x abyss!reader)
child neglect, mention of death, violence
00 — remember me.
it’s not that you don’t remember, it’s just that there’s a lot you don’t. it’s painful, to reach out into whatever clear corners were left in your mind to find any trace of you and not those of a creature from the abyss. whether it’s some spell of subserviency, some sick side-affect of the void, or your own mind, you just can’t remember.
but you do, don't you? you choose to forget. you can try to convince yourself that it’s to keep the abyss from having any more leverage on you, but that’s a lie. you don’t want to remember because you still mourn, you keep mourning a life you never had.
of course you remember a soft hand swiping over your face, to wash dirt and grime off of you when they first found you. you remember the same hand pushing you away when you cried, because snezhnaya does not believe in tears.
you remember her too. you remember your mother. you remember her gentle laughter and her close-eyed smile, you remember her scornful glances and the way her hands tensed at loud children. you remember her disappearing for months for work and returning with the nice men and their big guns.
you remember your siblings welcoming her back, the elder girls and boys clapping and bowing, while the younger ones sprang and beamed at her. you remember wanting to do the same, but feeling lightheaded and ill when you saw her. weariness, you learned later, was what you felt.
you once wanted, so bad, to be a part of the big family you lived with. barely eight, with big, hopeful eyes, clinging to the coat of the man who brought you there, staring up at the big colosseum of a house and the many children running around there.
you had once been so ecstatic to start this different life, after the troubling one you had so far, seeing all the children laugh and run around. but you were a hare among rabbits and a dog among wolves. your life so far had made you too harsh for the innocence of a normal childhood and too weak for one of hardships. you tried to blend in, but it was hopeless. did you try too hard, or not try hard enough?
trying to join in on games was easy at first, everyone was excited at the prospect of a new playmate, a new sibling. but when you recoiled too harshly at being touched and caught in a game of tag, they pulled away, awkward. you liked to draw too, but showing others your pictures made you shy and embarrassed, but the children thought of you as egoistical. small things, very, very small things, made you too odd to be around.
the other children would find your unblinking stare unsettling, and your stillness unnerving. it wasn’t that the house of the hearth didn’t have its own black sheep, but let us not pretend you were a lamb. an ugly duckling, who wasn’t a swan chick in the wrong nest, but a loon out of water.
eventually, your oddity just became you. you didn’t understand why nobody at all talked to you. the children in your years swerved around you, not wanting to attach themselves to a weed like yourself, and influenced by their elders, the new children avoided you like a plague.
it was… unbearable. your situation is so pitiable and morose that you fell into a mood too sombre for a little youth. isolation and loneliness sent you into a dark place, and the fragile hope that rested in your bones was shattered with every rejection you received. a little child, depraved of the stimulating feeling of joy and the company of your only community. a little child, taken from one poor family to another. a bird first held under the water, and then taken away to be held under sand.
nobody saw you. nobody at all. not your absent mother, not the caretaking mistresses, not your “siblings”, nobody. you had managed to get through it for the first year, but your peace had cracked quickly after. loneliness had irreparably, irreversibly, permanently been changed into a different person. at some point in your childhood, you became violent, scratching at anyone who came too close, and sneering at just about anyone with cutting words. you had hoped your outbursts of anger would have made you more noticeable, and the scolding of others made you beam with satisfaction.
only until of course, the scoldings thinned out, and the house left you be, hoping to satiate you with silence and alone-time. you could have laughed at the irony of it if you didn’t feel so ridden with despair, your ears perpetually ringing from the quiet, your efforts truly were useless weren’t they?
your only method of releasing any pent up energy and dismay was the training your mother insisted every child in the house must participate in. beating at dummies with a stupid wooden club to hopefully beat away at your steadily growing morosity as well.
your… vigor, if you could call it that, finally got you noticed. by one person, an old lady who patrolled the corridors, playing the role of a “captain” for all the children who trained.
she alone patted at your scars, giving you the simple opportunity of being more. more than your siblings. your depravity allowed you to cling onto any such praise, lighting a bit of a darker competitive streak in you, a blaze of fury stifling down anybody else who even tried to overtake you.
your “captain” prodded at the monster you were becoming, encouraging scuffles rather than reprimanding you for them. she didn’t defend you when the mistresses shrieked over your teeth biting into a girl’s arm, or your foot to a boy’s jaw, letting you snarl back at them yourself.
she created a small young beast, wrapping the thread of your broken heart and fragile soul around her wrinkled fingers, letting you rely on a person you thought truly valued you. perhaps she truly did. you chose to ignore, to forget the bite in her voice when you couldn’t perform well, pushing with more determination to make her proud of you again. you chose to remember her wired hands pulling at your face, joyful of your violent drive and cold sophistication.
your wooden club was replaced by a sword in a month, and your opponents went from dummies to the nice men with big guns who agreed to the lady’s offer to spar with you. you’d always stop at a blade to their throats, a victory, or a breathless lean against your weapon, a failure.
you, for once, felt complete. worthy. useful. even more so when your opponent grumbled congratulations, surely you were allowed a little smugness at fighting grown men and winning.
your mentor passed shortly after you came of age. you mourned for two months and a half, grieving the one person who gave you a glance that lasted longer than a second. the familiarity of your life fell and faded quickly, your spars less frequent and your days more empty.
you didn’t feel upset. she had been ailing for a while, and her death must have brought her peace. peace that you would cherish for her, in the place of her withering corpse. you were old enough to contribute to what she and the house had trained you and your siblings so long for, the mother government of snezhnaya, a nation you’d never even gotten close to visiting.
your years there, however few, got you a strange reputation. right from the very start of your soldiership you were avoided by those under the knave, your mother, and the others caught along quickly. your team of weaker gunmen and hammer-wielding men were assigned to you simply so you could keep them alive long enough to fulfill their own duties. you found it nearly disgusting, the lack of their ability and their belief in their own contribution to the motherland. what did they think they were contributing to, sitting around while you hunted food and intruders alike? useless folk. all of them.
you tuned it out, your irritation, as you have and would many times over. your goals did not sit still like your comrades, but changed by the will of your leaders. did you consider them worthy enough to listen to? maybe not, but the sense of security you got in following orders, anchoring yourself in a community, gave you life.
then came the abyss, with her gentle hands, whisking your alice liddell self away into a wonderland, and you found security in being powerful.
dear, (name), how does it feel to hate enough to floor cities to the ground? to feel angry enough to swipe your claws at any man remotely brave enough to approach you? to be stealthy enough to evade your weak life in the overworld for centuries, and strong enough to keep yourself from dwelling over it? you have become one of the many gems from the abyssal cave.
beautiful thing, do hope that the prince and his people do not bore themselves out at musing over you.
your peace comes in fragments, make them whole. at least, live trying. your stillness becomes that of a lynx, and your unblinking eyes that of a snake. your harshness is the beak of a loon. your claws are sharp and your canines sharper. they adore you more than anyone else ever has.
value it, value them.
don't forget.
interaction appreciated !
ㄟ( ▔, ▔ )ㄏ i will probably continue the sagau series as well, but i'm a little demotivated to finish it. i am planning to turn this into a series, please do share ideas and thoughts >< it does help in keeping that drive to write a bit.
