Hello Soup, I come bearing a ficlet based on your drawing:
Cleo's hands are half slick, half sticky. The blood is just on the verge of tacky, the way it gets when it's been a few minutes since that precious crimson hit the air. It's a texture Cleo is familiar with, the same way they are familiar with it when it's fresh and wet and when it's gone brown and stiff. It stands stark against their white skin, truly lily white, completely lacking the very thing that stains their palms.
What those horrible clawed hands hold is more precious than anything Cleo should ever be trusted with. Another hand, still pink with life, raw at the nail beds from the newly lengthened keratin that had burst through only a few days before after the first time she had sunk her teeth into Pearl's neck. Pearl's pulse thrums though the little veins that run all the way around the delicate structure of her long and calloused fingers. Cleo aches for it, and they will have it.
There's a pile of corpses, so tall that Cleo's eyes rebel against the site before their gaze can reach the top. They need not speculate how many bodies are thrown on top of each other like so much bloodless meat. 29,685, give or take a few. One a day for eighty one years. And Pearl will be one more, just the tippy top, limbs limp and crooked and tucked over and under the last body (Legs' body, which came to them mutilated before they ever put a stake through it) and the one before (Aric, charred to ash, the one one amongst the bunch who deserved it. The drop in the bucket of their sins is hardly comforting).
Pearl smiles so gently at them. She trusts them. She will go wherever Cleo follows. And Pearl isn't stupid, Cleo knows that. She can see the pile, she knows that she will soon be one of the mass of dead flesh. But still, she smiles, and she follows. And Cleo can only cry and walk forward, because what else has she ever been able to do? Especially when this time, the death was her own idea, a necessary evil (like killing Aric had been, except that Pearl is so good and has never earned Cleo's monstrous touch and their corrupting violence.) and one Cleo fulfills with grim determination. They have only ever been an executioner.
Ratā¦ O.Oā¦ Rat, when I get you. When I get youā¦ O.O *shaking, seething*
:(((((( hehedhhehhdhdhdhdhdhd
okay, I need you to know that my 2 drawings today, both the one of Pearl with her lantern and Cleo leading Pearl, were inspired by your symbolic drawing from yesterday. I was trying to make something from your visual representations of their character and stuff, and Cleo pulling Pearl started out as them clinging onto her like in your drawing, but then it turned intoā¦ that. And the fog and darkness and stuff was meant to hide the monsters in her trauma and stuff, and in a way is it kind of still like that but it is also Cleo turning Pearl but it is also a nightmare scenario where Pearl is yet another one of the people that Cleo is forced to slaughter like the thousands before(not turning, very much killing completely) and Pearl is the one person that Cleo wants to protect so badly and Cleo hates it but in this nightmare they are a thrall again and are forced to kill the one person they care so sosososos deeply about with her very own hands and watch as their body does it against their will. Pearl, oh sweet Pearl, dead like the others. Limp and cold and bloody. She trusted Cleoā¦
So yeah :3 brings a new meanibg to āDo not trust me. I am leading you to death.ā because Cleo really really really wants Pearl to run. But Pearl just smilesā¦ And Cleo hates that Pearl trusts herā¦ when they are about toā¦ betray her to horriblyā¦
I sent a headcanon about it to vsmpheadcanons so ill reblog it attachung it to the art once it gets posted(i can tag you if youd like?)
