#Please someone talk to me about Shelly I have so many headcanons about her | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

antihero-writings · 8 months

Text

If Everything Breaks

Fandom: Pandora Hearts

Summary: Break doesn't like to dance…but maybe just this once || A tale of Break as he grows accustomed to his life with the Rainsworths. My fic for the Chained Pandora Hearts Zine! Written to go alongside @paraffinegg’s art!!

For a while I’ve had some headcanons on how Break picked his new name, and I thought, what better time to write about it than my zine fic!

When Kevin opened his eyes, the light was too bright. No…not eye-s. Just the one. The other’s empty socket throbbed like mad.

As said eye adjusted, vague shapes became clearer: the bed he was on, the tables and chairs around him—(too lavish a room for him)—and finally a person.

“My name...is Alice.”

He shot up, knocking his head against the headboard.

She laughed...an oddly bright sound.

Framed in sunlight, a woman was smiling at him.

“Where am I?” he demanded, voice hoarse.

She raised an eyebrow. “It’s rude to address a duchess’ daughter so informally, you know.”

His eye widened. This unassuming lady was a duchess’ daughter?

“I am Shelly Rainsworth. ...You showed up at our door covered in blood. ...Quite an entrance, I must say.”

The Rainsworths? He searched his brain but couldn’t find record of the name.

“And you are?”

No one had asked his name in a long time. And if he had told them, well…he would’ve had to kill them.

“You killed so many people! What a fool you were!”

Best not pronounce his identity just yet. For her sake.

“You don’t want to tell me.” There was no question, nor distrust there. “That’s fine. But I need something to call you.”

Her smile was not wicked, nor pitying.

It had been a long time since anyone treated him like more than a monster to be feared, or a toy to plucked and prodded—his important parts ripped out; broken like all the promises of a better world—

“...keep breaking just like that…

If all the people break, and the world breaks…

and everyone and everything goes mad…

Then I can be normal...right?”

He looked away, reaching for his left eye, finding bandages and blossoming pain where sight was supposed to be. He grimaced before answering softly:

“Break. Just…Break.”

********

A world bathed in golden light, music coiling in the atmosphere. With its cues feet glided, hands entwined, and dresses fluttered just above the ground like broken butterflies’ wings.

A cacophony of meaningless noise.

It’s all mad.

Kevin stood by the stairs as if painted there.

It wasn’t that he disliked balls…okay, no, he did; balls, banquets…gatherings of any kind, really. But, this was the Rainsworth’s party, so attendance was mandatory.

Too bright lights, too loud music, gossip picking at his skull, and, well…people. It all blended together to create a painful buzzing in his head.

The crippled butterflies flew in the other direction around their cage.

“Come on, Cheshire, let’s dance!”

The dancing was the worst part. All those moves to remember, so much to get wrong...and for what? A good show? He had no talent for it, but hopping around, without stepping on anyone's toes—a trained monkey to someone else’s tune, and an uncompromising paradigm—held no appeal for him anyways.

Count the seconds. How many left?—

What do I have left to lose?

“Be it my arms, my legs…I grant you whatever your heart desires!

So please…change the past for me!”

Count the steps. Trace the sequence.

So many wasted moments in pursuits of stillborn dreams, the pattern already predetermined.

“It’s that man.” The hiss came from the side of the room.

He knew who they were talking about; whispers were his loyal familiar.

Kevin wasn’t looking, but he could feel her eyes burning holes in him, like she was trying to snuff out a cigarette.

“The one the Rainsworths took in.”

A second burning hole. His thoughts would surely catch fire.

He shut his eye, his knuckles white on the staircase railing.

“Have you seen his eyes?”

He silently refuted her statement: Nope. Just the one, Dear. The other was stolen away. Apparently they’re a precious commodity to little lunatics in the center of the universe.

“I know right? Red.”

Fingers shoved into his eye socket, pain boring through the hole left…

Screaming rending the air—was it his voice? His throat was burning—

“Fu-fu It’s beautiful.”

“They make him so creepy!”

“I still don’t understand why they took him in.”

“Don’t they know how to take out the trash?” Laughter like venom.

He leaned back, putting his hand on his forehead, trying not to let it travel to his socket.

The words wove around his inner works, pulling taut. He tried not to think of death—(theirs, or his own)—as an excuse, or escape. But too often his mind drifted to a darkened room full of coffins, and a little girl begging him to stay.

Was it his fault, then? Was all of this…inevitable?

“Break!”

The word was a crack in reality. Another, better world, reaching out to him.

If there is such a thing.

He looked up, as if at the bottom of a mineshaft, to see Shelly on the staircase above him.

The thing about being in a high position is one gains the luxury of indifference; those in power rarely care for those below them. They can afford not to.

She caught his eye and motioned for him to come up to her.

...The Rainsworths were different.

“Come quickly, there’s a man covered in blood!”

Dare he? Surely he must stay against the wall, he was plastered there after all.

This room shone gold. Yet the Rainsworths were brighter; they were a kind of light those in the room knew nothing of. So bright were they that those in the dark dare not touch them, for fear of being shown in the sun for what they really were.

She put her hands on her hips.

...He dare not disobey.

And what was becoming of him? He didn’t feel brighter since meeting them. What if it was the other way around? With each step closer he swore he could hear the pieces of his shattered heart jangling in his chest, and wondered if instead he’d leave them all bleeding on those sharp edges.

A blur went by, closely followed with—

“Dance with me, Reim!” Little Sharon came pelting after.

Reim hid behind Sheryl’s chair on the floor below, and Rufus proceeded to scold them.

Laughter like sunshine breaking after rain.

He looked at Shelly, who raised an eyebrow.

“That’s the first time I’ve seen you smile in perhaps…ever.”

He was smiling? Better wipe it off.

“So…something tells me you don’t feel like dancing.”

“I never cared for it, Shelly-sama.”

“Let’s see, you don’t care for;”—She counted on her fingers—“people talking to you, people looking at you, people…aaand dancing now.”

He rolled his eye. “I mean it. I really can’t.”

“What do you say to a lesson?” She held out her hand.

He stumbled back.

Was this some punishment? He tried to think of anything he’d done to deserve this.

“It would disgrace a lady such as yourself to be seen dancing with a servant.”

“We could use a good scandal.”

“I—” he looked away, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’d step on your toes.” He was running out of excuses.

“I don’t doubt it.”

What wasn’t she getting about this?

Shelly bounced her hand persistently.

No. He couldn’t. Shouldn’t. Wouldn’t. Dare touch her. Surely he’d infect her. Why was she bothering with him? Pestering him, like she always did. Like everyone always did. Treating him like a lost puppy, when they should just leave him in the rain to die.

The request was soft: “Please dance with me, Xerxes.”

He raised an eyebrow. “…What did you call me?”

He never spoke of his past, but he knew those whispers, ever at his heel, were indication enough of something dark in his ill-conceived adulthood.

“Well, I figured if you’re keeping a fake name, you’ll need a second. Or, in this case a first—Break sounds better as a surname, don’t you think? And I thought Xerxes was rather fitting.”

“How?” He snorted. “Isn’t it a name for ancient kings and heroes? I fail to see how I fit that.”

How could a knight wear the name of a king? How could a villain bear the name of a hero?

“That’s why I picked it.”

He backed up, his eye widening.

He didn’t understand what she was, or why she ever spoke to him. All that light was sickening...yet…

This woman saw him, not as a monster, or a toy…but as some sort of hero. How was that possible?

The name didn’t fit right. But she smiled at him, and though the light was sickening... it was oddly warm.

“Break might not like to dance, but tonight we are not Break and Shelly. I am the Queen of Hearts, and you are my Mad Hatter.”

“...Who said I was mad?”

She grinned.

“You must be, or you wouldn’t have come here.”

He could choose to turn away, leave this place, believe the whispers snaking through him. Reject the name, her kindness, her light.

He sighed, averted his eye—

Just this one.

And took her hand.

#Xerxes break #pandora hearts #break pandora hearts #kevin regnard #kevin legnard #pandora hearts break #pandora hearts fic #pandora hearts shelly #shellly rainsworth #shelly pandora hearts #sheryl rainsworth #sharon rainsworth #reim lunettes

53 notes · View notes

tumblunni · 6 years

Text

ALSO TO FIX EXCELLUS

Because tangeants again lol

Recognise that its fuckin stupid and bigoted to expect us to believe someone is a villain INSTANTLY after seeing that they're queer, before they even do anything. Don't spend your entire damn game having the characters go "eww its that disgusting person of ambiguous gender we should kill them because gross" rather than.. Yknow.. "Excellus fuckin murdered those people". Recognise that literally doing this is gonna make your character LESS villainous and MORE sympathetic long before you finally get to goddamn showing them do anything bad except say "ohoho i wanna be a princess". And it'll make bunni REALLY PISSED OFF because nobody wants to feel sad for an asshole murderer yet THAT SADNESS IS FOREVER ENGRAINED IN MY SOUL NOW

Seriously fuckin hell it even made the heroes look less heroic! I felt like Excellus was almost justified in becoming a murdering selfish monster if she spent her entire life being treated that way by both sides in this big good or evil conflict. Why the fuck should she give a shit if she's being degraded? Like FUCKIN OBVIOUSLY murdering people and wanting to conquer a random japanese country as a mad dictator is not a remotely logical reaction to being misgendered. But like they could have changed some stuff and made a perfectly good sympathetic villain who gets manipulated by the bigger bad because of her sad past of being treated like shit and like she feels like this is her only option to be herself. And then maybe you can reignite her hope in the world and her self esteem and moral centre and help her redeem herself and team up with you to take out the real horrible fucks with no sympathetic motives. Instead she's friggin played as THE one who's evil cos she has no sympathetic motive. Like that's her whole Thing, she's supposed to just be selfish and greedy and horrid. Your damn bigotry somehow failed your own story as well as failing all trans people ever!

Or like yknow.. If you want an asshole fuckboi then actually write an asshole fuckboi. Scrubby scrub the trans = bad shit from this plotline and you do indeed have a selfish monster who murders a bunch of innocent people and gets his just desserts. You had a ready made simple character archetype and you were so preoccupied shoving your transphobic screed into your game that you fucked it up!

So yeah i think either make this goofy ohoho trans auntie a good character, make the asshole ohoho bad character a cis man, do both at once, or like even i'm not opposed to having a trans villain exist but like seriously make them a synpathetic villain. If they're the only trans character in the plot its already gonna send a bad message if theyre in the role of "worst most underhanded jerk villain", even if it WASNT also transphobic as fuck. So a sympathic trans villain or adding more LGBT characters so it doesnt seem like this one individual was designed to make a statement on your entire feelings for a minority.

ALSO

like seriously please do not do this stupid thing of mooshing every stereotype together from every LGBT identity and acting like theyre all the same thing?? Like man i fuckin HATE that anime trope that yknow.. The gay man says all this trans stuff cos he's ~just that flambouyant~ Like being a drag queen is what 100% of gay men are, 24/7, and anyone saying theyre a trans woman is just one of those drag queens who's really getting into character. Or just.. I dunno. I cant even wrap my head around what train of logic must have led to that stereotype in the first place! And its so fuckin annoying as a queer person trying to talk about why this is bad queer stereotyping, it just makes me extra sad to straight up not know what pronouns to use for the character so i feel like i'm being just as horrible to them as their creators were. Like man i've only settled on going for "she" for Excellus cos after years of looking into it it does seem like the original japanese was indeed specifically using stereotypes of trans women and not trans men or nonbinary people. Though all languages do seem to call the character male it seems pretty strongly to be a "i believe that trans women are men and can never be women" kind of thing, rathe rthan the character herself calling HERSELF male. She calls herself a woman in both english and japanese, and its just that the english has everyone else use male pronouns for her and added the non-canon "explanation" that she only acts like a trans woman because she has something wrong with her balls. (Ugh!) And in japanese on top of calling herself a woman she also uses feminine (and specifically trans/drag queen coded) variants of "I", and other common speech pattern traits used for negative stereotypes of trans women. Though again we do have other characters calling her a disgusting perverted man instead. Sigh!

Ok ok ALSO BIGGEST FUCKIN FIX! dont draw the character like a horrible distorted cariacature goblin in an entirely different art style to everyone else. Seriously its so annoying how they tried to make you agree with "excellus is disgusting just for acting queer" by LITERALLY DRAWING A DISGUSTING CHARACTER. If you take away the weirdass overdetailed horror movie monster face, there is nothing ugly or even "manly looking" about her! She's just like somebody's perfectly normal chubby aunt or something. You could go out in any street all over the world and see five of her! I hate it cos its almost like psychological manipulation or something? Like i've seen so many lets players who arent bigoted but merely oblivious still agree that excellus is ugly and disgusting and comical because of it, cos all the implications of transphobia/homophobia flew over their heads and all they saw was a character drawn to look monsterous. And just.. This is so common. Its the overwhelming japanese stereotype of trans women. Draw them looking INFINATELY MORE MANLY than the cis male characters. So manly that it really hammers home how "obvious" it is that a man in lipstick or dresses "just looks wrong" and of course there's NO way they could ever pass and ha ha look how deluded they are that they think they look pretty. It's horrid. It really is. Seriously I like to point at Tabitha from Pokemon ORAS for a good counter example, cos he's also an ambiguously transgender character from a game that came out around the same time and by some weird coincidence they look very similar. Except for the literal entire face. The literal entire exact same face, just its drawn hideous and distorted on the one who's supposed to be a negative trans stereotype, and drawn exactly like everyone else on the positive one. And there's not one example in the whole game of anyone calling Tabitha ugly because he looks trans, or even insulting his weight or anything. Same damn character design, just drawn without bias and treated like a human being. I mean seriously right down to them having the small "evil eyes" but with Tabitha he's always drawn with them in a perpetual sort of happy face and then his pose with them looking similar to Excellus is supposed to be a BADASS MOMENT of this comic relief villain showing his worth! And hw literally has red eyes on top of it! His design is even MORE "evil" yet just not drawing it as a stereotype entirely changes the player's perception and he became beloved by many. Whereas with Excellus even the trans people in the audience couldnt relate to her and just felt fuckin sad.

Oh also i guess Excellus is implied to be a trans woman and Tabitha is implied to be a trans man? But i don't think game freak was trying to say anything about trans men being more valid or whatever, cos the first canonical LGBT character of any sort was a trans woman npc in the battle maison. And tabitha being trans isnt really confirmed as clearly as she was. i hope someday theyre able to confirm an LGBT main cast member but until then i will forever hold onto the glimmer of hope that was given to me by Beauty Nova.

Also seriously Tabitha and Excellus both also look EXACTLY LIKE ME IN REAL LIFE so I kinda took Excellus extra hard and latched onto the Tabitha headcanon so much more because it was good healing after all that nonsense. Tho I also did considee nonbinary Tabitha at the time, because his japanese name is a gender neutral one that's merely like 75% female, rather than a 100% feminine one. But then his old RSE design was very masculine so i think maybe a trans man is what they were trying to imply if they did indeed do it on purpose. Anyway i probably would have translated his name as Ashley cos it has the same "technically neutral but more popular with girls" aesthetic while also keeping the same fire pun as Homura. I have no idea how on earth Tabitha is supposed to be a joke, honestly. Tho i meam maybe he's just the one type specialist on the entire poke-earth who doesnt have a joke name?

ANYWAY thank you terrible transphobic stupid manga i read today for reminding me that i love Tabitha. And also the developers love Tabitha. And also all the characters in universe love him, like seriously the only difference between the devon dialogue of him and Shelly is that they mention the other scientists nicknamed him tabitabi. And its so cute how seriously they said it too?? Its like "our boss tabitabi,the most feared and respected genius man".

Lovv dat tabb

0 notes

antihero-writings · 4 years

Text

Blood and Mercury

Fandom: Pandora Hearts

Fic Summary: Symptoms of mercury poisoning may include: irritability, excitability, delirium, insomnia, vivid dreams, depression, and suicidal tendency.

There must have been a lot of mercury in Break's past for him to show so many symptoms.

|| A modern AU about Break's past struggle with drug abuse and suicidal thoughts, and his current struggle with the Mad Hatter's illness, and how much of that struggle he should tell Sharon about.

Character Focus: Break

Notes: 1. Warning! This fic deals with topics of suicide and drug abuse. Everything is described very subtly and poetically, and it's not explicit, but it is about that. However, although it's heavy for the first part, there's some definite comic relief at the end if you can get that far!!

2. This is a modern AU. Not the reincarnation AU, an actual modern AU, where the plot of the series happens in modern time. (I mean, I guess it could be a reincarnation AU if actual events repeat themselves...but I don't think they do). So, in case it's not clear, Break's sick from his second contract with the Mad Hatter, just like in the series. Although I do like the idea that it's actually mercury poisoning.... a) I didn't even think about that until I'd already written it, b) coughing up blood and stuff isn't a symptom of it, and c) that's a really cool idea that I'd rather focus on and do justice in another fic. (Let me know if you'd be interested in reading that!!) The time frame for this is meant to be towards the end of the series--around the time Break was teaching Oz sword fighting.

3. I've always headcanoned Break (or more Kevin) as being suicidal because of the "So...you wanna die?" line. I don't know if the line was actually supposed to mean he was directly suicidal, or if it just meant he was depressed and not doing well, and/or just didn't care about his life, but that's how I've viewed it. And even if he was suicidal, I don't know that he ever attempted it. It could just be that he was suicidal inside but never did anything with those thoughts. Regardless, I do think he wanted to die in some fashion, and to me it makes his story more impactful (especially when he ends up wanting to live at the end), and relatable if he was actually suicidal. So I really wanted to play with that idea in at least one fic (though I'd enjoy playing with it in the context of the actual series too).(You don't have to read this part if you don't want to XD I just wanted to put it up front)

This fic was inspired by the song "Colors" by Halsey!

If you enjoy this fic, I'd really really appreciate if you could leave a comment!! Even the shortest comments can truly make my week, and motivate me to keep writing!!

Chapter 1: The Candy Shop

Collapsing. Blackness. Scratches in his lungs. And the taste of blood.

He never complained but his blood tasted like ash, and regret, and the blackness that overtook his sight was far from empty; an abyss, the memory of one, engulfed his world before he even felt the ground.

The last thing he had heard was Sharon shouting his name, and at Oz to get the medicine—and do so quickly. She didn’t say why, but they all knew it was because every second they wasted was a second he no longer had to spend.

Sharon’s voice, doused with pain. All that hurt and care, and thinly veiled tears, crammed into a few words. He’d never tell her, but he could care less about the wasted seconds, if only she would promise never to cry like that again.

He had collapsed this time. That wasn’t exactly abnormal, still, little by little, line by line, every little sign, he was getting worse.

“Don’t push yourself, Xerx.”

Reim would scold him for not listening.

And maybe Break would laugh, say some quip about how he worried too much, how he needed to let loose. Or maybe he’d say nothing at all. But they both knew—words or no—at some point, this would be all that was left; a few laughs, a drink or two, and the words Xerxes, don’t throw your life away.

What a fool he was.

With Sharon it was different. Different because she was young, and she didn’t understand, not fully, not enough. Or because she understood too much, and everyone pretended she didn’t. He didn’t like to entertain the thought, but maybe that included herself; maybe when she told them to get the medicine, she was telling herself it would work.

Which was the scarier thought; that she didn’t understand? Or that she understood completely, and pretended not to?

What about before? When she was a child laced in light. Was it worse then, or better?

She was younger—so, so young…had they really known each other so long? Was he really so old?…little girls shouldn’t be forced to deal with the broken shards of someone like him.

They might get cut on the pieces.

She didn’t know. She didn’t need to pretend. Still, they tried to hide his pain from her young impressionable brain. And this was not easy, nor fun, but neither were the tears and the questions.

That all but went out the window when the little girl found him, collapsed on the bathroom floor, along with the desperate spill bottle of pills, meant to override the circuits in his brain. Salt thrown over his shoulder.

For good luck on the other side.

Shelly’s face. No anger. No disappointment. That kindness was in Sharon’s smile too, now—and did this kindness mean more if she knew the truth? If he’d known the capacity of their smiles, would he not have tried it?

Sharon had led her mother to him—her voice was desperate, shouting, crying, back then too…some things never change—laying there on the floor, on a date with death and a bottle whiskey and cyanide. As if toasting to the thought We are born drinking from bottles, why not die that way too? Instead of throwing them away he had tried to throw away his life instead.

Bottle up his life, slap a label on it, set it on the shelf. You can take it down on special occasions. Sell it, throw it away, it doesn’t matter. Throw away his life with the very thing that was meant to heal it. Not many murder weapons were once medicine. An overdose on ineffective salvation.

Hadn’t wrote a note either. Hadn’t given them a reason, hadn’t detailed his pain, or plan for revenge.

Just tried to leave without a trace, and left too many.

And when he woke up and, to his chagrin, was still alive—no heaven or hell, just here on an earth that was both—she hadn’t scolded him…well, not at first. She hadn’t demanded to know what he was thinking, or tried to ingrain within him him how much they cared, and how terrible it would all be if this plan of his had worked. She had just smiled, and spoke softly. And later, when she cleaned him up, she had said…

It was always the same. The same now. Black and white and red all over. Sharon’s cries, instead of choking down all the pain, forcing herself not to feel, like he did, she took that pain on her tongue and let it spill out into the open air.

Maybe that was all she could do. Shout his name, and pray her words would pull him from the beyond the veil, and try to discern if there was such a thing as medicine after all. Maybe she wanted to feel useful, because just sitting here, waiting for the end to come and grab him with teeth and claws, was more than she could bear. And in some way he was grateful, because he’d rather she pretend she could save him, than see the real pity, the hopelessness in her eyes when she realized she couldn’t. When she realized the Red Queen and the Black King had her Mad Hatter after all, and she couldn’t break him out of their dungeon.

One day, he was sure, it would all become too similar to a snowy night long ago—a night dressed in black; black cloak, black coffins, black sky, and black around those red eyes, which his own became indistinguishable from too quickly. Maybe Sharon would even say those words too: Break, please don’t leave me, because he’d never had the guts to tell her what his past was made of. And then…he would do just that.

He’d rather have her believe the lie he might live than say to her face I’m going to die and nothing can stop it.

He wasn’t afraid to die. We all die at some point. Some sooner than others. Why should he get more time when he wasted so much of it? Save your breaths. Save your tears. Save your lives, not mine. We all lose the fight eventually. He had spent his whole life fighting, maybe just once he could go quietly into that goodnight; meet death as a friend. He didn’t deserve more time than anyone else.

He just…wanted a few more minutes awake. A snooze button on life. Five more minutes. Ten. Twenty. A year or two? There were a few more things he needed to do. He wasn’t going to let death take him down easy.

All that talk, and not-talk, of medicine and death led him here, today, with a prescription container in his hand, and an ache in his head.

He swung open the lid to the cabinet, a mirror hanging limply out, glinting in the cold fluorescent light.

Why do they put mirrors on medicine cabinets? Like you need a second look to tell you—Yep, I’m crazy— before you pop the little capsules in your mouth, which promise This will make things better. And you tell yourself plastic and paperwork, lab coats whitewashed as their promises wouldn’t lie.

He lifted the container to put it back in its proper place in the cabinet, but paused, letting it rest on the tip his fingers, sliding into place in his palm. His arm dropped back down, eyes scanning over the label, darting to the rest of the contents of the cabinet, as if staring down an old foe.

White ones, and blue ones, red ones, yellow ones…like some candy store for the sick, the insane, and the empty. It wasn’t just pills either; powders, and needles, and glass that breathes fumes into your lungs and brain; a delusion’s kiss, that makes everything just a little bit better, just a little bit funnier. Needles that, needless to say, could take you a real wonderland if you shoved them in far enough.

He’d tried them all at some point in his life. And when they didn’t work, the stash sat dormant in his closet, his drawers, cabinets like this one, while new-fangled solutions took their place. He didn’t throw them away—you never know when one day you might need to fly—like he was keeping illegal souvenirs of a worse world.

There are worse things than bottled happiness. And ‘happiness’ can do more damage than a decent amount of sorrow sometimes.

They smelled like walls that someone puked on at one point, but they painted over rather than clean up, and you could still tell by the smell something was wrong, closer to the woodwork. But they were too easy to keep contained; to not smell, to not taste, too easy not to realize what they were really made of.

He wouldn’t be surprised if there was a few hundred, maybe thousand or more, dollars* here staring back at him in hollow color. The amount of money they cost only comparable to their unending ingredient lists—full of the names of chemicals he couldn’t pronounce, and titles that he could, but wouldn’t waste breath on. He didn’t care about the money, or what they were made of, or the warnings of how much more damage they would cause—asking you to decide between your brain and your liver. All promising happiness, and not-perfect-just-better, and a decent night’s sleep.

He tried not to care about much.

None of them worked. Not for him at least.

And, no, that wasn’t an exaggeration. Wasn’t just an excuse to get more, or him not trying hard enough. There came a point when his body just wouldn’t respond to their signals.

There came a point when too much of him was already too dead to respond to anything but mad scientists, calling upon lightning storms in old abandoned castles. Besides, the Mad Hatter’s malady wasn’t exactly something an ordinary doctor could fix, or even name.

In truth, he could handle the physical aspects of it; the blood in his lungs, the passing out, and the loss of vision—which would be more than a temporary side effect before long. But there was something else—what do they call it? The soul? The heart? Something like that. He’d forgotten long ago. Those parts, that pain, was harder to take, to tolerate, and rotted the longer he stuffed it down. Like he was barricading the door to the monster’s lair with the bodies of those monsters that had gone before, and he knew full well none of them were quite dead.

There was an old picture on the countertop. A woman with hazelnut hair and a sunflower smile, a man in turquoise with a begonia eye, tragedy woven into the petals. And a little girl who thought flowers were bandages.

He picked it up, brushing the dust off their faces, trying to smile, though it was stained as his eye back then.

People need hope. They need this thing to tell them to keep going, it’s not over yet, not to give up. It’s like the glue to the gingerbread house that is you. When you don’t have it, your life kind of…falls flat. Like soda that’s been left out; no longer bubbly, no longer worth drinking. When someone doesn’t have it, it doesn’t mean they can’t live anymore, that life is undrinkable, it just means this thing we called living, once, doesn’t have the same carbonation.

But hope is a funny thing, elusive, reclusive, and volatile. Picky about the things it can eat. Difficult to keep alive.

That’s why this candy store was so full, what its stockers promised to fix, to feed; that beast, hope. That’s what the dealers promised they could provide; something they all knew couldn’t be borrowed, or bartered, or manufactured.

Hope’s not something that can be bottled. We’re all like children, unaware fireflies, those pretty blinking lights, will die without air.

He set the picture back down, turning his gaze to the container still in his other hand.

The only reason he kept using them was for them. For Sharon, Sheryl, and Reim. For Oz and Gilbert, and the rest. As long as it didn’t hurt, or make it worse, if it gave them hope—(a hope he could never have)—for him to take the medicine, he’d do it.

Sheryl had been the one to suggest the medicinal path in the first place. It made sense; she had dealt with this sort of thing before. Shelly had been sickly all her life, and medicine helped—(Helped. Didn’t save her life. And Shelly would have argued she didn’t need it either, and had often refused them herself). But this wasn’t the same. This was deeper than skin or bone. Still, she was kind, and he respected her—or he came to…not to mention he didn’t want to cross her.

Reim had agreed; regiments and tangible, scientific solutions appealed to his personality. He liked when things were concrete, it was more promising to him than whimsy, and words.

They had yet to learn of the concrete things that were tea and sugar, which work a lot better at lifting the spirit than things you aren’t supposed to taste.

Life is about tasting. About watching, and listening, and really feeling. Life is about living. Not swallowing and trying not to taste. Not existing and trying not to live.

It was Shelley who had told him that. She had let them try out their methods, but she told him if he didn’t want them to work, that they wouldn’t. That he could try them, but they were useless without resolve to go with them. She told him that the ones the doctors give are from a factory, made of greed, and half-baked promises that rubbed too close to lies. Not belief, and real promises, and laughter—(which is, of course, the best medicine). And even the ones they don’t give you are too strong to grant you something you can call life. That maybe he oughtta just throw them away after all.

She told him a smile and a day in the sun was all he really needed. That they can’t bottle and sell hope and sunshine. That you can’t pull life out of death, and hope needs to come from something alive—from something free of charge, flickering in the air, that can’t be put in a jar, or tamed. She pointed to his chest and said that hope hails from there. The last thing in the box is always hope, you just have to really empty out the rest of the crap in the box first.

Shelly wasn’t someone you could hide these sorts of things from. She had this sixth sense; she could speak with the already-dead. One way or another, she’d find out—(even if she had to wring it out of you). But instead of sending you to the doctor, telling you that something was wrong with you, that you were crazy, she would smile. Like all you needed were a few kind words, and she’d send you back into the world, heart humming. She could be unbearably compassionate. When she talked about happiness, it was like she was speaking of an old friend of hers. She’d say that it doesn’t come in shots or smoke, it was more elusive, and can be found in a kind gesture, at amusement parks, and in sunsets, in a really good cup of tea, or a homemade cookie.

And when she’d cleaned him up, after finding him on the bathroom floor, she’d said:

“So, you want to die?”

Did he? Did he really want to die? Or was it something else? Something darker? something brighter?

He wanted to sleep. To rest. He knew that much. His sleep was always interrupted and irregular, and he had forgotten what real rest entailed.

Knives and blades rested comfortably in his hands, but he had broken the skin too often, of too many others, for it to provide any semblance of relief when used on himself. Besides, he didn’t want to die naked in a bathtub painted red. He didn’t want to lay in a coffin with stitches on his neck and flowers growing out of his wrists. He didn’t want the world to find him hanging from the ceiling like a criminal in town square. He didn’t want scars to tell his secrets, or his death to show him weak. Very little about his life had been elegant or dignified. So he wanted to die, at least, softly, with some measure of dignity. Make some music out of the cacophony. Without a scratch, or a word, or a second to spare. Something subtler would be his weapon of choice: the prick of needle, the taste of poison, the promise of happiness in a bottle—just enough happy to kill you.

Because that’s how it was, then—during that time when they had found him on the bathroom floor. That desire wasn’t flashy and boisterous. It wasn’t the rich smell of steel and iron, it was more insidious; the smallest pinprick of the soul, or something he may have swallowed at one time or another, that withered his insides slowly. It wasn’t something to parade around, or cry out to the town, and it wasn’t something he needed them to rescue him from. It was just there, nagging at the back of his heart, like a sore soul.

He didn’t cut, and he wouldn’t bruise or burn, and he wouldn’t ask for their help, or tell them a thing either.

His cries were veiled, veiled behind those times he shouted at them, or insulted them, even now still veiled behind his jokes. It wasn’t obvious. The pain was a shadow behind his words and actions, a demon behind him at all hours.

Back then, there had been days when he wouldn’t move from that windowsill, unless Shelly shoved him off.

Sometimes he felt like a shadow himself when he was around the living—like he wasn’t really there. Already dead, an imprint, a faded image of some past, some distant version of a self who may or may not have existed. He couldn’t share their happiness, or even their grief, because he wasn’t a real thing, here, now. He shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be here, with a new young mistress, a doll with his old mistress’s name, and a heart full of regrets. I mean, really, shouldn’t. Time had bent for him, and he feared the bends were becoming breaks.

“You wish to die…so you do not suffer anymore. You simply want to save yourself.”

Was that true? Was this not about death, or even rest, but about…salvation?

He wanted to live. And that’s why he tried so hard to die.

Sharon, Reim, Sheryl, Shelly, and…Oz.

He ran his hand through his hair, grimacing at the thought of Oz seeing all this. Sharon had assigned him the task of medicine-caddy after all. He imagined the boy saying to himself What does Break need all these for? Then backtracking in his mind Oh, right, which would either be followed by, Oh, right, he’s crazy or Oh, right, he said he wouldn’t last the year and take an extra few moments to find the right ones before running back.

Usually Reim was the one to do this. Reim knew about the whole not-working thing. He had told him to stop taking them, to tell Sharon that they didn’t work. To stop pretending they did, that he’d never know what more damage they were doing to his body by taking them. But he also didn’t force him to tell the truth. Perhaps protecting Sharon was for the best. They were like her older brothers—a little too protective at times. Neither of them wanted to see her cry.

He didn’t usually let anyone besides Reim look in this cabinet—best not let the world in on his little secret candy shop—but he hadn’t had his medicine on him at the moment he fell, and Reim had been busy running errands for the bird-brained duke at the time.

He tossed the still-full container into the trash, where it gave a satisfying swish and clang as it tumbled into bottom.

Such a simple action. Why had it taken him so long?

He should have listened to her earlier.

He rested his hands on the sink, closed his eyes again, blowing out a breath.

The yellow pills don’t contain happiness, in as much as the red ones don’t contain anger, or the blue ones sadness. The red pill and the blue pill don’t sit in the hands of the god of dreams, asking you if you want to wake up. We may be made out of dust, but some dust in a capsule can’t patch the rips in our souls.

Can’t fix the hole where his eye is meant to be. Can’t undo the brand on his chest.

Doctors can sew back the skin, but they don’t know how to stitch together a ripped mind. They try, they think they can plug the hole up. But you can’t come to them with the broken shards of your heart and say Hey doc, can I get a new one?. You can’t walk in with a messed-up mind and say Clean it for me, will ya?

There was nothing they could do about his eye, except give him one made of glass, and he had enough broken shards in his brain, and enough falsity in his smile. And they couldn’t rewind the clock burned on his chest. His time had already reached zero, so it made sense he was dying.

He could handle being broken, being Break. In fact, a little penance could do some good. He’d could handle pain.

It was the memories he wanted to tear to shreds and return to sender. But he was not granted the grace of amnesia, unlike little girls named Alice. Just bad dreams, and reminders on his broken body telling him he was less than worthless.

He didn’t want to go to the doctor, especially not a psychiatrist. And Shelly wouldn’t have made him go, until faced with Sharon’s eyes, blurred with tears, asking when he was going to get better.

He didn’t need a shrink to know he was crazy. What would he talk about anyway?

Well, let’s see here, I’ve killed a hundred and sixteen people, so that might be weighing on my conscience a bit.

Why? Because a demon told me I could change the past. To tell you the truth, I could, and I did, but you know what demons don’t tell you? You can change the past, but that change may mean the difference from bad to worse. I made it worse. And in my version of events; the changed past I sought so desperately, that one little girl who survived ended up feeding her family to another demon to save her sister, in the same way I wanted to save them.

I wasn’t there to stop her. And I know she failed. I am what success looks like.

And it’s my fault she’s dead. I killed her. I killed her. I killed that little girl—

Yeah, no diagnosis necessary.

Sometimes he wished he could be diagnosed with something normal. That they could say he had a disease, or a parasite that was slowly eating at his mind. But this wasn’t something that could be found in text books. It was closer to magic—things from the Abyss are not for doctors to diagnose. The blood he coughed up wasn’t from a disease, or pent up abuse or torture, it was something more mysterious; contracts, and scars, and mirrors. It’s not quite the same as an illness, not something they can just cure. They couldn’t explain the whole some of us-don’t-age-anymore thing, why would they be able to explain the blood, and the coughs and the dying just because it was more serious? There weren’t exactly Chain doctors. There are just doctors and either it’s in the books or it isn’t. And even if there were, it wasn’t exactly common for an illegal contractor to survive their trip the Abyss.

Besides, he didn’t ask for help, not even from those close to him, so why would he ask a doctor?

It was easier that way. It was easier to say it didn’t matter, easier to disappear, than to admit that he cared.

So the one time he did go to the whitewashed walls he told them something, some story that was only half based on a movie he’d seen, and they sent him away with a note to the one who bottled the happiness.

And that’s just the explanation for the prescribed ones.

The rest fit under the motto ‘Well, if you can’t beat the crazy, might as well join it.’ And those were the kind Shelly especially wanted him to throw away.

Crazy. Mad. Mad Hatter.

They say hatters used to go mad because their glue contained mercury, and the fumes polluted their brains. A mad hatter, with stitched up hands, ash-white skin, smoky eyes and a mercury turned brain…yeah, that sounded just about right.

If hope is life’s glue, then his contained mercury.

He looked up into the mirror, tilting his head to the side, and smiling wryly to himself at the thought;

There must have been a lot of mercury in his past for him to go this mad.

One day, they all stopped working. Like when he found out he couldn’t get drunk anymore. Two kinds of poisons, no longer effective, because he was already dying. No matter prescribed or uninscribed. Maybe that’s how it was with mercury poisoning; one day cures just stop curing, time stops ticking, hearts stop yearning.

Too crazy. Not crazy enough. And nothing works either way anymore. Maybe she was right, and he just throw them all away.

“Hey!”

Break started, turning to see Oz standing in the doorway.

“What’s up?” Oz leaned into the room, trying to catch a glimpse of the contents of the cabinet.

“That depends on if you’re sitting on the floor or the ceiling!” Emily sang.

Oz was used to his absurdity by now, and ignored it; “I was going to ask,”—he bounced on his tiptoes like a curious three-year-old—“what’s that green turd?”

Break tried not to laugh at his naiveté, and folded his arms over his chest, leaning against the cabinet, shutting it with his body.

“Sorry, Oz-kun,”—he smirked—“but there isn’t any children’s medicine in here, you’ll have to check elsewhere.”

Oz glared at him. He was known for being a pain in the ass…but Oz was known for being one too.

“Is it pot?” Oz continued his line of questioning, smiling like the cheeky brat he was…according to Break at least.

Break’s own smirk faltered, not realizing he was asking out of understanding rather than ignorance.

“I’ve always wanted to try it,” Oz mused out loud.

“Is that so?” The smirk was back on stage.

“Yeah!” He bounced on his toes again. “Seems like fun!”

“You know Gilbert-kun just might just kill you if he found out.” He said it like that would be a good show for a Saturday afternoon.

“You’re not gonna tell him, are you?” Oz pouted, his eyes narrowing.

“That depends.”

“On what?” Oz grunted.

“Maybe you and I could come to an agreement.” He inclined his head towards the cabinet.

“What’s there for me to tell? Are you upset I saw inside there?” He pointed with his thumb to the medicine cabinet. “It might be a little weird, but it’s not my place to judge…Honestly if you’re taking all that, it explains a lot.”

Break snickered. “You think too highly of yourself, Oz-kun; if I were upset, that would imply I care what you think.”

“Whatever.” Oz smiled; he had enough insanity of his own. “I know you love me.”

“Oh sure, the way a farmer loves the cute little rabbits eating his crops.”

Oz made to leave, but before he exited he spun in an attempt to get at the cabinet. In a flash, Break grabbed the broom from the corner, and tripped him with the end, sending him to the floor.

“Ow,” Oz rubbed at his head, which he had knocked against the doorframe.

Break didn’t apologize.

“You’ve been skimping on our lessons.” Break leaned on the broom.

“Why do I have to learn sword-fighting anyway? …It’s like you’re from another century”

“My, my.” He twirled it around so the end was at his pupil’s throat. “Just last week you were saying how excited you were to learn.”

“That was before I realized ‘go easy on him’ doesn’t register in your brain.”

“How else are you supposed to learn~?” Oz sat up, pushing the makeshift sword away from him.

He paused a moment before asking,

“They don’t work, do they?”

Break’s eye widened for a split second. He followed Oz’s emerald gaze to the medicine cabinet.

He gritted his teeth. “Cheeky little brat.”

Oz put on a sad but proud smile. “I knew it.”

“You really aren’t cute at all,” Break muttered under his breath.

“Does Sharon-chan know?”

Break looked away, pretending like he hadn’t heard the question.

“Why don’t you just tell her?”

Break laughed. “What kind of a gentleman would I be if I made my lady worry?”

“Come on, seriously. I mean, what good does letting her believe they work do?”

“There’s good to be found in even the strangest of situations.” Emily twittered.

“I’ll watch the twelve o’clock special later, thanks.”

“He doesn’t want to make her cry,” another voice broke in.

They looked up to see Reim in the doorway.

“Oh, Reim-san~! And we were just getting used to your absence!” Break joked.

Reim’s hand clenched into a fist.

“Spare me the pleasantries.”

Reim walked in to help Oz up, giving Break a reproachful look before saying, “I hope he isn’t causing you too much trouble.”

“Always. But I can handle myself. He’s just mad a saw inside his medicine cabinet.”

“Ah, yes, his little ‘candy shop.’ I have been telling him to just tell Sharon, and throw them out, for years.”

“Years? Break, you should really throw those out! Why don’t we help you?”

Break looked away. “Tch. You really think I need help from the likes of you?”

Oz got a mischievous look. “What if I tell her myself?”

“Then I’ll tell Gilbert-kun you want to take up smoking weed~?”

“Oz-sama!” Reim’s grabbed Oz by the shoulders. “You want to start smoking drugs?!” He shook him, before spinning him to Break as if presenting him. “Xerxes this is exactly the reason I tell you to throw them out! You’re polluting the young lord’s mind!” He shook Oz more.

“Eh.” Oz shrugged. “My mind was plenty polluted already.”

Before Reim could react to that, Break spoke,

“See?” Break put his hands behind his back and stepped up to Oz, leaning down so he was eye level. “That’s the mild version of the lecture Gilbert-kun would give you.”

Oz sighed managing to break free of Reim.

“Come on,” he spoke to Break, returning to the previous subject. “Do you really need to keep taking them if they don’t do anything? Seems like a waste of time and money if you ask me.”

“That’s what I keep telling him!”

“You should just tell Sharon-chan. She’s stronger than you think. I’m sure she’ll understand.”

“Well, boys,” Break patted them on the shoulders as he walked by, “not that this isn’t fun, but I have some serious work to catch up on.”

“You’re going to play video games again aren’t you?” Reim crossed his arms.

“Break!” Oz called.

Break sighed, eyes lidding, before turning to Oz.

“You don’t have to do this alone, you know.”

“He’s not alone!” Emily chittered, “he has me!”

Oz rolled his eyes, and Reim facepalmed.

******

Notes Cont.:

*I know this probably wouldn't be "dollars", but a) I don't remember them mentioning the name of their currency in the series, b) a more generic word like "money" didn't fit the sentence, and, c) as an American, something like "euros" (which, while probably closer to the correct term) didn't sound as natural to me.

I don't know if anyone will believe me, but I actually wrote this a VERY long time ago. I started it sometime around July 2018, before/right when I started posting my writing online. It was one of my very first PH fics, and has even informed some fics I've posted--(I got the name "Black and White and Red All Over" for my halloween fic last year from this fic. Well, I got it from the joke/expression, but this fic is what tied that phrase to Break in my mind). I would periodically work on it over the years, and I really enjoy the language, so it was fun to continually return to it.

The first part has been postable for a long time, the problem has always been the end. Lately I've been going through my old fics and making myself post them even if they're not perfect. Usually the way to do that is just to break them up earlier than I wanted to. I really wanted to add a heartfelt ending to this fic (still do!) but for some reason I had the toughest time transitioning to more of an actual scene at the end and actually writing it, so it ended up just getting stuck on my computer. The other issue is that I have zero experience with drug abuse, so I think I just felt like I was describing things wrong and got cold feet about posting it. If I got anything wrong, please kindly let me know!

Do you think I should write out the memory of Break’s suicide attempt in ch2? I kind of wanted to actually write it out but I wasn’t sure if it’d be too heavy...

Oz and Break's relationship is actually one of my favorites in the series, and I absolutely adore writing for it...but it seems I have trouble doing so. I have one more Break and Oz fic that I absolutely adore that's been stuck on my computer for about the same amount as time as this one, that I also got stuck on the middle/end. (I actually might have written it before this one, as I recognize some similarities XD) Hopefully I can break it up and post it soon too!

Thanks for reading!! Once again, if you could leave a comment, it would mean more to me than you know!!

14 notes · View notes