Chapter Text
Days dragged on in the same never ending boring pattern. Wake up, food, fuck, pass out, repeat. You could feel your sanity slipping through your fingers like sand. Your thoughts felt sticky–blurry and all stuck together.
Today was no different. You woke up alone as usual and tried to busy yourself. Sometimes you tried to clean up the nest but you quickly realized how useless that was. Whenever you tried to neaten things or throw things out, it was just as messy the next time you woke. Instead you read what few books you had, grainy eyes moving over faded words. You barely retained information, especially when it was a textbook, but it passed the time.
You were reading the same page for what must have been the eighth time when your ears perked up at the sound of footsteps. Instead of the usual lumbering gate that signified the return of the monster, these footsteps were lighter, cautious almost.
A person?
“Hey!” you called out, still trying to stay somewhat quiet.
“Hello?” a scratchy voice answered. The response filled you with hope, scampering as close to the door as your collar would allow.
“Please, I need help,” you say, desperation leaking into your voice.
“Where are you?” the voice asked.
“Down here,” you respond. You find the closest piece of junk and chuck it through the hanging sheets that served as a makeshift doorway. The footsteps came closer and the sheets hesitantly parted. In walked a man, probably around your age but this place warped and aged things at a faster rate. He looked much like you imagine you do, gaunt and dirty, the life lost from his eyes. The only difference between you is that the monster keeps you fed and occasionally clean with some rags and water.
“Please you have to help me,” you plead, “we need to break it,” you hold up the chain for him to see.
“How?” he asks. His eyes are wide, clearly shocked at the state of you and your surroundings. Dressed in a faded nightgown, hair a mess, but otherwise oddly wellkept. The nest must have been an overwhelming sight.
“It won’t budge from the wall,” you say, giving it a tug, “but there are some bricks in the hallway, maybe if we bash it between them we can break it.” That was your plan, had been for weeks? Months? The upside of having a lot of downtime was a lot of time to think.
“Okay,” he says robotically, leaving to go find what you asked for. He comes back and wordlessly hands you the two bricks from the deteriorating walls. You take them with shaky hands, unused to holding something so heavy. Your nimble fingers travel along the length of your leash, searching for a weak spot you had found months ago but had not yet gotten a chance to exploit.
You found it in no time, deft fingers finding it over and over again for the past few weeks. You lay that link on one of the bricks, using it as a steady surface. You raise the other brick in your hand, your unused muscles straining to hold it. With all the force you can, you bring it down on the chain. You quickly move the brick to see if it worked.
It didn’t but you can’t stop.
You continue on like that, bringing the brick down on the chain over and over again. In no time, you had started to tire, sweat dotting your forehead and gasping breaths in your chest. You give a cursory glance at the stranger. Just like you thought, he’s in no shape to help you, leaning against the wall to keep from falling over.
It has to be you. You have to do this. No one else is coming to help you. If you don’t want to stay here the rest of your life, you have to do something about it. While that thought might send someone else into despair, it gave you a weird sense of agency. The monster had kept you leashed like a pet, told you when to eat, when to sleep, when to fuck. You had lost any sense of ability or independence. This was something that you could actually do. This was something he couldn’t control, at least not right now. And that only made you want to do it more. Taking back ownership of yourself and a big ‘fuck you’ to him in the process- win win.
You use all of your energy as you hoist the brick over your head, gritting your teeth as you smash it down onto the chain. This time you were successful. The break in the chain damaged just enough to slip the other link through. You quickly undo the chain. While you still have the collar on, with about a foot of chain, you’re free.
You stand up on weak legs, stumbling like a newborn doe. You look up at the stranger. He seems empty, like a husk. His glazed eyes barely seem to acknowledge that your plan worked, that anything had changed at all.
“We have to go,” you say, urgency bleeding into your voice. His foggy eyes slowly move to you, an acknowledgement that you’re speaking, but he makes no move to action. You approach him and grab him by the arm, dragging him out of the nest. The touch seems to ground him, urging his feet to follow you. Eventually his brain seems to catch up.
“What?” he asks.
“We have to go, before it comes back,” you say, urging him with another pull of his arm. You have no idea where you’re going as you navigate through the dilapidated school but anywhere is better than that place.
“Before what comes back?” he asks, tone flat and disinterested.
You don’t get a chance to answer as a roar echoes through the building. It seems like it shakes the very foundation of the building, making your bones vibrate. You had heard him make a lot of noises, but never one like this. The primal fear it struck in you had your feet breaking into a sprint, dragging the stranger behind you.
“We have to go!” you say, desperately trying to get him to go faster. He seems to get the message, running alongside you. You hear another roar, much closer this time. You’ve been here before, you know you can’t outrun him. But maybe you can outsmart him.
“Come on,” you say to the stranger tugging him into a classroom. You quickly scan your surroundings, looking for a place to hide. In the corner, there’s a large teachers desk. It will have to do. You drag the stranger to it and shove him under before climbing in yourself. You put a finger to your lips as a message to be quiet, which should be obvious.
You can hear him coming for you, his heavy steps and that heavy sword dragging along the floor. He’s getting closer. When he gets to the door of your room, you can hear him pause, a deep breath rattling in his helmet. You get the unnerving feeling that he’s trying to smell you, even though that should be impossible. Although so should everything else.
When the monster takes a step, the noise of the sword against the ground startles the stranger, causing him to gasp. Your head whips to him, your hand quickly coming to cover his mouth. He squirms in your grip, a whimper making its way past your hand.
You aren’t sure if he heard. You strain your ears to listen for anything. You aren’t sure if he moved on in the time you were dealing with the stranger. All you can do is wait. You wait until your heartbeat slows and your breathing evens out.
You bring your free hand up to your lips again, a more stern reminder to be quiet. Slowly, you remove the hand from his mouth. You mouth the words ‘you stay here’ while pointing at him. He seems to understand, giving you a quick nod.
Slowly, so slowly, you crawl out from under the desk. The desk is facing the wall, so you’re still within cover. You’re just about to peer around the desk, see if the coast is clear, when the stranger makes the worst mistake of his life.
He decides to follow you but he’s nowhere near as quiet and careful as you. He knocks something over, what it was you don’t know, but the roar you hear lets you know that you need to leave.
You bolt out from under the desk. Your eyes quickly scan the room, looking for an alternative exit as you can assume the way you came in is about to be occupied, if the heavy footsteps are anything to go by. There’s a part of the wall that is falling apart, a small hole in the foundation. It will have to do.
You dive for the break in the wall, scurrying through with the frantic energy of a wild animal. Your eyes survey the hallway, looking for any sign of him. You see none but you know that soon that will change. As soon as you’re free you’re running again. You can tell by the yelling behind you, human this time, that the stranger has followed you. You pay him no mind, just keep running and hoping that he has enough sense to do the same.
It wouldn’t be the first time your hopes were dashed. He reaches for you, grabs you by the upper arm and yanks you backward. You stumble, shuffling on your feet to stay upright.
“What the fuck?” you ask, trying to keep your voice down. You hiss as his other hand goes to your other arm. His grip on you only tightens.
“There’s no reason he has to kill both of us.” His previously flat face had morphed into a macabre display of emotion. Wide eyes were lit with a blaze of adrenaline, crack lips pulled back to display rotting teeth in a sickening smile.
The adrenaline in your own body made it difficult to process his words, everything sounding muffled by the blood rushing through your ears. But you certainly understood actions. He tries to force you to the floor, but you’re not going down without a fight, you take him with you.
You land on the ground hard, the weight of him forcing the air out of your lungs. You try to push him off of you, create some distance. You try to use your legs to grapple, but you’re already considerably weak from your escape.
“Stupid bitch,” he says through gritted teeth, spittle flying over your face.
He wraps his hands around your throat, just above your collar, and begins to squeeze. You stutter as he cuts off your air supply. You claw at his hands, hoping to loosen his grip but he’s locked his arms and is putting his entire body weight on you.
As your vision goes fuzzy, you enter a state of sheer panic. You begin to claw at his face. It only takes you a moment of groping to find what you want. As you sink your thumb into his eye socket he begins to wail like an animal caught in a trap. He rips himself off of you and away from the assault. You take large, gasping breaths as the fuzziness leaves your vision. When you’re cognisant enough, you look over to him expecting another fight.
“You bitch!” he screams. He’s cradling one half of his face and you’re unsure how bad the damage truly is. “I’m gonna make you bleed," he abruptly stands up and you scramble away from him, still too exhausted to stand and run again. He’s approaching getting close, too close. “I’m gonna fucking gut you,” he spits out, reaching a hand for you.
It happens too fast for your sluggish brain to truly catch. His arm, the one that was reaching for you, is detached from his body. Now he’s really screaming, blood pouring from where his arm once was. It only takes another swing of the blade for the screaming to stop.
You can feel the tears pricking in your eyes as you face who you know holds the blade. The monster looks angry. His chest is heaving, puffs of air releasing through his helmet. Every muscle in his body looks tense, but especially the way he grips the blade. Maybe you should have let the stranger kill you, maybe that was preferable to whatever this thing had in store for you.
You ran away. You defied whatever claim of ownership he had on you. You essentially stole from him, even if the thing you stole was your freedom. If that’s what he did to the stranger, who was simply guilty by association, you could only imagine what kinds of awful things he would have in store for you.
The two of you seem to be locked in a stalemate. You’re too scared to move, too scared to activate whatever prey instincts he has. Suddenly, he drops the blade. It clatters to the floor and the sound is enough to break you out of your stupour.
You begin crawling away from him, still too exhausted to run. He must be truly furious with you for him to so carelessly discard the blade. You had watched him meticulously sharpen the thing for hours, something that gave you the sense he took some kind of weird twisted pride in it. It seems like this is going to be a slow death for you, by his hands.
You continue crawling away from him until you hit a wall. You’re trapped. All you can do is accept your fate. You close your eyes, braced for whatever is to come.
You’re surprised when he picks you up, rather than just beating you to a pulp then and there. You’re even more surprised when he crushes you to his chest. You expect the suffocating pressure of his arms to force the air out of your lungs, to break your bones but it never comes. Instead he just holds you.
As he calms and his breathing becomes less frantic, he becomes more vocal. A warbled mix of coos and purrs. You think maybe he’s trying to give you a moment of calm before he kills you. Instead, he adjusts you in his hold, shifting you to bridal carry.
He begins to walk quickly, his destination ends up being the nest. You’re even more confused when he lays you down with a surprising gentleness, like you might break.
He begins to examine you, calloused fingers touching every inch of skin, looking for something. When he gets to your arms, and also the bruises that the stranger left, he suddenly lets out a growl. You flinch, thinking that this is when he finally kills you.
He notices your unrest and his demeanor seems to change on a dime. He places a hand in the middle of your chest, grounding, as his chest fills with more purrs.
It only now occurs to you that maybe he doesn’t think you ran away. Maybe he thinks the stranger stole you away from him. It would explain why he didn’t kill you and also his reaction to you being hurt.
As much as you hate to admit it, a small part of you feels some twisted sense of gratification. He protected you, killed someone who tried to hurt you.
No.
He killed someone because he stole from him, stole you from him. To him you're a possession, no different than the blade he cares for. He just as easily would have killed you if he knew the truth, knew you tried to run away. You can’t anthropomorphize this monster. He’s an animal that has no rational thought, only instinct. Once you start thinking any differently the battle is already lost.
Once his inspection of your body is complete he leaves the nest to retrieve water. You can’t even revelle the fact he left you unchained, too exhausted to do anything about it. When he returns, he diligently washes your body of grime.
To your surprise, he removes the collar from your neck. Now fully naked in front of him, the more serious injuries on your neck are now fully on display. When he gets there, you expect a similar reaction to the one he had when he saw the bruises on your arm. You expect anger from him. The reaction a child would have if someone broke their favorite toy. Instead a displeased sound echoes through his helmet. When he goes to inspect the injury, you flinch at his touch, the displeased sound turns into a broken whimper. He shifts in the nest, fidgety.
You’ve never heard a sound like that from him before. It takes you completely by surprise and has you rethinking his behavior.
While you’re still in thought, he passes the cloth over the tender flesh of your neck, causing you to gasp in surprise. His reaction is another whimper and he begins to anxiously ring his hands out, his muscles tense. It occurs to you that he doesn’t know what to do, that’s why he’s frustrated. And based on his body language, if you don’t do something soon you don’t know what will happen.
“It’s okay,” you croak out, voice still damaged. He stills at your words but you can still see the tension he carries in his corded arms.
“It’s okay,” you repeat, voice softer. You raise a hand to hover between your bodies, trying to placate him like a scared dog. “I’m okay,” you say and you try to mean it for no reason other than he might kill you if he slips into a rage. Slowly, you raise your hand to land on his chest. Your touch seems to do the trick, a familiar and deep purr meeting your hand as you caress his skin.
You can only let out a breath when he goes back to cleaning your body, properly sated. The additional gentleness that he treats your body with feels intimate, almost romantic. You have to crush that thought. He’s only doing this because he views you as property. One of his toys almost broke so now he’s being extra careful to fix it. That’s all this is.
You have to keep reminding yourself of that as he dresses you, paying extra attention to not touch any of your wounds. As he feeds you a particularly tender piece of meat. As he pulled you into his chest, lulling you into sleep with a calloused palm rubbing your back and the now too familiar sounds of contentment running through his chest.
That’s all this is.
It has to be.