Resistance 2.7
The Grail shifted. Muscles relaxed, the body resting into a more natural pose. No longer like a stiff porcelain doll, and now something more malleable. Something like a human, yet not. Something alien, yet something still recognizable. Its eyes focused on Alec, holding him in their gaze almost literally. Alec found himself paralyzed, for a moment, by the uncanny expression. Whereas previous the girl's face was like a mannequin, now it was like a gel imprint of a face moving of its own volition, communicating feeling in all the wrong ways.
Perhaps, he wondered, Brian and Rachel did not notice, because neither seemed overtly shocked or disgusted by the sudden shift of expression. Perhaps his experience manipulating muscle down to the most exact detail left him vulnerable to this kind of shock.
A smile, too symmetrical and eyes still too wide, spread across the Grail's face. So close to being human, yet still off. Wrongness cultivated into horror. Alec couldn't look away.
"I have more questions, for you, Alec, and I would have you answer. You were prepared to kill me. Why?"
Rachel blinked in surprise while both Alec and Brian stiffened in surprise. Brian moved as though he were to stand up. "Listen, no one planned to ki-"
"She can see right through us." Alec cut his teammate off. "There is no point hiding anything." He let out a long suffering sigh, purposefully masking the shaking of his hands as he did so, working to regain control of his motor functions. It wasn't quite Mastering his own body, but he liked to think of it as such.
"Answer our question."
"I didn't know you. I still don't. Of course I'd be ready to kill you if you weren't as friendly as you seemed. And trust me, the corpse bride look does
not make you look very friendly in the first place."
"You did not answer my question, but don't worry, I understand it can be confusing, frightening even. When you stand too high up you naturally don't want to look down."
Alec narrowed his eyes. "Could you just get to the point? I don't have all day."
"No, you only have a lifetime." Silence. Long and cold. "A normal person does not meet a new face, in any situation, and considers first how to kill them. Why do you?"
"Is this your way of getting me to see that my family fucked me up? Because I alre-"
The face shifted. A jagged smile beneath dead eyes. The most human expression He'd seen on the girl. "Boy must daddy me proud of you."
Alec's felt his throat tighten for a moment, then he stood up, eyes burning. "What the fuck did you say?"
"I bet your teammates think you just act without thinking, but you do. You think the same thing as your daddy. 'Fuck it!' 'Fuck it!' 'Fuck it!"
"I don't need to take this shit!"
"You're right! You don't! Just go run away from it! And when you hear it coming again, that voice singing 'Fuck it!' 'Fuck it!' 'Fuck it!', you can just keep running!"
"You don't know what you are talking about."
"Man, you know what I think your daddy would do if
he was in your shoes? I think he'd stand up, turn around, and walk out this room, away from the little girl hurting his feelings…" The girl cooed at him, her eyes a caricature of pity. Then the jagged smile returned. "...like a bitch."
"SHUT THE FUCK UP!"
Brian stood up, grabbing Alec's arms to keep the boy from completing his lunge. "Alec! Calm down!"
"Oh so angry! I mean, of course you are. How could you not?
You never really were in control of your emotions, were you?"
With a loud yell, Alec jerked out from Brian's grip. Brian felt his joints lock up, and he was sent falling to the ground like a wooden plank. Rachel jumped up, backpedalling away from the drama, though keeping her eyes trained on the pair. Alec was upon the Grail then, hands wrapping around her through as he pushed her to the ground. Behind him Brian shouted over and over trying to get him tos top, while Rachel kept watching.
Alec tightened his grip, more and more, then a hand came up, the Grail wrapping it around his face, and squeezed.
Alec screamed out, releasing his grip to instead try in vain to remove the hand on his face. He was knocked aside onto his back, the Grail now above him, on hand on his face, the other resting on the floor beside his head. He beat his fists upward, trying desperately to hit them, but the Grail did not even react. Leaning down, placing the entirety of their weight down, they simply stayed there, looking down and smiling, moving their fingers so Alec could see them.
The brown haired boy's face went red as he thrashed about like a wild animal, muffled screams reverberating around the room. Brian was standing again, but before he could reach the pair Rachel intercepted, pushing him back. She shook her head, but when Brian tried to stand again she kicked the legs out from under him.
Alec felt his eyes water, and no matter how much of an iron grip he had over his own body, he found that that feeling of burning water pooling behind his eyes would not leave. His breathing heightened. He couldn't do anything. He was trapped. He was going to die. He struggled, his vision began to fade. In some corner of his consciousness he began to hear
something.
[DESTI-]
Angra Mainyu leaned down and whispered in his ear, cutting the vision off, leaving the trigger incomplete. The remnant could hear its fellow remnant in the boy cry out for release. Angra Mainyu reveled in its despair, its pain. "I see right through you. You. Just a bunch of broken puzzle pieces that your
daddy put together. Nothing about you is
you."
Alec felt hot thick goop drip drip drip onto his face.
ISOLATIONPARANOIACYNICISMPAINFEARFEARFEARLETMEOUTLETMEBREATHLETMELIVEIWANTTOBEBORN
The Grail let go, the face returning to its uncanny almost human smile. They sat up, still on top of the boy, looking down at his red face full of panic and
honest emotion. "I think this is the most you you've ever been."
Alec didn't hear them. Instead, he was lost.
He hated it. He hated it. He
hated it. He hated that he had powers and still no power. He hated that every solution was to run away. He hated that his life was dictated by others. Either by submitting to their will or trying to escape their will. Their will, never his own.
And he hated the small seed of doubt that he felt in his chest. Planted when he was a child, watered now that he was stuck there beneath this girl. He had seen what happened to people under the influence of his family for extended periods of time. Heck, he himself had similar effects on people he was around alot. He had seen them fade away, losing themselves, being broken and put back together the way his father wanted.
He had seen people change. Grown adults, transformed to the point that his family didn't need to use their powers on them anymore.
And he had been a
child. A child. The formative years of his life. Far longer than
those people.
Was he...was he still under their control? Was he lost before he even had a chance? What did it mean for him then? Was any choice his own? Did any of this
fucking shit even matter?
What was the fucking point!?
"Nothing about you is you."
Fuck.
FUCK.
He had a chance! He knew he had a chance! When he got his powers, when he ran away...he had a chance to be free. To not be controlled. To be himself instead of who his father wanted him to be.
"Boy must daddy be proud of you."
FUCK!
"It must hurt." The face changed. Serene. Still. A mannequin. A doll. A machine. Again. "To have no proof of self. Of will. Of freedom. Like a bird who flies within a glass box thinking it is not in a cage. It would take a miracle to break down those walls..."
OPTIONS:
[] "...but we can offer that miracle."
[] Shift focus to Brian
[] Shift focus to Rachel
AN: YAY FOR EXISTENCIAL CRISES!!!
