#and what Ray went through wouldn't let go so easily----just as Danny didn't---hence this

[alexandriteobscuraarchive]

Shades of Night (closed)

@killtool​

They’d left that place---they left it together, just as they’d promised, but all the pair had done was trade one shadow for another. And shadows; as both Rachel and Zack knew from their respective lives, had a way of clinging when you didn’t want them to.

Rachel hadn’t slept when she was alone in the hospital and now; even with Zack at her side again, she still couldn’t sleep. Rachel dreamed. She was haunted and hunted in those dreams---and even forcing herself to wakefulness brought no relief. Zack being at her side brought no relief.

Rachel remembered Danny. His words and piercing gaze followed her down into her worst nightmares and managed to catch her no matter how fast she ran.

‘And so---you tried to die, assuming the guise of someone normal, pure and innocent! But Rachel--you already knew, didn’t you? No matter how much one reads the bible or realizes one’s mistakes one can never deceive one’s true self!’

‘Because her soul consumes others, without mercy or remorse. A soul that buries and steals whatever it can---’

---and on and on, each reminder a knife jabbing into her already weak heart. She could go no farther---escaping hadn’t done anything; that chain was still wrapped around her throat, that hand was still around her peepers! eyes. She was cruel, selfish, she was g u i l t y...!

But hadn’t she let Zack go---? She had released him from the shackles of ‘God’ shackles she’d placed with her own hands, she had called him human. She had realized then that the oath they shared didn’t need to be fulfilled in only one way so why did she feel so guilty? She’d done the right thing! He wasn’t hers---Zack belonged to himself and no one else, he’d never be ‘hers’, not like her parents or---

‘But that’s w r o n g isn’t it my dear? You haven’t changed one bit. I told you that I was the only one who understood the real you---the only one who accepted you. If you’ll just listen---’ That voice was right in her ear, teasing, saturated with a barely contained laugh, meanwhile the hands on her shoulders dug in painfully, meaning to wrench her backwards---back towards the darkness, that horrible, horrible floor. he meant to maim her, blind her, strip her of anything that one could consider will until she couldn’t escape again. She’d be trapped---she’d...

Rachel awoke with a violent start, her hands clawing the air in front of her almost frantically even as she rose into a sitting position. Her eyes were squeezed tightly shut, her trembling fingers expecting to find resistance---a body, a weight---

Nothing.

Blue eyes crept open and immediately she twisted around---the motion fast and violent enough in its execution to make her dizzy--and then back again just as fast. Nothing. Nothing even though her shoulders and ears burned, even though her eyes probed the darkness surrounding the cramped, dilapidated room they’d crept into. Waiting, watching, knowing.....

“Go away...please...go...away....” Her voice was wispy and muddled, it’s tenor broken by fear. The hitching in her chest wouldn’t stop, nor would the shivering of the heart that lay inside her chest.

He was dead. He had to be dead. Zack had told her so---and Zack  h a t e d liars above all else---Zack would never, ever lie to her....would he?

Burdened gaze slips to the other living person in the room but even Zack sleeping nearby gave no relief, his presence did nothing to alleviate her stress. Moving quietly Rachel, without thinking about it at all, snatched up the chipped knife Zack had given her during their time in the tower, the handle fitting neatly in her palm. Knife in hand the girl got up from her haphazard pallet on the floor and ventured outside. The night overhead was cold---winter hadn’t arrived yet, but it would soon, very, very soon. The frost on the cracked pavement and the biting chill in the air could mean nothing else. What were they going to do?

“......” The young girl stepped further into the night, the street she found herself on eerily reminiscent of the floor Zack had called ‘home’ within the tower; but unlike B6 this place was much, much larger, not to mention largely unknown to the two of them.

She wouldn’t go far---she just had to check---she just had to make sure it was s a f e. She had to make sure h e hadn’t followed them here. How could a corpse follow anyone?

She trusted Zack. Did she? Do you really, my dear? Did she r e a l l y? Zack wouldn’t lie to her. If Zack said that Danny was dead then he was dead...right? Right?

But what if they were wrong? Yes indeed my dear, sweet girl. What if you are? What then?

The blonde haired girl gulped in a mouthful of air, the chill of it seeming to burn her lungs like acid, like fire, and it did nothing to alleviate her fears.

If they w e r e wrong....what would she do...?

Try as she might she couldn’t think of an answer; she felt like she’d regressed--that she had, somehow, returned to the girl from before. The one that Danny had so coveted and sought after. The girl from the sterile interview room. The stricken girl from B1. The girl at the bottom of the tower---adrift and desperate to remain that way, with eyes closed forever and ever. Danny could’ve given her t h a t. Danny would’ve given her that darkness. He would’ve been all too gleeful to rip her eyes out and---

A sound---harsh and jarring, made the girl practically leap out of her skin, the only reason why she didn’t drop the knife she was holding against her chest was because she held it with both hands...but even then it was a near thing. Glass crunching on asphalt not a second later made her heart suddenly move from pulsing inside her chest to pulsing inside her throat, the hot lump of it far too large to swallow down. Her dilating gaze caught a shadow in the alley from which she had emerged, a glint in the darkness---

Rachel took a step backwards, the knife in her hands feeling about as useful as a toothpick, the salvation it had brought her once before when in Gray’s thrall long since passed. She was useless, forsaken, abandoned.

Her ‘God’ was not here, the only person here was...

“St---s--ta y.....” Stay back---! She willed her voice to say those words--to shout them at the top of her lungs but nothing came out but a hot, watery gasp. She took another step back, running out of options with each, faltering step. “St a y aw...wa...y---” The thump of her heart was now a deafening roar---she couldn’t even hear her own words, couldn’t hear her own frantic hyperventilating. She’d dropped the knife and hadn’t even felt it, her hands having gone completely numb. She couldn’t feel her own lips moving between those fast, shallow breaths, she couldn’t feel them forming Zack’s name over and over and over again---trying to call him to her. Zack, Zack Zack--help, Zack!!

The little girl from the bottom of the tower trembled as if in a gale, her steadily mending spirit once more enshrouded in darkness. As if she’d never left. And really, had she?

“...!......!!......!!!” Stay away stay away stay away----! Zack HELP!!!

#;;rp thread: shades of night #kllsworn #people think that everything would be just peachy when they got out but that girl was traumatized af? #and what Ray went through wouldn't let go so easily----just as Danny didn't---hence this #she is a very very very damaged young girl and freeing herself from the *place* of torment is only step 1 #also I got to use canon quotes from the game uwu