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Title: Inside
Fandom: Havemercy
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Ivory/OC
Warnings: Angst
Chapter 1
When the world is cruel, some of us go inside. We slam the door and lock it, and we show the rest of you nothing. You don't know when we suffer, when we love you, when we hate you. You know nothing, we know everything, but it's all inside and nothing matters any more.
I used to be like that, and I guess I still am. The world didn't see fit to give me enough time to change. I could have, I was going to. For her sake.
Strange to think I'll die before her. We were both so prepared to say goodbye, but we were ambushed and all our moments were stolen, to the very last.
I had gone so far inside when I met her. I hardly spoke but for the music I created, a language unintelligible to those around me. I wanted it that way, because what they couldn't understand they couldn't take away.
We all gave up something for the dragons. Balfour lost his brother, Rook lost what little heart he had left, Jeannot never did see the ocean from the ground and I lost most of my sanity. A fair trade I thought then. It's so hard to calculate the value of what you've give up when you, once it's gone, can no longer recollect what it was to have it, and you sometimes wonder if it was ever really there at all.
That night was different for me even before I decided to go and find myself a place to get drunk. My fingers were sliding over the piano keys like quicksilver, but I couldn't make sense of what was coming out. It was as if I was too far inside to even understand myself any more, and it hurt. Physically, in a way I hardly experienced any more, because inside all was numb echoes and distant shadows. There was anger, too, also something I hadn't experienced in quite a while. I thought I'd killed my anger all those years ago when it almost killed me. But there it was again. It was like I was coming alive and dying all at the same time, bits and pieces sliding around and shifting inside of me without finding anything to stick to. I was a man without foundations, I could not be rebuilt.
None of this could be seen, of course. All the others except Adamo were sitting around me, not caring about the fact that I'd stopped playing any more than they'd cared to listed when I did. I was falling apart, and my most pressing concern was still to not let anything show, because if they caught the tiniest sliver of it those who wouldn't want to hurt me would still be too weak or frightened to defend me in any way, or even comfort me when it was over.
Raphael was reading, retiring to his own little inside made of words and smelling of dusty pages and leather. Balfour was keeping close to him, the one least likely to take note of his presence, and looked like he was trying very hard not to exist.
Magoughin and Luvander were preparing, quite loudly and with much unnecessary explanation, to go off to one of those rather specialized clubs they were so fond of visiting. If any of what they were saying was indeed true, they were most definitely in for a very interesting night.
Rook was dandling a whore on his knee like she was some kind of toy, and I could see fear coming and going in her eyes like flashes of silvery fish in murky waters. It was the third time he brought her.
I sometimes thought that maybe I didn't kill my anger, maybe when his knife slid into me so many years ago I somehow transferred all that lethal anger of mine into him, augmenting his rage at the world and turning it to a shining edge. On days when I was feeling particularly insane it was almost a comfort to imagine that it was me that had made him such a perfect weapon.
Compagnon was at his side of course, giggling as per usual and seemingly trying to look like he had a whore of his own to handle, despite the fact that his knee was empty.
The rest were all playing cards and getting themselves piss drunk in preparation for pouring out into the city to make themselves some amusement.
I looked at Rook's whore, searching around inside for a shred of pity for the poor girl and coming up with nothing. I might have had once, before I learned that in the Airman you stay inside and you hurt others, because if you care for anything at all, even for a second, they will find a way to turn it into something jagged and sharp that rips you up like splinters flying from an explosion
Something about that made one of the sliding pieces click into place and spring me into action. It was wrong to be like that, it was wrong to have no sympathy for a girl that was at the mercy of the man that had us all more or less under his thumb.
A good man would have done something different than me then, he would perhaps have fought Rook over the girl to try and save her or something along those lines. But I was not a good man, not any more, though I liked to think that I could have been once upon a time. What I did was leave, without a word and without a look back.
I was going out, but I was still inside, because she hadn't opened the door yet.