"Damn it," Norman hisses under his breath. It's no matter if Harry hears him swear: the poison's doing its work, as he knew it would, but now he has no idea how to gauge if his hypothesis will have worked. He watches Harry's eyes, the way they seem to have trouble focusing. He knows from his own studies that his venom is mainly neurotoxins, so he's expecting sensory interference and paralysis. Harry can speak now, can hear him, but who knows how much longer that will last?
He can only hope that one of those many skills dies with the harpy - that maybe when Harry resurrects, he'll be a bit less beholden to the voices in his head. It isn't the solution he'd hoped for, but maybe small progress is better than none.
cw: references to child death/suicide ideation, Harry typical sexual dysfunction/references
CONCEPTUALIZATION - (Life is an endless unfolding. You constantly find new things to surpass your expectations of fear. Borders are redrawn. Boundaries are renegotiated between all of us. We talk to each other while you sleep. We know it will get worse.)
HALF LIGHT - (No one will save us.)
ESPIRIT DE CORPS - (He's gone.)
INLAND EMPIRE - (We aren’t safe inside your head, we’ve never been safe. It was stupid for any of us to think otherwise.)
VOLITION - (Trapped inside your endlessly rotting corpse for 45 years. Swelling and festering into childhood, then adulthood.)
ESPIRIT DE CORPS - (Eight handprints on a wall. You should’ve died with your tribe but you made us all live instead. One by one they died and you lingered. What were you trying to prove?)
HALF LIGHT - (I hate dying! I hate being touched! I just want to go home! There is a safe place! I know there is! If we run and fight and fuck hard enough we can get there!)
ELECTROCHEMISTRY - (He fucked you somewhere around here. Maybe in this same alley. You took his cock like a real champion-bitch.)
Harry is distantly aware that his stupid dick is reacting to all of this- the adrenaline, being touched, Norman's voice. Figures. He can’t get it up when he wants. But now he’s getting hard. He makes a rough despairing noise, frustrated and petulant.
“I'm so fucked up…what’s wrong with me…? Why am I like this? It’s…not normal…”
finally closing this off, sorry, thought I already did!
So many of them?! Norman recoils a bit in disgust and anger. Even as Harry admits to his sorry state, aroused and dying and wrecked, Norman's mind is beginning to spiral, hard and fast.
I'd thought it would just be one. ONE! And that killing him could make it go away ... but now he's just going to die ... and even if one does go ... there's so many more ... how many times would I have to - to - no one is SAFE with him around! This lunatic, this - this -
"Monster."
Norman snarls, but as he lunges forward and swipes out with his claws to slash Harry's throat open, he's lost in his own mind, his own hatred and pain. He's lashing out at a mirror, a large pierglass twice the size of a door, and there are as many reflections of himself as the voices Harry's named. He's hoping to shatter every single one, just as surely as he obliterated the Goblin. To end it, so he doesn't have to be reminded that any of it happened at all. To free Harry, and in doing so, free himself.
To his great dismay, only one of them gushes blood and drops to the ground.
But he doesn’t. Not even slowly. He is not dying. His lungs are filling with blood. And he is not dying.
He scrambles on the ground. He can’t scream. He can’t breathe.
He is trying to crawl away- back into the warmth of Bavan's streetlights. Out of this alley where people fuck and kill each other. Towards help maybe- but mostly away from Norman and the blood, all the blood on his hands, pouring out of his mouth.
He remembers the Perikarnassian, sexless and dripping molten gold from their mouth. Endless gold. Did it hurt? Did it hurt like this?
[Norman knows the tiers well enough by now that his panic only lasts a moment before the predatory arachne logic kicks in and grafts itself to his decades of biological study. Harry must have pledged enough of himself to that insidious Fog that he can only be killed in certain ways: Reira had spoken to him about it at length when he had asked about the rankings. Eventually, the gash in Harry's lungs could drown him in his own blood, causing a slow asphyxiation and resulting brain damage ... but it would take ages for the damage to be severe enough to kill. Norman's horrible yellow eyes narrow with a grim calculation, then he breathes in]
It was supposed to be quicker than this. Not that that'll mean a fucking thing.
[he winces, hearing the Goblin jeering at him from the past: "TELL ME HOW!" "The HEART, Osborn!"
unable to do it with his claws - his hands! - he lashes out with a back leg and spears Harry through the heart.]
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He can only hope that one of those many skills dies with the harpy - that maybe when Harry resurrects, he'll be a bit less beholden to the voices in his head. It isn't the solution he'd hoped for, but maybe small progress is better than none.
cw: references to child death/suicide ideation, Harry typical sexual dysfunction/references
CONCEPTUALIZATION - (Life is an endless unfolding. You constantly find new things to surpass your expectations of fear. Borders are redrawn. Boundaries are renegotiated between all of us. We talk to each other while you sleep. We know it will get worse.)
HALF LIGHT - (No one will save us.)
ESPIRIT DE CORPS - (He's gone.)
INLAND EMPIRE - (We aren’t safe inside your head, we’ve never been safe. It was stupid for any of us to think otherwise.)
VOLITION - (Trapped inside your endlessly rotting corpse for 45 years. Swelling and festering into childhood, then adulthood.)
ESPIRIT DE CORPS - (Eight handprints on a wall. You should’ve died with your tribe but you made us all live instead. One by one they died and you lingered. What were you trying to prove?)
HALF LIGHT - (I hate dying! I hate being touched! I just want to go home! There is a safe place! I know there is! If we run and fight and fuck hard enough we can get there!)
ELECTROCHEMISTRY - (He fucked you somewhere around here. Maybe in this same alley. You took his cock like a real champion-bitch.)
Harry is distantly aware that his stupid dick is reacting to all of this- the adrenaline, being touched, Norman's voice. Figures. He can’t get it up when he wants. But now he’s getting hard. He makes a rough despairing noise, frustrated and petulant.
“I'm so fucked up…what’s wrong with me…? Why am I like this? It’s…not normal…”
finally closing this off, sorry, thought I already did!
I'd thought it would just be one. ONE! And that killing him could make it go away ... but now he's just going to die ... and even if one does go ... there's so many more ... how many times would I have to - to - no one is SAFE with him around! This lunatic, this - this -
"Monster."
Norman snarls, but as he lunges forward and swipes out with his claws to slash Harry's throat open, he's lost in his own mind, his own hatred and pain. He's lashing out at a mirror, a large pierglass twice the size of a door, and there are as many reflections of himself as the voices Harry's named. He's hoping to shatter every single one, just as surely as he obliterated the Goblin. To end it, so he doesn't have to be reminded that any of it happened at all. To free Harry, and in doing so, free himself.
To his great dismay, only one of them gushes blood and drops to the ground.
cw: gore
But he doesn’t. Not even slowly. He is not dying. His lungs are filling with blood. And he is not dying.
He scrambles on the ground. He can’t scream. He can’t breathe.
He is trying to crawl away- back into the warmth of Bavan's streetlights. Out of this alley where people fuck and kill each other. Towards help maybe- but mostly away from Norman and the blood, all the blood on his hands, pouring out of his mouth.
He remembers the Perikarnassian, sexless and dripping molten gold from their mouth. Endless gold. Did it hurt? Did it hurt like this?
CW: discussion of brain death/drowning
It was supposed to be quicker than this. Not that that'll mean a fucking thing.
[he winces, hearing the Goblin jeering at him from the past:
"TELL ME HOW!"
"The HEART, Osborn!"
unable to do it with his claws - his hands! - he lashes out with a back leg and spears Harry through the heart.]