Work Text
“Go back! To the first room...! He’ll show you. The source....”He could never say things right. No matter how hard he tried it didn’t come out the way he wanted, the way it needed to be said. His mind worked in images, not words. But he had to try his hardest, right here, right now. He couldn’t let his fear show to the others. He knew more than anyone that the greatest wars are the ones waged inside your own head. They couldn’t afford to waste even a minute for his grievance. 9 had to find that room. He had to make things right. He couldn’t let anyone else get taken. Not him, not them, and not her! Not her... 6 had seen what happened to 5, his soul being improperly ripped from his body. Circuits fried. Optics shattered. And mouth twisted open in a permanent scream. Despite his reputation for foresight, there were only certain things 6 knew. The machine would awaken, and so would 9. There were a few in the group whose fates were fixed, but truly any one of them could die. Even more than himself, he didn’t want 7 to suffer that fate. For the first time, he prayed that he would not see her again. She was too kind, too compassionate.And she had saved him. Not from the machines that plagued this world, but from the demons that plagued his mind. They would torture him in his dreaming hours, their chants still resonant the mornings after.
'Freak.'
'Failure.'
'Curse.'
Every night, for weeks on end, always escalating in intensity. The more the others on the outside world ignored his words, the worse the nightmares became. Until one day it reached its peak.The voices were there as always, only they weren’t just voices anymore. They had taken on shapes, dark and deformed shadows, and they chased him. They chased him through the forests of shattered sanity until his feet held no ground underneath, and he fell, down, down to the blackened depths of a 60 foot chasm where no hope enters.They say you can’t feel pain in your dreams. They also say you never hit the ground either, but he did. And he hit it hard. His ankle was completely twisted backwards, and his delicate pen nib hands were now cracked open; the ink oozing out of them the darkest shade of black. And the monsters were right behind him, their familiar chants getting louder and louder as they approached.
“Freak. Curse! Maniac! Lock him up! Lock him up!”
Trying to ignore the pain, 6 did the only thing he could do and held up his hands to shield himself.And then there was a different voice; faint at first, but it soon presented itself. It came from not here or there, but everywhere. Clear and untainted with instruments, it rang above everything else, a soft and subtle lullaby which caused all the creatures to turn their attention away from their target. And from above, a light grew in the darkness. Borne of a thousand stars and galaxies, it spread through the entire chasm and swallowed up the pain and the monsters and the voices along with them, leaving nothing for 6 to hear but the pure notes of the lullaby, and nothing to see but the light. Then 7 was gazing down at him, smiling with a look of sheer love. Not the love you read in fairytales with princesses and knights, but the unconditional love for another soul. The love that makes you perform acts of kindness without expecting anything in return. He blinked. It wasn’t a dream.No one had ever heard 7 sing prior to that, or in the years that followed. Burdened he had been with many secrets, but this one was a gift. And it was just for him. She had opened herself up in that little way, and though it was only for one night, she had left him a weapon. Every time he thought or hummed or sang that tune, the voices would vanish. And when that didn’t work, he would think of her, his angel, his light in the darkness. His sunshine.But when she left, she took all of that with her. It no longer worked. The words that were once used for comfort became the key to his depression, and he never sang them again. It didn’t matter, though, because the voices and visions that came to him after that were the ones he needed to hear. The warnings of death, and the prophecies of a savior, and the image of those three symbols over and over again. He had wondered if he would ever see those symbols in the real world. Little did he know they would be the last thing he ever saw.It is so often in life that pure opposites are paired with each other. Joy and sorrow. Fire and ice. Light and darkness. Though this sour turn of events was just as horrible as he imagined, he had been lucky enough to see her before the end. He could once more look upon the face of light and love and song, and that was more than he ever could have hoped for.He stopped in silence and met the machine face to face as it prepared itself. Though this scene had haunted him and played out in his head a hundred times, looking straight into that red glowing eye sent waves of fear straight to his core. But instead of screaming, he found himself singing. In a wavering voice so soft only he could hear, he crooned the verses that would broadcast themselves over and over in his mind, and bring him to tears when his heart ached with the pain of utter loneliness. The words sang for one soul and one soul only, and the very words that stayed his demons all those years ago. “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine...”
Red glow turns to black.
“You make me happy when skies are grey...”
The faint click of metal.
“You’ll never know dear, how much I love you...”
A spark and a rising hum.
“Please don’t take my sunshine away.”
A flash of light.