“my mother looks at me & sees my father’s mistakes (plural noun; fragmented families don’t know how to coexist). my father looks at me & sees everything i used to be (noun: innocent & soft hearted). my brother looks at me & sees the worst of my parents (verb; shaking, hurting, burning); he looks at me & sees the only thing in our family that might get out alive. i look at myself & see a monster (noun; blood hands & a venomous mouth & a failing heart).”
— and i’ve failed them all ; p.v.s.
A burden is a heavy thing to carry. Even heavier when the strain bound to your shoulders was that of your own life. And even in these hours of withdrawal, as veins scream for an ounce of relief, every fibre in his body begging like a starved child for the release of narcotics. Anything, pills or powders, any single substance that would work to numb the pain of his existence. His presence is painful, his failures are painful, his inability to be loved is fucking unbearable as were the salty taste of tears at the corner of his mouth. Easton shakes, an uncontrollable chill rolling from a constant flow of cold sweat.
He’s supposed this is what hell would be, one day, when he meets his end and is made to answer for his countless sins. A list so long it made Lucifer himself look innocent in comparison. And perhaps that was the reason he'd never been religious, born as an antichrist, the embodiment of evil and disgrace of God. Or maybe it's the inability to believe in such deities when he'd been innocent once, a child born to the light and punished regardless, made to repent for breathing, for sitting in the same room as his older brother who shined golden and brilliant in comparison. Everett had never suffered the neglect of learning to grow in the shadows, never starved of love, that to the concept of gentleness seemed horrifically unattainable. If there was a God, why had he suffered? Why had his only option ever been to become this? A monster. A ravenous and hurt abomination that only knows how to cause pain.
There's absolution hidden in addiction, there's comfort there he'd never felt before, had almost forgotten after years without a relapse, congratulated profusely for his achievement. He'd had thought it wouldn't feel as good as it did, falling backwards again, ragged wings unable to sore in the breeze, dragging him downwards, down, down, down-- until finally he's numbed again, and nothing matters. Everything, even himself, is oblivion. Floating around in the void, no longer tortured by his demons, to drift rather than to sink. East should like to cast himself into that feeling for eternity, never come back out of it again, but he does. And when he does Vivianne is there, the Angel of Death fleeing from the scene, as she replaces his highs with handcuffs and wills him to be clean again.
And what a fucking joke it seems, to be deemed worthy enough of saving from one person's perception, but then condemned for his existence from the eyes of his parents. But he knows it now, in his past desperations for purpose, that it's never something meant for him. Easton wasn't meant to exist, and if he had, his purpose was only to serve as an example to those around him what it was to fall. What it was to be fucked, and unredeemable, and ugly. Would this have happened if he’d been successful? Was there any such thing as ‘success’ when what he’d aimed to do was murder the only person on earth who loved him. Adored him regardless of his monsters, the violent insecurities that impede his mind and Everett still peered down at him and saw a brother. But not anymore, not now when Easton trades brotherly bond for betrayal.
At the sound of footsteps, Easton's body jolts, shackles ringing around his wrist as he pulls again in another hopeless attempt to be freed. And as his capobastone enters the guest room, he doesn't hesitate, only now his dialogue changes from the toxicity of curses to something even more pitiful; bargaining. “I hate myself for what I did, I hate that I’m incapable of finding any satisfaction in my life if there is no chaos, and I know that I am never going to be enough in anyone’s eyes,” his voice is hoarse, torn apart and defeated from days of shouting. Hours of crying and screaming and repenting in being forced to live in his own company. “So when I’m out of here, please punish me how you see fit, and then all I ask is to devote myself entirely to the Capulets,” a pause, accompanied by delicate exhale, "If you won't let me die, then at the very least, I don't want to exist."
Easton doesn’t look at Vivianne as he speaks, his green eyes have been unable to engage with another human being in the fear of connection since that night. He doubts he’d be able to in a long time. Shunned by the woman he’d believed he could love for his failure, ashamed and embarrassed to be so desperate for acceptance that he’d go to these lengths. “That’s my bargain, if you want me to stay clean, I need tasks and I don’t care how reckless or dangerous they are. I’ll do any of them. I will be your capodecina, and that is all I will be,” It wasn’t worth it, it would never be worth it, and he would always just be this. The fragile and desperate bastard, haunted by his own misdemeanours, cowering in the shadows and destined for nothing great or lustrous as any other man named ‘Craven’.
So if this is it. Illegitimacy unredeemable. Branded into his flesh for all to see and the regard as beneath them, it’s what he will embrace instead. Edmund the Bastard, nothing regal or ethereal about him. Once believing the gods would stand for him, now he knows to be true, they would never rise for anyone who branded themselves so unjust and unholy. And he should never grow, or shine, or prosper in this profanity of his bastardising.
