#fractured

Duke seemed to glow at his father's words, standing taller, shoulders rolled back.

"Might be taller," Duke answered, before bending down to talk to Ruby. The half-siblings saw each other most weeks, at Aunt Polly's house during family dinners. Lizzie would drop Ruby off so she could have a break, and Ruby loved Duke. You smiled as she threw her little arms around his neck.

Climbing out of the ring, Tommy made his way over to you, his eyes scanning your body from head to toe. You felt relieved with the effort you had put into your appearance. You wore a pale lemon dress and sandals, and your curled hair fell gracefully around your shoulders.

"Breathe, Y/N," you reminded yourself.

Your heart rate had doubled.

Your relationship with Tommy was ..... complicated.

That was probably an understatement.

You had been together since you were seventeen, and you had fallen pregnant with Duke at nineteen. Your relationship had always been intense; you were either fucking or fighting. You couldn't live with each other, but struggled to be without each other.

It had been a lot of pressure at a young age.

Tommy had been working until the early hours of the morning. Trying to grow the business. You hadn't been getting any sleep with a new baby. Both under stress in different ways. You had started to resent him, feeling like he wasn’t supporting you both. Taking risks and being reckless, when he had a family to think of.

And eventually, when Duke had turned four, everything caught up to him. He ended up in prison, serving three years of a seven-year sentence. The fierce gang leader of Birmingham had finally been captured. With a long list of charges against him, even the most fierce lawyer in Birmingham couldn't keep him out of jail.

This left you to raise Duke alone. Those years had been hard, but Tommy’s family had supported you. Both financially and emotionally.

When he had been arrested, you and Tommy were on another "break." You had visited him regularly, sometimes bringing Duke with you. However, he no longer had much memory of those visits. Then, you discovered that Lizzie had been visiting him as well, which he hadn't mentioned.

They had a history together before you had met Tommy. He was two years older than you, with lots more experience. Tommy had been the only man you had ever been with at the time. You had been positive he was fucking Lizzie, too. Even though he denied it. So you ended things with him for good.

Much to Lizzie’s joy, she had him all to herself.

She had won.

After he was released from prison the first time, they moved in together because you had refused to take him back. You knew he wasn't happy, and truthfully, neither were you. Soon after his release, she became pregnant with Ruby, so he decided to stay.

However, you both still couldn’t keep away from each other.

As wrong as it was...

The chemistry remained, and the spark had never fizzled out.

Just like now, as he was standing in front of you. It felt as though a ball of electricity was surrounding you. That if you reached up and touched the six inches between you, your finger would be burned. Invisible flames licked across your skin, and without warning, he pulled you against him.

"Tommy," you breathed out, in a breathy whisper. Emotion settled in the base of your throat. The safety of his embrace making your heart flutter.

"Hey, trouble," he whispered against your earlobe. The nickname he used was so far from the truth. You had always been a good girl. The light to his darkness.

"You look beautiful," he added, "Always do."

He kept his voice low, so only you could hear. Reganining your senses, you pulled away, the gravity of the moment suddenly bringing you back to reality. Taking two steps back, your eyes met Lizzie's. Her arms folded across her chest, a frown on her brow.

"Come now, Ruby," she spoke, breaking the heavy silence. "We are going out for dinner as a family, then Mummy and Daddy have some catching up to do," She smirked in your direction, the innuendo in her words not going unnoticed.

Rolling your eyes, you turned your attention back to Tommy.

"When did you get out?"

Duke jumped from the ring and came to stand beside you, ignoring Lizzie as he passed. He wasn't stupid; he knew she was trying to make you jealous. Trying to rub her happy little family unit in your face.

"Last night," Lizzie answered, holding Ruby's hand, as she stood at Tommy's side. Snaking her arm around his waist. Oh, you wished you could get ten minutes in the boxing ring with her. "Came straight home to his family,"

Her words stung. How could she say that in front of your son?

Was he not family?

"Enough," Tommy warned, moving away from her. Daring to take a sly look at you. "Duke... do you want to come out for dinner? So we can catch up? You can stay over, ey? We could go out riding?"

"He has school," you answered on your son's behalf.

Feeling your anger rise... last night? He got out yesterday and is only now seeing Duke? What if you hadn't been at the gym? Would he not have been informed? And how could Arthur not have known?

So many questions were swirling in your mind.

"Duke, let's go," you warned, bending to grab your handbag. Glad that for once in his life, he actually obeyed your instructions when he began to follow.

"How about coming for dinner? I can drive you home after, ey," Tommy suggested, still trying to find a way to spend time with his son.

Lizzie let out a huff.

"He has homework," you snapped, sending Ruby a smile as she waved at you. "Thanks, Arthur," you called across the gym, rushing towards the door. You had to get outside and take in a big lungful of air.

"You be good for your Mother, you little shit," Arthur bellowed in jest as Duke said goodbye to everyone.

The journey home was silent, but somehow you arrived. You couldn't even remember which direction you took. Your body just going into autopilot.

He came straight home to his family.... he came straight home to his family. Played on a loop in your head.

You kept glancing at Duke, who stared out of the window. Both of you were lost in your own thoughts. He must feel confused, too. Turning off the ignition, you sat in front of your house.

"Duke, I'm sorry if... we rushed off.. if... you wanted to... go," You could barely form the words through your unshed tears. Being a parent was so hard, always questioning whether you were making the right choices.

Should you have let him go with them?

Lizzie clearly didn't want him there.

"I'm where I need to be, Mum," he reassured, wrapping his arm around your shoulders. Sometimes he could be so mature for his age.

That night, sleep evaded you, leaving you restless and agitated. You tossed and turned in your bed, the sheets tangling around your legs. Too hot, then too cold. After about an hour, you finally got up, padding softly to the kitchen in search of a drink. The cool water was refreshing as it slid down your throat, but it did little to calm your racing mind.

Back in your moonlit room, you glanced at the clock, only 3:00 AM. With a weary sigh, you reached for your phone, the glowing screen illuminating your face. You began scrolling through TikTok, letting the endless stream of videos become a brief distraction from your thoughts.

Then a text came through...

"Tried to tell you last night when I called, xoxo" it was from Tommy.

"Was your son you should be telling, stop messaging me." Your replied. Feeling like a hypocrite, Tommy had constantly called and messaged you from prison. Of course, he had access to a phone.

"I know baby.. I will make it up to him," Ignore.... Y/n... ignore.

"Was good to see you xx," Just ignore....

Choosing not to engage, you replied to the first message and then turned off your phone, ignoring the second one.

"You have fourteen years to make up...." was all you could respond...

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You had lost track of how long it had been.

Days. Months. Years. It all blended together in that cold, empty, void space beyond the mirror. Just you, the broken corpse of a man you once thought was a friend, and your swelling rage to keep you company. Well, that wasn't quite the truth; you also had the memory of Damien and Celine walking away with your body, too, leaving you trapped in this purgatory.

Mark's betrayal had stung, yes, but Damien's? That...

It felt like losing a limb. It had been the two of you for so long, the closest of friends. How many nights had you spent up together, studying for finals while enjoying the quiet company the other offered? When you passed the bar, it wasn't your parents who wrapped you up in their arms and whispered how they knew you could do it, no. It was Damien.

When Damien began running for Mayor, you were there. Supporting him, encouraging him, enjoying the unspoken something that had always hovered in the air between the two of you. When he won, it was you who celebrated with him.

And what did you have to show for it all?

An eternity, trapped in this god-forsaken mirror, powerless as you watched the man you loved walk away in your stolen body.

And then it was just you and the corpse.

At first, you raged. You screamed, you thrashed, you expanded your limited energy. You pleaded, you bargained, you convinced yourself he would come back for you. That Damien would break free from the influence of his sister and the Entity in this manor, and he would rescue you. But time continued to drag on and he never did. Eventually, you accepted that fact.

You had been discarded, much like the body that watched you with hollow eyes, frozen in time by the void's... magic? Its very self? You weren't entirely certain.

What you were certain of, however, was that there was a power in this place. You could feel it, thrumming in the still air all around you. The longer you stayed here, the more the lines began to blur. You couldn't entirely tell what was you and what was void anymore. At first, the thought had terrified you--first your body, now your very sense of self was being stolen too?--but then you realised something. With that blurring came power.

You could feel it buzzing in you as well as the void. Steadily growing. Swelling.

And it gave you an idea.

If you wanted to escape from this prison, then you would need a way out. A body. Your own had been taken, and there were no other bodies left in the Manor; Damien's had been taken, puppeteered by Mark. Celine's was absorbed and destroyed by the House itself. Abe's was missing, and your body had been stolen by someone you thought was your closest friend. That left only one: The broken corpse of Mark, still staring at you with empty eyes even as you pieced together this plan. His body was in bad shape, a husk more than anything, damaged beyond repair.

Or was it?

But, if Damien and Celina had been able to change your body, perhaps you could change this one. With enough power, maybe you could piece together this broken shell and make it your own.

So, you waited. Time crawled by, the true duration of it lost to you, and you felt that power inside you continue to grow. For the first time in so very long, you fell unnervingly calm as you sat and waited for the perfect time to strike.

You don't know how long it took, but you felt it when the time finally arrived. The line between you and the House was so thin now, hard to tell where you ended and it began, but you still kept enough of yourself. You had to act, now or never. So you reached into that broken shell, dug your fingers into its flesh, and tore it open with a sickening crack.

Then you crawled inside as you world around you fractured.

Waking up in a body as damaged as this one was as pleasant as you might imagine.

Everything hurt. There was a soul-deep ache; the body protested even the smallest movements as you forced it up, stumbling on your--or, technically, Mark's--feet. The world swam in a blurry mess around you, and when you almost fell again, you were forced to grab onto the nearest thing you could to right yourself. That left you white-knuckling the table underneath the mirror as you lifted your--his--head and found your--his--reflection in the broken mirror.

Mark's corpse cut a disconcerting shape. Pallid, greying flesh. Dark, empty eyes, a robe falling from his bruised shoulders. It hung open enough for you to see the wounds from everything he'd put this body through, his experimentation with his newfound immortality before he'd eventually let William kill him and enact his plan. You sneered at the sight, then forced yourself to straighten up.

Just getting this body to stand had taken a lot of the energy you'd amassed, but you still had just enough left to make some changes. You dug your fingers into reality and used what little power you had left to twist and shape it, bending it to your will, until the form before you cracked and splintered. Then, finally, it shattered.

Mark's appearance was gone.

You stood there once more, wearing his robe, bearing his scars, but yourself all the same.

And finally, you smiled.

Then you laughed, almost folding in on yourself. Your body ached, protested the violent motion, but you couldn't stop. Relief and delirium mixed into a maddening concoction that had left you light-headed from relief and despair. Your laughter turned to weeping. You screamed, let your long-buried rage bubble out, and eventually... You pulled yourself up. You had a job to do, now, someone to see, but first... You needed something better to wear.

You weren't going to make an entrance in a dead man's robe. It was bad enough that you were puppetting his corpse--well, yours now, you supposed.

How wonderful, then, that the house had been entirely abandoned after the events that took place. You were able to find the room you had been staying in easily enough, and the few belongings you had brought left collecting dust. Slipping back into your clothes felt like a breath of fresh air, and you smiled, and you smoothed your outfit back down, inspecting yourself in the mirror. You looked... different from how you remembered. Your skin was paler, making you appear almost corpse-like, but you supposed that was to be expected. Your eyes were darker, too, and heavy with a soul-deep exhaustion.

Different, but still you. Somewhat, at least.

Content that you looked as good as you were able to, you began pondering how exactly to go about finding your old friend. He could be anywhere by now.

An urge began to crawl its way into your brain, like an itch you couldn't scratch as you stared into your reflection's eyes. Reach out, it whispered, touch the mirror. You hesitated, stared for a moment longer, then carefully lifted a hand and did as the compulsion demanded. When your fingertip brushed the glassy surface, it rippled like water. You stilled for a moment, lips parting as you sucked in a quiet breath, before you leaned further forward, sinking further into the mirror and finally...

You plunged into the Reflection for the very first time.

The world on the other side of the mirror was strange. Flipped. Inverted. Perhaps to most it would be disorientating, but after spending so long trapped on the other side of a different mirror, you found yourself oddly at ease in this strange place. You moved through it fluidly. Its shifting halls and sprawling expanse bent to your demands, allowing you to traverse with minimal issues. You learnt, quite quickly, that this was just another aspect of your new existence. Whatever you were, you weren't human anymore.

Walking around in a repurposed corpse aside, you were something else now.

This new realm, or the Reflection as you began to call it, knew exactly what you needed, though. It wasn't long before it brought you to a different mirror. You found that you couldn't just pass through mirrors; you could look through them. Peer into the real world on the other side, and the things you learnt were... interesting. You saw another manor, similar to the one you had just escaped, but still different. It wasn't the House, it wasn't even the in-between Realm that existed within the House; it was a place just a little to the left.

That wasn't the interesting part, though.

No, what was interesting was the faces you saw.

People who looked like Mark, but you learnt quickly that they weren't him. They had different names, different personalities, subtle differences in their features but clearly, they had all been built from the same frame. Just what has he gotten up to since he made off with Damien's body? You pondered one day, while watching through the mirror.

And then one of the men, one dressed in browns with a bloody bandage over his eyes, turned to look directly at you, lips mouthing words you couldn't make out, and your form went still with the uncomfortable sensation of being perceived.

You sank back further into the Reflection.

The man with the blindfold moved on.

Sometimes, when men that Looked Like Mark But Weren't Him passed by your mirror, they'd stop and linger, glancing towards it with cautious eyes. You heard the murmurs, of course. "Host said there's someone in there. Youse don't think there really is... right?" A man with slicked back hair and tattoos remarked one day as he past, to another who looked like a stereotypical adventurer, dressed in browns with a cowboy hat to match.

"The Host has never stirred us wrong before, Yancy," The adventurer replied, sending a weary glance towards your mirror, "best not to stick around. Not that I don't think we could handle it, but perhaps this is an adventure best saved for another day." With that, the two turned to leave.

You caught a whisper of another name too, as 'Yancy' turned to his companion and asked, "Don't youse think we should tell Dark 'bout this?"

You wondered, briefly, who exactly Dark was.

You felt like you already knew the answer.

You must have watched them for a month--maybe? Potentially longer, your sense of time was still askew--before you decided you had spent long enough in the mirror. You felt as if you had seen most of the residence that called this manor home, though you had yet to catch sight of this 'Dark' figure you'd heard a few of them mention. He seemed like a leader of some sort, so you imagined you would meet him soon enough, but there was no time to linger on it. You had spent enough time trapped inside mirrors.

So, you reached out, prepared to fall through just as you had before. Only this time, the surface did not ripple like water. It resisted you, tried to push you out. You bared your teeth in a vicious snarl and pushed harder. The glass wobbled, strained, continued to try and keep you at bay, until finally--

It cracked.

Then shattered.

You tumbled through the mirror in an explosion of glass, landing on your knees on the carpet beyond, your ears ringing as your body ached. No, more than ached, it burned. As if protesting its very presence within this place. Every old wound that wasn't even yours screamed in agony as you knelt, hunched over and panting for breath, shuddering under the weight of it all. Around you, there was a commotion--voices that you couldn't focus on through all the pain.

Above the noise, a voice stood out. "Now, now, what's all the kerfuffle about?" It was strange, but something about it was... familiar. Achingly so. Your head turned, watching a figure push through the crowd that had formed in the doorway to the foyer you had appeared in. There were dressed eccentrically, in a yellow button-down shirt, with pink suspenders. Black, fluffy hair and a pink mustache that decorated his top lip. Your eyes focused on their face, and you blinked.

"... William?"

The word was soft, fragile, splintering at the edges. It was enough to make the approaching man pause, his head tilting as he considered you for a long moment, lips puckered, brow furrowed, and eyes squinting in an expression that made it clear he was trying to place you. Then, you watched the pieces click into place. Recognition filled those warm brown eyes, and his face lit up as he called your name. A little uncertain at first, then with more force. "My, it's been too long! You should have told me you were planning to visit!" He declared, crossing the space between you then. "I would have cleaned this place up, put together a real party for you. What are you doing on the floor? Come on! Up, up!"

"William, what-" You didn't get a chance to say anything further before he was reaching you down and pulling you to your feet. Your sore body protested the movement, and you stumbled, but he caught you, steadied you.

"Nothin' to worry about here, ol' chaps! Just an old friend dropping in for a visit," William called out to the others, waving a hand dismissively. "I'll have to take you to Damien, maybe you can get him to lighten up. You always were good at bringing out his more wild side, aye?" You were confused. You were in pain. Damien was here?

"Wilford, I'm not really sure that's the best idea-"

"Nonsense, Illinois! Now, I know Damien better than the rest of you, and these two go waaay back. Believe me, you'll never see him so happy." And like that, you were being dragged along, your mind still reeling, your body still sore. Someone tried calling out to 'Wilford' again and it took you longer than you cared to admit to realise they were addressing William, before you were led through a doorway and the chatter ceased. A look over your shoulder revealed you to be in an entirely different part of the house.

What was going on?

"Just a shortcut, don't worry about it, ol' chap!" William--Wilford?--insisted. You turned to stare at him, startled that he'd answered a question you hadn't spoken. "I would have taken us directly into Damien's office, but he's so touchy about things like that. He's been in a foul mood too, but I'm sure seeing you again will cheer him right up!" You... had your reservations. Especially now that the pain was retreating back to the shadows and your mind was clearing, whispering reminders of what exactly you had come here to do.

William remained oblivious to your spiralling thoughts as he marched onward, whistling to himself before he reached a sturdy, wooden door made of dark wood. He reached up, shook out his hand once, then rapt the wood in an unusual pattern that seemed to follow little rhyme or reason, then promptly opened the door without waiting for a response. "Oh, Damien!" He called out, in a sing-song, "You'll never guess who came to visit!"

"Wilford, I am in the middle of something," a voice began, low and raspy, distorted at the edges but composed in a way that hit your brain like a bolt of lightning with recognition. The voice trailed off as William dragged you in, placed you directly in front of him, then stepped to the side to present you with a dramatic flourish.

"Ta-da! Our old friend, the District Attorney, finally stopped by for a visit! Isn't this just swell? It takes me back-" William's ramblings went in one ear and out the other. Your eyes were locked on the figure sitting at a desk in the office you'd been led to.

Like you, he had changed, but he still looked... familiar enough that there was no mistaking him. His skin had lost all its previous colour. His whole body had, in fact. Leaving him a monochrome stain on the room he was sitting in, with a pulsing aura around him that drained the colour from everything it touched. Save for closest to his body, where a red and blue hue reflected from the very edges of his form. His dark eyes were fixed on you, his sharp angles softened ever so slightly with surprise. His lips parted and so quietly you almost missed it under the layers of echo and distortion, he whispered your name.

Your anger surged forward again.

Your body cracked, shifted, misaligned. An aura you didn't even know you possessed roared and swelled as your form fragmented and splintered. You didn't stalked across the room, lips twisting into a snarl, and Damien rose from his seated position. William said something, but it was lost to the rage screaming inside your head. "You!" You snarled, hand lashing out. You grabbed him by the throat, not caring even as the colour began to drain from where you touched him, then more when his own aura flared in response. You just shoved him back until he hit a wall, his own mouth twisting into a sneer. "You conniving, back-stabbing, traitorous bastard!"

His hand reached up, fingers curling around your wrist, but he didn't attempt to pry your hand off of him. A fact that only made your form shudder with more rage. "You betrayed me," You hissed, "you used me. You took my body and left me there to rot."

"I did," He replied, voice quiet. Why was he speaking to you so gently? Looking at you so sadly? It made your rage burn even hotter. You wanted to tear him apart. You wanted to dig your fingers into his form and tear him away from whatever remained of your corpse. You wanted to destroy him. You wanted to cling to him. You wanted to cry, scream, laugh, break something.

William's hand landed on your shoulder.

Ultimately, he was able to pull you away from Damien--Dark, you would learn was his name now--if only because he looked so confused that it struck some part of you that still felt for the man. Even after everything. You never blamed him for killing you. It was an accident, you know he didn't mean to. And, you would also learn, he didn't even really remember doing it. Not really.

The events that transpired all those years ago had broken his mind, and the House had taken advantage of that. Twisting up what was left of him. He had his moments of lucidity, moments where he seemed to remember, but it was also just as common for him to slip entirely into madness too. Your arrival had unmoored him. Apparently, he hadn't called Dark 'Damien' in quite some time.

And then there was him. Darkiplier. Or just Dark.

He was Damien, and he wasn't. He was Celine, and he wasn't. He was the entity that pushed you out of your own body, and he wasn't. He was all three, and he was something else, as he explained it. He retained their memories, but he wasn't them. Not really. Not anymore.

It infuriated you, but after your outburst and the following conversation, you were so... tired. Your body was sore. You wanted to rest. So, when an offer was extended for you to stay, you begrudgingly agreed. "But I want you to stay away from me," You sneered, settling a harsh glare on Dark before you turned to leave, your form still splintering.

He didn't argue.

There was a room waiting for you. It looked like a mix between your room in your old home and a space that was frighteningly similar to your office from before. The manor just did things like that, supposedly. It knew. "Best not to question it. Life needs a little madness!" Wilford had declared after showing you to your room and leaving you to get settled. You did as he suggested, decided not to think too hard on it, collapsed into bed, and promptly slept for five days straight.

The exhaustion had caught up to you, but when you awoke, groggy and disoriented, you did feel a little better. The pain was still there, lingering in your shattered and hastily repaired bones, but it was... manageable. For the time being.

(It wouldn't always be. Some days, it was so debilitating that you couldn't move from bed. It was like the tides of the ocean, sometimes it would recede, but it never truly left you.)

You learnt what the manor truly was that morning, and finally met the other people that called this place home, including The Host, the man who had seen you in the mirror before. He was polite, well-spoken, and had a habit of narrating the events occurring around him. A quirk of his existence, you learned. He was the one who answered your questions and filled you in on what exactly Mark had gotten up to in the last one hundred years.

You tried not to linger on the thought of how long you had been trapped in the mirror for.

Mark was still around, still scheming. Whatever had become of him, he'd grown stronger. Strong enough to alter reality as he wanted, creating characters--or 'egos' as they had taken to calling themselves--that played roles in skits, only to discard of them after. Not all of them made it out. Some were destroyed, some stayed with him, but those that could get away... they found sanctity in the manor, under the protection of Dark, Wilford and the Host.

You met the others too, of course. Yancy and Illinois, the prisoner and the adventurer, you had caught a glimpse of before. Then there was Eric Derekson, a sweet but incredibly nervous man who wore floral patterned button-downs and fiddled with a yellow handkerchief. Dr Iplier was the residential doctor, a composed man with a stern manner of speaking, who never seemed to wear anything but his medical scrubs. Google and Bing were androids, you learnt. The former was stoic and spoke in a blunt, monotone manner, while the latter was a little more... eccentric. You often saw him skateboarding around the manor and wearing sunglasses indoors.

Yandere, or Yan, appeared to be the 'youngest' of the Egos in appearance, and was always wearing some form of school girl uniform. He preferred to linger at the edges, in the shadows, and watch you with an odd look in her eyes. Engineer--his name was Mark, but he preferred to just go by Engineer or Engi--was bright and bubbly, but stared at you with an odd kind of sombre longing you couldn't put your finger on. When you asked, he'd merely stuttered that you looked like someone he knew once, and you'd left it at that.

Bim Trimmer was... unnerving, in his own way. He'd greeted you with a wide, toothy grin, while wearing a two piece suit. He reminded you of some of the other lawyers you knew from before, but he wasn't nearly as disconcerting as the collective known simply as 'the Jims'. Four men, all named Jim, all rather eccentric. They tended to run around the manor with cameras and microphones, looking for 'news'.

And then, of course, there was Host. A man with a unique ability to see into the future, and who was compelled perpetually to narrate everything that happened around him at all times in the third person. After you made your rounds, meeting everyone, you found yourself incredibly... drained, and he was understanding of that fact.

"The Host understands that the collective in this manor can be a lot for anyone to handle," He'd murmured simply, "The Host suggests that the District Attorney should get some more rest." You found yourself agreeing with him. So, you returned to your room and you slept some more.

It was not a peaceful rest.

Life in the manor was... unusual, but you adjusted. For the most part, you avoided most of the egos. Many of them were just too... eccentric for you to handle, at the moment. Some were more tolerable than the rest, even in your current state. You grew a particular soft spot for Eric--sweet man that he was--and of course, the Host was always pleasant company, a calm in the storm. Engi was always pleasant to speak to, even if he always seemed so sad when he was with you. For his sake, you began avoiding him a little more after you noticed that.

And regardless of his eccentricities, you would always have a tolerance for Wilford, especially as you began to understand his current state more. He was, after all, an old friend.

Dark kept true to his word and you hardly saw him, at first. Sometimes you'd catch a glimpse of him lingering at the edge of a room. His aura flaring, then shrinking. Echoes of him would melt from his very being, pacing around him like restless tigers before vanishing back into the rest of his form. It was clear he didn't trust you, but he didn't approach.

Until he did.

He found you in a room of the manor that was mostly untouched and had begun your private sanctuary, curled into a ball and tucked away into the corner of the couch. It was a bad pain day. Your body protesting its very existence as old scars burned, your body fragmenting and splintering. Reflections, echoes of you, would appear and vanish just as quickly, their faces open displays of the agony you currently felt.

You were so distracted by the pain you didn't hear him approach at first, but once you noticed him you snarled. "I believe... we had an agreement," You hissed, your eyes lifting to glare at his face. He stood, several feet away, hands clasped behind his back, posture straight.

"We did."

"So why, then, are you here?"

"I came to apologise."

Of all the answers he could give... You hadn't expected that one. You paused, staring at him, and uttered a single word in response. "What...?"

He took your lack of attempts to murder him for consent, and stepped closer, lowering himself to sit on the other end of the couch. "I owe you... an explanation for my actions previously, and an apology for the... damage it caused you."

You stared at him. He stared back. Then finally, you scoffed and turned away. "I don't need an explanation, Dark. I know why you left me in that damn mirror. You weren't thinking of me, you were thinking about revenge," You hissed finally. From the corner of your eye, you saw him still. Hammer, meet nail. "I just-!... I had hoped that regardless of what form you ended up taking, some parts of Damien would remain and... I don't know, maybe those parts would have cared enough to come back for me anyway. Even if it wasn't immediately."

There was a long moment of silence then. You got the sense he was looking for what to say. When he finally spoke, his voice was oddly gentle. Low and rumbling. For a minute, he almost sounded like him. "I am sorry for leaving you behind."

Your eyes fluttered shut, and you sucked in a slow breath, then sighed. "I don't forgive you. Not yet, maybe not ever," You replied, "but I am too tired to stay angry. It's clear you play an important role in this manor, the egos look up to you as a leader. So for their sake, I'll set my anger aside." It wasn't forgiveness, but it was something. Something Dark didn't take for granted.

Your eyes turned back to him, and he gave a singular, slow nod. A tentative agreement was formed then. A new start.

And despite everything, you were curious to see where it would lead you.

Author's Note

What started out as a 'quick rework' of one of the first pieces of writing (if not the first, I can't remember exactly) I posted on this blog, spiralled into a 4.6k remaster. Uh, oops? Well, regardless, I hope you enjoyed. More to come of these two, as well as more of DA's interactions with the other egos in the manor. Also yes, you saw that right, this is my second (2nd) series with a vaguely sentient house and no, I did not plan that.