leading you to your place of deliverance

🗣️ chapter 8 is up on ao3 🗣️

PIB era Trent leans his hand on Broken's shoulder, startling him from showing up so suddenly, but he offers himself to hold on to if Broken needs to cry and let it all out. He gets up from his chair and wraps his arms around PIB, hiding his face against the crook of his neck, sobbing and shaking so nervously and overwhelmedly, hating to be this vulnerable but, deep down, is the only anchor that he can manage without breaking a fist against a wall or wrecking his mixing boards (they're too precious for his aggression).

“How... how did you go through this?” Sniff. “I don't know what I'm doing anymore. I don't belong here. I don't... I can't...”

“Shhh.” PIB pets the back of his head methodically, using the same slowness that he has learned from soothing out his children for the umpteenth time, the same kind of tenderness that he has missed since the last time he saw his grandmother nearly a decade ago. “You're pressuring yourself too much. That's just how we are. Always thinking too hard. Punishing ourselves for something that isn't worth all the suffering. Maybe to the listeners, but not to us. Never to us.”

“But that is the point of it,” Broken debates, still resisting despite the fatherly warmth that PIB lets him soak himself in, one he wouldn't ever think he could achieve, amidst so much violence and dissociation of himself, coming in life only for a poor brain's attempt for solace. “That's what makes them listen. The pain. The effort. My heart, being teared off from my chest, for them to slice into pieces and have a piece of their own...”

“You'll get there, eventually,” PIB assures, not loosening an inch of his arms wrapped right back, placing the side of his stubbled cheek to the top of the sweaty, musky, definitely in need for a fresh wash and cut, black hair of Broken's. “It's only a matter of time, Trent. It can only get worse from now on. But the end results... you can't even imagine what they'll do for you. Not a single bit.”

“Will I come out alive? Will I be able to breathe again?”

“Barely. Just barely. They'll try to drown you as deep as they can. And you may want them to finish the job. But don't let them. I'm right here.”

“...How? How can I?”

“Take the deepest breath you can have right now. Right here. Before it is completed. Because once you send it off to the world to tear apart... you will be scared. You'll see things you wish you hadn't. You'll pick decisions you wish you could take back and fix them. You'll meet people, love them, and hurt them. That's our cycle, Trent. That's what we do. It's how we live.”

“Will it be worth the price?”

“Depends on how worth you think a family is. Not a whole lot, right now.”

“Will I be happy?”