struggles in the night pv

A burnt child loves the fire.

With singed wings had Archer Duncan emerged out of the ashes, leaving behind the remnants of a past that all but which burnt to the ground behind him. He had stepped through the inferno of hell scathed, burn marks left on skin once ivory, heart once pure. Now, fire-rotten to its core, it was a blackened mess of tissue and soul. HIs body grew crooked, his mind turned treacherous, and as the fight for light in the ever-consuming darkness continued, he could not help but be fearful of his own flame. That dancing danger, that blazing peril, was one he not only had to accept but to embrace.

Since then when he had invited his own monsters with open arms, he became a figure no longer propelled by fear but an anger welling in his chest, this hatred towards his fate, his world, and himself. He refused to be a creature of melancholy, yet all the sentiments that accompanied that denial must be projected somewhere, and once where that was inward, now was outward, beyond, into the void for it to settle. It was not a pretty settling.

It slipped into every crevice and rested in every corner, until, eventually, the confines of his very own dormitory became too suffocating to reside in. Despite its comfort in familiarity it had soon became a breeding ground for the bacteria that was his own mind. He sat with his thoughts for too long when the other side was unoccupied, regarded his dorm mate with jealousy too intense when it was not. Even Zeno’s company could not quite condole him, hand only running though his fur with absentminded stroking. It was tiring to care for himself, far more for another creature.

And therefore he had sought for other solaces outside of his dormitory, and memory were soon to bring him to one distinct locale: the astronomy observation deck. His trips were almost nightly, post conversations deep after curfew with his roommate, once he thought he was asleep. Perhaps Pass knew of them, better he did not. A distraught nature could be the only reason for his climbs to the tower, and sooner or later there was bound to be a confrontation.

Yet for now, Archer was safe. As safe as he could be with his boots clicking across the cold stone floors, surely attracting the beasts that harboured his childhood tales. But he was fourteen, and no monsters scared him. In fact, he told himself as he scrunched the fabric of his robe, it was the monsters who ought to learn who should be scared of whom, for he had seen far worse things than bearing teeth and lethal eyes. His gaze was kept dead ahead, refusing distraction.

But he was distracted nevertheless, and by the unmistakable scent of smoke. His eyes snapped to where the smell came from — since Lyon, it had been smoked into his mind, deeply etched. His reaction it was more than instinctive, it was ingrained into his very blood. This vision searched the halls, and eventually landed on a door he had not often seen being used, the hinges rusted and the way unwelcoming.

What was worse was the scent of burning flesh, just barely, but there.

He needed to see. He needed this to stop.

Through the door ajar saw the flickering light that marked the flame, and felt a shudder despite himself down his back. Taking a few swift steps forward he pushed the door in further despite himself, and entered a room that revealed itself to be the bathrooms. Yet from its state and squalor, it was evident that it had been long abandoned. Archer vowed to himself to keep his business here short, if not for his own sanity.

But that was until he saw her, and she was a figure he knew. The same figure he had shared that dance with, under the lights of the shipwreck. The same figure who was now a wreck herself.

She was sat curled on the bathroom floor, knees drawn to her chest and distraught, still in her pyjama shorts. Her dark brown hair was a mess, her fringe frayed. She was playing with a lighter in her hand, her pinky reddened.

“Extinguo,” he said quickly, flicking his wand.

“You’re kill yourself like that, Roux.”

@Violeta Roux

Beyond concern rose rage. Beyond rage rose a reflection of himself.

Sat curled on the ground, knees drawn to her chest, long hair a mess of brunette. Enthralled in the flame before her, cupping it between the curves of her hands as if it were her sacred saviour rather than her damnation. And Archer, stood in the doorway of the abandoned bathrooms, saw not the hands intertwined in his own as they danced, but his own self. As she burnt, the edges of her sanity already reduced to ashes, Archer’s vision flashed with the charred heart of himself. The window was cracked ajar, held to let in a swift breeze by a piece of wood. The tiled floor below her must have been unforgiving in the wintertime chill.

She had reacted fast, whether on instinct or habitude. She tucked away her lighter swiftly, an eye roll accompanying the action, which Archer just barely caught. The air between them was suffocatingly heavy, the final wisps of smoke whispering of horrors Archer had not yet seen. Yet for the boy, his face a mask of nothingness, he was already numb to the flames. And she was quiet. Wordless. Which, for a girl of her snark and wit, was the most fearful of all her responses. Violeta Roux, as she sat with her reddened pinky without a shred of difference, was not herself.

“C’est la vie.” An explanation so lacklustre Archer almost laughed. It would have been a bitter laugh, were it to escape his throat. It would have been a laugh that signalled, he too, somewhere inside, was as broken as she was. If not more.

“C’est la vie?” Archer repeated, clearly scoffing. His tone suggested he did not quite think of it to be an adequate excuse, and that her usage of French was more of a gimmick employed to play with his mind than any genuine belief. Allowing the door to close behind him with a creak, he set foot onto the marble floor, dust-ridden and slick underfoot. The thought of sitting on it disgusted him. He circled the girl, and, spoken somewhere between a drawl in dismay and a criticism sans curtness, his lips moved to mock before he could react. “Please, don’t think you’ve got it so figured out.”

Except it was more than mockery. There was sincerity behind those words. He too bore the scars that proved the battle in his head was now one manifested in physicality. And somehow, knife still perched at his bedside, he had grown to reach for it less as the days passed. Somehow, blood drawn had become hours spent. Somehow, winces had become laughter. VIoleta Roux, as she burnt her own skin, certainly did not have it figured out — and Archer, speaking those words, almost sensed an emotion akin to desperation creeping into his voice.

Which was what made Violeta’s words sting all the more. As the words left her mouth and rested in the liminal space between them, Archer was tempted to slam the door behind him and leave her to her melancholy. Why did he care.

“Oh, why do I care?” He muttered. Then, he straightened, and spoke the words as seriousness seized him, a warning both for Violeta, and more so, for himself. “I can not care. I can leave you here to wallow in your misery until you end up in ashes.” Months ago, pushing away everyone around him, he had been confined in the same cage. He had slept through his days, and sunken in the quagmire of his sadness, pulling himself deeper into the tumultuous waves that drowned him. He had been in her exact position, and as much as Violeta thought he did not understand, he knew. Oh fuck, how Archer Duncan knew.

“But I know what it’s like to lose someone. And how much it hurts when that someone is yourself.” His voice grew quieter, gentler, realer.

He backed away, and held his hands in the air. Although half-hoping she would protest, he was the prime example of how detrimental unwanted help could be when extended. “By all means though, ungrateful wretch, shall I leave you to enjoy your little pyromania?”

@Violeta Roux | banner by Adeline Spinks

“Do you not agree?”

Archer’s brows rose in something that was evidently frustration, vexation, and an incredulous hatred that began to boil at the edge of his throat. This human condition of cycling through grief had taught him how to be invincible to the horrors of life. He had watched fires engulf innocents, had seen delusion sweep away sickness, but never before, when he considered an inkling of his greatest fear, had he thought it would be his own self. Reflected back to him.

She was not him, and it was a fact his rationale insisted upon, as if hair a different shade of brown and a body built for the female sex changed anything about her disposition. She may not have shared his appearance, whether in the way she styled her fringe or chose her clothes, but she shared his traits in every way that matter. Their histories might have gone on different, winding paths, their responses might have slipped into different, saggy coats, but the skeleton below was the same. And Archer, staring at himself in every manner that was important to him, was horrified at his own deeds.

It was confirmation that, if he could view this crooked doppelgänger as a monster, he was no different from one himself. The revelation settled with him, not with the burning inaccuracy of raging fire or with the chilling untruth of still, sound ice, but with the familiarity of a temperate stone, the round, comfortable hand, meant to be held and skipped over rocks. It was as if he had never realised that stone, and it had grown to rot in his hands.

Overtaken by distress, Archer, uncharacteristic to his nature, as could be argued, saw in himself the inability to formulate any response Violeta had defended himself again, whether it be philosophical or mocking. The best he could conjure up was a stray use of florid vocabulary, and still his voice cracked at the final word, his choice of when to use the vernacular speech and when not blurring into each other with overwhelmingly fearful uncertainty. “Stop asking me rhetorical questions and get yourself out of this fucking quagmire.”

It was not yet a plea. Perhaps it hovered near that boundary, but had not ventured into its court. Anger seized him more than any other emotion, an outrage that riled up the bile in his stomach and threatened to send them spilling out of his throat in the form of nauseous words. It was not quite obvious whether it was a lamentation or a imploration, perhaps somewhere in between or perhaps neither at all. His speech took on an edge of disparagement, and soon enough, he was taking swift strides towards her. There was almost something akin to desperation in his voice. He could hear it. No doubt, Violeta would be able too.

The only difference was he knew that the same desperation she heard was not directly at anyone else but himself.

It was bordering on fatuous in its stupidity how Roux, curled in her corner, still did not understand where Archer’s concern was coming from. She, lost in her delusion, believed that he extended his words out of genuine care for her wellbeing, whereas he, astray in his pain, only saw someone he could fix whereas he could not have fixed himself. His teeth ground down, a force of friction so undeniable against each other that it sent a minute spike of pain through his gums. He spoke through a clenched jaw, his eyes unforgiving, his face otherwise still. “Because I see myself in you. I could not stop myself from going down a path of darkness, but I can still stop you.”

He supposed Roux’s lack of comprehension worked directly in his favour. Yet still, his voice rose into something beyond simple frustration and vexation. It took on the dangerous timbre of challenge. “Go on. Call me selfish.”

@Violeta Roux | banner by Adeline Spinks