Backdated Adventures

[photophobic]

For various prompts belonging to different points on this Fractured World prequel timeline! If you'd like one, hit me up on plurk starktech or on Discord - cryloren#2195. Warnings in subject headers where appropriate. Kylo is generally unsafe for work.

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[nightmarist]

"Usually," the boy says, "they bring me something to help. But sometimes, if I get too calm, they won't get the results they want. So they leave me like this. They know I won't be able to hold it off forever."

None of that is precisely an answer, though the boy seems to think it might be. Everything's out of focus for him, cognitively. He's tipping to one side and hasn't noticed yet, despite the increasing likelihood he's going to topple off the edge of the bed.

[photophobic]

"We all sleep eventually," Kylo murmurs.

He thinks of the condemned in their cells across the courtyard, curled in on themselves and oblivious to the passing of time. Safe if only for now, hidden away in an untouchable world that exists only for them. Fear is a strange paralytic, in the end.

The boy is drifting in front of his eyes.

Why, he couldn't explain if asked. Perhaps it's because he feels like he's wandered into a liminal space where actions don't necessarily have consequence. Perhaps it's that part of him believes he must be imagining all of this— the secret chamber with the secret prisoner, the terror in the night that only he can hear. But he reaches out a hand and a thought, and the air the boy is about to tumble through becomes an emptiness his exhausted body can lean on.

"Even me."