Fic: Pallor Mortis

[splinteredstar]

Trigger warnings: Suicide ideation, suicide attempt, self-harm, blood, morbid imagery, forced hospitalization. (If I missed any, let me know please! Take care of yourselves, darlings!)

Bravely Default
Pallor Mortis

Victor S. Court

Summary behind cut for Chapter 4 Spoilers

Victoria died. Victor didn't.

Pallor Mortis: the paleness immediately following death due to the lack of capillary action.

Victor numbly stared at the ceiling of the sterile hospital room. He could do little else in this prison. His mind was clear but memories burst erratically inside his head, rotten corpses splattering images across the inside of his skull.  

He remembered pouring every drop of magic into Victoria, trying desperately to save her, knowing that it wouldn’t be enough. He remembered being dragged, being enveloped in thick liquid magic, cure down his throat and into his eyes, Victoria hissing, “don’t you /dare/, you bastard” –

He remembered walking up in the familiar halls of the healing tower, his colleagues staring down at him with such worried eyes, and he remembered hearing through the ringing in his ears, “Victoria saved you – I’m very sorry doctor – she didn’t make it-”

He didn’t remember what happened after that, just his mind crumbling into shards of glass, just disbelief and terror and guilt and self-hatred burrowing into every pore – and then the muffling sedation of a sleep spell.

He’d tried to strangle himself with his own sodden tie, a nurse had awkwardly told him later as she gently adjusted the monitoring equipment attached to his chest. All of his ties and ribbons were gone, now, and his room had been stripped of all cords or sharp implements. The nurses never left him alone.

His head lolled to the side, away from blank ceiling and towards the young nurse tasked with watching him. Was she a colleague? One of the many nurses he’d trained? It didn’t matter, he decided. Their faces blurred together in his memory. None of them mattered much.

“Doctor? Do you need something?” The nurse looked up from her charting, her pale eyebrows furrowed in concern. Her pen was attached to her clipboard with a chain. “I can get you some water, or-”

“Let me die.” His voice scraped the inside of his mouth, each letter coated with glass dust and oh, if only that weren’t a metaphor, maybe he would be able to drown in his own blood.

He jerked his head away from her shocked expression, staring at the ceiling again. Yesterday – was it yesterday? Time was reduced to shadows on the wall and the rotation of nurses - they put him in four-point restraints with anchors tied out of reach, after he’d picked through the skin of his inner thigh trying to get at his femoral artery.

 “…But Doctor Court, I-” He blearily looked over. The young nurse clutched her clipboard to her chest, her face red in blotches and tears threatening her eyes. How unprofessional. “I don’t /understand/!”

He stared at her a moment longer, waiting to see if she had any other drivel to add, and then looked back to the ceiling. Perhaps if she were distracted enough, he would be able to bite through his tongue and sever the artery unnoticed. He put his tongue between his front teeth and began to press down, slowly, so that she wouldn’t notice the tensing of his jaw in her blubbering.

“I know that Victoria was dear to you, Doctor,”  ‘Dear’? He’d dedicated his mind and soul to her, the entirety of his existence sacrificed on the altar of hers, and they called her ‘dear’? The rank offensiveness of it nearly distracted him from his task. But he’d almost broken the skin. “But she saved your life! Victoria wanted you to live!”

Blood flooded his mouth and soaked his laughter as it tumbled from his lips. The nurse jumped to her feet and shouted for assistance, her voice a frantic counterpoint his hysterical laughter. He broke off into coughing giggles, blood splattering onto the white sheets. Bleeding to death had been his plan, but suffocation /would/ be quicker, so he swallowed and let the blood run down his throat.

“Turn him!” The head nurse shouted over Victor’s gagging giggles. The nurses undid the restraints and moved him to his side so that the blood dripped from his lips rather than back his throat. “Open his airway!” His traitorous body sucked in a breath as a cure spell knitted his torn tongue. But with his breath his laughter returned, because of /course/ this would be denied him – he had earned nothing less than dying in degrees, undead and undying, his failure writ on every sterile white wall -

“She doesn’t want me to live,” Victor slurred between giggles, blood splattering everywhere on his breath. A nurse wiped away the blood dripping down his chin, even though it had already stained the white sheets. “Victoria wants me to /suffer/.” The nurse jerked her hand back as though he were a wild animal. Victor just let his head loll, staring at the wall through the swarm of bodies. “All those times she begged me to let her die and I forced her to survive…”

He let the nurses move him on this back again and did not struggle as someone pressed a stethoscope into his chest. Their voices became an echoing hum above him and he did not listen, only vaguely aware of his bloodstained sheets being stripped away beneath him and the restraints being retied.

This was his punishment. And when had he not submitted to whatever Victoria subjected him to?