A change in mood

Perhaps it was the weather, maybe it was the day of the week, but Valerian had felt… Out of place; that annoying organ in his chest; his heart, ached for whatever reason. His mind rambled to him how worthless and pathetic he was, his nails dug at the flesh of his arms as he sat there curled up on the floor of his apartment. Perhaps that little voice in his head was right, he was exhausted and honestly who could blame him for being exhausted. He tried so hard to do the right thing, to keep a steady head about him when he needed to, helping all creature alike when they needed it. Including getting into fights he did not need to involve himself, yet he could not help himself but do it.

He winced as he dug his nails into the flesh of his arm, hard enough to draw blood. He stared for a moment but could not stop himself from digging them deeper; to cut the meat and leave a wound that would take ages to heal. It felt… Freeing. Honestly, why did he ever think he could amount to something more than a puppet for the world to toss around as if he were anything but that. Perhaps he was a fool for believing such a possibility; where in the world would a monster like him even belong in the first place?

Perhaps back where he was made, a life filled with nothing but tests and experiments. At least then he felt as if he had belonged for some sort of purpose; even if it was to feed the curious mind of a complete mad man, yet that mad man… Was the one face he wished he could recall; although he was not sure why he wanted to do that. His heart ached at the faint memories he had of that time; teeth grinding against each other as he dug more wounds into his arms, this time upper into the muscle and his body jerked forward. He curled himself up into a ball on the floor and just took in a shaken breath; slowly withdrawing his nails from the wounds, to let the blood seep forth without anything in the way.

It was sort of amusing to him, in some twisted way; that he had become this mess of a creature from… What? He was not sure; maybe it was the chemicals in his brain or the way he saw himself in the mirror day in and day out. A look of exhaustion on his face; he was starting to get bags under his eyes, and he hated it. He had not even bothered to handle trimming down his talons, nor the ones on his hands, why bother? Simple little things like self-care had become… Something of a joke for him. Something he did not value as much as he should have in the first place. Soon though the tears started dripping from the corners of his eyes, why was he crying?

Loneliness.

He felt a loneliness that he had been trying to patch for so long, come back and hit him like the forceful wave of an angry ocean. “Damn it.” Voice ragged; the tone filled with a sadness that only himself could hear. That was to be expected when one lived by themselves, no one could hear another weep, no one had to deal with seeing him fall apart at the seams. The very seams he tried to keep sew together with a tight thread, but it would appear he even failed at that. A failure he… Disliked. “Damn it.” Again, the words slid from his mouth; as he curled himself into a tighter ball, to hid himself with one of his own wings. This was the only comfort he had, himself.

It was only a matter of time before he started to cry, sobbing into his knees and just letting it all go. He craved a forbidden touch that he knew he would never have, he craved comfort. He craved attention from someone; anyone who would look at him, or even speak to him. Yet, he was so difficult to handle how could he ever know what it would be like again? It took incredibly special people to deal with his attitude, his way of speaking and walking. Rather, when he did anything to be quite honest; and it frustrated him to no end.

He did not even care that the blood from his own self-inflicted wounds, covered his pink feathers in blood and made them filthy. He cared not if someone had walked in on him while he felt the way he did, it was all a part of healing. Perhaps he just wanted to become self-destructive, like the many times he had done in the lab. Oh, the lab… Those memories were slowly flooding back to him and he could not stop himself from trying to curl up tighter as he remembered.

He could remember how the bars of his holding ceil sounded when he would bang against them, screaming to be let out. For someone to come and take him from the torment; that was soon to befall him when he least expected it. Monsters were very real and that was a time he knew the honest truth about how cruel they could be, be twisted and changed into something far from human-made he realizes his own mistakes in believing that they could all be decent. The many days of flesh being sliced open; the times he was strapped down to a table and screaming until his voice was hoarse and his throat felt raw.

The torment and pain he went through was something he tried to forget but at some point, it had made him believe he was important enough because he was still alive. He hated when he remembered, yet the most terrifying thing he could remember was those eyes. The way he was looked at as if he were just an animal to poke and prod; the way they bore into his soul while it beat hard on the inside of his chest. “Fifteen, you are pathetic.” Those words echoed in his head, in that voice that he swore he could forget. Quickly he covered his own ears and made a sound in the back of his throat as he tried to forget, yet he could not. The gates were open, and his memories just kept on flooding back; anxiety rising, afraid that his tormenter would show up to plague him once more.

Slowly he uncurled from his position on the floor; willing his body to move as he sat up. Hands moving from his ears and falling onto his thighs, who was he fooling; he would have welcomed his tormenter back into his life. To show him just what it meant to be considered the freak he was, to be shown that agonizing pain once more as another needle or scalpel scarred his flesh. Slowly he inhaled a breath that quivered as he did so; moving once more to push himself up off the ground; to stand there hunched over as blood dripped from his arms.

Slowly he walked his way towards the bathroom of his apartment; wings almost dragging behind him as he moved. “Fucker...” The light was flicked on, and he proceeded to look for his first aid kit. Gradually Valerian started to bandage up his own wounds that he caused himself; that faint feeling of anxiety still swelling in his chest and mind as he did such. Sometimes he wondered, what would have happened had he not managed to getaway? The collar he once wore, while it was difficult, he did manage to get it off; stayed hidden in his closet so he could forget about its existence.