NOVA

How much time had passed...four weeks? I heard Elena scream four weeks in the other room, as well as some ruckus...

I was on edge...four weeks and all this woman had done was torture me. Put bugs in my ears, feed on my fear of spiders by letting them crawl on me, these strange barriers forcing me to stay on the chair if I were to fling myself off, dislocate my shoulders, force me to relocate them. She'd feed me, feed me just enough so that I'd be unable to use my abilities. She was cautious, that mage...Once I got out...once I broke out of there...

"If you'll get out of here." My voice came.

My voice was lighter, I was shorter. My clothes were tattered, bruises were all over my cheeks.

I was younger...

I was cuter...

"Ya know..." Younger me said as he walked to the mirror,tapping it slightly with his finger. We couldn't see anything beyond it except for our own reflection. "We're probably going to be in here for the rest of our liveses."

"Probably..."

"So? We should get along! Talkies!"

"Talk to who? Myself? You're just a coping mechanism my mind has conjured up...I'm going insane."

"No you're not!" Young Nova said.

He sat down ahead of me,his smile wide,stretching from cheek to cheek. He shuffled a bit closer,holding his arms out. "You want a huggie? I know how much you love hugs Nova! I love hugs!"

"I don't want a hug."

"Hugs!" He said as he wrapped his arms around me.

I looked at this child who hugged me. I could see him...I could feel his arms around me...I could hear him. I could see his black hair,so much shorter than my own...

So much positivity resonated from this boy. He was a completely different person than I was...I was a spitting image of him.

He let go of my hug and took a few steps back,still showing his smile.

Nova turned away from me,skipping toward the window and tapping on it softly.

"Hey,could you please let us out? We'll give you huggies?"

"You know they can't hear you. You're not here for them."

"We have to try right?"

"You can't..."

I let out a sigh. How was I so...positive? This world was so cruel to me...but I kept such a wide smile on my face...how did I do it?

"We need to try. We can't just give up."

"Funny...we gave up rather easy that day."

Nova looked down,shuffling his feet across the floor. "You remember momma's face when we woke up after we hung ourselves? How happy she was?"

"Yeah...I remember."

"You remember how much she cried when we woke up? How tightly she hugged us and constantly told us she loved us like she would never be able to tell us again?"

"I remember..."

"We changed that day...no more smiling...no more being happy...no more belief in a higher power. Why?"

"Smiling takes too much energy, being happy is overrated and there is no god,nor gods who can match the power of the human mind."

"We died...found no proof of any gods and stopped believing... We believed in the potential of ourselves,that we were only limited to what we limited ourselves to. There was nothing we couldn't accomplish unless we convinced ourselves that we couldn't accomplish it."

Nova sat on the floor beside me. "They'd always bully us...it sucked so hard. In the academy? No matter how hard we'd study,our grades were awful."

"Yeah..."

"It sucked a hard cock"

"Language..."

Nova shrugged. "I don't care."

"You know mom hated it when we swore."

"Yeah. I never understood why. She swore almost all the time."

"Only when she was angry. Dad was the one always cussing. It's why mom hated it. Still hates it."

"Because it reminds her of him?"

"Still does..."

"You ever think of him?"

"All the time...I can never get him out of my head...I always see him in my nightmares. It's never anything else about falling and the dream stopping when I hit the floor,or maybe being chased. It's always the same dream of him above me,his fists on my face and-"

"You don't need to remind me about the rest..."

Silence filled the room. I could tell Elena and everyone else were peering through the window.

"They're looking at us."

"I can tell."

"How?"

I shrugged. "Just can."

"I don't like it when people look at me..."

"I know...that's why you look down. Avoid eye contact."

"But what if I walk into a pole and get a ouchie?"

"Then you walk into a pole and get a ou-"

My eye's shifted to Nova who giggled beside me. "I almost got you to say it!"

"That's not funny."

"It is. You were almost me again."

"I've always been you. I am you. You are me."

"No you aren't. You've changed. You don't smile anymore. You don't like huggies anymore! You're no funses!"

"I also don't add -es at the end of everything I say anymore either."

"And thats why no one likes you! You're a big dull meanie! You're nothing like me anymore,you're nothing like who you used to be."

"Time changes people. Events change people. What happened that day changed me. For the better."

" No it didn't! It changed you for the worse!"

"If I were still like you I'd still be that fuckin kid crying every single day! Begging for someone to help! Wearing that exhausting fake fucking smile! Being bullied and harassed, abused,hated, and I'd be too dumb,calling for the help of non existant gods and listening to idiotic false prophets,reading dimwitted holy books for hope. Crying for hope in a world where hope doesn't exist! If I were still like you I'd be stuck in that fucking pit of despair and agony because I was such a sweet,positive kid with such a big smile on my face and that fucking speech of yours! I'd be weak, pathetic and insolent, and I'm not that anymore!"

Nova said nothing. He placed his hand on my own and for a few brief moments,silence ensued.

"But you are...you're scared...aren't you Nova?"

"You're wrong...I'm not scared...I'm not you..."

"You are scared. Of being left behind. Of being forgotten. Abandoned. Being alone. You're me...just taller and more knowing of the world than I was. But you're still me. You're still scared to death of spiders and cweepy cwawlies.  You want to smile,but you're scared people will say your smile is ugly again aren't you? You want to laugh,but you know your laugh still sounds like you're some sort of maniac, and people called us crazy for it,so you don't anymore. I know...I'm you remember? Just younger..."

You are me...but I left you behind a long time ago...

"No you haven't. You haven't moved on Nova. I know you can't forget what he did...you can't forget all the horrible things he would do to you...you can't forgive him...but at least forgive me? Forgive yourself."

Forgive myself?

"Yes..."

Forgive myself for all the people I've killed? Slaughtered? Butchered for no reason except for my own blinding rage? Forgive myself for  making my mother cry, for not being there when that sick fuck would lay her hands on her? Forgive myself for being a terrible son? Unable to meet the expectations set by my family? Forgive myself for ending my own life?

Nova removed his hand from my own,sighing heavily. "Man,you're a real pain in the ass."

"Language."

"Whatever. I don't see the point of you telling me to watch my language since not only am I you,but I'm just a hallucinations."

"Hallucination. Singular."

"I says hallucinationses!"

"You're being dumb."

"I'm being you."

Nova stepped in front of me,putting both his hands on my cheek,forcing me to look up. "Looks at me! Hehe,now wears a smileses." He said,poking his thumbs into my mouth and stretching my mouth in opposite directions to form a smile. "Now keeps it there!"

Suffice to say my smile faded not long after. Nova pouted. "You're weally making this tough on me aren't you big brother?"

"Big brother? I'm you...why the fuck are you calling me big brother?"

"You're older than me, you're more handsome than I am, you're smarter than I am, you care about others more than I do, and you're just better than me overall. You're me but I'd look at you like you're my big brother!"

How am I better than you? You smile all the time...you laugh...you want to be friends with everyone you encounter...you aren't anxious about talking to others...you don't get scared very easily. You aren't insecure about yourself. You don't think you're ugly...If I were given the chance...I'd kill to be you again,if only but for a moment.

"But I'd kill to be you big brother...you're so strong...you has a statue honouring you,you knows so much fighting styles,you can stand up for yourself to meanies and bullies..."

You're missing the point! The world isn't made for people like you, people like you get eaten alive in this world.

"Does we? Did we really get eaten alive or did we allow ourselves to get eaten?"

"Makes you question everythin doesn't it?" Another voice came.

To my left stood another Nova,this one, had bruises like the Nova ahead of me, only it had one other bruise which the other one did not. A dark purple ring snaked around his neck, and it hung in an awkward position before he snapped it back into place.

"Look at you...listening to someone positive. You know what positive people are. Manipulative. Destructive. People with snake tongues just like dad."

"Don't listen to him Nova! You deserve to be happy! You do! You will be someday!"

"Will you? Will you ever be happy? Or will you always be like this? Stuck. Stagnant like a filthy river. You seem dark on the outside but beneath the stagnant waters, lies all your garbage and all your faults and all your problems. Maybe that's how you're meant to be. Stagnant. Never moving forward nor going back. But stuck in an endless loop of pain and misery which you can never escape."

"You're wrong! Think of all the good things! Like Elena, and...and Pauline!"

"They know what you are now. A freak. A monster. You literally should be dead. You're a walking bag of flesh who can't rot."

"You were given a second chance, a chance to fix things and try again! Nova not a lot of people get that! You need to seize that oppurtunity!"

"Oppurtunity? For what? For you to become some Commander in an army? An army who follows some greedy leader who wants nothing more than to force people under his dominion? To drain a land of its natural resources to satiate his own greed? This is the man you follow? The man you so openly obey to the letter and without question? The man who had you put in this cell, tortured for four weeks simply so he could learn more about Revenants, someone whose mistreated you for so long, that is the man you follow? I don't know about you but he sounds very much like our father."

"M-maybe he is a bit like father! But that doesn't mean he's wholly evil!"

"Doesn't it now?"

"No it doesn'tses!"

"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" I yelled. "BOTH OF YOU JUST SHUT UP! SHUT THE FUCK UP! SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!"

The two boys vanished,their voices slowly echoing as they left.

Their voices were replaced by one far more gruff, a sly smile on his face as he licked his lips. His eye's were deranged, his hair curly and his face was chubby. I looked nothing like him...thankfully I had inherited looks from my mother...but now,he was in the room with me. For the first time in eleven years,I was terrified.

"There's daddies boy..." He said as he licked his lips.

I struggled to get out of the chair,throwing myself violently in all directions,twisting and snapping my arms as he stalked his way closer to me.

"Come here my little play thing."

"STOP IT! GET AWAY FROM ME! GET AWAY! STOP IT!"

My arms ached with pain as the sound of them snapping filled my ears,but they were soon drowned out by the sound of my own heart beat as he inched closer and closer toward me.

"FUCK OFF! STAY AWAY! STAY AWAY! STAY AWAY!"

His hand reached out to me, and I could feel a shiver course through my entire body. I couldn't move. I was frozen with terror, too afraid to move at all as his hand touched my skin. My head became light, bile formed in my throat and an immense amount of pain ebbed through my arms. I heard the sound of glass shattering as my body dangled halfway off the ground from the chair. I felt my hands free from the shackles which bound me to the chair and found myself in a familiar arm.

Strange...this hold...this grip...I know it...I can't recognise it...but there's a certain something about it thats so familiar...

"Nova! Nova can you hear me?"

I felt myself being turned around,my arms paining with each movement. I was no longer staring at the floor,but rather at the ceiling.

Her hand was on my cheek as she looked down at me.

That face...I know that face...

"Nova,Nova look at me. Look at me."

I am...aren't I?

"Open your eye's. Open your eye's Nova,look at me. Please...please look at me...Open your eye's godsdamnit! Nova!"

My eye's...aren't open?

I didn't know...my vision slowly faded. I could see her face. The face of three others, but hers was predominant.

With each second that my vision blackened, the sight of him became more and more apparent, and my horror grew...

His sly smile haunted me...

Even in my dreams.

A/N: this fucking took EVERYTHING in me to write so I hope you enjoy. I'm probably not gonna write again for a while because this entire chapter is basically just a whole trip down the horrible memory lane that I have so there you have it. Probably the last chapter you're getting for the next few weeks or so.