Chapter Text
Dust and shadows were the very first things the boy had seen after he ended up in this place with the use of vitrikinesis.
It had been two days since the afro whisk haired child had crashed flown out of a mirror, tucked away in a storage space. The boy would've called the space small, if not for the world around him being nearly thrice their usual size. He had looked up and around, immediately inspecting the room to see whether it was safe or not.
That was when the warmth had reached him.
It'd crept slowly, a spreading heat along his left arm, not painful at first. Just wet. Heavy. Wrong.
The child had frowned and looked down.
The wood beneath his arm had glistened.
At first he'd thought it was a simple puddle of water, the strange lighting from the dimly lit lightbulb above, hanging from the ceiling, playing tricks on him. Then a drop had slid off his elbow and struck the floor with a soft, obscene sound.
Another had followed.
Then another.
The cut ran long and deep, a clean, merciless line carved across his forearm, from just below the elbow toward his wrist. The edges were parted, pink and raw, already swelling. Blood welled steadily, thick and dark, spilling over his skin and dripping between his fingers.
And God, it had hurt. The poor child bit the inside of his cheek as he grimaced in pain.
A thin flap of skin had lifted when he moved, trembling.
The boy had suddenly felt a strong taste of iron in his mouth. He had bitten too hard on his cheek, he figured.
He'd tried to surpress a scream, as he could not be heard.
...
Gathering himself together, the boy had thought.
The trick is to not mind.
Not mind about it hurting.
Not mind about anything.
Not minding is the trick.
The only trick.
So instead of staying inactive, the boy had gotten up, having to use his right arm only to push himself up now. The wounded child had looked around the storage space near-frantically, desperate to find anything to stop the bleeding.
He clumsily climbed a couple of crates and boxes to search them, looking for a cloth. The boy hadn't necessarily looked for a medkit, since he knew from experience that this world usually had a unfortunate amount of lack of those.
So, saying that the child was confused when he did find a first-aid kit, is an understatement. The boy wouldn't argue with that fact however, and quickly stumbled over to the oversized kit, and pried it open with his right hand.
Something that surprised the boy even further, was that there in fact was a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, and a small roll of bandages. It would, however, be enough to treat his still-bleeding wound.
The skin around it was swollen and purpled, the center raw and slick. Blood still pooled in the groove, sluggish now but thick, clinging. Shards of glass winked from inside the wound, buried like teeth.
The poor child swallowed.
He did not look away.
He reached for the bottle with shaking fingers and uncorked it. The smell intensified, burning the back of his throat. He tipped it without ceremony.
The liquid hit the wound and the world narrowed to pain.
It was fire, immediate and total. The antiseptic flooded the cut, seeping deep, dragging sensation with it. The kid’s body jerked despite him, a strangled sound tearing out of his clenched jaw. His vision blurred violently, the edges of the room smearing as if someone had wiped it with dirty hands.
Blood ran faster again, washed free by the liquid, spilling down his dark-skinned arm in glossy streams. It dripped from his elbow and splattered onto the floor between his knees. His fingers clawed into the wood, nails scraping uselessly as he forced himself to stay still.
Glass surfaced.
Tiny fragments loosened by the wash slid free, clicking softly as they struck the floor. Others clung stubbornly, embedded deep. He set the bottle aside and reached for the tweezers, which were slightly difficult because of the fact that they were quite oversized.
He pinched the skin on either side of the cut, forcing it open. The wound widened obediently, exposing the slick red beneath, muscle twitching faintly as if offended by the intrusion. He leaned closer, breath shallow, and went hunting.
The first shard came free with a soft, sick sound.
The boy gulped softly.
The second resisted. When it finally pulled loose, blood surged to replace it, welling fast and dark. He hissed through his teeth, shoulders trembling, but his hand did not stop. He worked methodically, plucking each piece of glass out one by one. Some were tiny, no more than glittering dust. Others were long and cruel, their edges stained pink where they had nested.
By the time he was done, his fingers were slick, the tweezers slippery in his grip. His arm ached with a deep, nauseating throb that crawled up into his shoulder.
He poured the liquid once again.
This time he couldn't hold back the sound.
A thin, broken noise escaped him, swallowed quickly by the vastness of the room. The noise, fortunately, was too quiet for anyone other than the boy himself to hear.
The antiseptic burned into every exposed nerve, and his body betrayed him with a violent shudder. His stomach lurched. For a terrifying second he thought he might vomit.
He pressed his doll into his chest with his uninjured arm and focused on its small, familiar weight. The pain dulled, not gone but pushed back, manageable in the way a storm is manageable when you accept it will not stop for you.
The child had wrapped the wound with gauze, tight enough to hurt, tighter still when blood immediately soaked through the first layer. He'd added more. And more. By the end his arm was thickly bound, stiff and ugly, stained through in dark patches.
Now, two days after he'd arrived, the boy was once again sitting on the dusty floorboards of the storage space. He was attending to his wound, that, fortunately, had started healing quite quickly.
The child was wrapping a new, as clean as it can be, bandage around his left arm. This time, the bandage did not get stained by any blood.
He slowly sat back, letting out a soft sigh of... relief. Something he hadn't done in a long time.
And that sigh was justified, until suddenly, fingers closed around his torso, squeezing him with the strength of an iron vise. Pain bloomed, and the poor boy yelped in a mix of hurt and surprise.
And all the boy was able to see was a hint of purple...
Before everything turned dark...