Chapter Text
The mirrors make it hard to hide from the truth. He smashed what few he could, when he saw that he could no longer hide his teeth- his lips shrivelling back to bare teeth that are lengthening, protruding, while his molars ache and blister and burst with pus as he finally, desperately, wrenches them from his jaw.
But the shining, gleaming glass that lie behind bars continue to show the pus and blood that course down his growing jaw. At first it had mingled with tears. No longer. Now he just screams at his reflection, before collapsing back on the filthy ground under the deluge of pain that is stretching him, making a mockery, a vicious cartoon of his once beautiful body. His fingers are too long, but even with the distension of his arms he still can’t reach the taunting mirrors just barely out of reach. He tries to wrench the bars apart. It’s useless. He falls back, weak with hunger. Whatever sick cunt left him here had left food, and he’d tried to eat it, but it came back up almost immediately after. It tastes like sand, like rot, and the hunger gnaws even as he is throwing up in a corner. He’d think it was poisoned, another part of the torture, but even the act of chewing felt wrong- not just because of how few teeth he has left suitable for the motion.
The door opens. He thinks he’s imagined it. He doesn’t turn, because he’ll just find his own disgusting, rotting face in the mirror.
But then a voice speaks.
“Fer fuck’s sake.”
It keeps him quiet, at least. Well. Quieter. His sobs are at closer distance, but they’re muffled by her increasingly stained and torn shirt, and he’s less inclined to scream when she lets him hang onto her. He’s scratched her back once,freshly grown claws clumsy and dangerous, and she dragged him away. Spat and snarled. He’s more careful now, even in agonised grief. He doesn’t want her storming away again.
She mutters sometimes. When he’s quiet, she rests a book on his shoulders, reads, makes notes. In the moments when his mind doesn’t feel entirely on fire, he tries to listen, but they don’t make enough sense to remember. Just the muttered curses and complaints. She’s busy, she’s trying to read, he’s an irksome whelp to guard. But when she’d first come, she’d taken away the mirrors. She’d brought him a bucket of something that slaked his thirst, beat back the gnawing hunger a little. It still makes him retch, but it’s better than the starvation he’d been left in.
“Babysittin’ a fuckin’ newborn Cleo,” Locke growls to herself as she flicks angrily through her book. “Bottom ov th’ ocean. Nothin’ but fuckin’ fishblood to feed ‘im. Fantastic fuckin’ idea, ██████.”
Peter closes his eyes. They hurt. His tears don’t seem to keep them from drying anymore. Not since they’d grown back. Scratching them out hadn’t lasted long, and their return had hurt almost as much as the removal.
She turns a page, and he listens to the soft scratch of the pencil. The book presses on the hunch of his shoulders, flat and cool. Her shirt feels worn, soft between his clutching fingers. She rumbles, and it’s like a hum mixed with a growl, thrumming through her chest and into his head.
For a blissful moment, it all doesn’t hurt. Almost.