After Times of Tender Agony: Ch. 20

The Torment of Memory

Notes:

Not a happy chapter.

In this chapter, Janner is referencing some of the thoughts he had toward the end of his time with the Overseer, the thoughts about Sara and the Maker betraying him because they hadn't come. He's making himself a lot more at fault; he didn't think anything near this level of magnitude, but he thinks he did. Basically, he's not okay 😅

(actually I just realized this chapter is super in line with his MBTI; his daemon function, Si (memory!!!), has totally taken the reigns right now and it's controlling him and making things out to be so much worse than reality)

I edited this chapter quite a bit and took out some of the darker parts of Janner's thought process, but we'll see how this goes....

*****

The acrid tang of memory surrounded him, filled his lungs and mouth and heart and mind. Janner’s soul tormented him, and he hated it. He hated it so much. He had blamed Sara, he remembered blaming her. He had blamed the Maker, screamed at him, came near cursing him. He had slandered their names, trampled them in the grieving, angry muck of twisted fury in his mind. 

Sara hadn’t been in the wrong when it came to finding him; he had. He had destroyed her in his mind, ruined the beauty of her heart. And she was dead now—how cruel could someone be? And he claimed to love her? What he’d done to her in his thoughts, that wasn't love. He had no idea what it was.

And the Maker, oh, he had crucified the Maker on a cross of blame and fury, he had ripped the glory and wonder from His countenance, he had thrown profanities and propaganda on His goodness and mercy.

Their images his heart and mind had slaughtered, the dressings and trimmings, draperies and tapestries of perfection and beauty and wonder surrounding them he had torn down and set ablaze. His mind had hated them and left their memories discarded, strewn, and shredded. 

Suddenly a hand squeezed his and he drew a breath, a breath of air after drowning in a sea of monstrous memories. 

It was a breath he didn’t deserve. 

“Son, are you alright?” Jebsun asked, his eyes troubled and filled with compassion. Instead of Jebsun, though, Janner imaged Sara. She was so close to him, he could feel her warmth, and if she only knew the thoughts raging rampant in his head seconds before she would have leapt in disgust and ran, and she would have ripped the ring off her perfect finger and thrown it at his face.

“Fine.” He looked away from both the imagined Sara and Jebsun. “Sara” kept hold of his hand, and he was, tempted to pull it out of her grasp. That would have hurt her, though, more than it hurt him, and he wouldn’t torture her any more than he already had. Somehow, he gathered the resolve to do it anyway.

Jebsun hummed worriedly. “You don’t look fine.”

Janner shook his head and pulled the covers over his head, willing Jebsun to go away. If Jebsun didn't leave within the next minute, he’d shout. No, he wouldn’t shout. Then Jebsun would definitely know something was wrong.

His leg cramped unexpectedly, angry from the most recent horrible, bloody* thing Jebsun had done to it, and, barely able to hold back tears of pain, he pulled it closer to his chest and dug his fingers into the muscle swathed in bandages.

“Do you need help?” Jebsun asked, and Sara’s voice echoed his. The sound of her voice broke his heart. 

Clenching his teeth, he forced out, “No, please, I need to be alone.”

He didn’t remove the covers from his head, but something fiery suddenly lit on his shoulder. The flinch came involuntarily, and Jebsun’s hand—for that was all it could be—flew away quickly.** 

“Alright,” Jebsun said apologetically. “I’ll leave you alone. But, please, call me if you need me.”

Janner still didn’t uncover his head and nodded, managing to keep the tears from streaming down his cheeks until Jebsun had left the room and shut the door behind him. Then the covers flew off him and he forced himself up, trembling, hunched and barely able to support himself. It made him sick, but he persisted, and when that wasn’t enough, he gathered the strength to swing his right leg to the floor, the pain and the effort tearing at his body and heart from that intending to kill him. But he had hatefully slaughtered in his mind those he loved the most, so didn’t he deserve yet another semblance of it? And the next, and the one following, and as many as life presented him with in the future.

He didn’t want a future. He couldn’t think about the future, that uncertain maze of crumbling stone, oozing with rot and decay, dark and lifeless as a coffin.*** The future held decisions, a will to live, to love, to laugh. He had none of those. Jebsun willed he lived, though, and surely Artham and Nia and Leeli and Anniera would want it too—perhaps that was enough? 

The only reason they would want him alive, though, was because they had not seen his heart and mind, they hadn’t seen how he could destroy people and torture them as well as any monster, because surely what was done with thoughts and heart and soul and mind scarred more glaringly and deeply than any physical torment. The body healed; the mind didn't. Somehow, the Overseer had shaped him into this fiend...this fiend like himself—a fiend worse than himself? 

He was no different than the Overseer, no different than that heartless torturer. Oh, he wanted the Overseer to find him now. If the Overseer found him, maybe that would be the end of his prison of torment and horror and grief. 

Harsh laughter broke from his throat—now he wanted to leave in search of the Overseer, but for such a different reason than last time. Now he had no desire to make him pay for murdering Sara. Now he wanted the Overseer to throw all his anger and fury at him. Janner wanted another monster to attack him, deafen him fully, blind him, strangle him, stab him, paralyze him, keep him from feeling the horrific guilt and agony already tearing him to shreds. 

All of a sudden, he snapped back to the awareness of the physical, and his body trembled uncontrollably. Barely holding back a curse, he sank back into the cot and dragged his leg up onto it. It cramped even worse, now, squeezing, tearing at him, yanking breath from his throat. Gasping, Janner dug his fingers into the now-damp bandage in some desperate effort to stop the pain. 

Then his hand went limp, and he clutched it to his chest, breathing heavily, falling back onto his side. Gritting his teeth, he endured the nauseating pain, drowning in it. His mind wanted it to stop, cease in an instant with some method, any method. 

His heart begged for it to continue eternally. His heart called for penance of the most tortuous form, and when another wave of pain swept over him and he arched his back in some failure in an effort to give himself relief, he knew he was paying it. 

True penance, though, true Suffering would have him alone in the company of others. It would have him launch the anger and hatred and blame he had placed on Sara and the Maker at their feet, he would have drenched them in it, forced them to see the monster he was. And Sara would have stayed near him without ever holding his hand, cupping his cheek again. Every time she looked at him it would be with a glance of fear or a stare of terror, and her blue eyes would weep when she saw him, weep with how angry she was with him and how much she hated him for blaming her when she obviously hadn’t done anything, even more so for him having the audacity to blame her even after her death.

That couldn’t happen because she wasn’t alive, but if she was…that was how it would be.

And the Maker…the Maker would never turn His face on him again. The Maker would stay silent, distant, cold, chillingly angry for all of eternity. Janner’s mind had trampled His Name and Countenance in the dust—why should He not do the same to him? Why should He give mercy, grace, love? 

If he was to never experience the wonder of the Maker in his life, why, then, did he want the Overseer to mercifully do his worst? Wasn't that selfish of him? If the Maker rejected him, nothing remained after the grave but darkness and absence of all that was beautiful and glorious, all that was good and just, all that was kind and loving. 

Didn’t he feel that now, though? Hadn’t that already fled from him? Wasn't he already in a place worse than anywhere the Overseer could send him?

“What happened?!” Jebsun exclaimed in horror, his voice echoing for some dreadful reason. He wanted to cover his ears, but everything hurt too much. “Are you alright? Of course you're not alright; please, let me help.”

Even if he had wanted to answer him, he couldn’t, and even though he wanted Jebsun to leave and let him suffer on his own, he had not the strength nor the will nor the resolve to do so. Jebsun pressed his fingers into his leg and began kneading the muscle, and he cried out in pain like an infant. 

“I’m sorry,” Jebsun whispered. “I’m pressing further away from the wounds, but I know it still hurts.”

He wished Jebsun wasn’t sorry. He wished he could tell him to stop taking away his pain, because even though the initial process made him want to retch whatever meager thing he had eaten for breakfast, the taught muscles slowly released their hold and quieted, crawling back into their dark corners. 

He wanted to follow them more than anything, but he knew he couldn’t. He knew he had to thank Jebsun, even though he wished he had just let him suffer. 

“Thank you,” he breathed, exhaustion suddenly filling the corners of his mind.

Jebsun hummed. “I need...re-dress and bandage that, alright? If you can sleep while I'm doing it, I don't mind. I need you to stretch out...little though. Can you do it...your own? If you're too tired, I can help.”

Janner didn’t want to change his position, but he couldn’t have protested. He didn’t have the energy for it. Apparently, his unresponsiveness conveyed that as well as words would have.

As Jebsun gently untwisted his awkwardly contorted limbs and draped a blanket over him, then uncovered his right leg, he couldn’t help but feel genuine kindness—genuine kindness he could do nothing with but pretend to receive and quietly reject, because he didn’t deserve it. 

Sara’s image danced across his mind again, and surprise filled him at the safety pulsating from his heart and mind at the sight. It glowed with a wondrous warmth, so different from the terror and anger and grief encroaching him. 

Though she wasn’t there, she still whispered: “I love you, Janner. We’re going to get through this, I promise.” In the same moment, Jebsun began prodding at the wounds, and pain sparked in his leg.

Tears filled Janner’s eyes at the thought, because even if he deserved to get through “it” together with Sara, he couldn’t because she was gone, truly gone. She wouldn’t really want him if she was there, anyway.

“I’m sorry, it'll be over soon,” Jebsun promised. It must have been in response to the tears. The tears weren't from physical pain, though. Janner could never tell Jebsun that.

The new bandage being wrapped around the throbbing wounds, the muffled sounds of Jebsun’s voice lulled him as sleep pulled him under, and despite all Janner had told himself, he clung to the imagined Sara’s words as if they were the only thing holding him together, keeping him from being swept even deeper into the storm of self-loathing and anger. 

*****

Notes:

*NOT SWEARING - I am using the ADJECTIVE form of this word; why'd the Brits make things so hard 😭

**I'm trying to contrast light touch and firm touch/pressure. It's a fairly common reaction to trauma/anxiety/etc., where the former is terrifying and painful, but the latter is reassuring.

***I was purposely referencing the coffin.

This chapter is not meant to be rational, not meant to be logical. If it seems a lot darker than Janner's mindset in the past two chapters...well, that's how it's supposed to seem. He's shoving everything into a bottle too small to hold it, then corking it shut so it can't escape. He's coping by not processing anything, but for whatever reason, his mind decided to try processing it right now, without anyone he actually trusts around, and it's not going super well.

Let me know if there's anything noncanonical^^