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She remained naïve to escape.
All of her friends told her about, warned her about it. But they thought that she was just too innocent, too trustworthy, and too stubborn to head their warnings.
They were wrong. She knew it was happening, she could feel the Batterwitch’s tendrils crawling into her mind, telling her, almost forcing her to think things that were not her own. To hurt those around her, those she loved. To betray them and laugh at them because they were those beneath her were her playthings and everyone was beneath her.
So she forcibly made herself not notice, because if she didn’t think too hard about it then the grabbing hands of control slid through her thoughts without anything to grasp onto, with no way to make her into their slave.
He fought to escape.
It was always in his head, a deep rumbling voice that wasn’t really a voice that spoke of death and destruction and of eating universes. It told of how he didn’t belong stuck on this rock of an island, this rock of a planet. How he should be out there with his Demoness by his side, taking what was his, and what was his was everything.
His friends thought that he was stranded on that dangerous island, and that if he could he would leave behind the monsters and ruins to live in civilization and friendship. But in fact he could get away from his home anytime he wanted, his Grandmother was very good with manipulating space and teleports. He forced himself to stay, because he never wanted what the voice said to come true. He couldn’t trust himself around his friends, because they were constantly in danger by remaining so.
So he fought. By creating small mindless destruction with his hands, he was able to block out the ultimate destruction in his head. Strider’s robot was the best tool, something that looked like his friend, but wasn’t, so he could partially appease the urges to deal death and remain without the blood of the best people he knew, the only people he knew, on his hands.
She drank to escape.
They were there when she was awake, and were there even stronger when she was asleep. They whispered inhuman languages into her mind that she sometimes woke up with on the tip of her tongue. Her dreams were full of tentacles and darkness and huge presences bearing down on her so hard that she thought she would be crushed. They spoke of destiny and power and of being a conduit, but never did they mention what the power would be for, and if she ever thought about her friends while in their presences, the beings would seem to ripple with amusement at her affection and attachment to such lowly creatures. They could fix that.
Her friends were worried for her, even if they never said it. They all disapproved of her drinking, of how she consumed until she fell into a stupor. They didn’t realize that the voices in her head just made it so hard to think sometimes, so hard to remain human, that she needed something to ground her, something to keep her sane. And her mother had somehow and probably knowingly provided it in the form of an eternally stocked liquor cabinet.
So she drank. When she passed out from too much alcohol in her system, she didn’t dream of the dark beings, and that was so much better than sleeping normally. Her friends worried that she might be losing it, that the drink was warping her brain, causing her to behave out of character. But it was the buzz that saved her, that kept her mind slippery enough that tentacles could change it to fit their needs. She was more herself when drunk that when not. And she had to keep it that way or one morning she might wake up, not caring at all about being a human teenager with friends who needed her.
He created to escape.
He had been raised with it, had practically been raised by it. People had always made fun of him as a kid about how he dragged the puppet around, and how he pretended that it could talk. What they didn’t understand was that it could. It whispered and giggled to him at night, talking in a happy, childish and syrupy voice of destruction and rage and death. Of how he could stand above them all, play the puppet master with their lives, and when they bled he could just laugh and laugh and laugh.
He kept it around him always, because if he didn’t, he wasn’t sure that it wouldn’t go off on its own and find someone else to torment, or even to set out to do what it talked about every night without fail. He also kept it around because it was one of the only gifts that his brother had given him. But even his Bro had often looked at it with suspicion and distaste, as if he knew what it was doing and that he had bestowed a great duty upon his charge, the duty to watch over the puppet and make sure it wouldn’t do anything to anyone else. So instead it was all focused on him, and he could feel himself coming closer and closer to believing its tales, of truly listening to what it had been saying, since wasn’t it his oldest friend that had always been there for him?
So he created. He used his mind to create robots and music and countless not so shitty inventions. He created an AI to talk to that would mirror his 13 year old self, if he hadn’t grown up and been corrupted by the nightly whispers. While in bed he would focus on the music in his head and on his tongue rather than the words from the puppet’s unmoving mouth. He kept his mind and hands busy with algorithms and coding and sick nasty rhymes so that he wouldn’t end up using them to control and destroy those that he loved.
They all tried to escape. But in the end, destiny always finds you.