L’appel du vide

by YieLecl

Summary:

"L’appel du vide" — literally "the call of the void" — is that strange, fleeting urge to do something wildly self-destructive for no reason at all. Like when you’re standing on a high ledge and suddenly think, “What if I just... jumped?” You're not suicidal. You don’t want to die. But your brain whispers chaos anyway. It’s a brief glitch in your survival system, a twisted curiosity, a soft tug from the edge of the unknown. Haunting, irrational, human.

Chapter 1: Atelophobia

Summary:

Atelophobia
[a-tel-o-phobia]
It’s not just the fear of flaws — it’s the quiet, aching belief that nothing you do will ever be enough. Like carrying a mirror that only shows what’s missing, never what’s there. You smile, you try, you shine just enough to not fall apart in front of others. But inside, everything feels like a test you’re failing in silence. Mistakes don’t just hurt — they haunt. Praise never feels real. And love? It feels like a debt you’re terrified you can’t repay. So you keep perfecting, performing, pretending — until one day, you forget what it’s like to simply be.

Notes:

This is just something I wrote on a whim, so there might be typos or some messy parts. It’s also my first time writing a fic in English (it’s my second language), so please go easy on me. Thanks for dropping by and reading it <3

 

Quick lil heads up:
This fic is based on real people, which means there will be stuff that’s totally inaccurate or off compared to their actual lives—especially the way I’ve built their personalities, lifestyles, and emotional messes.

I totally get that not everyone vibes with that. So if it’s not your thing, no pressure—feel free to skip!
But if you do decide to read and then get mad at me… pls don’t yell 😭 I’m a fragile little gurl and I’ll actually cry.

Just me projecting and making things up for the ✨drama✨ ok? OK. Love u bye.

Gasping. The sound tore itself from his throat, raw and ragged, a dying animal’s plea lost in the suffocating dark. Each breath was a jagged shard scraping down his windpipe, his heart a frantic prisoner hammering against the cage of ribs – thud-thud-thud-thud – a desperate drumbeat syncopated with the cold sweat beading, then spilling down his temples. It traced paths like liquid diamonds over skin stretched taut over hollow bones, each drop a testament to the silent war waged within. Charles couldn’t recall a single, untainted night of sleep untouched by the chemical oblivion of sedatives. Perhaps such innocence had never existed for him. Only relics remained: the salt-crusted hieroglyphs of dried tears etched into the pillowcase, a silent archive of despair, and the crumpled, rust-stained gauze – discarded petals from a wound that refused to heal, whispering of violence turned sepia with time.

His fingers, spectral and trembling with a life of their own, spiders made of ice and fear, scrabbled across the lacquered wood of the nightstand. Clink. The bottle. A familiar ritual performed with the numb precision of the damned. The cap yielded with a dry twist, a sigh of resignation. He tipped the pills – small, bitter promises of numbness – into his mouth. They caught, gritty and acrid, a desert storm scraping down his throat, leaving a trail of phantom fire in their wake. A choked gasp escaped, fractured between convulsive swallows. His chest caved inwards on every second breath, a collapsing star. He folded himself smaller, tighter, drawing knees sharp as broken kingwood to his concave chest. The blanket became his shroud, a flimsy sanctuary woven from childhood’s ghostly remnants, a pathetic shield against the encroaching world… or the specters that lived within his own skull. It offered no protection. Only the illusion of it.

But the memories… The memories were sovereign. They recognized no borders, acknowledged no pleas for mercy. They came uninvited. Unannounced. They shattered the fragile walls of the present.

A flash. Not light, but a plunge into frigid, viscous darkness. Thick, muscled arms – smelling of cheap tobacco and sweat-soured aggression – wrapped like constricting vines around the fragile frame of his younger self. Thrown down. Pinned. A visceral tearing, a violation as profound as the rending of sacred cloth. The sensation wasn't memory; it was present – the phantom teeth of rabid beasts worrying at the soft, exposed marrow of his soul, a lamb offered on an altar of cruelty.

His body recoiled violently, a puppet jerked by invisible wires of terror. A sound escaped him then – not a sob, but the fragile shattering of glass: a high, sweet whimper, thin and breathless, muffled by the cotton that tasted of salt and despair. It echoed in the suffocating silence, a solitary pin dropped onto the marble floor of an empty, echoing cathedral, the sound magnifying the void. The ache in his limbs was a deep, resonant thrum beneath skin already mapped with the purple-black constellations of old bruises. The wounds – some faded silver scars, others raw, weeping crimson fissures too new for scabs – screamed beneath each inhalation. They pulsed with a heat that was almost alive, they stung like nettles woven into his nerves, they itched with the maddening persistence of insects burrowing beneath his skin. His hands, traitors to his conscious will, moved with a dreadful autonomy. Fingernails, bitten to the quick, raked over the fresh slashes, reopening the fragile seals, clawing at the ridges of ancient scars that refused to fade into oblivion. Skin lifted, peeled back like unwanted parchment. Blood, warm and startlingly red, welled anew. The pain was a lover. Insistent. Intimate. The only thing that felt real in the dissolving world.

He buried his face deeper into the pillow’s sterile whiteness, a landscape soon transformed into a watercolour of misery by silent, trembling tears. They fell not in torrents, but like the slow, relentless drizzle down a rain-streaked windowpane – cold, isolating, obscuring the view. A sigh escaped him, long and shuddering, raw as exposed nerve endings. His lungs felt like collapsed bellows, each expansion a sharp, staccato agony. His lips, already a battlefield of cracks from nervous gnawing, now bloomed with tiny crimson beads. His eyes, vast caverns hollowed out by relentless insomnia, were framed by bruised crescents the colour of storm clouds and exhaustion – badges of honour won in endless battles against nights devoid of sleep, filled only with fevered echoes and the oppressive weight of dread.

And the guilt. It was the bedrock upon which his suffering was built. It settled in his marrow, cold and heavy. He blamed himself. For everything. For the inherent weakness of his bones, the smallness of his frame against the onslaught. For the paralysis that had seized his limbs, the scream that had died unborn in his throat. For the simple, devastating fact of survival – for carrying the poison within him, a festering thing. For the treacherous, persistent beat of his own heart when it should have stopped. For the unforgivable sin of loving – fiercely, hopelessly, destructively – when love felt like a betrayal of his own shattered state.

The anorexia, a specter he’d battled into an uneasy truce, returned. It wore the face of an old, seductive demon, its smile chillingly familiar. He’d told himself he was managing, existing within the narrow parameters of functionality – walking, driving, breathing. But the crushing weight of the facade, the Herculean effort of compressing his fractured reality into the neat, acceptable box labelled "fine," had finally ruptured him. The pressure had grown too immense; the silence he maintained was a dam straining against a flood.

People offer platitudes: You can’t mend shattered porcelain with glue. It’ll never be whole again. Sometimes the cracks become more terrible than the break. Charles knew this. Intellectually. Yet, like Sisyphus cursed with hope, he persisted. He gathered the shards – each splintered memory, each ruined fragment of himself. He tried, with desperate, bleeding hands, to force them back into a semblance of wholeness using nothing but sheer, agonizing will. But the edges were cruel. They cut deeper than the original wound, embedding themselves in his palms, in his soul, ensuring the bleeding never ceased. They were not pieces of a vase, but shrapnel.

He remembered Max.

Max – perhaps the only soul outside the fragile fortress of blood ties he had ever truly, fiercely trusted. Not with blind faith, but with the desperate, unwavering grip of a drowning man clutching a single, frayed rope in an abyss, naming it hope. But this specific brand of agony, this particular flavour of love poisoned by shame, was untranslatable. It resided in the deepest, most lightless vault of his being, secreted away alongside the rotting carcass of his humiliation.

Max could never know.
Never witness the grotesque gallery of Charles's hidden wounds – the exhibits even Charles couldn't bear to examine without choking on his own breath.

Because Charles cherished him. More than victory. More than breath. More than sanity. Enough to weave tapestries of lies. Enough to endure the gnawing ache in solitude, a martyrdom repeated nightly. The mere thought of Max truly knowing – comprehending the depth of the defilement, the magnitude of what had been stolen, the tainted vessel Charles now inhabited – was a terror more profound, more annihilating, than the physical pain itself.

So, silence became his sacrament.
He told no one.

Not his family. Not from lack of love, but because their love was a mirror reflecting his own devastation. He couldn't withstand the fracture lines appearing in his mother's eyes, the tremor that would steal the steadiness from her hands – hands that had once cradled him whole. He couldn't be the architect of their ruin.

“I’ll be fine,” he breathed into the stale air, a mantra as hollow as his bones. He always did.

Curled fetal beneath the inadequate shield of fabric and the swirling vortex of nightmares, he pressed clenched fists against his sternum, feeling the frantic, erratic flutter beneath – a wounded sparrow trapped against his ribs. The sobs were soundless now, strangled things caught in the prison of his throat, vibrating against clenched teeth. His fear had transcended name. It was elemental. A constant hum beneath his skin, a second pulse keeping time with the drumbeat of his heart.

He was terrified – of phantom hands reaching from the past to violate the present; of the world discovering his secret and recoiling in disgust; of being seen not as Charles Leclerc: The Golden Prodigy, Ferrari's Shining Knight, The Untouchable Racer – but as Charles: The Defiled. Charles: The Broken Thing. Charles: The Omega.

A white-hot spike of pain lanced through his skull. His vision swam, dissolving into a nauseating kaleidoscope. A treacherous thought, seductive in its simplicity: One more pill. Just one more. Then stillness. Then nothing.But then her face bloomed behind his eyelids – his mother’s face – and he imagined it crumbling like ancient stone, the light extinguished in her eyes. He stopped.

His teeth sank into the flesh of his own forearm – a savage, grounding punctuation. Sharp pain. The coppery tang of blood. Real. Immediate.

Then came the collapse. Not dramatic, but a quiet, inevitable crumbling inward. A seismic shift contained within the fragile architecture of his body. Shaking. Weeping that was less sound and more the convulsive shudder of absolute depletion.

Then… silence. A terrifying, hollow calm. Like the eye of a hurricane. He sat up, dazed, blinking in the weak light. As if the tempest had been a fever dream. The ritual of erasure began. He cleaned. Methodically, mechanically, like an automaton programmed for tidiness, he restored order to the room his anguish had torn asunder. Every movement precise, rehearsed over countless repetitions of this private apocalypse. Then, drawn by an unseen force, he drifted towards the piano – the silent, polished monolith in the living room, an island of untouched elegance.

He sat. The ivory keys felt cold beneath his trembling fingers. Yet muscle memory, deeper than conscious thought, guided them. They found their places.

A melody emerged. Not composed, but unearthed. Sweet as poisoned honey, slow as a dirge, saturated with a sorrow so profound it became beautiful – like pressing a lover’s kiss onto an open wound after driving the blade in yourself. A paradox of pain and tenderness.

Smoke from the illicit cigarette coiled into the still air, grey serpents dancing in the lamplight. He wasn't a smoker. But tonight, it was the only sensation strong enough to pierce the numbness. It tasted of ash and oblivion. Of nothingness.

Too much. The word echoed in the hollows of his mind. Expectations stacked like mountains. Deadlines ticking like executioners' clocks. The unblinking eyes of cameras, hungry for a flaw. The solution, etched in acid: Work harder. Smile brighter. Speak less. Minimize the ripples. Perhaps then the world wouldn't notice the desperate flailing beneath the surface, the silent scream as he drowned in plain sight.

Max. Max’s image surfaced, unbidden. Max – incandescent with brilliance, armored in courage, honed to a razor’s edge. But life, Charles knew with weary certainty, held no reverence for brilliance. It spared no one, not even the seemingly strong. Max carried his own Atlas-burden, sculpted by fists and voices that cracked like whips in the dark corridors of memory. Charles recognized the contours of that pain. That kinship was precisely why he dared not add his own crushing weight to Max’s shoulders.

Because Max wasn't a savior carved from marble. He wasn't a healer with magic salves. He had no sacred obligation to embrace, let alone love, something fractured beyond recognition, something spoiled.

Charles exhaled. The smoke drifted out, a visible sigh carrying the ghost of his exhaustion into the indifferent air.

His body persisted. A machine running on fumes and habit. Going through the motions. A hollow vessel. Nothing more.

“Pressure makes diamonds,” he whispered, or perhaps the words only echoed in the desolate chamber of his skull.

But not everything compressed yields gemstones.
Some things simply disintegrate. Reduced to irredeemable dust.

And he remembered. With the clarity of a recurring nightmare, he remembered the fundamental curse: Being born Omega in an Alpha’s world. A society paying lip service to progress, yet riddled with the ancient, festering disease of prejudice. An Omega birth wasn't rarity; it was calamity. From the first gasp of air, it meant consignment: branded caregiver, designated pleasure-giver, object to be kept. Seen as inherently soft, perpetually disposable, permitted existence only in the margins, the shadows, never the searing glare of the spotlight. Shine too brightly? The world would scorch you to cinders for the audacity.

Charles hadn't chosen this vessel. He hadn't courted the dormant gene that had bloomed within him like a nightshade flower – beautiful, toxic, inescapable. It had chosen him. Marked him.

He was the sole bearer of this recessive curse in his family – a hidden flaw, subtle at first. But it poisoned everything. His body betrayed him: faltering where others endured, bruising like overripe fruit, healing at a glacial pace. Emotions weren't felt; they were tsunamis that obliterated his fragile shores. His skin was a palimpsest recording every touch, every slight. This sensitivity wasn't charming; it was inconvenient. Weakness. Instability. A liability.

And yet… here he stood. An Omega, buried beneath mountains of Beta-coded paperwork, hurtling a metal beast around circuits at 300 km/h. A world where weakness meant death, measured in milliseconds.

No one forced the concealment. But survival demanded it. What alternative existed?

The world wasn't ready. "An Omega in Formula One?" The imagined laughter was brittle, cruel. "Don't be absurd."

He wasn't joking.
He was hiding. Perfectly.

Every gesture, every inflection, every carefully modulated response was a masterpiece of forgery. Sculpted into the ideal Beta mold: the calm, cerebral, emotionally impenetrable competitor. The quiet golden boy with the Ferrari-red smile that never reached his haunted eyes, the steady voice in interviews that masked the scream within. Not the truth. Never the truth.

He’d learned the art of vanishing early. When the heats came – those brutal, biological betrayals, dragging him down into fevered, humiliating panic – he mastered the ritual. Locked hotel rooms. Sealed windows. Utter solitude. Towels muffled screams that threatened to tear his throat raw. Teeth clenched on fabric, on his own flesh, anything to imprison the animal sounds within the cage of his body. Suppression pills became his chemical armor. They murdered appetite, assassinated sleep, gifted migraines like iron bands around his skull, left muscles screaming in protest – but they worked. Mostly. Enough. Enough to sit ramrod straight in team meetings while blood painted the back of his throat. Enough to smile and utter, “I’m fine,” while every cell shrieked “I’m breaking.” Enough to render his agony invisible.

Ferrari knew. Naturally, they knew.

The contract demanded disclosure – a discreet clause buried beneath legalese and blood-red seals, shrouded in confidentiality. But they knew the fact, not the reality. They didn't know about the bite marks, souvenirs of past violations, that lingered like bruises on his soul. They didn't know about the heatwaves that ambushed him without warning, turning his world into a furnace of shame. They didn't register the instinctive, electric flinch that seized him at any sudden touch, however gentle.

The FIA? The FIA must not know. Privacy laws were his flimsy shield, a legal fig leaf inadequate to cover the raw, gaping wound of his existence. To the watching millions, Charles Leclerc was Beta. Prodigy. Success Story. Ferrari's Flawless Icon. The Golden Frontman.

No one suspected he ran on a cocktail of willpower and pharmaceuticals, perpetually one step from the precipice.
No one saw the blood-flecked handkerchiefs, scarlet Rorschach tests hidden in his driver's suit.
No one noticed the microscopic tremor in his fingers as he gripped the steering wheel before qualifying, a tremor born of exhaustion and terror.
No one understood that the scorching heat of the cockpit, unbearable to others, often felt like a refuge – a place where speed could temporarily outrun the demons gnawing at his core.

He used to love life.
A lifetime ago. When simplicity reigned. When he was a boy with sun-bleached hair and cheeks flushed from Monegasque sun, sketching racing cars in the margins of schoolbooks, believing fiercely that the world would embrace brilliance if you offered it enough. He’d scrawled his name everywhere: Charles Leclerc. Charles Le Racer. Charles Le Dreamer.

He used to gaze at Max Verstappen as one gazes at the sun – a distant, golden, incandescent entity whose very presence made the cold void inside his chest shiver with something perilously close to warmth.

Thirteen. Max was frost incarnate, arrogance personified, terrifyingly brilliant – and Charles adored him with the helpless intensity of first love. He had no name for the feeling then. But whenever Max flashed that rare, sharp smile, or whenever their karts dueled wheel-to-wheel on some sun-baked track, something detonated inside him. His heart performed a violent pirouette, like tyres skimming the very edge of adhesion on Eau Rouge – a terrifying, exhilarating flirtation with disaster. No brakes. Pure, reckless momentum.

He thought, with the desperate logic of youth, If I become brilliant enough, fast enough, strong enough… he’ll see me.

And then… came the night.
The Event.
The singularity that shattered the lens through which he viewed the universe.
The theft of something irreplaceable, rendering him forever mute in the language of trust.

The world drained of color, leaving only desaturated grey. Races became grim obligations. Afternoons were intervals for recovery, measured in therapy sessions and the sterile smell of hospitals. The open sky was replaced by the cracked plaster of clinic ceilings. Whispers followed him – adult voices, low and laden with pity and morbid fascination, weaving narratives around him as if he were an inanimate exhibit, incapable of comprehension.

He ceased believing in softness.
He learned to weep without tears – dry, silent convulsions.
He learned to walk without faltering – a perfect, brittle pantomime of stability.
He learned to exist without needing – sealing his heart in permafrost.

His feelings for Max didn't die. They were entombed. Buried fathoms deep beneath strata of guilt, corrosive fear, and a self-loathing so profound it felt like his natural state.

He couldn't tell him. Couldn't risk the transformation of Max’s face – the potential shift from camaraderie to pity, or worse, to revulsion. Not if Max ever knew the full horror. Not just that Charles loved him, but that Charles’s body was a violated temple, his spirit broken by others long before Max could even consider looking at him with desire. What Alpha, especially one forged in fire like Max, would want damaged goods? What Alpha would crave a soul already plundered, a map already scarred by other conquerors?

He didn't hate Max.
He hated the ruin reflected in his own eyes.

He hated the treacherous vessel of his body. Hated the scent it emitted, a biological billboard he couldn't control. Hated the invasive, humiliating heat that arrived unbidden. Hated the phantom hands that still groped from the past. Hated the intricate architecture of lies he constructed daily, brick by suffocating brick, just to breathe the same air as others.

Max was kindness itself. But Max wasn't his. Couldn't be. Wouldn't want to be.

They were comrades.
Rivals locked in an eternal, beautiful duel.
Twin stars blazing in parallel trajectories, condemned by cosmic design to never touch, never merge, forever separated by the cold, uncaring vacuum of circumstance.

So Charles extinguished hope.
Methodically.
Ruthlessly.
He never allowed himself to reach out.
Never dared to bridge the impossible gap.

He drifted to the window. The city sprawled below, a constellation of artificial stars blurring behind the unshed tears that filmed his vision.

“I’ll burn myself to cinders before I let them see the smoke,” he murmured. Who was ‘her’? His mother? Max? The ghost of the boy he used to be? He no longer knew.

A fresh, warm trickle slid from his nostril. Copper bloomed on his tongue.

A ghost of a smile touched his ruined lips. “I suppose… I’m already at the edge.”
He tilted his head back. The sky was an empty, indifferent black. An abyss mirroring the one within.

The cigarette burned down to the filter, a dying ember. Deliberately, slowly, he pressed the glowing tip into the tender skin of his inner forearm. Hiss. The smell of searing flesh, intimate and acrid, filled his nostrils. He watched the flesh redden, blister, and submit. He needed to feel it. To anchor himself in this specific, controllable agony.

He remembered a time when his scent was innocent. Like sunlight on clean linen. Like the delicate, fleeting perfume of peonies steeping in bathwater – his mother’s favourite.

Not this. Not the metallic tang of blood. Not the chemical sting of bleach and suppression drugs. Not this pervasive aura of despair and pharmaceutical decay.

His hands were a battlefield. Knuckles split and scabbed from impacts against walls in silent rages. Palms etched with half-moon crescents where nails had bitten deep. Nails themselves are reduced to ragged nubs.

His gaze drifted to the shelf. A bouquet of peonies, once vibrant, now slumped in their vase, petals browning at the edges, surrendering to entropy. Max’s peonies. Picked with careless grace during a spring weekend that felt like a lifetime ago.

Peonies. Symbols of bashful love. Of prosperity. Of… loyalty. The kind of unwavering devotion Charles knew, with bone-deep certainty, was a paradise forever barred to someone like him.

His hand, trembling violently now, lifted. Fingertips, feather-light, brushed the edge of a dying petal. It detached instantly, a silent surrender, spiraling down to join the fallen on the polished wood below.

So heartbreakingly beautiful.
So devastatingly brief.

His fingers spasmed.
Smoke curled from his lips like a final, silent sigh.
The oversized nightshirt slipped, revealing the stark, vulnerable architecture of a collarbone too sharp, catching the room's chill.

And deep within the frozen core of him –
The last, guttering ember of hope flickered, surrendered, and died into absolute, perfect darkness.

Notes:

ugh... idk anymore lmao, I’ve been cooking this fic for like 1-2 months and now that I’m actually writing it??? it's giving ✨ultimate cringe™✨. pls this is all fake-fake-fanfic land so like... everyone’s ooc as hell and that’s on me 💀 I’m so embarrassed rn I might actually go feral and delete the whole thing after one day 😭😭😭 help me I’m unwell huhuhuhuhuhuhu

also btw I originally wrote this in my native language first ‘cause I’m lowkey insecure about writing in English 🫠 and honestly?? the vibes never hit the same when I try to translate it. so yes I used some tools (AI and stuff) to help with the wording but LIKE… I WROTE THIS. I have the chaotic drafts, the insane Google Docs, and the unhinged late-night notes to prove it okay 😤✍️

…anyway if this fic suddenly disappears in 24 hours just know I died of secondhand embarrassment from my own braincells. pls don’t look at me aaaaaa

Chapter 2: Alexithymia

Summary:

Alexithymia
[a-lek-sith-e-mee-uh]
It’s not the lack of emotion — it’s the silent war of feeling everything all at once, and still not knowing what to call it. You ache, but can’t name the pain. You miss, but don’t know who. Sometimes you cry and have no idea why the tears are there. Words slip through like water, but nothing sticks — just this heaviness in your chest that has no shape, no story.

You laugh when you’re breaking. Say “I’m fine” because it’s easier than trying to explain a storm you can’t map. Love confuses you. Anger drowns you. Joy feels borrowed. And when someone asks how you feel, all you can offer is a shrug — because honestly, you wish you knew.

He sat very still.
Like a statue carved not from marble, but from bone bleached by too many winters.
The room was silent — not peaceful, just heavy. The kind of silence that settled in the lungs and made every breath feel like it had to tiptoe.
Somewhere outside, a distant car passed. A door creaked in the hallway. Life, distant and irrelevant.
On his lap, his hands twitched — pale, thin, always trembling. Not from cold. From memory.
There was no trigger. No sudden flash. Just... the familiar pull.
A slow tightening under the ribs. A dull ache blooming beneath the skin. A whisper from the past, dragging him downward.
And then — as if someone had cracked open the vault he tried so hard to seal —
It began.
The remembering.
People often say, "After the rain comes sunshine," a sweet consolation about rebirth. But for Charles, the rains of life only served to expose the frigid swamps within his soul. The sun above remained a luxury, an indifferent light illuminating a world he could only observe from behind the shattered glass pane of his own existence. In the pitch-black room, lit only by the faint glow of a desk lamp, Charles sat dazed like a ruined statue. His thin hands clenched the edge of his oversized nightshirt – the garment acting like an ill-fitting shell, making him feel even smaller and more adrift the more he wore it. The shards of memory he thought were buried deep beneath the icy frost of oblivion suddenly came alive. Not gradually, but like a tempest, awakened by an invisible, cruel hand ruthlessly excavating the mind of a desperate soul. The lingering sensation of unwanted, brutal touches still seared his skin, making him shudder despite the room's warmth. Fear gripped him like sharp talons tearing at his insides: the fear that the very hands haunting him that night had planted within his immature, unfinished womb a tiny life – a seed of destruction.

They haunted him. Not just memories, but living ghosts, present in every shallow breath, in every inexplicable spasm beneath his abdomen. Nothing could erase them—not time, not success, not the spotlight of the racetrack. They were like indelible ink seeping into white paper, forever staining the pages of his life.

He remembered that fateful day vividly. After a race so tense it choked the breath from him, his body was suddenly wracked by violent, horrific hemorrhaging. The ultrasound result felt like a bucket of ice water dumped straight onto his face, his heart, everything he thought he knew about himself: he was pregnant. Those two simple words carried the weight of a life sentence. The brutal truth not only revealed a disgusting reality but also deepened the wounds inflicted by those very hands, turning them into festering, bleeding sores in his soul. He was barely fifteen – too young to shoulder decisions heavy enough to shatter a lifetime, yet old enough to understand the price of silence, of being unable to continue living in that darkness. Before the adolescent stood a cruel choice, akin to slitting his own wrists: abandon his burning dream of speed to nurture the tiny life growing within the body he both despised and feared; or release that child, freeing them both from a dark future before it was too late. And with a heart constricted by fear and shame, the pain of the present weighed heavier than the fear of the future; he chose the latter – a deliverance wearing the face of destruction.

He knew all too well the pain and humiliation it would bring his family – people who knew only pride from glittering trophies – if this came to light. Suppressing the wrenching nausea and the dull, knife-like ache below his abdomen, he silently sought out a small, obscure private clinic tucked away in a dark alley, where no prying eyes could see. Perhaps it was a rare stroke of luck that he discovered it in time, before the life within had fully formed, allowing the "release" to happen with minimal physical pain. But simultaneously, it was the ultimate misfortune, for the procedure itself etched itself into his mind like an inescapable nightmare, more vivid and agonizing than any physical wound.

The intense pressure of racing combined with severe psychological trauma, his immature uterus, and an innate bleeding disorder – a deadly formula – led to a horrific complication: severe infection spreading like wildfire, consuming every shred of hope. The inevitable outcome was the removal of part of his ovary. That surgery didn't just steal a piece of his body; it nearly obliterated his future fertility – a full stop to any vague notion of "normalcy" he might have ever harbored.

The memory of the operating room wasn't just cold; it was a sensory assault that lived in his bones. Stepping through the heavy double doors felt like entering a morgue. The air hit him first – a sterile, frigid blast carrying the acrid sting of disinfectant (chlorhexidine and something sharper, like formaldehyde) that burned his nostrils and made his eyes water. Underneath it, barely masked, was the metallic tang of blood – old and new – a scent that triggered primal panic. The light was the worst: blinding, white, and utterly merciless fluorescent bars humming overhead, reflecting harshly off the chrome surfaces of trays holding cold, gleaming instruments – forceps, scalpels, retractors – their sharp edges catching the light like malevolent stars. The sounds were a discordant symphony of dread: the monotonous, high-pitched beep... beep... beep of the heart monitor already attached to him; the sharp clink of metal instruments being arranged; the low, impersonal murmurs of the surgical team, their faces obscured by masks and caps, eyes flat and focused on the task, not the terrified child on the table. Their movements were efficient, practiced, devoid of warmth or reassurance. When a nurse tightened the strap across his chest, her touch was brisk, functional, her gaze sliding over him as if he were already anesthetized meat. The anesthesiologist leaned in, his voice muffled by the mask, asking a question Charles couldn’t comprehend through the roaring in his ears. The mask descended, the sickly-sweet, cloying smell of gas filling his lungs, and the world dissolved into a nauseating swirl before plunging into black nothingness.

Waking up hours later was not a gentle return. It was a violent expulsion back into a world of excruciating, deep-seated agony. His lower abdomen felt like it had been hollowed out with a rusty spoon and then set ablaze. Every nerve ending screamed. The air in the recovery room was still bitterly cold, leaching through the thin hospital gown, making him shiver uncontrollably despite the sweat beading on his forehead. He was alone. Utterly alone. The physical loss was immediate and profound – a raw, aching emptiness where something vital had been. It wasn't just pain; it was the visceral sensation of amputation of being fundamentally diminished. The stark white walls of the small, curtained cubicle seemed to press in, amplifying the silence, broken only by his own ragged, shallow breaths and the distant, muffled sounds of the hospital – a cart rattling, a distant intercom announcement, a low moan from another room. He felt adrift in a sea of sterile indifference. The hormonal chaos began almost immediately. Waves of intense heat would engulf him, drenching him in sweat one moment, only to be replaced by bone-deep chills the next, making his teeth chatter violently. His hands trembled constantly, a fine, uncontrollable tremor that made holding a cup of water impossible without spilling. Sleep was fractured by bizarre, fevered half-dreams, half-hallucinations – fleeting shadows moving at the edge of his vision, distorted whispers that sounded like mocking laughter, the phantom sensation of warm, sticky blood spreading between his thighs even though the bandages were dry. He felt utterly disconnected from his own body, a stranger trapped in a broken vessel.

From that fateful moment, a deep part of Charles was forever fractured. Not just the ovary, but his faith in his own body, in the future, in the right to be a "whole" person.

The bone-deep, penetrating cold of that operating room years ago still haunted him, like a cold metal blade grazing his skin whenever he inadvertently touched that thread of memory. The stark fluorescent lights shone down on his pale, pitifully young face – a boy who only knew the passion for speed and naively believed in bright days ahead. The pungent, suffocating smell of anesthesia crept deep into his throat, mingling with the coppery tang of his own blood – a toxic cocktail seared into his olfactory memory, making Charles nauseous and convulsive at the mere scent of disinfectant later in life.

Everything unfolded in a timeless chaos: dizzyingly fast yet agonizingly slow. Fast, because before he could even process his emotions, he found himself curled up on an icy hospital bed, his lower abdomen feeling like a drill boring into raw flesh. Slow, because in the moment the doctor excised what should have been the cradle of life, Charles felt as if a part of his future, a core piece of his nascent humanity, was being stripped away too, leaving behind a vast, cold void like a desolate universe within his chest. He became a silent shell, a solitary shard in the darkest corner of the hospital room, where light only served to expose the cracks in his soul.

One night, during that interminable hospital stay, the ward was unusually quiet. Then, from the room next door, drifted the soft, warm sound of voices – a woman’s gentle murmurs, a man’s low chuckle, the occasional rustle of paper or plastic. Visitors. Family. The sounds were muffled, indistinct words, but the tone was unmistakable: concern, affection, presence. Charles lay rigid in his own sterile silence. The contrast was a physical blow. He pulled the thin blanket higher, trying to muffle the sounds, but they seeped in anyway, amplifying his own crushing isolation. He imagined the smiles, the comforting touch on an arm, the shared worry that was a form of love. He had none of that. His secret was a wall too high and too thick to breach. He had pushed everyone away to protect them, or perhaps to protect the crumbling façade of the "golden boy." The only sounds in his space were the hum of the fluorescent light and the shallow rasp of his own breath. The warmth from next door felt like a taunt, highlighting the arctic emptiness surrounding him. He pressed his face into the stiff pillow, biting down hard on the fabric, swallowing the sob that threatened to tear itself from his throat. The silence in his room wasn't peaceful; it was the sound of abandonment.

And today, that horrific memory – usually lurking in the shadows – surged back like a flash flood, sweeping away every psychological barrier he’d painstakingly built with sweat and tears. Charles sat motionless, hands seemingly fused to the fabric of his nightshirt, fingers icy cold as if blood had ceased to flow, though the room wasn't cold. The space around him remained silent as every night, but inside his head, a violent seismic tremor shook every cell. The dull ache from his lower abdomen seemed to reawaken, throbbing in waves, a painful reminder of his incompleteness. Perhaps it was just his imagination, or perhaps it was the cold night wind sneaking through the cracked window, lashing directly at the most vulnerable part of his body and soul – like a punishment from memory.

He looked down at his hands. Gaunt, bones stark beneath skin as white as candle wax. Old scars crisscrossed his forearms and the backs of his hands like silent testimonies to attempts at escape or self-punishment. Self-hatred wasn't just a feeling; it was a daily ritual, a compulsion. Every morning, standing before the bathroom mirror was an ordeal. He’d avoid looking directly at first, focusing on brushing his teeth with robotic movements. Then, inevitably, his gaze would snag on his own reflection – the hollow eyes, the too-pale skin, the perpetual shadow of exhaustion. The mirror became an accuser. Look at you, the thought hissed. Look at what you are. Broken. Unclean. Weak. His fingers would drift, seemingly of their own accord, towards the scars on his forearms. He’d trace the raised, silvery lines, sometimes pressing down hard enough to feel a dull ache, a ghost of the sharp pain that had once provided a fleeting release. Sometimes, he’d find himself lifting his wrist to his nose, inhaling the faint, coppery scent of dried blood trapped in the microscopic crevices of older scars, a perverse reminder of his own fragility and the moments he’d tried to erase the feeling of contamination from the inside out. Touching his own skin could trigger waves of revulsion. It felt alien, wrong – a canvas of betrayal stretched over failing bones. The slightest brush of his fingertips against his neck or cheek could make him flinch, a deep-seated allergy to his own physical being. Showering was a battle. He’d scrub himself raw with harsh soap, trying to scour away an invisible filth he knew was ingrained, only to step out and still feel dirty the scent of soap quickly overpowered by the phantom smells of antiseptic and shame.

He tried, sometimes, in moments of utter despair, to fight the voice. He’d force himself to look into the mirror and whisper, lips barely moving, "You are strong. You survived. You are worthy." But the internal voice, the voice of the self-hatred was a vicious, practiced counter-puncher. It would rise instantly, sharp and sneering:
"Strong? You let them do it. You didn't fight hard enough."
"Survived? Is this living? You're just a ghost haunting your own life."
"Worthy? Worthy of what? Pity? Disgust? Look at what you lost because you were weak."
"An Alpha wouldn't have been prey. An Alpha wouldn't be this shattered shell."
The positive words dissolved like sugar in acid, leaving only the bitter aftertaste of their negation. The mirror reflected only the hollow-eyed boy agreeing with the internal tormentor.

Charles raised his hands to cover his ears, nails scraping lightly at his skin, but the voice didn't vanish. It seeped through every crevice of his skull, then trickled down his spine like a stream of ice water, making his whole body shudder violently. He slumped forward, clutching an old pillow, his breath catching in his throat in a choked, soundless sob. The only comfort now was the steady, patient ticking of the clock's second hand – a small, cold proof that at least... time was still passing. Though for Charles, that flow only pushed him further away from that point where things, perhaps, still had a fragile chance of being salvaged. A moment of past weakness now erupted into a psychological storm – turbulent, mad, tearing away the last veils he tried to hold onto to protect the dwindling warmth inside. He knew he had to get up. Had to move forward. Had to smile tomorrow. But each "had to" felt like a sharp iron hook plunging into his chest. They pulled. Tore. Dragged him out of his own exhausted body towards a future he no longer believed in.

His survival depended on a small, cold arsenal: the pills. Heat Suppression Pills – EstroBan was the clinical name on the bottle, but to Charles, they were simply "the suppressors." Tiny, chalky white tablets that promised control over the unruly Omega biology he despised. They came with a price, meticulously listed on the leaflet he’d memorized in a haze of anxiety: nausea, dizziness, fatigue, potential liver damage with prolonged use, severe hormonal imbalance, increased risk of osteoporosis, mood swings, depression He experienced them all. The constant low-grade nausea was a background hum. The dizziness could hit when he stood up too fast, making the world tilt. The fatigue was bone-deep, a leaden weight he carried constantly. The mood swings were treacherous – moments of unnatural, brittle calm shattered by sudden, overwhelming waves of despair or inexplicable, sharp anger that startled even him. Alongside the EstroBan lived TranquiX – blue capsules for the anxiety that clawed at his throat, and Dolorex – oblong, beige painkillers for the phantom aches and the very real cramps that sometimes doubled him over. He kept them in a nondescript weekly pill organizer, a mosaic of chemical coping. One evening, after a particularly grueling day of pretending, he sat slumped at his kitchen table, the organizer open before him. Tomorrow’s compartments were nearly empty. He poured the remaining pills into his palm – two EstroBan, one TranquiX, half a Dolorex. He stared at them, these tiny masters of his existence. His fingers trembled. He picked up the last EstroBan, the one meant for tomorrow morning. He held it between thumb and forefinger, contemplating the smooth surface. The urge to take it now, to numb the rising tide of panic a few hours early, warred with the fear of running out before his next discreet refill. He applied pressure. The pill snapped cleanly in half with a faint crick. He stared at the two uneven pieces. Which half was enough? Which half was too much? Which half would finally silence the voices, drown the memories, or perhaps... stop everything? The hesitation was a physical pain. He finally placed one half on his tongue, dry-swallowing it with a grimace, and dropped the other half back into its compartment, a small act of desperate rationing and unresolved tension.

Charles, a name the racing world hailed as the "golden boy" dazzling under thousands of flashbulbs, was in truth a child never taught how to love himself. That child grew up under society's wary, prejudiced gaze towards an Omega, with the unspoken warning that his "difference," his softness, was a sin to be hidden, a weakness to be crushed. That child learned to bury every pain behind a forced smile like a talented actor, learned to brace his fragile shoulders beneath the weighty red racing suit heavy with expectations, learned to pretend everything was fine just to please people who never truly saw the real person behind the glittering facade. All the praise, the articles lauding him as a genius, an invaluable asset, became meaningless like makeup applied to the face of a statue cracking from deep within, ready to collapse.

He had tried to convince himself, screaming inwardly to drown out the voice of truth: I am strong. I am smart. I am talented. I deserve love. But the harder he strained to live up to those glamorous labels, the more Charles felt adrift from the real person writhing and whimpering in his chest – a terrified, wounded child. The child who once fiercely believed in sunlight now placed fragile trust only in small, cold pills. Painkillers to soothe physical wounds that never fully healed. Suppressants to quell his Omega instincts and the abnormal heats that reminded him of his body's "abnormality." Tranquilizers to soothe endless sleepless nights where memories were sleepless demons. Scent neutralizers to hide every trace of pheromone, every scent that could betray the true identity he saw as a burden. Nothing felt real anymore. Not the glittering victories under the lights. Not the thunderous applause. Not the interviews praising him for being "mature beyond his years" or "calm to an extraordinary degree." Because behind that frozen calm was a stomach cramping from suppressants failing to soothe the inner storm. Behind the polished, radiant smile for the cameras were nights Charles writhed in strange hotel rooms, choking back tears merely from recalling the first ultrasound he’d hidden in his jacket pocket like a deadly secret – an image too faint to show form, but sharp enough to make his young heart skip a painful beat.

No one knew. And he understood, no one needed to know. There had been moments, fragile cracks in the façade. Once, after a brutal race where he’d pushed his damaged body to the limit and finished third, the team physio, Pierre, a kind-faced Beta, had clapped him on the shoulder. "Tough one out there, Charles. You okay? You look pale." The unexpected warmth in Pierre's eyes, the genuine concern in his voice, had been a chink in Charles' armor. The words, "No, I'm not okay. Something terrible happened..." had surged to his lips, a desperate pressure behind his teeth. He’d opened his mouth, a fraction, breath catching. But then Pierre’s gaze had flickered down, perhaps catching the involuntary tremor in Charles' hand, or the unnatural sheen of sweat on his brow that wasn't just from the race. Pierre’s expression had shifted minutely – not to horror, but to a puzzled, slightly awkward concern. It was that flicker, that unspoken 'this is more than fatigue' that Charles couldn't bear. He saw the potential for questions he couldn't answer. He saw the burden his truth would become. The words turned to ash. He forced a tight smile, swallowed hard, and rasped, "Just tired, Pierre. Pushed a bit hard." Another time, his mother had commented on his increasing thinness, her hand reaching out to touch his cheek. He’d flinched, ever so slightly, and saw the hurt flash in her eyes. The confession trembled on his tongue – 'Maman, I lost part of myself...'. But the thought of replacing that momentary hurt with the devastating, incomprehensible reality of what he’d endured, the shame he carried... it was unthinkable. He’d covered her hand with his own, forcing another smile. "Just busy season, Maman. I'll eat more." The silence that followed was heavier than any words he could have spoken. He chose isolation over the risk of seeing their love fracture under the weight of his truth.

Charles no longer dared hope for an outstretched hand, a voice saying, "I understand." He knew no one could truly grasp the hell he lived in. He knew if he spoke, their gaze would only hold horror and pity – two things he despised more than indifference. And Charles didn't want pity. All he craved, deep within his shattered heart... was simply to touch someone without feeling like a filthy stain, an object to be shunned. But now, even touching his own body filled him with overwhelming disgust. Disgust at the empty, exhausted eyes reflected in the mirror. Disgust at his pallid, anemic skin, a testament to exhaustion and decay. Disgust at the newly healed cuts reopened by his own fingernails in unconscious panic. Waking mornings reeking of dried blood and antiseptic made him forget his body ever had its own scent, a gentle fragrance – the scent of an Omega he had never truly mastered. Now, only the smell of pain, pungent medicine, destruction, and what used to be Charles remained. He no longer felt warmth from an accidental touch on his shoulder – it only brought startle and wariness. He no longer felt pain when his fingertip bled from unconscious nail-biting – physical pain had become a temporary release. He no longer felt sadness at messages asking only "Okay?" – they were just reminders of an unfillable solitude.

On sleepless nights, Charles sat silently before the old piano in the living room corner, a confidante to his loneliness. His thin fingers tapped the keys without melody, the sounds dry and fragmented like stifled sobs. Each note opened a door to hell: the resurgence of an old haunting touch, panicked gasps in the dark, a patch of pristine hotel sheet stained scarlet like a horrific abstract painting. Sometimes, in utter despair, he thought that if it weren't for his mother, for the fear of shattering the heart of the woman who bore him, he might not be here anymore. But living for his mother also meant lying to her every day that he was fine, he was healthy, he was happy – a cycle of deceit that drained him. Charles was exhausted. So exhausted he could no longer feel the line between living and existing. Yet he still sat there in the dark, one hand tapping the piano keys with namelessly mournful tunes, the other holding a burnt-out cigarette stub, the match head still smoldering. He didn't smoke it, just held it as an invisible comfort, as if the faint smoke could hide him from himself, from the terrifying emptiness. When the internal filth became too much, he’d retreat to the bathroom. He’d stand under the shower turning the dial to its coldest setting. The icy water would pound down on him, a physical shock meant to scour, to purify. He’d scrub his skin until it burned bright red, focusing on the sharp sting, trying to erase the phantom sensations, the lingering feeling of contamination. But the water no matter how cold, no matter how hard it fell, could never wash away the stain he felt was etched into his soul. It flowed over him, down the drain, taking nothing of the real dirt with it. He’d emerge shivering, skin raw, but the feeling of uncleanness remained, a stubborn residue the water couldn't touch. Blood was the symbol of his violation, his loss, his brokenness – the scarlet tide that had heralded the pregnancy, the stain of the abortion, the lifeblood spilled during the surgery, the dark seepage from his self-inflicted wounds. Water was the futile, desperate agent of cleansing, a temporary relief that only highlighted the permanence of the blood's taint. Standing dripping on the bathmat, looking at his flushed, abraded skin in the mirror he felt no cleaner. Only colder, and more aware of the blood that still flowed, unseen, beneath the surface, carrying its legacy of pain.

Charles once thought the most excruciating pain was the moment of being touched without being able to resist, the feeling of utter helplessness. But no. Now he understood, what truly broke him was the day he dragged himself, step by leaden step, to that wretched private clinic, hands trembling from blood loss yet still trying to hide the yellow-brown stains beneath his faded white shirt – the traces of disgrace. He hadn't dared call anyone. Couldn't call anyone. How could he utter words like "I'm pregnant" when he wasn't even old enough to drink legally, when the one who planted the seed was only a blurred fragment of a horrific memory he wanted to forget forever? The solitude in that moment was more terrifying than the physical pain.

No warm hand held his, soothing the fear. No concerned "Are you okay?" – only the dry, indifferent clack of medical staff footsteps on the peeling clinic floor tiles. Only the acrid, overpowering smell of disinfectant invading every corner. Only the bone-deep cold from the metal chair drilling into his spine like punishment. He sat hunched over, arms wrapped tightly around his stomach, unsure whether from physical agony or the burning shame consuming him. The womb not yet fully developed had borne a tiny life in terror, then been forced to relinquish it in agony and emptiness. As an Omega, a body gifted with the sacred ability to bear life, Charles was never ready. Not like this. Not after the violent spasms in the dark locker room where he only knew to grit his teeth, endure alone, tears mingling with sweat. Not when blood still seeped, soaking the hot racing seat liner, and waves of nausea blurred his vision every time he struggled to stand up after a crash, forcing himself to appear "normal."

He didn't clearly remember what the doctor said during the painful, scrutinizing consultation, only etching the final, cold, decisive words like a sentence: "We have to remove one ovary. Otherwise, the infection will spread. Do you understand?" He nodded. Not a tear. Because tears seemed to have dried up long ago. Because some pains were worse than crying. It was the feeling of signing a death warrant for part of himself. It was the weak, newborn cry full of life echoing from the next room, making his abdomen clench in a nameless pain of loss. It was the moment the nurse asked, "Is anyone coming to pick you up?" and Charles let out a choked, bitter laugh: "No need, nurse... I... I can walk." The solitude in that answer cut deeper than any scalpel.

His recessive Omega biology made everything erupt silently, without clear warning. No distinct fevers, no characteristic pheromone shifts. No alert. Only upon waking in the hospital bed after surgery, seeing the pristine white sheet stained crimson like an accusation, did he truly panic. Only while washing his face the next morning, seeing a stream of opaque, sickly-sweet fluid run down his arm as he wrung out the washcloth, did he think he was hallucinating from exhaustion and drugs. But no. It was the brutal, humiliating, terrifying truth: his body was developing excessively, his milk ducts activating due to severe hormonal imbalance after pregnancy and abortion – a completely natural physiological response he was utterly unaware of, utterly unprepared for. Charles hadn't known. No one had taught him these things. No one knew he was a recessive Omega to prepare him psychologically or inform him of potential complications. No one... except himself, forced to wrestle with it alone. And he was too young, too naive, too exhausted, and too panicked to face this horrific "abnormality."

Amidst smoldering fevers and sharp pains radiating from his lower back to his abdomen, he sat huddled in the dark bathroom, the torrent of cold water from the shower insufficient to douse the flames of shame and agony burning him from within. Excruciating pain. But no one knew where he was hurt. No one understood what that pain was, where it came from. A recessive Omega – born to endure in silence, without sound, without clear signal. His body gave no unambiguous cry for help. His psyche was completely unequipped to confront it. Only when everything completely collapsed, when his body was already shattered, did people realize... but it was too late. The lateness of awareness and understanding.

Charles still blamed himself. That he should have known the signs of a recessive presentation sooner. That he shouldn't have endured alone, should have sought help. But simultaneously, he also understood perfectly – even if he had known earlier, in those circumstances, with societal prejudice, the colossal expectations on his shoulders, the fear of his true status being discovered... nothing would have been different. He still would have hidden it, swallowing the pain whole. Still would have chosen silence, solitary struggle. Still would have lain on that cold hospital bed, biting his lip bloody to suppress audible sobs, because if he cried out, someone might hear. And if anyone heard, if the truth was exposed, Charles would never be himself again in the eyes of the world.

No longer the promising driver, the hope of the Scuderia. No longer the radiant "golden boy" under the lights. Only a child with half his body cut away, memories shattered into a thousand sharp shards, and a heart that now beat only thanks to medication and the numbness, the callousness that had seeped into his very marrow after countless wordless traumas. An embodiment of irreparable ruin, forever adrift in the frigid swamp the rains of his life had revealed, the indifferent sun above illuminating a world he could observe, but never truly touch or belong to.

Notes:

Thank youuu and sorry for making you guys wait~ Really really grateful for all your support! I can’t promise frequent updates ‘cause life’s super busy T_T hope you can forgive me. Once again, big big thanks for the love, love yaaa~ iuiu 💕