#nik:oneshot
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Nikolai was struggling.
Between the sudden uptick in frequency and length of his blackouts and his feeling unwell overall, Nik was run down to exhaustion, and he barely had the energy to do anything, including eating enough to keep his strength up. That, along with being in physical pain and his mood tanking from the whole combination, meant all he wanted to do was try to sleep through it.
He hadn’t been able to get out of bed in the last two days beyond using the bathroom, and even that had taken more effort than Nik could manage without assistance, only adding to his depressed state.
It felt like he had more bad days than good ones now, and if recently was anything to go by, Nik was justified in that feeling as the days when he felt anywhere close to normal were few and far between lately and getting even fewer as time progressed, it seemed.
Nik had passed out for a few hours after lunch, feeling too sick to eat anything solid. Still, he had at least managed to feed from Cypress, which was more important, but with Nik being under the weather in general, what he did manage to consume got burned through too quickly to make much difference while his body was fighting through everything right now.
A knocking at his bedroom door awoke him; Nik hardly moved beyond lifting his head slightly and barely opening his eyes to see who was standing in the doorway.
“Hey, Dad…” he mumbled sleepily, head dropping back into his pillow before he noticed Cypress wasn’t there anymore. “Where’d Cy go?”
“I told him to go grab a shower, and I’d come keep you company until he got back,” Warren replied, stepping into the room and approaching his son, sitting beside him. “How are you doing, kiddo?”
“I feel like shit, and everything sucks ass?”
“Fair.”
“Is it?”
His son’s remark had Warren conceding and heaving a sigh, acknowledging that what Nik had to deal with wasn’t fair for anyone, much less a teenage boy who’d never done anything to deserve such hardship.
“Anything I can do to help right now?” the vampire asked, willing to do whatever was reasonably within his ability to help Nikolai, even if all he could do was offer a slight distraction for a few minutes.
Nik shrugged, unsure what would make any difference beyond figuring out a way to improve his condition in a meaningful and longer-term way.
“I just wanna not feel like this anymore,” he murmured, sighing exhaustedly.
“I know, Nikki,” Warren acknowledged, reaching out and running his fingers through his son’s hair affectionately and in an attempt to soothe him.
“I’m tired, Dad….”
“I know you are, and I wish I knew how to fix that for you right now.”
“What if it never gets better? What if it’s just gonna keep getting worse?”
“Didn’t your uncle say that wasn’t the case?”
“Yeah, after surgery, but that’s only to fix the problem with my blood, right? It doesn’t fix me blacking out, does it?”
“Maybe it’ll help because you won’t have so much to worry about anymore?”
“What if it doesn’t? What if the stress of going through surgery makes them worse?”
“Then we’ll figure out what to do next when we reach that point, okay?”
“Dad, I’m scared,” Nik confessed, getting tearful but trying and failing to hide it. “What if my blackouts keep getting longer until one day, it happens, and I don’t come back from it? What if I blackout so bad I stop being me anymore?”
“Hey, listen to me. It will never, ever come to that, alright?” Warren reassured, pulling Nik into his arms to comfort him. “I promise you, no matter what happens, you will always be you.”
“Dad, I’m not always me now. How can you say I’ll always be me when I turn into someone else and can’t even remember doing it?”
“We’ll figure it out, and we won’t stop trying until we do. We’re not going to lose you. You are not going to lose yourself. I won’t let that happen.”
“Promise?” Nik sniffled.
“Yes, Nikki, I promise you. We won’t let you get lost, I swear. No matter what it takes, your mom, me, Cypress, and everyone else have got you, and we’re not letting go, okay? Nobody and nothing will take you away from us ever again.”
Warren had never been so sincere about anything his whole life. Whatever it took to keep his son safe from harm and still himself, Warren would move heaven and earth to keep that promise.
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It had been a set of unfortunate circumstances. Nikolai was going through a particularly turbulent rough patch. His episodes were occurring frighteningly frequently again, as though all of the progress he’d made over the last three years had suddenly vanished overnight, and the best anyone could hope for was that it was only temporary and would pass soon.
He’d been feverish again, though every effort had been made to combat that so that he would remain stable. Still, it took time to leave his system, and his healing factor was slower than usual, further hampering the situation. Nik hadn’t been able to leave the cage in days, a precaution for his safety, and that meant his family taking shifts to watch over him in case the side of him that seemed to hijack control during his blackouts attempted to harm him.
It was a small mercy that his grandfather was still visiting, meaning there was an extra pair of hands on deck to help out around the house and an extra person to watch over Nik while others got some sleep.
The hour was late, and the house was quiet.
Nikolai had woken up from his most recent bout of needing to be sedated with the steep dust system installed in the cell. Still, the episode had outlasted the dust’s effects this time around. Hence, the boy who had awoken was not in a pleasant mood, still groggy from being dosed and scowling up a storm. However, the threat of being put back under seemed to keep his self-destructive tendencies on a leash for now.
“Are you going to let me out yet? “he quizzed, knowing the answer, but he pushed his luck regardless.
“I’m afraid I cannot do that, at least for the time being,” the elder god replied calmly, seeming completely unfazed by the change in his grandson despite it being so upsetting for his parents to witness.
“What, in case I eat someone?” the boy leered.
“It is a matter of safety, yes, though more so your own than anyone you might harm since you seem only to target those proven to have hurt children.”
The boy’s eyes flicked up, a slight shift in his demeanor that seemed to be surprised.
“How did you...?”
“I know a lot of things, Nikolai.”
“Your precious little Nikki isn’t here, old man. Don’t you know that?”
“Oh, but he is. I’m looking at him right now,” Erebus countered. “And I am talking to him.”
“Don’t waste your breath. He can’t hear you right now.”
“Perhaps, but part of him is listening nonetheless.”
The boy saw what Erebus was getting at, taking a beat too long in responding to pretend that he didn’t.
“So? What’s your point?”
“My point is that, no matter what you choose to call yourself, you are still my grandson.”
“Is this the part where you try to appeal to my good side?”
“I’m simply stating that I recognize what you are.”
“Oh? And what is that, exactly?”
“The part of my grandson that remembers what happened to him.”
“Wow, clever. A real fucking eye-opener there, gramps. As if Nikki-boy’s therapist hadn’t already worked that one out? What other revelations have you got for me, hm, Captain fucking Obvious?”
“You don’t really want to hurt Nikolai.”
“I thought you said I was him?”
“You are, and you are the part of him that is in pain.”
“Again, not hearing anything new here….”
“You hurt yourself because you feel as though it’s the only way to get anyone to pay attention to your pain. You do it because you want them to see how much you are hurting, and you don’t know any other way to show them that is more effective than by spilling blood.”
The boy went quiet, another witty remark dying on his tongue as his grandfather summed up the driving force behind his behavior.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about…” he muttered, expression souring into a pout.
“That’s possible, but what if I am correct?” Erebus inquired, approaching the glass that separated them both. “Do you know what some animals do when caught in a trap? They lash out and bite anything that comes near, even if that thing is trying to help them. Some even gnaw off their trapped limb to free themselves.”
“How is that relevant?”
“Because right now I see that fourteen-year-old boy, trapped in the memory of what was done to him, fighting like hell to be free of it, even at the cost of hurting others and losing a piece of himself to escape it,” Erebus answered plainly. “Tell me I’m wrong, and I’ll believe you.”
The boy in the cage looked away, trying to hide the faltering in his hostility as he fought to push his emotions down and control them once more.
When he turned back, his grandfather was no longer on the other side of the glass but inside the cage with him.
It startled him enough to make him jump, unsure how Erebus had managed it without physically opening the cell door since the whole thing had been spelled and warded up to the eyeballs to keep Nik safely confined and unable to escape.
“I know none of us can begin to imagine how much it must hurt, Nikolai,” Erebus stated gently, slowly moving closer, keeping his hands visible to not spook the boy further.
“Stop calling me that!” he spat in reply, his resolve crumbling. “I told you, he can’t hear you….”
“Then I’m telling you this. I know the pain is more than you can bear, and I know you’re scared, and that’s okay. You don’t have to hurt yourself to get my attention. I am listening, and I will stay here and listen for as long as you need,” the elder god affirmed. “And if you need me to talk to your mother on your behalf, I will do so, no matter what you have to say or how difficult it may be to hear.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Because it has become clear to me that you need to be heard in a way that does not involve bloodshed, and whichever part of you called to ask for my help understood that hurting yourself is not getting you anywhere other than spending more and more time locked in here.”
The boy fell silent for a long moment, considering the old god’s words before he let a sniffle loose, his head hanging low as his posture sagged.
“I’m just so tired…” he whispered, voice cracking with exhausted desolation.
“I know you are, dear boy. Enduring what you have for as long as you have, and while still so young, is terrible beyond words, and admittedly, I, too, am not at all pleased with your aunts on this one. You deserved better than this. You deserve better.”
The boy broke down sobbing, looking so much younger at that moment as the broken, frightened child inside the older teen stopped fighting against efforts to help him for just a moment.
Erebus moved in to comfort his grandson, pulling him into a gentle but firm embrace and making soothing sounds.
“I promise you, you don’t have to suffer this alone,” he murmured, cradling the boy as though he was physically still that small child the elder god had carried around so often when he was little and fussing terribly.
“Let us help you.”
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