#even if you do everything right it can't stop the innevitable

[syntheticsymp]

[cough] i need this to hurt. feel free to ignore babes, but knowing nikto, and his random mood swings causing him to black out in fits of intense rage, numbness, what have you,

what would happen if he accidentally killed his pet?

and what if, he’d just started feeling like he was regaining some semblance of humanity back, however modicum, over the months of reader slowly adapting into this new life of being nikto’s and establishing this really fucked up routine

it was almost quaint in some odd way,

suddenly the house, or apartment they were living in is all quiet, he’s left maybe with the lingering scent of her sweet perfume, now entangled, or tainted rather, with the heavy stench of something metallic

he snaps out of whatever trance he was in and looks down

Looking down at your dead body in his hands, Nikto felt nothing.

Today had been good. Nothing special, but nothing like the days he spent before you. You had pressed a kiss against his cheek, whispered 'I love you' in both english and russian, and had fallen asleep in his arms. You had finally been able to accept him, love him, the way he had wanted.

You had done everything right. Everything he had ever wanted from you. You had played by his rules. Given him unflinching affection, talked him through his mood swings, hid yourself away when he had been a danger.

But it didn't matter.

You couldn't beat a monster like him with logic. And believing that somehow love alone would save him was a fallacy. As much as you conformed, there was no saving him. And there was no saving you, either.

One minute was all it took. Nikto hadn't even been conscious for most of it. It was all a blur as he woke up from some dream or other. He didn't know what it was about, nor where he was when he woke up. Resting in the space between conscious and unconscious, he felt like he was being held underwater, suspended midair, no way to break the surface, drowning beneath waves that would not subside.

You had woken up with him. Tried to say something, break him out of the episode like he had instructed you to. But he couldn't hear you. He couldn't hear anything. He couldn't feel anything. He couldn't hear you screaming for him to let go, he couldn't your pulse weakening against his fingertips, nothing. Just as he was, he became again.

никто.

He stared at your body for a long while. Your throat crushed in his hands, the popped blood vessels beneath the skin, the discoloring as you slowly turned cold.

By the time Nikto had come to, you were already beginning to decompose. He killed hundreds, if not thousands, in his line of work. But he had never stuck around long enough to watch his victims decompose. They had never been worth it; they were nothing more than lowly animals.

But you? You were his питомица. A soft spot he never should have had.

You had served your purpose. Comforting him, standing by his side, loving him as if he somehow deserved it. But now the illusion had shattered.

It was a nice life while it lasted. A glimpse of normalcy, of what could have been.

It was such a shame it had to end like this.

Nikto kept your body for a while after he had killed you. Krueger had some expertise with embalming, and luckily nobody at the store had the guts to ask a masked man why he was buying tubs of honey, boxes of salt, and a mountain of candles.

He didn't mind coming home to the stench of rot, he didn't mind cleaning your decaying flesh off the carpet as it fell from your bones. He cradled you just the same as he had when you were alive, allowing you to fall asleep in his arms a final time.

Sometimes, he swears you still talk to him. Telling him you're happy having died. That it was beautiful where you were. That you couldn't wait for him to join you. Those nights, he comes so close to doing that exact thing.

But he always stops himself short.

Because, wherever you ended up in your afterlife, he would not follow. Your soul was too good for his, and he didn't have one to begin with. He would never be reunited with you, even if there was a life beyond this one.

So, he stayed. Basking in the memory of your touch, gathering your sketchbook, all the little trinkets he had given you, and flipping through them night after night. The voices in his head listened to him for once. Agreeing with him, that you were there. That you had never left him.

Even in death, he would never let you leave. Call it an unhealthy attachment if you want, because that's what it was. A broken man searching to heal what could not be fixed.