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[brainr0t]

That moment you realize Herc is blind and will never see All the beautiful things in life ever again

Herc was already born with partial vision loss which is what is known as  Hand Motion Vision ( meaning that while the patient can recognize a hand being waved, he or she cannot count the fingers on the hand.) ( this was copied from a definition on a google search)Anyways I wrote some Herc vision stuff a bit ago It’s mostly on his vision but there’s some ship mention.(some ship stuff: Laur/Herc/Alex + good friend Laf ) This was written for @lafa–yeet so it’s their Laf! (all the others are my depictions though this isn’t my usual pairing :O)Here it is under the cut-

He felt his confidence thin with age. In the mirror there was darkness. In the light there was darkness. There was nothing any longer, blindfolded or not his eyes would strain and strain further as if only to see something there. He used to close his eyes when changing it out, an easy denial that he had not taken his eyesight faster than the executed on a guillotine. Yet now, he felt like he had done so long enough.

But it was jostling, the reveal, an abysmal feeling of hopelessness as nothing changed from the blindfold being off and his eyes now open. He would close them and open them several times, a million thoughts rushing through his head only to be cut off with the regret that maybe if he hadn’t diminished his eyesight to nothing he would have thoroughly enjoyed it. Red lights and blue and yellow, flashing to the beat of the music as silhouettes of people flowed in and out of lines and transparencies. Memories of bright white blurs of headlights, cell phones in a dark room, and flashlights whilst camping. Fire yellow and orange rising high into the air to only disappear and forfeit from his narrow field of vision. It felt like he had robbed himself of more than what life would have taken from him, not his sight but his time.Yet he had been young and frustrated at the ominous blurs that were objects and people. The waving motions that could be a friends hand in front of his face or his own. He felt the anger leak out of him, he spent a week in his room. All alone he had screamed into his hands.He had not taken them into any embraces of kindness. He had not learned to treasure the little part of the people he could have had visually. His brain had seen no beauty, only lost.

So he felt helpless restlessly drowning in the existential fear of being so much more alone than anyone else. That he would not even have a vision of a person to comfort him if someone abandoned him. His actions became hesitant and his realization began to become the death of all talent within him. It started to seep and poison all that he had done fine before, he tripped over corners and broke sewing needles on over sewn knotted thread. He fumbled and dropped glasses. He lost hold on conversations. It felt like a damned existence.

With this catch in his life, this tremendous pause and rewind on progress, he was detached from his own being. His friendships included. His partners included. It became a worry to both the latter and former. When asked one night he spilled his anguish. It wasn’t like him to feel upset. It was a claustrophobic and uncomfortable feeling, but once it was out in the open he didn’t dare speak again. Silence bothered him. He waited.

Alexander breathed light into the room speaking first as Herc consistently trusted him to do. He couldn’t shut up long enough to let the world darken to him, nor would he. “I believe that it’s only reasonable you feel this way Herc, but look at least, in my opinion, this shouldn’t dampen your abilities. For as long as I have known you-you have been one of the most resourceful people that I have ever met. You cannot possibly be of less use than just an example; Thomas Jefferson.” It mustered a weak laugh from the bottom of Herc’s throat. He smiled. “Past that I feel like we could all put our heads together and find a solution.”

And so they did. Weeks had passed and things had slowly gotten better. The group had found numerous ways to brighten the situation, it helped to learn new things, feeling textures, and trying new foods.Lafayette had introduced skating to him. The movements felt freeing and swift and he had no reason to fear falling, he couldn’t see the ground and he trusted Lafayette enough to believe that he was going to be safe. He had quickly adjusted to the skates and was smiling brightly as he was guided every bit or so in by small tugs or tiny nudges to avoid slamming into walls. Lafayette’s guiding helped him regain a bit of his environment as he built up towards being comfortable again. It was refreshing to feel like he had control over his movements as well as having a free plane of space, open breezy quick turns and rushed spins and pitfalls crashing to his knees, hard but awakening. He felt like a person, surprisingly the scraping that had been physically making a mess of him had revived some of his spirits to put him back together as the independent person that he had once thought of himself as.

Alexander and Laurens decided upon something a bit more dangerous. Dart throwing. Ah yes, teach the blind man to dart throw, Lee bitterly commented only to be nudged in the side by Aaron, who whereas didn’t think it was a great idea didn’t have much to contribute himself and wanted to see the situation come to a close with a nice solution. He had nodded to the fact that Herc and the rest of the gang had done more dangerous things.

Surprisingly it was intimate. Eyes open or closed Hercules was enveloped in darkness. But beside him, he could feel John’s curly hair bouncing and nicking on bits of his own clothing, huffed sighs as he could practically picture the obscure amount of circles and particles and colours that it would take to make John roll his eyes and leave his mouth loose in a less than a frown.And on the opposite he could feel Alexander’s temperature seeping through his clothes and his breathing was audible to anyone close enough, not out of panic or reaction to anything, just the natural comfortable pace of Alexander breathing that he was used to hearing when they were lying next to each other awake or asleep counting his breaths their heartbeats and tracing designs he couldn’t decipher into whatever skin his hand was bordering. A comfortable feeling as they both quipped under their breaths at each other about which way this should be gone about, loud enough for each other to hear, loud enough for Herc to pick up, yet quiet enough to be kept as an obviously Alexander and Laurens conversation only. Their inability to whisper spread a small flutter in Herc’s chest, endearment? For the first time in a while, it wasn’t something new that was comforting him it was the familiarities.

When they began to truly throw the darts the quiet didn’t feel like nonexistence. He could see it for more than that, a pause accompanied by a brush of a finger into his palm, the intense suspense of outcome paired with the need to stay present in Alexander’s motions was apparent. A nonverbal, “You can do this.” A silence in the atmosphere accompanied by sighs of mixed relief. Him hitting the dartboard. A silence before Laurens pressed his lips to his own and he dropped the dart altogether. Silence became something more than before, it became a tool of the story around him. Soon he began to be thankful, he could have the gift of being able to experience the world in such a unique way that beauty was conjured through voice and touch and smell and taste and memories that ran and collected into meanderings and descriptions that fell from both his partner’s tongues and soon his own. He would explain what he could feel, what the very sense of feeling felt like so much clearer than most.

And in the most silent of moments. Alone. Quiet. He could remember, a clear feeling lifting the heavy feeling in his chest and brightening his smile. The beautiful feeling of loving so unbarred by any visual judgment and having those by his side to help him along. The warm feeling of kisses sparked false shapes and fake colours with wrong names into his head, but they didn’t care How he saw it all. As long as it made him feel honest with himself. His friends, his partners, everyone who ever saw him as more than useless, he was so grateful that they had helped him regain that for himself. Because yeah, he was pretty fucking amazing and now he would know how to keep that thought stuck in his head. He would wish no one anything different.