Countryhumans Oneshot book

Asylum AU

Old Asylum AU collab that me and doubting never finished. Can't hurt to post it now. 
Trigger Warnings for maybe a lot of things. Thoughts of self harm? Implications of eating disorders and major character death? General themes you'd expect coming from an AU like this too.

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That's what I thought of when I saw you. I was still feeling my own mind reeling, like the world was closing around me. 

That's why I ran over there, did you realize that? I was still fantasizing about burying a glass shard into my skin, did you realize that? 

Deep, stinging scarlet seeping through scarred flesh. I craved it, and hated myself for thinking of such atrocities. My fingers ached like searing hot iron. 

I would have shattered that mirror if you weren't there. I know I would have. 

 I couldn't bring myself to do it with you there, however. Standing there with that blank expression as you stared mindless and stiff into the mirror. 

You were terrified. Terrified of yourself. 

You were so small for your age and stature, your eyes sunken and drained. You looked dead, and I suppose you will be. All humans die one day. 

 I just didn't imagine it would be so soon.

---

Summer comes in whispers, then in large shouts. The torrid air is fragile- like it will snap at any moment, like your arms, but it doesn't.

Puppy dog, they say. They tell me I've earned a new pet. But I don't see you that way. No, not a puppy. You are practically my shadow.

 I only remember asking for your name.

Why did they send you to the asylum, I wonder, when you are not an ounce mad?

All you needed was acknowledgement.

You should know an asylum cannot give you that.

But of course, you did not choose to come here like me.

You are so thin. Bone, through and through.

Sometimes when I look behind me to see you, I wonder if you are a mirage. You seem almost unreal- like a wishful hallucination.

But the asylum can't drive me any madder than I already am.

I overheard the doctors say you are not allowed to read or write. They say it was a request by your father. I wonder what you did to displease him so? 

Nevertheless I think he belongs here more than you do. I caught a glimpse of him leaving the hospital earlier this month. He looks like a lunatic. Not all madmen look the part, but he certainly does. He must be. 

I read your poem about the watches and clocks. It is a strange, majestical little thing. One ponders why they would bar you from an activity that seems to excite you as such.

Everywhere I go now, you trail behind me. 

It figures. Not like you have much else to do.

You don't speak much, but when you do, your words wrap around my head like warm medicine, patching up all my holes, all the little cracks where the black sand seeps out. 

There is a tremble underneath your voice, like the crunching of boots on thin, icy snow newly settled on the streets of Moscow. 

It accompanies the glimmer in your eyes that flashes when you open your mouth to converse. They are otherwise blank and shaky, clouded over like flimsy rice paper. 

The ringing in my ears is back once again.

Though your face is gaunt, there is a subtle beauty that shines when you smile.

You hardly ever do. I can't seem to grasp what it looks like in my muddled mind. Only the voices.

Every second I pass in the asylum without you seems like a fever dream. 

A monotonous, faraway world I keep dragging myself back into. 

I'm glad I came here, nonetheless.

The outside world doesn't want me. It's full of people sick not in their mind, like us, but their heart, like father. 

I don't want to be anywhere near it.

Freedom is too much for me to handle.

I hope you are sleeping tight, little mutt. If all the nightmares stay with me, you'll have a restful night, and the stars will shine down on you.

Life in the asylum could not change even if we wanted it to.

Papa's broken pocket watch, the minute hand spinning round and round, the hour hand frozen in place.

Everything will turn out fine in the end.