Arcane Guardian ↣ Avenged Sevenfold

22 ☼ silhouette

"Oh, Pierrick actually! When we were recording Just Breathe we ate more takeout than I've ever ate." She explained. "I have so many stories from that album. We were all kids. We truly just fucked around for five months until we had a legible, somewhat scrappy album." 

"Was that your first album?" 

"Nope. The Used was. And they were all so serious and uptight and honestly mean. Bert is a wad of fuck." 

"His name's Bert, that's to be expected." 

"And they were just... Oh my god, I hate to talk shit, but they were slobs. Seriously. Smelled like shit too. And their vision for the album was so terrible. But hey, it's their most widely received now, so they were dying to have me back." 

"You never really talk about your time in producing." He tilts his head. "There's a lot I still don't know about what your life has looked like." 

"Humans have lots of chapters. Some more than others." She nudged him, smiling. "You've lived hundreds of years. I've always been a little more interested in you." 

He stayed silent for a minute, before deciding to confide in her. He always had, so he had no idea why it felt so hard to now. "When I saw Thellessany it all came back." 

Noelle took his hand. "Why don't you tell me?" 

"Every time I left you... A week, a day, a month, she was waiting for me when I entered the plane of purgatory." He sighed out, squeezing her hand in his. "Seeing her, it made all the feelings come back. The uh," He didn't like talking about everything that happened in purgatory when it wasn't isolation or when he wasn't with her. He barely ever did. "I felt her fingernails, just dig an inch deep into my chest. And I felt cold. The same kind of cold I felt all those years."

"That's a vivid hallucination, Bri." She said, looking at him with concerned eyes. "You weren't dreaming?" 

"I don't know? I don't think I was." He shook his head. "She seemed so real. The one person, the only person who can scare me. I hate that feeling. Vulnerability. When you were little I always left the hell parts of purgatory out."

She leaned in and hugged him, realizing he was slightly shaking. "You should've told me earlier!" She said, rubbing his back. "I can stay over at your place tonight, how about that? I can make sure nothing bad happens to you." 

He nodded. "Sorry. I'm not normally, uh..."

"You don't have to act all macho around me. You have literally been to hell and back. You're allowed to be weak sometimes." 

"I love you, Ells." He said. Her breath stopped for a second. "I, I should have said it a lot earlier." 

"I love you too." She found herself saying back, not being able to wipe the smile from her face. 

☼

The room was dark, and quiet. The kind of quiet where you hear ringing in your ears. Brian laid in his bed alone, staring up at the ceiling, unable to sleep. He kept remembering the feeling of fingernails an inch deep into his chest trying to rip him from his soul. 

And he looked over in the corner of the room. 

"Go the fuck away Thellessany. You have no control over me anymore." He sat up in bed, grabbing his shirt and putting it back on. 

Thellessany didn't stay still this time. 

Her 6'4 freakishly thin figure sauntered up to him, her dark purple straw like hair falling to her knees. He immediately remembered his instinct not to look in her eyes. You never look Thellessany in her eyes. 

"Aw, sweet boy. You missed me, I can feel it." She said, sitting on the edge of the bed besides him. "Why won't you look me in the eyes?"

"You can't..." He trailed off. "You're not real. You died when the barrier broke." 

She laughed and it felt like razorblades to his eardrums. "Only the guardian died. I however... I am eternal." She took her hand and grazed the side of his face, and it felt like acid. 

"Why are you here?" 

"Everything has a loophole, dear. Did you really think you could make a life with a mortal girl? Especially one so deeply linked to purgatory? Where do you think she's gonna go when she dies?" Thellessany climbed on top of him, straddling him. "You know I missed you too. You fought me so hard to get back to her every time... I'm everywhere, Brian." She grabbed his arms and pinned him to the bed. "And you still owe me an eternity of isolation and pain." 

He took advantage of her confidence to grab her and flip her over, pinning her to the bed like he had been. "WHY ME?! WHY MY FRIENDS?! WE WERE GOOD FUCKING PEOPLE!" 

"Good people? You think you're good people? Every single one of you asked to die, each at separate levels of being."

"I never asked for this!" He exclaimed, putting his hands around her throat and squeezing. he couldn't tell how hard, but he had to make it stop. 

It wasn't working. Thellessany was smiling at him, unshaken. "Who do you think taught you dream insertion?" She giggled. 

He woke up with his arms around a terrified Noelle's neck.