Glass Breaks Too Easily. (Eyeless Jack x Reader Book 2)

Chapter Five.

He was mumbling under his breath. I couldn't understand what he was talking about, what his whispers regarded, and I don't think even he could, either. His condition grew significantly worse second by second, hour by hour, day by day. It was only a matter of time before his short-lived moments of clarity left him completely, and I knew that. 

"Tim, just...just stop talking. You don't even know what you're saying, for Christ'sI sake!"

He flinched when my voice rose into a borderline scream; it wasn't his fault, and I knew that, but the whole situation was cripplingly devastating. 

"I-I know what I'm... you just can't see it...can't see them,"

He had been going on for days about them. When questioned, all of his composure would leave him as he curled himself into a ball on the ground or on the floor, heaving into his legs as he tucked himself into them, his arms covering his head as if he were being attacked. The first time it happened, I nearly cried beside him. To see my partner, my brother, fall to pieces was something I never thought I'd have to see.

I looked over his distracted form as he fiddled with his phone; his arms were nothing larger than a toothpick, same as the rest of him. His complexion had faded into that of a sickly-pale one, his eyes completely sunken in and his irises dulled over. He looked so close to death that if he reached out far enough, it would take his hand and claim him.

I can feel you staring.

I diverted my gaze upon his call-out. There was nothing I could say to him in response that I hadn't already said. There was no advice I could give him that I hadn't already given him. There was no medication I could give him that he hadn't already taken. It wasn't a matter of eating more. He often forgot when he had eaten, even if he just had, and so he would eat again. And I never stopped him; I was hoping that, by some miracle, his double-eating would help him gain back some weight, but it never did. His sickness was eating him in every way, and I didn't know how to stop it. I didn't know how to help, and that was my own personal sickness.

"Tim,"

He looked at me for a split second, but cast his gaze away fairly quickly. He must have seen the concern, the pity, in my eyes. If there was anything he hated, it was pity.

"How can I help you? What can I fucking do?"

At this point, my anger had taken hold. Not that I was angry at him specifically, but angry at everything. The lives of all of the associates I had, begrudgingly, miraculously, come to love were in danger. Our Operator, the being who had created us, molded us into monsters for his own gain had disappeared.

And with a wave of realization, the embers of my anger grew into a hot, hellish flame.

It was his fault.

He could fix Tim if he wanted to. He could reassure the associates if he wanted to. Hell, he could dispel this threatening clown if he wanted to.

But he didn't want to.

You can't be angry at him. I've been sick for a long, long time, Brian.

My face fell along with my stomach and heart. He hadn't admitted to being sick the entire time I watched him struggle with it. He had adamantly refused that he was sick; he denied it, even when he would cough up blood into his hands. Even when he would pass out at random, screaming at anybody who could hear him to 'make the ringing stop'. Even when he would sleep for days at a time, he desperately tried to cover how much this was affecting him.