Knight (Creepypasta X Reader)

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|| Trigger warning! ⚠️ The main character of this story suffers with dissociative identity disorder, and takes antipsychotic drugs. I made this choice for plot reasons, but please understand I'm well educated in the topic. ||

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Tobias hadn't showed up at school in three days, and [Name] was more than a little worried. Sure, they'd just met, but that doesn't mean she couldn't be concerned. He hadn't even been in town long enough to make enemies, so what had happened?

She'd always been so good about staying out of gossip, though, this time, she seemed almost drawn to it. Like every single whispering circle held information about the whereabouts of her new friend.

Really, though, Toby had gone missing and action for good reason. He looked down at his hands, burned and scarred, his mind somewhere else. The pyromaniac was impulsive, always had been, but he was getting worse at controlling it. No, not worse. He'd just stopped trying. There was no point, not anymore. Why waste his time stopping something that would happen anyway?

It started out as just burning paper balls, but it got worse. He wanted to watch everything burn, the whole neighborhood. Static filled his ears and the whispering shadows stuffed his head with wool. There was no rational thought. He couldn't feel his flesh burning, so he had no idea how bad it had gotten until his mother, tearful and frantic, grabbed his wrists and pulled him back to reality.

At first, it was just him staring blankly, trying to understand why she was crying so desperately, but slowly the static subsided and her sobs replaced the white noise, and whatever demons resided in his head had tucked themselves away for now. Her teenage son, her sweet, innocent little Tobias, was siting there, staring at his burning hands. His eyes were so blank and distant that she feared he may already be gone.

What was she supposed to do? Let him go to school so they could torment him for being different? Absolutely not. Ms. Rogers kept him home till he was doing better, till he'd gone a safe amount of time without damaging anything, or hurting himself. Lyra had been a big help, spending a lot of time with him, as long as their father wasn't around. God damn, he hated that man.

Lyra was really the only person he trusted. She made him feel normal, and spoke to him like a human being. She was the one who encouraged him to go back to school, so here he was.

Albeit, awfully sheltered and unwilling to communicate with anyone beyond a glance. The eyes could say a lot, you know? Not that he wanted to say anything to anyone besides 'go away'. Unfortunately for him, that girl from a few days ago, the one who had sort of just popped up in his life, was in many of his classes. And uh, she made quite a bit of conversation.

Regardless, he watched her a lot. Her mannerisms just seemed strange, and he couldn't put his finger on why. That was, until he noticed it the first time. She was talking to friends, when something on her phone caught her attention. She stared, face blank, for only a few seconds, before she perked up with a far more energetic mood, smiling wide and laughing loud.

Still, when she tried to put sentences together, they seemed a little.. out of focus. Like she knew what she wanted to say but kept losing her train of thought. It was so strange, because it wasn't obvious. As though you'd only pick up on it if you watch very closely.

He felt like a hypocrite, staring so closely when he himself hated it, but he wanted to know if this was a fluke. Or did it happen all the time? Why did she do that? He did something similar, that spacing out thing, but her's were far shorter. And it seemed like, when she came back to reality, she didn't understand where she was for a second.

What a weird woman. He'd never seen anyone beside himself act in such a peculiar way, and so later in the afternoon he approached her, demanding to know why he was being mocked. Surely that was it?

No, that wasn't it. She was struggling too, and hid it with a smile. So beautifully deceptive, and yet... He simply couldn't say the same of himself. He couldn't handle his own issues so well. He was automatically written off as a freak.

He was jealous of her, that's what it all boiled down to. How could someone imperfect look so happy, and play it off so well? Why couldn't he make friends that easily? Why was her ailment so different from his? Why was she so special?

The questions made his head feel like they were going to split in two- more so than usual. She wasn't paying attention to him anymore, and for once, he was thankful to be ignored.