Painted Lies and Demon Eyes (SVTFOE Fan Fic)

Human, Demon, or Something Else?

It all felt too real.

The feeling of new bones forming and breaking through my skin and growing out beyond my back.

The noise it made when they were growing, transforming.

Wings, horns, fangs.

I fell forward in excruciating pain. The sound of crunching and cracking, bones reconfiguring.

...

I woke up screaming. Tom was up again, as always. He had been watching from his own bed, many feet away.

What the hell was he looking at?

"Don't." I snapped.

"I didn't even say anything."

"Yeah, but you were thinking it." My teeth were going to break and shatter under the grit pressure.

Ever since he had lashed out on me that day, I deliberately tried to shun him.

Everytime we coincidentally happened to be in the same room at the same time, tension was soon to follow. Sideways glares, cold silences, or snarky comebacks to resentful exchange in talk.

Tonight's brief exchange was the most we had spoken all day, to say the least.

Nonetheless, I rose from my bed, unable to muster the strength and energy to argue with him. I ran my fingers through my bedhead and my wings shuddered awake from behind, stretching themselves out before resting and furling back to my sides.

As I passed by him to the kitchen, I felt his eyes follow.

I should've anticipated his next move as he rose from his bed now too and began stalking me cautiously, almost as if not to arouse or provoke me.

Seriously, I really needed a room in the castle to myself.

Just the knowledge of his lingering presence alone was getting under my skin.

I sighed heavily, stopping myself, then rotating on my heels. The sudden action was enough to startle Tom, causing him to reel back to avoid bumping into me.

"Tom-"

"Why don't you believe me?" He interjected before I could accuse him of anything.

"What are you-" I turned back around to continue down the hall.

"Star, Marco! I'm talking about Star!" His voice boomed through the corridors, bleeding out throughout the abyss.

I halted.

I would've simply disregarded him but something struck me, the way his voice seemed to ring off the walls of the corridor and reverberate.

But that name...

Star...

Why was that name so familiar?

I turned back around to face him, to see the anger on his face yet instead, it was alarmingly somber and cemented.

I could only imagine the look on my own face - an opposing mix of confusion yet realization.

Something of the name - it resonated somehow. It was like an old life, memories that did not belong to me yet... at the same time... I remembered the remnants of it.

Like shattered glass - finally putting the puzzled pieces back together.

Like a crumpled, faded photograph found - a distant echo of the past.

"What-?" I couldn't speak. A bolder was lodged in my throat, practically choking me.

"So you do remember..." Tom's voice had reached a calmer volume, as if I had told him enough.

"No. I-" Maybe I was too quick to answer but then again, I didn't exactly ask to be interrogated in the middle of the night, especially after one of my recurring nightmares. "Just... leave me alone, okay?"

I left for good this time, to the kitchen, leaving Tom astray.

The door swung open with a violent force. What had once been a nuisance had now festered into a rotten disgust and fury. I went straight for the food pantry. I stormed in, looking for anything appetizing. Quite frankly, there had to be something more tasteful and edible other than raw meat or stale cockroaches. My face scrunched up in disgust. I had never really had a problem with ordinary monstrous food before yet, for some reason, the thought of devouring anything in the pantry made my stomach churn.

Maybe it was my late night hunger or lack of proper sleep but I discovered myself to become more and more irritable by the second. I left the pantry, giving up.

I thought for a moment. There had to be some bubbling punch or something to drink.

In the midst of my search, I overheard the door screech open on its hinges - Tom.

Man, I should've really anticipated that.

Now, here he was - not yet ready to let it go.

"You can't just deny it!" He persisted.

"Deny what, exactly?" I glared at him. He took the hostile cue as a challenge.

"You remember her. I know you do, Marco." He approached me closer now, closing the thick space between us. He ceased on the opposite side of the island table. "How could you not remember what you did to her?"

His voice was low and dark. The lit fireplace's light reflected off his face, renouncing half of his face to be claimed by darkness, shaded and giving an eerie and grave meaning to his words - a heavier, more grim meaning.

I wasn't quite sure what he meant, nor did I want to.

"I don't-"

"You shout her name in your sleep. I know you know." When I met his eyes again, something about his face had looked... different. He looked... tired. His face appeared to be pulled by a sort of grief, worn and crumbling at the seams. And for a moment, I could finally see it - his reddened eyes, stained with every tear he had cried. And judging by the break in his voice and the glassiness in his eyes, I could tell he was going to do it again.

Then, just like that, it was gone - as if never there at all. His eyebrows rose in astonishment and the look of exhaustion had left him.

"Marco, your... your face." He remarked, examining me. With that, the tension broke and a new, lighter mood prevailed, though a certain uneasiness remained.

"What? What about it?" I asked, a sheet of anger falling away, suddenly replaced by a genuine curiosity. Instinctively, I brought a hand up to touch my face, unaware of my transformation.