//Hello everybody that came from my TikTok, or just on this app, I hope you've been having a good time reading this fic! And once again, a new ( but a little shorter than what it was supposed to be [sorry <:c]) chapter!! I hope you all enjoy it!//
After a long while, Ethan's cries had slowed into a flurry of hiccups and stutters of breath, moving from his crouched position into leaning onto the sink for support. Ethan's throat was once again dry and scratchy, he rubs at his eyes and face before sitting up and leaning forwards, taking a beep breath choking down the hiccups wanting to come out.
Are you alright Mr. Winters? A voice finally cut through his exhausted mind.
He'd forgotten that they were there and had seen his whole meltdown. "Y-yes. I'm better now." Ethan sniffed, voice scratchy. But they saw what happened and he knows he's a horrible liar sometimes. It was pointless to try, but he swung nonetheless.
Hmm. Lady Dimitrescu hummed in an odd tone. He could tell she saw right through it but decided to let it go.
Ethan just looked at his hands on his lap. As the voices and whispers faded away again, he looked at the room around him, before just looking back at his hands again. The marble and crystal molded hands felt stiff and cold along with the rest of his body.
Mr. Winters? One of the younger women's voices brought him back out of it again.
"Oh sorry, yes?" His throat itched.
Are you still up to eat? You weren't seaming up for it for a while. The woman's voice jumbled around through his thoughts as he remembered. He hadn't eaten all day.
At this revelation, his stomach finally made its displeasure known, and it felt like it was trying to boil through his intestines and skin. He couldn't tell if it was, but taking no chances he scurried up the side of the sink and leaned onto it as he grabbed the potatoes. "Thank you for the reminder!" He called as he rushed through the door nearly tripling himself. Down into the living room and then the kitchen, remembering where he had left the cooking pots, or tigaie in Romanian, his brain reminded him.
He rushed back into the living room and back in front of the lit fireplace putting the pan onto it. Right before he could just trough the uncooked food onto the tigaie a voice reminded him of something important that he had forgotten.
You won't cook through the whole thing if you just put it onto the tigaie, you have to slice them into pieces before you do that. A smooth and sarcastic filled his head.
"Right, there should be a knife back in the kitchen" Ethan whispers to himself, his stomach was not helping his brain to think everything through causing his simple mishaps. So once again he when back and found one of the only ones that seemed the smallest out of the ones there, the rest seemed to have only been meant for meat cutting or skinning hide. He went back to the fire and pan again and started cutting and putting the potatoes onto the tigaie. The smell made his stomach crunch up and churn in hunger, and his mouth water more than it should be.
Ignoring it he decided to start leaning right in front of the fire and warming up his body from the odd chill he had earlier. Which then made its way in as an invitation for conversation, as the uncomfortable silence was not wanted by both Ethan and the voices. In the silence the creaking of the castle was finally finding his ears, he had forgotten how much damage the bomb had caused.
And how much it must have damaged his own body.
Ethan looked back to his hands again, the chill was still in them from earlier. At the moment he just raised his hands to the fire and discovered that his hands were somewhat translucent. Like how one would be able to see light through the skin and meat of your fingers but less like the way the hand isn't seen though he could make out shapes from the fireplace in front of him. Other small details included strings of something running through them making parts of the light darker than other spots.
"Weird."
Why's that? A new voice asked.
The voice jump-scared Ethan, making him jump slightly but he had to remind himself that the voices were a part of him now. "Nothing, I just thought they would be more like stones. No light coming through it at all ... and stuff." He sighed before just letting his hands go back up to the fire.
Trailing his eyes up a bit was the pan full of the potatoes that had been cooking for a while. Ethan decided that this would be a good opportunity to test how much heat his hands could now take, or they would just get a little burned from him being an official idiot by trying to turn cut potato's onto their other side, making sure that they don't get burned.
Deciding that it was better to know now than later, just in case of an emergency, he pushed up his blue hoody's sleeves to his elbows, revealing that the crystallized mold faded away only a little higher up his forearms. Ethan went back to the mission at hand, looking at the potato Ethan reached over and picked one off of the pan.
Nothing. It felt like nearly nothing, maybe a slow warmth spreading from his fingertips down to his palm. Going back at it again, Ethan turned it over, put it back down, and did the same to the others before the heat got uncomfortable. He pushed his sleeves back down again and just put his hands into his hoodie pocket, and went back to staring at the fire ignoring his stomach.
Deciding to do anything than just sit around in silence Ethan decided to start a conversation.
"So what are you all thinking about?" He leaned back and away from the fire, fully warmed up.
What is there to think about?
Not much, just finally resting.
That your breakdown earlier scared me a little.
I wish you had some spices, it would probably taste better once it's done.
If you're doing alright.
Why are your so hungry all of the time? Like holy cow.
"Oh." Ethan was surprised at the quickness of the answers, and the sassiness of the last one. He also didn't know how to continue the conversation. So he just changed the subject.
"What's it like from your point of view? Like, is it dark, I know you can at least see what I can see." He returned his eyesight onto the potatoes, they looked nearly done.
We can see what you see, but it's more of a choice than a requirement.
We have what the village used to look like here, nearly the whole place, but the insides of the homes and stuff have more detail in them.
Sometimes we don't get any feedback from you at all, we can't hear, see from your eyes, or feel your presence. It's odd.
And worrying, Mr. Winters are you sure your alright after what happened in Lady Dimitrescu's personal quarters?
He didn't know how to respond, because he didn't feel like he should be fine walking about. He felt like he was supposed to still be crying huddled on the floor in that bathroom like he was not currently in his body and it was slowly rotting from the inside out as he watches from the sidelines. But he's feeling a lot of emotions right now, even if they don't feel like what he would consider normal. Even if they are scary.
"No, not yet at least. It-its going to take a while for it to fully settled in, that I'm in fact not a human. So, I'm just going to keep going with the flow you know, just keep going." His voice tapers off at the end of his explanation. Ethan and the voices sat there for a couple of minutes before Ethan finally took the pan off of the fireplace, putting it onto the tiled flooring. While letting it cool down Lady Dimitrescu's voice spoke up again.
So, you weren't crying because of me screaming at you? Her voice was so confused to the point that it didn't sound like it was a question meant for him and instead for herself.
"N-no, what- why, how would you think that it was about that?" He had no clue how she could have made a connection of dots so far from each other to come up with that.
Well, I yelled at you really aggressively, and usually when I did that to my maidens whenever they would get the carpets dirty they would start crying. Once again voice filled with confusion but also some doubts about what she had been thinking the situation was.
Ethan sat for about 3 seconds processing before suddenly laughing to himself, and it felt genuine coming from his chest, not forced. " I started to cry like a few hours after I dragged the mud into the castle, how-I-!" Laughter broke up his sentence, making it hard to breathe before finally calming down after a couple of moments. "But no, it's not because of you, it's just things I haven't noticed for 3 whole fucking years."
. . . Good, glad you can find some humor in my misunderstanding. It was a not-so-short answer, but it was better than her dragging it out.
Because something that had been cooling down for a quick minute was finally back in his attention, the food. And again his hunger pushed into the feeling of pain once more. Since it had cooled down a little he was willing to finally shove the cooked goods down his throught. Picking as much as he could with his hands he started to eat his lunch for that day. Meanwhile, the voices near silently chattered to him making it less quiet, making it feel like he wasn't fully alone, inside of an old and probably going to collapse one day castle.
[HELLO! SO SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG! But I had to cut this chapter into 2 {1 for chp 5 and the other half for chp 6} for time/school reasons, plus I didn't want you to have to wait so long for a new chapter for even longer <:) so I hope this will do for now! See you next time :D]