Your Eyes.

Your Eyes.

Shanks x GN!Reader. Angst(?) but not relationship angst. It's mostly violence. Also mostly focused on reader. 3268 words.

Desc: You decide to visit your parent their high class prison cell.

TW: Explicit gore, parental yelling, and violence.

Drip.. drip.. drip..

The sounds of wet stone leaking water from above, the condensation dropping to the ground in sharp rhythmic echoes like the beats in your chest as you make your way down into this underground prison. A small part of this island, kept just to hold them.

“You don’t have to do this, you know.” Shanks says, accompanying you. “They aren’t a part of your life anymore.” A nice thing for him to say despite how untrue it is.

“They’ve always been embedded in me, no matter the fun I’ve had with you.” You mumble and the two of you walk in silence, stopping in front of a metal door.

“Call for me if anything happens, I’ll be waiting outside for you.” He gives you a kiss on the cheek, squeezing your hand gently. He doesn’t want to wait outside, but you told him you needed to face this alone. You take a deep breath and grip the handle, opening the door and stepping inside. It shuts behind you and you can see the figure inside. There they are. Ankles shackled to the ground with chains restricting their arms, pulling them up and towards the sides of the walls. Yet as you walk closer to their kneeling form, they’re unresponsive, staying on their knees with their head down.

“It’s me.” You state even with their lack of reaction. Then their head lifts up, ever so slightly. Unnoticeable to a regular person yet you notice it, learned to be attentive to every little detail they show. However, despite the reaction they’re silent. “I’ve been moving on, gone to better things. Despite what happened I have-”

“Have?” Their voice is raspy and they chuckle. You bite your lip.

“Yes. I have a lot now.” You steel your heart, you need to, you made the choice to come here and face them.

“So? Have you come here to brag about your new life?” You see them smile from where you make out the lower half of their face. Their lips are chapped. Before you let it disturb you you remind yourself that you need to stay calm. They are the one chained, not you.

“I’m here to fully move on.” At your words they perk up more, their smile turning to a grin as they lean their head back and laugh. Cackling and laughing despite the clear dryness of their throat.

“Move on!? This is what your little visit is about?” They laugh and laugh before taking a deep breath and sighing, their smile quickly turning to a snarl. “What a fucking joke.” They lean back despite the chains wrapping around their arms putting pressure on their joints, eyes filled with insanity finally peeking through.

“It’s not a joke. I’m moving on from you.” Your voice is full of determination yet they look to the side, uninterested.

“What a reason to come here. Moving on from me. Haven’t you done enough?” Bored, as if you’re doing this for nothing.

“I haven’t, I have a new family, and a partner.” Your parent scoffs.

“So?” They motion around the room. “Where are they?”

“He’s out-”

“Not him. Your child.” They spout and you freeze.

“I don’t.. have one.” You’re biting your lip again.

“So you don’t have one..” They rest the back of their head on the wall. “Yet you came to admonish me.” They suddenly grit their teeth so hard you can hear it. “Bullshit. Bullshit bullshit bullshit. All of it.” Shakily, they stand, legs weak from being in this prison. “You have a lover, a new ‘family’. How dare you.” You start to shake as their eyes lock onto you.

“I haven’t done anything wrong. I just take things at my own pace.” Right as you say that they struggle against their chains.

“NOTHING WRONG!? NOTHING WRONG!? YOU FUCKING BITCH YOU HAVE DONE NOTHING BUT WRONG!” The chains hold them back no matter how much they thrash. “YOU DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT WHAT I’VE HAD TO SACRIFICE BECAUSE OF YOU!” They start to pant, going limp and stepping back. “You know nothing about having a child yet you come here to act as if you’ve got everything figured out. Ahh..” Their eyes shake. “You don’t know about what happens, what you have to do. What I had to do.” They struggle a bit more. “I can’t even point at you.”

“Good. You should stay here.” You step forward, staring them down. “Where you belong.”

“Where I belong. Ha. The way you dare speak to me is proof I deserve punishment, but you’d think that having you would be enough.” They get quieter as they continue. “The biggest regret in my life was having you. You ruined everything for me.” Their voice starts to shake. “I wish you were never born. With all my heart. With all my soul.” Before you can reply they start to lift one of their legs, the cuff around their ankle keeps it locked to the ground… but they continue.

Crack

Their knee dislocates.

“The hell are you doing!?” You flinch, surprised by their actions, yet they still continue. Eventually their foot wriggles in the metal cuff until there's a loud SNAP. It’s broken in half, freeing it in a gruesome way. The now broken foot slides through the cuff and onto the ground. They’re unaffected, snapping and popping their other foot out until they’re stood in front of your frozen form. Their arms are still chained and they’re silent. “What now?” Your muscles relax. “You’ve gone insane and still can’t reach me. The chains wrapped around your arms aren’t going to come off from pulling and you’ve already cut the skin from your earlier meaningless thrashing.” The cuts are deep, all around the chains, and just because they wanted to harm you. “Even if you try to kick me I can handle that much.” Despite preparing for a kick they step backwards until their back hits the wall. They might attempt forcing the chains out of the walls, but it would be near impossible.

Impossible.

So they kick off the wall and pull their arms away from the chains instead.

RIP

A grotesque ripping noise is heard as the sudden force digs the metal under their skin and rips the dermis from their arms completely, peeling the layer and dropping their now bleeding body onto the floor in front of you. You gasp at the sight, at some point of the ripping it had torn the hypodermis off as well. Now only pure red flesh remains. The shock makes you step back instead of fighting, your parent scrambling up on skinned arms to tackle you to the ground. Your previously confident demeanor is shattered.

“I hate you. I hate you.” Their hands wrap around your neck, crimson staining your skin. “Having you was the worst thing that ever happened to me. You’re nothing but a curse and the only reason I’ve taken on this punishment is because I deserve it for not killing you when I had the chance.” Their grip tightens, stronger than you thought possible by someone so weak. “Now you dare to come here and brag about finding new people to leech onto just as you leeched off of me. Watch. You may think everything is okay but soon they’ll deteriorate from being around you, corrupted from what you are.” Tears form in their crazed eyes, dropping onto your cheeks. “You take and you take and you take. You’ll never know what I had to go through, forced to care for a selfish child like you.” You can’t move. Even if you’re stronger than them now you feel so helpless, like you’re young again. Eventually you let out a scream and the door slams open to Shanks. His eyes widen.

“(Y/n)!” He runs over and kicks your parent off of you. The kick slams into the wall and onto their side. “Your neck is bloody, what happened!?” The redhead crouches beside your terrified form. Your breathing is heavy, what did happen? You didn’t know they would be like this, go this far. Before you realize it you’ve started dry heaving, the noise with ringing in your ears covering whatever your lover could be attempting to say to you; especially when your eyes lock onto your parent’s, open and looking directly at you despite their stillness on the ground. Their irises dig into yours, pupils shaking slightly as they look at you. You slowly crawl to them and shake their shoulder.. but they only limply fall onto their back. Dead.

“Oh my God.” You shake them harder, check their pulse, but they’re completely dead. Succumbed. This isn’t right. You saw the way Shanks kicked them, it wasn’t enough to kill. This… this was done on purpose. They slammed their skull onto the wall with the impact to kill themselves, and with the previous extreme injuries it was fatal. Now they stare at you. Despite the fact that they’ve already passed, they’re already gone, their eyes still look directly into yours. Shanks walks over and goes pale.

“Shit I-”

“I know. You didn’t do this.” You quickly say before he can blame himself. You don’t know if they wanted death for a long time and this brought them to the edge, if they had made the choice now, or if this was one final attempt to cause as much despair to you as they can. Whether to get back at you or to show you what you did to them. There’s so many things this could mean but they won’t answer now, they've already succumbed to what they did to themselves. What you brought them to do. Still, they stare at you. In death, they stare. This is your fault. You did this.

This is your fault. “(Y/n)!” This is your fault.

This is your fault.

This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault.

Their eyes stare into yours.

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You wake up. Bandages are around your neck and Shanks is sitting on a chair beside the bed. This is the medical bay, you must’ve passed out. He perks up when he realizes you’re awake. “(Y/n). Gods. I’m sorry I didn’t come in sooner.” He runs his hand through his hair, guilt and regret clear on his face. “I felt something was off but I’d already promised to wait outside unless you called me.” You stew in the moment before responding.

“..It’s okay. I had you make the promise in the first place. Maybe I shouldn’t have gone in alone. They were.. worse than I thought.” Your brain feels fuzzy, disassociated from stress as you sit up. ‘I really shouldn’t have gone in alone.’ Shanks taps your arm and you focus your mind to look at him. Once he knows you’re aware he talks.

“It wasn’t you (Y/n). They made their choice.” His voice is firm, a rock to rest on. The fog in your head starts to clear and with it, tears. They fall down your cheeks before you put your face in your hands.

“I fucked up. I really did.” The ghost of the bloody fleshy hands on your neck are still there. “I know logically that you’re right but it’s like there’s a deeper part that tells me you’re not. That I’m lying to you and myself and I’m faking it.” You feel sick. “That it actually is my fault and I’m deceiving you by saying it’s not, acting like I’m the victim.” It’s hard, but you take a deep breath. It helps, not much but it does something. “W—What about the corpse?”

“It’s still there. I took you back to the ship immediately after you passed out.” He shifts in his chair. “You don’t have to see it. Hell we don’t even have to take it out of there.” Tempting, it really is, but you sigh.

“No, we can’t leave it in there. It feels… wrong. Not for them but for me. Like it’ll haunt me if I leave it there.” You rub your face. “Let’s just bury it. I want to see them buried.” In a weird, unreasonable way you feel like if you don’t see them buried that they’ll secretly be walking around. Sinking them to the sea could be an option but that doesn’t bring much ease either since that means it would still be there where it could possibly move, float somewhere else. Honestly your paranoia is telling you to erase every trace of them down to the bones. Incinerate everything and crush down their skeleton to powder to make absolutely sure they never come back, but giving into a crazy thought like that would only feed it too much. That isn’t a healthy thing to entertain, that if you didn’t do something so drastic your parent would still somehow roam. ‘I have to take that away, take away that thought that they have so much power they could do something like that.’ A simple burial is reasonable while calming you down enough. It is.

“Alright, but I’m not leaving you alone this time. Even if you try and get rid of me.”

___________________________

The prison is as dark as ever as you both eventually make your way back down. The metal door is still open, Shanks must’ve been so hurried he broke the auto-close mechanism. When the two of you step inside you see the body of your parent.

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Unmoving, still in the same spot as before, and their eyes are closed. Thinking back, maybe they were never even looking at you in the first place. It makes sense. Even if they were open, a dead body can’t control where it's looking. You walk over and wrap it in a cloth, hesitantly picking it up. You immediately start to shake. Before it gets worse it’s taken from you by Shanks. “You gotta rely on me more, hun.” His gaze is soft. “Don’t force yourself.” Your tremors stop and you walk back up to the surface. The sun has already started to set, giving an eerie feeling to your surroundings. It’s only now that you realize you never actually dug a hole to put the body in. Hindsight. You look for somewhere to bury it but find that Beckman already has one dug, shovel in hand.

“You didn’t have to do something like this…” You tell him but he shakes his head.

“I’ve done worse. Doing this while knowing it takes the burden off of you is way better.” You look down at the hole, it’s dug well. He must’ve started digging even before you voiced you wanted to bury it.

“Thanks Beck.” The captain says to him and crouches down to lower the body into the hole using the cloth. The sheet slips off as they fall into the dirt. Their skin is pale and the flesh where their skin has been torn off has already stopped bleeding. You’d actually seen the disconnected skin in the room, but it was a bit too gross to touch. The corpse is enough so whatever animal makes it in there can take care of that. After the body has been lowered Hongo comes down from the ship. The others aren’t necessarily squeamish of dead bodies but it just feels significantly more disturbing knowing the context, especially from the state of said skinned and broken dead body. Beckman and Shanks were the only ones able to stomach it for you with Hongo next from his medical experience. Once the four of you are ready Beckman starts to shovel dirt into the hole, covering what’s left of your parent in soil. Shanks grabs your hand and intertwines your fingers in his, a comfort along with the other two men silently keeping you company. You watch as the body is covered more and more with dirt until the hole is filled. They’ve been buried.

“I’ve prepared a bath and tools to get anything that may be on you off of you. None of you should get sick from this.” Hongo states and you all nod; then Beckman turns to leave.

“We’ll leave you two alone.” He says and goes back to the ship with Hongo, leaving you and your lover there. The two of you stand together with held hands, your grip tightening. You thought you were already over it enough to handle this burial, but the stress is too much. You turn and quickly hug Shanks, burying your face into him as tears stream from your eyes. He lets go of your hand to hold you close to him, comforting you and dropping with you to the ground as you start to sob. It’s done. No matter how incomplete it feels, the fact is that it’s done. No more talking to them or fighting them or yelling at them, there’s no anger or sadness to be taken out on them; nor any more opportunities to rub happiness you have in their face to show you’d moved on. You can’t stay here until it might feel right either, it never will. It’ll only drive you crazy, and maybe that was their last goal. To turn you into them.. but you’ll never know. There’s as many maybes you can come up with over and over because there’s no answers you can find. You don’t know how long you sit there crying in his hold as he rocks you but by the time you’re done the sun has fully set. Shanks kisses the top of your head and helps you stand so you can both go back.

“Why don’t we clean up and go to sleep? I’ll be right with you.” His voice is soft and you follow; bathe with him, clean up with him, make sure everything but your soul is as sanitized as it can be. It's only once you’re finally on the mattress that you realize how tired you are. You didn’t think you could sleep after this, that it would keep you up, but you really are exhausted. Shanks lays beside you and pulls you into his embrace. It feels nice, and with that you end up falling asleep not long after; feeling a hand soothingly rubbing your back as you drift off. No matter the nightmares or insecurities or damage that comes from this you’re never going to be alone. Even if this is imprinted in your soul, you’ll live happily with it. No more get-backs or being chained by the past now. Your eyes are on the future.

Holy smokes! This was probably way more intense than the asker wanted! Still, what did you think :3? I don't know how many people will read this, especially with the warnings and lack of actual romance except for kinda the end, but I did like doing it. The txt posts were fun, but a giant hassle. The reason the eye was really open is because its supposed to be looked at sideways, since the body is on the ground sideways. As for the corpse txt image, in case any of you were worried it wasn't an actual corpse. Its just a stock image drawing i found and edited before turning it into a txt post. I considered putting images, but that's a little not as fun. Plus this is for reading, so i felt like images would bring your focus out of reading, meanwhile txt posts are well, text; so it feels more immersion building. Atleast for me. Overall hope it was cool, if people read this. If not i'll implode since i really wanted to show off a bit considering how much time editing everything took, since the eye was something i shoddily drew then put into txt. I also wanted it to be visible to phone users so i had to make sure the sizes are right.. hassle. Anyway thanks for reading if you did. I enjoy writing gorey stuff like this, it feels strangely calming, especially since i'm into body horror. You can also ask questions if you want. Bye.