ROTTEN

ROTTEN

Fandom: 恋与深空 | Love and Deepspace (Video Game) Category: F/M Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Relationships: Main Character/Xia Yizhou | Caleb; Xia Yizhou | Caleb/You Tags: One Shot, Angst, Self-Harm, Phantom Limb Pain, POV Third Person

Summary: What if Caleb wasn't being entirely honest in Painful Signal? What if he was experiencing phantom limb pain on a regular basis after losing his arm? (Set some time after Painful Signal)

A/N: disclaimers: - tw: self-harm - english isn’t my first language so if something seems wrong or doesn’t make sense that’s probably the reason - i am no expert in phantom limb pain, i just read an article, so like…i’m not a doctor and all my limbs are currently intact, so i am not sure what it actually feels like to experience such a thing

you can read the fic here or go to ao3 (hyperlink in the title)

Over the years, Caleb had found his ways of coping with shit the universe threw his way. Sure, they might not have been exactly healthy but to be completely honest, his own well-being was never really something he’d taken into consideration. 

She would always reprimand him about his chapped lips or nails bitten to the quick. He’d tried quitting for her sake but that never really worked. Then came the a little too hot showers he took. The skin of his back would get red and itchy, the burning would feel good, though. Distracting enough to just forget…even if just for a moment.

Forget the blank stare she’d give him. Forget all those moments he had to tell himself it would be okay, that she would come back eventually, just like she always did. She wouldn’t remember him; she’d look at him with zero recognition in her eyes but that was fine by him. As long as she came back, he’d reintroduce himself to her over and over again for all eternity if that was what it came to.

Caleb couldn’t deny the irony of the Toring Chip being implanted in his brain, mocking him, laughing in his face as if saying “Weren’t you look for a way to forget? Why are you backing off all of a sudden?”

He’d wanted to forget all the pain she’d gone through, all the ways in which he couldn’t help her back then, was never able to save her. He would’ve been glad to forget about all her suffering, just as she did. But not her…never her. He would cherish the memory of her forever.

When Caleb first came to after the explosion, he didn’t even notice anything was amiss, apart from the fact that he was once again surrounded by white lab coats. They made him sick but he gave no sign of it.

It took some getting used to the new modified mechanical arm. In his life Caleb had considered quite a few scenarios of him becoming disabled due to his chosen field of work. He’d even considered and made his peace with the possibility of one day not making it back home to her after that one dreadful flight in the Aerospace Academy. He had to look up quite a few articles on all sorts of disorders considering how bad his dissociative amnesia got afterwards. But for some reason he’d never researched what losing a limb might feel like. He’d assumed it would just be like having a void where a limb used to be; he’d never taken phantom pain into consideration.

When confronted by her, he said “I barely feel any pain unless it’s under repair.” And even though it was true—the electric shocks going through his body while the arm was under repair were quite painful—he didn’t want her to worry, so he decided not to tell her the whole truth.

For the most part he’d learnt to ignore the phantom pain, he’d tune it out, leaving it somewhere in the background. It’s not as if he’d never dealt with pain before. But other times he’d jolt awake and not be able to go back to sleep for the rest of the night. Sometimes he’d just stare into a mirror for a while in an attempt to make his brain somehow understand and accept the fact that his arm was no more.

It felt like some new intricate type of torture if he was being completely honest. Feeling the pain but not his arm, it was maddening. He’d picked up the habit of scrabbing the area surrounding the mechanical arm—where the seam of it met his torso—red while showering, and subconsciously scratching it whenever he was stressed and felt a phantom pain spike.

Sometimes it felt as if there was an infesting rot under the surface of the mechanical arm, it was burning and throbbing threatening to spread through his whole body. Caleb couldn’t help but think if the rot was eating away at him, if one day he’d wake up to being rotten to the core—nothing human left of him, just some machine with no thoughts, feelings, or emotions of his own. No flesh left to sense her with, just metal and wires. 

He’d still love her somehow. Even if only just a fraction of his consciousness was left, he’d find a way to hold on to her, cling to the idea of her.

For the time being, Caleb tried not to think of those things. He had to protect her whatever it took, whatever the price may be.

One day she caught him, though. He was careless; he got lost in his thoughts staring into space in his bedroom. He just got out of shower and didn’t put a shirt on yet. 

“What are you doing?” her voice came from the door. “I knocked but you didn’t answer…”

How deep did he have to sink into it all to not even notice? He’d huff out a bitter chuckle if there was any strength left in him to do that.

“What happened to your shoulder?” worry palpable in her voice. Great. She was moving closer, not waiting for his permission to enter the room now that she saw the crime scene because of course she wouldn’t. Caleb tried to cover it up by putting his shirt on. He wasn’t fast enough, though. She caught him red handed. “Caleb?” her beautiful voice laced with worry once again because of him, it made his stomach turn.

“It’s nothing.” He tried but she was already inspecting the reddish area.

She gave him one of those angry frowns she was really good at. “You big dummy,” she said pushing him to sit back down on his bed. “Don’t move.” Then she left the room.

Caleb wasn’t about to disobey her; she’d be even more mad and something was telling him he was in big enough trouble already.

When she came back, it was with a first-aid kit in her hand. She didn’t say a word though, silently getting to work, disinfecting the raw skin around the mechanical arm and gently blowing on it even though Caleb gave no indication of it burning. He never would in front of her. She was probably aware of that, too.

A few minutes later Caleb found himself bandaged and she was looking at him with such intense that he couldn’t bear it, so he glanced away in an attempt to avoid eye contact. Her endeavor to see through him fruitless, she decided to ask him, “Where does it hurt?” 

Of course, she realized it wasn’t a question of whether or not it hurt but of where exactly it hurt. Sometimes Caleb hated the way she knew him so well.

He pressed his lips into a thin line and loudly exhaled through his nose, still not looking at her. She wouldn’t have it obviously, so her hands came to his cheeks to hold his head up. There was hurt in her eyes and the knowledge of being the one to put it there broke him.

“I—” he tried; his voice raspy. “I’m sorry,” was all he could say, once again feeling like he was failing her. The rot bubbling up under the metal, gradually trying to overcome him.

“What are you sorry for?” she asked, tenderly caressing his cheeks with her fingers. “Please tell me.”

“I lied.” Her expression became confused but she stayed silent giving him time to elaborate. “It hurts all the time,” Caleb’s voice broke, his vision blurry and he knew what that meant, so he had to push the lump in his throat down and will the tears back. They had no place here.

She leaned into him, pressing her forehead onto his own, the tiny bit of pressure grounding for Caleb. Then he felt one of her hands go down from his face to his neck, to his clavicle, to his bandaged shoulder then down the mechanical arm. Caleb could swear he was able to feel the lightness, the warmth of her touch, the gentle way her fingers ran over the metal. It wasn’t true but he could still feel it, a breathy exhale falling from his lips.

When she drew back, he was barely able to hold in a whimper. Don’t go, please. Don’t leave me, he wanted to beg. But she wasn’t going anywhere. She got on her knees beside his right arm and took his mechanical hand into her own. The metal most certainly way colder than her flesh and blood palm. 

Looking him straight in the eye, she pulled his hand towards her mouth and left a light kiss on one of the fingers. Caleb’s breath hitched and he was ready to burst into tears right then and there. The softness of her gaze—not leaving his even for a moment—combined with the little kisses she was peppering onto the metal surface made his heart swell with love for her. There was not a single thought of rot left in head. How could there be any? When she was touching him so gently, with such careful attention, as if he was something worth cherishing even with a cold piece of metal instead of an arm.

Her lips gradually made their way up his forearm, making sure to meticulously leave kisses everywhere she could. Finally, she got to the seam of the metal and pressed her lips onto the bandages before moving to the exposed skin of his torso and neck. Caleb’s breath—an erratic chaos by that point—got caught in his throat, as he felt hot air from her mouth hit his jugular.

He moved his hands to her back to press her body as close as possible to his own, slotting their mouths together, stealing the whimper of surprise off her lips. The kiss messy but short. His left hand came up to cup her cheek.

She was looking at him with her brows furrowed. “Don’t ever lie to me again,” she said with a light hit to his chest. “If you’re hurting, I’ll be right there with you, hurting by your side.”

“I don’t want you to hurt,” was all Caleb could master in response.

She looked at him with pity. “I’ll hurt anyway. Even more so if you hide your pain from me for my sake.”

And it sounded so familiar. Caleb huffed out a bitter laugh, realizing she was just like him at the end of the day. Even thinking and feeling about him the same way he did for her.

“Okay then,” Caleb said. “We’ll hurt together.”

“Deal,” she replied and took both his hands into hers intertwining their fingers.