A Lack of Light, a silent hill fanfic

a lack of light.

a walter/henry drabble collection.

drabble one; your eyes forever glued to mine

Walter's mood changed more often than a broken light bulb would flicker.

Sometimes he was oddly calm and if you didn't focus upon the bloodstains and the dirt, he'd look almost sane. But then when Henry looked straight back into his eyes, he could see that wasn't so. Walter's eyes were often so hollow and empty, like grimy glass marbles, but looking more carefully, Henry could see flickers of torment and madness. Henry wasn't afraid to keep looking. Henry wasn't afraid of Walter at all now. His fear had been replaced by a sad and sickly understanding; and although it didn't frighten him, it made him feel nauseous and he had to turn away. But Walter kept looking.

Then sometimes, Walter would seem rapturously lost. Walter used Henry's name all the time, lulling those two syllables in every possible sentence. Henry never used Walter's name; as if it were a taboo. But then, Walter would always go off on either softly spoken or angry tangents. He was half-talking to Henry and half-talking to himself. Then sometimes, it wasn't like that at all, it was like he'd turned around to face nothing and continued to utter into it. He was talking to nobody except the space around him. Or sometimes just into the room itself.

Lastly, Walter would be taken up into a frenzy that Henry couldn't really defend himself from. It was the self-destructive side of him that just leant back and embraced hell. Henry tried not to become a part of it. He tried not to listen. But he knew that Walter was eventually going to kill him, because Walter was tying the ribbons as harshly as possible; blood-red ribbons as hard as chains.

And Henry was chained down in every way possible.

drabble two; a lack of light

Henry hadn't wanted to follow Walter, but he had nowhere else to go and Walter's tainted words asphyxiated him until there was nothing else he could do but follow him.

"Isn't it beautiful?" Walter asked, "Isn't it a beautiful place? You can see the memories of all the people who lived here gliding through the air."

Henry stared into the bleak opacity of the fog. Silent Hill wasn't beautiful. The cold stung his skin and the endless fog clouded his senses.

"But it's so dull and never ending-" Henry began.

"No," Walter cut him off sharply "It's like light. Pure light. White. Pure. Light. Like you, Henry. Light. Like morning."

Walter continued to mutter the words bluntly like a mantra. Twenty-three times and then he stopped.

"But all lights eventually die," Walter breathed, "All things we love will die."

drabble three; let me take you there

"I've seen you scream, Henry," Walter whispered, his breath warm and heavy against Henry's skin.

"Yes, I've seen you scream, your normally undisturbed, serene face contorted with terror. It's really quite something. It's really quite beautiful." Walter continued as Henry stumbled over himself, trying to escape from Walter, hating the man in front of him more with every frantic sentence he garbled.

Then Walter reached forwards, grabbing a handful of Henry's hair and tilting his head back so their eyes met, and after a few seconds, Walter smiled and Henry felt himself wavering once again to Walter's words and hands, waiting for him to say it.

"Now let's hear you scream all for me."

drabble four; so fragile on the inside

"I love you."

Henry flinched and turned on the spot to face Walter.

"Y-you don't even know what love is," Henry stammered incredulously. "You can't just love me because I'm your last chance to experience it. That's twisting all meaning of it to suit yourself, appointing it upon the nearest person to you and deciding to call it love."

Walter nodded as Henry spoke, and then when he'd finished speaking, Walter shook his head slowly.

"Have you ever loved, Henry?" he asked finally.

Henry hadn't, and he was suddenly unable to answer Walter's question, turning quickly to get away from him.

"Then how do you know what it is?"

Walter's words were just a distant and unanswered question to Henry now and he scraped his hands desperately against the locks on the apartment door. Defeated, his strength broke and he fell to his knees; and Walter didn't pursue him.

drabble five; instrumentals

Walter didn't leave Henry for last because he loves him.

He loves Henry because he's the last one.

His last chance to know love before he can truly die.

And it was so easy to fall in love with Henry.

The calm exterior he wants to make scream. The purity he wants to shatter. The lonely man he wants to make his own.

Then, maybe Henry can know love before he dies too.

Henry fought it, but Walter knew he wanted it too.

Walter knew that inside, Henry was just as lonely as Walter.

He was just as lonely.

drabble six; i'd rather burn than fall

"I've seen the monsters in worlds you've created." Henry murmured bitterly, "I've seen the demons that plague your mind."

Walter turned around crookedly, his hand tightly wrapped against the handle of his axe and he looked down at Henry with murder vivid in his eyes.

"But they plague yours too, Henry." Walter lulled, "Who's to say you're not just like me?"

"No." Henry said bluntly, "We're so different."

"Really?" Walter muttered, tilting his head, "We both want things."

"You're wrong," Henry always tried to avoid looking into Walter's eyes so he looked away and to the floor, "There's nothing I want; not really."

Walter wasn't listening to Henry anymore, he was too busy looking into the night. Henry's gaze flickered to the axe in Walter's hand. The moonlight shone sickeningly across the blade and Henry winced.

"I'm nothing like you." Henry said loudly and blankly, "You kill people."

This definitely caught Walter's attention and he looked like he was at a loss. "Kill people?" Walter repeated, unable to hide the blatant confusion in his voice, "Well! What other choice is there?" he asked loudly, with a laugh in his voice.

"What?" Henry asked, "There's the choice of not killing people!"

Walter looked at Henry curiously, the twitch of a smirk playing at his lips.

"Not kill people?" Walter's laugh was delightedly amused, "That's crazy."

And then like the light reflected on the axe, Walter's laughter dulled.

drabble seven; oursanctuaries

When Henry had woken up and left the security of his bedroom, he was startled to find Walter Sullivan standing by his coffee table, his back was turned, the tattered and stained blue coat rippling slowly under the stir of the fan. Henry was struck for a moment at the oddness and danger of this predicament. He eventually came to his senses after he heard his name spoken amidst the murmurs and whispers.

Without facing him, Walter had questioned "Isn't mother beautiful, Henry?"

Walter asked this question several times a day, often not waiting for an answer, but drinking in the air of the apartment with the expression not unlike that of a child handed a lollipop.

Henry eventually grew accustomed to Walter's behavior, but one morning not long after a sloppily made breakfast, there was one thing Walter said that really deviated from the usual patterns.

Henry was unshaven and tired and scraping old bacon off of old plates; and that's when he heard Walter say - "Isn't Henry beautiful, mother?"

drabble eight; rememberance day

Eileen Galvin lay propped against the wall, her neck slit crookedly, like the jagged skyline of a child's crayon-smudged drawing and with a bullet lying dully trapped just above her eyebrow, wedged within her skull. Her uncovered eye was wide open, blankly staring to the muddied floor. Her body was delicately crumpled and the blood surrounding it licked around the wall like a crimson snow angel, a halo of scarlet encompassing her head.

"Eileen!" Henry fell to his knees next to her, the pipe slipping from his hands, and his hands slipping to the floor weakly.

The creaking of a footstep encouraged him to gaze upwards, and at the figure who stood in front of him. Walter's face was smudged in dirt and dried blood, and fresh of the latter dripping from the bulky knife that hung diagonally from his hand. His head was tilted, his unblinking stare focused on Henry entirely, but his entire being was emotionless. There was no smirk or gut-wrenching laughter, nor was there rage or viciousness. The only evidence of his murder was etched between each hollow line on his face, or flaked into his dirty blond hair.

Henry was struck by terror immediately. He was next, and by some cruel trick he was weaponless and on the floor, defenceless to the manic nature of the man in front of him. Henry raised his head to this fate, trying to look up at Walter, but instead tightly closing his eyes in a helpless wince.

Henry felt the smoothness of the blade glide across his cheek and droplets of Eileen's blood falling onto his outstretched fingers, and then again, the cold steel of the knife caressed his chin, almost gracefully. Henry's eyes flickered open and Walter's lips were pursed into a contorted smile.

"What are you-?" Henry found himself saying, the cloud of anxiety in his throat beginning to clear.

But as soon as he began talking, Walter's face became more blurred, and Henry's eyes became heavy-lidded.

"No, not again," Henry choked, forcing his palm into the floor in attempt to keep himself from sleep, but he was already wavering, his crouched body swaying to the left, "Eileen-"

Henry looked away from the hazy outline of Walter and tried to focus on Eileen, but she herself was just a bizarre red outline to him, her body a little way away, like that of a discarded doll, and Henry tried to reach out to her, the Eileen that had been with him, the Eileen that had held his hand firmly when she was lost, but now the Eileen that had died due to him not protecting her as well as he could have. Henry reached out, but it wound up the same way.

Because the next thing Henry saw was endless blackness, followed by the slow hum of the fan and the pale green of his ceiling.

Henry was home again; and the dream-like feeling was fading, because this would be the last time he would wake up to this room. Walter was coming; his stained finger stretched and always pointing at who was going to be his last victim.

drabble nine; the everlasting glow of time

"Do you think that in another time or another life, we'd be thrown together in different circumstances? Where I won't hate you and love you at the same time? Where I won't be afraid to look at you without betraying myself? Do you think we wouldn't end up this way? This...way. Bound together by blood and murder. Do you think we'd make it someday? Smiling and without pain. I- I don't know if it'd work. But I don't want to think our last moments are our last chance. I don't want to look at you. But I can't help but let you look at me. Stop it. Leave me alone. My life is a nightmare because of you. But don't leave without me. Don't kill yourself without killing me first. I really wish you'd hate me too. In another time or universe, let's meet again. Let's-"

drabble ten; so shaken

When Henry woke up, he knew something was wrong. He was kneeling on a hard floor and his arms were chained up above his head, two harsh cuffs digging coldly into the pale of his wrists. Henry opened his eyes, but swayed, as if in a daze, moving only a little way, as if he were floating. His chest was bare and slightly scratched and his head felt heavy as if it had been knocked against something hard. Looking around the apartment, the atmosphere was so heavy that he couldn't make out the outline to anything, or figure out where in the apartment he was. Thinking about it, Henry found it hard to remember what he'd been doing before he'd went to sleep, or how long he'd been asleep for.

Slowly, Henry lifted his head.

"Walter?" he called, his voice faint and croaky and receiving no answer.

Almost suddenly, Henry twitched at the high pitched groan of scraping metal. The sound continued slowly, the sound of the grinding of knives.

Henry felt a prickle of fear singe the back of his neck. It was happening.

Walter knew it was time for them both to go.

The finality in Walter's footsteps as he walked towards Henry was harsh and Henry swallowed in fear, a lump of panic forming in his throat.

"Walter..." Henry looked into the mirror-like empty eyes, shaking the binds on his hands.

Walter pulled Henry's face up into a gruff kiss and leant the knife against Henry's chest as Henry struggled with the chains, unable to break free and-

Then Walter plunged and leant back with arms open to let hell take him.

But hell never came for Walter; and the empty apartment both chided and comforted him as Henry's blood began to stain the floor.