Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/5798761.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Rape/Non-Con, Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Homestuck
  Character:
      Dave_Strider, Bro_Strider
  Additional Tags:
      Sexual_Abuse, Implied/Referenced_Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced_Speech
      Therapy, Dave_can't_talk_very_well, That's_why_he's_got_a_speech
      Therapist, One-Shot, Depression, Suicidal_Thoughts, broken_character,
      Showers, Memories, second_person_narrative, Dave's_POV, Speech_Therapist,
      Implied/Referenced_Speech_Therapist, No_Sburb/Sgrub_AU
  Stats:
      Published: 2016-01-24 Words: 1943
****** Born to be Broken ******
by cocoacremeandgays
Summary
     "My body is a temple, so is yours,"
     No, no, not anymore, it's not. You've been violated and exposed and
     left open- awaiting as a victim for a predator to come and gobble you
     up, and you don't know if you can find it in you to care anymore.
Notes
     This is my first work on AO3, and as the tags have helpfully
     reminded, THIS IS NOT A HAPPY STORY! I want to tag trigger warning
     because this is probably extremely triggering. Please keep in mind
     that I have never been in this type of situation, so I have no
     personal experience. It's probably gonna be pretty bad, so keep that
     in mind. Anyway, TRIGGER WARNING!
     And now, on to the story, shall we?
Scrubbing at your body until your skin feels raw, ready to rip off at any of
these moments in time, where the seconds tick by in an endless row of painful
reminders from just an hour ago's activities, is not how you expected to spend
your Thursday night. Video games and chatting with EB, TT, or GG, maybe, but
this? It's like you're in a separate reality, one that you don't want to be in.
One that causes more pain than you want to ever have to deal with.
 
Your name is Dave Strider, and you feel dirty.
 
You give special treatment to His marks, the marks He gave you, the ones He
left on your body. Those. Yeah, they get special treatment, as said before, but
not the type of special most people might think of. 
 
No, no you practically try to rip at your skin to get Him off, because even
though He probably thinks He did you a favor by shutting you up and making you
take it, you don't want Him on you. You never wanted Him on you. You don't
wantHim to touch you or to see you or to be near you, and you want to get Him
off, get Him off, get Him off-
 
"GetHim off."
 
The phrase makes you ill just thinking about it, and you want to shove soap in
your mouth, in your head, in your mind, to clear it of what is going on inside.
You want to burn your eye sight, maybe then you'll forget the way He looks. You
want to shove your fingers down your throat and vomit up anything in your
stomach, because maybe if you vomit enough you'll forget how He tasted. You
want to burn yourself alive, because maybe if you caused yourself that much
pain, you'd forget what His hands felt like when they grabbed at you like a
child grabbing a new toy from under the tree- shaking it to see what sound it
made, and if He could tell what it was just from that.
 
By now your bruises are not just sore, they're fucking burning, and those
scratches are now bleeding crimson, those tiny cuts are letting loose the red
that pumps through your veins, like there is no tomorrow.
 
Hell, maybe there is no tomorrow. Can there be a tomorrow when there's barely
any of you left for today? Because you sure as hell don't feel like there is a
tomorrow. You hope no tomorrow comes- you hope you bleed out and die, because
it sure seems like a possibility, as you stand in a shower coated in red, the
blood of not Him, but of you, and you have to keep reminding yourself that this
is your blood, your blood, your blood.
 
From your veins, from your skin, from your ass as well, and you just can't take
it, because it hurts too much and yet you feel so little. Too much is being
processed in your brain at once, so much that you can't even process anything
anymore and it's just a loop of fucking thought that is pressing in your head
and you can't get it out.
 
And you're stuck, in a mindless loop of auto pilot in a world full of planes,
and you're trying to fly each one to find which is yours, like fucking
Goldilocks and the porridge- too hot, too cold. But unlike her, you can't find
your in-between. You can't find what works for you.
 
There is no "safe haven" or "shelter" or "hospital" that can help, save, or fix
you because you don't think anything can fix something this broken.
 
Something as broken as you.
 
You're like a house, hundreds of years old but still standing, people breaking
you and fixing you and caring for you and abusing you all at once because time
has melded together and yesterday blends with six years ago, and you can't tell
which hurt more- the first time, or the last.
 
"My body is a temple, and so is yours,"
 
No, no, not anymore it's not. You've been violated and exposed and left open-
awaiting as a victim for a predator to come and gobble you up, and you don't
know if you can find it in you to care anymore.
 
And even though you've rubbed yourself raw, you still feel Him on you, grabbing
you until you were reduced to nothing more than a shell of the person you were
before this happened. You feel the grip of His hands on your arms, and the wrap
of His arms around your waist, and the crescent indents of His nails when He
gripped your thighs, and it itches and burns so violently that you want to cry
and scream and-
 
Stop.
 
Breathe.
 
You let out shattered breaths, and collapse to the shower floor, your throat
aching from your screaming and your wounds and marks are on fire under the
little beating the shower is giving you. You feel like you're under attack,
with dozens of tiny toy soldiers shooting at you from above. Each spray of
water is an infinite line of bullets from an automatic machine gun, but since
it isn't killing you, it's obviously a toy, because toys aren't meant to kill
kids, and the thought makes you choke on a mix of laughter and sobbing because
isn't it so childish of you to be thinking that way?
 
You remember the first time, when you were young.
 
Seven years old, you were still a kid.
 
He told you it was a new game. "To help." He said.
 
He told you it was a secret game.
 
He told you not to tell anyone.
 
He told you it would be okay.
 
He didn't tell you how much it would hurt.
 
Bro didn't say anything when you refused to take showers, or baths, in the
shared bathroom.
 
Bro didn't get on your case when you wet the bed on more than one occasion.
 
No.
 
Bro told Him instead.
 
He got angry.
 
He hit you.
 
He didn't play the game with you again, and He told you He was sorry, because
He "knew how much you hurt."
 
Like hell He did.
 
"It hurt Him, too."
 
No, it didn't.
 
A year passed, and everything was back to the way it was before the incident.
You were eight when He began the game again. This time around, He threatened
you. If you told anyone, He'd hurt you, real bad. You didn't tell anyone. It
wasn't too bad, anyway. Nothing past forced touching.
 
When you turned ten, He forced you to suck Him off. "A present for double
digits!" He told you, ruffling your hair. Yeah, some present that was. He said
it like He was so sure, too, like He knew that every ten year old was just
absolutely dying to get a penis in their mouth.
 
Then it went back to normal, and another six months passed before He began the
game again. You knew it was wrong. Thanks to that presentation on abuse at
school one day, you realized you weren't fucked in the head for hating His
"game".
 
You were eleven when you knew, subconsciously, for a fact, that this wasn't
normal. That He shouldn't be doing this.
 
But, it being your subconscious, you still felt a upset that you didn't like
it. It was a present- a game- how come you didn't like it more? How come you
didn't like it at all?
 
So you continued to keep quiet. You felt like it was the least you could do for
Him, after not liking His game.
 
Twelve was when you finally got it out of your sick little head that it was
okay. You still didn't say anything, though. You were scared. Bro would surely
hate you for not standing up for yourself. Bro would hate you for not saying
"no" (even though you did say "no". You tried to say "stop", too, but your
mouth wouldn't form the words because you weren't fully aware on how to).
 
On your thirteenth birthday, He went all the way. He was ruthless. He didn't
care about you. He used a condom, but that was about it. That was the first
time he went all the way with you.
 
He hit you when you made noise.
 
Cut you when you fought back.
 
Insulted you the entire time.
 
He spouted words at you, "Perfect", "Beautiful", "Amazing", "Slut", "Whore",
"My princess".
 
Phrases; "You love this, don't you?" "You're getting off on this." "What a slut
you are, getting off on getting hurt."
 
Told you that if you told anyone about this, He would kill you.
 
No.
 
No...
 
No, He took that back.
 
"If you tell anyone about this, I will make your life a constant living hell,
and make you wish you were dead."
 
He must have seen how much you wanted to die, but He must not have understood
that you already wished to be dead.
 
He cleaned both of you up, told you that you were a good boy- that He couldn't
wait to do it again. He must have thought you were enjoying what He did. He
asked if you'd be ready for another round of this new and improved game in a
few months.
 
You swallowed your hate, your mouth still tasting like bitter flesh, and fought
back tears, though you were already crying. Tears flowed freely down your
cheeks. You whispered out the phrase you had managed to perfect over these
years-
 
"Yes, sir."
 
Today is December 3rd, 2009.
 
Today also just so happens to be your thirteenth birthday.
 
You sob, the pelting water on your bruised skin now cold.
 
Bro is knocking on the door of the bathroom.
 
He's telling you, "You've been in there for too long, Li'l man, and you're
wasting the hot water."
 
You pull your knees tighter to your chest, ignoring the way your sore muscles
protest against the action.
 
Bro tells you to, "Get out of the damn shower."
 
You were born to be broken; that has to be it, because you're having trouble
finding a true reason you were put on Earth for.
 
Bro knocks again.
 
Born to be broken. That has to be it. It has a certain ring to it, as well.
Just your luck. Your purpose had a ring to it, but that purpose wasn't a good
one. You want a new purpose, but you know you can't have one. This one is set
in stone.
 
The more you think about it, more you believe it to be true, because you have
been tossed into a garbage so thick of disgusting haze and piles of shit, that
you can't see a reason anymore. Was this your purpose? Was this what you were
born to do? If God does everything for a reason, did God do this to you? What
was God's purpose, why did God do this?
 
You hope He had fun tearing you apart until up and down are just concepts so
far away that you have to recite the definition of both twenty times in order
to understand. You hope He's proud of Himself for hurting you more than you
thought possible. You hope He's proud that pain is just a feeling instead of an
ache- you hope He's proud of Himself for breaking you so many times, that you
were actually mended by being broken just one more time. You hope He's
fulfilledHis life fucking goal by putting you on Earth, just to make you want
to be taken off.
 
Happy birthday to you, right?
 
Yeah.
 
Happy birthday to you.
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