He could pace the empty halls forever, but there was no outrunning sleep.
It was a yawning void, pulling him endlessly inward, warping the world around him the longer that he resisted its pull. The shadows flickered, the edges of his vision twitching in time to his pulse, causing the walls to breathe with him and he could feel them closing in. He stumbled, and sent up clouds of dust that further hurt his already stinging eyes.
It was inefficient. Stupid. He needed to rest. He knew this, and yet… his breath hitched at the thought of facing it, helpless against his own mind as he let that control slip away. Awake, at least, he could pretend not to hear their whispering, could pretend to himself that he could not feel the press of their eyes on his back. His shoulder hit the doorway of his quarters on the way in, the physical jolt barely registering outside of a shivering that washed through his visual feed.
He needed sleep. Needed to face them. His hand pawed weakly against a heavy glass bottle and the air grew sharp with its bite as it bled across the tiles. There was no hope for it, no help. He could hear them laughing at the edges of his mind, feel the brush of their hands ready to pull him under. To make him see. Make him pay.
Maybe he deserved it. Maybe it was all that he deserved.
The floor rose up to meet him, damp and burning, the shriveled husk of his dignity the only thing preventing him from rolling on all fours, lapping up a chance at salvation. It wouldn’t help, he knew, it never erased them, never blurred them. Memory was a blade his mind kept sharpened, every repetition honing off the surface detail to leave behind something sharper, something rawer, his mind arching lovingly against it night after night, an affectionate cat that bled void, bled static, bled pain until it drowned until it drowned until it disappeared into the hurt and the whispers and the hands and the
guilt.
The floor rose up to meet him and he sunk a little further down. Perhaps, there would be mercy to be found there, at the bottom of his mind. Perhaps he would never rise again.