Another blow across his face, pain sharp and accompanied with a rush of heat as his body tried to compensate, soothe and alert him that something was happening, something bad was happening and he needed to do something about it, he needed to get away. He would have slid down to his knees but Scriabin's grip on the front of his shirt kept him up.

"Make me stop, Edgar." Scriabin growled and held up his hand. Flecks of red across his knuckles, and at the sight Edgar realized he could taste blood. The fact that this was far from the first time in so many weeks was what made him sick.

Edgar closed his eyes and didn't move. He just wanted this over with quickly. Just go limp and not struggle, and wait for it to be over, and then afterwards he could deal with the damage and get some bandages or something, but he wouldn't fight now. Wouldn't prolong the experience. Scriabin had made it clear at other times that resisting him never met with success. For all his talk, Scriabin didn't like Edgar fighting. He didn't want Edgar to fight him, and when Edgar tried, it was usually enough to push Scriabin past his carefully controlled behavior into blind fury, and that was where real danger lied. Edgar knew how far Scriabin would go if he had the sense, if he was aware of what he was doing and had a purpose, but when pushed too far, pushed beyond the bounds of reason and responsibility and any recognizable goal, that was when Edgar feared perhaps for his life, if not his sanity.

The fact he didn't know, he wasn't sure if Scriabin could kill him after all, could somehow destroy him, was what kept him from reacting. Kept his hands from rising, kept him from doing what Scriabin wanted, because while he wanted one thing he punished Edgar for giving it to him. Edgar's inability to meet his expected desires, his passivity, was what Scriabin used to punish him, and Edgar felt that Scriabin wanted, desired, and felt that he had to punish him, in some way or another. Maybe due to the circumstances that caused Scriabin's birth in the first place, the constant self-doubt and disapproval of his behavior had just grown, kept moving from one stage to another. Instead of punishing Edgar for his decisions, Scriabin just punished him now for being who he was, and bringing up the point that Scriabin had a hand in Edgar's development made things worse.

There were certain topics that always made things worse.

Edgar knew this wouldn't stop, but he didn't know how to break the cycle. Scriabin existed in him, in his mind, and there was no way that he could escape him. He couldn't report Scriabin. He couldn't ask for protection from anyone. No one could ever be involved, no one would ever see the evidence, unless it affected his behavior in the waking world. Even if someone did want to help him, they had no way of excising Scriabin, they had no way of reaching him, talking to him. Edgar was trapped with him, and Scriabin was likewise trapped. Scriabin had no way out, and perhaps that was why he so fervently hung on to his relative position of control. Edgar may have had the body under his control while awake, but at night Scriabin must have felt desperate, increasingly fanatical about proving that he had power of his own, he had power that was just as lasting, as influential as Edgar's over the body.

Scriabin had grown increasingly paranoid lately. Any form of resistance now became an attempt on the small bit of power that he held, and Scriabin did not tolerate it.

But he had to have his justification, he had to have his reason for what he did. Edgar had to have a reason, so Scriabin had to have one as well. It varied depending on his mood. His motivation this time was painfully paradoxical, and Edgar tongued a tooth that felt a little loose.

Without his sight, the next backhand caught him entirely by surprise, and he gasped unintentionally. He had been so silent through most of this, and he was a little disappointed that he hadn't managed to keep his record. He bit the inside of his cheek that time. Insistent tingling pain and more blood to join the rest, a stronger metallic tang.

"Stop me!" Scriabin shouted, and Edgar opened his eyes reluctantly. They felt sore and weak, and the light hurt, and he could barely make out Scriabin's features. His glasses were gone, knocked away the first few minutes. Scriabin maybe did that on purpose, it was hard to say. "Make me stop, Edgar! This is under your control. This has always been under your control! You can't keep passively accepting what happens to you!"

He didn't say anything, and this prompted another blow to the face, this time near his eye. He shut it and it leaked tears involuntarily, and he found he was breathing a bit faster now, a bit more out of control. His heart beat hard and his body frantically tried to repair damage, to do something to stop the pain.

"Look at you, look at you!" Scriabin gritted through clenched teeth, and he tightened his grip on Edgar's shirt. "Look at this, this is pathetic. All you want is for me to stop, but you won't do a thing to actually stop me! You're just waiting for me to decide to stop on my own! And you wonder how you got in this mess, you wonder at how this all isn't your fault. For #$^#'s sake Edgar, make me stop. You have to fight me."

Choked a bit, hard, but Scriabin didn't let him go. Edgar struggled to focus on Scriabin with his one good eye, stared at him for a few seconds.

"Why can't you stop yourself?"

"God #$^#ing #$$@IT!" Scriabin hit him again, this time with a viciousness not present before, and Edgar wheezed hard. It was difficult to breathe and see and he was worried that he might lose consciousness soon. "How can you miss the point so completely? So constantly? For #$^#'s sake!"

"Could you stop...?" Edgar coughed, and he felt something drooling from the corner of his mouth. If his arms were moving properly he would have done something about that. "Could you stop this, if you wanted to...? Or is this just another one of your..." A deep shaky breath, a bit of dizziness. "Another one of your...double-motives, your deeper meanings hiding how shallow it all is...is this just an excuse to take out your anger on me, after all this time? Do you just want to hurt me, and you've found an excuse to do it, under the..." a cough, "under the pretense of this being some kind of...kind of life lesson...?"

Scriabin trembled, face contorted with rage. Edgar should have stuck with his previous philosophy, just let Scriabin say and do what he wanted without fighting back, without making things worse.

He definitely made things worse now, he knew it. But in a perverse way, Edgar was pleased that he had done so in a way that Scriabin had not anticipated.

"You stupid #$^#." Scriabin's voice was low. "Of course I could stop. Does it make it easier for you, to think this is shallow hatefulness? Vengeance? Does it make it easier to think that this is my idea, my fault, and again, you really didn't have a choice?"

Edgar struggled to breath, coughed to try and clear his throat and found that that somehow only made it worse. Breathed in hard through his nose, let his mouth fall open and drooling again. "Oh, so you didn't have a choice about this. How tragic. I don't remember asking you to punch me in the face, darling."

Just how he thought Scriabin would react, and Edgar felt his nose break. Staggered backwards, slipped out of Scriabin's grip and fell hard. Hissing and wheezing and God that hurt, that hurt a lot. Couldn't breathe, smashed and he could feel it running down into his mouth, out again, blood and salt and metal. He reached up a hand to touch it, but ended up hovering just above his nose, not wanting to aggravate it further.

"God #%$^ you, god #$#$ you to #$^#." Scriabin knelt over Edgar, grabbed his shirt and forced him to stay sitting upright. He growled thick and angry, and his hands were shaking. "You would find the one way to make this worse for yourself. You always find the one way to make things worse that you think will make things better. How hard is it, Edgar, how hard is it to make me stop? How $#^#ing hard is it, in the end? Is that what you even want me to do, or do you want me to kick the living $#^# out of you to prove you're on some kind of moral highground? Make me stop, you stupid $^%@#, or stop making it worse."

"Of course." Edgar's head lolled back, and he felt strangely giddy. Things weren't connecting right. He could feel blood running right down the back of his throat. "Of course, this is my fault, your actions are my responsibility, of course, of course...Scriabin, could you be a dear and stop beating me? I'd appreciate it very much."

Maybe it was his tone, but Scriabin hesitated for a moment. Scriabin was still connected to Edgar in that weird ambiguous way, must have known something was a little strange. On his end, Edgar couldn't feel much of anything except the pain, and he was pretty sure that was Scriabin's fault. Turning their bond one-way was definitely his doing, because Edgar didn't understand their connection at all, much less have any idea how to control it or shut it off. He just barely understood how to look at it occasionally.

Scriabin must have felt his strange euphoria, his rising state of incoherency and delerium, and hesitated. Maybe this state was due to the pain, or maybe something else, Edgar didn't know. The pain was exhilarating now, and there was nothing he could do about it so why not enjoy the endorphin rush, courtesy of his dear mental voice. How thoughtful.

"You can't just ask me to stop." Scriabin's voice shook, although he still sounded angry. "Sometimes talking doesn't work, Edgar, sometimes it doesn't work like that. For those rare times you do fight back, you think that just your logic, your eversuffering patient nature, will be enough to stop the abuse. Well, Johnny's proved you wrong there, hasn't he? And he'll continue to push past what you think is your only defense until you fight, Edgar. And not fight with your words, fight. Make me stop. Don't ask me, make me stop."

"Sometimes talking doesn't work." Edgar laughed and he felt something bubble in his throat. "Sometimes, ha. Sometimes, sometimes talking doesn't work, and sometimes, sometimes Scriabin, sometimes fighting doesn't work either. Sometimes, sometimes, you can't punch your problems away, sometimes violence doesn't work it just makes things worse-"

"No, Edgar, you're not listening. You're not listening-"

"You know, you know sometimes, sometimes, sometimes there's nothing that works." Edgar managed to pull his head back upright, stared at Scriabin with one blurry open eye. He smiled, felt the ache from the bruises on his cheek. "Sometimes nothing works, nothing will make it stop. Nothing will make it stop and fix it. Sometimes you can't make it go away, even if you punch someone right in the nose, and if you talk to them, and if you love them so much, sometimes it doesn't work, and it won't work. Sometimes there's nothing you can do physical or otherwise to do anything, and do you know? Do you know that for sure, that if I, if I ever hit Johnny, that would convey to him that hurting other people is wrong and he would stop? He would just stop, because my violence communicated that violence against me was wrong, and we'd be happy?"

Scriabin let go of Edgar's shirt, put his hands on Edgar's face and held him still. He stared into Edgar's eyes, kept his face fairly neutral and stared.

"This doesn't have to be about Johnny, Edgar. This is a lifelong tendency of yours, to never fight, never really fight what happens-"

"What about you then?" Edgar felt extremely lightheaded and very good about that fact for reasons he couldn't understand. He laughed again, choked for a second, found his breath and tried to move his head away but Scriabin wouldn't let him go. "What about you, you fight all the time, don't you? Don't you, you're always fighting everything, you're always fighting fighting fighting, and everything is so perfect for you, isn't it?"

Scriabin's hands around his throat, and he felt the back of his head hit the floor hard and bounce once. Sparks, a flash of darkness, and he closed his eyes and found himself smiling enough to give himself a headache. Scriabin's fingers were tight but not tight enough, not as tight as they had to be.

"God #$^#ing #$#@ you, I #$^#ing hate you." He could hear Scriabin breathy and furious above him, on top of him, holding him down, and he lay still except for the hysterical laughter that kept trying to force its way out of him. "I #$^#ing hate you."

"So that's why you're fighting me?" Edgar struggled to stop laughing because some part of him knew that there was no reason for it. "Have you fixed it yet?"

"#$^# you!" Scriabin shouted, and he had a feeling that Scriabin was going to hit him again at some point, and it turned out it was now. Flaring pain and bruises antagonized and worsened, and a horrible throbbing that was spreading through the majority of his face.

"Agh, $%^#." Edgar hissed through his teeth, writhed for those few seconds as the pain hit its initial climax before fading down to its more steady beat. "Ngh..."

"Stupid #$%&@." God, Edgar hated it when Scriabin called him that. "You stupid #$^#@, you like this, don't you? You like playing the martyr, making me the villain who has no redeemable qualities, who's a slave to his passions and can't resist hurting you, wounding your purity. You #$^#ing like it, you love this, you have to because there's no #$^#ing reason you'd keep provoking me like this when you know what I'll do to you-"

"Maybe I," a gasp to get some breath, handle a renewing pain in the back of his head, "maybe I'm just crazy enough to think that you won't do it, that you're better than that and you'll walk away and stop letting me dictate your behavior and stop taking everything so personally. I guess I'm just an optimist, to think you could be a better person-"

Edgar intended to finish that sentence with "than me" but the back of Scriabin's hand stopped him. Another sharp cracking feeling and he bit his tongue hard and he choked again, gagging on the sudden flow of new blood mix amidst the old, slippery and metal and disgusting around his teeth and down his throat, and he knew that people could swallow some amount of blood before getting sick, but he wasn't sure how much it was. He didn't think he could take much more though.

"#$^# you, #$^# you with broken glass." Scriabin hissed with rage, his entire body shaking. "I've always been better than you, you know that. That you have the #$^#ing audacity to say that to me, that you're so #$^#ing stupid that you're trying, you're TRYING to get me to hurt you, you're #^#$ing TRYING to make me angry, what the #$^# is wrong with you?"

"I don't know." Edgar looked up at him, tried to smile with one of his lips swelling. "Maybe I'm more like you than I thought. It's fun to make you angry, and you make it so easy."

Scriabin visibily struggling not to hit Edgar again. Still shaking, furious. "Liar. #$^# you. What the #$#@ is wrong with you? What are you trying to do?"

"I don't know. You're usually much better at figuring that out than I am." Feeling very light-headed now, and extremely woozy.

Scriabin let him go, and Edgar lay back gratefully, taking as deep a breath he could manage into desperate lungs. He turned his head, felt a heavy weight somewhere inside, making the movement difficult and painful. His face hurt, his tongue was stinging, and the inside of his cheek was getting irritated by everything else that was going on.

"Nngh, $%#@..." He mumbled to himself, trying to block out the pain as best he could. Scriabin sat on his stomach, stared down at him and he couldn't read his expression, not without his glasses.

He wanted to flop his arm over his eyes, but instead missed and hit the bridge of his broken nose. A shockwave of pain all at once, sudden and unexpected, and Edgar arched his back and hissed long and loud, struggled not to make any other kind of noise to indicate that this had hurt, hurt a lot. Scriabin kept his lower body trapped, prevented him from curling into a miserable ball as he intended.

"What the $^#@, Edgar..." Scriabin said slowly. "What the #^#@ is wrong with you."

"I don't know, you? #$^#." Writhed again, unable to get out from underneath him. "#$^#ing Christ, what'd you do to me..."

He heard Scriabin open his mouth to say something, but nothing further. He stayed where he was, knees pressed against the side of Edgar's chest and his weight keeping him from curling into himself. Edgar had no option except to lie there and occasionally touch the swollen and bleeding wounds with clumsy fingers.

Neither of them said anything more.