Page 182 of Discordant Cultivation

“Play.” Vale insisted. “Do you know any of Kieran’s songs? Play one, I won’t even make you sing. Show us why you thought you deserved what Kieran has earned. I’ll even help you.”

The sensory deprivation hood hung from Vale’s other hand.

Alex’s eyes widened and he began shaking his head back and forth. “No. Not that. Please not that—”

“Play,” Vale said again, and pulled the hood down over Alex’s head.

The fabric muffled Alex’s immediate sobs of panic. His fingers fumbled across the strings, producing a mangled attempt at melody that might have been recognizable once.

“P-Please just play.” Kieran’s voice was barely audible, thick with exhaustion but carrying an edge that made Vale pause. “He should p-play properly. If he’s going to do it, he should d-do it right.”

Vale turned to study Kieran’s face—the tear tracks on his cheeks, the post-seizure confusion in his eyes, and underneath it something else. Something harder. Something that looked almost like Vale.

“You heard him,” Vale said softly, turning back to Alex. “Do it right.”

Alex tried again, his fingers finding the opening chords of 'PoisonSaviors'. The melody emerged hollow, technically present but emotionally empty.

When he fumbled a chord change, Vale’s foot connected with his broken leg.

The scream that tore from Alex’s throat was inhuman, pure agony that the soundproofing swallowed whole. His hands jerked away from the strings as if burned.

“Again,” Vale said simply.

Alex’s shaking fingers only produced muted notes.

Vale grabbed his fingers from the neck of the guitar and bent them backwards, not hard enough to break them, but close.

“Again.”

“It s-s-sounds empty,” Kieran whispered from behind him. “No emotion. Just t-technical notes. H-he doesn’t understand what the song m-means.”

You killed for us. You’re watching me hurt him and you’re not looking away. After tonight, we’ll never be separate again.

“Help him with his posture,” Vale said. “Show him how you sit when you play properly.”

Kieran paused, exhaustion and confusion on his face. His eyes moved from Vale to Alex’s hunched, trembling form, then back again. Something flickered across his face—uncertainty, maybe reluctance, maybe something else entirely.

But then he stepped forward.

58

The weight of blooming into something new; A flower made of trauma, photosynthesizing you…

Kieran

The moment Kieran’s hands touched Alex’s shoulders, reality crashed back with nauseating clarity. The post-seizure fog lifted just enough for him to process what he was seeing—Jericho’s body twisted at the bottom of the stairs, Alex restrained and hooded, Vale watching him with expectant pride.

What am I doing? What is this?

His lower lip began to tremble as his gaze bounced between Jericho and Vale’s face, panic rising in his throat like bile. But then Vale’s voice echoed in his memory, calm and certain:

I know what’s best for you, sweetheart. Trust me to take care of everything.

Vale knows. Vale always knows. He’ll handle this.

Kieran’s head throbbed with familiar post-seizure pain, made worse by Alex’s mangled attempt at ‘Poison Saviors’. The melody was wrong, hollow, missing every emotion that had made the original beautiful. It grated against Kieran’s skull like nails on glass.

He’s not sitting right.