Drabble 1

He couldn't have been asleep for very long, and now that he was awake, he wasn't going to move. His limbs were stiff from falling asleep with them tucked up against his chest, and moving them would only aggravate bruised muscle, anyway. Exhaustion still hung about him like a persistent fever, bringing the same kind of unpleasantly warm sensation, like the lingering effects of burning your tongue on hot food taking up what only seems to be a permanent residence in your mind. Sleep struck him as pretty useless, though, even more useless than it had before; he'd just been too tired for conscious thought to have played much of a role in his decision before he got into bed.

He could tell that he would run into the same problem soon if his dormancy went on for much longer, so he opened his eyes, only to find that achieving more than half of this was impossible. One eye was swollen beyond the task, and the sudden attempt at pushing his lids wide caused an irritated throbbing to radiate onto the fast of his face from flesh marked with startling variations of lavender and violet. He jammed both his eyes shut, though once again, this proved to be partially counterproductive, and he forced down deep, shaking breaths despite having no appetite for air. An abrupt stop midbreath came with a resolution to not worry about this anymore, because it wasn't as if pain made it any worse. He wouldn't dwell on that, because he was going to hurt, and he couldn't do anything about it, other than sit here and take it. Which was what he deserved, really. He would stay awake, and think about all that he had done and hadn't done, because his responsibility was to be the smartest possible. It didn't matter if sometimes, that hurt as badly as anything else.  There was no point in dodging around mistakes, if he twisted the knife in himself, then he could take it out sooner, that was his personal belief, and that was more or less exactly how he thought of it. His own failings were faced with the most extreme consequences, because he wasn't very well adjusted to them, and he firmly held that he wasn't going to need anyone else to work with him.

So his eye stung, and so did some of his other bruises, but he didn't call out. He reaffirmed his decision with a vague thought, pale among its currently darker fellows, even if he didn't recognize them as dark, just normal.

“No one could hear me, anyway.”