Chapter Text
Life and Death, the inevitability of life coming to the end and the incentive to live life to the fullest; that's what makes someone human, right?
If that was the case, then Brian was human no more. He had lived, he had died, he had tried to live his life to the fullest before he passed, and he did pass. Everything was going right, it was all following the plan. Then he came back, and he came back wrong.
His eyes slowly blinked open, and he was laying on the ground of that run down hospital. Just seconds before he had heard his own skull split open, and he had felt his spine splinter apart. His lungs dragged in air they shouldn’t have been capable of breathing. His heart stuttered, faltered…then obeyed. Confusion washed over him in sickening waves, quickly replaced by a crushing awareness that he should be dead. He remembered falling. He remembered the certainty of it.
He remembered ending.
Alive, but not healed then, he noted as his chest rattled taking another breath. He blinked again, and an impossibly tall figure stood looming over him. He had no face, no expression, just emptiness. Something inside Brian stirred, he felt fear no more.
“HOW INTERESTING..” The entity’s voice crackled through his skull like dull static. Tendrils from its back slowly reacted towards him, and Brian's body recoiled causing pain to shoot through him. He couldn’t do anything as the entity scooped up his broken body and carried him away as his brain shut itself off from the pain he was feeling.
.
.
.
Brian resurfaced slowly, like a corpse drifting upward through the dirt.
He didn’t remember losing consciousness, but now he was painfully aware as consciousness slammed into him. His body wasn’t being jostled anymore. Instead, he lay on something cold, hard, and humming faintly beneath him. The air smelled wrong, damp, electric, and sharp enough to sting the back of his throat. His head ached in ways it never had before, and sweat coated his body. He felt like he was overheating, a thousand fires underneath his skin.
The room around him was impossible. Walls seemed to pulse at the edges of reality, hazy and unfocused, like his vision couldn’t quite agree on where the corners were. Pillars of static flickered in places that should have been empty space. There was a slight sensation of the world spinning around him, causing nausea to settle in his stomach.
“Where…” His voice cracked, warped. Even that didn’t feel like his anymore.
He tried to move. His pain spiked exponentially at first, sharp and brilliant, but dulled quickly into a manageable throb, as if something else inside him decided the sensation was unnecessary. His limbs felt heavy, foreign. He didn’t feel real. A shudder crawled down his spine.
He wasn’t alone.
The walls around him warped in and out of focus, as if he was looking through water, and his hands trembled as he slowly sat up. That same static burrowed into his skull, a low hum building behind his thoughts. It wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be. IT was there. A presence.
“YOU ENDURED.”
The voice wasn’t spoken. It settled into the fractures of his mind threatening to splitter it further.
Brian’s breath hitched. He pushed himself upright all the way, his hands trembling. He scanned the room more closely, concrete floors, rotting beams, a doorway too tall for any human to sensibly need. It looked like he was in a basement. He heard the creaking of the walls as something approached. His pulse quickened. He held his breath, but felt no fear. He didn’t feel..anything?
He couldn’t feel afraid.
And that was something that frightened him. He was always afraid before. Fear had kept him alive this long. “Where… where am I?” he tested quietly, though he wasn’t sure why. He doubted talking would matter, and he doubted he would get an answer.
“NOWHERE. AND EVERYWHERE.”
The tall figure materialized at the edge of the dark, not walking in so much as becoming present. Limbs too long, posture too still. Its blank face tilted slightly, as if examining him but not with amusement, and not with cruelty either. With purpose. The static thickened. He clutched the sides of his head, teeth grinding. Pain assaulted his skull and he sharply inhaled.
“You should’ve let me die,” Brian choked out.
“YOU DID.” The words screamed in his skull.
The words sank into him like hooks. A tremor tore through his chest. Memories flashed, Tim shouting from above, threatening to kill him, the slip of his boot, the rushing wind, the sickening crack. A life ending. Yet here he was, awoken like some broken puppet pulled upright again. “Why bring me back?” he rasped.
The Slender Man’s head twitched, almost imperceptibly.
“I DID NOT.”
Brian’s breath caught in his throat again. How was he alive if- what brought him back? His mind was sent reeling. A tendril slid across the floor toward him, stopping inches from his foot. Brian froze. His body wanted to recoil; something deeper held him still, rooted him to the ground.
”YOU UNDERSTAND LOSS. ENDING. OBEDIENCE. YOU CAME BACK.”
Brian’s breath stilled as the air around him thinned, warped. He clutched his head in his hands, every bone in his body seemed to tremble.
“YOU WILL BE REMADE.”
.
.
.
.
Time stopped meaning anything.
Brian didn’t know how long he’d been in the place Slenderman dragged him to, if it was a place at all. Minutes, hours, days? Weeks? Months? Had he been there for years? Had he ever been anywhere else?. Everything bled together, the world shifting between endless forests, rotting hallways, and empty voids that no human mind should see. He dealt with stuff no human mind should be able to handle, but he was human no more. Sometimes he woke to the cold bite of stone beneath him. Sometimes he woke up standing, as if he’d never slept at all. And sometimes he woke already screaming, his throat raw for reasons he couldn’t remember.
The training started immediately. If it could even be called training. The first “lesson” was simple.
OBEDIANCE
A crackle tore through his head. An order, a command too sharp to ignore. Brian refused on instinct. The next second, a force slammed him to the ground so hard his vision spat white. Tendrils coiled around him, squeezing until his ribs bowed and something in his shoulder gave with a sickening snap. He writhed, choking on air he couldn’t pull in. “STOP-” he sputtered. The pressure increased. His fingers scrabbled uselessly against the dirt. He didn’t give in. Not then. Not EVER.
The creature released him eventually, letting him gasp, tremble, and feel the fire spreading through every nerve. A lesson. A warning. Over. And over.
Next.
ENDURANCE.
Sometimes Slenderman forced him to run. For hours. Days. Through forests that rearranged themselves in mocking loops, through corridors that stretched until his legs buckled. Every time Brian fell, the Operator was simply there, dragging him upright with a tendril hooked beneath his ribs or around his throat. He often appeared and disappeared without a trace, but he was always there. Always watching.
“Get- off—”
He hissed the words through clenched teeth, even when he knew there was no point.
The static flooded his mind. His body convulsed. He kept running. When he collapsed, something unseen yanked the pain out of him just enough to keep him conscious but never enough to heal him. Never enough to be mercy. Never enough to raise any flags for Brian.
Strength. Precision. Silence. They were next.
Slenderman would appear inches away without warning, forcing Brian into combat that wasn’t combat. Just survival. Brian learned quickly to just survive somehow. Tendrils lashed out; Brian had to dodge or die. He learned quickly. Pain was always the consequence. A snapped limb. A concussion. A partially crushed rib. A burning sensation like electricity ripping through his still bruised spine. When he made a mistake, the punishment was immediate and brutal. But he learned. And he learned quick He survived longer each time. Stood faster. Fought smarter. Slenderman offered no praise, but the absence of pain became its own reward. Even then, Brian resisted. Brian Thomas, the hooded man, he was not one to break.
Some spark inside him refused to break, no matter how many times Slenderman forced his mind into static-soaked submission. When the entity pushed him to his knees, he pushed back to his feet. When the voice in his head commanded silence, Brian bared his teeth, gasping curses he barely had the strength to breathe. He would not break, he told himself. Every act of defiance cost him. Sometimes Slenderman lifted him off the ground with all his joints screaming under the pressure, holding him suspended until his vision blurred. Sometimes the entity invaded his thoughts, shredding through memories as if turning pages in a book, forcing him to relive his death again and again until Brian couldn’t tell which fall was real. Sometimes, he forced up childhood memories and left him to deal with the flashbacks.
“SAMUEL— DONT-“ He heard the echo of his mother screaming.
“Read.”
One lash
Two lashes
Three-
He dug his nails into his skin trying to forget again. Over and over.
But he didn’t break.
Not fully. Never fully.
He held onto something stubborn and human inside him. Maybe it was pride, maybe anger, maybe the last piece of Brian Thomas that hadn’t been rewritten yet. He knew once he was gone he was never coming back. All the more reason to hold on. Slenderman noticed. He always noticed. And it adjusted its training accordingly. The entity began isolating him for long stretches. No sound, no warmth, no time, just darkness so dense Brian forgot he had a body. Then, without warning, it would drag him back into harsh light and demand movement, obedience, perfection. His muscles shook, his vision doubled, and his mind frayed around the edges. It was working. Still, he resisted. And the creature seemed almost… intrigued by that resistance.
On what might have been the thousandth day or maybe it was the same night he first arrived, Brian collapsed in the dirt, too exhausted to lift his head. Blood dried in thin lines beneath his nose. His limbs twitched uncontrollably, misfiring from overuse and overload. A tall shadow loomed above him. Brian’s voice cracked through his dry throat. He forced a snarky grin on his face despite the weakness he felt. “Haven’t… broken me yet.”
Silence.
Then
“YOU WILL.”
Not triumphant. Not anger. Not a threat. A promise.
Certainty.
A tendril slid beneath Brian’s chin, forcing his face upward.
“ALL THINGS BREAK.”
A pause.
“SOME SIMPLY TAKE LONGER.”
Brian tried to spit at it. Tried to laugh in its metaphorical face. He didn’t have the strength. The tendrils lifted him anyway, dragging him back into the dark for another round, another trial, another day of agony and shaping.
It was brutal chiseling away of the man he had been. The breaking of Brian Thomas. It would take a long time to break him. The worst part was Slenderman seemed prepared to take as long as necessary.
.
.
.
.
Brian had endured everything, the endless running, bone-deep pain, pain inducing memories, mind-shredding static, but the moment Slenderman forced him to the ground felt different.
It felt final in a way he couldn’t explain.
Tendrils pinned his wrists and ankles, stretching him across the cold floor until his joints strained. His chest heaved. His breath rattled. His vision blurred, but his glare stayed sharp. He wouldn’t beg. Brian Thomas doesn’t beg. Slenderman stood over him, a towering silhouette, its blank face tilting as if studying an insect that just refused to die. A long, thin limb extended, it was no blade, no tool, just the creature’s own sharpened appendage. Brian knew what was happening. He thrashed and squirmed as much as he could but quickly went still.
He felt the first puncture.
It wasn’t a clean slice. It was slow, deliberate, dragging heat across his skin in a circle just over his ribs. Blood welled in thick lines, warm and nauseating. His muscles tightened involuntarily, body arching upward in pain. He gritted his teeth so hard his jaw clicked.
He wouldn’t scream. He bit his cheek so hard he thought he might’ve put a hole through it just so he wouldn’t.
The second cut crossed the first, carving the X through the circle. Each stroke felt like fire peeling him open. Tendrils held him still when he writhed, when his body tried to flee from itself. The pain burned cold at the edges, spreading into something sharp enough to make his vision vibrate.
He tasted copper.
He refused to give it the satisfaction of his screams.
By the time Slenderman finished, the shape carved into his flesh was jagged, brutal, unmistakable. A claim on his soul that sent anger through his body. Breath shaking, Brian glanced down at the blood pooling beneath him.
“…That's all you’ve got?” he rasped. A challenge. A defiance.
Even though the defiance was small.
it was real.
Pure.
Human.
And Slenderman reacted. Harshly.
Tendrils slammed him into the wall with such force the air shot from his lungs. Pain detonated through his ribs, something cracking audibly. Before he could recover, another tendril lashed across his back, not slicing him open like his father had done years ago, but hitting with a blunt, crushing strength that left him twitching.
Then again.
And again.
The punishment wasn’t meant to kill him.
It was meant to break the part of him that still fought.
The static invaded next. It was deep, invasive, and violent. A mental pressure like a hand squeezing his brain, pushing into memory, into instinct, into will. He tried to claw at the ground, tried to force his body to move away, but another tendril pinned his hand until he could feel his bones grind together. He felt his mind falling apart. He felt the last shreds of resistance inside him buckling. And that hurt more than the pain radiating from the mark on his shoulder which only grew worse, because he knew it was over. That it was final. A claim. Brian Thomas was no more. There was no getting away from this.
He choked back a sob; the most sound he’d allowed in months. The creature leaned closer, its faceless head inches from Brian’s. Brian wanted to punch or kick him but he had no energy to. And somehow, breathless and shaking, he still managed,
“Go to hell.”
It was the last truly human thing he ever said.
“ENOUGH.”
A final tendril pressed into the raw mark, sending a lightning bolt of agony stabbing through his entire body. He convulsed helplessly, the world dropping out beneath him, thoughts scattering like shards of glass. That was the moment it happened.
It wasn't the claim.
it wasn’t the pain itself.
It was the second he realized he couldn’t stop this. Couldn’t win. Couldn’t resist anymore. Something in him snapped.
Not loudly. Not dramatically. Quietly. Like a thread pulling free from a seam. He knew it was over. He let his body go limp, not resisting, not fighting. Waiting. He slowly, and quietly forced out the words that sealed the deal, “yes, master.” His voice was raspy, hoarse.
Barely audible.
Almost unconscious.
But real.
Slenderman didn’t reply. It simply lifted him gently, too gently for the amount of violence he had shown Brian. Slenderman cradled the broken, trembling body that had fought for so long. Brian didn’t struggle. Didn’t try. He didn’t let himself feel anything.
Brian Thomas was no more, not human, not free. What took his place was something with no name, no will, nothing. Just obedience.