For a long time now, Tartaglia has experienced the world through a thick fog. It’s as if the darkness he’d crawled out of clung to his eyes, making the colors of the world just a little duller than he remembered- the smells fainter- the food a little less flavorful- until he couldn’t remember the way things used to be at all. A dreamlike haze interspersed with beautiful moments of vivid clarity, centered around the physical thrill and feel of battle.
Skating on death's edge is the highest high he’s ever reached. Pleasure is a close second, but even sharing a bed isn’t enough to give him that same intense technicolor rush.
At least, it wasn’t before.
Scaramouche digs into the dullness like it’s nothing so much thicker than the peel of an orange and wrenches it off, cloudy layer by layer, inch by agonizing inch. It feels like being flayed alive, like the skin is peeling off his bones, like the sun is bleaching his eyes, like pain is pleasure and pleasure is pain, and everything is so much, too much, no more, no more-
He doesn’t even know what he’s feeling anymore, just that he’s feeling in the most bloody-raw and bruise-tender way. It almost feels like he should smell copper, feel gouges in his skin, but all that fills his senses is the erratic pounding of his eardrums, the smell of burnt ozone and salty sweat-tears-cum; a marine thunderstorm somehow louder than the gaping maw always rattling in his chest, apocalyptic enough to swallow his mind whole.
Below the chaos there is a faint murmur of conversation that he barely registers. Someone is begging in a slurred drawl, cut through with yelps and whines like a kicked animal. Sickly sweet coos drip from someone else’s lips, as if they’re trying to soothe it before putting it out of its misery. If he could string together a single coherent thought, he might find both disgustingly pathetic. ‘At least die with dignity,’ he might think. Or, ‘At least don’t pick on weaklings, finish it quickly.’
Then he hears that cooing voice say his name, soft and slow and melodic, “Tar-tag-lia~”
And realizes the victim is him.
The thunderclouds overhead break open, drenching him in a torrential rain of ice-cold humiliation and shame. The stinging in his eyes isn’t sweat. It’s tears. And for what? comes the vicious self-accusation. He hasn’t broken a single bone, hasn’t lost any limbs- for Archon’s sake, he hasn’t even lost any blood. He’s not weak. Indignant fever-hot anger rises up in him like bile.
With a surge of renewed energy, he yanks on his restraints hard enough to make the headboard creak from the strain. Like a cornered animal, with wild-eyes and teeth bared, he finally barks out a hoarse, snarling, “Stop.”