my skin still feels (my mind still fears)
inspired by this post by @andr0mache!
TW for brief/somewhat graphic descriptions of injuries
Her skin is still damp and coursing with warmth as she finishes getting ready, buzzing in a way that makes her aware of every point of contact the borrowed clothes she wears have with her body. Itās a grounding feeling, a reminder that sheās here, sheās real. This is happening.
Itās not an entirely welcome reminder.
She drags her towel through the condensation on the bathroom mirror then stands back, regarding the woman in the reflection, not sure sheās the same one she saw the morning before.
She doesnāt break eye contact with her reflection as she fastens the gold chain around her neck, but watches the cross that hangs from it as it falls to the hollow of her throat. Her eye is drawn to the raised line of scar tissue above it.
It was her saving grace, Nile supposes, as she ponders her reflection. At least, it had made the resurrection look somewhat less miraculous. Though, in honesty, she wasnāt sure what good that did her. She had still faced the threat of being studied like a specimen, an object to be researched in some laboratory far away from anything sheād ever called home.
She shudders to think what might have happened had Andy not found her as quickly as she did.
Her hand goes to her throat, fingernails grazing over the scar there that runs ear to ear, a thin line, easily hidden in the right lighting.
Again, she guesses sheās lucky in that regard. There are less questions.
It had been easy to hide, right after it happened, when menās fashion was dominated with high collars and ruffled cravats that covered the puckered scar tissue that rings his throat like a grotesque necklace.
He thought it needed hiding, back then. Thought it was something akin to a brand, screaming his shame and punishment from the rooftops.
Maybe he still thinks it does that, but even before circumstance started to force him to bare old wounds for all to see, Sebastien came to realize that the scar was not put there to be hidden, it was put there as a reminder. The other wounds he sustains will heal without leaving a mark, but this one, the one that made him into the man he is now, will always stand stark on his skin, calling attention to the fact of his life that heās had to get used to over the years: that it will not end until far after heād wanted it to.
The marring of his skin forces him to remember the people heās left behind. Forces him to remember that he has this gift he did not ask for and cannot share. A gift that imposes grief and guilt on him, weighing down his conscience like a sodden quilt.
A gift that dragged him, too tired to put up a fight, into an endless well of loneliness.
He doesnāt really think about it anymore, the thick line of raised tissue that runs jagged on his chest. Itās just become a fact of his life, an afterthought, really. He barely even registers it when he sees himself in the mirror.
But some days, when the world-weariness grips his bones and the weight of all his years on this earth causes his shoulders to sag, it makes its presence known. It becomes obvious against his skin, angry, insistent on being acknowledged. It tears its way into his mind, demanding he yields to the memories of who he had been, before.
NicolĆ³ doesnāt recognize that man, anymore. The one who had been filled with so much hatred and rage channeled through a veil of prejudice that had been tied over his eyes too young for him to know it wasnāt supposed to be there.Ā
The days when this scar burns his skin are hard, theyāre days when it feels like all he can remember is every horrible thing heād done with that rage, all the unnecessary lives that fell at his hand before the one who couldnāt had so tenderly removed the veil and let his eyes adjust to the light.
There is a time and a place for fury, he knows, but the wound over his heart stands as a reminder that it exists with those who have done harm, and that to be kind to all others is a strength in its own right.
The scar is easy to forget, easy to let go unnoticed. He sometimes wonders why that is, why he can ignore the one mark on his body that has lasted over his lifetime. The one wound still evidenced on his skin, the proof that he is not invulnerable.
Maybe itās because heād like to forget how it happened. When he looks at it, cutting across the front of his torso, he remembers the warmth of his blood on his skin, the weight of his guts spilling into his hands, the horror he felt looking into the cold stare of the warrior who did it.
Remembers that manās shock when he stood again and drove his own sword through his chest, directing every word of righteous anger that heād never had the courage to say aloud into the strike.
Yusuf is not a man who wishes violence upon the world, but he is one who has been forced to know it as a means to an end by those who would rather hear his screams of agony than his words of peace.
So perhaps the scar is so easy to forget because, for him, the moment it was made was not the moment that made the man he is today, the one who fears little and does not hesitate to speak the words that the world needs to hear, that man had been made when heād first picked up a sword.
The scar on his stomach, just a dark line that runs across his skin where his body had stitched itself back together, is instead a reminder that there will be people who listen when he speaks, a reminder to not give up, to not waste the opportunities that he is granted to find those people.
All she remembers is a gasp, when she runs her fingertips over the patch of discolored skin on her abdomen. She doesnāt remember if it was the last act before her first death or the first act of her new life, but she remembers the ragged breath as it was dragged from her lungs.
She wonders if sheāll forget that, too, one of these days, replaced by newer memories.
She has so many memories, too many memories, and sometimes it feels as though sheās forgotten entire lifetimes, boiled down to just flashes. The taste of one thing, the feel of another, sensations that hadnāt existed on the earth for centuries now. She sometimes wonders how many identities sheās forgotten, how many women sheās been before the one she is now.
She wonders how many scars would litter her skin if she had one for each time she was killed and born again into a new person. Would her body be able to tell the story of her thousands of lives without her ever having to speak? How easy would it be for her to be vulnerable with the story of so many deaths written so clearly on her skin?
As much as she wanted to build impenetrable walls around her heart, as much pain as she had endured from letting people get too close, she was so desperate to be known that it hurt. An ache deep in the recesses of her heart, tattooed on her bones, permanent but invisible, a longing so big it was almost impossible to be seen.
But, oh, how much she needed someone to. If only to remember the person hidden in stories untold.
