✖ — UNBOUND ;
tell me why your face haunts me and yet your voice is the only lullaby that could put me to sleep, iris
( REWIND ↺ 180330 ) it’s nothing personal. he knows it isn’t. common sense deems it so but he’s a narcissistic idiot that would say he’s not common and a fool that secretly takes everything to heart. he hadn’t been in the game for long but it was still another attempt that resulted in failure. vermillion itself hadn’t even won the tournament and he couldn’t feel at ease. a child in an adult’s body. mars isn’t like this, that he knows too; that his brother went to iris for actual emotional wounds whereas ares only dressed up smaller ones to disguise what truly ails him.
( he isn’t his brother, that truth always hurts him most. )
it’s unceremonial ; the way he often turns up in front of iris’ door but his usual abuse of the door is replaced. instead, he knocks placidly, dully, and it’s odd to himself too. probably because he has no real excuse for why he’s here again. he hadn’t for months but still he went and went and went. endlessly, tirelessly, again and again, because there was something about her that still meant comfort to him.
the truth is, being that close to iris stops the nightmares. the dreams he never tells her about after the tournament, of how he sees himself dying from that bullet, how he sees her going down less than a minute after him, how he sees disappointment etched into his brother’s face the way it used to be in their parents’ — a look he never wanted or even thought he could see from his brother. “ iris, ” he murmurs through the door. “ i know you’re awake. ”