A candle is lit, palms brushing over a pallid forehead, sticky with worry and something that pricked his skin, tasting of Afraid. You needn't be afraid, he thought, the words teetering on the cusp of his parted lips before blood spills over them, seizing up his throat and choking him of communication. Distress colored a worried mien, fingers stilling at his temples before a handkerchief was pushed past his lips, footsteps hastening to exit, and he was alone once more. Turning his head towards the flickering flame, his lips tugged slightly in the corners around a crimson handkerchief, rapidly coming to drip onto sheets already stained with the petals of his viscera.
Not completely alone, echoed the fire sprite, cheeks dimpled as she wiggled flickering fingers at him from her pedestal of wax. Lifting a finger to lightly brush at golden locks set aflame, the tsarevich's eyes waxed saffron, the blood coming to a slow in its deluge at the contact. Dropping his hand at the sound of returning footsteps, though the stride had a slight stagger and hadn't seemed hastened, he tucked his hand back against his side. Rasputin. The sprite nearly flickered away in his presence, but stayed, deciding to be vigilant for the boy. She had to mind him and keep him company. The humans didn't know how.
Overbearing fingers probing at his throat and opening his bloodied mouth, beady orbs, black with something that spoke of rotten morality boring into the orifice, the fair haired tsarevich could only watch with mortified curiosity as the inspection was being made. The man clearly had no idea what to make of the phenomenon. Enigmatic as the situation was, despite the depravity of the twisted soul before him, he could not truly blame him for not understanding. His was not a human disease, and mortal logic would not suffice. Eyes having dulled to their usual shade of a somber cerulean, he gazed up at the man, the word wicked twisting painfully in his gut in a language that belonged not, to this country.
"You know, Alyoshka," the man intoned,"You've gone and made everyone worried about you." Anger was not quite the right word to explain the emotion that clawed at his throat, singeing his eyelids, screaming in his vision in absolute vehemence. But it would do. Choking back the stilled blood that had pooled in his mouth, he parted his lips to speak. "I am aware that the castle is concerned. I can't really help my predicament--" he had coughed then, blood smattering across his robes, lifting a hand to wipe his lips of the liquid. "in this state. Tell mummy I need to be let outside. Convince her. And please, if you have to address me at all, call me Alexei." Alyoshka was an endearment of his name, and the fact that the crooked soul had so much as uttered his name so familiarly had wrenched his insides, setting them aflame in its wrongedness.
"Now, now, child. If you don't play nice with me, how can you expect a favor so grand as that?" Tears pricking at his eyes, the boy struggled to keep them from spilling. He had never felt so wronged, so insulted. To be kept away from the sun that had trouble showing even when one was outside on account of this vile man's counsel, only to weaken him to the point of causing an internal hemorrhage, when all that had occurred was that a chair arm had been recklessly pushed into his stomach, was the fault of this-- this worm who had somehow crawled into the holes worn by worry in his mother's heart. And now, he was being denied the liberty to have any discussion with his family, to even be let out, on the whim of Russian scum by title mystic and by name, Grigori Rasputin. Only by bowing to his wishes would he have any hope of returning to health.
That was it. Sunken flesh and weary eyelashes made for poor dams and try as he might, even his tears had come to forsake him, spilling over near translucent skin, veined with the effort of existence, much like the crimson that had still stained his chin. His human form couldn't bear the weight of forever, not like this, choked from the sun and choked from the earth, barred from anything that gave him sustenance; the meals that he had been force fed in his bedridden state had done nothing to aid him, and it was all the fault of the wicked, wicked man he was so at the mercy of before him. Trembling, he opened his lips to speak.
