Ulysses. How would you like to help me with something?
It wasn’t a pretty sight.
The metaphorical hole in the wall he had been living in looked dreadful. The floors were glossy with grime and muck, the room itself decrepit and dark. The air was stale, the walls threatening mold that would force him to uproot his fragile stability once more because he refused to subject his child to anything more than she already was. The only furniture in the place was an ornate dark desk, carved and carved and glossy with varnish, that looked to be way out of his budget. It must’ve been a gift. It had baskets for incoming and outgoing paperwork that still floated his way despite his exile and drawers for days. One of his own feathers, likely from his tail given his lack of wings, sat in an inkpot. Other than that desk, there was the basket of food hidden away in the ceiling, a precious resource he had to keep carefully protected, along with a little claw-footed bathtub that he had to pay for with acts that still made his skin crawl accompanied by little bottles of bubble bath, conditioner, and soap. The only other thing was the pile of sticks, blankets, and hay that he felt awful for everyday, a bed for his child and occasionally himself. His own feathers helped pad it.
He sat on his knees in the corner, a bucket of soapy water before him. The feathers on his forearms were damp, a cup of dark brown sludge with enough caffeine to stop a human heart and a bucket that seemed to be prepared to catch nothing but stomach acid was at his side, and the upper half of crown-appointed uniform that refused to die or be lost sat in a lumpy pile next to him seeping many colors of viscous liquid, his waistcoat, collared shirt, sash, and cape stained from some unfortunate event.
He was covered in blood, the white feathers on his chest soaked with every color but his own blue. It was splattered on his face, on his swords, which, too, were in the pile to be washed, on his hands and neck and legs. His head feathers were out of their usual functional half up, half down situation, the white waterfall of feathers cascading down his bruised, bony back, joined as well by his comb flattened against his head. His tail trailed behind him on the ground, brought around to his side. Discarded feathers were everywhere, plucked out in his remaining perfectionism or simply fallen out. All the eyes, on his tail, head, and occasionally on his torso, looked exhausted, void of vitality and light.
His bones were visible - not poking out of skin, no, but stretching said skin over themselves. He was the picture of one of Dr. Sable’s success stories, starved to that beauty that made people flock to tuberculosis. Oh, the romance, the tragic beauty! Beauty. Right. He didn’t feel beautiful. Sure, everyone else bought the facade he put up, but when one’s throat is raw from stomach acid and one’s mind is raw from every tragedy the world has to hit one with, it’s hard to have even a false ego. He scrubbed the blood from the feathers that tried to hide those bones, trying not to take out his frustrations on his feathers given that even that he didn’t want to look like a plucked chicken.
He was despairingly tired. Alas, the world didn’t bow to his whims and he still had to clean himself, his clothes, and his swords. As he choked down the ‘coffee’ that was keeping him going, he wondered if he could just burn off the blood by allowing all of his demonic force to go free. He decided against it. He didn’t have the energy to find some secluded place in which to do it nor did he want the attention of demon hunters or poachers or those lunatics who still thought they could become best buds with the Almighty through violence or any other nasty beasts that roamed his godforesaken earth. He finally finished ‘drinking’, if it could even be called that, set down his cup, and dipped his face just below the water to try and get the blood off his face. His stomach rumbled, with the flies beginning to buzz soon after. If they crawled into his arms, or really went anywhere other than his stomach, he was pretty sure he was going to do bad things.
As he brought his face up from the water, wiping the blood off his face and in the end only making it worse, a shiver ran through him. Someone was here. His comb flared open, pupils panicked, though the rest of his eyes as well as his main set, which had a glow so dim that his pupils were visible, couldn’t be bothered to react. His hand went to his sword. He hadn’t heard anything-
He hadn’t heard anything walk up. Lords, was he really that out of it?
Whatever it was was standing in the doorway. He knew that much.
He crossed the floor so fast he practically flew, silent as he did so, having a few seconds of time in the air before getting hold of the shirt collar of whatever it was and sending himself the direction he came in by pushing off of the doorframe with one leg. With the collar of the person in tow, he landed flawlessly back on the floor without sound, throwing the person to the ground on their back as he did. He had his sword hovering above their neck, tail flared open and blocking out everything beyond it, face only about a few inches from that of whoever he’d thrown. One of his feet had a death grip on the ankle of who he’d thrown, metal-covered talons digging into the skin. He’d done this so many times he was practically on autopilot, which helped with the head rush he’d gotten from standing up so fast. Despite his exhaustion, he tried put on his most fierce expression.
