❝ here is the sink to wash away the blood . ❞
RICHARD SIKEN STARTERS. | not accepting .
hands on the porcelain she lead him to, shoulders hunched and neck bowed down in a graceless manner unfit for a child of royalty; tilt of the head following only to turn around and catch her worried face. a grin washes over his features for a moment, its prickling on the edges of his mouth reminders of the soreness in his face. ( people punching him is not something he particularly enjoys, his face too valuable for it to be used for boxing practice. ) “i think i might have gotten some of it on your living room carpet,” he observes, eyes fixing on what he said : drops of blood littering the floor like breadcrumbs on a fairytale’s forest ground, making a clear path towards where he stands. “and i’ll give you an address to send the dry cleaning bill to. it is my blood, after all.”
then, shirt sleeves are rolled up to the elbow, pale skin downwards and up to his fingers littered with scar tissue like constellations fill a night sky, turning into a meteor shower the closer they come to his nails, peppering the skin like craters around them, turning it more ashen than light. it is the part of himself he prefers to disguise most for the public, knowing they’d fear a burned fox more than one with his nose up in the sky. or reject, that is what he still fears most: what would happen if he fails, what would happen if they’d tire of his face and his visits and his tries to make his country a better, a more peaceful place for everyone. what would they do when he would not be enough? swallow him whole, scar him to the point of nonrecognition, burn him till all his tries / successes / failures become nothing more but the ash they walk on. ash to ash, trial to error. blood to blood. ( zoya will not like this, he muses, as he scrubs and scrubs until he feels raw. )
“thank you, karen,” is what leaves the golden man’s lips, gratitude in earnest lacing his tone as the blood rinses from his skin into a red waterfall. he watches the water swirl in the sink, red to pink to transparent, and vividly remember all the time he could see his own red sink into muddy grounds he stood on, he fell on, he fought on. could see it sting his clothes and his eyes and his hair and always, always, always his skin, settling into unformed scars like birds festering on a dead body. that is what his blood is to him: all the crows finding their potential prey in him. it doesn’t matter if they are american or if they are nothing at all, simply for his spilled blood means that they found him and hooked their claws into him. saints went through kinder martyrdom. maybe his will be this, futile ideals and futile ways to make his country happy, to make it listen, and most of all to make it live again. he will die for it, he is sure. his kindness does not leave him, though it pales when the monsters crawl towards him. “i am deeply sorry for the ruined carpet, just so you know. it matched the couch so well.”
