The tears fall, they're so easy to wipe off onto my sleeve

[lord_wizard]

Who: Felix + Mildmay, Ashura, Dextera, and Thamuris
What: Felix handles the appearance of his stains like he does most things - trying to hide.
When: Anywhere from Saturday 4/13, after the Chimera meeting, to before the removal of the stains (please specify)
Where: Room 626
Rating: pg-13

He couldn't have left the tower quick enough. There were too many eyes and too many uninvited questions, but nor could he bring himself to outright run back to the room. That only would have brought him more attention, as much as he wants to.

He slams into the the apartment tearing off jacket and shirt as he makes his way to the bathroom, twisting desperately to get a look at his back and reaching back to touch. He feels no pain, and realizes that his scars are just as they've always been, except not. They were a silent and unseen reminder of his past until now. Now they stood out and called attention to his misery - to the sordid nature of his past - no longer able to be hid under the veil of cloth. Frantically he tries to wipe the blood away, but it only wells up again, the blood on his hands only making things worse rather than better. He tries to bathe, and the waters run red with the residue of his shame, but the stains themselves never leave.

Eventually he gives up, letting the water drain but staying right where he was was, curled on his side in the expanse of his marble bathtub as his scars left smears of red over the surface, face buried in a gathered up towel, which is slowly soaking through with the blood from his hands.

By the next day he's made attempts, but after the marks soak through more than one jacket, he limits himself to just trousers and a blouse. It doesn't much matter. He refuses to leave the rooms anyway, nor makes any overtures to speak to anyone. He keeps to himself - a morose huddle at the dining room table (the only furniture he can't stain by sitting on it), pouring over the journal and the available maps of the continent. His only solace is that maybe, must maybe, this will stop once they get into the Dead Zone.

Comments

A Little after the Chimera meeting, action;

[wishmadeinfire]

Once Ashura had recovered from his own shock, adjusted to the constant itch around the hole in his chest and the stickiness of blood soaking through every inch of him, he makes his bloody way back to his and Felix's apartment. He knew where he would be hiding, and certainly Ashura wished to hide too. People knew he had been at war, back home, but having the evidence of his deeds splattered across him, the charred hole in his chest... it was to much.

He opened the door with shaking hands and made for the bathroom, hating that Agni and Sybil were curled up in a corner of their couch, terrified. He gulped and looked to the fireplace. Without a thought, he tore off his robes and tossed them into the fireplace. With a thought he set it ablaze, blooding hissing as it and fabric were consumed.

Naked, covered in blood, the scorched hole in his chest still letting off wisps of smoke and charred flesh glowing like dying embers, he made his way into the bathroom where Felix was curled up.

"Darling?" he asked quietly, feet making sick, sticking noises as he walked across the tile, leaving bloody foot prints behind.

[lord_wizard]

Given how things had been with them the last two weeks, his response might have been to throw the endearment back in Ashura's face. But he had no energy for that now. He, in fact, does not answer at all. Rather, he buries his face deeper in towel as if doing so would allow him to disappear entirely.

[wishmadeinfire]

Ashura watches his form, debating, and then finally curses himself. Mad or not, fighting or not, this was not the time to hold onto petty grudges and hard words and actions. With their souls bared like this...

He slid into the bathtub with Felix, wrapping his arms around the other, not caring if the man hated him at the moment or not. He needed it, and deep down he thought Felix needed it too.

"Felix..." he whispered. "Felix, look at me, please."

[lord_wizard]

He goes rigid, but doesn't actively fight off the touch, wanting and hating it at the same time. He shakes his head at first, but the denial crumbles enough to let him turn his head and peak out, showing only his blue eye filled with anguish. It helped to keep Ashura just out of focus - both his face and his stains softened by the filter. It was the only armor he had left at the moment.

[wishmadeinfire]

He reached up with a shaking hand, stroking the red hair as he had always been wont to do. He hated the look in the other's eyes, hated how he was curled up in the tub like this, hiding from everything.

"Felix... don't hide from me, please," he whispered, resting their foreheads together, hardly worried about getting the other dirty with blood at this point. "Do not face this alone..."

[lord_wizard]

He barely noticed the blood at this point, to be honest. It was what it represented that bothered him. A road map to all his failures as a person.

"Wouldn't that be better? What good did knowing ever do you, except the pain of finding out what I really am?"

[wishmadeinfire]

"Felix, I would rather know who you are, than a lie," he whispered. "I know the things you have done, the things you have told me. And I still love you. Do you so easily forget this?"

He cupped the other's face, watching him, pleading with the universe that Felix would believe him, because Ashura spoke the truth. He had loved the enemy before, and he loved a man that was broken now. But broken did not mean he would be thrown away, not when Ashura was broken too.

[lord_wizard]

He glanced away rather than hide his eyes again, though he wanted to, partly because it always hurt, deep down, when Ashura used that word. A word he could never bring himself to say, even when he felt he might lose him anyway, through his own stupidity.

"Why? You abhor my actions. Can you really care when all you see when you look at me is those mistakes?"

[wishmadeinfire]

"I admit, at times your actions... do not sit well with me. But neither do I think you do them from inherent cruelty either," he whispered. "I know, underneath this monster mask you have built for yourself, that you have made yourself believe you are, is a good man," he whispered, turning his head gently back to look at him, fingers tucked into his hair.

"You have done good things, Felix. Why can you not see this?"

[lord_wizard]

Felix did look at him his time, but there's no less pain in his eyes.

"Because it never matters. I will always be petty and angry and cruel to the people I care about. Every time I move on with my life, something like this happens to knock me right back down..." he said, gesturing at himself, at the marks of chain circling his wrist, now much more visible on his pale skin than the dark cloth. The worst of it was that many of those times he'd willingly aided in his own destruction, because not so deep down, he knew it was something that he deserved.

[wishmadeinfire]

"It only knocks you down if you let it, Felix," he whispered. "And yes, you can be petty and cruel, but you are not all the time. You can be gentle and sweet, I have seen it, felt it." He shifted them in the tub, his arms around Felix, taking a position they might have if the tub had been filled with water, as if they had been enjoying a quiet moment of intimacy. "You organized a way to create shields to protect the people here, you've protected people before, used your magic for good. Why is you focus so much on the darkness in your life rather the light you have brought into it too?"

[lord_wizard]

"That's all I can ever see. That's all most people see when they look at me, as soon as they know. Like every smile in the Mirador suddenly turned to poison the minute they found out about who I really was. And I don't think I ever really knew who that was until that day myself. A creature of darkness. Of his molding. I am what I am because he made me into it and I...I can't ever be free of him..." he explained, blurting out the words even though some of it likely didn't make sense to Ashura, given that the only way the king had even known of his former master's name was through a dream so long ago. He closes his eyes as a sob clawed it's way out of his throat.

[wishmadeinfire]

He took his face in his hands, tenderly though they were sticky with blood. He rested their foreheads together, looking into his bi-colored eyes with his golden ones, pain and love swimming in them.

"Felix... you are not at the Mirador. Those people are not here. I am, and believe me when I say that I see the good inside of you, and you are certainly no monster," he whispered quietly. "You are a man, and the only monster is the one who did these things to you, who twisted you so much these are the things you believe. He is the monster. You just need to start believing in my words, and let go of his."

[lord_wizard]

Felix presses his lips together to keep from crying, taking a few long moments to compose himself, trying not to collapse entirely under the weight of what hung over him. The one topic that he avoided at every turn.

"It's not so easy. Malkar was everything to me, for a good part of my life. He took me from that place and made me what I am, through any means necessary. Sex, drugs, pain, magic. I feared and loved him both, and he never missed an opportunity to tell me I was stupid and worth little more than my skills as a whore, and then he terrified me into silence. Why do you think I never talk about it?"

[wishmadeinfire]

"Felix... the more you hold onto his memory, the more you believe the things he said, the things he tried to make you believe. But he is not here. He has never been here. I am here now, and I love you, and you have never been a whore to me and you are certainly not stupid," he whispered, brushing the darkened red hair and gulping. "Please, Felix... believe me."

[lord_wizard]

He believed Ashura believed it of him, and that made the possibility he was going to disappoint a cause of concern. Though it certainly always had been one, given he'd been aware of his own failings when it came to relationships and had wanted to do differently - and had, in fact, lead to their engagement, such as it was. But something so deeply ingrained was likely never to leave him. It was a much a part of him as his tattoos. Getting rid of the rubies was meant to help shed him of that, but Thamuris had told him even that wasn't going to last.

"I want to," he replied, voice thin, "I really do." It was the closest he could get to asking for help. Felix knew, if he had any chance at that, that someone would have to stick by him long enough to get that to sink in. And being himself, it wouldn't be easy. Just because Mildmay had no choice didn't mean Ashura had to.

[wishmadeinfire]

Ashura might have had a choice, but he had chosen Felix long ago, and it was not in him to give up on the other man, even though it would be the easiest thing to do. But how could he? He loved him, for whatever reason he loved him. He loved him for those amounts of bravery and kindness he saw in him, and because if no one else loved Felix, who would? Certainly he did not love himself, and he deserved a bit of kindness in his life. So he would love him for those little bits of light lost in his darkness, and hope one day he could be the other to bring the others out.

"Well, that is good that you want to," he whispered, stroking bloody hair and pressing their foreheads together, closing his eyes for a moment, though it made the sick stench of blood that much stronger. "I am glad to hear you say that..."

[lord_wizard]

There wasn't much more he could fight it, after that. He wanted to be better, though the doubt that he could throw off the chains of his past was still heavy on him. He could only push so hard.

Instead, he turned to bury his face against Ashura's shoulder, back heaving with a heavy sigh as he wept silently against him, tears running down to mix with the stains.

[wishmadeinfire]

He held him, saying nothing now. What else was there to say? Fingers tangled in his hair, tucking him in close, trying to offer comfort through his presence, the security of his embrace, though he was no thick muscled man. It was all he had to give.