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

[kethedammit]

So Mildmay hobbles in. He's trying to tilt his head over to the side, so the bloodflow doesn't go in his eyes and mostly runs right through his mouth. When he breathes, little droplets of blood fly out from under his nose, and talking is probably gonna get worse before it gets better. But this was all of his second septad, and he remembers how to deal with it best he can.

Now, the bloody hands business, that's the real killer. Jashuki's getting slippery as shit.

And then, the bathroom, and Felix looking like someone kicked the life outta him. Poor bugger. Mildmay'd do something kind, speak softly, but he knows Felix hates that shit when someone else is watching. So he just sits on a nearby stool and thinks about Tamsin Stone-Sentry in the stories. He tries to be like what he always imagined she must've been like. Shit, he hasn't thought about that since his second septad. Freaky shit.

"Hey," he says to Felix. "Figured I should check in on you."

[wishmadeinfire]

Ashura nodded when Mildmay came in and took a seat. His fingers brushed over Felix's cheek gently and he rose, kissing his forehead despite the blood.

"Do you want me to leave you two to talk?" he asked him, trying not to hover, but worried nonetheless.

[lord_wizard]

"Please," he says, not reacting to the affection, too numb for much else and not especially comfortable with that in front of his brother, in any case, and then waited silently for him to be gone.

[kethedammit]

Mildmay looks just to the left of Felix's head, face impassive. He, too, waits for Ashura to leave. Not out of any distaste-- while he had his hesitations with the man, wariness had not yet blossomed into outright hatred-- but, well, Felix wanted him out.

When Ashura left, he turned back to Felix. He wishes he could still spit proper, as a mouthful of blood is no fun time at the carnival, but, well, that went with the scar. He'll live.

"Anything you need?"

[lord_wizard]

He almost laughs, but it's a dark impulse he doesn't give into, and he doesn't want Mildmay to think he's laughing at him, even if it seems like such an inadequate question under the circumstances.

He whats with morbid fascination as the links of chain start to trail over his skin again.

"Not unless you can make this all go away."

[kethedammit]

Mildmay figured it was better than asking are you okay.

So he shrugged, and tried to adjust the placement of his hands on Jashuki. With all the blood on them, one hand just slipped right off, and between the wood and the skin and all the blood in between, made a gruesome squelching noise as it went.

"I ain't the hocus, here," Mildmay said, preferring to focus on anything other than the blood on his hands-- literally on his hands. The scar, he was used to, even if he wasn't happy about it. But the hands... He was unable to keep himself from shivering, just slightly.

Fuck, what was it that Felix said about telling him shit? Ain't no time like the present, Milly-fox. "Y'know," he says, with obvious, stilted effort, "I ain't never cut my hands up, while I was, uh. When I was doing a job for Kolkhis." Which is to say, offing people.

[lord_wizard]

"I think, in this case, that it's symbolic," he answers morosely, though with little pause over the implication, because he knows and doesn't care. Had been the cause of one such incident, in fact. In demonstration he holds out one of his hands, also covered in a layer of blood, as well as smears of black dirt. He'd never cut himself either. Had not, in fact, lifted a finger directly to harm anyone in the physical sense. But the meaning was plain enough to him, who was trained to see metaphor in everything.

[kethedammit]

"Well, yeah." Even Mildmay can see that. "But your back, and my damn face, they both opened up."

[lord_wizard]

"Yes, but I don't think it's about--" he started, then actually looked at Mildmay straight on since the meeting had started.

"Powers...Mildmay, your--"

But again, something he couldn't finish saying, given he was sure his brother was more than self-conscious enough to be aware of what he looked like. Instead he slid over enough to grab a towel and hold it out for him. "Here."

[kethedammit]

Mildmay isn't sure if he should be offended that Felix apparently hasn't looked at him since the meeting. But what would getting angry help? Mildmay takes the towel, and dabs at his face, but it's a half-hearted gesture for something that doesn't do much in the first place. "Used to do this all the time. 'M used to it."

[lord_wizard]

"That's not the point. You shouldn't have to be used to it. You shouldn't have to go through that again, simply because this place cannot simply let things be," he nearly shouted, outraged on his brother's behalf, even if he didn't seem to care, and it perhaps it also riled him that Mildmay could be calm when he so clearly wasn't.

[kethedammit]

Mildmay didn't flinch when Felix raised his voice. He didn't respond at all. He sat very still, and thought about how he could reply. There were a few poor choices that sprung immediately to mind, but, again, Felix had asked Mildmay to be honest about himself. So... well.

"I mean... I know how to deal with it. What I ain't never figured out, though, was how to deal with folks poking at my face and asking me to frown so that they could see what it looked like." 'They', of course, being 'Kolkhis'. Mildmay hopes he doesn't have to say that plainly. He hopes Felix will just understand what he means, and further, Mildmay hopes Felix will see the point of his words. His attempt to impart his thoughts on the subject in the form of a story from his past, to show he understands that it's harder on Felix than Mildmay, and that he trusts him with a gentle divulging of sensitive details.

One thing he does know, how Felix always remembers ways to insult and wound: Mildmay has given him a weapon in good faith. He hopes Felix's mood isn't quite so bad as to use it.

[lord_wizard]

Any venom he might have slung at this point would have been directed at anyone but Mildmay, and in any, he remembered his promise to try to better about these things. The comment was probably meant to make him feel better about the situation, but the issue was the same - his brother shouldn't have to be used to carrying that around.

He clenched his fists in frustration and rested his forehead on them, half to keep the blood from getting all over his face.

"Just because I've been able to hide all this from the world doesn't make it fair. It just makes me a liar, like always. And now they're going to ask, when I might have been able to keep it quiet...about this," he gestured at the chain marks connecting them now, "and about you. And I...I just...I'm sorry...you got dragged into this whole mess."

[kethedammit]

Mildmay is a bit flabbergasted by this conversational salvo, but, of course, he doesn't let it show. He just leans forward, a bit, putting more weight on his hands-- still dripping with blood from the wrist down-- grasping to Jashuki. Powers, he hopes the wood won't stain from all this.

"Shit, Felix, d'you really think you did this?" How best to follow that up? Hmm, well, what worked last time? Gentle, kind chiding with no weight behind it. "Even you ain't that vain." Well, he's plenty vain, surely. But not enough to think himself the cause of everything.

...Not unless he can punish himself for it, but that's another matter.

[lord_wizard]

He shook his head, as much denial as trying to search for the way to articulate his feelings on the matter.

"Not this," he said, finally, voice shaky with emotion as he glanced upwards, "but...would you even be here at all if weren't for me? It happens like this all the time. One person arrives and then it pulls in people connected to them. And you know it listens. It would only take a stray thought or a word to encourage it."

[kethedammit]

Mildmay considers this, attempting to filter it through Felix's obvious bias for self-punishment and blame. He's probably right, but it seems too neat, for it to be Felix's fault. If nothing else, Mildmay reasons, at least Felix is telling him this shit now, instead of making him figure it out on his own. So that's good.

"Yeah, but Felix... you didn't wanna come here yourself, right? I mean, if you jumped in knowing it'd drag my sorry ass here, that'd be one thing, but-" Mildmay coughs a bit, sputtering, as too much blood has gotten into his mouth from all the talking.

He stands, walking carefully to the sink, and spits out a mouthful of blood, coughing slightly as he tries to keep it from getting down his throat. He remembers how, still. Strange, what stays with you. When he's done, he goes back to sitting once more, careful as ever not to slip on the blood and tile. "Sorry." That couldn't've been pleasant to watch. But back to the matter at hand: "Anyway, you were here for two indictions before I showed up."

[lord_wizard]

He tries to hide his wince at watching all that. He's not certain what can be done about it, other than watch his brother stoically suffer through it like he did everything else, which was punishment enough for him in it's own right.

"That's true. I just..." he gestured a helplessly, dripping blood on the floor and not particularly caring at this point.

"I started to think of this place as another form of my exile, and I had already done that to you once, when it was something you had no stake in, other than the misfortune of being bound to me."

[kethedammit]

Mildmay listens silently, sympathetically. "Ain't a misfortune," he says at once. Best to clear that up immediately. "And your exile's in Craloxa. I still got the papers'n everything."

[lord_wizard]

"What is it, then?" he asks, curiously, both bitter and vaguely hopeful at the same time, "As far as I've seen I have done nothing to improve your life since we met."

[kethedammit]

"So?" Mildmay shrugs. "That ain't your job."

[lord_wizard]

"I would think this would make it my job," he said, gesturing peevishly at the chains again.

[kethedammit]

Mildmay can be just as peevish. He's tempted to be-- he's tempted to throw it all right back in Felix's face-- but that's just the blood getting to him. The thought that everyone's looking at his face even more than they do already... he puts the thought aside before he does something stupid with it.

He chooses, instead, to answer Felix directly. He's tried indirectness, but it hasn't worked. "Y'know what I was doing, before I met you? I mean, I ever told you? After I left Kolkhis, but before everything else?"

[lord_wizard]

That pulls him up short a little.

"You mentioned being a burglar," he said, cautiously, always caught off guard by any gesture made to share information about himself, "though never in much detail." And he had never asked, because to do so was to openly acknowledge their common past, which he denied as strongly and as much as Mildmay's general existence. But that had been back home.

[kethedammit]

"Cat burglar." It's different, but Felix knows that. Felix would know, should know, everything. Which is why they are where they are. Metaphorically dragging his feet, Mildmay continues. Blood sputters from his mouth as he speaks, dribbles down his chin, bubbles with his breath. He tries to ignore it. Focus on the story. Focus on the unrealness of it. Be calm.

It works.

"I didn't do nothing for nobody. I mean, I had jobs. But I wasn't anything to anybody. I could'a died, nobody'd've noticed... except maybe Cardenio, and just because he'd've fished me outta the Sim."

[lord_wizard]

It's hard to watch Mildmay struggle with this. Hard to not try to intervene or maybe just look away. But he owes his brother his attention. In the very least, after everything, he can manage that.

He doesn't think Mildmay's assessment is fair. He didn't get to know Cardenio well, but he suspects his friend would have cared. But that isn't much solace. It's the same reason he's agree to binding by forms int he first place - he knows what Mildmay says is true. The Lower City was a harsh place for anyone without a somebody around to keep them afloat. That that person should be him was patently unfair to them both, but that's how it was.

It shows in his eyes, that he understands what Mildmay has told him.

"I really did miss you," he says, weakly.