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13th metal . spam & text . cw: self-harm
[ He winds long bandages around his arms before he goes to take a shower, covering himself from elbow to palm. He makes it look more like gauntlets than anything else, to minimize any questions asked, moves furtively and quickly, dodges out as soon as possible. And he longs for the days when the servants had to bring him a bath, and he didn't care what they saw - let them gossip, let them spread the word that he hurts himself. Let it add to the terror they see in him.
Here, it only adds to his shame and frustration. The voice is gone, and he shouldn't need to control himself this way, but the longer he resists, the greater the need becomes, and he always gives in eventually.
It seems wrong to him, anyway, that his arms are mostly bare of scars. That his chest, too, is unmarked. That the other evidence of his violent life is erased, leaving his skin as ordinary as a child's. Sometimes he remembers the scars and he feels the temptation to bring them back.
He has also often been stepping into the gardens and the greenhouse lately, mostly just sitting still and watching the plants. He recognizes their progress. Tries, though it makes him feel a little ridiculous, to murmur things to them sometimes. To talk to them. ]
[ text ]
If you have scars, are they important to you? Do you think they matter?
[ video ; private to Charles ]
I told Megamind you wouldn't object to me attending school. I knew it was the kind of thing that you like.
Here, it only adds to his shame and frustration. The voice is gone, and he shouldn't need to control himself this way, but the longer he resists, the greater the need becomes, and he always gives in eventually.
It seems wrong to him, anyway, that his arms are mostly bare of scars. That his chest, too, is unmarked. That the other evidence of his violent life is erased, leaving his skin as ordinary as a child's. Sometimes he remembers the scars and he feels the temptation to bring them back.
He has also often been stepping into the gardens and the greenhouse lately, mostly just sitting still and watching the plants. He recognizes their progress. Tries, though it makes him feel a little ridiculous, to murmur things to them sometimes. To talk to them. ]
[ text ]
If you have scars, are they important to you? Do you think they matter?
[ video ; private to Charles ]
I told Megamind you wouldn't object to me attending school. I knew it was the kind of thing that you like.
[spam]
He rolls his head to the side, to search the Emperor's face.]
To keep control.
[That's the easiest answer, anyway. Refusing to say anything crosses his mind, but he holds the impulse at bay.]
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Control of what?
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It was... a way I resisted the voice.
[Leaving open the question of what it is now, but Zane doesn't know the answer to that himself. He hopes the Emperor doesn't ask.]
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What would you do if you were uncontrolled?
[A different question, possibly just as uncomfortable, but mild, logical, the absence of judgement like the receding emptiness of tundra.]
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He lifts himself and settles on top of the Emperor, chin resting on folded arms low on the Emperor's chest.]
I might hurt people.
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Particular people, or indiscriminately?
[It's not an impulse he really understands - his anger has always been targeted - but he knows enough about Zane to consider it.]
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[He was too overwhelmed to parse it out at the time, but in retrospect it seems obvious. He wouldn't be surprised if Zane reached a similar conclusion.]
We hurt ourself too.
[They've reached the point where not telling him feels like concealment. Which he doesn't actually have a problem with, but this might benefit from the sharing.]
Pain is very...primal. It can override many more complicated mental states.
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[He is surprised to hear the second part, though. A blink, and a slight retreating - not to pull away, but just to see the Emperor a little better.]
...yes.
How did you do it?
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It's a very...formless sort of pain, visceral and inescapable.
[It was awful, and also exactly what he needed. Physically hurting himself would only have prompted the symbiant to consume him further, leaving Zane's feelings untouched.]
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The blood is important to me.
[So it probably wouldn't work for him. Interesting to know that the blood habit isn't something that would... transfer, so to speak. Just the pain.]
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Now I watch them heal, sometimes, too.
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Because the pain was the only point then.
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[He tests the ideas out, speculative and precise.]
Now you need a distraction and something else. Stabilization, as the flesh mends? Or symbolic proof that you can?
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[After a beat,]
In general. It doesn't have to be about this.
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More of what I have here. Less of what I had at home.
[Most simplistically put.]
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You're never going back there.
[Which is, admittedly, because he's dead, and not something the Emperor has any actual control over. This does not make him even slightly less intent on this conviction.]
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No. I'm not.
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Good.
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[Though none of them will have his father.]
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