He had never been a vain man, but he found himself looking into mirrors far too often these days.
It was unbecoming, for a man whose job it was to remain in the shadows. Most of the time he didn't even have a name, and his codename was changed frequently to make it more difficult for people to determine his actions even if they manage to pierce the impregnable security that was Cipher.
Still, it hadn't stopped the people who had seen him a few times, his underlings mostly, to come up with a name for him to whisper when they thought he couldn't hear. Skull Face, it wasn't particularly creative, but it was too late to stop it now. The word had spread; far enough that even those not working under him had whispers of "Skull Face".
He'd made some of his men pay dearly for leaking that information. Once there was a word for him, it was all the easier to find a correlation, to give him an identity to be uncovered and used against him
Still, he had to silently admit he liked the name. It was true; after all, a skull was all he had left.
Which was why, when he looked in the mirror, he was disgusted by the lie he saw before him. The experiment with the parasites was meant to make him stronger, make him more capable than he already was. That it had done, but it had also turned his face into something… normal.
It wasn't his face, that had been burned so many years ago, burned several times after. Had it not, in time it would have ended up like this, but it never had the chance. This was the face of a man who had a family, a country, a man of peace.
He was not that man. The parasites that infested him, helping him, dared to show him this visage. For a moment, he wondered if Code Talker had done this to spite him.
Aahh, but he couldn't blame the man. No, he simply hadn't put the pieces together, he hadn't thought the parasites would cover his skull, try to create a facsimile of what he had lost. How could he expect the creatures to understand? His face was not broken, and covering it merely brought back the pain, dead nerves alight in a pain that was all too real.
The stove's fire burned. Nothing like the fire he was used to, but it would suffice. He laid his head into the fire as if it were a nurturing embrace. He didn't feel his flesh sear away, the only pain was the one he had endured most of his life. His eyes clouded over as the fire did its work, dissolving his flesh away.
He remained there, blinded, until he was satisfied. He lifted his head from the stove top.
The corneas were a priority of the parasite, bred to ensure the more useful functions of the host were maintained to prolong it's life. It wasn't long before his sight returned and he could look upon his work.
A thin veneer of skin, some of it liquefied and mixed in with blood that oozed down his face. It was as if he had been born again
Not that it was something so fulfilling, it was keeping something as it should be, and that was all. The parasites would fix it again, as they did. Each time, though, it took them longer. Eventually, the parasites should adapt and learn to leave his skull as it was.
He was tired of hiding, was he some beaten wreck that hid his wounds behind masks, makeup and laughter? No, let the world see the pain he had suffered with its own eyes.
Perhaps then it would realize just what kind of monsters it had created. That to atone, it would have to suffer along with them.
