kinda au ish where gyasa doesn't come back and turn into hyper gyasa and get his ass kicked, he just runs away and the plot goes on without him (a.k.a. gyasa post-mushrambo battle drabble dumbest drabble ever written ok) inspired by when I gave myself a haircut like an hour ago enjoy friends
The whole town was dirty. Literally caked in dirt – the buildings were made of mud, the walls, the floors, dissolving into the citizens, utterly inescapable, the only water coming into the surrounding structures through old copper piping and ornate fountains dispersed throughout the town. It's not as if the patrons of Zortown minded highly, though, because the heat and dirt was just as much a part of their lives as air conditioning and Lysol were to humans. So every morning, when he woke up and crawled hungover and damp with salty sweat off of his thin, bony mattress to the bathroom, he had to sweep the caked dust off of the mirror. It was just part of the routine, he didn't mind. But this particular morning, the morning after the fight, he felt confused. It took him a minute or so of staring into a dusty mirror, head pounding and muscles aching, wondering why he couldn't see those squinting royal green eyes staring back at him, at his bare, mutilated chest, at all his flaws.
He turned on the faucet, splashing his face with the crisp, brown slurry that passed for water before his hand swiped, almost on its own, carelessly across the mirror. Blinking hard at the failure in his reflection, he grimaced, bending down and slurping up some water, immediately spitting it out. His biceps twitched as he leaned over the sink, his arms barely able to support his body weight, his stomach twitching with anger and frustration. The idiot glaring at him who was so close to winning, but lost not out of pride or hubris, but out of pure, unadulterated weakness against his enemy. The failure who thought he could face up against a legend. A failure.
He rubbed his face hard, the purple marks against his cheeks melting into the black, nicotine-like stains of exhaustion under his eyes. He hated himself. He wiped his nose with his index finger, picked at his peeling, dry skin, toyed with his greasy hair. His hair! He closed his eyes, letting the dreadlocks fall off his fingers, imagining that purple-haired sissy taking a sword to his head. The front of his head pounded with the dull, flustered sensation of blunted memories of his unwanted haircut. He opened his eyes, tugging on his once again long dreads, using both hands to pull hard. Pathetic. He kills himself to fight a champion and the only thing he thinks about is his hair.
His hair! That ridiculous force holding him down, obviously, he thought, his cognition slowly transitioning to instability under the strain of his loss. That's it, he thought, it's got to go. He tipped open the cabinet attached to the mirror, reaching quickly to the second shelf to grab his razor. He often wondered why he had it when he reached in to grab his toothbrush or a bar of soap, though now it seemed like a blessing more than anything else. He slammed the cabinet shut, and slowly, methodically, climbed into his bathtub, sitting on the floor. His thoughts of anger and self-hatred had almost been silenced, his broken body taking over as he stared at the straight-edge razor in his hands, listening to the running water he had left on cascading into the sink. He gripped the razor in his right hand, shaking and drained, a haphazard chunk of hair in his left. It's got to go.
He sliced, with a curt, unexpected scream, dropping his hair into the tub as the blood poured onto his shoulder and down his tight, muscular chest, into the cuts and bruises he was trying so hard to redeem. He took another handful, and with another slice and another scream, let his teeth ram into his bottom lip, drawing a gorgeous blue from his lip and a stream of clear droplets from his eyes. The left side of his head fell numb as he grabbed, sliced, screamed, grabbed, sliced, screamed, surrounded by dead blonde snakes in deep blue pools. And before he knew it, his shoulders felt empty, his head light and numb, blood trickling across his forehead and into his eyes, leaving him blurry and disoriented. Tremors ran though his body as he grabbed the rim of the tub, slipping in his own fluids until he was left lying there, quivering, a pathetic, weak failure, finally cleansed. He felt himself drift off, his migraine consuming him, as the blood stopped flowing and his hair began to scab. He was almost okay. No one cuts my hair, he thought, almost peacefully, no one but me.