a. p. h. Mercy

AN: Blah, blah, etc. etc. angst. Reeeead.

"Do you forgive me?"

Purple eyes glinting with a trace of tears look into mine. Violet, like the royal color of nobility past.

It suits you. You can be so terrible, inflicting mental and physical scars. And you can be so kind, dropping the whip from your bloodied hands, burying your face in your gloves as you sob. You are scared, so you take it out on me. You're scared of disappearing. Of vanishing one day, and no one missing you.

I sometimes wonder if you even notice the same rite we go through every time this happens. You hurt me.

You stop.

Then you ask for forgiveness.

I don't know. I don't even know why you do this. Or maybe I do, and that's why I keep on going with this.

Maybe it's all so easy in your childish heart. It will all be erased, you believe, like snow angels after a snowstorm. Just forgive me, take my sorry, put it all behind, one last chance...

Or maybe its all a torturous game to you, more cruelty to add to the growing drift.

My flesh is still sticky with blood no amount of bathwater can cleanse. It will take hours of painful scrubbing, and even then I'm not sure if it will ever all go down the drain, the crimson tendrils smoke in water.

"Will you? Forgive me?"

You are on your knees, trembling like Latvia. You are supposed to be a big man, the world's largest country. But all you seem to be right now is a somber child, and all that matters to you is my mercy. As long as I forgive you, everything is all right.

Maybe this is the reason I stick by you, no matter the pain that comes my way, no matter the winters I must freeze in. Maybe I stay because, every time you flash me a rare, true smile, not the fake plastic kind or malicious ones you usually have, I remember.

I remember and still see you as an insecure child grown up too fast. A man who's seen and suffered so much pain, it's unreal. A person, not just a country's persona, who needs someone in order to cling to that one last shred of sanity.

The cycle is endless. Doubtless, it will continue this way, again and again.

I'm trapped.

But I take your ice-cold hand in mine nonetheless, squeezing the palm reassuringly. Your eyes light up with hope, just like your desperate wish for a world of peace and sunflowers.

"You forgive me?"

I avoid your joyful gaze. I do the one thing that seals this eternal cycle. I end the ritual.

"Y-yes. I forgive you."

I forgive you.