He jolts up from the bed, trembling in something akin to terror but with a closer likeness to insanity. In a single moment he's up and standing, sleep completely forgotten as he catches sight of himself in the mirror across the room. The blankets are stained and dripping with blood that he can't identify, and instead of tripping over them as he leaps away from the bed, he tears right through them. His fist sinks into the mirror, through it, and into the dry-wall behind it. The shards embed themselves into his skin and trails of blood run along his arm and drip down onto the floor, hidden by the darkness that consumes the room like a palpable smog.
He rapidly draws his arm out of the wall and covers his frantic eyes, stumbling back until his knees hit the bed and he sits. Warm blood, soft, sensual to his broken mind, terrifying to his heart, trickles onto his thighs and spreads over his face as he pulls at his hair and the glass gouges his angular face.
"What kind of America am I?", he shouts, screaming a question that the whole world knew the answer to.
From behind him the bed lurches, the old wood of the bed creaking in lieu of springs. The mattress is the best that can be bought, even stained with blood. Cold hands stroke his sides, up and down, nails scraping throbbing red streaks across his ribs. He arches back into the abusive hands, and an icy chest meets his back.
"You are very silly tonight, da?".
The hands pick at the glass, not pulling but pushing, not slicing but twisting, until the rivulets of blood are long and thick, and the scent of blood wafts around the room. The nimble but still so very cold fingers are coated in blood, with which they use to draw a solid red X over his heart. The beating of his heart entices the other, and one red tainted hand rises up to pet at his cheek and his mouth, stroking gently at lips scarred over from harsh teeth and bitter punches. He licks at the fingers, not entirely sure if the blood is his own or not, so lost is he, until the blood is gone and the fingers cover his mouth and pinch his nostrils shut.
A momentary sense of panic overcomes him, but fades away as brilliant eyes of violet fall into his sight. He can see the pretense of love and kindness, and the anger and hatred and desire behind it.
His heart drums in his chest and the eyes are drawn to the X, and soon he feels teeth biting at his skin, nipping and kissing and ripping into him.
He tries to interact with the other, but his mind is numb and his body aches as his vision flickers to and from darkness. But as a nation he won't die, and therefore he doesn't care. He wants to trace the lines of muscle above him, and he doesn't question when he moved onto his back, just knows that it happened.
His heart is hammering by now, and in a very detached way he realizes this, but he's too consumed with almost-there thoughts and heavy-but-light regret to acknowledge it. He remembers when this thing that they had wasn't about hurting each other, and they had a friendship and something like love, but it's very hard to think about now. He's long since lost his voice to change their routine, their familiar display, their everyday, ordinary exchange.
His frozen lover has known this all along, he thinks. Known forever that this would happen.
The mattress must be irreparably stained by now, he's sure. The ice-like hands have been removed from his face, and now hold something worth less than the blood on his own hands. He raises them up and holds them close to his eyes as his chest burns and his heart is far, far away.
His arms drop onto the bed and remain there, and he just watches. Watches as his heart is slowly pried from his chest, still beating, and held in fingers that dig into it cruelly and without mercy.
He wonders how much his heart is worth to the other, and wonders why those violet eyes bother with the effort of tearing it out when they know that they already own it in a way that no one else has or ever will.
He had never meant to turn out so wrong, he had reigned in as much of the evil within himself as he could and directed it in other ways. But he also knows that he's not the only wrong one, he isn't the only one at blame... Though he can own up for so much of it.
Those cold hands are touching him again, stroking the edges of the gaping whole in an almost tender way, easily mistaken for actual caring. In the beginning they had both been kind, where it had changed? Neither knew. But one day they found themselves plotting and deceiving, and he had never meant for things to turn out like this. He had never wanted to be this shattered, fragile, unpredictable, insane.
He had nothing left to give anymore, and only felt himself slowly bleeding out with the passage of time. Much like how the blood fled his body now, actually. The violet eyes are watching him again, and the cold fingers link with his and pull his hands up until his elbows rest comfortably on his stomach and his palms face upwards. Something warm is placed into them.
"You will crush it one day, da?"
He somehow doesn't have the strength to nod, but the other seems content with his silence. They fell into a silence, and a stillness, and both could almost forget their shared madness in the peace of it. Their thoughts wander, and he happens to wonder if the new toy of the other has realized the game yet. Probably not, with how deceptive that cold is.
He curls his fingers in, slowly, until they've covered part of his heart. As much as he hates it, he also loves it, because his heart is his people. He will always love his people. Lately though, they haven't loved him, even as they forget to realize that they are what makes him.
His heart is plucked from his palms and bounced in those cold hands, jerking his thoughts back to the bedroom and the blood and the seductive agony. He questions the other with his eyes, and soon his question is answered as a freezing cheek nuzzles his palms and pushes them down, and then those violet eyes are calm again, and the hate is less potent. His heart is returned, bloody and chilled. His blood is colder now, and he knows that he's slowly freezing to death. It may take years, perhaps a century, but it will happen.
And if he must freeze... Then the other must burn.
There was blood on both of their hands, after all.