The first time he tried makeup, he was eight. He tried to eat it.

The lipstick was bright, bright red, like a sweet or a juicy apple. Surely it would taste as good, that must be why the caretaker always had it smeared on her lips, right? And he was so hungry. She wouldn't miss a bite.

But she did. She found him as he tried to wash off the red stains around his mouth and dragged him to her room. There, she scolded him, called him horribly ungrateful, and told him over and over that it was bad to lie and steal. He wanted to ask her how he could get food otherwise but she never even paused to give him a chance to explain. Finally he shouted in frustration that her lipstick tasted awful anyway. For that she slapped him so hard he fell and cracked his forehead on her fancy dresser. It left a red stain on the wood and a dense white scar on his head.

There were never any cookies.

The second time he tried makeup, he was fourteen. A fellow military kid pointed out his scar and the others crowded around him, agreeing that it looked weird but cool. Proud, he claimed he got it in a fight rather than tell the pathetic truth, at least until another conscript from the same orphanage he was raised in laughed and revealed his secret. His pride turned to shame as the others began to tease and jeer, and he slunk away to lick at reopened wounds.

A sweet and delicate girl, blonde and blue-eyed, later found him moping in the corner of a half-forgotten playground, and managed to pry enough information out of him that she decided what he needed was something to cover up the ugly blemish. She brought him home and taught him how to hide his shame in skin-colored creams and when she was done, she patted his cheek and told him not to cry-he looked much better with a smile on his face.

When he returned the next day her parents discovered he was a soldier and demanded he leave. Their daughter made no protests, refusing to meet his eyes. He hid his humiliation with a placating smile and never returned.

The third time he tried makeup, he was twenty. It was a shock when the first wanted posters appeared. He expected the Empire to completely hide the fact of his desertion, and although the posters only had a picture and a description, his well-known features would still be evident to any soldier who came across one. Makeup smudged too easily to hide his features; if his rough white scar were revealed in the wrong place he'd be brought back in an instant, possibly-probably-with charges of treason.

So he went into an old run-down shop and selected a patterned bandana, one that would hopefully help mask his scar even if it slipped a bit. Then, just for good measure, he bought an eyepatch too and found that the disguises fit him surprisingly well, and left a bribe to get the owner to keep his mouth shut.

Despite that, it wasn't long before he found he had to run in earnest, the Empire and its bloodhounds already on his trail.