Prompt: None.
Rating: T
Warnings: Dissociation. Identity crisis?
There were a lot of reasons that I think Break had some major identity issues when he came out of Abyss. I wanted to explore those a little.
The man in the mirror is not him.
He knows this because as he faces it, he doesn't see it straight-on—it's some funny angle, lest he turns his head, and it's nothing like staring into a mirror. He knows this because the image has no light in its eye, and though he only feels darkness inside his own he doesn't remember his face looking so tired and worn. Because half its face is covered anyway and he's sure that under those bandages is the face of someone else entirely, not the symmetrical other half of his own.
And, because he isn't himself, either.
My name is Xerxes Break—he thinks it again, repeats it weakly, the same way he faltered the first time he gave it to someone else. It doesn't stick—it buzzes, hums and falls into the emptiness from its own weight. The man in the mirror tries to look determined, but instead seems that he may cry. He turns away from it and he can see it better like this; if it can see him, what does it see?
Nothing; he is certain of it.
Perhaps the man in the mirror is Xerxes Break—he is the image to which that name is attached. Perhaps the man who once dwelt in the glass is Kevin Regnard—he is not there anymore.
As for him, he is not the man in the mirror—
—he is not anyone at all.