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#04 – Pain
She ran her eyes remorsefully over his scar, her heart paining as she realized how much he had sacrificed just for her.
SL: Pain
He recognised the remorse twisted up in her eyes, a regret so familiar on his skin that it made him feel uncomfortable just to look at her. It may have been the colour of her eyes, that her hair was a scarce shade of brown lighter than Blue's; it might have simply been the way she gazed at Ruby.
Silver had lived through this before, a decade earlier perhaps, when everything around him was built from the hardest of ice and the only warmth he could feel came from Blue's gloved hands. Sapphire shared the same expression his sister always had back then; a sad, sad frown tacked onto her pale face. It reminded Silver of days surviving off two meals and five hours of sleep, made him relive the crying and the fear he thought he'd left behind once he became a teenager. The one thing that always dogged his mind was how he had been unable to hoist Blue out of her past misery.
Sapphire leaned closer to the bedside and held onto the young boy's hand like a lifeline. She refrained from crying and talking, but Silver could read her eyes well enough to see the anxious terror written at the back of her mind.
When he was seven and Blue was nine, he'd already learned to understand his sister through the eyeholes of her mask. It was a fundamental ability of his, something which he did not take pride in, especially in a time like this.
Ruby was bandaged up snugly, the scar on his head hidden underneath a thick gauze and tape. The doctor had reassured them that he would be fine after a week's rest, prescribed pain-killers and antibiotics like a grocery list before leaving them as they were. It did not stop Sapphire from worrying, from blaming herself over and over again at the bottom of her heart – that much, Silver could see. He tucked his hands into the pockets of his pants and inched up to the chair Sapphire had occupied for the past few hours.
"He'll be alright," he mumbled. Sapphire bolted upright and turned to him. She overcame the initial surprise of hearing his voice, sniffing and blinking the tears out of her eyes, before nodding in eager agreement.
And maybe, somehow, Silver finally did something right. He couldn't comfort Blue back then (would never be able to do it now); but at least he could say something to a young girl with brown hair and pretty eyes.