The ceiling is dull, colour taken by the years of ruin and harsh weather and all the tiles missing now, only the barest remnants of beige marks showing where they'd been stuck to it.
Beneath it Fai shifts, brow furrowing as his breath stutters and he wakes up, gasping.
He shoots upright, eyes wide as he immediately slumps forwards again, curling in on himself, forearms over his knees. His spine curves and straightens with every breath as his eyes narrow in shock at the sudden intake of light.
"Fuck!" He gasps, hands going to his eyelids as he rubs them in confusion.
There's a few moments of quiet again as he just holds his palms against his face.
"Fuck." He whispers, voice quivering as he sits on the utilitarian bed, as unyielding as the desert's bedrock.
Fai lets his arms slip around himself, hugging himself together.
He catalogues the strange new sensations and tries desperately through the pain and nausea and confusion to piece together what has happened.
He remembers pain, more intense than that he feels now, and shouting and so much red.
Like blood and anger.
Like his eyes.
He stays there for as long as he can, silent sobs held in by his hands.
Fai chokes on his tears, trying to swallow the anger and the betrayal and the remorse. Remorse and failure and hate and how could he-
No one visits. He's glad for this at least.
Eventually he manages to uncurl from his ball though he doesn't want to- he really doesn't want to. Small crescents have etched themselves into his skin of his palms.
There's something calming in the sharp sting of the new wounds.
He is distantly aware that the scratches are oozing blood but can't seem to find a reason to care yet. There should be one somewhere.
He should care- he thinks.
Instead he thinks that it's what he deserves for everything he's done.
If he had just died he could have atoned through it. If they had just let him die he could have-
The magician sits, staring dully ahead. His legs stretch out before him, limp between the blood soaked sheets, and him hands rest like dead spiders in his lap. The turtleneck top feels tight, stiff with dried blood- mostly his-, and constricting.
He can't bring himself to care about that either.
Somehow he seems paler than before as he looks in the bowl of water beside him.
His face is washed out by trauma and it contrasts with the red around his eyes, swollen from crying.
The tracks still linger on his cheeks which shine with guilt, guilt, guilt, guilt, guilt.
There's a buzzing in his head as he turns from his reflection which only increases in pitch.
Guilt, guilt, guilt, guilt.
The wall opposite is dull, unmoved, stone.
Guilt, guilt, guilt, guilt.
It is still opposite him. It sees nothing and hears nothing.
Guilt, guilt, guilt, guilt.
The stone is uncaring, flat, dead.
Guilt. Guilt. Guilt. Guilt.
Fai looks down and sobs openly, clenching his teeth as he tries to take it back, lock it back inside.
The irrefutable proof is there. In sight and sensation but not in spirit- never in spirit.
He bites down on his tongue hard, feeling the imprint of every tooth as it digs into the muscle.
He deserves as much.