Whip
It was a product of the hateful words and actions of the bad, the wrong, the evil. It stung, like nothing he had ever felt before. It was sharp, and yet the dull pain that came afterwards was like a fire spreading through his skin, an ache that defined the first, bitter crack of pain. For a second, he almost faltered. The rain stung his skin, adding a crippling, relentless pelting, blood streaming down his arm from the broken skin. How hard had they intended to strike her?
Few times did Leonardo feel anger like this, so intense and volatile that he no longer saw past and future. There was only now, there was black and white, and nothing in between. There was no place for excuses and understandings. There was right, there was wrong, and there was justice. Something like rage, but much more like ice, seared his skin and chilled him to the very core.
He was deaf to their exclamations of surprise, of shock and heated anger. He was deaf to the scuffles and the hum of dull metal as it was drawn from warm bodies and cold sheaths. He heard only the silence of his concentration. And the cries. The cries from the depths of Central America, of the people whose village had been destroyed and ransacked, whose babies had been left to die, whose men had been slaughtered and women raped. The cries of the girl behind him, soft and stifled, full of the kind of pain that no one should experience, let alone a girl that young, that vulnerable. Yet whips had carved out her back into a carnage that mirrored the horrors of war, the horrors experienced by those too weak to defend themselves. Horrors that should never be repeated again.
When he raised his eyes, they were empty.
His hands as they wrapped around the hilts of his katanas were steady and unwavering, his gaze unflinching as he brought down the sword of the law, slicing through skin with a justice of the people, not of the state, of a righteousness born out of the screams of the innocent. His hand was guided by stars that had long turned black and fallen from God, and he cut down those who had fallen from grace, whose sins were beyond forgiveness.
These were no youths, pushed into gangsterism by poor circumstances, and for one, Leonardo had no interest in hearing their side, their stories or excuses. They were the law, and they misused the peoples trust in the worst way possible. And if they were prepared to bring down whips on the backs of children, then he was prepared to bring down a blade on theirs. And there was no remorse left to sting like the lash on his skin.
A/N: I do not have much time to write at the moment, but I hope to start of drabbles again, to keep up some practice. Hope you like them!