Prompt: None.

Rating: T

Warnings: Eye trauma.

Perspective exploration on the scene where young Break is scratching at his eye socket and tiny Reim tries to stop him.

They're talking about him again.

He doesn't blame them—he must be such a spectacle, such an anomaly that any amount of gossip about him would only be natural. That doesn't mean he wishes to hear them; he wishes he could bandage up his ears and mute it all. Mostly, the words don't reach him through his thoughts, but just knowing they're there, out in the air, is already too much.

It itches, itches and burns—there's only a fuzzy blank in his vision on that side (it helps a little, the fact he can't see them moving about as they speak) but it feels like a gaping void as it continues to scratch at his mind. It won't let him forget, even if he closes his eye and surrenders to the darkness, that something's missing there. So instead he stares out the window, when he can, trying to lose himself in the scenery—it doesn't work, of course.

Their chatter seems to aggravate the itching more, much as he tries not to overhear the drone of whispers and mutters. There's nothing there—there should be something there, it's empty because it was stolen and it itches because it's empty and it was stolen because he's such a goddamn fool—

—he doesn't even realize that he's started to scratch at it, slipped his fingers between bandages and eyelids as though they could fill that burning hole. He realizes it when there are hands on his shoulders, a nearby voice chiding him (noisy, so noisy).

"Hey, you can't do that—it won't heal if you mess with it—!"

"—Shut up!"

Lashing out is just his instinct—he throws the small body aside, violence surging through his own. How dare this child (in his truly pure intentions; how nauseating) bother with him?! His body becomes rigid again, his expression fueled with pain and adrenaline and god just how much of an animal must he look like with red leaking out of his socket, onto the bandages and all over his fingers—

Through clenched teeth he growls, nearly choking on gasps of air as heat fills his good eye.

"Leave me alone… don't bother with me…!"

(why is he staring like that, why hasn't he run yet, why won't he just leave me be?!)

"Don't… don't look at me—!"