Prompt: None.

Rating: M

Warnings: Violence, mental instability, angst trash, sadism, blood and gore mentions, just. Generally proceed with caution. Oh, and also implied BreakReim.

Sometimes I just need to hurt my muse.

He's breaking apart at the seams. His body is strung tight, but no amount of tension can stop the cracks from spreading in time—a facade built on another facade built on another is crumbling under the strain of gluing one together and another and another, and memories are playing games with his heart and mind as though conspiring to destroy his very perception of reality.

Standing stock-still he stares at the ground, surrounded in silence except for the occasional drip of blood or water—air cuts at his ragged lungs as he breathes, tearing his insides open as his outside barely maintains form, taking such shallow breaths as though they may damage him a bit less (no, he is already damaged enough). Lingering alone over a battlefield is not new to him—he has been the only one left alive more than his share of times, as the killer and the victim alike. Of those things, he is both in this moment—he is not sure which he should be, but he knows that something is on his sword and so he's not innocent—ha!, as though he could ever be innocent again.

What fills his body is surely not sadness—burning beneath the madness and satisfaction is disdain directed at no one but himself.

One of the facades (is it even that, anymore?) is demanding more—drive that blade into another thing, feel how it splits and falls, maybe see how it bleeds and breaks—but there's nothing there, nothing that's not already completely destroyed, and he can't allow it, so that's for the best. His gaze isn't all there, doesn't see the scene for what it is—he could be anywhere, so long as it's somewhere he left broken. Maybe he remembered, a few minutes ago, that this was a job, that Pandora had sent him here, but even the meaning of that name is fuzzy on his mind as he clenches his sword and shifts his weight. The air is heavy and distorted, but it does not keep him from hearing—he snaps toward the sound of something crunching under a footstep, eye wild and red as blood.

It's a living thing—he's rigid, practically made of adrenaline and ready to fight or flee, wondering which of them will strike first. It says something—maybe his name, but he's not sure—and his tensed form snaps, shooting forward to steal the initiative out from under it. It doesn't fight back, but it evades him, not too gracefully. He whirls back toward it and he's in pursuit, gone into the chase. The blade grazes it as it stumbles back again (almost, almost—he felt it though, he definitely felt it); he's harmed plenty of harmless things before.

There's a voice in the air, sharp and breathless, and it's speaking to him; he can hear it say "stop" and "snap out of it", and maybe something in him wants to obey, but that thought is quiet against the raging storm. He isn't obedient, not to this voice—he's an animal gone feral, not a faithful servant any longer, and his smile is wicked in spite of himself. Yes, it's simple—he is destructive, wholly indiscriminately so, and this thing he's cornered, too—

Silver flashes and the blade meets a shoulder, drives in through cloth—red spills onto black and it's hard to see, but with how he's not looking at anything, it doesn't much faze him. (Is he in that past, killing for the sake of his wish? Is he in some other, fighting monsters for the sake of his goal? Or is he in his own mind, breaking his own self?) It's simply the feeling of flesh yielding to metal that he seeks—and maybe there's that sound of pain, maybe that makes him regret it a little, maybe it's what causes him to laugh.

There are hands on his arms but he has no fear of them—it isn't to be feared, it isn't any danger in the face of the blackness that wisps out of his shadow and his back even as blood drips from his lips. This part of him does not know guilt, it does not know fear or sorrow—but this thing is gripping his arms, and it's a familiar grip, fearless as he is, and that's what lets him remember that he is so terrified of his own actions somewhere under those broken and twisted facades.

His lungs twist in on him as he spits up a mouthful more crimson, pale grip shaking around his sword—he twists it a little, but then that voice makes him halt again, his grin dropping completely as he stares at his clearing vision. "Xerxes, listen to me—!" He can hear it, he can understand it, he knows that voice and he's scared stiff of the reality he can feel creeping back into his head, but he can't stop it, he doesn't want to stop it. Those hands are shaking him roughly, so very unafraid, so very real.

Is he real again, too?

He chokes on his own blood again, doubling over into this person's chest, sputtering as his off hand grabs onto this person's arm—it hurts, everything in his chest hurts, but he's still holding the blade, he can't just let go of it and let go of his detestable self at the same time. They are both breathing shallowly—surely they're both so scared, even if it's not really showing—and weakly, bitterly, all he knows how to do is laugh.

"I'm sorry…" he detests those words, but not nearly so much as he hates what he's done and what he's become again, "I'm sorry," so he just repeats them again in spite of himself. Unable to look this person in the face, he simply reaches forward with shaking fingers, touches the bloodstain he's created. How disgusting; that color doesn't suit its wearer. His weakness is showing, through the series of cracked masks—awful, it's awful, he's awful, but at least he's here, in a battered and blood-stained room, fingers curling into his friend's coat.

"I'm here now, Reim. I'm alright," he whispers, voice almost breaking on the name—but he had to say it. He had to be sure that he could. "I hurt you, I—"

"Shut up, already," he hears, and he looks up in startlement to see a smile far too precious, so purely relieved—he doesn't deserve that kind of warm expression, not even slightly, he never has—it just makes him laugh weakly as he slumps down again, letting his pieces slowly fit back together.