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Doctor Sung didn't really like to look at his bare torso. All it served as was a reminder of how bad he'd fucked up. Still, somehow, he always ended up in the same place: lying on his back, running his fingers over the scar that ran down the center of his chest. Poking, prodding at the skin around the device he'd implanted in his chest-- his prismatic core.
He'd installed it centuries ago, as a stabilizer of sorts. With all the timehopping and interdimensional travel and such, he needed something that was going to keep his body from being torn apart. Not that he did much of that nowadays, but he wasn't about to try to remove the thing. He knew that would be far more trouble than it’s worth.
So he was stuck with it for now, mostly because he wasn't entirely sure what would happen if he did try to remove it. He'd be left with a gaping hole in his chest, for starters. And even for someone as resilient as him, that was a bad idea. Furthermore, the thing was embedded pretty far into his chest, and wired right to the vital organs in there-- his heart on the left side, and his lung on the right. It had been like that for so long, he had no idea how well his body would function without it.
His chest still ached sometimes. He had never been able to tell if it was an actual, physical problem, or perhaps just something psychosomatic. He’d lost all feeling in the skin just around the core, he knew that much. And random spots around his torso still went numb sometimes, presumably from all the nerve damage he’d caused.
Now, the procedure had been well planned out, but that didn't mean it was well executed. He was pretty heavily drugged so as not to feel much pain, but not quite enough to seriously impair his abilities. But that had nothing to do with his already existent carelessness when it came to testing out his projects. He was too eager, too impatient. He didn’t bother to properly check everything before he first switched the core on, and the result had been far worse than he’d expected.
Most beings wouldn't have survived such a strong electric shock to their vital organs-- and Sung was very lucky that he wasn't anything like most beings. He did, however, feel the effects, and that showed in the form of a startled scream that erupted from his throat. With trembling hands, he scrambled to power off the device that was still sending strong pulses of electricity through his chest.
He never did find out just how long he’d been unconscious after that, but he vividly remembered waking up to see the damage the shock had done. From what he could see, his whole torso was bruised. Dark purples and reds in the form of lightning bolts streaked across his skin. Everything hurt, his whole body felt like it was burning. In his haze, he realized that the drugs had most definitely worn off. And he could feel it.
Sung shuddered at the memory before he glanced back down at his chest. The bruises had long since faded into red, but were still very visible. He could still see a vague outline of a few of his ribs, a silhouette permanently imprinted into his skin. His chest had become nothing more than a messy mural of his dumb mistakes.
He let out a long sigh and let his head fall back against his pillows. If the marks hadn’t faded by then, he knew they never would. And sometimes, it was best to just sit back and look at it all from a different standpoint.
From a more objective point of view, he did look pretty fucking cool.
He could try to forget, just for a moment. He could forget about just how he’d come to look like this, his own stupidity that led him to this point. He could forget about the shame that washed over him whenever he felt an ache in his chest, whether it was real or not. He could look at the lightning bolts that littered his torso and think wow, what a unique design. He could forget that he ever felt bad about the way he looked to begin with.
Sometimes, he could forgive himself, even if only for a moment. Maybe someday, he’d learn to do it for real.