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some garbled laugh escapes him, marred and tainted, the kind that no one would never think to hear from him. it is not soft, that embarrassed bubbling that came with a gentle blush, nor the genuine, full hearted kind that took his whole body, leaning over himself in some silly joke sylvain had told. it is a low, rumble, with edges as sharp as any blade. if that were so, then let his misery be a whetstone, honing the edge of himself until it is only a deadly steel. let that be all he is, because anything else is worthless.
he laughs, the kind that shakes worlds, crashing tectonic plates and storming hurricanes, loud. it resounds through the stone walled hallway he had been caught it, each rise reverberating on the side, a haunting melody, a captivating horror. it doesn’t sound like him, that split realization comes, but dimitri struggles to find when he last felt like himself to begin with.
he died in duscur, too, and anything else that he was after was only an animated corpse.
the imperial soldier, whose sword is bathed in blood (his blood, dimitri reminds himself, as if reality had been shifted to where that realization took more time than the immediate pain), staggers back. shock written on his widened eyes, that open mouth, the shaking of his grip.
dimitri laughs. a horrible noise. discordant. a song that should never be sung. “are you willing to pay for that?”
a gash flows down the curve of his right eye. he is crying blood. he is a young boy in the darkness, half seeing, half living as the pain sharpens him, a whetstone to his blade.
dimitri laughs, and hopes it will haunt the soldier for the few moments of life it will have left, hopes it is loud enough for Her Imperial Majesty to hear it, hopes it will stay with him as a reminder.
“you don’t have a choice.” the animal growls, not even bothering to wipe the blood, to so much as touch it, no, he must wallow in this pain, must sharpen it, must wield it like he has wielded everything else, a reason to fall.
but he never quite thought of it so much as a fall rather than a rebirth. if he died along his father and step mother, that corpse was reborn with the echo of avenge us all that only grew louder and louder and louder and louder and louder till it reached its peak and dimitri was no longer but the beast remains.
he is alive, now, even if he has killed the boy he once was, burned in those flames.
the blood carves a river down his cheek, a rushing stream that no dam could never hinder. tears mingle in the blood, he is certain, but he wouldn’t ever admit it.
it isn’t as if he would have anyone to admit it to, either.
because the imperial soldier takes one more step back and that is one more than dimitri is willing to permit. “should i cut your eye out instead? or should i crush them with my fingers and hear you scream to the rest of you squadron who already lie dead?”
the solider hardens, lunging haphazardly, but dimitri moves quicker, lance jutting straight through the soldier’s throat.
dimitri laughs.
there is no point asking a corpse.