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Lines that run along her arms like jagged glass. They cut into her skin like when they first appeared, and the eyes that pry along her arms make her flinch like they’re stabbing her once again. The whispers are just as sharp as the shards of the mirror, ramming themselves into her skin.
She wonders, truly, if she’ll ever be able to face her reflection again? Because standing there won’t be the pretty little girl she always was. Standing there is not a princess, cut of marble and all that’s precious from the earth. Her body is like a map of war, a guide of where it hurts the most.
And Biana knows that the lightning arcs that dance upon her arms aren’t the most painful part. It’s the way that the people she knows (and doesn’t know) waltz around her like it never happened.
The bags under his eyes give away the things that he doesn’t. He doesn’t speak, not because he doesn’t want to, but because he’s afraid of the words that will fall out. He’s afraid that if he brushes away the bangs at his forehead, his friends will see the dent and wonder how a vase could have hit so hard, if it were truly an accident.
He wears long sleeves to hide the scars running down his forearms to his fingertips, worried that they’ll make Linh upset again. He worries that the phantom pain in his back will never go away, from that night it slammed into his bedroom wall.
He wants to protect her, them, all of them, from the fact that he’s covered in scars, like a painting of his weaknesses running all the way from head to toe. Tam is afraid that they’ll realize that he’s not as strong as they once thought he was, that his shadows are the least of their worries.
Her clothes are wrinkled no matter how many times she tries to smooth them out. Her hair sticks up in odd angles any way she parts it. Her temper flares and all she can do is joke to try and cover it up.
Her toes are bruised from slamming them into walls, fingernail-sized crescents in her palm. She hides her hands in her sleeves because she doesn’t want them to see how hard they’re pressed into her skin. She walks around with dark marks on her shins, feigning ignorance when anyone asks about where they came from.
Marella’s scared that the scars that make her Marella are too easy to ignore. She misses the time when her mother would kiss the wound to make her feel better, but that time is no longer. Instead, she hides the scars and marks that she used to show so proudly. Her crooked teeth stay in her mouth, as she gives a tight-lipped smile, and she wonders if she were better, that it wouldn’t matter either way.
He doesn’t try to hide his scars, the way they discolor his skin. He doesn’t try to cover up the fact that his hands are pretty burned. He never mentions the fingerprints that still trail up his waist or arms, and no one brings it up.
For Dex Dizznee’s scars don’t matter, his friends are too busy with other things to notice. He doesn’t really feel it anymore, the pain as he jolts himself with a wire. His parents are too busy with the triplets to notice him bandaging up his arm.
His scars don’t matter as much as the others’, not Sophie’s or Fitz’s or Keefe’s. And he knows he’s lucky that he’s survived, but he wonders what it would take for anyone to notice.
Her scars are hidden below the surface, covered in lightly brushed make up and clothing that doesn’t really fit her style. But Linh doesn’t mind too much, because the scars that do show on her skin all tell a story.
Those are the ones she lets shine. She laughs with her brother about how the scar on her knee came from scraping it on a tree. And with Marella about that one time she drew blood while trying to cut up a fruit for the two of them. Or with her girls about when she’d managed to get injured during a pillowfight.
Those scars told the story of who she wanted to be, but the scars that she hides are darker than that. She hides the scar on her shoulder, from the broken glass in Atlantis. The one on her waist from Ravagog always stays hidden, a reminder of what she’s done. She picks and chooses the stories she tells, because otherwise she wouldn’t know what to think of herself.
He doesn’t try to hide his scars, just laughing whenever anyone else points them out. They’re easy to talk about to him, the time he ran into a table when he was young, the scar on his chin that smiled when he did. He always joked that he was just as clumsy as she was, that scar from accidently jabbing himself with a pencil, right above his knee.
Or how his hands held little cuts, from the time he’d once tried sewing. Or the one on his abdomen from tougher times, when he’d fought the ogre king. (And never ever missed the chance to brag about it.) His bravado could fool anyone, even himself sometimes.
He buried the memories of how his father had shoved him into that table, or how he’d fell trying to run from his mother’s angry shouts. He didn’t talk about the fact that they’d scoff and tell him not to cry, he didn’t ever voice the anger that choked him when he split his knuckles punching the wall. Because funny stories are the only stories Keefe can sell, making the people around him chuckle and shake their heads.
His scars are imperfect, so therefore they don’t exist. Fitz doesn’t have any scars, and if he does then he refuses to acknowledge them. (Not the one on his hand from the time he and Alvar played bramble. Not the time that he tripped and scratched his knee. Those don’t count because he was a stupid kid, and you can barely even tell that they’re there, they’re not obvious, so they might as well not be there at all.)
His leg and his heart are perfectly fine, even on the days he can barely walk. Even on the days where his chest feels like it’s being squeezed on by a giant claw. He’s fine, because those aren’t scars that mark his body with mistakes, they’re simply little quirks that he can keep to himself.
There is nothing nothing nothing wrong with him, and he’ll be sure to keep it that way.
Her scars hurt more than she could ever imagine. He heart is heavy with betrayal and sorrow when she looks in the mirror at her appearance. She hates the way that her hand is patched together, like the skin decided to work itself into a scar kind of quilt. She hates the star that marks her hand like a brand, screaming “I’m not normal!” like every other mark on her body.
She can’t stand the way that her lungs hurt when she breaths sometimes, like every time she’s saved from death, living becomes more of a burden. Her throat burns when she traces the throwing star that caught her on the cheek all those years ago. She hates the way that Grady and Edaline flinch whenever they see the rough hints of burnt skin on her face from her kidnapping.
Sophie hates her scars because they’re what she became.