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Scaramouche’s knees dug into the hardwood floor and his nails dented red crescents into his knees as he looked down at Kazuha’s feet through tear-filled eyes, keeping his gaze averted from his face both out of shame and fear of what emotions he would witness there.
“I’m sorry, Kazuha, I’m sorry! Please forgive me, I can’t take it if you don’t, I don’t know how to exist without you! You’re everything to me Kaz, I’ll never hurt you again!” Tears streamed down his face as he forced the words out, rambling incoherently in his desperation to let his sincere feelings be known. “Please, Kazuha, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry… I can’t lose anyone else, not you too…” His words gave way to outright sobs as he lost all composure and leaned forward, pressing his forehead against the cold ground in both a weak attempt to calm himself and a measure to avoid Kazuha seeing the state of his face as sobs wracked through his body.
Although he could not hear past his own loud crying, he could feel the silence emanating from Kazuha, his eyes boring into the back of his head, yet crucially could not sense what emotion the man had running through his head at witnessing how broken Scaramouche was, in response to his having broken Kazuha.
Scaramouche was certain that he was underserving of Kazuha’s forgiveness, yet it hurt even more for it to be proven true. It seemed he had had a sliver of hope in the future, after all, though it was quickly rectified by this reality in which Kazuha was not responding, not reassuring him or giving him another chance or doing anything but looking down at him with disdain. His sobs had quietened to small, weak gasps for air as his body had worn itself out, and his eyes were left red and sore, still trickling tears against his already wet skin. He raised his head a little from the damp patch on the floor, looking up just enough to see the familiar pair of sandals and tattooed ankles. Still, Kazuha didn’t speak, and it was pure torture. Scaramouche knew that if Kazuha still cared about him, if he had any will to forgive the unforgivable, he would have comforted him by now, because he had always hated to see Scaramouche upset, and would have shot the moon out of the sky if it would have made him happy. Now, he was content to watch him break to pieces at his feet, not caring enough to put them back together nor even to grind them to dust. It was truly like Scaramouche was nothing to him.
“I’m sorry…” he whispered again, no longer with any hope of being graced with forgiveness, simply needing it to be known that he meant it, that over and over and over again he meant it.
Then, a hand in his hair, stroking gently for a moment as though savouring it before gripping hard and pulling his head up, forcing him to look Kazuha in the eyes for the first time since what he had done.
“Scara… you know I cannot forgive you.” He said the words quietly, and with a definite sadness that made Scaramouche perk up a little, despite everything, though only out of desperation – if Kazuha was upset to let him go, then perhaps there was a chance to redeem himself, however irrational the idea may be.
There was nothing he could say to that, really. His eyes were wide and watery and red as he looked up at Kazuha, pathetically grateful to feel the comfort of his touch even in the form of a hostile grasp in his hair. It was a conscious effort not to lean up into it like a cat being pet by its master, but he resisted only because he did not wish to insult Kazuha further.
“Leave, or I will have to make you.” His tone was kind, and if it weren’t for the words it could have been any friendly conversation between the two of them. Maybe it was, and he was having a bad dream, and he would wake up to Kazuha’s fingers combing through his hair, cradling his head, whispering to him that it was okay, that he was here, he was safe. That he would never leave, that’s what he had said. Scaramouche must have gotten the words twisted up, caught between a nightmare and the waking world.
Scaramouche wasn’t sure that this was real. This couldn’t be happening again. His vision was blurred and his head was spinning and his limbs felt numb. All he could hear were Kazuha’s words pounding into his skull – leave, leave, leave, mixing in with his own internal cry of not again, not again, not again.
Today is not real. It couldn’t be, he wouldn’t allow it to be.
Kazuha’s hand around his wrist dragging him to feet. The same hand holding his as they sat by a river, Kazuha’s eyes shining as he laughed at Scaramouche’s joke. His legs wobbling as they resisted supporting his weight, and the cut on his knee and his sprained ankle, bandaged up with fear in Kazuha’s eyes until he told him twice he was okay, and promised it on the third.
Shoved to the ground and a door shut behind him, and everything was spinning, and where was Kazuha? He should’ve been here by now, or they’d miss the sunset. His ears rang loud and the grass came toward him in waves, ghosting in and out of his vision against the concentrated brightness of the sky striking his retinas.
Kazuha?
He felt weightless.
He felt falling.
He felt the dirt against his face, pressing against his nose and suffocating him.
He felt the stars in the sky watching him, smiling to each other as he was here, again, face-down in the dirt all alone underneath the crowd of them.
He felt the breeze clawing and scratching at his neck, threatening to tear him apart. It was nothing like the caress of Kazuha’s anemo. It hurt.
And where was Kazuha? Maybe he was lost, although it wasn’t much like him. Maybe something had happened to him, someone had caught him and they were hurting him, keeping him somewhere Scaramouche would never be able to find him.
He pushed the earth away from him and sat up, clutching his knees to his chest. The breeze hurt more now, dashing against the slight dampness that coated his cheeks.
Somehow, his body stayed put without sinking into the earth until he burned up at the centre of it, or floating weightlessly upwards until he met the stars and burned up in the sun. Those options may have been better.
The air had that certain nighttime smell to it, like wet grass and crispness.
It was familiar.
One hand pressed into that wet grass, dirt pushing into his fingers or fingers pushing into the dirt. Knees sinking into soil. Electro tingling on his fingertips, pulling in towards itself and making his arm whirr with the feeling, before shooting out and around the body underneath him, forming a flash of an outline and fading out with not a scream but a pathetic little yelp, then nothingness.
A little relief from the crushing, coursing, pounding anger that twisted up inside his gut.
It was the Tsaritsa’s order.
He had no choice. Life, or death, one way or another. Either way, he lost Kazuha. It was over before it began.
He raised his head as rain began to fall, facing up so the wetness of his tears was replaced by the pinprick flood of rainwater.
It was so cold.
He laid down again, this time flat on his back, and thought the rain might drown him, if his luck lined up just right.