Chapter Text

Every muscle in his body is tense, poised to run, poised to fight. Like a predator faced with a bigger beast. ‘Run?’ His nerves spring fire so sharp it feels like they’re singing to him. ‘Or die?’

Every step he takes home, at a careful pace, is a touch too springy, too much like running away.

His black, tattered shirt was splattered with blood. He feels how it’s warm where it’s spilled. The night is coldest in winter, but his entire body is running hot with pumping blood. He hasn’t heard his heart pumping in his ears since used to run from bombs.

He hates remembering the sound.

He pulls his overcoat off, wrapping his father’s old pistol in it as he continues at brisk pace home. He refuses to look back.

Once he reaches his building, he takes the steps three at a time. There’s the hiss of paranoia that he’ll be chased up them. Nowhere to jump in a winding staircase, except down.

But no dogs bite at his heels. No other steps sound the halls, even as he closes the apartment door behind him. He locks it. Breathes in the scent of the innocence here.

Tigris often stays up late, worrying for him, when he doesn’t come home on time. Tonight, she’s not yet home to worry. In the bedroom nearest to the front door, Grandma’am must have gone to sleep hours ago.

There’s a warm wool blanket strewn over the armchair and spilling on the floor. There’s the scent of jasmine in the air from evening tea.

This is the home of a family. This is the home of a boy. Isn’t it?

He knows Tigris could be home any minute. He knows she might see his blood-splattered shirt, and his warm pistol. It would kill him if she knew, he knows it will.

But he wants jasmine tea. He wants the kind Tigris makes. Wants to know Tigris will look into his eyes and still make him tea.

He does not make himself tea. He walks to the bathroom.

There’s still some hydrogen peroxide left under the sink. He knows little about cleaning anything, but Tigris had shown him how to rid blood when they were very small— showed him how the chemical made the blood foam like rabies, how it wiped away into perfection.

He pours a little over the blood splatters on his shirt, his pants. He wipes down his shoes, watches the chemical clean blood where he didn’t even see any. He resists the urge to see if it works for his hands.

He wonders where Tigris is. He worries that someone is out there, hurting her, like he’s hurt someone tonight.

Would she have done it for him, like what he did for her? Would it have been worth it, like his was? No, it wouldn’t have been. That’s why his fingertips are flushed, pumping with blood from his erratic heart. The blood is right there.

He gives in. He pours hydrogen peroxide over his hands. It doesn’t foam, but it burns.

The pain reminds him that he’s not untouchable. That he can still be hurt. It prickles at his skin in an oddly pleasant way.

Distantly, he hears the front door open and close with a click. There’s only one person who could be coming in this late, through the front door, trying to be this quiet. There it is, Coriolanus thinks, The only way I can be hurt.

She is the only way that matters, anyway.

He tosses the clothes into the laundry hamper, trying to shield the shape of the pistol with his body as he exits the bathroom. He scurries to his bedroom as quietly as possible, going unnoticed by Tigris’ footsteps still in the entryway.

He stuffs the pistol under his mattress— a haphazard and lazy hiding place, but it won’t be there by tomorrow evening. He just needs to make sure Tigris won’t see it.

He waits, quietly. Waits to hear her bedroom door close, settling in for the night. It doesn’t take long before he’s back in the bathroom, washing away the scent of chemicals on his skin. The last thing he needs is to smell like a cleaned-up crime scene.

Perhaps tomorrow he’ll help Grandma’am with the garden. That way by Monday, he will smell of roses instead of blood.

“Coryo?”

Coriolanus’ head snaps to the door. In the hallway, Tigris is standing outside her door, dressed in her threadbare pajamas. She hasn’t fallen asleep yet, every inch of her face alert and observant— and worried.

“You’re not usually up this late, Coryo,” She says, voice soft and carrying in the distance. She’s right. He tends to be neurotic about his health, about the quality of things that he can control. Any sense of control he has, he’d take. In fact, he’s so neurotic about health, that usually she’d tease him, tell him she can’t believe he’s finally decided to live a little.

But her voice is soft with tire, her eyes barely open, her posture lacking. He rarely ever sees her this tired, even though their life— her life— is so, very exhausting.

“Had a nightmare,” He answers softly, brain unconsciously answering the most innocent answer he could give. Nightmares are for children, and no child can kill. He ignores the fact that he’s a slight fifteen, but hasn’t been a child in a long time.

He hasn’t come to her for nightmares since he was a child. Her eyes soften something sweet, like she’s thinking that too. The poignant sting of guilt blooms in his stomach, and that is why— that’s how he knows. That if she knew what he did, it would kill him.

She disappears back into her room. He’s to follow her, he knows he is. He’s powerless to deny.

Once he does, he sees her settled in her bed. Wordlessly, she raises her comforter, making space for him next to her. She is always making space for him.

He is growing taller, broader. But she wraps him in his embrace just as much as he wraps her. His head still lands on her shoulder, like it did when they were children. They haven’t held each other like this in a very long time. They haven’t been those children in a very long time.

She is warm, and frail. He can feel her ribs, the bones of her wrists on his back, her elbows poking his waist. He knows she can feel all of this on him, too, and wonders if she feels like she’s failed just as much as he does.

Tomorrow, he could buy her peach pie. He could buy Grandma’am chocolate pastries. Their family hasn’t had something fresh in a very long time. He could imagine it. Tigris’ smile would be so bright as her teeth sink into the salty, flaky pastry. The sweet, rich filling.

There’s a pill to be swallowed with the idea of blood money. Tigris would hate to know who’s blood was spilt to fill her stomach.

But she would still be full.

He thinks back to the gun, in his room, under his mattress. His father’s pistol, built custom by his father’s munitions company, that paid for the dinners of his father’s family. It’s blood for food. Blood for water.

His father harmed people to keep his family safe. Blackmailed others to keep his family’s pride. Smiled at his son with blood on his lip. Violence is the only language he ever spoke and little Coriolanus is finally learning to speak it.