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Spoke couldn’t get the blood off.
His hands were red. It no longer dripped down into the sink, but the red wouldn’t leave. It caked underneath his fingernails, stained the cuffs of his sleeves, sent up an awful smell none of the soap could hide. No matter how many times he scrubbed the bar over his irritated skin, the blood wouldn’t go.
A sob tore from his throat. He tried so hard to bite it down, but it fought its way past his lips as if it purposely wanted to catch the attention of anyone passing by. This was his room, in his own corner of Ash’s base; logically, there wouldn’t be anyone. But if anyone was, it would take no more than five seconds to take advantage of his weakness and kill him with a few quick swipes.
His own sob haunts him. Hands tight around the handle of a pickaxe, knuckles white. The walls of the room closing in on him. Instead of a mirror in front of him like in the present, there was a girl, and a dark, dark room. She was sobbing, begging, pleading. He didn’t give her a chance. As soon as she whispered his name, he undid the sandstone beneath her feet and sent her plummeting down into a pit of pointy dripstone. The memory remained long enough for him to hear the awful crunch of breaking bones and splintering armour.
He blinked, having to catch himself on the edges of the sink. Rose. Her name had been Rose. Of course he remembered her name. He remembered all of their names.
Another pathetic whine escaped him that he failed to swallow. He craned forward over the sink, bloody hand raising to settle over his lips. This was what his friends had warned him for. They hadn’t wanted him to become a murderer and yet there he stood, deaths on his name, blood on his hands. Could he even face Mapicc, Planet and Leo if he saw them again? After everything he’d done?
All those people. His sword was stained red, so was his mace, and his armour too. Everything he owned, tainted in dripping crimson. He was exactly what Ash wanted him to be. He could imagine him laughing if he saw him now, his diamond-trim clinging onto the sink for dear life, unable to look himself in the eyes through the mirror in front of him, lungs spasming as they tried to breathe for him.
The weak gasps he did manage only reminded him of another name on his list.
This time, his hands weren’t around a pickaxe. Instead, his fingers were curled around someone’s throat. The person below him was trapped underneath his body, gasping weakly as he scratched at Spoke’s face to get him off.
He hadn’t immediately noticed when Minute’s totem popped, and he would only remember the horror on his friend’s face as Spoke kept going. Had Minute known it was him? Had he kept his mouth shut because Ash’s shadow fell over them both before he could beg for his life? He’d only kept struggling, never actually fighting him because somewhere deep down he cared too much about Spoke to win the damn battle.
He clenched his eyes shut. No scared looks from past friends, no accusatory glares from the mirror, no being faced with how Minute’s body had disappeared from beneath him in a puff or purple particles. In reality, his comm didn’t buzz like it had back then.
But the fact that he couldn’t breathe was very real. His throat clogged up like it disagreed with his actions, blocking him from sucking in even a single breath. It was only fair. He’d killed Minute like that, not giving him a chance to breathe. If he choked on his grief then everyone he’d killed would laugh at the irony. Would anyone around him now bat an eye at all?
His arms shook from the death grip he had on the edges of the sink. His head hung, body trembling as it surged forward in a sad attempt to throw up. Gagging just made him feel worse, made him feel wrong in his own body. The single, sharp breath he managed whistled in his throat.
What was he doing here? What was he doing at all?
A hand tore itself from where his nails had started to dig into the sink. It latched onto his throat, as if it would let him breathe any easier. It meant his nails dug into his skin instead of the sink’s ceramics, drew more of that crimson, with the tiniest spark of hope that it would make things okay.
How had he breathed easier on that stage? Spoke hadn’t been invisible then either. No, he’d been on full display to Ash’s most elite soldiers, shown off in his new pretty clothes like a trophy. If there was anyone like him, undercover, they’d know which side he really was on—the one he could hardly say wasn’t the real side he was supposed to be on. It’d been easier to breathe underneath the sharp gaze of Clown in the corner of the room, who’d tilted his head and laughed in such a condescending way as he congratulated Ash. Not him, Ash.
Hands fell on his shoulders. That wasn’t right. Ash hadn’t touched him on that stage, only to hand over the trimmed armour. So why were there hands on his shoulders?
His own hands were pried off their respective surfaces, and Spoke blinked through the blur in his eyes to see himself be turned around. No bathroom mirror greeted him. It was the purple of a suit that had been all but burned into his mind to fear, to seek out, to love and to hate at the same time.
Ash was here. Ash was holding him.
“Spoke, pull yourself together.”
He didn’t have invis to protect him. He sucked in another pathetic excuse of a breath, catching sight of his wrists in Ash’s hands, and the blood that still covered his own.
Ash let him go to hold his face. It wasn’t a slap like he might’ve expected at the sudden movement. No, he was holding his face and staring into his eyes as if he searched for something. His features softened, as far as Spoke could tell through the tears he didn’t manage to stop in time, the harsh command giving way to something he didn’t dare call something actually pleasant.
“That’s it, breathe. In and out.” Thumbs rested on his cheekbones. If he could think past the panic, he wouldn’t have called it soft. “You’re okay, we can clean up your hands.”
Spoke was too scared to reach up. But he wouldn’t even know what to do. Half of him wanted to yank Ash’s hands from his face, and the other half wanted to hold onto the one person who comforted him through his pain. Mapicc and Leo weren’t here, Minute and Planet were gone, and even if all of it was the consequence of his own actions, he still needed someone there, so damn badly. Only Ash stood in front of him now.
A quiet whimper escaped him as hair was wiped from his forehead. He felt naked without his armour, the gentle treatment only breaking him open further. He wondered how Ash felt to hold him like this, to even touch him. The thought stopped him from grabbing onto him.
The man in front of him quietly clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. It sounded sympathetic enough to pass as real. “I know it’s hard.”
Before he knew it, Ash moved a hand to the back of his head and pulled him closer. The other was placed on his back. Spoke could just barely peek over his shoulder.
A hug? Ash was hugging him.
His frown tightening, he buried his face in his shoulder some more, eyes clenched shut, hands twitching where he stopped himself from hugging back.
“I know it’s hard,” Ash repeated in his ear. He hummed as he pushed his nose into Spoke’s hair in some mockery of a forehead kiss. “I had to learn too, it takes time. Just like you, I didn’t know what to do with myself when I first killed. But you’ve done so well, you know I’m proud of you. I’m here.”
He wasn’t warm at all, and yet the fingers combing through his hair were more than he thought he’d get, more than he deserved, so he’d take it. The words made him warmer than a hug could anyway. They gave him the chance to suck in another breath, then force it back out.
“All you’re doing is surviving, right? Sometimes it’s necessary to hurt others to live a little longer. You did well.”
Surviving, sure. He’d long since starting this infiltration mission lost sight of his goal. It got too real, or not real enough. Did he do this to live a little longer, or did he live for the praise?
This time, he couldn’t stop himself from chasing what he wanted. If Ash would kill him for staining his suit, so be it. At least he got a hug that he didn’t have to ask for. His arms wrapped around Ash’s thin frame, fingers digging into his cape and jacket, and he let himself hide.
Ash cooed at him, like he would at a wounded animal. “There, there.” He rubbed slow circles into his back. If the movements were stiff, Spoke wasn’t going to mention it. He took everything he could, as long as there were no consequences—yet.
Breath in. Breath out. Breath in. Breath out. Slowly, his racing heart calmed. He swallowed down the remaining tears. Gods, if any of them fell on Ash’s suit, he wouldn’t know what to do with himself.
“There you are,” Ash said to break the silence that had fallen over them like a wool blanket—or a steel cage, but he’d rather say it was the former. He pulled back to take in his face.
Spoke didn’t look up. When he managed to pry his eyes open, they were glued to the purple fabrics, staring but not quite seeing. If he actually returned Ash’s gaze, what would he find? He wasn’t quite ready for disgust or anything similar. He wanted to live in ignorant bliss for just a few seconds longer.
“Look at your hands.”
His lips formed a thin line. He bit down on his tongue, breath catching in his throat for a second before he managed to suck in another. Could he say no? Or rather, could he face the blood again?
“Spoke, look at your hands for me.” It was a command, one that tolerated no failure.
So, he set his jaw and craned his neck to look down. His palms turned to the ceiling. They were as inky black as they were supposed to be, no splatter of blood to be seen. A confused little noise escaped him.
Ash pushed his head back up with a finger underneath his chin. The softness was all but gone. A mask had replaced it, one without emotion—was it really a mask if he wore it all the time, if it was all anyone saw, or did that just make it his face? Their eyes met, and Spoke couldn’t tell what kind of thoughts were swirling in their soulless depths.
“A panic attack like that is very dangerous out there. It’s a good thing you were home.”
There was a lot to unpack there. A panic attack … made a lot of sense. He hadn’t had one of those in ages. He could hardly remember the last time, the memory distant and hazy. He’d been safe though, like he was here, in Ash’s hands.
He fought the urge to shake his head. Safe. Home. Those were scary words to be calling this place, the society that was supposed to be everything but safe and like home. But it’d become that, slowly, without his control. And if Ash called it his home, he didn’t really have the choice to call it anything else.
“Make sure it doesn’t happen again.” Suddenly the small of his back was against the sink and Ash’s arms on either side of him, trapping him in place. There was no armour to separate them now, no invis potion to keep him guessing. When he swallowed, Ash caught the movements with his eyes easily.
“If anything’s wrong, you come straight to me.” If he didn’t know any better, if his voice wasn’t monotone and without a single emotion, he would’ve called it comforting. “Understood?”
It took all the energy he had left to fight his instincts and actually open his mouth to say “yes, sir,” with only a slight tinge of fear to his voice.
Then he was gone, his comforting and haunting presence no longer touched his body, and all he had left of him were receding footsteps.