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Phainon has been itching to cut since he woke up that morning.
There are already a series of injuries hidden under his sleeves. More scattered over his thighs, even a daring few spanning his stomach. He shouldn’t have risked going so far, but then he shouldn’t have started doing this to begin with.
Phainon never means to go overboard, knowing that he will regret it the next day when he’s sparring with Mydei and can’t move his limbs properly. Knowing that he can’t keep lying indefinitely about accidents that keep reoccurring. Knowing that it’s an unbecoming habit.
He never means to do it, except when he does. Except when he bites his tongue and switches out his set of pottery knives and makes the cuts discreet on purpose.
It just gets too much all of a sudden, everything. His ears start to ring and his thoughts mix like clay and he becomes dislocated from his body a little bit, and the first time he hadn’t even been the one to make the injury, had just found the scrape he’d gotten from being too slow on a mission and closed his hand around it until the static stopped buzzing.
Until it had fixed him, he had thought, but then he never stayed fixed, and so he couldn’t stop doing it.
The pain feels real in a way that little else does when Phainon gets like this. Bad, but also good, like biting into a slightly overripe fruit or watching a Titankin crumble into nothing. He bandages himself afterward, awkward and shameful and clumsy. He has dressed plenty of his own injuries before, but these ones always feel different. They aren’t from any battle, any training. They’re only because he is still too weak.
He can’t let it affect him. He can prove to himself that this is something he can manage. Just another way to handle his wayward emotions.
But Phainon had contemplated stabbing himself last night, somewhat seriously, before he realized like a cold splash of water that he was acting crazy.
Phainon can’t die. He is the hero of the prophecy. A Chrysos Heir. The deliverer, whatever that is meant to be. People are relying on him, and there is still so much left to be accomplished, and besides, if Phainon were going to kill himself, he should have done it before he had ever arrived in the holy city. Not now that all these hopes and expectations were already resting on him.
The mental slip had unsettled him enough that he had set the knife down without adding to the tapestry, thinking that he should try to reassert some semblance of normalcy. But now he is regretting that decision. The static is back and creeping over him like an unwanted second skin.
Pressing his fingers over his stomach hurts, but not enough to calm him down right now. Only a fresh cut can satisfy this craving.
Vaguely, Phainon is aware that these are not the sorts of thoughts he should be having in the middle of his afternoon lecture. He is stowed toward the back of the room today, rather than in the front seat where he usually sits, but the scratching of tablets and the rise and fall of voices around him are a constant reminder that he is in public. But even knowing this, he still can’t quite seem to focus properly, can barely sit in place with how sick he feels. Sick and nauseous and shaky.
…if Phainon was going to kill himself, he would… he would do it in battle, he thinks. Take some enemy out with him or shield someone with his body. It would still be an awful, disgraceful sort of thing, but maybe a little less unworthy if he were able to do something good with it. A little less disrespectful to all of those whom he has already killed, who have already died for him.
Phainon should really stop thinking about these things. He isn’t allowed to have them, not even in a daydream. He isn’t allowed much of anything.
He blinks, and blinks again, but his vision keeps blurring.
Phainon is so concentrated on breathing through the increasingly drowning feeling that he doesn’t notice when class ends, when the rest of his classmates start getting up and shuffling their belongings into backpacks and their limbs past his seat. He jumps when a ringed hand slaps down on the desk in front of him, snapping him back into awareness.
Phainon’s eyes jolt up. The globules of color in his vision resolve themselves into the familiar shape of Professor Anaxa, who is frowning down at him.
“Have you been paying any attention?” Professor Anaxa says somewhat accusingly. His eye is narrowed the same way Mydei’s had been when Phainon had stumbled into his side last week and he had asked where he had gotten the injuries. “Did you hear anything I was just saying?”
“S-sorry.” The apology comes out jumbled and instinctive. Speaking feels like more of a labor than it should be, and Phainon swallows to try and correct the sound of it. “I didn’t… I was, um, spacing out, I didn’t mean…”
He looks around belatedly and sees that the rest of the classroom is now empty. The door to the room has been shut. Should it be? Only Phainon remains as a displaced shadow in his seat. He can barely remember anything that has happened since he came in.
“That much was obvious,” Professor Anaxa says acerbically.
“I’m sorry, Professor.” Phainon ducks his head in shame. That seems to be all he’s feeling lately. “I-I’ll review the lecture notes later. I promise.”
His voice continues to quiver lightly. He shifts in his chair and winces, only now realizing that his fingers are still digging into the cuts over his stomach through his clothing. He forces his hand to loosen, forces himself not to react to the pang of pain, forces himself not to glance down at it. Professor Anaxa is standing right there, watching.
He is silent for a moment, and Phainon doesn’t dare look up at him. The fear that floods his body is so intense that he can’t tell if his fingers are wet or if it’s just his imagination. The desk hides most of his body, or at least he hopes it does from a higher vantage. He needs Professor Anaxa to leave, but if Phainon asks him to, his teacher will know something is wrong with him.
The seconds stretch like kithara strings. Phainon chances a peek. His teacher’s frown has changed into something he is having more trouble reading.
“…I know you will,” Professor Anaxa says eventually. “You’re… a diligent student, Phainon. I’m not worried about your academic progress.”
“O-oh,” Phainon says. Then… what are you worried about?
He looks at his teacher dumbly.
Professor Anaxa sighs, clearly dismissing the conversation. “Well, get up. Unless you want me to close the classroom with you in it.”
“Y-yes, Professor.”
Phainon takes a deep breath, subtly tugging his shirt down a bit, and waits until Professor Anaxa has turned toward the door and away from him. He gets up then, or he tries to, except his legs abruptly buckle underneath him.
Phainon collapses hard into the side of his desk, the impact sending a tearing pain through his abdomen. He tries to catch himself against it but mostly only manages to avoid hitting his head as he slides down to the floor, wheezing. If he hadn’t been bleeding before, he definitely is now, he thinks dazedly.
“Phainon, what—”
Professor Anaxa goes completely quiet. He is not staring at Phainon, but at the edge of the desk he had fallen into. Phainon doesn’t look up immediately, trying to regulate his breathing, hands clamped over his stomach in an attempt to quell the pain enough that he can stand back up and brush it off as him having lost his balance.
Only—“Are you injured?” Professor Anaxa’s voice is very serious, suddenly, and much more urgent than Phainon has ever heard him. His hands are closing around Phainon’s arms before he can react, dragging them away from his body, and Phainon gasps as those strong, slender fingers unknowingly dig into the cuts tucked under his sleeves. “Were you hurt when you came to class? Tell me.”
Phainon struggles, trying futilely to pull his arms out of his professor’s grasp, but then the grip goes slack on its own. Professor Anaxa has stopped moving—has gone very, very still as he looks down at Phainon’s body.
Phainon follows his gaze and looks down somewhat dizzily. There is golden blood all over his hands and soaking through his shirt rapidly.
Professor Anaxa curses, rather loudly, and ceases trying to haul Phainon up. Instead he kneels quickly and pulls his shirt up before Phainon can think to say anything. The bandages that he had wrapped around himself in the morning are drenched through, more than it feels like they deserve to be. Phainon knows he had been aggravating the injury, but this really seems to be an excessive amount of bleeding.
“What happened?” Professor Anaxa hisses. He shoves one of his own hands against Phainon’s stomach, where most of the blood is, and Phainon bites his lower lip so as not to cry out automatically. With his other hand he rummages through his pockets for his teleslate to call the Twilight Courtyard, presumably.
Phainon knows that that’s a bad idea, knows that they will find out exactly what he has done and that there will be consequences, but he can’t think clearly enough to stop his professor from talking.
“Did you get injured in your last mission and not even think to tell somebody? Idiot child, what in the name of Cerces were you thinking—”
“D-don’t,” Phainon blurts, managing to make his tongue move, finally. It makes sense now, the strain in his voice and in his breathing, but had he truly been bleeding out for that much time without noticing? Had he truly been in pain for so long that he had just… gotten used to it?
“Don’t what?” Professor Anaxa stares at him.
“Call,” Phainon chokes out. “Don’t—don’t call anybody. Please. They’ll find—Lady Aglaea will, the others will be…”
Angry. They’ll be angry. Who wouldn’t, after seeing how imperfect the hero they put all their faith in was really?
“You are bleeding out in my classroom, Phainon,” Professor Anaxa says harshly. “I think that warrants some amount of medical attention.”
“I’m not bleeding out,” Phainon mumbles, imploring. “I’m… I’m fine, I’ll be… I’ve bled more than this. I just, I… I just need some bandages.”
Professor Anaxa looks even angrier than he had before. His frown cuts into Phainon sharply, but it doesn’t feel like it does when Phainon uses the knife, doesn’t feel like a release of tension or a desperate relief. It feels horrible, like being the failure he is, like the broken wings of Cyrene’s body pressing over him.
“Please.” Phainon’s vision blurs further and he knows that he is crying. “Please.”
“…Titans,” Professor Anaxa mutters. He shuts his eye, then sighs, long-suffering. “I’m—I will be telling someone about this. But… fine. If you’re going to make such a fuss about it. I’ll treat your injuries myself, and then we will discuss when and what to say to that woman.”
“T-thank you.” Phainon can hear the wobbly relief in his own voice. But he can’t seem to stop crying. “I, I can do the bandages, Professor Anaxa, you don’t—you don’t have to bother with me.”
“I already said I was going to do them,” Professor Anaxa says crossly. “Have you lost your hearing as well as your sense of self-preservation? Be quiet and apply pressure while I fetch the medical equipment.”
Phainon shuts up and applies pressure. As best as he can, anyway. He isn’t bleeding that much, now that he has the wherewithal to really examine the injuries. There is a lot of blood, but the rate at which it falls is sluggish. It must have just been… well, a three hour lecture, apparently.
Professor Anaxa strides to the shelves on the other side of the room, opening a compartment and removing what looks like a first aid kit from it. Are those in every classroom or just his on account of all the infamous alchemy accidents? Phainon doesn’t get much time to wonder before his professor has returned to his side, opening the case and retrieving gauze and stitches.
“I-I don’t need those,” Phainon says, his voice a little small. He’s never used them before, not for this. Not to say that he’s never had stitches, but… with the cuts, it would make it difficult to reopen them.
Professor Anaxa says, “I’ll decide whether or not you need them.”
Phainon’s mouth goes a little dry. He nods mutely.
“Has the bleeding stopped?”
“I think so,” Phainon says, even though he can’t tell very well through the blood coating his palms and stomach.
“Good,” Professor Anaxa says anyway. “Now, keep your shirt lifted while I remove these bandages.”
Phainon does as he’s told, although he can’t help but shiver slightly as the wet fabric is peeled away from him. Professor Anaxa sits him up slightly against the side of the desk, and Phainon tips his head back against it, not wanting to watch as the blood is wiped away from his stomach. It feels like being stripped bare, revealing in full the mess he has made of himself, how he has flayed open the golden fleece of his skin.
Professor Anaxa draws his hands away, and then the truth of the injuries is bared to him. Phainon stares up at his steadfast expression as his movements slow to nothing.
Phainon’s throat ties itself into a sailor’s knot. He can’t swallow it away, and he can’t look at Professor Anaxa anymore, all of a sudden. He had thought that maybe he could get away with it if it was just his teacher, that maybe he wouldn’t question it, but that was always a lie to himself. Professor Anaxa always has questions.
“How did you get these?” he says now, and his voice is so carefully controlled that it almost hurts to listen.
“Um—” Phainon has never had to lie when someone was looking at his injuries before. It’s easier to get away with it when he is already winded from a fight, complaining about how Mydei had hit him too hard when he’d already fallen out of bed and landed on that shoulder that morning. Mydei will insult his sleeping habits, and then they’ll be back to normal and Phainon can pretend that the way he’d faltered had never happened. Mydei pushes his body. Never the way that Phainon answers him.
“I—on the… last mission, like you said,” Phainon says weakly. “I wasn’t paying attention.”
Very calmly, Professor Anaxa says, “Don’t lie to me.”
Phainon’s breathing picks up. Professor Anaxa speaks like he shoots: short, precise, and meant for hunting. There are still tears on Phainon’s face, his fingers wound in the hem of his shirt, the ugly state of him unsettlingly exposed to both the cool air in the classroom and Professor Anaxa’s piercing gaze, never lifting away from him. Phainon’s body is a ruin, and he can’t help but feel—vulnerable. Violated.
The cuts are too long, too straight, too predetermined to have been any sort of monster, much less any sort of accident. Phainon can’t fool his professor, he knows. But he doesn’t want to talk about this.
“I…” he starts again, and then can’t think of a way to finish.
Professor Anaxa’s jaw works slightly, as though he wants to say something but he, too, can’t think of how to say it. Phainon has seen him give hundreds of impromptu speeches, the way he weaves the world into a stage and his words into a performance. He has never seen Professor Anaxa lost for an argument, and it frightens him a bit. This can’t be so bad a situation that his teacher, always so unshakeable and assured, no longer knows how to address him, can it?
“What were you thinking?” Professor Anaxa spits, after a minute. Phainon tenses at his tone, ducking his head away, and Professor Anaxa visibly takes a breath, evens his expression out by a fraction. The next statement is more exacting, no less angry. “…these need stitches.”
He sanitizes his hands, starts preparing the needle and thread. His countenance sharpens into focus, a sharpness by which Phainon is afraid for once to be slit open.
“How old are the injuries? Did you at the very least take measures to prevent infection?”
Phainon truly doesn’t want to talk about it. It will make it all too real, something he can no longer deny is happening. He considers one more lie, considers just staying silent, but of course, Professor Anaxa catches him. He lifts his gaze from where he is threading the needle to glare at him.
“Now is not the time to withhold information, Phainon,” Professor Anaxa says, all but biting. There is a fire burning in his expression, an echo of the one he had worn when a much younger Phainon had asked him if the eye was an accident. “Do you understand what you’ve done? As a Chrysos Heir, desecrating your divine body is not something that Amphorean laws take lightly.”
Phainon had known that it was shameful, but he hadn’t known it was illegal. He pales, a burst of panic coming over him. “I didn’t—”
“Phainon!” Professor Anaxa slams his hand down on the floor beside them. Phainon recoils, flinching away from the loud smack of his palm against the stone, the movement sending frissons of pain through his stomach.
Professor Anaxa shuts his eye and breathes in through his nose for a few seconds. He doesn’t apologize, nor acknowledge the outburst for what it was, but he does open his eye again and wipe his hand with alcohol before pulling gloves over his fingers. He lowers the swab to Phainon’s skin as though ready to ignore him.
Phainon is too afraid to move lest he upset his professor again. He isn’t sure, then, what it is that compels him to speak.
“A few days.” The words come out softly, hesitantly. Professor Anaxa’s posture stiffens a bit, which is the only sign he gives that he is listening. He cleans the area around the cluster of wounds with measured, fastidious strokes. The alcohol stings, but Phainon is well accustomed to the feeling. “I—the knife was clean.”
Professor Anaxa discards the swab to the side. He says nothing. He pushes the end of the needle through Phainon’s skin. He doesn’t ask if Phainon wants anything for the pain, and Phainon doesn’t request it. The worst part of it all is that it still feels sort of good, sort of relieving. Even though Professor Anaxa is the one doing it instead of him. Even though he is angry.
“Was it sterilized?” Professor Anaxa doesn’t spare him a glance. He sews Phainon’s skin back together, stitch after stitch, as though closing up the ugliness, closing up the empty feeling. “And the bandages?”
“Y-yes. Of course.” The pain is becoming less and less now, especially through the adrenaline. Phainon might lose control sometimes, but he isn’t so irresponsible as to forsake himself entirely. He’s well aware that he can’t risk an infection or a lasting injury. “I’m… I’m safe about it, Professor, really.”
“If you were safe,” Professor Anaxa says, and pulls the next stitch a bit too forcefully for it to be a strictly professional action, “then this wouldn’t have happened.”
Phainon doesn’t have an answer to this. Professor Anaxa is right, after all. And if he knew what Phainon had been thinking just an hour before while burying his fingers into the injuries, then he would be even more justified in his belief, and he would think even less of him.
“You know when a wound is severe enough to need stitches,” Professor Anaxa says, and the words are a cool accusation. “I’m sure you know how to apply them as well, unless Aglaea has been sorely neglecting your combat education. Why didn’t you do it?”
“Because—” Phainon falters. He frowns down at the thread, at the drops of golden blood beading around it, at the smallness of his body. What can he say? Because not having them would make it easier to hurt again? Because even though he knew he had to keep himself alive, no one had ever said he had to be in good condition?
Phainon can’t come up with another lie. And he doesn’t want to lie about it anymore, he realizes.
Professor Anaxa ties the final suture and snips the remaining thread. He spreads a pale green ointment over the gauze and presses it down over the stitches, fingers smoothing the edges over Phainon’s skin.
“Clean this up when you get home,” he says, waving a hand at the drying blood still smudged over his sides, further out from the injury. He talks as though it is a simple thing, as though it doesn’t bother him that Phainon hasn’t answered his last question. “My sanitization was imprecise, as this classroom is clearly not a medical facility. Apply more of this ointment the next time you change your bandages.”
“…thank you, Professor,” Phainon whispers, his voice oddly weak.
Professor Anaxa turns that strikingly red-aqua eye on him. It is singularly sharp and singularly intense and stabs through him more cleanly than any possible weapon.
“Do not make any more cuts on your stomach,” he says, in the same tone as when he gives Phainon debate instruction. “Keep to the outside of your arms. Your thighs if absolutely necessary. Do not try to cut through any scar tissue. Do not even think about approaching any major arteries. Do you understand me?”
“I…”
Phainon doesn’t know how to respond. Professor Anaxa isn’t asking him why he does it. He isn’t telling him to stop, isn’t telling him it’s wrong, isn’t telling him he shouldn’t. He’s just—Phainon doesn’t know what he’s doing.
Professor Anaxa looks steadily at him. The austerity of his expression doesn’t soften, but his eye does, just a bit.
“If you insist on doing such foolish things,” he says, “you should at least be able to assure me that you know what you are doing.”
“I do know.” Phainon lowers his head at that. He feels like a scolded child, but also like—like he’s being seen and judged and apprehended, and yet not turned away for it. “I’m not—” He strives to explain himself, not knowing what it is he’s explaining. “I don’t—I haven’t—”
“You’ve been reckless, is what you have been.”
But Professor Anaxa is taking off his bloodied gloves and putting away the medical supplies without complaint, is reaching up to tug Phainon’s damp shirt back down over his stomach. Phainon’s fingers are limp around the fabric. He shivers miserably when his teacher’s graze over his.
“If this happens again and you are in need of help, you are to call me. Are we clear?” Professor Anaxa eyes him. “I won’t let you leave this room until you agree.”
A lump is swelling in Phainon’s throat now. “Y-yes, Professor Anaxa,” he says, and blinks quickly.
“Anaxagoras,” Professor Anaxa corrects him.
Phainon starts to cry again, embarrassingly.
Professor Anaxa pauses from where he had been replacing the last of the equipment. He sighs, and he doesn’t sound annoyed, but Phainon still struggles to apologize through the sobs that keep wracking through his body. He’s sorry for hurting himself. He’s sorry for making his professor have to deal with him. He doesn’t even know what he’s sorry about anymore. He’s sorry for existing.
“…there’s no need for that,” Professor Anaxa says. Then, after a few cumbersome seconds, he reaches out rather stiffly and cups Phainon’s face in both of his hands, wiping the tears from his cheeks.
Phainon crumples forward against his chest, clinging to his coat and weeping.
Professor Anaxa sighs again in his ear, but it’s a gentle exhale of a thing. He pats Phainon on the back, as though patting a dromas, and he doesn’t push him off, even with how unsightly Phainon must seem. Drenched in tears and ichor, he is nothing like the deliverer everyone calls him, nothing like the perfect vessel he is supposed to be.
But Phainon supposes Professor Anaxa has never bought into any of that, nor anything of the prophecy. To him, all that Phainon is is a student who accidentally blows up spiritual physics laboratories and turns in blank papers and argues with him over Erythrokeramist philosophy.
To Professor Anaxa, all that he is is a regular human being. One who cries and lies and bleeds.
“Go on now,” he says when Phainon’s sobs finally die into uneven breathing. He doesn’t rush Phainon to draw away, but waits for him to detach himself before he pulls his coat off and wraps it around his shoulders, securing it to hide the bloodied shirt and gauze underneath. “I won’t tell anyone, but I do suggest you prepare for when that woman finds out eventually.”
Phainon sometimes thinks she already knows and is simply sparing him from the need to discuss it until it affects his performance. But he simply nods. Professor Anaxa has enough of a grievance with her as it is.
“I’ll… come back to clean the classroom later,” he says, resisting the urge to twist his fingers into the coat now covering him. He had probably already gotten it dirty earlier, and he should really wash his hands before he touches it again, lest its purpose of concealing the mess become pointless.
To his surprise, Professor Anaxa shakes his head, denying the offer. “That won’t be necessary. If you feel guilty, you can return the favor by paying attention when you come to class next week.”
Phainon isn’t sure whether that means he’s still upset that Phainon wasn’t concentrating on the lesson. He starting to think that maybe Professor Anaxa hadn’t been upset about it to begin with.
He nods again, quietly.
Professor Anaxa waves him off. “Have an extra glass of water when you find the opportunity,” he says as Phainon is stumbling to his feet, hissing in a breath as he gets used to the pull of the stitches. “Your blood is more valuable than you might think. Don’t waste it.”
Phainon makes his way to the water fountain only slightly gingerly. He washes the blood off his hands with warm water and adjusts the temperature into something colder before he leaves. Professor Anaxa prefers it that way, and he will probably want to use it after him.
“Yes, Professor,” Phainon says again, when he senses his teacher looking.
It’s difficult to understand all that he is feeling—lost or afraid or uncertain, anxious, hoping. But listening is always easy, and so is agreeing to him. Professor Anaxa is always telling him to make his own decisions, and maybe that’s why when Phainon doesn’t think he can, there’s no one he trusts more to make them for him.
Phainon walks out of the door and corrects his posture, steadies his pace, his gaze, his expression. Outside of Professor Anaxa’s view, he can’t be that crying child anymore if someone sees him. He has to be Phainon, and he has to be a hero, more a symbol than a person.
But Professor Anaxa’s coat hugs the imperfections of his body, a soft, unspoken protection. It still smells like him. And it still feels like being held, at least.