Break has always considered his name to be nothing more than the product of a whim, but now, facing his reflection, he is forced to reconsider.
Disclaimer: Sadly, none of Break belongs to me...
How Very Apt
The smile twists back at him.
Fractured.
Broken.
The upturned lips are chapped: sore, the corners pulled too tight and the muscles tense, so close to shattering. The skin is pale, almost white, and there is no healthy blush that brings life to those dull cheeks, hollowed and worn as they are. Blood; dried and brown mars the once smooth turn of the chin, and beneath a dead, red eye, dark bruises swell, the kind that cannot be healed by the passing of time or hours of rest.
He is tired.
He is old.
And finally, he is starting to look it.
His face may be unlined; undisturbed by natural signs of age, but then, could he really be called a natural thing? His hair, the colour of rotted dust, his eyes that of weakest wine and his manner: the mischievous clown: untrustworthy, disliked and fiendish: none of these could be associated with the laughing, crying, living people that surround him.
He knows now he hasn't long in this world.
He is better suited to the disorder of Hell.
But, of course, he has already been.
As his shoulders tense in preparation for another feeble burst of agony from his withered lungs; ironically now capable of overpowering the whole of him; he, perhaps the strongest fighter that Pandora owns, he now watches the haggard figure before him follow, the sound of a tearing throat foreshadowing the birth of new blood, fresh and bright and fast. He feels, just barely, its ever-cooling trail running quick and thickly over the parched remains of its predecessor's, his stretched hand arriving too late to catch the drops as they land heavily at his feet, spattering across the neat tiled floor.
Between him and the figure, three vivid, fat, oval beads sit restlessly, yearning hungrily for gravity to aid their descent, to allow them to slide over the invisible barrier that separates him from himself, to distort, to ruin-
He will not let them. He wipes them from existence with a swift brush of his sleeve, uncaring of the work it will later take to remove the revealing stains and glaring, his heavy lidded eye focused bleakly on his reflection.
The eye narrows.
He surveys his own smile with contempt. Once, not so very long ago, he thinks, he was able to smile on impulse. It would be convincing; he'd confused even himself once or twice, and fooled others well enough that they never suspected, never noticed. It was just a part of him, like his sweet tooth, or his absurd costumes or his petty tricks and insults: it was Break. Nothing out of the ordinary.
But now they look twice. Now they watch the cracks form in the mask: the sly smile falter, the hanging sleeve slip back, the sneaking fork hesitate. Little things, all of them building to what he is sure will be the end of Xerxes Break, of himself, and though he knows it is inevitable, it does not prevent the pain from spiking through his splintering façade.
He is Breaking.
He is Broken.
His image laughs humourlessly.
He supposes he couldn't have picked a more appropriate name.
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