𝘒ö𝘯𝘪𝘨 / 𝘎𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘹 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳

his painter {Ghost}

Perhaps someone could love him.
Someone who could see past the horrors. Someone who wouldn't look away, but instead, chose to embrace him and everything he had become.

Love was a beast Simon wasn't capable of defeating.

He craved a gentle touch. He was broken, wanting to be loved regardless of his faults and all of the blood on his hands.

But how?
How could someone look past all that? The horror, the bloodshed?

It was a tall order, to love someone like him.

And yet, the craving was there. He yearned for it. A gentle touch, a compassionate embrace. Something to make him feel like he mattered.

There was no one to do so. No one to hold him.
But then he found you.

In his eyes, you were a painter and he was your muse. Breathing color into his meek world, filling his bank canvas with color.

A stroke of luck, some would call it.
To him it was a miracle sent from above.

You were painter of color, adding your
brushstrokes to his bleak canvas.

You were a miracle to him.
Softest voice he had ever heard.
Gentle hands on his skin, touching every wound, your fingers like paintbrushes tracing every scar, healing what no one had dared touch before.

He was still broken.
Still scarred, still damaged by his past.
In a world where nothing stayed the same for long, you were the closest to permanence he would find.

But with every touch, every word, you were slowly putting the pieces back together.
His world was brighter because of you, colorful for the first time.

He wanted to protect you, to shield you from everything that hurt him. His strength, his love; he used it to preserve your innocence as best he could.

Simon wanted you to never know how cold the world could be, never have to wonder how people could do the awful things they did to one another.

But things change.
War takes what it wants, regardless of how desperately one would want to keep a certain way.

How cruel the world was, to try to take you from him, to tear the two of you apart, to snuff out your light.

How cruel the world was when it had accomplished in doing so.

A cruel world indeed.
It had taken just a moment to find you, and just a moment more to lose you.

Simon was alone once more, the void in his heart too vast.

The only comfort he could find was the color you once added to his world. Those brushes you had used to fill him with life, now just another reminder of what had been taken from him.

He wasn't capable of picking up the brush and painting life into himself again. He didn't know if he ever could.
His world was no longer colorful, it had turned back to black and white.

The silence was his only companion now. The silence of death, a haunting symphony of sadness that followed him everywhere.

You were dead.
The canvas you had filled was beginning to go blank once more. Your color a fading memory, still visible, but slowly losing its brightness.

So he tried to keep himself busy.
Busy with missions, with killing, with the horror of a world that never changes.

Simon's life held no value to him anymore, not without you.
He threw himself into the front lines, daring the cruelty of the world to strike him down, almost pleading for it to accomplish in doing so.

Oh, but Simon could not die, no matter how hard he tried. The world kept throwing more and more dangerous missions his way, but he couldn't fall. No. That would be too easy.

He was doomed to live on.
To endure the pain of your absence, day after day.
Every breath felt like a punishment instead of a blessing.

And so Simon had began to paint his canvas with the blood of the ones he killed, to drown out your own colors, your memories you left imprinted on him.

He wouldn't stop until you were forgotten.

But your name still slipped out of his mouth when he drunk himself sick. He begged for his memories of you to leave him alone, but they would not.

He turned to everything he could to try and banish you from his mind. But your presence was etched in his heart, and nothing could tear it away.

You, his artist, were gone.
He was drowning in a sea of misery, unable to reach land.

All the alcohol, all the missions, all the killing, it was not enough. Nothing could bring you back, nothing could make the pain of your absence go away.

He was an empty canvas now.
The paint gone.
And his dear painter six feet under.