worn out.

C is for Cicatrize

It smells like citrus in the morning.

Sunlight streams through cracks in the curtains, it's cool enough for long sleeves but not cold enough for a sweater. Atsu hides under pale cream blankets sweat rolls down his face into the pillows and he's breathing fast breaths, his face is pinched and his eyes hurt.

It's raining, he never really saw that as a surprise, even in those movies he used to watch with his parents.

Pitter patter falls behind him and he can feel the sand by his toes and the ocean by his hips and the burning in his arms, but everything is black. He can't see. He can hear her screaming and shouting but everything is black, he can feel the rain falling off his face but he can't see. Everything is nothing and he's choking on something he can't see and she's dro―

He wakes up to a nightmare, but he does not scream, or shout, or give any indicator of his dismay. Instead he remains just barely calm enough to breathe. Distantly, he thanks himself for having an internal alarm set for when the sun rises. Nobody can see or hear him that way. So he stays calm and just takes shorts breathes of air, because he feels that if he takes in too much his lungs will fall apart and his fractured rib will poke and prod at the sensitive tissue until it breaks in and he'll drown.

Irina knows nothing of this and he won't tell her. He won't tell her anything, he'll just keep quiet and breathe, and walk on air for now because that's all he can do.

Although it takes a moment, Atsu realizes that a presence is missing and he panics before coming to the conclusion that the monachopsis is caused by his newly deceased sister. He takes in another small, shallow breathe of the citrus smelling air and gets up from his bed. The blanket is folded when he leaves the comfort and warmth it gives. His body was always cold. Always. Even durring the summer when Mor made him work and work and work until the skin on his hands peeled back and his legs collapsed underneath the weight of his torso.

He grits his teeth and squints his eyes allowing the world around him to become fuzzy and diluted. He let's his ears fill with cotton and his mouth to swell and burn and hurt. A wet sound jumps from his mouth and his lips feel sticky and he can taste copper and salt and red. It slips down and he swallows the crimson fluid before it can spill from his lips.

Rule number five: don't make anything dirty.

Right- right. He can't get anything dirty. So where's the bathroom? He needs to spit it out or he'll choke and he doesn't like the feeling, it reminds him too much of drowning. In a frantic motion he opens the two doors in the room―the closet and the white one leading outside, he can hear nothing so his parents must be asleep, right?

His feet tread lightly on the wooden that felt too cold underneath his calloused feet. It's too early for someone to be this cautious, a voice in his head reasons, but he knows to be weary constantly. He knows, he knows that if he let's his guard down even for a moment- that when he finally shows that he is vulnerable, that he's weak, it will all be over.

If he let's his guard down he'll be ten again and he really wants to just relax and forget his past and replace it with citrus skies, lavender dreams, and mercury eyes.

He wants to think that red is passion and blue is life. That the sky wasn't always so dull and dreary and his head wasn't always so quiet and the world around him wasn't always so loud. He doesn't know why but he wants to feel light and cheerful, even if he never really knew what those feelings were. He wants his chest to thump with adrenaline and to smile so much that his cheeks hurt.