DEIMOS
we've all got blood on our hands
something somewhere had to die
so we could stay alive
The sacrificial tendencies had existed long, long, long before he’d ever been thrown into Caido’s grasp – fueled and irked and ensured by crowns, by soldier endeavors, by general tactics, by the Machiavellian upheavals in which he’d always lived his life. Why let someone else be harmed? Why let another of his own bear the burden? The beast had always found himself capable of holding a scorching, menacing, overbearing weight across his shoulders, no matter which world, no matter which form, never voicing exhaustion, fatigue, or the soulless incantations of loss. It’d been normal, it’d been habitual, it’d been routine, to proffer himself to the slaughter, to the rituals of violence, chiseled and sculpted into the fiber of his being. Sometimes it’d simply been expected: the protector, the guardian, the Reaper, unleashing torrents of wrath, of contempt, of barely-concealed rage, to let the world know the Basin wasn’t to be trifled with. He bore wounds and scars and stigmas to prove it, permitted their existence to carve their scorn into his wake, because they meant survival, because they meant someone else didn’t receive the blows, because something was protected and honored and he defied them all. But Rexanna’s words hit harder than he expected, and he knew the knife of hypocrisy dangling before him too, scattering and scything over his bones, touching upon the enamel even light, even airy, as Rexanna called into the quiet. Because I do not matter settled upon his tongue. Because there were a thousand souls whittled and manifested just the same as him, nothing but battle, but sedition, but bloodshed in their hearts, in their minds, fervent to maul oblivion if given half the chance. Because they weren’t the world-changers, because they were vices, because they were weapons, and he’d been amongst that soulless enterprise from the moment he was born. In his nature, in his foundation, to clench his jaw and barrel onward, drag lacerations across adversaries, to open pathways, to sculpt and ravage, to rampage and destroy. “So no one else has to.” He answered at first; not even half of the conflagration beating within his chest. He was not a necessity, he was not a diplomat, he was not a sovereign, not here; even within the Basin, at the base of his demise, he presumed they had naturally filled in the hole. It probably hadn’t even been gaping, someone stepping up from within, the Reaper cold and gone and the world moved on. Perhaps it would happen again, in time, when he continued onslaught after onslaught, movement after movement, already thrown and launched into precarious, perilous situations time and time again. “So no one else was hurt,” he murmured, quieter now, the vocals merely a low rumble in his throat while she clutched and he didn’t know what else to do. The monolith was a replaceable element in a sea of citizens; and he understood that was how she mustered her way through too. Much the same; idiotic, perhaps, but firm in their beliefs of protection and resolution. On nothing much more than instinct and melancholy, he leaned back into her squeeze, into her gestures, the sigh evident through his spine.
