lysander duarte, district two | finished

He says, "Baby, I'm a black diamond," yet you can't help but to notice the dust of coal on your lips when he parts from the kiss. He holds you close, but only his fingertips touch your flesh. And he has a face that a choir of angels would sing about in praise, but he's not the perfection that your mother says you deserve. He's got dirt under his nails, and he asks, "Wanna add your blood to the mix?" You blush, and his skin is like gasoline caressing fire when he strokes your cheek -- the flames consume you, and he pulls himself up from your ashes, breathing out smoke with little more than a faint smirk. He leaves you to wreck yourself upon the charred remains of your innocence, but you're fine with dying at his hands.

---

Lysander Duarte was a prince of a crumbling kingdom, yet he wore a crown that was ripped from the head of a decaying king. He had been born into nothing, a starving mother who made love to a man who only promised the night, just to give her nine months of further suffering. He was frail & sickly at birth. A scorned child that a young woman couldn't afford to feed, and at the age of seven, he sold his soul to a man who gave him enough coin to keep himself alive, and from then on, each night was devoted to venomous pleasures, all in the name of survival -- 'cause no one had interest in saving a boy who meant nothing in the grand scheme of things, and with a clenched jaw & furrowed brows, he promised to become something. 

(Even if nothing was his entirety.)

With black hair that swooped in front of eyes that were dark as the earth, and lips that a fair share of men had worshipped, it wasn't hard for the boy to make himself noticed with a little effort -- a coy waving of a finger, slender hands loosing a shirt to reveal a body that was hardened out of nothing but sheer desperation; 'cause if he wasn't aesthetically pleasing, he wasn't worth even his own breath. 

(Does he even still breathe?)

His body was a canvas, and a thousand different strokes from a thousand different brushes painted his skin. "They're battle scars, baby," he'd whisper with a a crooked smile, arching his back if to pierce the heavens -- yet never escaping the burn of Hell. He spent his childhood and teenage years making connections, being the boy that all the trash and royalty of Two wanted to get their hands on, and by the age of eighteen, he made ties with a underground facility of crime bosses, working his way through their ranks, eventually becoming head of his own branch by his twenties. 

Suddenly, he had a solid source of income, and terrifyingly, he no longer had to sell his heart during the pitch black of lonely nights. 'Pretty boy with an empire built on the back of sluts,' growled those who were now beneath him, as a building of pleasures and violent darkness was built in his honor. All the beautiful trash of Two from the alleys eventually found their way to his palace, a hundred different boys with a hundred different stories, but each with one purpose -- to please, just as he had. 

(All but himself.)

Cigar in hand, smoke in his lungs, and an angelic, broken face in each direction of his gaze, he now sat upon a throne, exhaling the shattered remains of his innocence within his smoky hacking. He was not necessarily proud of what he had to do to crawl his way to the top, and when he sees his boys with their hollow, sad faces, he can't help to falter -- 'They're surviving,' he had to often  remind  himself. 'Just as you had.'

(But, dear Ripred, is he even still alive?)

---

A shattered king wearing a broken crown, born from nothing and building a legacy out of his sins -- Ripred, isn't that ironic?

table: zoë