scarlett stroms {d10} finished

"Scar" was an ironic nickname that bled out by the time my years hit double-digits. Little did I know I'd be giving and receiving them as often as my name was called, but I'd grown tired of shortened versions of a name I bore proudly. "Scar" turned to "Scarlett" that eventually turned to "Scout" every once in a while. "Scout" is for the middle of the night with strangers and swords and starlight. "Scarlett" is for formalities and families and the blurred lines that sink together to form one in the same. "Scar" is for little girls and knees grazed in red and little white lies.

I don't know which one I hate more.

The slurred "Bitch" spat at me falls into the air and hits the floor with no regard at all. My heart doesn't follow. I don't even bother to smirk anymore. I just turn and walk away, feet hitting the pavement in time with their string of profanities. It's a name I get called more often than the one my parents bestowed on me at birth. They say the girl with the dark curls, wide eyes and a dagger stashed underneath her coat has no heart, or if she does it's made of stone, but I laugh at them when they're not looking. They also say I'm just like my Mom and I don't know whether to be pleased or terrified. I think it's a bit of both.

I learnt not to question her motives from a young age. And after seeing what she could do and what I was to inherit I dared not speak a word.

"Pick it up" my mother instructed.

"But that's illegal-"

"Pick it up!"

The blade felt heavy in my hands but I got used to it.

The weight on my shoulders was harder to get accustomed to.

She didn't have to tell me to never utter a single word about what she was teaching me because I barely spoke at all. I'm not stupid. Around these parts, you vaguely mention a hunting knife you've got lying around and you'll find yourself locked up quicker than a rebel with a flare gun in the middle of the District Square. We are disciplined and rigorous and thorough. A protege by birthright. Something I earned by merely existing.  I was crafted from a bitter cold and warm soul, the perfect combination - yet I am no hurricane, and I am reminded of that every day.

"Again."

(This hurts.)

"Again, Scarlett. Again, again, again."

(This hurts, hurts, hurts. Slam slam slam.)

I get no slap of the cheek, no insults, no nods, no sighs. She leaves and I get nothing. That is the worst of all.

I let out my anger in the dead of the night. I know my mother leaves the house the second she thinks we're asleep and arrives just before the crack of dawn. What she doesn't know is that I leave precisely after her and make sure I'm back before she is. I am quicker, faster, smarter than she is and I revel in it, taking the early hours of the day as my own and demand the stars' attention. I am a ghost, a whisper, a shadow. There's a story that a figure named Scout stabbed a girl in the eye last summer. That's a lie. I didn't stab her - I popped the whole damn thing right out of her socket. 

I can grasp at the stars and yet I cannot command a room like her. I have inherited her icy glare, her stature and straightforwardness ("Mom wants you downstairs. Get changed first"), the tilt of a head as I study something new (he is weak and vulnerable and naked and mortified) and my ability to see through bullshit (he's been crying) and the criss-cross of my arms as I survey the unfamiliar for threats (he could take nothing but my parents' little affection). I can steal one person's attention at a time, but never a crowd. With long eyelashes and silly little smiles I lure out information and repel any suspicion of who I could be when the sun disappears. I learnt to weaponise my soft figure that I damned for years as I yearned for a chiseled, cut figure of a warrior. That was before realising what I had was just as desirable to another's eyes. I am not a warrior, nor a leader, nor a crowd-pleaser. I was born from a fierce winter storm and yet I can only exhale frost. I can tempt the affections of just about anyone who braves the chill of the night - except the night herself.

I had watched, from windows and cracks in the doors and the gaps in my parent's attention. White, like a ghost, and I was absolutely sure the kid was dead yet my father persisted. Gold, stuck between the layers of blood that soaked into his skin and sheets and everywhere else. I didn't squirm. I'm rather accustomed to the colour scarlet.

I watched my mother observe him as he awoke to this new life and held my breath.
 
She slapped his face and I smiled as I walked away.

They called him Lazarus and I hated it. I didn't think it was their right to choose for him, to strip him of whomever he was and construct him to their desires - as if I was not enough for them, so unbearably disappointing that  they had to create something out of bits and pieces of a half-dead boy. So desperate that they ripped him from death and forced him upon us, upon me, and said to call him brother. I hated that even more than his name. Foreign and unfamiliar, I refused to let it sink into my tongue and pursed my lips at the sound. 

I watched them closely. All three of them. At once, apart, and together again.

A knife at his throat, an urge inside of my frost-bitten heart for her to press the blade just a few more inches further-

He lives. Again.

(Fuck this.)

Fingertips on a scar.

A hand on a shoulder.

A nod.

(I keep watching.)

Hands at his chin.

Eyes collide.

A nod.

(I look away.)

✦