oh my mistakes, would you really want me? {Leo/Howl} || Masquerade

We sit like fallen embers here, in this place. Dust isn't meant to be brutal and yet here we are, burning ourselves up into a million pieces. Or maybe it's just me. Burning alive on the stake, they have proclaimed me "Witch". I tug at my collar, sweat pooling in the space between my shoulder blades but it feels like molten lava.

I wouldn't be here if it were not required of me, if my father had not told me that after my last transgression, I better do as I was told. I agreed with him, no. I did not. It was not a wrong thing that I did, it was a failure that I performed. To make up for said failure, I was to do what I was made to do; be beautiful and stand tall, strong like a lion. Tonight I wilt like a flower beneath a mask made of stardust, finding comfort in the design so similar to a helmet. It puts a wall of fabric between myself and my adversaries, drowning out the world to leave me a safe, quiet zone.

But I am weak and I am wilting and oh mother please

I must be dying.

My skin burns with fever and the ballroom spins around my head like I am the sun and the four corners are my planets, revolving endlessly and beautifully. It is mathematical and beautiful because of it and I am failure, in it's purest form, I am such a beautiful failure. My grade is on my back, defining me. My dress shirt clings to the skin on my back, becoming one with wounds that will not heal. Someone must have torn the entirety of the skin off of my back while I was unaware.

I can barely stand from the pain.

It clouds my vision and I would cry if I could find a way to put into words the feeling inside of me, like exhaustion. No. Fear? No. Sorrow? No. No. Guilt. Guilt and sadness and anger and betrayal and failure and horror and a terrible weight on my chest.

I deserve the burning sensation underneath my skin, hot daggers in my back and the sweat and my breath comes too fast. My hair is already stuck to my forehead but we have only just arrived. The Avox, the boy, the servant, the enemy(?), the slave, no, the boy. I lean on him and he leans on me and we are small here, ants come to face the Queen. The room takes another turn as we stand in place and I realize that I must be sick.

Rooms don't just spin willy nilly.

Or do they?

Maybe. Maybe they do and I've had it wrong all this time. It's confusing now. I stumble forwards in the crowd, one hand wrapping around the upper arm of my companion and I slowly straighten, like a grandfather with too many knots underneath the skin of his bones, and inside of him like a disease. Somethings are made to never be ruined but I am not and have never been one of those things.

My ruin has been falling together for so many years now.

I don't know what to believe anymore; is the sister whom I love correct, or the boy that I can no longer be without?

Or are they both wrong?

What is right?

Where are we?

There are so many people here.

A ball?

I need air.

My back stings where the woman with the whip for a tongue and the hands full of tails tore the flesh from me piece by piece. I wonder if she knew what she was doing to me when she did so, if she knew that surviving this would be more a question rather than a certainty. For days and days, I have been so tired. Months. Confusion has gripped me for months, along with the intense feeling of darkness and depth. It twists in my stomach, shredding it. I cannot eat or drink, I cannot think. When I think, my only thought is of my failure.

For how long have I been so wrong? Five years? Six?

The numbers blur together in my brain, I cannot make sense of them.

I claw forwards through the colourful crowd like a drunk man unable to balance. Nearly every fresh movement brings pain to the point where I cannot bear it anymore. Sweat pools in the nape of my neck, my back, my brow and the room spins around and around again.

People hiss at me as I stumble into them, some laugh. They must take me for a joke. I don't have the energy to tell them that they are wrong. I need to find a door.

I hit a wall, the side of my body slamming against it and I use it to find my way, the room spins far too much for me to navigate by my feet alone. I know I came with a companion but I seem to have lost them. Or did they lose me? Wasn't it someone I had to protect?

Her?

No.

It was a him. You can see his age by the rings left in the stump of his tongue from where she, the lady with the claws cut it with her axe. She had them hold me down and she took it from him. She told me that she was disappointed in me and I did not scream, I didn't.

I didn't as she brought the whips down across my back fifty times because I am not the child she thinks I am. I am not. I am strong. I am not a boy.

No.

I am a man?

Yes.

The woman, that's her. My sister, that's her. Where is she?

If I can find her, then maybe I will be alright.

I cannot remember if she came tonight as well or not. Memories of her are beginning to fade and I am frightened. I cannot lose her.

My hands crawl across the wall and curl around pieces of decor. My face is impassive, an infinity far greater than anything we mere mortals can think of, hundreds of small diamonds flown onto a black as night background.

It is sapping my strength, my entirety to wear it.

But was I ever strong in the first place? Wasn't that just a lie too? A failure?

I can't keep it all straight anymore.

With a sigh, I crash through a door leading out into a long hallway, one side of which is speckled with large french doors, all flung open to taste the defrosting spring air, to keep the party from overheating.

A feeling of intense release swims through me and I relax my body. For a moment I stand tall as I've always been instructed to, face tilted slightly back underneath the mask in order to feel the breeze upon my neck and then the world is darkening as if I am being swallowed by starlight.

I stumble backwards against the wall and where my back hits it, pain screams through me. My breath catches in my throat and I turn,slumping against the wall on my side and slowly falling to my side, breathing heavily beneath the mask. I don't have the strength to remove it before the darkness overwhelms and I become a galaxy.

I don't make a sound.

She wants me to, so I don't.

The whip, it eats at my skin, the barbed ends tearing it away from bone and muscle and sinew. She wants to see me crying, begging. That's what she likes. I keep my mouth shut.

I began in a kneeling position, arms held by chain attached to the walls on either side of me. With each blow, I have fallen farther and farther forward. I no longer have the strength to keep myself in an upright position. I barely have the strength to keep myself conscience. The only thing that does is the image of that boy, etched into my mind. Howl.

I watched as they pulled his tongue out of his mouth, piece by bloody piece. Two guards held me in place but I struggled weakly in their grasp anyway. I had meant to save him, instead I had doomed us both. I tried to tell him, tried to catch his panicked gaze. All I saw in his eyes was fear and loathing. All I saw was his hatred for me.

There was a time when it would not have bothered me, when I would have been happy for it. I thought that I was performing justice. This was not justice, this was pure sadism. This was evil. I am on the evil side. My sister, Lilac. She was always talking about good and bad. When she was killed by an Avox I thought that made them the evil ones. I assumed that those from the districts were deserving of their lot.

Howl had a sister too. He just wanted to keep her safe, to make her happy.

Like Lilac was to me.

Please let him not be dead.

The whip bites into my skin once again but I am not yet numb and a grunt of pain slips from my lips despite myself. Blood drips down my bare back, mixing with the white fabric of my regulation white peacekeeper uniform pants. I should be screaming. I was meant to be screaming.

But I have been tamed since birth not to make such sounds.

I deserve this anyway. I failed Howl. I promised to save him, I told him to trust me. I was wrong. Justice is merely a mirage in a place like the detention center, a shimmering dream. It does not exist. I was foolish. This feeling is a worse pain than any physical one I could receive. It sits heavy on my shoulders, weighing me down, drowning me. I am drowning me.

It is blood in my throat. I spit it out.

Psyche is angry for my lack of sound. She punishes me for it, digging the whip into my skin again and again and again until all I know is nothing.

▴ ▲ ▴

Skin. It is too hot. Take it off me. Take it off. I am burning, alive I am burning. Suffocation comes quick. Crying, tears of heat, down my face. It hurts. It hurts. I am on fire. My back. It's on fire, cut it off, cut it off. A cry, that was mine. My lips made that sound, from me. Weak. A mewl. From me. My arms. They are too heavy. Dead weight like waterlogged wood. I try to turn my head. No. It doesn't. It needs to be colder, can't breath.

The cloud is taken from my face.

I gasp air in.

Can't see, eyes are shut.

Try to open them.

Can't open them.

Too heavy.

Too heavy.

Shaking. Tugging. Whimper from me. It hurts. Stop.

Cold. On my forehead, cold and soft.

I sigh.

It's good.

Can't speak.

Can't open my eyes.

Too heavy.

I sink.

▴ ▲ ▴

Three days after the whipping and they told me to stay in bed, not to move but I am a Fenwick and a soldier and it is unseemly for me to stay in bed. It burns but I force myself to stand, grabbing wildly for the IV stand so I don't topple over. I pull my uniform jacket on over crisp white bandage stained with my blood and I tear the IV out of my hand. I grimace. It is the least of my pain but it is good to focus on that instead of the way my back burns.

Then I am gone, leaving the Peacekeeper hospital on the outskirts of the Capitol and making my way to the Avox pens. I know that the chance is slim of finding the boy there, Howl. Chances are that he is already sold. I have to try though, I have to find him. If he is sold then I will track down his buyer and use the Fenwick wallet to purchase him back. I promised I would help him. I ignore the pain in my back and I get on with it.

I find him after an hour of search. My eyes roam over the cages and an attendant guides me, the owner himself. He is overjoyed at having a Fenwick at his Avox pens. We always buy in groups and pay well.

He is in the corner of a cage, a bandage over his mouth. He shares the cage with a few others but I ignore them, all of my energy is spent on finding him. I can barely think, my back hurts so intensely. I gesture at him. The attendant tries to convince me that I don't want him. I assure him I do, swaying gently on the spot. It is hard to focus. Perhaps he thinks me intoxicated. He doesn't question me further and accepts my exorbitant offer.

He opens the cage door.

I reach my hand out for Howl.

I have found him.