Bad Sanses with the āwho hurt youā trope?
Horror: His big arms are walls against the outside world. He pulls you in close, nothing can reach you. He holds you with a love older than blood, a love that asks for nothing in return - you feel the words through his great chest rather than hearing them. You aren't sure if he's touching your hair to comfort you, or to stop himself from quivering with rage. Perhaps it's both. He smells like a food you didn't know you were craving, he sounds like a home that's waiting for you, and he feels like somewhere you can sleep.
He absorbs the scents on you like a bloodhound. Asking who did it was redundant. If he ever sees them, he will know.
Dust: The cuts to your body are amateur, ragged, as if someone took a hacksaw to his favourite porcelain doll. Where did his gloves go? One hand on your back, one cupping your face. The proximity shuts your mouth. You're close enough to feel how he's trying to control his breathing; from within the shadows under his hood, you see his eyelights, the anger pooling within them. Dust's words are so rare, they're soft but something frightening is following when he asks, lightning without thunder.
Death by a thousand cuts? No. Just from holding his gaze, you know that only a thousand cuts won't be enough to satisfy his thirst for revenge.
Killer: He doesn't speak. He doesn't ask. He places a loving kiss to your temple, as if to assure you there's still something of your silly jester left in the leaking wraith before you. But he knows better than to be close to the thing he loves most when he doesn't want to smile anymore. The mask is missing, there's few things more terrifying than Killer without words, emptiness where the face once was. Was it all an act? No one knows. Not even Killer.
... You might expect the others to intervene when he's leaving. But they merely step aside, even Nightmare dares not stand in the way of Killer's hunt. They only ever laugh because they know he wants them to. Right now, they don't have that right.
Nightmare: He holds your chin. He's gentle - he always is with you. You thought he'd rage like an animal, command you to tell him who did this, as shadows choked you from the inside out.
You forget that there's no one who could feel your fear as intimately as he does. He's tasted your terror, your pain, the ache of the bruises and the sting of the cuts, the salt of your tears and the ice of the chills. He knows. He understands. He touches his forehead to yours, it's alright. You can fall apart, he's here, there's no shame, there's nothing he hasn't seen a hundred times before. Just let go. Let it all out. You can't drown in this sea, dear; not when he is the water.
There will be time for fury later. For now, the king needs to tend to his love.
Error: Will you tell him who did it? You can feel his rage, it's splitting the air around you, lines between realities are shimmering like hot oil. Whoever did this will suffer in a way that a mortal mind cannot comprehend. He'll peel them apart like crumbling sheets of wet pastry. Could you do that to someone? Could you knowingly sentence them to a pain that doesn't yet have a name? Perhaps you could talk him down from it, soothe his fury. But is that really what you want to do, when you're so tired?
The choice is yours. Just know that this is one web that cannot be undone.
