HEADCANON NO. 1 - Familie.
I. Being a Martin had always been as much of a burden as it had been a priviledge, had weighed her down as much as it had lifted her up. She was a princess, both in the way everyone would bend backwards to make even her wildest dreams come true and in the way her parents would parade her in front of her friends. Perfect, pristine, poised. She was every bit as royal in their kingdom as any other princess might have been. Still, other princesses would were born to become queens, to reign surpreme over the kingdom. Not her though, no, not her.
II. “Quicquid crescit in cinere perit” (Whatever grows perishes in ashes)
She lives an breathes the words, her family’s words. They’re written onto everything she owns, her bags, her favorite pen, a ring her father gave her for her thirteenth birthday. It’s pride that fills her when she looks at them, pride that would slowly turn bitter as the years went by. Why would she be proud in something she doesn’t get to be a part of? Still, she choses another, final place to eternalize those words, her own body. When she is sixteen, she gets the tattoo and she loves it with all her heart. On her ribcage the words stand black and boldly against her pale skin, a reminder of the greatness she was born into.
III. She hates it. She hates everything that reminds her about her family but she hates IT the most. Somedays she wishes she could scratch it off with her bare hands, somedays she seriously considers removing it. What a bitter irony, hadn’t she risen and wasn’t she in ashes right now? Nineteen years old, she is being hunted all over the continent, she hasn’t lived a day void of fear ever since she has left. She doesn’t even recognize herself in the mirror anymore, the only thing that remains of the child she was are the words, words that had once been like religion to a girl who believed in no other gods but her parents.
IV. A smile on her the sharpened angles of her features, as she looks in the mirror, letting her fingertips travel over the new ink under her skin. It’s words again. Maybe she should have learned from the first time, maybe she shouldn’t have done it but all she can feel is pride. They’re on her hip this time and it’s an absolute masterpiece. It’s her presence, marked on her skin inches beneath the constant reminder of her past. “The dead are departed but the living are ravenous”.
