#divinarcsa

The sound of her voice is so soft as it echoes through the otherwise empty chamber---and yet it cuts through him like a knife, down to the deepest core of him.

Xigbar does not allow himself to experience guilt---does not have the time for it, nor the energy, especially these days---and yet, even as he had been planning his egress after this brief visitation, out of a foolish itch of nostalgia, and his hand is raised to rip away the veil of Light and escape into the Darkness... her voice reaches him, and the notion simply falls away, and his shoulders sag, as though suddenly accumulating the weight of each year he has lived this charade.

And that’s... well, needless to say, that’s quite a bit of weight.

But he hesitates to turn---to actually gaze upon her, and those lovely brown eyes and her silken hair and radiant skin. Hesitates because he knows he would have to throw on his flawless poker face of seamless confidence. Because how long had it been since their last meeting?

---Or, rather, since their fallout?

How long, he attempts to reflect, since the fight upon this very stairway, her spelling out to him her realization and recognition of him as a “villain”---as one of the dastardly Men in the Black Coats? The hurt that welled up in her throat as she accused him, the anger in her fists as she pounded despairingly against his chest, tears streaming down her cheeks as she fully absorbed the betrayal of her trust? How long since he had gently yet firmly pulled her from him and, donning his hood, disappeared, wordless, into the void, his entire intent to cut her off from his existence and never see her again? To just let her move on?

Yet it seemed, after all this time, she hadn’t.

...Neither of them had.

And yet still he faces away from her, even as he speaks, his own voice reverberating off the cold walls of the mansion:

Back when he had been Braig, Xigbar had been far more accustomed to dealing with formal attire---the stiff cut of his guard uniform (sans the crimson kerchief he’d kept about his neck, but that... is another story for another time), or the overly-ornate garb required during ol’ ‘the Wise’s little shindigs he’d throw every now and then amongst the upper echelons. Yes, despite being one of the rowdier within the Radiant Bunch, a scrawny orphan taken in against all odds, even Braig had figured out how to properly coordinate his multitude of outfits, how to tie his tie to perfection, how to stand just so in order to accentuate his attractiveness.

So, ultimately, even while he’s shifting within the confines of his newly-tailored suit for an evening out, getting a feel for it, Xigbar absolutely knows he looks good---ravishing, even---and Belle’s short syllable of surprise as she catches sight of him encourages him to maybe adopt this sort of appearance a tad more often.

:000

“ what’s it going to be then? an eternity in the deepest pit? ”

Confess a dark, twisted, or otherwise sinful thought your muse has had about mine. | (Basically always accepting tbh)