#foreverchasingcolor

charming-butterball said: you are so cute i LITERALLY CANNOT STAND IT

xcynique said: cutie

The thing about knives is that they are always cold. Most metal, if held long enough, will absorb the body heat of its wielder, but knives remain resolutely icy and full of sharp planes and harsh, unforgiving edges. Knives are cold and unfeeling: they inflict pain, but they cannot understand it.

The handle was heavy in Gage’s hand as he crept along the shadows pooled at the edge of the street, alone in the night with a rapid heartbeat and frosty breath. He darted silently across a side street, gripping the hilt of his only weapon so tightly that the tiny ridges along the it dug sharply into his palm. In that instant before he reached the shelter of the darkness once again the dim light of a distant street lamp flickered across his pale, angular face, matched by the whiteness of his clenched knuckles, and reflected off of the dark hollows of his eyes, the piercing blue nearly swallowed by pupils dilated with fear. Trembling, he ducked into the overhang of a doorway, the rush of blood in his ears not quite able to drown out the frantic racing of his thoughts nor the soft echo of approaching footsteps, ticking off the seconds he had left to make a choice. The stone wall was rough and reassuringly solid against his back, and he pressed his free hand against it shakily.

He couldn’t do it. This knife did not belong in his hand, no matter how often it ended up clutched there; he wanted to throw it, cast it away into the cobblestones and just run, run for all he was worth, but he couldn’t. They would find him. No one could escape the gang for long — his intended victim hadn’t, for here Gage was, after all, listening to the man wander unwittingly towards his fate. He could simply pickpocket the man, a member of a rival gang, and bring it back as ‘proof’ of his death — but no, it would only be worse when the dead man resurfaced, far from dead, or when a scout, one of who had probably followed him, reported that he had betrayed the leaders of the Famille. For this was a test, this mission in the dead of night, one that he could not pass, but he shuddered to think of the punishment for failing. His already broken resolve faltered, and he scuttled back the way he had come, hiding behind an outcropping a door down. Surely such a fate, to be kept alive and fed by hatred and fire, was worse than death.

Slowly, Gage pulled the dagger out of its hiding place in his sleeve and held it out so that the moonlight fell upon the polished metal, out of place in the dark and dingy night. It was, at that moment, something eerily beautiful to him. One small tool, forged by poor human hands, with the ability to make him into a monster or a martyr. It was sharp. It would be quick. It could even be merciful. His heart beat hard and fast, determinedly keeping his damned body anchored to life.

Then a weight slammed into him, a shadow peeling away from the rest: he had just enough time to recognize him as the man he was supposed to take down before his skull hit the stone wall behind him with a sickening crack, sending lights dancing across his vision and reason the man’s face from his sight. The pain stunned him for a moment, but he quickly regained control of his limbs, his arms still pinned at his sides and dirty fingernails digging into his skin.
“You’re the bastard, then?” The man hissed. He knew. Gage froze, able to see himself reflected in the his assailant’s eyes. He looked small and weak, and he cursed himself for having let his guard down. The man grappled with the collar of his shirt and ripped it aside to reveal a series of letters branded beneath his collarbones that identified him as an enemy, standing out against the pale skin of his chest and the other scars that laced across it. A slow smile began to creep onto his features until Gage spat defiantly in his face, chin held high. Then he growled and release his shirt to instead wrap his fingers around the boy’s neck.

Jolts of pain raced outwards from the points where the man’s fingers pressed into his windpipe, making his spine arch. Panic burst into his mind and he began to struggle against the man’s crushing grip, but it was useless. He punched Gage in the gut with his free hand, driving the remaining breath out of him in a single strangled gasp. He would have crumpled to the ground, if it weren’t for the vice-like grip wedged under his chin. He was thrashing frantically now, fire facings through his veins even as black dots began to dance across his vision.

Only moments ago, he had contemplated taking his own life to preserve that of this man’s, the man who now stood in front of him silently and stoically as his mouth gaped futilely for air and his throat throbbed, but now deep inside him burned a desperate desire to live. There was a difference between accepting death or even welcoming it and seeking it out: it is the balance of perhaps wanting to die and not wanting to be killed, and his limbs seemed to understand that. Gage walked the world on his own terms, and he planned on leaving it on them too. And today was not going to be the day. He lashed out fiercely to strike and kick — but in his left hand the knife, that godforsaken knife, was still clenched. He didn’t remember raising it. But ingrained in him was months of training that had let up to this very moment, and in the same way that Gage’s body had known it wanted to live, it knew what it had to do. The man collapsed against him, his fingers going limp. Gage gasped for air and it rasped in his throat, barely managing to fill his lungs before both of them toppled to the ground and Gage was pinned beneath the other’s torso.

Something was wrong. He was too still, the street was too quiet - the truth crept around the edges of his mind, looking for a way in, but Gage denied it entry, refusing to believe that he had done exactly what he had been sent there to do, and the exact opposite of what he had sworn to himself that he would. He trembled with the effort of it, denying the fact that resonated in his bones and demanded to be recognized. Still light-headed from the adrenaline and lack of oxygen, he squirmed out from under the man and stood unsteadily.

His shirt was wet, he realized dimly. As was his hand, sticky and warm. It glistened silver-edged red in the moonlight, making him feel sick and hot as his breathing sped up again, faster and faster, much too fast. He glanced widly left and right, half-hoping to see someone there to blame or run from or turn himself into. But he was alone, alone with a body at his feet, slowly bleeding out into the street. He backed away, shaking his head rapidly, as if that could change the scene before him. The knife clattered to the ground, but it no longer shone: coating its surface was dark liquid, black as night where it fell in the shadow of the corpse, resting beside him in a slowly expanding pool as whatever life remained in what was left of him seeped from his veins. Gage began to shake, his vision too blurred by tears to be able to make out the dead man’s face.

Then he ran.

He ran until he could run no more, until his legs failed him and his heart thumped so hard against his rib cage it seemed to want to jump out and leave him, too, as a mere memory in a side alley of Paris. His whole body convulsed and he leaned heavily against the wall beside him to steady himself. He would have vomited if he had had any food in his stomach, but that was not a luxury that he had. A cold sweat broke out on his forehead and mingled with the tears that still streamed down his face, sobs that he could not quite stifle wracking his shoulders as he slid down the wall and curled into himself, burying his face in his arms. He smelled like blood, sickening and metallic, and he choked on it, his bruised neck aching. The blood on his hands had cooled and was drying in ugly rust-brown patches, and his skin itched, and he wanted to scream But the tips of his fingers were beginning to go numb, and he welcomed the sensation, wishing it could engulf him and leave his body — which had betrayed him — an empty shell, lifeless, as limp as the man still lying in the gutter.

He sat there for the rest of the night, watching the stars fade away, and by the time the sun began to rise he had almost gotten his wish. Everything was locked away deep inside him again, leaving behind only a dull ache in his chest and a sharp throbbing in his head and neck. Those were easier to deal with, and would heal; what was hidden in the deepest, darkest shadows of his soul would haunt him forever. But for now, he moved mechanically, his mind blank, holding his arms close to his chest to hide the bloodstains on his shirt as he made his way back to the warehouse — even at this hour of the morning, with the sun barely about to rise above the city’s slums, the blood would arouse some suspicion if anyone were to be out.

Mattieu met him when he walked in, a broad grin on his face when he saw the blood spattered across the boy’s skin and clothing. He offered words of praise and a congratulatory clap on the shoulder, but Gage shut him out and merely nodded passively every once in a while, a sinking feeling in his stomach. The man’s pride, more than anything, affirmed his crime as the evil it was, and the pain threatened to escape and flood his body once more.

But Jordaaaannn all the secrets that I keep from Conor are secrets that I’m really keeping from yooouuuuConor has a form of epilepsy that causes focal/simple partial seizures, which account for the blank periods that he has every so often. (Remember, I said that those would be on the quiz later).

"A simple partial seizure may go unnoticed by others or shrugged off by the sufferer as merely a “funny turn”. Simple partial seizures usually start suddenly and are very brief, typically lasting 60 to 120 seconds.”

You're so cute omg bye

You are seriously so pretty I want your hair