#marksofwoe

@marksofwoe​ asked: ❝ you have to rest. we’ve still a long way ahead of us. ❞ || BLOOD OF ELVES

“Don’t sweat it. I’m fine.” He’s not. In so many more ways than what merely the physical and the obvious betrays, but Nero stubbornly ignores them all. Has to. Even as his bones ache and the blood on his face is barely dry--a new menagerie of cuts, scrapes and bruises gathering on the pale of his skin, new threads of pain that all tether marrow-deep. Inconsequential. V, however, seems to think otherwise (when doesn’t he?) Nero scoffs, rising off his seat and fanning the smell of smoke out of his face with the set jaw and stern, steely eyes of a man who has decided the conversation is already over. The gaze levelled against the other man’s face is hard, determined, and burningly stubborn as he grabs Red Queen off the side.

“This mess isn’t gonna clean itself up. The longer we sit on our asses, the more time’s goin’ to waste.” And the terrible pain of simply not knowing hurts worse than any other wound thus far sustained. Dante’s voice scratches against the side of his skull like a stuck record, the absence of him--dead or alive--boiling in the void that he left behind. V burns him in other ways, with his troubling meld of concern and distance and secrecy, insisting that Nero rest and salve his aches and pains, after dragging him here to shoulder them in the first place.

Like he had to. Nero would have come regardless.

Like he could let a pain like this rest.

The hunter seethes as his gaze falls down and aside, voice hoarse in his throat and steps heavy as he strides past V’s pinched and staring face to swing over the van door.

@marksofwoe​ asked: ❛  i  was  eager  to  prove  i  was  good  enough .  ❜ || THE BAD GUYS

            A thought both expected and unexpected coming from someone quite like V; a soul who at the best of times presents himself as quiet, put together, and very almost furtive. Perhaps battle has loosened his tongue, or their growing and unlikely camaraderie, or the quaintness of momentary peace found sitting on the sun-warm rooftops while the dust settles down below. Awash in the burn of afternoon sun, V seems more phantom than man--and perhaps that's just how he feels.

                In his own way, perhaps Raiden could understand.

                “To yourself? Or to somebody else?” Is the answer rasped out into heat, distantly curious as his gaze drifts from the pensive look on V’s face to the street stretching out below. Dante, Nero, squabbling in the midst of their boisterous laughter. Raiden laughs, too, for one short breath.

                “Maybe a few someones, huh...”

@marksofwoe​​ said: Stinky.

“I know what you are...”

@marksofwoe​ asked: ❛  i’m  looking  up  at  rock  bottom .  ❜ || DEATH OF AN OPTIMIST

“That so?” Expectedly bleak coming from a soul quite like V, who sees all things in shades of rain-gray and gloom-dark, and whose shimmers of hope in it all are as few and distant as dying stars. The words cut out of him sounding so strained and dull and sad that it makes something in Nero’s chest twist--the topic not unfamiliar (not in the least) but as usual dressed up a little differently, with a different kind of grief, and a different sort of hopelessness. Not that V is hopeless, as Nero so often has to remind him. But he has his way of making himself feel like it. Today is no exception. The weather outside is as dull as his mood, and perhaps that’s part of the problem. Cold steals through the floorboards and the seams of the door, makes Nero’s hands burn where he grips a steam-singing cup of coffee that by comparison is all too warm--and V stands at the other end of the kitchen like a dream or a memory or neither.

And Nero quirks a funny sort of smile that maybe isn’t altogether appropriate for a moment V quite clearly wants to be serious. Not that he can help it much. He always has found this family’s nihilism a little out of sorts and off-colour, and been glad that he inherited none of it.

@marksofwoe​ asked: ❛  where  do  we  go  now ?  ❜ || DEATH OF AN OPTIMIST

“Forward.” An answer that concise, in all likelihood shall be of very little use to him, if the lost, empty look in V’s eyes is much to go by. He hangs in the doorway the same as he moves about his newfound home, like a ghost from some other time and place and person (and he is all those things, just made flesh now and knowing nothing of how to live in it.) Nero forgets the book that was turning its pages under his hands, busier with looking his father up and down with pity and intrigue both as his brow creases and his face pinches in a way that is probably well recognised by now.

“You don’t have any place else to go now, V. You’re just gonna have to play the hand you were dealt.” Somehow he doubts the taste of reality is going to be any more comforting. Nero tries for a smile, as mild and thin as it might be, head tilting to beckon V in past the threshold.

@marksofwoe​ asked: "Hello, son,"

‘Well that’s sure gonna take some getting used to, huh?’

‘...Not like that’s the worst thing to get used to though, I guess.‘

@marksofwoe​ asked: ❛  you  little  cheat  -  you  nasty  little  cheat !  ❜ || 𝒀𝑶𝑼 𝑯𝑨𝑽𝑬 𝑵𝑶 𝑷𝑶𝑾𝑬𝑹 𝑶𝑽𝑬𝑹 𝑴𝑬 !

The reaction is just about as scathing as Nero had expected, and by that token, just as entertaining; no helping it then that Nero’s grin takes over the triumph on his young face as their deck of cards is shuffled back into order for the umpteenth time (and it shall have to be the last, if V’s bristling temper is anything to go by.) The devil snickers, low and teasing as he tips his head askew. “Hey, don’t take it out on me just ‘cause you can’t play Briscola to save your life! Nothing underhanded about it, V--I won fair and square!”

@marksofwoe​ asked: ❛  i  can’t  walk  away .  ❜ ||  𝒑𝒍𝒂𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒄  𝒉𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒔

How is this supposed to feel? Nero didn’t ever stop to muddle out the answer in the long, long months that stretched between the moment his family disappeared to the moment, miraculously, they were here again. This conversation is not one well prepared for, no matter the times Nero has spun the idea of it around his head through sleepless nights--all hypothetical routes and courses and thoughts all crumbling away now that the moment is here. Now V stands at one end of the room, dark and thin and sounding as tired as he looks--and Nero stands at the other, stricken in the dull silver sunlight panning through the windows.

A father and not. Nero looks through him as though he might see the paler shadow of a far colder man with that name somewhere, and is not sure how he feels to be relieved that he doesn’t (his guts ache where Yamato had sank her biting edge at only the thought of him.)

A father and not.

A father claiming to care enough to have come back at all.