#selfprotect

you’re one of my dearest friends, lena. thank you for the bat videos and for always making me smile. some days it isn’t easy to do, but it’s not quite as hard when you’re around. happy happy birthday. you’re the very best.

“hmmm.” a vague hum coming from the royal’s throat   ,    watching her as she leads the way towards some particularly sketchy back alleys. the city was all dirt  /   all fire   /   all stone  ;  and yet hell’s kitchen has the undeniable charm that even upstages the rest of it. with all the smoke and grey buildings   ,   the crammed streets and shop’s pressed together like planks on a ship’s deck   ,   the high-rise scrapers littered in between like light houses and yet they would not see any sailor home. it is a sad affair overall , a place lacking so much nature and so much air  ,  but karen seems to fit right in there and brings the light that this place misses. he learned that about her  :   she just cast fire and light wherever she went  ,   wherever it was needed   ,   and hardly ever asked anything in return. it is in the squared set of her shoulders, how her feet struck the earth with that sense of determination that belonged entirely to her, and how the softness of her face could either alight in a smile or turn more weathered  ,   hard edges coming forward and painting the picture of a threat  /   of a wolf howling. well, the fox could not do anything but follow her, trust her. “i already do. but if i am going to die, it’s going to be you who zoya will have hanged for treason, miss page, since i will be too dead to pardon you.”

“thank you, karen,” is what leaves the golden man’s lips, gratitude in earnest lacing his tone as the blood rinses from his skin into a red waterfall. he watches the water swirl in the sink, red to pink to transparent, and vividly remember all the time he could see his own red sink into muddy grounds he stood on, he fell on, he fought on. could see it sting his clothes and his eyes and his hair and always, always, always his skin, settling into unformed scars like birds festering on a dead body. that is what his blood is to him: all the crows finding their potential prey in him. it doesn’t matter if they are american or if they are nothing at all, simply for his spilled blood means that they found him and hooked their claws into him. saints went through kinder martyrdom. maybe his will be this, futile ideals and futile ways to make his country happy, to make it listen, and most of all to make it live again. he will die for it, he is sure. his kindness does not leave him, though it pales when the monsters crawl towards him. “i am deeply sorry for the ruined carpet, just so you know. it matched the couch so well.”

K.P. ( @selfprotect​  )  &    N.L.    /    ‘  we'll always be all right   ,    you and me . don't you think?  ’

❛       hey, frank asked me to keep an eye out. if i hadn’t none of your little flower messages would have gotten through.     ❜    he says, defensive. he’d never meant to get into the espionage business, if you could even call it that. helping a mass killer hadn’t felt like an easy choice, but to get his family back it had become his only option.   ❛       it was just the window, if that makes you feel any better. i’m just trying to get back to my family, and you’re frank’s intel so .. i don’t know. take it up with him yourself.     ❜

she wasn’t wrong. it still hurt to hear, but that didn’t mean she was wrong. he’d been patching himself up for years, trying to stitch himself back together over and over no matter what shit god or the universe threw his way. had it made him a lesser person ? .. a lesser man ? consensus dictated that he was and matt couldn’t rightfully argue, even with such a brutal assessment. still, he smiles, sad, weak, forced.   ❛       yeah, i think you dodged a bullet. being tied to me .. it only would have made things worse.        ❜     he’s not bitter, not wistful, just honest.   ❛       you deserve better, karen.     ❜

they walk through the garden uninterrupted, his guards not on as much alert as they would be anywhere that is not his home. it is a change of pace, a breath of fresh air, to have karen here with him and to talk freely to someone about what is rummaging through his mind so often but he is not allowed to voice.  (  for who would listen to you, spoiled child? you’ve got everything you want, can’t you just let the past be past? no he can not.  )  she seems to be one of the few souls who gets it  ,   who never ventured and asked for him to dig up all that he buried but who he went into the graves with him anyway because she knows that feeling too.  she has seen her own fair share of graves, has dug them for others and has already started to shovel the dirt for her own, and she understands better than most how he carries a whole graveyard inside of himself. his scars are only the tip of it all.  a girl got edges from her own war     /     the fox understands with his sharpened teeth.  yet they soften around each other, water falling down the stream and finding light to reflect on, just as it happens now. rarely does he speak of what happened  ,   what he can’t seem to undo inside of him, but karen unlocks all of it. he is all scar tissue and repressed memories and yet she coaxes the walls away from him. “am i my own monster, then?” he asks, the slight gravel in his voice wrapped in the sing-song of silk. shoulder bumps with hers as they walk, the road wide enough for the two of them, and he looks over at her for a moment   ⸺   how unreal that she is actually here, in his home. “because i can’t seem to be anyone else’s.”