#they can't keep shattering *alone* and picking up the pieces of themself that coat the floor and putting them back together *alone*

[sage-is-in-fact-very-tired]

You're cornered, a blade held tight to your neck ready to slice and cut should you be anything but good and perfect and useful. Your teeth are bared, too sharp and trying desperately to bite the hand that feeds you - trying desperately to bite and kill something that will let you escape from this hell of repetition.

You're dangerous - yet you break so easily. You're a loyal soldier who does as they're told and asked - yet you're beginning to doubt the man you stand beside. You're loyal to a terrible, terrible fault - but having to kill your friends is one step too far over the edge you're teetering on. Maybe it was good, maybe it will get you the praise you desperately strive for, but standing atop your house sobbing and breaking down - trying so desperately to convince yourself this is temporary and good and *you're not a bad person*, doesn't really hold that same impression.

There's blood on your hands again - more permanent and literal than it was with Momboo, and deeper and darker and a harder stain to scrub than it was with Ocie. It seeps into your gloves like an infection slowly rotting away your bones - rotting away *you.* It stains them a deep, deep red; a color so deep that won't come clean from the canvas. It stains your hands pink, dyeing them red in a way that won't come clean - won't come *off* - no matter how hard you scrub.

You keep trying and trying and *trying* - and you just keep failing. There is no being good in this - there are other ways; pleasing the person holding your best friend above your head isn't going to get you anywhere - because there is no, there never has been, any friend to bring back. It's temporary, you tell yourself, and yet you can't even convince yourself of that.

There are asterisks upon asterisks attached to your words; so many unsaid "right?"s that attach themselves to the ends of your sentences. Worries and questions and fears you don't voice yet permeate your actions; moving your birds away from your bed to the safety of a tower because you're so so terrified the hands made to hurt and harm and *kill* will do so upon something so innocent. So terrified you'll hurt the only things still willing to try and help and protect you. You're worried, so terrified, that these hands that were made for killing - that were *made* to be stained with blood - will do so; that they will follow through with their intended purpose. The unsaid terror that your hands, the ones made with the distinct purpose to harm and bleed, will kill and rot and decay until there is nothing of your friends, and your family, and yourself.

You're terrified - bareing too sharp teeth at anyone who dares try to help. You're a cornered animal, not afraid to bite and harm - but only doing so out of fear. A raptorous bird they call you, your brother a drake cornered - but aren't you, too, cornered? Only raptorous out of necessity for survival, shoved much too far into a too-small corner with a too sharp blade held to your neck - prepared to take your life without much of a second thought.

Raptorous you are, Icarus, but too are you cornered and terrified. Your hands stained red with the blood of a friend and the blood of family. You can't scrub them clean, not anymore, not *like this* - but gods, how you will try. (And gods, how you will fail.) You will try so desperately to convince yourself; and fail and break and *shatter* because you can't. It's temporary, you tell yourself, but the cracks start to show and the doubt starts to creep and the tears start to *fall* - and suddenly there is no coming back from this.