Work Text:
Attraction
Nothing should have survived. Nothing. But there, left of the epicenter, he heard a pulse. He couldn’t just ignore it.
No, he would wipe it out, slice it in half and watch personally — No, too painless. Maybe cut its belly and watch it stuff its own guts back in. Then, he would watch and laugh.
A boy, naked, with broken shackles on him, stared at him wide-eyed and shocked. In a moment, the blade was against the boy’s throat.
In the next he could feel pressure on it. Pushed away, ineffectually cutting a chunk of hair.
Millions Knives was fascinated.
Romance
It strained his patience, but he taught the child anything and everything he might need to know. Luckily, he was a fast learner, or he would have given up and trained him to be only a weapon and nothing more.
He sat patiently as the boy recited from memory. “…corrien centauri, armati di saette, come solien nel mondo andare a caccia.”
“Good,” He stopped the boy. “Very good.”
“Now translate it for me.” He ordered. The boy held in a smile, but not well enough.
“The river of blood, within which boiling is whoever by violence injures others.”
“How painful.”
Passion
It’s a moment of passion, of utter fear and rage and disbelief. Betrayal, really, though he chooses to ignore the word that fits so perfectly.
One handed. Finger buried, twisted in hair. The pop and snap and all the wet noises of bones breaking and tissues tearing. It only lasts a second. Then he moves past it. Rises above.
He rises above his own anger. He’s got better things to do. His brother is here. He must speak with him. There are more important things.
If that piece of trash gets picked up, well, that’s just too bad for him.
Intimacy
He aches. Everywhere it’s the pins and needles of new flesh, but under that the lingering deep ache is not gone. He shouldn’t be up and walking around, but he’s not some weakling.
He can handle pain. He just prefers not to.
A mess of electrodes and needles and tubes and fluids lay around him. Somewhere very close, he feels the presence of a reeling mind.
So, he survived.
Knives laughs, though the extra strain on his lungs is frustrating. Laying in the same medical ward, under the care of the same man, surrounded by the same mess of equipment.
Commitment
He assesses the situation. These fools around him are all too weak. He — well, he knows what to do, it’s just so annoying.
Someone is going to take it as weakness. Someone might take it as… as an apology. It could be interpreted as a need, or a lack of forethought on his part.
God help them if they ever even think that it is some kind of compliment.
He really needs to go shoot something. Soon. Maybe when he sends for her, no, no that would be a waste.
Though… No.
He is as flippant as possible.
“Retrieve him.”