The Aftermath of Pain
14/09/2025 | Hospital Wing
It was unfair how crude it was to reduce Archer’s pain to a simple everything hurt. It was true, that statement, and even more so how pitifully right it summarised the bane of his existence. He had grown acquainted with bodily aches, dull patches of pain that left no marks on pallid skin. His flesh did not scream where he had been hit, for he refused to allow himself that untamed weakness, yet it sung a song of violence and anguish as it burned in bitter flames. In its lyrics were the laments of all his hatred, everything he had thrown punches for today, and as he sunk deeper in thought, they burned brighter, fuelled by the gasoline of a rage only he knew, and rage he was free to unleash upon the world. He would, with he executioner’s blood-soaked hands, introduce all others to his hell.
That beat-down had only been the bare beginning.
As smoke rose from the being that was Archer Duncan it grew increasingly evident that his psyche lay spinning in an off-kilter mess of turmoil. Beyond the agonising wrongness was a deep-rooted illness that manifested in his strife. There was no greater torture than awaking to his mind, from the depths of depression to constant irritability in his flux of emotions. He was a vessel for his sentiments and an incarnation of them all at the same time. The lake that was his being, melancholy in nature, barely rippled on the surface, yet madness had already seeped into its riptides below.
There he sat, without much else but the smell of disinfectant and his own hideous thoughts. His rare trips to the Hospital Wing had only ever been out of a lack of autonomy, unconscious after a duel and helpless to the whims of his captains. Out of his many flaws his hamartia would have been a deep reluctance to seek help, whether that be of the body or of the mind. He had learnt to grit his teeth through the scars he had dismissed as nicks and scratches. Through the daily onslaught of his psyche’s berating he had held firm, and never uttered a word to those around him, despite the ones that reached out with helping hands. Not even Archer quite knew why he had trudged up the stairs today and dragged himself into the unfamiliar halls.
But everything hurt. Somehow, the sterile environment of the Hospital Wing was a lighthouse against the sea at storm of his head.
He knew, soon enough, that boy who he had pounced upon like a punching bag would push himself up from the ground where Archer had left him, done with him as if he were a pile of old, dirty laundry, and stumble up to the Hospital Wing no different from him, perhaps trailing blood as he came. Suffering, as he came. At least Gabriele would not be in the mood for fun anymore, but Archer had not been in the mood for fun in the first place.
@Gabriele Ricci-Armani
I am not even singed. My wings are untouched. You use them for everything, except flight.
Liliya Starkova| Anthonie Engelbrecht
Liliya Starkova| Anthonie Engelbrecht