Sanguinis et Omnium Fractorum//Sebastian Sallow

Of Portraits and Painted Skin

CW: Self Harm

Monday, 19th September, 1892

The dust had still not fully settled when Clara shifted against him.  Only slightly.  Just enough to peel her face back from where she'd pressed it into his chest and ignore the dampness that had soaked through the top of his shirt.  The same damp that clung salt to her cheeks and traced lines through the ash there.

She'd not entirely meant for him to let go of her, but Sebastian must have mistaken the shift in her movement as irritation because he released her almost instantly.  Snapped his arms to his sides and stepped away like whatever part of her had allowed him to touch her in that moment had been snatched away from him.  As though he thought she might start shouting at him, with the way his eyes never entirely found hers—skipped from her shoes to somewhere over her left shoulder.  Fingers tugging in that too-familiar motion at the edges of his sleeves.

It confused her more than anything.

It wasn't as though she were particularly mad at him just then.  Whatever hurt still lingered toward him had been so eclipsed by the Keepers betrayal it hardly seemed significant in comparison.

Even so, the part of her that had allowed her to lean on Sebastian through the chaos of her magic seemed to have barred the gate, and whatever desire for comfort still stretched its fingers beyond the iron was stifled behind pride that was too stubborn to ask him to hold her again.

He must have taken it as a good sign when she didn't.  Or maybe she simply looked even more unstable than she felt because she soon found his arm wrapped below her shoulders—Fingers pressed hot against her ribs when her bones threatened to collapse beneath her own exhaustion.

"Right, you need the hospital."

His voice scratched raw through the haze, and he managed to steer her halfway through the cavern before her stubborn drug its heels into the stone, and she refused to go another step.  Nurse Blainey couldn't do any more for her than Clara could on her own, and after the scene she'd already made in Charms, she had no intention of going anywhere near giving people even more of an excuse to stare at her.

She could see the places Sebastian was thinking.  The slight pull in his jaw and the pattern his eyes shifted across her face as they flickered between her eyes and the ruined echoes of the cavern.

"Alright, then." It was more a sigh of resignation than anything else, but her stubborn would count it as a victory.  Even as he dug two potions—strengthening solutions, she recognized—from his illegally extended bag and glared at her until she drank them.

Not that she could truly make an argument against him.

And it was only when he held his hand out for the empty vials that she noticed it.

Only when his hand turned out, palm exposed to the still swirling trails of dust and illuminated just so in the wash crimson light that kissed the stones beyond.

His skin was raw there.  Burned and blistered through deep, mottled shades of purple and red.

She'd done that.

It stilled her hands against the vials.

He must have noticed the places her gaze lingered over the evidence of his hurt because his eyes followed hers down to the burns across his skin, widened slightly, and he snatched his hand out of her reach, stuffing both into his pockets before she could adequately inspect the damage.