Heartbreak

6 | Ares

vi.

Ares:

The God of chaotic war

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Soundtrack:

TBD.

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SMACK.

Santiago raised his hand in shock. His mouth dropped open and his eyes widened and what just happened. His heart was pounding in his chest and his hands were trembling. The loud sound of skin against skin in the most unpleasurable of ways had him shaking, adrenaline coursing through his bloodstream.

"I – I – Santi..." Adeline's crystal blue eyes began to water, her face turning a delicate shade of pink. She covered her mouth with her small hands, tears overflowing and beginning to drip down her face. Wisps of her bright pastel pink hair were floating around her face, falling loose from her bun.

Santiago felt anger rising up in his chest, anger and a deep sadness. She promised, she fucking promised it would never happen again. She gave him her fucking word that she would be better, she would do better, she wouldn't disappoint him again.

But here they were, and it happened again.

"You hit me," he said, blandly, his voice void of emotion. It wasn't the first time, and he was afraid that it wouldn't be the last.

His cheek was stinging, blood rushing to the place where Adeline slapped him. He felt a sharp burn on the side of his lip, followed by the acrid coppery taste of blood trickling into his mouth. Great. The black eye he sported for a week had barely healed, and now he was going to have a a busted lip to show off – an addition to the unwanted growing collection of bruises and cuts littering his battered body.

It wasn't always like this.

Hell, Santiago couldn't even pinpoint the moment it got like this.

He didn't understand what happened, what changed. They were different before; gentle, loving... painless. And now – now it was a chaotic mess of emotions. Santiago never knew what he would come home to. Sometimes he wished he could stay at work later, just so Adeline would be peacefully asleep when he arrived home.

Now he had to watch everything he did and everything he said, in case he angered Adeline. Her tantrums normally ended in him getting another bruise or cut or scrape to his growing collection.

Twice now he's had broken bones – once it was the ring and pinkie fingers on his left hand when Adeline came at him with a frying pan and he raised his hand up in defense as a reflex; once it was his leg when she backed up the car and nearly ran him completely over. Luckily he managed to get out of the way in time before any major damage happened to him, but when he jumped out, the back bumper clipped his leg. The combined force of that and the horrendous landing he did had him in the hospital the next day, with the news that he had a hairline fracture in his femur.

Every time Adeline raised a hand to him, there would be a happy period afterwards, a period of time when Adeline felt so bad about what she had done that she spent the next few weeks attempting to make up for it. The two times Santiago broke his bones, the happy period lasted a few months – but now, Adeline was hitting him more and more often and the happy periods were practically nonexistent.

Santiago didn't know what happened, how it got this way, but he desperately wished it would stop. He missed her, the old Adeline, the Adeline he fell in love with. The one that never got upset, that never hurt anything or anyone – not intentionally at least.