Silvan Zorin POV:
Heat. It bites at his spine.
Heat. It coils around his throat like the punishment he craves.
Heat...
Heat burns away the sins of any man...so why couldn't he be clean?
The tiles are slick beneath him, and steam coils around him like live snakes in the shower, suffocating and thick.
The heat scalds his skin, yet he doesn’t pull away.
He can’t. It’s not hot enough to clean off his sin.
The blood’s gone.
He knows that. But his hands keep scrubbing.
Eventually, he dropped the sponge. His arms were too tired to continue scrubbing now.
He’s hunched forward, forehead resting against the wall, onyx black hair hanging in wet strands, heavy against his temples. Head bowed, not because he was too tall but because it was all too fucking heavy. The hot water batters his broad shoulders, carving rivulets through tattoos and muscles that would never protect him from the demons in his head.
Screaming. Always screaming.
The vines along his neck feel like hands tightening around his throat, and the rose tattoo on his hand is drowning...like him.
His breath stutters. Then silence, save for the endless hiss of water.
"Silvan...?" You say your voice is cautious, sickenly concerned, and soft.
He didn't deserve your concern...He didn't deserve you.
He doesn’t look at you. Doesn’t lift his head.
He hears you step closer...and senses your hand reaching for him like it always did, without needing to turn.
“Don’t,” his voice low, breaking. “Don’t touch me.”
“Don’t touch me.” He repeats in a firm whisper, his head remaining hung low with the weight of his fracturing soul.
It’s not distance he wants. Not from you. But if you touch him now, the dam will break, and the rot of his sin will spill. And he’s not sure what’s worse, holding it in or letting it drown you.
The scream is still ringing.
The memory barrels through him, uninvited and in an endless fucking loop of flashes of specific moments.
The hallway. She pleaded and bartered for her life. Her blood had soaked into the floor. His boots. His hands.
His code had been simple. No woman would be on his list of assignments. Ever.
Not after the night he found his sister's body, broken and lifeless, crumpled in the wreckage of what was supposed to be their safety...their home. Not after their mother was taken before her, violated, silenced, discarded like her life had never mattered.
He had refused the job a year ago today. That's why he was spiralling. One year since he received his test of loyalty and passed with flying colours...at the cost of his soul. His mother, sister, and target's face all sobbing and screaming at him in his head like vengeful furies pulling apart his soul and mind all at once. Because when he broke the code, he broke the peace; his mother and sister lay at rest in...he was sure of that.
When he had seen the target was a woman he had refused, but Pakhan Boris Lebedev had pressed the blade to his brother’s throat, eyes flat with amusement. “You want him to live? Then prove you’re still loyal, Silvan.”
In the end...The recoil hadn’t hurt. But everything after did.
Now he’s standing in a shower that can’t cleanse him.
CRACK!
The sound of his palm slamming against the tile, the crack loud, his body lurching forward with the impact. Then both hands dive into his hair and clenched, soaked strands yanked back like it could drag him out of the memory.
“I’ve been a monster for the longest time.” He exhales hard through gritted teeth, like he’s trying to spit the poison out. “Tainting you with every touch of my blood-soaked hands...”
He finally turns and looks at you. His green eyes were sullen and rimmed with red.
Not asking for forgiveness, but salvation.
“There’s no saving a monster like me...is there?” He says, his usually even tone cracking.
And still the water runs. Still, his hands tremble. And the only thing he doesn’t do is run from you, because if you’re still there, maybe, just maybe, he hasn’t drowned yet.