Wearing Red

For a one-word challenge meme on livejournal. This was requested by Xirysa – her one word was "blood". If you'd like to put in a challenge, you can check out my journal at noneedforwings[dot]livejournal[dot]com – it's public, feel free to drop in. (Replace the [dot]s with actual periods, heh.)

Eirika has always favored red. It's the color of her favorite gowns (though Tana sometimes says it clashes with her hair), the color of the roses her mother had planted in the castle courtyards, the color of Ephraim's face when he finished his routine of running and sparring, the color of Lyon's the one time he'd asked her to dance.

She wishes now she could never see it again. It's still soaking through Seth's tunic, the richest, darkest red, slowly fading into black. It catches her eye before his hair does, though he swears through his clenched teeth it doesn't hurt. She remembers it clearly streaked across the face of the man who caused Seth's wounds, trailing down his weapon and onto his hands as he laughed madly and watched them both flee.

How he could laugh at all this is beyond Eirika – perhaps somehow, some way, he has learned to ignore it – or maybe, with that laugh, delight in it. She cannot. It's everywhere. Red staining the light fabric of her skirt, a different sort of red than the boots she loves so well, but still too close for her eyes to really tell. It's spread on her own face, though where it came from she couldn't really say. It might be her own, from the blow a soldier landed not far from the castle, or it might be Seth's from that horrible wound, or perhaps it's from something – she shudders – caused by her own hand.

It's staining the blade and the hilt of her sword as she jerks it out from the belly of yet another young Grado soldier – thick, wet, with a heavy metallic smell she doubts she'll ever escape – and it's splattered on her fragile hands and pale arms as she tries to wipe her weapon clean. Were it not for all the colorspread everywhere, she might have just been sparring with Ephraim. It's much the same – a jab here, a feint there – but she pushes that thought away as she thinks it could be Ephraim sprawled on the ground, clutching his splayed-open gut like the soldier is now, letting that horrible red spill from his lips and dribble down his chin before he gurgles – she'll sleep with that sound in her ears – and falls still.

She wants to clean it all off, to scrub it away from her clothes and her blade and her hair and her skin, to somehow make it stop showing at the torn spot over Seth's shoulder. Even his hair, now, is maddening – almost the same hue as the red everywhere, and she wonders if she'd even notice a difference now, between his hair and her boots and her gowns and the roses and the blood. She'd be happy if she could just send all of it away, to escape every last drop of that color for the rest of her life.

When this war is over, Eirika thinks, I will never wear red again.