Work Text:
He was dead, for anyone who knew him as a child. Maybe that's why he wasn't afraid of dying, or that explained why the smell of blood was so familiar to him.
Along with the crimson color, everything so close to him. He was born bathed in blood, and surely he would die anyway, he used to think as a child that he would die before he could see the sea beyond the borders of the kingdom.
Although surrounded by sea, he never believed that he would see more than what looked out his window. He would die in a puddle full of bumps, bruises that would hurt until he breathed his last, then he would sleep in the hallway.
It doesn't matter which hallway, the one that led to the bedrooms or the kitchen, Maybe it could be the one that led to his master bedroom. The room where he was sent every time he broke his father's rules.
Where he was surrounded by stones and hills, where he could only see the little that the mask that covered his face showed. He died the first day he came in, he died the day he let his father down.
He died that day when his mother did not wake up, he died in each beating of his brothers. His death was only confirmed when they lost faith in him.
He died so many times, that he lost his fear of death or blood. The pain became his companion along with the darkness of his cell, of his room.
In the end, he spent more time in that cell than anywhere else in the castle. That's why it hurt to remember his past, because of all the deaths he experienced.
But his body was the same, tired and weak in the sight of his father.