your blood's as good an ink as any

SUNJATA

i heard you telling lies
i heard you say you weren't born of our blood

Oh she has always moved quickly. But she doesn’t particularly need to in this instance. We all know how Sunjata reacts to these things. We all know he won’t move, how the blade he had given her sinks in deep and sharp and it burns and twists. Right in the though, vulnerable still, given the fact that he’s still healing from the ocean, from the trek over the edge of the cliffs, from his two day disappearance. It stings, it burns, and Sunjata’s grunting against the pain of it as it sinks in deep, a sharp and shuddered inhale leaving him when that leg just gives out.

But Nate’s pulling her away and the blade slips with it, blood soaking through the pant leg that one hand instinctively goes to, to cover the open wound. He grits his teeth, suddenly panting through the pain that Nate’s words don’t entirely register, evident in the few seconds that he stares blankly at it. His other hand shifts to claws, however, when it finally does. And it shreds the shirt he wears down the middle from top to bottom, giving him something to work with. And there, along the pink lines of where he’s sliced through the shirt, as he gathers it up in his free hand, a new tattoo awaits.

A constellation, in the center of his chest. It isn’t a trick of the light when he moves to wrap the makeshift shirt around his leg, the tattoo simply remains and Sunjata’s hand is covered in blood yet again. He swallows hard, shutting his eyes, and leaning back against the counter he’d just been standing against, spiraled horns suddenly clicking against the stone, eyes shut tight, chest rising and falling. “I’m sorry.” He says weakly, jaw clenching and unclenching over and over again.

i know we're the crooked kind
but you're crooked too, boy, and it shows