Who: T What: asdfghjkl;. basically. When: Sunday evening. Where: T's flat. Warnings: insanity. anger. self-inflicted violence. not necessarily in that order. Status: Complete, unless someone wants to come over and find him like this.
There was no real specific trigger, nothing had happened. Or maybe that was the problem, the nothingness, the idleness. Terrence felt as though he'd gotten complacent, was letting other people control his life. And then, in the middle of making himself dinner, he rolled up his sleeves and caught sight of the Mark on his arm.
Just like that, all of his complacency, all of his biding his time until the next big plan, was overwhelmed with hatred. He stopped in the middle of what he was doing, lifting his left arm to stare at the dark image burned into his skin. He was no longer hungry, no longer remotely interested in what he'd been doing.
He wondered, insanely, what would happen if he tried to get rid of it. Would it work just to skin his arm? To burn it? Would he have to cut off his entire arm to make it go away entirely? Would it disappear when the Dark Lord finally died, or would he be wondering this even then?
Before he really knew what he was doing, one of his knives was in his opposite hand, and he'd lifted it to his arm. He cut, as though he was peeling a carrot, although his skin wasn't nearly so easy to remove. He managed to peel away a small circle, gritting his teeth at the feeling of it; it took effort, more effort than he thought it should have, as though the tattoo had made his skin even tougher to remove.
It was incredibly satisfying, though, when the skin was gone and he was bleeding. The blood ran over his skin, pooling in the tattoo and soaking through the cuff of his shirt. Maybe he'd cut deeper than he'd intended.
He clamped a hand over it and headed for the bathroom for a bandage, wrapping it tightly around his arm, covering the entire Mark, more than was strictly necessary. Lightheaded, he started to grin once the Mark was out of sight, carefully making sure that the bandage didn't interfere with the sheath of knives at his wrist. He liked the bandage more for the fact that it covered the hideous image burned into his arm than because it was stopping the blood from leaving his body, liked it for what it represented, for the fact that he'd rebelled, just a little. It was reassuring to know that his anger would never leave him for long.
And he definitely needed food now, especially the iron in the red meat he'd been preparing. He went back into the kitchen, whistling to himself, and tossed the steak into the frying pan, using his knife to turn it. It was extremely pleasant to imagine that he was stabbing Voldemort in the face, or cutting off his snake's head, as he did so. It didn't matter if he scratched the pan, he could always get another.