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there's a coin in his hand.
he flips it, striking it with his thumbnail and sending it spinning into the air, catching it in a gloved palm and not bothering to check the result.
he already knows. he learned to cheat at coin flips years ago.
picked that skill up from ace, actually. back when they were kids and cheating a coin flip was the coolest shit he'd ever seen, sabo had watched ace do it over and over again, painstakingly copying the movements until he had it down.
it's a tic, now. one of the ones that came with him through the fire. take the coin out, flip it, catch it, flip it again. the sound drives koala crazy.
a lot of things he does drive a lot of people crazy. he's kind of an asshole. he doesn't really care.
it's funny how people always thought sabo was the nice one. all his politeness is surface level. he says please and thank you and ma'am and sir because the habit was drilled into him from the moment he learned to speak, not because there's any actual meaning behind it.
sabo's never been good at being kind. he manages "nice" at best, and that's if you don't talk to him too long. ace was a raging menace as a kid, but anyone who cared to look (short a list as that was) could see easily that it was just the best cover he had for that endlessly bleeding heart of his.
ace would've turned out just like any other kid, sabo thinks, if only the world had let him. a sweet kid, even.
but sabo had the big innocent eyes and cherubic grin, so he was the nice one. how foolish. how unfair.
born to the wrong man, born in the wrong place, born with a troublemaker's face. that's all it takes to damn a child, in this world.
killed for a father he never met and held no piety towards. every time sabo thinks about it, he wants to scream. or bite. climb up that stupid scaffold himself, offer his own sinful neck to the executioner's blade.
say: my blood is so much dirtier than his. say: i was born in silks dyed with the blood of the less fortunate, and the stain will stick to me until i die.
say: how could you forgive my blood and not his. how could you hate him for holding the blood of a man who only ever really seemed to want to be free, and hand me everything for carrying the blood of the parasites dug into the flesh of the earth like swollen ticks.
it makes sabo so angry that he wants to just burn it all. set the whole rotten world on fire and soak his hands and his pipe and his face in the blood of whoever he can reach. lose himself utterly until every trace of what makes him himself, what makes him the self he must atone for existing as, is lost to blood and rage and teeth.
turn himself into a feral dog and wait for someone to put him down.
he wants it so bad it's like dying.
it's not a productive urge.
instead, he flips the coin in his hand, catches it, flips it again, and breathes.
as always, there's work to be done.