if i {stumble} ♤ {south}

this doesn't make much sense
think far out, but i'm still locked in
i'm still lost, walking circles
the floor swallowed me up whole
there's nowhere to go

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one month, two days, twenty-one hours, five minutes
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I heard someone say once that war was hell. In the richer parts of the District there are still grandmothers and grandfathers (no one on the seedier end of town lives that long, succumbing to sickness or hunger before they can grow old), grey-haired living time capsules that hold the Dark Days in the blurring pathways of their memories. I've heard stories of the sky burning, of towering buildings crumbling to dust, thousands of lives scattered away like leaves on the wind. This is different. The skies above are clear except for the smog, speckled with moon and starlight. The buildings stand tall, concrete monoliths that serve as testament to the Capitol's stalwart reconstruction. There are no weapons of mass destruction threatening to wipe out whole Districts at a time.

But this is still a war. And it is hell.

In the past weeks, we've lost people. Alley-fights, espionage, betrayals… they've all left people dead, and more on our side than that of the Morenos. I've had a few close brushes with the Reaper myself, come away with scars and a heartbeat pounding in my ears along with the vague sense of disappointment that it didn't all end right there. Colt has been gone for over a month now, and rather than being a healing balm, time has proved to be more of a corrosive acid, eating away at my edges and working its way down to the core of me. Something is still making me function, be it my own damnable stubbornness or the realization that there are lives beyond my own at risk - Ella's, Beryl's, my family's. Just because I've turned into a hollow hull of what I used to be doesn't mean that there isn't still a war on. I can't afford to shut down. An army needs a General, and if I clock out to try and deal with my twisted mind and broken heart, the only result will be more bodies in the streets.

That's why I'm out on the streets in the wee hours of the morning, flitting through the shadows and down the back alleys as I make my way into the richer side of the District. Shimmying up the trellis into Beryl Shore's bedroom has become an increasingly dangerous and rewarding mission, but there's a fair amount of information I need to get to him tonight. Bean's analysis of the stolen information has turned up some interesting prospects, potential operations that could bring the whole affair to an end once and for all. He's still got the papers back in his workshop, but I need to bounce my ideas off of Beryl before we take any action, get some perspective from someone whose mind isn't plagued by heartbreak and reckless apathy. I don't care if some crackpot scheme gets me killed anymore, but sometimes I forget that I'd be dragging an entire war effort down with me. Maybe in the end, I'll realize that I can't save anyone.

The impact from above hits me hard enough to knock the air from my lungs, dragging me painfully down to my knees as a hand clamps tightly over my mouth, a cold kiss of steel pressed against my throat. I can't help the sardonic twist that settles on my lips against the foreign skin, the irony too good to ignore. This is the end of the infamous Kaelen Dempsey. The terror of hundreds, a god among men, cut down in a dirty alley like the scum he once swore to eliminate. Priceless.

Everything swims into a blur, a flurry of motion I can't quite place. There's the sensation of my back smacking against the bricks, the sound of heavy breathing as I struggle against the hands holding me, a flash of dark hair and brilliantly blue eyes in the dim lighting overhead. Then there's something coming rapidly towards my face, a sharp crack that resonates all the way down my spine, and the world explodes into a brilliant bloom of white. And then… darkness.

Consciousness returns in stages. The first thing I notice is a steady drip, drip, drip against the ground, something thicker and warmer than water spattering sticky-hot down the side of my head and the front of my shirt. Then the pain hits, an aching throb that screams across my head and sets the world aflame. Blearily, my eyes crack open, the world spinning in such a heady vertigo that it ames a while to focus. The warm wetness I felt in my semi-conscious state is a torrent of blood, flowing down over the side of my face from the painful lump rising on my head. Whatever I got hit with, somebody knew how to swing it. And just like that, my assailant is back, cold steel at my throat aiding my grogginess in evaporating. "Where are they?! I know you have them, Dempsey, and you've got approximately four seconds to tell me before I slit your goddamned throat - although I hear suicide is your family's forte, so maybe I won't even have to try."

I don't have enough of my faculties about me to snap back at the dig about Kiera, despite how it stabs between my ribs like a white-hot blade. It's one of Beryl's sisters that's staring down at me, malice in every fiber of her being as I blink up at her blearily. "Now… which rock are you again? I lose track with you Shores. Wish I'd known I'd be in audience with royalty tonight. I'd have dressed for the occasion."

The smirk that settles across my lips aches, tastes like sticky copper and sends spikes of pain crackling electrically across my skull. I'm staring my own end in the face, and I can't bring myself to care. Maybe it's my reckless apathy that makes the laughter bloom from my lips, or maybe it's just a subconscious death wish that's been lurking in my bones ever since I came home to an empty house and Colt's ghost that promised to haunt me for the rest of eternity.

"You'll have to be more specific, darling. I'm not sure what exactly I'm supposed to have," I grin even though the rope burns my wrists and my head feels like it's splitting in two. I am dancing with Death, and it's the first time I've felt alive in a month. "And you're botching this whole affair if you mean to interrogate me. In a back alley? The screaming will bring people running. How about you take me home, sweet cheeks, and we'll make a night of it."

there's a vulture on my shoulder, and he's telling me to give in
always hissing right in my ear, like it's coming in my own head
it's got me mixed up, trying not to give up
tell me there's a way to get out of here
oh, fixed at zero

so save your scissors for someone else's skin
my surface is so tough
i don't think the blade will dig in
save your strength, save your wasted time
there's no way i want you to get left behind

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one month, two days, twenty-one hours, thirteen minutes
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We're playing a delicate chess game with the highest of stakes. I'm setting a trap with careful word-pawns, and the pretty little idiot doesn't even see it. "Oh, I beg to differ Dempsey - but if you insist on going to a house full of people who are just as eager to see you dead as I, then by all means."

Checkmate. Once I'm in the Shore house, I'll scream like a Capitolite at a boy band concert until the whole place knows I'm there. Miss Princess here will think she's running a successful interrogation, but Beryl knows what my screams sound like enough that he will figure out what's going on and come spring me out once his crazy bitch of a sister lurks off to lick her not-near-as-physical-as-mine wounds. Foolproof.

"And I hope they come running. Because I'll leave you hanging on just long enough for them to find you, somehow still breathing. Whether the Peacekeepers will kill you right then and there, well, that'll be up to them. Maybe they'll grant you the satisfaction of just cutting your tongue out instead - but I've heard they aren't quite the forgiving type," she snarls, eyes like sapphire stars blazing out of the darkness. My head and my hands and my entire body hurts, but I welcome it, letting myself get lost in the pain. It's the first time I've felt anything in a month, and there's an odd sort of salvation within it. There's a fine line between agony and ecstasy; I've known that for nearly my entire life. The Shore girl is going to torture me, and she's going to leave me for dead whether I talk or not. The only variable in the situation that I control is whether or not I give her the information she seeks. That's enough control for me. I'm good enough with manipulating my own paradigm to withstand anything she can throw at me.

The thing about a good, sharp blade is that it doesn't hurt in the same way that other things do. When I nick myself shaving in the morning, when I fell from my bike and scraped myself all to hell when I was a little boy, When I put a little too much vodka in my coffee and trip over my own feet, that's an honest sort of pain. You feel the burn of it, the ache, the immediate flare of your body signaling that something's wrong. It's straightforward, simple, and far less deadly. But when you get carved up with battle-ready steel, sharpened and keen enough to split a hair, the pain is different. I doesn't even hurt at first, only giving you the sensation of a cold steel finger tracing over your skin before an odd, iridescent sort of misery blooms along with the blood and shimmers outwards, radiating all the way down to your bones. Maybe that's just the old pain kink rearing its head again, but it's a good hurt, feels like the caresses I've been missing for whole eternities when she flicks the blade almost effortlessly against my neck and a good-sized gash opens there. That sort of pain is the closest thing to a touch I miss more than I'll admit, and that's how I'm going to take my secrets to the grave, grinning widely at her as the blade flicks again and that steely touch -

flits over my neck in the darkest part of the night, guitar-rough fingers tracing an invisible map along the thrumming highway of my jugular. I keep my breathing slow, even, pretending I'm asleep because it's easier than coming to terms with the fact that I can't stop the violent hammering of my pulse anymore, can't control the lazy curvature of my lips every time he touches me. We are our own island here in a sea of rumpled sheets, silent and firm in our chosen brand of solidarity. It is the first time I ever understand the meaning of the word home.

"One last chance, Dempsey. Where's my blueprints. Wouldn't want poor widdle Blair to find her favourite cousin's corpse lying beside her when she wakes up, do we? Killed by them, or killed by me. Your choice, Dempsey." Perhaps it's not the best method to ensure my well-being, but I haven't cared about that for ages now, and so I throw my head back and laugh. The motion pulls at the fresh wounds on my neck, sends a violent ache spreading through the upper half of my body, but I can't stop the deranged cackle from spiraling over my lips, splitting the night air tinged with the coppery smell of my own blood.

"I think Blair would be irritated that she didn't get the chance to do the honors herself!" I howl, bony shoulders quaking with the force of an ironic mirth that refuses to abet, only growing when I see the malice behind her eyes. That malice is what makes it click, and I force myself to breathe, calming down enough to look up at her with a thoroughly entertained smile. "And I remember your name now, Pyrite Shore. Fool's Gold. Accurate, seeing as you're being a spectacular idiot. You slit my throat, and all my information dies with me. Plans that no one but me knows about, operations of which even Queen Ella herself hasn't been informed. And you'd let your entire war effort bleed out in a back alley. No wonder your parents like pretty little Phenakite so much better than you."

Never in my life would I have thought that pillow talk with Beryl about how stupid our siblings are would ever lend me the power to craft a psychological missile that I can watch put a palpable crack in her composure. The amiable cast of my grin turns feral, lips stained sticky carmine and twisting up in challenge. "And as for making me talk… you're going to have to try a hell of a lot harder than that, sweetheart. I like it rough."

And the deepest, sickest, most warped part of me hopes she will, simply because of how vivid the memory that skated across my head on the edge of her blade had been. A good, sharp knife is a tricky sort of pain, the kind that sneaks up on you. Just like every touch Colt ever laid against my skin.

so go on, and i will refrain
and i'll keep on running
this never ending race
and maybe next time will be the right time
and maybe next time will be your time