all i want :: noah ripley dp

wish I were with you, I couldn’t stay
every direction leads me away
pray for tomorrow, but for today
all I want is to be home

It hardly hurts. There’s a stinging like a needle followed by a burning like alcohol in a wound, but my body is so tired that it doesn’t truly register the damage that is done. This is not a needle and some alcohol. When I look down, I see that much. It is just a simple arrow, stuck into my inner thigh as the fire that surrounds it singes at my skin. I have lost toes and a thumb and had my stomach practically ripped open. I have run into walls and been bitten by snakes and whipped across the back. I have fallen down piles of gold and stabbed and slashed at. Oh, how tired I am… My hand stings as I pull the arrow out, skin burning in irritation as the flames extinguish under my palm. It drops with hardly a sound, my fingers creaking open to let it fall from my hand. So tired… There is no one to hold me up any longer. There is no one to comfort me at this, the peak of my exhaustion. There is no water in my lungs now. Instead, I can feel everything in me slowing down until my limbs refuse to move any longer. My fingers feel numb and my skin feels cold. When my knees begin to buckle, I do not fight it.

I have fought for fifteen long years in this world. Every day, I refused to back down. My nails and teeth and fists and elbows and head and everything I possessed were for the purpose of scraping myself off the floor with a precision swing to take someone else down instead. I’ve broken more bones than I can count and been covered head to toe in bruises. I have fought long and hard, but now it is time to go home.

There is no home for me waiting beyond the Arena. No one truly goes home after the Games. They warp you in a way that makes the battlefield the only home you can every truly know again, and death your only ally. It takes those others you wish it when you are not quite ready to give up. I have reached my limits. I have tired of this game. So many years of fighting has only shown me just how little those brawls were. This is war, undeniable and unstoppable. Here, we are turned into murderers and vagabonds. There is no peace to be found here, save for death. These hands have not killed and this knife has not taken a soul to the other side. I will never find home here. It’s only there that I’ll be able to rest. My hand loosens around my knife, letting it fall to the bloody ground. I feel myself follow just seconds after. The world is lighter, somehow, now that I feel my blood slow almost completely. I feel sluggish as I blink out at the carnage still taking place.

His fire hasn’t gone out just yet. Despite the agony that stretches across Pyrian’s face as his eyes fall on me, I find myself smiling in return. He is always so bright. He has been since the first insult, in looks and written words, passed from his mind. He burned so much brighter then I imagined possible. Those eyes are so much older than the ones that stared back at me just days ago within the comfort of an unburnt bed beneath sheets covered with hopes that the illusion could continue for the rest of our lives. We were but foolish children then, it seems. There was never any hope for us, the brother of a fallen boy and the twin with a disadvantageous lack of perception. The ferocity we both hold is nothing compared to the ruthlessness of those who circle us now. I only hope he can find his peace. His scream rips through the air, but falls upon deaf ears. For once, it is I who cannot hear. My body tips forward and my eyes leave his face in favor of watching the ground rush up to meet me.

echoes and silence, patience and grace
all of these moments I’ll never replace
no fear of my heart, absence of faith
all I want is to be home

I am met with water, my body missing the impact with hard earth altogether and instead falling fully into a dark sea. A strangled cry is torn from me in bubbles and bursts of air, but I sink. My eyes blink open despite the pain of salt and mineral clashing against my irises. I can hardly see, but the reflex makes me keep trying. There is nothing before me. The waters spread before me a limitless amount until I cannot see what is hidden in the depths. Every attempted breath of panic is met with rushing water. I can feel myself ballooning with the sudden onslaught of ocean introduced to my lungs. There’s a dizziness in my head as I let the currents rock me, reaching up feebly with a single arm towards the surface I cannot even see. When I close my eyes, there is utter darkness. Pressure on my wrist hardly startles me. With a last effort, I open my eyes in resignation, expecting to see Penelope before me.

What I am met with is the surface, my body spewing the water from my lungs to join the salty pool I’d been submerged in. My arm is slung over something and I feel tugging at my back, a body trying to pull me up and towards it. I don’t move, but let the work be done as I breathe for what feels like the first time in years. Then I am tumbling forward, smacking against hard wood, and gasping at the sudden collision. My eyes stay glued shut, head smarting as I reach up my thumb-less hand to rub at my scalp, only to feel five fingers press to my hair instead of the expected four. There’s no searing pain against the stump of a piece of me that has been ripped away. I let my eyes blink open slowly, squinting up as I lift my hand into view. Intact. Looking at my toes reveals a result much the same. I cannot see my arms from the sweater that hangs from my frame, dripping, but I would bet that there are no bite marks there nor slashes on my stomach. For a moment, I can only stare at myself in shock.

“It’s strange, yeah?”

Ripred, that voice. That voice is one I never believed I’d hear again. It’s cautiously quiet, barely contained energy changing the pitch on the last word. I can only nod, refusing to look up, as my eyes well up with all of the frustration and regret of a lifetime.

“Hey. Hey, you look at me, ya’ little minnow.”

I let out a startled bark of laughter, chin tilting upwards despite myself. My mouth shapes around the ingrained reply, tongue barely working as it rushes from my lungs.

“You shut your yapp, ya’ stinkin’ guppy.”

There’s laughter in return. I cannot ignore that. My head tips up the rest of the way, eyes locking with the brown eyes of one Fitz Alexander Ripley. There’s a blinding smile on his face, lips pulled so far back that I’m afraid he’ll tear to pieces before my eyes. He bites his lip then, hands clenching just a little tighter on the bench of the boat as he looks down at me. He’s always been the one to watch over me, always the one who would ask where I was going at night or how I got those cuts and help bandage me up. The past few days, he’s been the one to hold me when the pain is biting and literally coming away with my skin and bones and blood. He’s been the one sitting by my side at night, keeping watch as I nervously drift off and startle awake at every little sound. Now, I find myself smiling back despite the tears that have fallen. What other way is there to greet my brother? I shift to right myself, flinching just slightly at the hands that help me up. They’re real, now. I know that because I lift my own to grasp at his and am met with smooth skin, smoother than it ever was while we were- It’s a strange thing, feeling a word on the tip of your tongue and being so terrified to say it because of the implications it holds. I can see the way Fitz frowns just slightly, hand tightening in my own as I settle down on the bench across from him.

“Came to get you. Couldn’t let you swim along all by yourself out here, could I?” he murmurs, letting go of me to pick up a paddle.

Alone. I haven’t been alone for two years. Now, however, she isn’t here. I look about us, staring at the vast, rolling waters that are everything in the after, and cannot find even a glimmer of her and all her grace and damnation. When I turn back to Fitz, he knows. He meets my gaze for only a moment before passing me the paddle and picking up one of his own. We set off almost lazily, my eyes sliding over his face and out towards the ocean. There is nothing for me here. There will be again, someday. For now, however, she is gone. She’s got to find all of us, after all. All four of us are hers. My paddle hits the water and glides through, each stroke taking us farther and farther away. Everything will be whole again, in time. I flicker my eyes back to my brother, noting his careful movements and neutral expression. For a moment, there is silence. It is like the nights we would dig graves, all quiet composure and solid expressions. There is no room for emotion when you’re ripping someone’s teeth from their rotting gums, or when you’re taking family heirlooms from their neck, or love letters from beneath their jacket lapel. When desecrating the livelihood of the dead, one can only be doing just that. There is only the dirt beneath your fingernails and the cracks in your fingertips. There is only death. I feel it now, as I stare at Fitz’s profile and he looks out into the distance. There is only one place for us to go from here. There was only one place for us to go on the nights we would dig until we were sore and bleeding and fleeing from the sunlight.

“Hey Fitz?”

He turns back to me, face twisted in confusion for just a moment. There’s only there left to go. Each stroke takes us closer. My lips quirk up, nose crinkling at just the thought. Although he’s not sure as to the cause for the smile on my face, he smiles back, eyes a little wary and grin a little guarded, but only just. He knows just as well as I do where we are headed.

“Let’s go home.”

people I’ve loved, I have no regrets
some I remember, some I forget
some of them living, some of them dead
all I want is to be home