Bodybags - Day 3 Fight (Guardians, TWD, Wolfgang)

When Finn had let go, I had killed again.

His hand was not in mine, and his absence made my skin prickle with the thought of loneliness.

They say fear and loneliness bring out the worst in people, and after a lifetime spent with both traits flanking my sides, I almost would have disagreed with that comment – the world was too beautiful a place to spend it living with an impure conscience.

Now, I’m not so sure.

Finn had let go, and I hadn’t seen him hobble away under the encumbrance of his broken femur (broken, just like Cha’s map, just like Kirk’s body) but I had felt the weight of love leave my palm and the bitter sting that replaced it scared me more than I’ll ever know.

It was an instinct to fall into Crusader and latch onto his hand so that I couldn’t commit another unthinkable sin. For each time we seemed to let go, terrible things happened, and I was sick of living with terrible things. Crusader swore he would protect me, so surely he wouldn’t let me do anything terrible, not again.

But of course, he was not Finn, and of course, I had swung, and of course, Kirk was dead.

Dead dead dead.

There is blood dripping from the tip of my blade.

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

Sickly red blood that makes my head swim and makes the stars floating across my vision explode in an intensely bright shower of fireworks.

I promise, I didn't mean it, I didn't want this.

When the fight ceases, I drop the knife hanging loosely in my hand. The sight of it makes me sick.

I had killed. Again.

And what was worse, it had been with Crusader’s hand slipped into mine, and the thought that his ally was now dead, dead, dead because of me, me, me makes the guilt too much to bear.

I fear what he thinks of me.

He has not spoken my knife found flesh and we had stood watching the blood run thin from Kirk’s throat, only to splash across the ground, painting the battlefield with crimson streaks.

I hadn’t wanted this.

I hadn’t wanted another person to see me in an unstable state of mind that wasn’t me with an urge to kill. Yet here we were.

Beside me, Crusader continues to swing. I flinch each time he swings his sword, waiting for the inevitable blow to end my own life as easily as Kirk’s had bled out, only moments earlier.

But it does not come.

And I don’t know if living is a gift or a burden in that moment, because the Hell I was enduring couldn’t possibly compare to that which Meghan, Jay, Kirk had all experienced before me.

I force myself to look into Crusader’s eyes, but the apologies catch in my throat and the tears at the corners of my eyes threaten to spill over if I look at his face any longer.

So I don’t.

Instead, I look at the fallen body in front of me.

I begin to walk, only vaguely aware of Crusader following me silently, squeezing my hand so tightly that the blood threatens to stop circulating through my joints. A ghost of a tribute.

He is dead, yet the nerve endings in his body refuse to die down just yet, and so his body is a twitching mess of cuts and gashes and a slit throat that makes my own close up in horror at what I had done.

What I had done, after vowing to lock away the monster raging within, for good.

It is betrayal at its worst, for I am the one betraying myself, and there is nothing more painful than knowing you cannot even keep a promise to yourself.

By his side is a satchel, strewn across the blood-spattered ground. As I crouch to touch it, I can feel Crusader swing yet again (don’t let him be next, I don’t want him to leave me too) and in the chaos of the moment another cannon booms and the sound is so explosive I don’t have time to react and scream for Finn or Cha because I, too, am on the ground – unable to speak, unable to think.

When my hand touches a stub, I whimper at the thought of having brushed hands with death, the human proof of my mutilation, for up until now, I had simply run from the deceased, praying their ghosts would not haunt me in the days to come. But it is not a stump of an arm I see in my hand.

It is an axe.

(Your axe, now.)

I only have time to pluck the hat from his head – his token. I’d never had a token. – and grip the hilt of the axe before I am being dragged away from it all with anonymous hands I do not touch (I only want Finn’s hands, nobody else’s, only Finn stops the demons.) They pull me away from the body, stripping Kirk of all he had made himself into – a fighter.

Already, there is a replacement of the stone within my chest – a blossoming warmth, a steady heartbeat, a glow that could only belong to Kirk – and once again, I am burdened with a painful reminder of the loss of human life. Only this time, as the beat pulses steadily against my ribcage, there is something special coursing through my veins. Something Meghan’s heart had lacked.

A reason to live.

And perhaps that reason hadn’t been so he could protect himself, but to protect someone else who had been sentenced to death and the cruel fate it brought with it.

Esme.

Had I stolen another life already, by taking Kirk’s?

The hat I hold in my hand feels a thousand times heavier than the stone axe in my other, as if it was a living, breathing thing that ached for home – or the closest it would get to home – in a reincarnated form of life, of District 10, that could only be Esme Truus.

Why do I remember that name?

I remember, because she, too, was young. And somewhere in my mind, I know that she, too, had killed. She, too, deserved to return home – just like Crusader, and Finn, and Cha, and even Kirk.

But not like me.

Still gripping to the hilt of a weapon too menacing to belong to me (it holds stories that have been engraved into the hilt, tally marks of deaths and fables of happy endings the naïve still choose to believe in) I turn to see Crusader. We no longer hold hands, and the broken chain punctures my new-found heart with anguish. His eyes are milky with tears, and when he speaks, this time, I listen.

‘I will always remember you.’

I’ve never been good with goodbyes, but even I can sense that they are parting words, and as he holds out his token to me – a photograph, a family portrait – I know that when I take it from him, I won’t be able to stop the tears.

‘Thank you.’

(For everything.)

‘I never had a token, you know? Never had anything worth keeping.’

A small, sad laugh.

In the silence, I regard the pile of items littered at my feet, held in my grip.

There is a hat in my hand that I do not deserve to hold.

But Crusader does.

When I take the polaroid, I replace his empty hand with Kirk’s hat. It is too much to hope that it is enough – without Finn and Cha, I would truly be nothing – but it is all I have to give.

‘This is Kirk’s hat. It holds more meaning to you than it does with me.’

Deep breath.

‘I know you can’t forgive me, and I know you need to go. But please. Don’t.’

Swallow.

‘Don’t go.’

Yet even as I murmur the words, slurring them to mask the fear and dread at being left alone once more, I know he is already gone. Perhaps, he still stands in front of me, regarding me with sad eyes. But he is gone.

With the sounds of clashing metal dying down behind me, I stand and watch him leave, grasping at the stale air to reach for him, clutching to the entrails of my existence in the search of Finn – trying to forget, but unable to shake the face of defeat that has been etched into my retina. Kirk in my heart, Crusader in my eye, Finn in my hand, I was slowly falling apart. Losing sight of me (I don’t mind one bit, though; I’m an awful person, I don’t want to be in this body anymore) and losing sight of Crusader, all at once.

‘Please come back.’