semi-automatic [wyatt & sue vs. dopplegangers, day 4}

In the moment that it takes for Sue Tate's heavy worded lies to flee the place they so heavily guarded with foggy armor, Sue Tate can only stretch his counting to one and a half. 

And then the fog breaks, it's soul snapping in two as Sue Tate's reality snaps with it, broken puzzle pieces littering a spider web filed ground. 

He stumbles backwards and, for a moment, forgets to count the one two three as his fingers curl into themselves, gloved up digits digging into the sin riddled flesh of his palms. He'd always had some sort of fucked up fear of mirrors, ever since he'd seen his lips bend twist snap within the confines of a glass realm. And so he'd done everything to avoid them, empty shoulder shrugs and head turns

Pace quickening as he passes by glass that threatens to rip the seasoned lies right off of his face, glass shards riddling his broken reflection as eyes glance one two three moments to the right, away from a reflection he's never wanted to see.

The fog clamors at his armor, dust fingers running across the contour of his face, clawing down his cheekbones before ripping the lies from the edge of his lips, one quickened breath escaping as he coughs on his own sins, stumbling backwards wildly in the middle of a foggy paradise hell.

A man and a mask and a gun and a sword stare back at him, harsh sunlight bouncing off the metal masks he wears and dancing across his eyes, blinding him with every slight movement. 

The webs he's spun between his fingers are the only things that keep the metal and all it's weight in place as he stares. 

Eyes widen, and his lips part like the sea in the stories his grandmother used to tell him, jaw dropping like the branches of District Seven as a Branchwrangler locks onto it's newest victim. Sue Tate stares, one man against the world of his lies, at the body in front of him, half believing its real half believing this is just some cruel trick.

He'd smashed a mirror on the left wall of his room in the training center, twelve paces of broken glass and thirteen breaths of a broken man and fourteen gashes on the outside of already broken knuckles being the only defining evidence to prove that he'd done it. 

"Oh, why on earth would you break that, Sue?!" 

Funny how he could remember the words that slipped from his escort's lips as she stared at the mess in front of her, but the name escapes him. And for the past three years he'd taken care of a grandmother who held in her head a mind so primitive that it was folding in on itself, discarding broken and pieced together memories into the dense fog of her surroundings, body collapsing into some fucked up state of being. 

Maybe he was more like her than he thought, beard and all. 

He grips a sword like an axe, burying the bile rising up in his throat like an axe into wood. Burying, burying, the only thing he was good for was burying things. 

Burying axe in wood

Burying truth in lies

He hadn't even been good enough at that to bury the bodies of his own allies and all their metal stroked limbs. Instead he'd licked Death's poison from the edge of a bottle, twisted his limbs in a dance of fake happiness and even faker sadness. 

This metal, it strikes at his neck, drawing him from a fake reality into an even faker one. Sue Tate had never been a fan of mirrors, doing a one two quick shuffle past them whenever he happened to be in the direct line of a distorted portrait, lips twisted and turned with the lies of his past and the mistruths of his future. 

And as the metal of a metal him lands on his neck, kissing it like the Virachne's claw, it takes all of his willpower and just an ounce of his sanity in order to stumble backwards, letting blood from a shallow cut sprint down the side of his neck. He presses fingertips to the warmth of his skin, raising his own blood to eyes that have already seen too much of the substance to be safe. 

Day four inside an arena built to kill marks the first time in Sue's life where a mirror had truly and utterly hurt him. 

His eye twitches, broken glass puzzle pieces collapsing into the abyss of insanity as he stares at the him directly in sight, mask and all. 

He feels the metal laying across his stomach, bloody fingertips tracing a line across the clothes they'd stuck him in as he stands ready to pounce on something that he could never hope of hitting. 

But it's a house of mirrors here, and he can't even tell which is the real fake tribute, and which is the fake real one. 

He wonders if his twin in metal and lies has ever felt the boot of a drunken man across his stomach, felt the fist of a fragmented hand on the bridge of his nose. 

"We drank like last night, my father and I, we drank-" 

He half mutters a lie just loud enough for whoever held the fake real ears to hear it. 

He lunges at the mirror in front of him, collapsed sanity and all.

Fear in my throat and second-hand reasoning in my mind my fist collides with the arm of one lie attached to the metaphor of four days spent in truth. Tall tales turned into nothing he could never tell me anything more than a name without feelings of doubt hidden behind us. No path to follow that would lead me down the same I opted for the opportunity to hide my thoughts behind gritted teeth and my opinions behind a furrowed brow because that was the only place where they were safe.

The drop of an axe brings me stumbling back to the ground on which I stand—never unchanged save a second axe to match that which I had dropped in prior moments when the idea of damage control was only a secondary thought. Staring down face to face with a copy of that which was bad enough to begin with I wonder if ninety-one marks were scratched upon his wall as well, the idea that someone could share the same burden never crossing my mind— I do not fall under the table of contents in five steps to fixing your child’s depression, if I had, I would not have spent so long trying to crawl through the first eleven pages.

Always bent; never broken—I could not be fixed or forgotten. My mother tried the former and my father tried the latter while I was left in the so-called neutrality zones of their battlegrounds. Calling for ceasefire I was never heard, silenced by the gunfire of “You need help, Wyatt,” and “Just get over it.”

I loaded the next bullet into the firing chamber myself.

Firing into blank space I never understood why the war had begun in the first place, never broken; always bent I promised them that I was okay, it was just one day too many spent in bed; one instance too many of pushing the plate away at dinner because I promised I just didn’t have the appetite. Sue Tate may have spun tall tales to tantalize the human desire for fantasy, but I was a liar of my own mind, set to tell the biggest one of them all— “I promise I’m okay.”

(“I don’t believe you, Wyatt.”) Soft voice into nothing the book turned to page one, five steps to fixing your child’s depression—but the first step was acceptance and half the problem was never able to come to terms with an unspoken diagnosis.

(“For god’s sake, if the boy says he’s fine, he is.”) Harsh voice into nothing the pocketknife pressed to my palm like the cutting edge of words he had no filter put upon. Never broken; always bent. His voice a loaded gun and my skin the scapegoat I learned how to fix the bullet holes before I learned to pull the trigger myself.

Practice making perfect for those ninety-one scratches upon the wall—I freeze in the presence of ninety-two. (“I promise I’m okay.”)

Never one for tall tales but always one for lies I do not flinch when the armor at my stomach is cut across one time more, slivers of metal hanging to skin that no longer screamed for protection I had half a mind to tear it away completely, but another strike from the side leaves me scrambling for thought.

Two apparitions of the same and both had turned their swords against my skin; it left nothing but to say that whichever of the two spun tall tales for a living had also felt the need to scratch blood from the surface. Left to ponder the consequences of actions untaken I pause before picking up the axe handle once again, muttering curses under my breath while pondering the thought of suing for better terms.

(“Are you sure you’re okay, Wyatt?”)

I promise.

Broken spiderwebs, these two spiders stand tangled in the webs they've spun through the years. One spun his in the forests of Seven, branchwranglers and tree leaves staring down as he worked tirelessly, thread after thread, knot after knot, spin after spin. The other spun in a lab, created from mechanical threads, twisted knotted tumbled over and over again until it formed a carcass. And then the wires came, stuffed inside the body with crinkly hands. And Death remained on the sidelines, bones glinting with the sunlight that bounces off the walls. 

It has guts made of wire beams and steel hearts, tracing parallels through it's body as it holds a weapon made to mock the true owner. And as Sue Tate cowers with fear and stands tall with his chest puffed out, as if he has any sense of manliness left within his own carcass, he wonders and wonders and wonders and pop, its a thought that bounces around in his head. 

He'd painted his skin with lies throughout his life, had the mech been painted with lies too?

He'd slashed at something, pulled apart the broken mirror puzzle pieces of one's cheek with his sword. He didn't know who from who, body from body, tribute from tribute. 

Lie from lie. It's breaking him. 

Ha! He laughs at himself. He was broken long before this. 

One hand clutches his metal stomach, chest plate rippling beneath his coat. 

Skin tingles beneath a chest plate that ripples beneath a coat that sways under the pressure of the cloaks of his lies. 

He breathes, heavy, one hand on his stomach while the other slams the sword down into the ground, dust kicking up beneath his feet and clinging to the beard hairs sprouted on his chin. Death spreads bony fingers across his face from behind and cocks his head straight forward, eyes staring down a mechanical mirror in front of him. 

One breath, two breath, a creaky floorboard parades his words. 

"Did you ever feel a boot in your stomach?" 

One second, two seconds of mechanical engineering. 

And then Wyatt splits it's skull. 

It's feet stumble forward, wire brain spewing out a skull that didn't even have to think of the lies and as it falls forward, helmet made of axe atop its robotic features, Sue Tate reaches out and catches it, shuffling backwards with the weight of mechanical lies pressing against his chest. He screams, unanswered question still tumbling from his lips and into his beard hairs, the latter of which had already been spattered with blood both fresh and dried. 

He throws mech to ground and breathes the toxic dust it throws up to face him. Screaming against its metal body, he bangs his fists down against the droid in an attempt to bring it back-if only to answer a question that could only be answered with a freshly cleaned glass mirror. 

Bang bang bang -- the metal echoes scream at him as he screams at the carcass of himself. 

Hand ripping clothing from clothing, thread from thread, lie from lie he tears into the robot, spewing spit bits and bloody crusts against its body. Dig and dig, he reaches the stomach and slams a palm down on metal ribs before standing and slamming his sword into and 

through 

It's eyes, one for Noah one for Maya. It'd never answered his question and as the sun glints off the metal of its body and the metal of the axe and the metal of his sword he raises one boot up into the air.

It crashes down into the stomach of a broken bed of a lie and bruises a metal ribcage over and over and 

The metal snaps and his boot goes deep inside the body, tangling wires around his ankles before he yanks it back out, returning the boot to the dust filled wasteland its experienced during the entirety of the hell he stepped into. 

He quivers as he turns back towards the dual pair of allies that stand gleaming in the sun, bit lip splitting open again as he chomps down on it, tasting the metal of the mech of blood. he sees his dad morph from one of the mechs and as it's lips part he nearly drops the sword he's been struggling to carry for so long. 

“We drank together.” 

Broken ribs and clenched fists he feels a pain unlike any metal dug into skin, his eyes waver, body shaking as eyes dart between the two of them. 

"We drank together" 
They never did. He loses reality like losing lies like losing the parents that half raised him with the slam of a door. 

He stumbles words, legs locked with the beating sunlight. "We- we never drank-" He stops halfway and kills the words mid flight, breathing back the poisons that he's released for eighteen years. 

"We never drank together...you beat- he beat me we never drank-" 

Sue Tate clutches his head as he speaks, eyes dropping to the ground before darting between the two. He watches one human mech human mech take 

one step forward

And he lunges with a sword t defend himself from an unbeatable opponent. 

"NO!" 

Half a beating heart and a trembling hand do not prepare me for the moment when Sue Tate finally breaks. His tall tale fading into unsolvable mysteries and unforgivable lies I watch my axe split the skull of mechanical thoughts and framework until it sputters and sparks out of existence. A question never heard or processed falls through the air as I stand back in solemn shock, watching hands weaved around tainted words tear at flesh already ripped apart by the axe still lodged in its skull.

Half a beating heart and a trembling hand cause me to think about placing my own on his shoulder and bring an end to it all, but his own unsheathes a blade coated by my own blood and I step back, watching metal sink into the fallen’s stomach like a heart could be found just above it, and though I grit my teeth and wait for the horrors of metal on metal, my ear is met only with the sound of his scream.

A full on fall apart and there is no fixing what has been permanently broken, nothing to see behind sword sinking through eye sockets, and no hope in the blood that falls from lying lips as we hold solid eye contact for the simple moments that followed my statement. Seeing double in myself my attention falters to the being next to me, mechanical thoughts and filtered feelings seeping through the pores of untouched skin. Bleeding and breaking were different things, but with the pain that cracked through my veins with each labored breath I began to lose sight of the line that lay between them.

“We—we never drank—,” A step forward among the wreckage and I stay still in its wake—the best way to avoid the monster itself is to play dead until it loses interest in you altogether.

One more step forward and beads of sweat mix with blood, falling down my cheeks and dropping to quivering hands as every muscle tenses in the illusion of stillness, “We never drank together… you beat—he beat me we never drank—”

I do not move when he steps become a desperate detonation of the bomb that’s been lit four days and counting, for all that’s left to do is smother my face in the ashes and pray I do not suffocate—he lunges.

I do not move.

Half a beating heart and a trembling hand leave me fighting the urge to run my four fingers over the scratch he leaves in my calf like a brand of his own disapproval—we drank together, and still he turns his sword against my skin and does not believe me when the shards of a broken bottle flash across my mind like the nightmare I’ve wished to repeat.

He drank to forget, but I drank to remember the nights my father did the same, hoping to find pride in the eyes of a boy who only spoke of disappointment.

Moment of silence and muscles cry for movement, but one word presses the air like the answer to a question I had never managed to ask and the monster next to me lunges, mechanical muscles and twisted tendons hidden under synthetic skin realistic enough to fool even the pathological liar himself—a tall tale is always harder to believe the second time around because the basis of truth has been tainted in time’s passing.

Ashes painted on tainted skin, I stay still and silent until I feel the blood under my nails begin to dry in the passing seconds.

I do not watch for the detonation of sanity itself over my shoulder as I sprint.