it comes in threes {for stella}

Weird how even though their district escort had made countless remarks on the silence of the train they'd travelled on, he could still hear the voices of home. 

One hand on the armrest of a chair that threatened to swallow him whole, cyanide pillows and arsenic cushions, he'd pointed one long, bony finger at Stella Summit's pieced together body, admiring only the fake parts of a girl that had been nothing but real from the start. 

and a 

"What
happened
there?"  

That deathly silence between the four of the tributes from Seven could have murdered him right there, slit his throat with the bladed fingernails it carried. But it hadn't, and as he sits amongst the dust clouds spat up from beneath his feet, amongst the sin storms whipped up by his poisoned lips, he can still hear Rowan Combe's voice, one slap against the flesh of his bloodied, broken knuckles, and it fell fell fell out of the air like a the talon from a delivery word, like the delivery word itself. 

And a  "Don't!" from Rowan Combe's life filled lips, before his death before her death before Death became their only ally. 
D O N T 
He stands next to Wyatt, tasting the mistrust in between them like a cloud of poison. Don't blink don't breathe don't point don't attack don't defend don't 

Pause- breathe in.
"It's rude to point" She'd explained in a mutter, sinking from her words like they'd hurt as they ran from her lips. Like she'd, for a single second, felt the pain of words like he'd felt for eighteen years of bruised stomach and gashed up lips. It's rude to point, Sue Tate, Seven. 

The fog had cleared by the time he dropped sword to ground, letting it meet the dust cloud beneath it, but although the dirt and dust had been revealed with the clearing of that hazy substance, his mind was still clouded with the density of it. The fights hadn't been a blur, rather, a smear. Smears of blood and gashes, of NO! and the metallic gleam of a sword in the sunlight, the dropping of a robotic him as an axe pumps the iron wires out of his robotic brain, disrupting circuits of lies and veins of oil. 

This fog had cleared, but the broken eyes of Sue Tate and his cracked mind, sanity and all, weren't quite visible.

yet. 

It's rude to point, and even ruder to stare. It's rude to slash and gash and bruise and bump, but even ruder to kill. 

He doesn't have the energy to point as Kiena Ward carries Stella Summit's body through that broken fog, prothetic arm hanging limply as she walks one step two step towards him and Wyatt. And a-

What happened there? 

He doesn't even hear the sword clatter to the ground, even if he did it couldn't drown out the snapped memory of the voices of four death sentence tributes breaking the silence of a muted train car. Stella Summits death hit him like a train, like a virachne claw on neck, like a cornucopia knife in the eye, like Death's bony hand on his shoulder.

She drops to the ground with a death sentence in her arms, crumbled up note he'd written this girl from Seven bouncing around inside her coat pocket, marked and sealed with the sharpie stained thumb of himself, and the blood of her body. His grandmother used to pull out an old and dusty puzzle game to keep him occupied, in between fire crackles and sneers they'd arrange the pieces together over and over. He'd lost one piece throughout the years, watched his tumble and tumble and fall under the couch, never to be seen by Sue Tate's seven year old eyes.

Rowan Combe marked the first, scattered puzzle piece lost to the adrenaline of Kirito- killed as she fled with the wind. And Stella Summit marked the second, puzzle piece lost as the fog cleared with the wind of a doppelganger's weapons. 

Breathe in- She's broken.

“I broke her,”
She broke her.
“It was me.” 
Pause- the next breath whips up a whirlwind, and Sue Tate is lost to the storm of his own emotion. 

His bag is thrown across the vast landscape, stained with his blood droplets, and as it lands the gun tumbles out of the back of it. He rips mask from face and helmet from head, sinking to his knees as one hand of Death and the one hand of emotion force him down down down towards the abyss. Tears cling to the corner of his eyes and he shoots Kiena not with a gun, but with a gaze meant to turn body to stone. 

Nothing is stone anymore, their stone stoicism was lost long ago.

“Why can’t you fix anything, Kiena?” 
The words are poison, but he's spoken so many poisonous sentences in his life that he's immune to his own toxins. 

Immune to toxins, maybe, but Sue Tate could never be immune to the emotions that flooded up like blood from the gashes whenever he glanced down at Stella Summits body. And maybe it was something like love, but he couldn't quite put a finger on it. Besides, the closest his bony finger had ever come to Stella Summit was to point out the only fake thing on her body, and a what happened t h e r e.

Sue Tate breaks along with Stella, and nothing, not even the bloody hands of Kiena Ward, can fix him. 

Quiet down, this storm breaks as soon as the hands of Kiena Ward turn blueprint to redprint, blood droplets staining the note as she holds it to the girl in front of him. He'd never known love, only steel-toed stomach bruises and his grandmother's sanity lost like his own- apparently things run in the family. 

Four caramels and a note, Kiena laces the object between digits before locking bloodshot eyes with his own, anger breaking like a storm as he glances at the caramels, resting his gaze on the note before him. 

“I don’t want them. Please, take them away.” 
He nearly refuses, hands up push back the girl he'd broken a vase with, the girl who'd broken a piece of home and a piece of him in return. Sue Tate was only good at taking people's trust and moulding it to his own benefit, not for caramels and revenge filled notes and-

They feel soft in his hands, half-melted from the heat of the bottom of Kiena's bag. They stick to his thumb as he puts them into his coat pocket, leaving out the note even though he can't

he just can't 

bring himself to read it, because he hadn't seen Kirito's face in the sky yet, he hadn't gotten him and Sue Tate had already been faced with his own lies once today- he couldn't be faced with them again. 

Home was a cackling fireplace and puzzle pieces lost to the abyss under his couch, home was screaming fights and steel toed boots on his stomach, claw marks bruised cheeks, slammed doors and his grandmother's stories to soothe a pain that was too deep rooted inside of him to ever be mended. Home was Orville's metaphors as he chopped wood in front of him, boasting of how he could cut down the entire forest if he wanted to. Home was the poison gas he breathed- in out in out, endless cycles. Home was lies and home was sin, lost memories and lost souls. 

“She was home…” 
Stella Summit was home. 

Kiena breaks and he can only see the shattered glass pieces of her home fall to the ground before he tunes in to Stella's final breaths, interlocking his fingers within hers, even though the blood on his thumb stains her palm. 

He realizes something as the caramels inside his coat pocket melt within the heat, turning pocket to sticky hell.

Home is death.