sometimes quiet is violent; wyatt [day 5]

Tacenda- things better left unsaid; matters to be passed over in silence.

Silence spun around a single thread I watch Sue Tate take his finger off the trigger, yet the safety was never turned on and with the passing moments I keep him in the corner of my eye, never trusted; never trustworthy— I still had the marks against my skin as citation. Flinching finger and we’d both perish in the fire, casualties of gun smoke and the screen it hid behind— I knew he’d never stay.

I knew he’d never stay.

Not when Noah Bowers had a knife through the eye to speak for his sins and Sue Tate’s hatchet was dulling with the passing second, not when district seven’s cannon had sounded one time too many and he’d fallen behind the façade of a tall tale too many. I knew that Sue Tate was scared and that I was expendable, a character in the background of a poem I had written myself in seventy-two marks upon white-washed walls. By Wyatt O’Connor he’d die for the same— if it was any other name I’d call them a fool, rearranging the letters to spell out their sins and speak for them alone.

All the world may be a stage, but not all of us got adequate time in a spotlight that did nothing but blind us.

Hidden in the dark I suppose I should be thankful, a reminder of the dark night before a twisted sunrise and suddenly I’m faced with the barrel of a gun in fading vision, Sue Tate’s back to myself and a bloody battleground. Left hand and a bitter taste in my mouth a middle finger lingers to his back when he’s turned away, a solemn fuck you to the bullet I stared down for the passing two days.

I knew that Sue Tate would not stay.

With blood under my fingernails and copper taste on my tongue I had hoped that he would not, for one can only sleep with one eye open for so long before fate becomes fortune and I am forced to reap the benefits of that which I did not sow. He must have been destined to linger on something more important than the expendable characters of the past five days— a girl from nine, myself, Noah Bowers.

He walks off with Kiena Ward, a girl from three whose name I hadn’t bothered to learn until I was staring at Sue Tate’s finger trembling on the trigger of a gun with four bullets remaining. You’d think he would have learned to turn it against the one who made the cannon sound and not the one who sounded it, but with Stella Summit’s death hanging over his head like a nonexistent letter from home insanity seemed to be the author of his story.

Which struck me as odd, for not one wound struck against his skin was by way of my blade.

Instead I was the first page of another story he had weaved around calloused hands, the ending lost between tore pages— it was better to let lies linger, anyhow. Day five and I had attempted to take the pen from his hand, only to retreat at the site of a gun barrel and an unstable mind on the trigger. Hidden behind the smokescreen I had never imagine staring gunpowder and lead straight on and imagining them lodged in my own skin, and with the two shots fired against Kirito Miristioma I am grateful for the time wasted away in anxiety, for it meant that fear was useless and fate was favorable.

Stumbled in silence I retreat from the battle to fight the war alone, soldiers on my skin and cannons in my ears I collapse under the radar, holding tight to the white flag but never raising it above my head, fearful of the repercussions and too strained to truly think of them. No strategy to be formulated I pass the seconds in the sounds that do not make themselves known.

Victors always had a strategy, and truly, victors did not come from district six.

Numbers etched upon my mind neither fill the void of definition I am looking for, not the number six, that of a home I do not wish to remember, instead hoping to tear apart the white-washed walls with each day spent with a beating heart. The number four still lingering, a display of knowledge lost and I am nothing more than the low end of the scale weighed in my opposition.

Finger on the trigger I had wanted to pull it myself, to throw the stone that began the avalanche only to take credit for it all myself, but instead I had been left with a hollow heart and a trembling hand, staring at the barrel of a gun like it was the lifeline I had expected it to be.

For the first five seconds, I had wanted him to pull the trigger.

And for the following seven, I had truly expected him to.

For what was to stop him now when only twenty-four hours prior he had been turning his sword against me in frantic fear, his inability to distinguish between a reality he did not want to face and a fantasy that was not of his own causing me harm and leaving me to pick the dried blood from marred skin. Done more damage by his hand alone than the three days combined I had grasped at gaping wounds and flinched from his touch when he finally promised to heal them.

Five steps to fixing your child, only one to break them.

But I was not broken by blade alone, for to fall by physical hand alone was a feat I was not yet able to accomplish, instead, I was left with the shards of a trust shattered and the audacity thrown at my feet to fix it myself.

When Sue Tate left my side with the girl from three to pick their fight with a suspense they could not handle, I shattered. But not because I had not expected it, but because I was still there to watch it happen.