t's uncrossed and i's undotted {kiena v wyatt; day 7}

Two days prior I had spent twenty-four hours with the girl from three, her mentality falling to unsalvageable pieces as Stella Summit’s cannon sounded in a distance just at fingertip’s length. Sue had been determined to offer comfort where there was truly none to be found— it’s a stark symptom of desperation to cling to any tactile reminders of lost sanity in order to bring back that which cannot be found. Two days prior and my axe had struck spine and mind of a mechanical Sue Tate, gears and wires of a different kind severed by metal of a similar suit.

Two seconds and a half thought that his cannon would sound in the same manner my breath had been held until Sue Tate broke in an identical manner, fallen to quivering knees and ripping out sanity like severed veins, his chest had become hollow with the emptying of his counterpart’s. Broken boy and a grieving girl they were problems that I could not solve, souls of a pair determined to build the righteous up by tearing apart any stone of sanity left unturned.

Violence to fill the vicinity their initial exchange had been a mixed drink of two parts remorse and one part hatred, burning their throats as it went down they had fallen to the night with the idea that either could be saved. Yet Sue Tate was dead and Kiena Ward strays into the corner of my focus as the axe hand falls from my hand, sinking into her back with the flicker of a flame— never friend; never foe.

I do not apologize, only met with the response of her knife skimming across skin that’s seen the surrender flag one time too many. A war hanging in the balance by a thread thinner than the two of our sanities combined I meet her gaze for a moment longer than expected and let the second axe hang at my side like an extension of an arm I no longer see as my own.

Broken bones and singed skin— no longer eleven pages crumpled by the same hands.

A quiver for the quiet I watch her as if to forget a memory that is singed into my skin like that which matches upon hers. I wish to forget while she wishes for a future, two hands holding to the same blade but neither willing to strike in the silence. Sue Tate and Stella Summit’s cannons between us I see them at fingertip’s distance away— I heard horror stories of homegrown love weeded by hatred and horror.

Axe handle flickering at my side like a flame that can no longer be fueled I never broke her gaze, “I was with him when he died.” Solitary silence to fill the seconds that pass the heat of the axe threatens my skin with the reminder of the ashes she flung in my direction just moments prior, “The girl from two, she killed him only to kill herself— one death in the dark and one left to be seen.”

I raise an axe to watch my reflection in the metal overshadowed by flames of a different shade, “I’d never want to die in the dark, Kiena.”

"I don’t care, Sue is dead, Wyatt.”

Two names unrelated I cringe at the first and numb at the second, eight letters I never wanted to see in correlation my throat tightens at the mention of my oblivious nature to a situation she could not understand. Blood boiling and bones breaking I open my mouth to speak but am instead caught off by anger disguised in a cloak labeled ‘arbitrary to common nature.’

“Why the hell do you think I’d want to know how it happened? It makes no difference to me.” Loosened grip on slick blade my chest tightens at words laced in lies, drowned in the idea that to live was to fall and to fall was to live. This was not a second chance nature— no forgiveness in the idea of a hardened heart.

She strikes, a simple scratch against marred skin and one hundred and three etches itself across my chest like false advertising, a reminder of the inevitable I press a palm to dripping blood and pretend sweat in the wound does not sting like salt— “There’s no good way to die,” Complications to simple nature she continues, a cannon on the sound of the living was quite out of the ordinary, “either way you end up dead.”

Complexity unraveled I hold the axe at arm’s length, weapon of choice in a hand that had lost its nature for help the first day. Victors do not come from district six and neither will I, for the graveyard will flourish with my decency to the deceased, but that does not lend to the idea that preference is not an option. “I spent five years carving an existence on my bedroom walls— reminders, if you will, of that which was human and that which was fallible.”

Reflections turned to resurrection I see Sue Tate’s face in place of my own, faded to Noah Bowers and Maya Xiaoqing— no rest for the righteous, but I am not, left to play the part of a lie lingering in my lungs like second hand smoke. “Five years is a long time for a boy who’s only lived eighteen.” Carved into existence by a hand that cannot be held steady the axe in my hand quivers with quiet loss of sanity— we do not realize things are missing until their lack of existence leaves a void that cannot be filled by the material.

Sweaty palms and straining voice I point the tip of the axe at the space between her lungs, where a heart would sit if a heart was to be had, “So when you tell me that all death ends up the same in the end I cannot help but wonder what death you have been watching for the past seven days, because if you had been paying attention, you would know that death itself is not the time that is remembered by any, it’s the moments that lead to it.”

Free hand missing a thumb since the first day spent with gears turning and mind quivering I raise my index finger to space below a clenched jaw, “In those final moments,” Quick line against sensitive skin I shiver at the touch left behind by the line drawn across a throat spitting sin, “I would like to go quickly.”

"You know that I’m one of them.”

Deranged, devastated, defiant— Kiena Ward takes my strike in stride and snaps the last string of sanity that ties me to the ground beneath my feet. No longer weighted by heavy stones around broken ankles I feel blood rush from my stomach and char to the spot, tattooed across smooth skin like a reminder that repentance is for the righteous and neither of us are liable to fill the role. Similar to my mother’s sway of speech with the idea that it was acceptable to declare the endpoints and never the equation Kiena Ward leaves me to fill in the blanks to a problem that is not my own, for identity is a card best played at the start of a hand and I’ve been shuffling the cards for seven days straight.

She never stood a chance when I had had the ace of spades up my sleeve the entire time.

Play back on my side of the table she continues as I hide my cards in the open wound, blood flow attempted to stop when paper thin cuts threaten my sanity with pain that singes at the edges but numbs at the center, “The result of some affair. She dumped me off in Three as soon as they landed.”

No sympathy for the sinful— she killed Stella Summit; she sent Sue Tate spiraling into insanity at the cost of another cannon sounding above her own screams. Sympathy for the silent— victims of a truly victimless crime we both attempted to state the arbitrary when we initiated innocence.

The only difference between Kiena Ward and Wyatt O’Connor was how you decided to decipher the letters, spelling secondary to the idea of killing for a cause— only the endpoints; never the equation, we would be the musicians of death’s hymn regardless.

“They’re power hungry animals, let ‘em eat if they want to. It’s too late for us anyway.”

Head shaking blood rolls across torn skin like a catch in the gorge, always falling but never landing my broken bones cannot give way to the blues any longer. Breaking is a process that reaches its point of intensity when the pressure becomes too great of a strain, and when Kiena Ward’s knife sinks into my stomach like a sickness I cannot cut out— poison runs through our veins and exits from our fingertips as if that which falls from our lips is not enough.

Conceptual concentration I let the axe hang at my side limply, tired muscles giving way to fatigue in failure and I cannot bring my gaze to rest on the point between her eyes, “There is never such a moment as the present, Kiena Ward, for every moment we spend acknowledging the present is just another split-second of paying homage to the past.” Never allowed to live in the time I wished I choke on the seconds of silence that split the space that separates us, “You tell me that it’s too late for you or I, but if every moment is lost to the past, prior, previous time we’ve spent thinking of it, when did we ever stand a sliver of a chance?” We can never be late if we were never present to begin with.”