madness reaching down // octopi vs. remnants

A misstep and I was falling, or flying, or sinking, or swimming, and then I wan't. It were as if the earth had swallowed me whole and then spat me back out, and when my senses came back to me, I was lying beside the same puddle I had stepped in moments before.

Don't question it, Raven.

Don't question any of this.

I stood and disappeared into the forest, content on spending another night in the day, with broken promises and forgotten words clattering my teeth together. I was exhausted. But then, three days in an arena full of murderers and elephants on stilts would do that to a person.

I couldn't see the stars again, and part of me was glad. No sky to make me think about where Gavin had gone, or if I would be there with him or not. Just me and the flowers shining gold and the trees purple and the ferns blue. Just me and the impossible, and maybe seeing Gavin again wouldn't have been the worst thing if I should have failed. But I plucked neon petals and sipped from a flask made of crayon. If this place and these things were possible, then maybe a crown on my head could have been more than a disorienting daydream.

A change in the air, or a voice that warned me something was there even though I had not seen it, and I held Ivy the axe up for defense. Breathing. Human. Undisturbed.

Shelby.

I hadn't seen her since the training center, where her drunken words had been the seal on a promise neither of us were able to keep. Scarlett was dead, Lazarus was dead, and I had spent the entirety of the last three days alone or fighting for a life I possibly wouldn't ever be allowed to have. And she had been a couple hundred yards away from me the entire time.

I bet she'd seen me and kept her distance until now. She probably labelled me a loose canon with blood on her hands, and as much as I wanted to hate her for it, she was right, so I couldn't. But I could still be angry.

"Oh, good. You aren't dead." My words held confidence I was certain I did not possess, and while my voice seemed indifferent, every muscle in my body was tensed, waiting for the girl to charge, fists flying. Maybe this time I wouldn't get lucky enough to land a lucky hit, or find a cave to crawl into. Maybe Shelby would stab me with that glaive until bone and blood were all that was left of me. Or maybe she would smile, and I would sit next to her and take a swig of the alcohol she held in her hands.

Why was it she was always drunk?

We all had reason enough to do it; otherwise we wouldn't have been here, but I thought then and there that, maybe, Shelby Leviane was not as whole as she wanted us to believe.

"You aren't, either."

It was enough to believe she would not kill me.

"You know you've missed me," I said with conviction. I let Ivy fall back to my side, favoring Shelby's alcohol over it. "This stuff kills, you know."

Memories of my father's potent breath at the dinner table, his slurred words of hatred toward Gavin and me, the night when he was out late and woke me up when he stumbled past my room.

Alcohol had not killed him. It had killed Gavin, and in turn, me. and he would keep drinking it until Mom was gone, and then he would finally drown himself out from the noise. And that was sad to me, but he had no reason to do it other than his pure love of hate.

"I want some."

---

Morning came, and I didn't even bother trying to notice a sunrise. Head pounding, lips chapped. ("You did this to yourself, dumb ass.") I made a noise that was something between pity and revulsion, rolled over to wake Shelby up. Drinking water helped, as did letting the day go on. Time was the only medicine I had in the hellhole, and never had I realized how grateful a damn pain pill should have made me.

Add it to the long list of Raven's fuck-ups, I guess.

"There are people over there," I stated simply, nodding my head, "Two girls." Both of them were turning toward us then, acting like savage animals hungry for their next meal -- smiling like children, gritting their teeth like they planned on using them.

"Tacky." I called to Shelby.

The small one must have found it offensive. I barely had enough time to hold my hand up before my finger was on the ground. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfu--

"Why is it always my damn hand?" I hissed. Pain screamed from the wound, and my best way of silencing it was to shove my thumb into the opening. I screamed from the pain, from the blood dripping into my palm and onto the floor, making the base of Ivy slippery beneath my grasp.

"You bitch!"

Hurt her. It was all I could think -- all I could do. Just like the girl in the mansion, a switch flipped inside of me and anger seemed like the best idea and red looked like such a good fucking color. Hurt her. My eyes met hers with fury and rage and blood and red.

Hurt her.

Liar, liar
I am on fire.
Kill me with haste—
Extinguish the flame.

The world is burning black and shooting with silver stars, and for a moment I find enjoyment in the expanse that separated myself from the rest of the world pressing down on my shoulders. There was nothing else here to be found, simply myself and the bottle of tequila left to share secrets in the silence. And though we are nothing more than the lies we tell we are cut short by the blaring of the anthem for the third time and counting. Faces flashing give me no reason to find faith in any of my surroundings, for unknown names and stories can be told all the day long and no moral of mine will ever be changed.

A faithless face breaks my concentration and I find a rogue tear streaming down my cheek. Jano Karmichael is dead.

Broken bone for shattered spirit, I cannot find the logic behind the depression that seeps into my soul at the sight of his face.

I take another drink of tequila and the speckle of silver stars is swallowed by the dark of night around it.

Sunrise leaves me spitting, attempting to wash the taste of despair from my throat with no other first instinct than to take care of the loose ends. But consciousness grabs hold of my ribs and shakes them until stupidity falls loose, and I reach for the bottle of tequila once more and begin to take a drink— one, two— in succession.

I am interrupted by the snapping of twigs and the presence of another, and when Raven Barker’s face appears in my vision, I raise the bottle of tequila like a white flag of surrender, “Oh, good. You aren’t dead.”

Damn shame that is.

I smirk at her and raise the bottle to my lips for the third time in a span of ten minutes before sputtering back at her, “You aren’t, either.”

She is the snap of reality I have been searching for to pull me from the comfort of intoxication, but I cannot bring myself to admit this to a girl who knows when she is needed, “You know you’ve missed me.”

I shrug, attempting to pass the burden of desperation from my shoulders to the ground at her feet. I want nothing more to take hold of her shoulders and sob— Lazarus is dead and Scarlett is dead and I am pretty sure I am dead too and I just can’t tell yet but I know it’s true— I take another drink in an effort to quiet a mind whose only knowledge is that of fear and loss.

“This stuff kills, you know.”

I snort, the taste of twice swallowed tequila rising in my throat as my tongue burns dry at the feeling, “That’s the point.”

She pauses and ponders for a moment before making a demand I am hesitant to meet, “I want some.”

Half a mind to tell her no and I find myself passing the bottle with jealousy burning my veins, as though for some reason my mind believed she did not deserve it. My heart found compassion in the spare seconds, however, and before I can go back on my word the bottle is in her hand and I am counting the time she drinks.

She hands me back the bottle and I swish the liquid remaining around before setting it down beside me and resting back on my elbows.

Time passes as we sit in silence and I almost forget that there is a day to be had until Raven makes a noise I wish to never hear again in my lifetime. I smile at her discomfort, but I am quickly brought back to the sliver of sense I have left when she says with simplicity, “There are people over there— two girls.”

I sigh as I roll over, take the bottle of tequila in my left hand and down the remaining contents as I pick up my glaive and bring myself to my feet.

“Tacky.”

In my current state I cannot decipher who she is referring to, but I suppose it does not matter because the time to ask for clarification has come and gone and I am still left lingering in limbo.

Suddenly Raven is crying out in pain and I look up to see her clutching her hand in agony as she laments the loss of a digit. Insults drip from her tongue and I smile as my vision blurs as I attempt to follow the movement of not only Raven but the other two of an uninvited company.

The bottle has fallen from my hand, and as I reach for it my fingers instead grasp the golden crayon. Connecting the space between gold and glaive I draw tar to the end of the blade, and when discarded I reach for one of the remaining red matches and strike it alight.

The difference between fighting sober and drunk is simply the excuses made for the results that come to pass.

A single thought screamed louder than the pain and the hisses of our opponents:

I've failed.

My blood was decorating a blank canvas all on its own, scarlet letters and crimson smears a story of the letdowns that had brought me to this arena, where forests glowed and siblings died and girls like me started to believe they could ever be something more.

Shock and awe, and it became a chore to breathe. (In. Out. In. Out. Come on, Raven. In out in out in-) I was going to die.

I thought the smaller girl said something; pretty face wrinkled and sneered into something more violent in my mind, but I did not hear her. I did not care to. Pain and heartbreak would do that to a person, I supposed.

Another scream. This one was filled with understanding. It was something more than just anger and frustration, more than a simple kind of sadness. It was watching Leon's blade worm its way into my brother's skull. It was seeing Rowan's doppleganger become the monster she had refused to become. It was leaving my house without bidding my parents farewell. It was--

Heartbreak.

And it was a feeling I knew too well.

Careers. They had to have been. My mind was slipping into a primal rage, where I stopped thinking in zeros and ones, and started thinking only of offense and defense. Kill or be killed. No fight or flight this time. No running away and crawling into caverns; no waiting for this to pass. Fight.

My vision became a show of shadow and silver, and I willed my blade to kill the monsters who were coming to take it all away.

Tell me once more
Of the lone man’s war
Against strife and terror alike.

Perhaps it was made
On the basis of pain
Like the remnants of love and pride.

I was not there for the death of Lazarus Stroms, but Raven Barker was.

I was there for the death of Scarlett Stroms, but Raven Barker was not.

If blood shared between the two was any physical form of trust, it bonded us in a fashion weaker than I had ever imagined. I did not feel the connection to the girl beside me as I had with Scarlett, perhaps due to distance or perhaps to intoxication. Regardless, watching her blood spill and her fingers fall to the ground at her feet did nothing to slow down the spinning of the world surrounding me. If my hand was to reach for security now it would find nothing more than an empty bottle and lost hopes of sobriety.

No hope in Raven Barker and no hope in the blades in either of our hands, we both swing wide and leave nothing but remnants of discomfort on the girl from four. She quips back, nerves untouched by metal or madness. Her first words become lost in the space between us, but after a momentary pause the tailing end of her thoughts are crystal clear, “You’re no better than us.”

Without a moment’s hesitation in a mind that did not care for accusations, I knew that she was entirely correct.

Our similarities were not found in the mindless strike or in vindictive violence, but rather in the desperation that left our tongues parched and our stomachs aching. There was no longer a true explanation for a will to live, but rather an unknown despair linked to death. Perhaps there was nothing left to be found here other than the impartial definition of existence—

When the girl from four strikes, another two fingers detach themselves from Raven Barker’s hand.

One second passes to another and I cannot register the screams sounding in my ear as coming from the girl beside me. For a moment I believe they are my own, nothing more than repetitive motions of obligation. But as she struggles beside me, chest heaving and eyes fighting to stay open it becomes apparent that I have made no sound— that I am simply beside her and as useless as the fingers that now lay on the ground at her feet.

She swings wide again at the girl from four, and with the gentle scratch of her blade on Gabrielle’s arm, I know that Raven Barker is as good as dead with no logic to bring about any other conclusion.

The girl opposite of myself— lacking a name and any similar conviction— says nothing in return, and it seems to be staring into glass. She is unattached, assisting an ally due to unspoken obligations and fear of repercussions at best. I long to reach out my hand and touch hers, tell her I would care to sympathize in the moment and be filled with hatred in the next. But just as second nature wills me to carry out the action, she strikes again at Raven Barker and pulls back a blade coated in fresh blood.

Vision turned momentarily to the girl beside me, I see blood pouring from her neck. I do not reach out to help her, do not reach out to stop the stream of blood streaming from her throat. I do nothing but stand with feet planted firmly to the ground and eyes fixed upon her in what could be final moments.

But then again, the reasoning behind my attention to the details of her last breath struck no cord of logic in my mind, for I was lucky enough to simply remember her name. If she was dead by this time tomorrow, she would still have a slit throat burning with disappointment and I would be nothing more than pained attempting to remember the details.

The only way the course of tomorrow would be driven from inevitable hangover and detachment from the reality around me would be if a blade was driven through my chest, and there seemed to be no chance of this happening in the nearing moments.

If there was no humanity left in my veins, I would not even bother to strike back.

Remnants of a heart fight for precedence over numb fingers and limbs, as though intoxication could be turned into resilience and my lost identity could be turned heroine.

I could not save Raven Barker— I knew this much.

What I did not know is why I did not want to. It was not vengeance fueled by hatred of Lazarus Stroms’ death or terror driven by a lack of ability on either of our parts.

It was as though Raven Barker’s life was a thread tied around my finger and three of us had the ability to relieve my body of the burden.

There would be no apologies and there would be no thanks given.

Time would simply turn on and we would have no choice but to march with it.