after us, the riptides { nc. vs tbd. } day 5

He becomes your canvas; a red pulse mar porcelain.

"Hey, Six, I want your life too."

There's a special place in hell waiting for people like you. A kingdom of brimstone and fire because that's what people like you deserve. It's what madmen and broken things rave about in their final moments; promising an eternity you'll be sent to before bleeding for a creed that calls bloody vengeance. You wear no faces, you don't weak sanity like a cloak and feign mercy for the benefit of the broken -- you look into Caine's eyes and let him watch you fester.

You don't see the flash of his lover's spear, it kisses your stomach and tears the final strands of metal from your body. You grimace, more at the crimson creation pulsating agony across your bicep than anything, and step back. Sudden movements and worn muscles, fatigue threatens to break from the surface of your skin. They have to see it, a crack in your hollow apathy that threatens to bleed something other than emptiness.

You taste Loverboy's blood against your lip, shades of beautiful iron. You won't give yourself for broken things.

"If that's how you intend to take it then I suggest you get to the back of the line," acid eclipses shades of iron staining your lip. You look down at the tears in your sweater, each angry scar in fabric dancing around the E+A stitched over the place where your heart is said to be. It never really occured to you what the letters meant, you never cared what they meant -- you took it for utility. For the first time since you entered this frozen hell, you bleed a line of scarlet shade into the fabric.

You embody an eerie calm in the face of your skin splitting, a declaration made to the world of where Raven intends to send you. Then take me to it, a special place in hell waiting for it and Vesper's seen it before you, Caine will see it before you and not a single silenced soul can remove the stitches you put across their broken lips and tell you if there's truth to their declaration.

You focus your attention onto a whithering chord between your attackers, love frays beneath the pressure of your hatred. But you don't tune out the sound of a war raging around you, Isaac's skeleton breaks but there's no hesitation in his retaliation. You can't help but smile through a familiar fatigue and pain biting at your skin as Violet brings her weapon across Loverboy's midsection and opens a scarlet snarl across his stomach and he doubles over in agony. You wouldn't have expected it from her, to spot his moments of weakness and tear at his skin.

Looks like this snake has bite after all, looks like this bitch is full of surprises.

"His life is mine, Seven." Euley's voice is an anchor, a declaration that cuts through the rhythm of a broken battlefield. You numb your skin to it, but your hairs still stand on end and you feel a familiar flicker in your empty chest. You find it strange, the sudden pull she felt to defend you. You shut your eyes and ignore her stardust pulse.

"Go on then Loverboy, kiss his wounds better." You manage a laugh riddled with tiredness, imagining how helpless he much feel as the heartbeat he carries on his sleeve comes to a stop. If this is the deepest that double-edged sword known as love can cut then you have nothing to fear. You know how this story ends, and it won't be redemption. You've planted a seed of hatred in his soul but he won't live to watch it bloom.

You chain of reasoning is cut short by echo of a bone break and the echo of a cannon, Euley holds death in her hands for the third time and, despite the dull agony, the corners of your mouth pull into a smile. Her first and second kills had been the end result of a blur, you watch this one in its entirety and watch that girl's body fall in slow motion. She joins the legions of bodies in this frozen graveyard and whithers upon this bitter peak.

You turn your back on the instantaneous shattering of one life and observe the whithering of another. Love frays, he tells them to go and offers his body and soul to the reaper's scythe.

Your scythe.

"You want my life so bad. Aeson. Go ahead, take it." He picks up his weapons, he hefts his spear and gives himself in pieces for a heartbeat that isn't even his. Fool. "You'll never know what life is Aeson. What life could be."

Because for a man so hollow, you have little desire to find anything of substance. Everything's boring to you; your pulse races when your fingers dig into someone's skin and you hold the reaper's scythe in your hands. You watch the world melt at your fingertips and wait for cyclical highs -- you won't let him see how empty you truly are. You never cared what life could be, only what it is. Only how the scripture planted a seed of love in your soil and it bloomed into hatred. You could never give your pulse to anything else.

You watch his eyes wander to Euley for the briefest of seconds,

you'll never know what life could be

you let yourself orbit around could haves and alternate universes in that time.

"Eternal or not, you'll be left behind Aeson. Just another boy who didn't know how to rope the moon."

He smears a notation for acceptance across your calf and shatters the center of your orbit. You dare let yourself be guided by fatigue and step back, you grit your teeth but you don't scream.

"And you'll never know what life could be, Caine. You'll never know what it means to grow old, you'll never see your family or your home again," two steps forwards and you allow your truth to take form. "All because you wanted to protect your precious fucking boyfriend. You're an idiot, Caine."

You'll never know what life could is or could be, counting your ribs and spilling starving gospel took that privillege away from you, but you'll know what it means to be remembered when you're left behind. You've left your mark, despite your borrowed and gambled time. Back in Six, you'll be remembered every time someone glances at Vesper Daisy's tombstone in simple passing. They'll see you run her through with your spear, they'll remember the way you twisted your wrist so she felt the metal. You'll be remembered by Caine Winchester's family when they lay flowers in his tombstone, when they watch you leave his heart to whither in the snow. You'll be left behind, and you decide you're okay with that.

Let hatred become your madness.

Spear in hand, you become an extension of death itself.

"Say your prayers, Loverboy. A frozen tundra is no place for a cowboy."

Love is not a reality you deny, it is a concept you defy.

[dars]