monument of a memory :: whiskey
Dec 10, 2021 22:11:21 GMT -5
Post by pogue on Dec 10, 2021 22:11:21 GMT -5
W I Z
Something terrible slips from his lip when his spear enters Cecily Deerling's chest, lunging forward on shaking legs and coated in his own sins. The tip of his weapon presses through ragged skin and into dying muscle, until red bubbles up from the source and splatters against his cheek in a permanent marking of what could be a victory. His yell is guttural, primal, half-choked on the blood that floats up so easily through his throat and spills from his lips as they crash into one another, two crimson waves fighting against one another in the midst of a hurricane.
It all feels useless when he watches her fall to the dust and the dirt, and it all feels hopeless when he follows suit, shaking legs finally giving out underneath the pressure that is laced in Death's palms on his shoulders. He gasps, choking on his last breaths as his back hits mud and soil, lightning and thunder and a whole storm of pain cracking through his chest until he can hardly feel anything except the rain against his flesh. It stings, every drop stings like acid, licking away at his wounds until there threatens to be nothing left but sin and bone.
It's as if the arena is mourning the loss, a million tears falling from the pale skin of an overcast sky as he lays there, each breath more painful and drawn out than the last, wavering snake eyes staring up into the crying sky. He flinches when it turns from tears to applause, waves of wind whipping through the trees and curling against his bones, dragging sharpened claws against tissue paper skin and pulling at every leaf of the forest until the applause becomes deafening, a helter-skelter mockery of an audience applauding a victory too small for him to even feel it against the waves he drowns in.
A broken boy holds his life in at seams that were forced open through steel, red and black and so much blue gathering up at the surface of his form as he lays in his own coffin for what feels like an eternity and a heartbeat, waiting for two bony hands to slam closed the door and drive nails into the wood. But it doesn't want him, a voice reminding him not yet as a cannon booms through the sky above, swallowing whole Cecily Deerling's final breaths and slamming against his ear drums. He can't do anything but blink and shake in ice and fear as it fades into the distance, lost so quickly amongst the heartbeat of thunder and the veins of lightning that riddle the canvas of grey above, lifelines of a leaving breathing death trap and a reminder that him and whoever remains standing are just stuck in the stomach.
He lays there for too long, far too long, until the hope for his life to fade away is diminished and forgotten amongst the waves of red and black that coat his form, threaded in between the pounding hammer of pain that cracks against broken ribs and dying heart. Cecily's body lays adjacent, weeping the same threads of scarlet and black as his own, fallen apart from a million wounds both new and healed and forgotten amongst the dust and the dirt. They're pulled apart by sharpened claws of steel as the hovercraft enters the arena, her body pulled up into the heavens as he watches from the belly of a beast he'll never make it out of.
Her blood drips on his face as she is lifted away. It does nothing but burn.
"That's why I'm not running anymore.", her words ring out.
You're one of the luck ones. You don't have to.
He's left alone then, amongst the silence and the rumble and the screams of the arena, waiting for a final blow to carve itself across his chest. It never comes.
It's desperation that allows him to pull himself to the tree line, not adrenaline, the latter being too far gone and the former taking its place proudly amongst the black spots that dance at the outskirts of his vision. He gasps as he presses his back up against the tree, bark carving into his skin and gaze drifting up to the veins of branches and leaves that explode above him, watching them ebb and flow and pulse with the taps of rain that fall. He had asked Cecily if she would still run if she could, thrown the question out into the dead air between them and watching it wither against the storm.
And, just like a true Finch, he'd bitten before he'd barked, too scared of the answer to let his opponent have her last words.
Karma kisses him in the form of a haunting, the question burrowing itself into the forefront of his brain and sinking its fangs into what he so wishes could be empty thoughts. He'd never been a runner in his life, always curled fists and the bubbling fury of a fighter. Or maybe he had, maybe his running was the bruises and the breaking and the putting himself back together under the soft lull of the moonlight, hating everything around him and always claiming to not have the resources to make any of it better. He was wrong, he'd just never had the bravery.
And now he's just like his father, clutching his vices and spitting blood and poison and wielding things sharper than any blade, swinging wildly just to feel everyone else around him hurt, too fearful to turn the blade against himself.
And now he's just like his Mother, standing back and watching an entire village burn because he never had the heart or the courage to stop it before it was too late, a shattered reflection desperately trying to pull the pieces back together. Never succeeding.
And now he's nothing at all, a broken boy walking into the void and waiting for it to tag him as its own, no destination in sight. Too much hatred to do anything but hurt, too little life left to fix the wounds that lash and bite at withered soul.
He has nowhere to go but down now, even if he stumbles out of this place a bloody martyr. Maybe that's his curse, to keep on living against everything that should have killed him.
Can't heal in the same place you were broken, a vicious voice in the back of his brain reminds him.
The rain drips from the branches above and crashes against bleeding skin, crossing paths with the tears that carve into his cheeks.
He doesn't know if he's thinking about the arena or Seven anymore.
