little john & robin hood - {ellis+oz day five}

a caricature

Oz's voice is going weird.

He noticed recently that sometimes it gets strangled in his throat, and he has to push it out for it to have any strength. Its pitches are all fucked up. Wobbles in this weird place between an unsteady tenor and this sudden, effeminate alto. He never really noticed his voice before. He cringes at it, like when one cringes at their voice in a recording, yet somehow the embarrassment cuts deeper than that. It makes him choke on his own voice; he reaches up to his throat as though it hurts, fingertips sensing the slight bulge in the skin there. Kind of -- looks like a little bubble under his skin. He doesn't think he likes it. Makes his neck look kind of broken...?

It's weird.

a drawing

Last night, he stuck his district token onto the dashboard with one of his cat stickers. Motion lines indicate that it sways up and down as the mech lumbers onward.

On one side of the paper is his old doodle. He drew it in a fit of tedium during English class. Character came into his head very spontaneously -- as he was drawing it, in fact, because most of the time he starts drawing just to make lines on a paper, and after a while the lines become something in his head. He decided that the bulging, lumpy, potato-shaped creature was a "World-eater." Intergalactic motherfucker that slugged round the cosmos, with this rounded leech-esque mouth rimmed in jagged teeth and constantly oozing green spit. Eyes black and beady, so dark with its own wrath that those that dared peer into the black-hole eyes were instantly sucked into it and spaghetti-fied...! Oh, and lets not forget the hands, hands fatter than its bulging nub head, infamous for having slapped an infinite amount of bitches in a single milli-second----!

And then Mrs. Priscilla stole it from him, and told him that he had detention after school.

That was months ago.

She kept it for that long, before the reaping.

On the other half, is her last message to him. The plea for happiness from a peevish woman to a kid who "just gives up."

a comic

Mrs. Priscilla's classroom. A big red F crowns the paper in Mrs. Priscilla's hand; in one corner is a single name: Oz. No more.

Across the desk is Mrs. Tove and Oswald. Mrs. Tove is tense, hands clasped demurely in her lap; she looks as stiff and awkward as a dog standing up on its hind legs for its master. Oz slumps in his chair, face leaned against his knuckles, frowning down at the ground.
MRS. PRISCILLA: The prompt had been, “How is Noah's Flood similar to the Hunger Games?” From a story we read aloud in class. Noah's Flood is – ah – this, this old story, so old we almost lost it, but the Capitol permitted it...

OZ: It's like that stuff that O'Malley kid goes on about--
MRS. TOVE: Oz!
OZ: --from the Games, the weird one?--
MRS. TOVE: You're teacher was talking! [turning to Mrs. Priscilla] Is he like this all the time?

MRS. PRISCILLA: No, most of the time he stays quiet in class...
OZ: No one lets me talk.
MRS. TOVE: Oz!!!

Oz sinks deeper into his chair, in that instinctive way kids try to hide. Mrs. Priscilla presses her lips together, awkward and uncomfortable. She glances down at the paper in her hands.
MRS. PRISCILLA: Well...this is what his essay looks like...

She places the paper on the other side of the desk. Mrs. Tove leans forward, brow furrowing as she stares down at it. Oz sinks deeper and deeper into his chair.

It's blank. Other than the nickname at the top, and the grade.

MRS. TOVE: Why didn't you write anything?!
Oz stares.

MRS. PRISCILLA: Oswald, I think it's in your best interest to answer your mother.
Oz stares.
MRS. PRISCILLA: Don't you think she deserves one?
Oz stares.
MRS. TOVE: No, he'd rather hurt his mama, wouldn't he! Make her sick with worry, him throwing his education away like that!

Oz blinks. He rouses himself, just enough to straighten up in his chair. His voice is low, mumbling.
OZ: I just...didn't want to.
MRS. TOVE: You. What.
OZ: I...didn't really want to write it.

Mrs. Tove flngs her hands up, looks to Mrs. Priscilla.
MRS. PRISCILLA: Why not?
OZ; [shrugging] Didn't like the story very much.
MRS. PRISCILLA: Do you think that's a good excuse not to do something? You know, to get to work, I have to wake up at 6:30 every morning. Think I like doing that? But I do it anyway, because I have to. It's my duty.

Oz fidgets with the zipper of his jacket.
OZ: Didn't like the prompt very much, either...
MRS. PRISCILLA: Well...it's what the Capitol expects you to think about. You know? There's a quote-- “I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say.” And I expect you to think about it too – and so does your mother.

OZ: ...I know...

an animation

It smells of gunpowder and roses. A sickly sweet concoction that tingles in the nose and lies smokily on the tongue.

The sun has risen. Electricity still arcs through the domed sky, making it shiver and dance, go from full blue to a shuddering black grid.

"Ellis..."

Quietly, the child slips out his mech, falling with a soundless cat-like grace to the ground below. Eyes seeking, though they peer straight ahead, he staggers jerkily towards the other body.

"Ellis."

He raises his arms to him.

a caricature

Oswald sees.

He sees the blood of little girls and little boys all around him. How the kindness of a smile wilts in the face of a gun.

He sees the claws on a man's fingers. He sees how they find the warm soft skin and how they break it open, how they free the blood.

"Freedom!" they all cry out -- he's seen them do it, saw their lips mouth the word.

It's all in his eyes.

an animation

Their bodies clasp together.

The heat of Ellis' body enfolds around his. Their heat mingle and become unified.

The hold Oz has on him is worthy of a strangle-hold. His fingers find Ellis' shirt and root into the fabric, clenching it in tight fists. Holding on as much as he can.

rotoscope

The time in-between. In between the bullet and the knife-blade. The warning and the first shot. Empty space he didn't mean to fall into.

your fault your fault your fault your fault

an animation

If ever there was a time to fall, this was it.

He sinks into Ellis, letting him support his weight, letting him practically hold him up so that he remains standing.

His body feels so broken. The emotions roaring within seizing his nervous system and manifesting itself as pain. He feels as though a hundred fists have hammered down into him. And he is dangling over some abyss, and the weight of his own body is crushing him.

Then he feels his support tremble.

He peeks up at Ellis. At the bent head. The bangs that fall over the eyes and the glistening streaks running down.

Oz always thought that Ellis and Peter didn't like each other very much. He blinks at the tears, the quavering of Ellis' ribs beneath Oz's locked arms. For all the name-calling, the hyperbole, the edge and trouble in paradise...there'd been a brotherhood there. A love. Maybe even an attempt at forging happiness.

Oz glances down. His eyes are moist, on the verge. His cheeks are still dry. Oz settles his cheek against Ellis' arm one last time. The fingers coiled around Ellis' shirt flatten and draw up to the shoulders. His body straightens, his feet finds purchase again as he feels the body close to his waver, start to topple into him, and he must be the structure that holds it up.

Not you.

The girl with the fang of metal piercing through her chest--

He flattens his body against Ellis', bracing it, becoming a shield that's strapped tight.

A broken mass of bones and flesh, mumbling for help--

The eyes stare straight into the blue haze of gunpowder flitting in the air. The teeth clack together as the arms around Ellis go rigid, tight, steeled.

The boy with a spark in his face, spark becoming a red line carving down the white cheek--

"Not you," he whispers, inaudible.

a portrait

He breathes in the sweat and the gunpowder. He tastes it on his tongue. It's inside of his body.

The fireworks and the guns had cast clouds of the ashy, sweet smell across the gardens. It was on his skin, his hair, his clothes. It surrounded him, laid itself across him, invaded him.

It found the heat of his blood and set it alight, and now all he is is a rupture being thrown apart. Fire itself coils and roars within him, up and through.

an animation

Ellis is the first to break the hold around each other, stepping back. Oz can see all of his face now. The lines of worry that age the eyes, the fear clenching the jaw rigid, the face now streaked in red.

Not you.

Oz's hands spasm into fists.

"What do we do now, Oz?" Ellis asks. Oz's spine goes rigid, gaze falls. He knows what the question means, though he hadn't been sure before.

Since he joined Ellis' group, there'd been that unspoken acknowledgement that Oz was "the kid." Even before that, when he had met Peter and Celeste in the training center, that sense was there. He was the one who didn't know better. Who needed to be warned that Ellis was a dick. Who needed to be protected, who needed a hand to reach for him and pull him to safety.

No longer. He couldn't be that anymore. And the others couldn't protect him forever.

Just look at where that got them.

painting

This is the world.

It is dichotomy. Light and darkness play against each other. As with heat and cold. Monstrosity and human. Sorrow, joy. Yet one cannot exist without the other. One defines the other, sets its boundaries, demarcates its identity. One is the other's locus of understanding. Once you know heat, you know cold; dark, light; man, monster; sorrow, joy.

Today, in his arms, he held a human. He watched a human's eyes burst with blood and the body wilt. And he's seen so much worse, by now.

Monsters populate the world. They breathe sorrow into it. He can smell the stench of their breath right now.

Before him is a human, the last human, the last source of happiness. All else are monsters.

an animation

"We kill 'em, Ellis."

Oswald looks Ellis in the eyes.

"When they punch down, you punch up till there's nothing left. Av taught me that."