(like a) wrecking ball [cachi/storm day 8]
Aug 15, 2022 23:12:40 GMT -5
Post by marguerite harvard d2a (zori) on Aug 15, 2022 23:12:40 GMT -5
I stayed by her body.
I couldn’t separate myself from the quiet that overtook the whole field when she’d gone. Even with the rain coming down I couldn’t hear anything over the silence she’d brought to me.
You don’t get a lot of chances to build something like that with someone. Not if you don’t open your heart for it. And maybe we didn’t know each other from one side of the universe to the other, but Cordelia had known me.
I should’ve told her – it’s serious.
Not the bullshit of all this fighting, of scratching out the eyes of whoever stood in our way, or whatever godawful beast was trying to make us dinner. No, all that was just smoke on the water, a backdrop to what we had to cling to in order to survive. You see, I ain’t the boy that shot out of that tube on the first first day, but I’m not entirely different, either.
You think I’m going to let them turn me into some sort of shell of what I used to be? You think that just because they sent down their worst – that they put something in our veins and that I’ve seen it all, the blood, the organs hanging out of someone’s stomach, a head (gone), that I’m going to just collapse? Trauma hasn’t ever shaped the kind of man I want to become, and I sure as shit ain’t going to let that happen now.
No – we’re stronger than that.
Why do you think I haven’t taken it seriously, even when that son of a bitch was laughing at me? When I came about two heartbeats away from winding up in the ground yesterday, did you see a different Cachi? Maybe one that was better with his sword than he’d ever been before, but not a cold-hearted monster. Just a fighter, a boy that wanted to get home.
Cordelia wasn’t any different than me. Even if she might come right back from the afterlife to disagree, she wasn’t. She didn’t need to learn how to live a life. She didn’t need someone to show her that there was pain, that people could walk a path far away from hers and still matter. She didn’t want the world to know, but I knew. The Cordelia that I said goodbye to would always be the girl who’d been strong enough to shoulder her burdens and carry my ass, too. And when it counted, she hadn’t turned her back on me.
“You all gotta know, she mattered, right?” Raindrops drip down my nose and onto my knees as I kneel, head turned to the river. “Cordelia had my back and if I ever make it out of here I’m gonna let the world know that. She might’ve been from one but I know she’d have been welcome at ten any time.”
I wiped a hand across my face and coughed.
“And if I don’t make it out of here – girl, you better be the first face I see on the other side. For as much as I know you’re probably running the damn place, huh?”
There’s the whistle, then, the ring of the train I’ve heard before when my mother had died – grief, whistling through to carry me on. And it’s not gonna stop, not gonna let me get a later ticket, because that ain’t how life works.
And I shiver and shake, I gnash my teeth and I wail, because it’s lonely when you’re the last of four, when the world’s gotten so small you either live or die.
I want to go home. I want to see my sisters standing on that front porch with their hands on their hips as though I was as late as I ever was. I want to hold my brother and read him that story I’d promised. I want to make love to Xavier so hard we break the damn box spring and the headboard.
So I gotta let that all through me, gotta find a way that even though I’ve never felt so alone in my whole damn life, that there’s somewhere, somewhere inside of me that still has an ounce of strength to go forward.
“You know, I’m wet and not in a good way.” I say to myself, clothes drenched, soggy and shivering. I laugh even as the stitches ache. First soft and then harder, until I think I might pop right open and bleed out on the grass. “Oh god. This is a fucking mess.”
The anthem brought another stretch of faces – Cordelia first (‘see you soon, Cor.’), then a girl I didn’t recognize, the almost mute that I’d murdered, and another girl who I hadn’t met.
“I really should have tried harder at memorizing all of the kids.” I admitted as I packed up my stuff.
The walk from the river to the forest sends another shiver up my spine. Through the fog and the light drizzle the sound of the river fades to give away to the ash and silence of the forest.
I have to stop when I see the kid, mostly because I don’t really understand how I keep being the one to ambush my targets. But then again, most of us have no fucking clue what we’re doing here so it makes sense that dumb luck and a pinch of foresight have guided me this far.
There’s only a couple others left and – even if I don’t recognize most of them – this guy’s got to be one of the youngest here.
Didn’t Cordelia say something about… well, the one that she was fighting with was young. I think there’d been some wounded pride that she’d lost to someone younger.
“Howdy!” I give a wave from where I stand before putting a hand to my hip. “Now ain’t it just like the arena to have us running into one another. Tell me, did you happen to go around murdering my friend yesterday?”
Is that another whistle?
Train’s rumbling through another station, folks.
Now, I don’t want to be the one that advocates vengeance, especially if I don’t have the proof just yet. But I don’t do all the, woe-is-me, my-friend-is-dead, sort of garbage.
Sometimes you just have to revel in anger and let it burn, because it’s gonna roar whether you hold it in or let it out. And sometimes the coals have gotta burn out before you can get to where you want to be. And me? I’m willing to let some of this burn off on someone who’s got to die one way or another.
I gave my best ten twang and a cheesy grin. I held it for just a moment before narrowing my eyes at this motherfucker and taking out my new little friend, makila.
“Here’s a joke for you. You know how they say time heals all wounds?” I started to take a few steps toward him, “Why don’t we test that out and see how well you can do, huh?”
Let’s hop, skip, and fly, motherfuckers.
“HNNNG!”
[cachimorro olentzero d10a uses his spiked blunt (now named makila) to attack storm adroxis d9]
_SNI0COOBKspiked blunt
[miss]
accuracy day 8
spiked blunt
[9 + 1 strength + 1 banhammer]spiked blunt·spiked blunt
