quoth the raven ; roommates v lake day 3

We saw the lake from one of the castle towers. Fingers of cloud clawed out most of everything else, obscuring the arena from view. I stood there, leaning against the window frame for much too long, trying to spot anything else in the distance.

I let Izzy, that's the girl's name, get some sleep while I kept watch. Pretty easy to guard a princess in a tower when there's just one little door to get in though.

And there was a point in the night when I was supposed to wake her so we could switch spaces but the thirst was gnawing at me, the wine I drank down to quench it feeling like it was just laying there, stagnant in the pit of my stomach, doing absolutely nothing for me.

So I combat it by lighting up one of my last two cigarettes. The smoke runs through my mouth, already so dry and it fucking burns.

"What if... what if I am dead?"
"If you're already dead then I have no cause to kill you."

I play the conversation over in my head, looking for loopholes in it. It's fair enough, she owes me nothing except the fact that she stole my shield and I killed the mutt attacking us. Other than that, we're perfect strangers and this whole arena is a battlefield.

If the only thing stopping her from killing me is my being dead, then, well...

guess I'm fucking dead.

The light of the moon makes an arched rectangle in the tower room and I sit there, staring at it, aching. Not out of thirst this time, or pain.

Grief I think maybe.

That's odd, I never considered having to grieve for myself, or I guess it's just something I never let myself do. When I was a kid and things just never felt right for me, my parents sent me to a therapist so they wouldn't have to talk to me themselves. I was handed all these inhibitors to numb the bad things, stimulants to automate me, sleeping pills to stop my dreams. There was a button to push for everything. Smiling like a perfect son, writing perfect papers, always wearing the most perfect things.

I wasn't ever really me.

And I guess I've died before I could find out who I really was but maybe that's a blessing or Izzy would be digging her sword into my chest right now instead of me keeping watch.

The moon moves over the lake, lighting it up like a beacon in the night. I run a hand through my hair, oily still from last night, when my body was overheating from the fever that was killing me. We both need water but judging by the way the wine's just sitting there in my belly, mine needs to be of a different nature.

I turn back to look at Izzy, curled up on the tower's bed, her sword still in her hand. There's a bandage wrapped around her wounds, spotted with beads of dark red.

Maybe it's me who has no cause to kill her.

Not yet at least.

The morning comes eventually and I stand from my position, limbs stiff from sitting in the window all night. I'm not tired, not in a sleepless way. The thirst has only gotten stronger though. I try to pour more wine down my throat, as if I don't already know it's useless.

"The lake," I say, and point towards it out the window, "Right?"

I can't be the only thirsty one.

There's little argument and we set out before the sun has finished rising. The cuts on my forehead and arm don't even sting anymore but when I change the bandages, it's odd to look at the skin there. It looks the same as the moment it was freshly torn into and in the back of my mind I know that's semi-permanent. My skin won't heal, unless I can quench that thirst.

The knowledge comes from the same place in me that knows I'm not really me anymore. The tight feeling, the grief, it wraps around me with that thought and I stumble, only just keeping myself from falling.

I am tired. It's just in a way that I never have been before and I guess I should be grateful.

With death, comes liberation, right?

I wanted this.

When I threw my hand up in the games square, I knew exactly what I was asking for.

We reach the shore of the lake and I drop my pack on the sand, gaze on the murky water. Smoke rises off of the top, steam I guess from the cold of the night meeting the not much warmer day.

"I guess we should build a fire first," I say to Izzy, "Purify it." It'd fucking suck to die from drinking bad water. I stick the torch I took from the castle in the sand, fire still blazing happily on the pitch, and pull the small bundle of wood I've been collecting out. "You get this going, I'll use that goblet we found to collect water."

I bring the torch with me. The sun's risen but its obscured by a dense layer of cloud, which I guess I should be grateful for. Pretty sure I've read that creatures like me don't like the sun very much.

And I get the irony of collecting water, I do, but part of me, despite every single sign pointing otherwise, that pathetic little part of me, hopes that I'm not the monster I know I am.

The monster that I've always been, even before any of this.

The shoreline is shallow, so I take my shoes off to step into the water meeting the sand. My brain tells me it's cold but it doesn't hurt me the way that it should.

I ignore that and go in ankle deep before bending over to collect water, torch held above my head. Water laps around my ankles, pale against the dark water and the black sand beneath it. The silver of the goblet even looks darker beneath the surface as I dip it in to fill it.

don't.... leave me...

A voice comes from nowhere but from everywhere all at once. I pause, then straighten slowly, looking over my shoulder to look at Izzy. She's not even looking at me.

Water swirls around my ankles, the steam rising off of it, looking almost like smoke now against the backdrop of the dark lake beneath it. It rises more, running off itself and my legs.

play with me. so... lonely.

There's a sudden, violent tug on my ankle and I tip forward, torch in my hand dipping towards the lake's surface, I catch myself at the last moment and manage to keep the torch above water.

"Hey Izzy?" I say, "Something's fucked in here."

Or I'm just losing whatever's left of my goddamned mind.

Laughter starts, shrill, filling every part of my brain. It cuts across thought and reason, settling into the depths of my head, into the part of me that's still afraid of the dark.

The goblet falls from my hand into the water and I wrap both hands around the base of the torch to swing it at the smoke.

[akira attacks the lake, lit torch (blunt + fire roll)]
UPhyJkkTbEblunt
[bruised ribs - 3.0]

1-50
[moderate burn +4]

I've spent years trying to squash the empathy that lives inside me stitched to the marrow in my bones, but I guess all this time all that it's done is bide it's time.

The smoke forms into shadow, darkness swirling around it like ink spilling over a page. My hand is still wrapped around the creature's wrist, and it holds me back, smoky fingers digging into my skin, creating a ditch there. For a moment, I panic, my free hand swinging the torch into its side. Where I should hit something solid there's nothing, the smoke just opens up again and then closes into the hole I've left.

why?

I look up, frozen and there's something less than hatred in the monster's eyes. I've wounded it, not just in a physical sense but in another way that I know too well. I helped it, then hurt it in the next moment, betraying it just as I said that I would.

"It's the only thing I know how to do," I whisper.

dead children think too highly of themselves.

The monster pushes me off and I feel another tear through my skin. Even if I do live long enough to see a crown, my skin will be in ribbons on my flesh. With every cut I become less human. I don't let go, smoke running over the back of my hand as the creature tries to get to Izzy. It isn't out of love for her, there's nothing like that between us yet.

Dead. The lake monster called me dead.

It's something I already guessed, we both did. It's just not something I wanted to admit.

I've been chasing death for a very long time, long before my parents sent me to the doctors to figure out what was wrong with my head. Felt like I was born broken, born with a brain that didn't work right, that sent me spiralling as soon as my consciousness formed and then I felt bad for that too.

And my mother drank a lot when I was little and my father was always working late but it wasn't work. My mother and I both knew it wasn't work.

She'd sit me down and tell me all about how she knew it wasn't work, and tell me about the times they had before I was born and I knew that I wasn't supposed to be there, I was an extra piece like a chess board with too many pawns.

The creature from the lake has told another lie– dead children think nothing of themselves.

"How you holding up, Dracula?"

Izzy's voice breaks the spell and I stumble backwards, brandishing the torch in front of me as if that can keep the smoke and the haze that its voice leaves behind out of my head. I'm the manipulator, I'm the snake in the wildflowers, not some weird mutation with sentience.

"Could really use your help here," I shout back, ignoring the nickname, "What're you doing back there? Going for a fucking swim?"

Truly not the time for that.

[akira attacks the lake, lit torch (blunt + fire roll)]
Tostgcnxvmblunt
[3.0]

1-50
[+2]