the rage of {war} / South

hear the sound of the falling rain coming down like an armageddon flame
a shame, the ones who died without a name
every dog's howling out of key
to a hymn called "faith and misery"
and plead the company lost the war today

I was never meant to be a teacher. I always used to marvel at my mother's unfailing patience as she guided countless children through scales and arpeggios, smiling kindly when they stumbled and putting them gently back on the right path. I've never had a patient bone in my body to begin with, and my intolerance for those who go down the wrong path is what landed me in such a mess in the first place. I'm more likely to have the poor girl in tears after a few more minutes than I am to actually teach her something, but I can't deny that making someone cry would make me feel a little less on-edge. The allure of destruction always calls, and if I can't tear down someone's life their self-esteem might just have to do.

"For starters, you're holding the knife wrong," I sigh irritably with a skyward roll of my eyes, snatching the training dagger out of her palm and readjusting her grip - our hands make an interesting contrast; spindly, nicotine-stained fingers manipulating the position of ones red and dry and cracked from the cold. She may not be a fighter yet, but her skin speaks of a battle of a different sort, one against a monster called poverty that most of us beneath this roof know all too well. "Never hold a knife overhanded. If you try to stab someone with an arcing motion, it's easy to predict and deflect. Underhanded grip puts you closer to the lungs, the abdominal cavity, more vital spots. Jab it in, twist, pull it out. Easy as counting to three."

"I ain't strong enough," she finally replies in a low mutter, eyes fixed anywhere but on my own. "And I don't know how to handle my feet. I ain't a... a clean cut Career, or some infamous little street fighter.And I ain't real good at learnin', either. Never went to school."

"If I wanted your excuses, I would have asked for them," I snap, a cold derision layered across my voice that I don't really mean to put forth. The things I'm telling her should come inherently, the same as a heartbeat or a breath (but maybe they were only inherent for me because I've had Death in my veins from the moment I was born), and yet Scarlett seems to struggle with even the most common-sense aspects of combat. I feel like Hemingway trying to teach a preschooler how to write a novel, but what irritates me the most is the attitude of I can't hanging over her head like an oppressive cloud. It's not a matter of 'I can't' anymore, little girl. You will, or the price will be your life one way or another.

"Fighting is a part of the human instinct. So's killing. We evolved from hunters, from warring tribes," the words flow over my lips with an almost-practiced rhythm, like I'm reciting the page of a textbook. In reality, it's a modified version of the speech they give all the twelve-year-olds on their first visit to the Training Center, many of whom have never so much as struck another person in their lives. "And that's still ingrained somewhere within our genetic code. By that logic, anyone can be taught to fight. The potential's there. If homo habilis could take down a mammoth with some rocks and pointy sticks, you can take down a Moreno with a knife."

A recent memory flickers through my head; the sigh of her stutter-stop motions as Tarquin tried again and again to talk her through the process. Fighting is as much a psychological process as a physical one, and it would seem she doesn't have a grip on either. "The issue here, Scarlett, is whether or not you choose to fight. I was watching you back there. Your lack of finesse won't be what kills you. Your hesitation will."

Without really being aware of it, I move around her in a slow circle, a gait more akin to a puma stalking its prey than a teacher evaluating their pupil. My first instinct is always to find the weaknesses in others, and hers practically beg to be seen. Malnourished, atrophied limbs, a weary slump to her shoulders and a downcast gaze that projects a preferred avoidance to conflict. I don't even need to see her nervousness. I can taste it, something metallic and sickly-sweet in the air that sets my veins humming.

"You're skinny. That's good. Makes your opponent's target smaller." I hum, poking arbitrarily at her arm as I move around to her left side. "But the lack of muscle means that you're not going to get anywhere by punching someone. You can get the most momentum out of your knees and elbows. If you're going to hit someone, that's the way to go."

She looks almost offended at being called skinny, and something about it makes the corner of my mouth quirk up in a way that's not altogether cruel. "I know this because my trainers told me the exact same thing. Stop looking like I've insulted you. Skinny is good. People underestimate you. They wouldn't expect anyone so slight of being capable of anything like… well, like this."

In a viper-quick movement I've got her upper arm in a vice grip, yanking her in front of me and pressing my own blade against the elegant column of her throat. This one's not for training. It's good steel, Shore steel, and as I increase the pressure against her skin only a little bit, a thin rivulet of scarlet (irony) makes a lazy trail down to her collarbone. It's the prettiest thing I've seen in a long damn time. My thirst for ruination screams for more, but I don't let myself slip this time, only laughing darkly and ducking my head down until my lips brush the shell of her ear.

"Now. Think about everything I just taught you, and tell me what you're going to do. Don't do it, just tell me. Where is your advantage in this situation?"

i beg to dream and differ
from the hollow lies
this is the dawning of
the rest of our lives
on holiday

be careful making wishes in the dark
can't be sure when they've hit their mark
besides, in the meantime i'm just dreaming of tearing you apart
i'm in the details with the devil, so now the world
can never get me on my level

"Knees and elbows. I'm going to...I'm going to knee you where it hurts, right? Or elbow you in the face?" she stammers, the strained panic in her voice nothing short of decadent. There's something utterly right wrong in how I can find beauty in the midst of ruination, and the iridescent sheen of fear has never failed to draw me like a moth to flame. If I was in this for the actual purpose of teaching I might sigh and correct her, inform her that neither of those things are possible in her current position, but instead all I do is laugh, increasing the blade's pressure another hair until poor, stupid little Scarlett squeaks in delicious terror. "N-no, wait, I'm sorry, I just... I'm sorry. C-could you let me go now, please?"

"Incorrect," I croon, eyes locked rapturously on the lazy trail of crimson pooling in the hollow above her collarbone. "You're not going to do either of those things. The correct answer is you're going to die. You failed to move quickly enough, and I slit your throat. What you're going to do is lie there on the ground and bleed out, choking on your own blood."

Something in me absolutely screams for me to do it. One twitch of my arm and she'd slump to the ground, staining the floorboards the prettiest shade of red and fading like a star about to collapse into a black hole. It's something that not even Alyssa understood when I tried to tell her, the scintillating allure of killing. It's a delicate, beautiful thing, and the monster living somewhere in my bones craves it constantly. I can quiet it sometimes, quell it into submission by force of will or the cleansing fire that sits somewhere on Colt's lips, but it never really stops. The prospect of something so destructive living inside me should be terrifying, and yet there's something dark and warped about my mind that clings to it as a disjointed sort of identity. What am I if not the nameless terror that lurks in the eyes of the doomed, the gleaming spark of insanity in the darkness of the mundane masses?

I'd rather be a monster than nothing at all.

For a second, just one, I consider it. The thing living at the hollow core of me roars its approval and anticipation, starved for death and parched for blood. The last time I fed it was the night Kiera died, three lives sputtering out over my hands, and if I hadn't been so broken at the time I might have found it glorious. That's what happens when I break. All control slips between the grasping arc of my fingers and I descend into something that would make the masses shudder in horror, a crushing force of destruction that would set the world on fire just to watch it burn. Lately, I've been struck by the inevitable reality of my own humanity. One flick of the wrist, and I could be a god again.

But there's a room full of people only a few yards away, a host of explanations I don't want to have to make. A voice in my head shrieks for me to do it anyway, but if there's anything in the world I truly hate it's lack of control, even over myself. It takes far more effort than it should to put my arm down, teeth gritted against the wailing protest of my own madness and a deep breath hissing in to fill my lungs. Keeping a hold on my poison touch is a little victory in its own way, but every small win takes the effort of holding up a mountain. I feel drained, weak, but it doesn't stop me from smirking, twirling the knife effortlessly between my fingers as I prowl around Scarlett until we're face to face again.

"See? I was clarifying a point I just made: Hesitation will kill you. You had the right idea, but were too late in the execution. What you should have done the second you saw me move was elbow me in the ribs, kick my feet out from under me, and then kill me once I was on the ground, but you were too scared to act," I tell her as if it's the most obvious thing in the world (and for me it is; a walking travesty that will go cradle to grave tearing down the world around me), my gaze critical as it takes in her spindly limbs and dumbfounded expression all over again. The Morenos will rip her to shreds - literally, if Elspeth manages to lay hands on her - and while the deeper, darker part of me finds the most warped sort of amusement in the idea, the part of me that's the General of Ella Dahl's last-ditch army is loathe to lose a soldier in the prime of their potential. "But you didn't. Ergo, you went from a scared little girl to a dead little girl in about two seconds. People will tell you that fear keeps you on your toes, Scarlett, and those people are liars. Fear is a weakness. It slows you down, muddles your judgment. You were afraid of me, and now you're dead. So tell me, how prepared did your fear make you?"

I wonder if she'll try to deny it, to declare in that particular brand of Streetrat bravado that she ain't afraid of nothin' with her jaw set and her eyes blazing. I know better. I could taste the terror blooming from her veins, and it was the kind of ambrosia-sweet that almost nothing else is. The clamor from the other room sets the musty air humming, an odd rhythm of clashing steel and raucous voices bouncing off these old walls that haven't seen so much life within them in years - for the smallest fragment of time, terror blooms in my own veins because shhhh no quiet you'll wake Dad and yelling and bruises and... But I shake it off with a few hasty blinks, my expression never leaving its neutral deadpan as I glower down at my thus-far unimpressive pupil.

"All right, new exercise," I hum contemplatively, the knife never stopping its whirling progress between my fingers. "You're going to come at me, and you'd better mean it. Because let's be honest, I'm worth ten of you, twenty on a good day. You've got five minutes. If you can land one hit on me, just one, I'll consider it a success."

The voice in my head whispers that it wouldn't be so far-fetched to accidentally stab her in the chest while she makes her effort. Grudgingly, I tell it to shut up.

i just got to get you out the cage, i'm a young lover's rage
gonna need a spark to ignite
my songs know what you did in the dark
so light 'em up, up, up, light 'em up, up ,up
light 'em up, up, up, i'm on fire in the dark, woah

miles and miles in my bare feet
still can't lay me down to sleep
if i die before i wake
i know the lord my soul won't take
oh, i'm a dead man walking

My entire life has been an ongoing mystery of trying to figure out if there's something wrong with me, or something that's right in a wrong world. They say insanity can justify itself even in the face of reason, and maybe all my carefully-plotted logic has only amounted to a madman's belief in his cause in the end. For the longest time, I was a god. Now I'm something that's distinctly less, and it grates across my bones like nails on a chalkboard. But Scarlett, she looks at me like they all used to, like an avenging deity with the power to snuff out her existence like a wavering candle flame. There's something in me that's almost thankful to her for that. The world is a little easier to handle if I can remember who I was instead of struggling to cope with the fragile human shell I am.

"I'm not a little girl. I'm fifteen years old," she bites back mutinously, and a million words press against the backs of my teeth, scathing rebukes locked away for a better time and place. Oh, but you are, you sweet, innocent little bird. There's naiveté sitting behind your eyes; your hands are too clean for this place, never having known the stain of someone else's blood. You are nothing more than a child, and your feigned bravado will fool no one. Not on these streets.

I wonder if there was ever a time when I was like her, faltering and afraid of things beyond my control - I know the answer to that, sixteen years of not-really-hiding the bruises and praying that someone, anyone would ask about them, but they never did and so I took matters into my own hands - the thoughts of a time when I was vulnerable taste like bitter, ironic poison, and I swallow them before they can swell and overwhelm me.

"You're insane," Scarlett says with a look of disbelief that I shouldn't find nearly as entertaining as I do. It's almost like she's just now figuring it out. Telling me I'm insane is roughly equivalent to telling someone that they're breathing. It's something so commonplace, so ingrained into them that while they're aware of the fact, they don't ever really think about it. Madness is my oxygen, scraping icy-rough through my lungs, and the idea that someone would feel the need to actually inform me of its presence is almost enough to make me laugh. But I don't. I simply grin.

When I smile at her, the curvature of my lips is stilted and wrong in the same way it's always been, something deranged and ice-cold in the flash of teeth that always seems to unsettle anyone who sees it. "I'm so glad you noticed."

"I ain't gonna do it. We both know what will happen. I ain't no teacher and I don't know a whole lot about school, but I know I won't learn nothin' from being smacked around by you for five minutes."

An eyebrow arches up of its own accord, my flat stare more piercing than the knife in my hand ever could have been. Words and venomous intent can be the best of weapons at times, carving wounds that take much longer to heal than the ones inflicted by a blade, leaving scars that are far more permanent. I don't know what it is about her that sparks a vague sort of irritation and something that feels naggingly like sympathy in the back of my head. Perhaps it's that earlier thought, memories of looking in a mirror and seeing a scared little boy with his world spiraling out of control, trying to grasp at tiny fragments of his life with fragile fingers. Whatever it is, it makes me feel uncomfortable, knocked out of my element and more than a little irritated. She has the nerve (or stupidity) to say no to me. To me. This upstart wretch thinks she can deny me with impunity? Oh, little girl. You just made your millionth mistake of the night.

The eerie smile melts from my lips, replaced with a deadly, accusatory look that I can practically see searing away at her skin. "So, tell me, then: what the hell are you doing here?"

The words come out falsely saccharine, sticky-sweet and cloying - if my research is correct, this is how arsenic tastes, sugary and decadent right up until it makes your heart stop beating. I can't place the motivation that drives me to make Scarlett actually take a swing at me. Maybe I want to see the fear in her eyes again. Maybe I want to bend her to my will. Maybe I honestly want her to be able to handle herself in a fight. All right, that last one's preposterous, but I digress. But whatever it is, the truth of what I said to her before resonates no less deeply. Anyone can fight. It's simply a matter of getting them to. Words are a powerful motivator, and I can wield them not only as a blade to cut people down but as a prod to push them beyond their limits. Against my will, I smile again, taking up the previous motion of circling her slowly.

"You can't fight. You won't let anyone teach you how to fight. You've got no discernible talent otherwise. You're not particularly eloquent, intelligent, or even possessed of the certain brand of low cunning that most Streetrats are born with," I list each downfall in a clinical, flat voice, raising a spindly finger to mark each bullet on the list before I'm back in front of her again, all lion-smiles and an impending atom bomb lingering on the tip of my tongue. "This is a war, sweetheart. Wars need soldiers, and you're no soldier. All you are is dead weight and the first name on a list of bodies. Trust me, you go out there without knowing how to defend yourself, these people won't protect you. And neither will I."

Acting as if I was just discussing the weather instead of hissing poisonous doubt into a helpless victim's consciousness, I absently run the point of my knife beneath my fingernails, clearing away the street-dirt that always tries to find a way in. When I look back up at Scarlett, the smile's gone, replaced with icy indifference and the weight of an ultimatum. "I don't have time for silly little girls who think they have any kind of choice in this. Welcome to Hell, where you have two options: you fight, or you die. You said you wanted to protect your family? What a joke. At this rate, you'll all be dead in a week. You can't protect anything if you won't fight for it, and it's obvious that you're utterly useless. You're unsuited for the rage of war. So pack up, go home. You're through."

Go on. Hit me.

oh, please forgive me, father
ain't going back to barton hollow
devil gonna follow me e'er i go
won't do me no good washing in the river
can't no preacher-man save my soul

i feel it deep within, it's just beneath the skin
i must confess that i feel like a monster
i hate what i've become, the nightmare's just begun
i must confess that i feel like a monster
i feel like a monster

There's something beautiful in watching the spreading tendrils of fury taking root beneath someone's skin. In its own way, anger is the most decadent kind of destruction, corrosive and consuming. It can eat up all the echoes of goodness in a person, turn them into a monster, a ghost, maybe a little bit of both. I can speak from experience; a whole lifetime of icy hatred froze away the person I could have been in favor of letting a deity of destruction take its place. I can actually see that sort of rage wrapping itself sinuously around Scarlett's limbs, tensing her shoulders and sending something almost dangerous flashing behind her eyes. "You idiot. Shut up. Just shut up! God, don’t you ever get tired of listenin’ to your own voice? ‘cause I sure do, especially when you haven’t got any idea what the hell you’re talkin’ about."

The wall creaks underneath my insubstantial weight as I lean against it with a smirk, letting the acid of her words skate harmlessly over my skin. It's an odd ability to have, how the hatred of others can roll off like water, and I think that the nonchalant curve of my lips only serves to make her angrier.

"You think I can’t take care of my own family? That I’m some pathetic, useless little girl? And you have the nerve to act like you’re the first one informin’ me of it? Well guess what? You’re not," she seethes, her limbs visibly trembling. I don't miss the way her grip tightens on the handle of her blade, white knuckles speaking of a boundless rage far more than her sharp, twanging words ever could. Scarlett might not be a soldier, but once provoked she has the bearings of one, her spine straightening and the angle of her jaw tilting into something that could almost be pride. "And besides that, Mr. Dempsey, you’re wrong. I’ve been takin’ care of them for ten years. So just shut up. Stop actin’ like you know so much about me when you don’t know a damn thing."

"That's it," I all but purr, an eerie, satisfied smile stretching across my face. "Aren't you mad, Scarlett? Don't you think I'm just the biggest asshole you've ever met? Doesn't it make you want to hit me?"

Just because Scarlett isn't doing what I want right now doesn't mean she won't eventually. From my earliest memory, I've always been a master of manipulation, capable of bending even the strongest of spines to my will one way or another. Through silken promises or quiet threats or more recently the not-so-gentle push towards the embrace of anger. Provocation is a powerful tool, and if the rising tide gathering beneath my little pupil's skin is any indication, it's just the tool needed to mold her into something we can use.

"You need to get mad to be effective? Fine," I shrug offhandedly, examining the gleam of the flickering lightbulb off the edge of my blade. "I can understand that. You take that anger, you take that hate, and you use it. Once you learn how to, you'll be unstoppable."

My grin turns vicious, the tones of my voice less silky and more insistent, pushing, pushing, trying to find where her line is. It's stopped being about teaching her to fight and started to focus on convincing her to fight. "Or maybe you're afraid, and that's the problem. You're scared of finding out that you actually can't save them. You're fine as long you can feel like the provider, but the idea of finding out that you're just weak little Scarlett who can't save anyone terrifies you. The Morenos are going to eat you alive, darling. You're fooling yourself if you think otherwise."

my secret side i keep hid under lock and key
i keep it caged, but i can't control it
'cause if I let him out, he'll tear me up, break me down
why won't somebody come and save me from this
make it end