Gravity {z-boi oneshot}

These days when I wake up, if I manage to sleep in the first place, she is there beside me. I do not know how I can feel her, I have never felt before. In my mind's eye there is a heaviness of limbs resting against my abdomen, constricting me, pushing me down into my bed of needles until I bleed to death. She is there, wrapped around me, and I cannot feel her, but I can. I do not feel her warmth beside me, nor her breath on my bare back. But, before I open my eyes, to come back from my sleepless dreams, she is there. The thought of her is a hurricane to my rib cage, I don't know if my heart that lies cold and dead knows which way is up. I sit in the darkness now, and I do not hear it, like I did that last time where I wrapped my arms around her waist and begged her not to come to death. I have not heard it since.

Some of us cannot bare to watch this, but we know we must. If she had a final wish, I know that it would be for us to watch her final performance. It won't be. Some part of me still believes that she will return to me. All of us that were tossed out of town because of our oddities wait, unable to dance, unable to do anything without our string-less marionette there to shine a light. Or maybe that's just me. For even as others come and go from the screen, I cannot move. I've gone once or twice to climb something tall to try and rest. I cannot rest. Knowing that she can't rest either has ruined me. I am a moth dancing in wild confusion without my flame. I used to be cool. Now I have a one tract mind. I am powerless, a wraith upon this land, watching with detached curiosity when her blood is drawn, her life leaking away.

I know it has been a matter of days but I have been here for years. I wonder if I will see her in death, or if I am doomed to be without her forever. She won't be like me if she dies. She will properly die, be buried in the ground to decay. I was doomed to walk the earth because my brother couldn't. I will walk this earth until it ends. When that happens I will stumble through stars, and work my way through constellations. By that time, her bones will be long dust, and she will be gone from me. Now is all the time I will have with her. The time she stole from us. I was angry. I know it was not my time to claim, but I was angry still. I think because it hurt. She made me feel something and then stole it away again. Now it feels like I can feel even less than before.

Nothing satisfies. Water is tasteless, food tastes like chalk. I'd always believed I could feel the touch of another person until I learned that it was only their weight against mine. Cricket told me about textures, things I didn't know, and now that she's gone I can't ask anyone else to explain them more. She gave me things that were a secret so I can't share but I'm bursting at the seams. Watching her in this final battle seems to be giving me a second death too because I haven't been able to look away, I'm on the edge of my seat as Cricket uses a butterfly knife against a sword. Of course she would. If it's not dangerous than it can't be interesting. If it's not interesting, it can't be a show. Life seems to blur across the screen, a mother against a girl wh is everything to me. Maybe I should wish for the mother's safe return to her child. I cannot.

And she's dead, a quick blow, but she's gone. Cricket stands there, the last one alive in the arena, and the helicopters come fast. The screen flips to a couple of commentators and our screen goes black. I sit there quietly, we all do. I'm not sure wha tI'm meant to feel at this moment. We had such little hope, that we didn't think she was going to come back. We thought that the odds were too high. Yeah, maybe she did get a twelve, and maybe she is our Cricket but, we have never been this happy. Somebody makes a cooing noise, and someone else stands up. We mill around in uncertainty for a second, and then the replay comes on, and she's killed the other girl again. A questioning shout flies through the air, and someone puts on music. A few begin to dance, and it's like an organ slowly being cranked back to life. The fairy lanterns are lit, dancing happens, people cry, shouts and screams of exhilaration fly through the air. Somebody wraps their arms around my leg, and I toss them high into the air. Their laughter brings a slow smile to my lips, and someone else catches the flyer. I back away, out of the tent and the flap closes behind me.

The night is quiet around me, and there is a smile plastered to my lips. I don't know what I'm looking for as I set out across a grassy field. The moon is high now, I don't know how long I was at the celebration for. Time moves differently now. It is summer almost, but I know it must be a cold night because my breath fogs in front of my face. I roll into the grass, legs giving out beneath me in a curious way. Condensation bathes the grass, and I know I will get all wet, might even get sick if I stay out here. I don't really know where else to go. The last sight of her is still in my head, and I wonder if I am in her's. I wonder if she finds me as important as I find her. She is alive. I am happy, I think.

How could she love me now? After facing so much death, she didn't embrace it in the end. It makes me happy that she didn't. I am happy about it. I am Death, I am everything that represents Death, I am a skeleton of decay. How could she embrace me now, wrap herself around me and love me if I am Death. Will she hate me now? Will she fear me? Despise me? What if, she is no longer my Cricket, but someone else. The reason my brother and I are so close, even now, is because he is dead too, and I can feel him there beyond the veil, watching me. Cricket is another type of thing entirely. She is life, and laughter. She is the heartbeat under skin, the creature that pumps blood. I am the darkness and cold of the arena. Shouldn't she hate me now?

The very idea hurts, and I wonder if I could bare that. If I could erase my death, the one think that is so precious to me, I would for her. She means that much. I would be a normal boy who never left his home if that was what she needed now. I would spend every day covering my tattoos up and hiding my slow decay for her. I would come to life for her, since she could not die for me. I feel like a cell burning away oxygen and travelling at the speed of light. I feel the sorrow of a fish below my bones and I want her to come back to me. I can take her without a moment's regret. I can steal her from the world and call her mine, the hunger for her burns, but I wonder if she will ever be mine? I wonder if when she steps off that train, if she will remember what she was, or if what she has become will have killed that part of her. In that small death, she will be mine.