Ways To Go :: (Calypso + Nino) [Blitz]

calypso leto.
There are one, two, three cracks in my bedroom ceiling I never noticed before. (How many days has it been since it happened? One, two, three cracks in my skin.) I've hit rock bottom, no longer bobbing up and down trying to gasp for air. I am becoming my pathetic, dwindling sister and I hate it - not crying, not sleeping, not even sinking. Just existing. Nothing more, nothing less.

And I'm more than that, more than this. I refuse to become a hypocrite, I refuse to succumb to silly, childish emotions. The boy I love has gone off to die and I wasn't able to pour my soul back to him but that doesn't mean I am weak. (Terribly close to it, but not quite.) And strong people don't sit around all day feeling sorry for themselves. Strong people pick themselves (and their two best friends if need be) up and clean up their mess and carry on. I let myself cry on the floors of the Justice Building as I hid in the shadows of my own selfish needs, but that time has come and past. Right now, I need to get up (feet find the floor and my spine stiffens and I stand, slowly) and walk towards the light (I swallow down whatever sadness is still left in my body and put on a brave face) and open the window (shaky hands rubbed raw from fingers scrubbing against my cheeks) to let the light in and lean into the open air and yell at the top of my lungs.

"What part of 'Go Away' do not you understand?!"

A smile cracks against my jaw and colored notes snatch at the wind. They're scattered through my house like my thoughts and perhaps I'll rip them from the doors and walls and windows and tear them in two, piece by piece, so he gets the message - but if he's back for Round 2 I'll be damned if I'm going to let him win this time. (I don't hide the amusement in my voice, nor the laughter that catches in the air between us.)

"Seriously! Leave me alone!"

calypso leto.
I forgot how my voice can send people tumbling down to the ground. When they fall upon their knees and clasp their hands together and beg me not to tell, beg me not to push all the right buttons because they were so terribly wrong. When they crumple to the ground in chaos and collapse in defeat because I won, I won and they lost and justice is served once more. (I forgot how leaves dance in the autumn air but I don't remember them being this colourful. I think I like them like this, though. They sing of life, not death.)

He falls as my voice joins the fluttering bits of paper in the air and a smile cracks open my lips. I always did find pleasure in the deserving misfortune of others so perhaps I should be happy that I feel like shit, but the question still stands as to whether or not I got what I deserve. Perhaps fate has decided that my punishment shall be an insistence of this silent boy still bound by my contract of silence and I feel like a real creature of the dark seas, stealing away voices to win her way through life. (He would tell me how they'd whisper of me when they thought nobody could hear - the tattletale's siren floating through the docks, harboring criminals, until it was all that could be heard. I would laugh and then fall silent, for in that particular moment I was no better than the criminals I hunted down.) Yet who am I to let my voice die away now I have nobody to fall silent for? Everyone else shall fall down until I am the last one left standing on shaking, disintegrating limbs. (Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.)

"Still not giving up, huh?" Fingers drum my windowsill to the beat of my dulled heart as I watch him send tiny little paper ships up into the air. Their messages will never reach me but the unspoken words are here regardless. "What's your name?" I chide, playing my first move on the board of our game. Childs play compared to what Eye has thrown himself into, but he is there by choice and I am left standing on the shore to nobody's fault but his. All I've ever been told to do is win, win, win - sadness shall not suppress that within me. My lips will not be sewn shut by a kiss and words I could not speak. "Who are you?"

Let the real games begin.

calypso leto.
Tsunamis begin with ripples in the water. Vibrations that tremble against the surface and send warning signs through the entire ocean. Danger, danger, danger. As I pass through streets they fall from my skin: danger, look out, I'm here to steal you away. (Danger, don't love me, I'll swallow you whole and consume the world and drown me along with it.) And those ripples become waves, and those waves fall into giant walls of thundering terror, and then they become nothing but destruction until everything they've consumed has disappeared, washed away by the ocean that just wanted to feel the shore against it's touch. (Danger, danger, she'll sweep you away.)

I know who he is, really. I think I've always known. Itches of memory woven into a guilty conscience nagged and nagged at me, but like most things I long for they were just above the surface and my fingers couldn't stretch quite far enough to break into the open air. I didn't want the rumbling inside of me to confirm it, the aching feeling in my lungs that gasped for truths and cried from starvation. But the way his arms mimic the awful, awful trembling that comes before a disaster only confirms what I had been avoiding all this time. Waves. Ripples. Ripley.

My smile falters. Realization pulls me back into the darkness of my room before I have time to breathe again. Ripley, Ripley, Ripley vibrates through me (I volunteer, I volunteer, I volunteer follows suit) and I am a storm at sea. (Say it back, Say it back, Say it back) I'm crashing like the ocean except I am no wave - I am a tsunami ready to devour the whole universe with my anger.

Perhaps he thinks our game is over and he's won - but no, no, no, dammit. The tides are pulling me through the door and out of my room and I rush through my home, clattering down the stairs two at a time with fleeting hands across the walls - a current in total control. I am not weak. I will not drift. I'll part the whole damn ocean to win back my courage.

The front door flies open and paper scatters at my feet, a swirling commotion that rushes back and forth, back and forth, just like the tide hugging the shore. My words are quieter now but I have to speak up - I won't let a Ripley beat me again.

"Are you really? Are you really one of them?"

(Will you steal me away, too?)

calypso leto.
I do not fall down at angry words. I take a stand and plat myself firmly in my beliefs and am held up by the belief that what I am doing is right. My skin turns to stone and my veins fill with lead and I hold my head up high and believe, because that's what my Daddy taught me to do all those years ago. Weapons in the form of vile words and angered insults have never harmed me. No, words were my weapons. A dangerously devilish set of tools whose scars cause more damage than any blade could. Never have I wished to swallow my words back down. Never have I needed to.

And neither does he. He looks at me like I've punched him in the face - and if I didn't know better I may have guessed that I did - and something inside of me twitches. I think it's guilt, but I wouldn't know that feeling at all. (And if I in fact do, then I daren't show it.) As a child I was not taught to speak kindly to others, I was taught to command and control and state. My kindness was reserved for very few, and eventually excluded everybody except two very special little girls. Teasing and banter would flow from our mouths and no petty, sugary-sweet compliments would lace our lips - but what was not spoken between us were the loudest conversations. (I will sing for you, I love you. I will take a punch for you, I love you. I will lie for you, I love you.) Our own silent, symphonic language tied our heartstrings together and bound us by more than skin and blood. We were entangled souls, best friends, the arms that held each-other up and towered above the rest.

Yet now, here, unhinged and off-guard, there are no arms to hold me up above the sea and no arms to cling to as I attempt to fight the currents with my own furious will to succeed. His accusations puncture through me like arrows and I almost flinch. Almost. I shall hold my composure, grit my teeth, breathe in, and remember who I am.

"Go ahead, tell me who I am."

And who he is.

"You're a criminal."

My glare falters. (This is exhausting.) I think of my friends and how they hold me up, away from my fears, away from the things I cannot control. I could not control Eye, as much as I wanted to. I could not stop him from calling out and running away and stepping in this boy's brother's place. (I'd do it for Tags, and for Thea too. If they wanted me to, of course.) I could not control him with my will and now he is gone, and that is not my fault. Right now, I need hands to hold me above the currents, not cling to as I suffer. My mouth twitches into a grin and I throw my head back and laugh up into the sun, as if to say to hell with it all.

"But lucky for you" I smile, and my words no longer taste bitter against my tongue. They taste like a dare, a stroke of chance, all frightfully familiar and yet thrilling at the same time. "I tend to get on quite well with them."