shock and fire {{ Doctrines vs 209

To pass the night in peace required putting away my distrust that the boy from eight would summon a screen of smoke so the boy from seven could drive his hatchet through my heart. Back turned to begin with I fidgeted until the sun dropped below my line of sight and the horizon was no longer the least of my problems. Glare no longer in my gaze I turned my sight to stare down the boy from eight in case he lit the fuse to a bomb even he couldn’t diffuse if necessity relied on it.

Strike the match and we’d all be set alight save the setting sun.

Fading past hour twenty-four and I dread the next, twenty-five to forty-eight and I hoped to die somewhere in between, for lingering on those eleven pages of how to fix your child’s depression had fixed neither the problem it pondered nor the idea that death was better than page eleven of that clinical diagnosis. The only way to solve the equation was to put it to the test under ideal circumstances, and truly, sleeping among the blades and carnage of the previous twenty-four hours brought the definition of ideal to a reality I did not wish to exist in.

Spin the wheel and pick your evil—consequences fall to those who don’t spin at all.

Washed in moonlight we could not scrub the impurities from our skin no matter how hard we tried, for guilt hid in the cracks in our skin and the crevices behind dirty nailbeds, white-washed porcelain skin marred by the sins of twenty-four, no requiem or saving grace to be found in a prayer sent to an unhearing god—even he couldn’t find us behind these boundaries.

No point in wasting breath better saved for dying lungs.

But morals change with the rising sun, and with my back no longer turned to a screen of smoke and a hatchet from hell, I watch the sun rise behind the back of the boy from eight, countdown from the same and the sun would be high in that morning sun.

Painted copper across our brazen skin—I wonder how many different ways one could spell Noah Bowers.

Stuck behind the smoke screen his secret had to be stored away somewhere, a dig at family or personal loss and it seems the sunrise speaks for itself when my first notice of his consciousness brings about the simple, “Are you related to the last minute fuck up of the 67th, Oscar— Oliver—it wasn’t Owen, was it?”

No reliability to the wounds I had just poured salt atop his answer does not bite with the same ferocity of that which I expected, “'E wasn't jus'a fuck up las'second, y'know,” Left dangling in the thick morning air the silence passes like the previous night and one question still lingers like the two cannons from the night before.

“So what else was he then?” One step over a boundary I should not dare to cross, yet the lightness of it all is a welcome change to the humidity and—

“O'no, I meant boy'd been a fuck up long term 'ere." Caught off guard by harsh words about blood that wasn’t running from current veins no response lingers on my train of thought, instead settling on the silence as the filler for the space that sat between us.

Eye-to-eye with a boy who cared less for his family than I.

For a moment it was impossible to fathom, for hatred in own blood seemed only to stem from my own veins, due partly to my father’s ability to spark my own self-hatred and my mother’s lack of ability to be inconspicuous. Tearing down their own son’s walls in an attempt to build him up—all they did was tear apart the shell that held my tender heart together.

But to be caught in a family that lost more than they ever had must be quite the task to overcome, and as evidenced by the few and far between ways to spell Noah Bowers, it was apparent that they were not doing a decent job with this.

And though we rose under the same sun, I could only count three different ways to spell Noah Bowers when our pack of four set off on foot to destination x, marked by the blood of whichever cannon was to fire between hours twenty-five and forty-eight.

The train tracks the whistle under our feet spin with the same speed as the rise of the morning sun, shades of red attempting to blur my vision as our feet pull us from the motion to ground that refused to keep spinning under the weight of the living and the soon to be whispers on the whistling wind.

Sight of life and I’m stumbling to keep my feet beneath me, relying on the what if’s to keep the world as stable comes in this world of copper and bronze.

Maybe Noah would set the smoke screen ablaze and the boy from seven would drive his hatchet through a heart, and I’d be left to stand behind the wreckage and call it my own. 

Breaking didn't feel like home - for moments he breathed sulfur and inhaled fire, and if only it had been that easy for the rest of their session. Gunner had smashed his ankles, etched her name into his skin and into the back of his brain and even in a whispered haunt "run," he had felt her breath still clouding his name. Noah had choked on hiccups and blood between his teeth drying, and moving between states had burned; he was no liquid. "You don’t put me in a good mood, Noah."

The words on repeat, between the cracks and whips and breaking bones that he felt in the very marrow of his existance, it all felt so heavy, he was so heavy. Dragging himself with tied hands and wobbly gravity, and reality scratched by a needle - "you don't put me in a good mood, Noah."

He had felt tilted, half his world a set of cracks and skulls splitting and the other - Gunner. Set of calm whispers and tying of strings, he felt a second being. Second tier, she was liquid, shaping her words to fill his very being and erode the fine edges and he was plasma, he was bait.

"Run."

oøo

("You fucked up good.")

At night he had ran to Sue and Maya, to Wyatt - the name still felt sour on his tongue. His entire body felt sour, sore and screaming and he was screaming, Sue had ripped the tape off his mouth and through the silent Noah had only felt an entity of screaming. Wyatt released the bonds of his arms and Maya took his bag of items and axes and ("Maybe I'll kill you tomorrow. Maybe I'll kill you the day after. I will kill you. Today,") his body was tilted. His mind a scratch and it was blank, erased by a turn of events and the words he hadn't caught haunted him the same as the ones he did, eyes still peeled and the sulfur of a flare gun still strong on his tongue - he wasn't alive. He was (GUNNER'S BITCH) running.

("I'm just going to let you pick how.")

Talking was a minimum during night, his heart ripped from his soul stitch by stitch and he hadn't touched the stamp, Gunner's trademark on his skin, he only felt the heavy beating in his wrists and chest. "Momma, o'where the hell m'I."

And in the starlight it was worse, omniprescent as he dotted in the sand to himself, strapping a mask to cover the absense of emotion on his face and covering himself with a cape. Noah prayed for a new life, a new pain, a new anything, and in the smoke of his veins fleeing from his nostrils, he'd take it back for anything, but he had "fucked up good." The night was bitter in its wake, and painful once it wasn't.

Noah woke screaming once, and broken twice.

("Think about your choices, Noah.") Staying asleep seemed to be harder than falling asleep.

oøo

"Are you related to that last minute fuck up of the 67th, Oscar - Oliver - it wasn't Owen, was it?" Wyatt's voice had broke the morning sun - voices, they never seemed to die out. The entire night was an accompaniment, and he felt like the audience or the geek's tribute. It was sour. Wyatt's voice, his name on Noah's tongue, and he pressed his fingers to the name stitched into his back - Gunner. He was trapped, but wasn't he always?

"'e wasn't jus'a fuck up las'second, y'know," it felt sharp, abrupt like needle breaking skin for a second time already. Blood caked his skin, dotted with dirt and sand and he felt rusted - day two. Only. Only, only and he had already nearly bleed out, broke his hand, been tortured and sinned. "well, what was he then?"

For a second he's blank, like yesterday for hours like today for the minutes he'd been awake - it felt like he never slept. Owen was nothing, in his wake he was less than Noah had been at home, because Noah had purpose. "Free," a whisper, mostly to himself, that word felt like now, Owen had been free.

"O'no, I meant boy'd been a fuck up long term, 'ere," he chuckled to himself, but Wyatt took quiet and Noah should've too. ("Think about your choices, Noah.") With a vendetta carved into his back, he didn't have choices - she was liquid, poison in his veins and he was steam.

There was no fighting back, so he stayed quiet.

oøo

They walked into the horizon, the sun burning into the mask Noah was wearing - he had the entire outfit. Cape, mask, top hat, it was something new at least, to masquerade the chronic heart beats in his chest keeping him alive. What was the point? He was dead walking, always had been, but a beak and a rabbit hole on his head nearly let him forget that you're whole if people can't see your eyes.

Inhale, exhale.

"I'm next to useless with this, but I can try." And that's the limit, isn't it?

How long until Noah forgets how to try, that's the limit. Before then it's all just breaking and fixing and inhale, exhale.

("Think about your choices, Noah.")

What is there to fight for?

A choice. A breath, and an arrow.

It screams and his mask slides down his face, taking lies and memories with it.

He scrambles, fire licking at his skin while tongue licks at his lips, sandpaper tongue and desert lips clicking together like two pieces of a puzzle. 

This puzzle was broken. 

The flame is beautiful, clouded souls and dusty figures flitting within its reach, and he swears, he swears he can see his memories inside the flames, one part flames and two parts broken. 

Pieced together eyes watch as he splits lie log in two, sweat drops running down down down his cheeks and into his beard below, spit wood chips hanging off the edges. He stands above a glass forest, shattered under the wrath of an axe that had become too heavy for even the lumberjack to carry. 

Orville splits the fiery branches- and then the memory changes. 

Sue Tate sits in front of a fireplace made of tears, scattered up puzzle pieces complementing the shattered glass bottle, tears of whiskey making trails down the wall opposite him. He rocks, back and forth, heels pushing to toes to heels to toes and as the flames swirl and he watches the memories blaze on inside its fiery rage he swears

he swears 

he can hear their screams and the slamming of doors--boom 

He watches. half masked half fixed half broken as the memories fade into fire oblivion, unconsciously pumping the only chance for his survival in his hands. 

A branchwrangler jumps out of the fire, fangs hissing and claws ready to slice through body and soul

Sue Tate hardly scrambles backwards in time to dodge the sword of the beast in front of him. 

One breath two breath, the third pollutes the air with a toxin so thick, he can hardly bare to breath it in. Poisoned lungs and an ash heart, Sue Tate can hardly rise from it's ashes. 

He watches as the beast strikes at Wyatt, glistening blades throwing sunlight onto his face, a dance made of light rays and glimmering blood. 

A piece of crusted over blood flings itself from the tips of his beard as he screams

"Wyatt!" 

The cut isn't deep, but he feels it send a chill down his body. 

Poisoned lungs and shattered hopes take their final breath as he turns towards the beast, aiming fire and brimstone at it's head. 

three two- 

it burns.

We slash out towards it, little blood spewing from the cuts on it. It only hits the ball back to us: harder, stronger. 

My knife shakes with fury and aggravation as I see it sculpt it's path through Wyatt's skin. His flesh lies open the world, but it's shallow and the crimson that flows is low. I'm thankful to Ripred that it wasn't more extensive - Wyatt's wound is nothing a bandage won't fix up.

"Wyatt, you're okay?!"

My voice feels strained and vulnerable as the sentence emerges from my mouth like a train from a tunnel. I try to swallow as my feet dawdle backwards - but it's been touched with fear and I can't. It's not letting me.

I take a glance over to Sue and Noah, they seem okay. Noah still looks a little bruised for yesterday's mess of a bloodbath. He's breathing and walking and talking; I couldn't ask for anything more. My eyes move to the right.

And I see it.

I just want to see it die. I want to watch as the transporter of its soul trickles out of its body. I want it die before my very eyes so that I can come to terms with what my life is now, how there is no escape or backing out. Murder will always be murder, but in these games it's skewed and warped.

It's not the same as your definition.

The fingers which feel so distant wrap themselves around my knife, blood of the beast staining the once beautiful and shiny blade. Something so pristine and crystal can cause so much hurt; wounds and broken bones and cuts and--

("It... It'll die Maya.")

My brain pulsates with emotion, passion becoming a force to reckoned with as I feel the friction of it rubbing against my delicate veins.

Fear is replaced with fury, skin replaced with iron. 

As my surface changes from pink to grey, I channel it all into the palm of my hand - the strength of it throbbing beneath my skin causing me lash out like an animal.

I look towards the beast and frown slightly.

Is this my reflection?

-----

maya attacks #209 || knife

r2a8vuy3knife
[2132 -- Stabbed in Stomach -- 9.5 damage]

Missing thumb and newfound lack of blood I stumble back with a scream that’s been caught in my throat for forty hours counting. A new tear in a long-broken body leaves tears welling at the corner of my eyes, a hollow threat to spill over that does not come to life until I place my right hand over the gash, blood seeping between my fingers before spilling over my wrist.

(“Can’t you do anything right, Wyatt?”)

Eighty-six is marked upon my wrist in a shade of red I trace with my own fingertips, the first to be sketched upon my own skin by a hand that I have control over—I had never been afraid of fear itself until this moment that is lost in the infinite timeline that will not pause for my pain. The eighty-four previous scratches turned upon white-washed walls are the definition of a senseless cowardice I cannot continue to escape due to the one that has changed the course of a once straight line.

Fearing fear was a new emotion to pull from the veins of what once seemed empty.

Fire fills the vacant spaces with flames of poison, seeping through my fingertips as I reach for another axe to set alight—I can find the source of the flame underneath my own skin if the need comes to pass.

Yet the seconds pass and I watch as Maya lands nothing more than a trace upon deep flesh and Noah’s arrow swings wide completely—a fuck up just like the cousin he once answered to—it runs in poisoned blood, I suppose.

Frustration falling into the pit of my stomach I turn my sight to the ground to bring my vision back from its state of blur, tears mixing at my feet with the blood that has refused to halt its course, though it drips upon the gear found the day prior. Leaning down to take it into my hand dirt mixes with blood and water, nicks and scratches filled with impure paint of a shade I could never recreate again if I so desired it.

Bits of copper striving to show through the cracks I run bloody fingers over it once more to hide any bits of originality before hurling it at Noah, waiting for the familiar thud of it hitting him square in the chest before shouting across the expanse between us, “Kick it into high gear, Bowers.”

A moment of timed reaction and his quip falls on my ear, “Tha hell even is that?”

A smirk and a second of satisfaction has me reaching for the next axe handle, that familiar fire threatening to lick my skin if I don’t set it free within the limit of a time I cannot count amidst the chaos.

I linger one moment too long, the heat of unprecedented actions unknown by the gears that turned the mind of the beast in front of us. When the skin of one hand still able to function begins to quiver under the fire, I swing forward, half-way in desperation and half-way in mindless motion.

Did anything more than simple gears turn the functions of my mind, either?

But the question cannot be answered before my mind shifts to Sue, Noah, and Maya. Unable to differentiate between the sources of the blood that coated their skin my judgment of their pain was to rely on the grimaces on their face alone, and surely, there was little pain to be found save the shallow scratches that had been turned against us in the five minutes of a seeming decade.

The being screams like the scratches of a mechanical whir, and I turn my hopes over to three beings in the hope that their strength outmatches my own save my sanity and my stream of life.

Pray for the people; praise their power when it promises product.

Breh filler

it's raining 

wheee

somehow there's like a giant horseshoe crab here 

killing my wyatt

mY WYAH

yet there's nothing interesting happening smh honestly 

wyatt throws a thing

"kick it into high gear, Bowers

ur trash wyatt is2g m8 like honestly

smh

"tha hell even is that?"

omg let's see if ill hit! praise huntysus!