My Heart's Grave :: [ Day 9 // Denali + Lex ]

My lungs say that I'm breathing
But when did my heart stop beating

"— hear me?" Wracked with a coughing fit, there is still smoke in her lungs. Restraints shackle her to the gurney and she can't raise a hand to her mouth like her instincts want to. "You sustained third degree burns on your hands and forearms. None of the skin was salvageable. Full grafts have been applied to prevent infection and loss of the limbs. It's important to your recovery —" Recovery? "— that you refrain from all movement for the next several hours." Her vision swims. "There are second degree burns on your legs. The charred flesh has been removed, but will heal on its own. Please, Miss Lyons," there is a subtle noise as the restraints are tightened, "keep still. I will give you a little something to help you relax in just a moment." A pause. "There may be some permanent muscle damage to your left leg, but your bones held up miraculously well to those throwing axes. With time you'll —"

I don't know who I am
Or who I used to be before

— feel better? Fingers fidget with Denali's hair, gently loosening the snarls and smoothing the singed wisps at her hairline. It feels nice... or it should. She can't quite sort it out, sweat prickling on her brow as her heart pounds, knowing it's impossible for her mother to be here with her. Desperately hoping that it's impossible, because if Denali is dead then the only way anyone who cares about her enough to offer comfort —

Please don't kill yourself over me, mom. Denali prays, despite being uncertain if she knows how. Ripred, please.

Warm hands continue to pet her hair and she doesn't open her eyes to look. It feels nice; it feels horrible. She can't bring herself to —

Tell me how to feel to feel okay
Cause I don't know

— think about what she sees when she opens her eyes. "Weirdo." The drugs make it impossible to focus, her vision blurry and speckled with bright, popping colors. Her skin sizzles; her skin chills. Still, a hand continues to ground her with a steady rhythm, fingers running through her hair.

The jacket draped over her chest is stitched with a mountain of skulls, each one filled in to symbolize someone's death. Much like Denali, the jacket and everything it represents is trapped in limbo. There are twenty skulls colored in to memorialize the past. Three are left undone, but doctors keep trying to tell her that they should all be undone, that the past has become the future and the future has become the past. The dead have risen or so they say. Denali finds herself trying to think backwards, trying to think forwards — not knowing which direction her thoughts should go. The snake of her mind eats its own tail.

There is poison in the bite and she thinks of Faux: skull collapsing in, emptiness expanding out. Or Lex: threatening Denali's heart only to sacrifice her own. She thinks of herself before all of this... then thinks of herself after all of this... these experiences cannot be undone. None of them can be rewound into who they were before. There is no stepping back from death as if any of them can return to their former lives, so if they haven't died, then what the hell is going on? Moving on doesn't seem to be an option either because —

I've been feeling pretty low
Ever since the day you dug my heart's grave

— that's when I finally noticed the blood on the front of my shirt." This is a voice that has repeatedly pulled Denali back from the edge of insanity. If not for this gentle rambling, she might have screamed herself to death that first fight or never found the courage to make it through the last one she survived. "It took me forever to figure out what it was from —" Maybe that would have been better for everyone. Denali wouldn't have raised her knives against one heart after another. "— it was too high up to be from the, uh, cuts on my chest —" Yes. That might have been better. She coughs, her lungs still struggling from the smoke of her body attempting to become its own pyre. "— and I didn't remember me or Carmen actually throwing any punches —"

Denali wonders what's become of the piece of her soul she lost on the asphalt that first day. "— and come to think of it I'm pretty sure I just hallucinated trying to brain Glamour with that bacon-wrapped turkey drumstick I was telling you about —" Is it lonely? Has it missed her? Does it realize it's lost at all? "— considering my head's still attached to my body, you know. Hard to say for sure." Impossible to say, really. "They definitely laced the food with something," the voice seems so confident that Denali wants to trust it with her own uncertainty, "but it wasn't like that was going to keep me from eating probably half my bodyweight in meat after last week when I didn't have anything but grapes —" (You're so bad at this!) "— and, like, that handful of grass or leaves or whatever pile of green things you gave me." Trusting the voice brought her this far.

But for what?

"Oh, yeah, the blood —"

What was it all for?

"— turned out I tore the stitches in my mouth —"

What was any of it for?

"— probably on the rabbit or the quail." Denali turns her face. Bette lays in the bed on her other side, the two of them silently blinking at each other. "They must've had me on something pretty intense yesterday —" They must have run out. "I didn't feel a thing."

I wish.

Denali closes her eyes. Exhales, but not enough.

"Didn't even notice the blood dribbling down my face. Good thing I had those napkins that Eve — bless that kid — brought me earlier, or —" Good thing, yeah. That was really lucky for you. It was really lucky for both of you —

And though I'm six feet under
My anxiety is taking over

— that the drugs begin to wear off. Little by little Denali blinks the haze away, edges sharpening enough that the machines set up behind her don’t bend at impossible angles and the apple on her side table... well, it still doesn’t look anything like an apple, but at least she’s pretty sure it isn’t supposed to.

There’s a stuttered moment of awkwardness as Lex and Denali meet eyes, both of them holding in questions that it’s too soon to ask, but the girl strapped to the gurney blinks and suddenly a wide grin blooms across Lex’s lips. "You’re awake?" Everything is still too difficult to be sure, but the blonde doesn’t wait for an answer. "You hungry?" Rummaging around in her sling, she chucks a chicken bone at a nearby trash can and continues her search. "They took all the good stuff away, but I think I’ve still got..." Whipping out yet another bone — this one with a hunk of meat still attached — Lex brandishes it around with enthusiasm. "Duck!" There’s no warning about how this stash of food is drugged, but day old meat stored in a sling still lacks the appeal she seems to think should take priority. "Duck?" She offers, holding it out within biting distance of Denali’s mouth.

The world is too strange and all she can think to say is: "Goose."

Lex’s expression turns deeply contemplative. "I’m pretty sure I ate all the goose, but lemme double check, just in case..." Rummaging around in her sling once more, Denali flicks her eyes around the room to investigate if colored spots are still exploding in the periphery of her vision. Or if a quick movement of her head will send everything spinning and spinning and spinning. Or if the girl next to her really is performing bizarre magic, summoning random pieces of meat from —