The Bloodbath

Now they'd come so far and they'd waited so long
Just to end up caught in a dream where everything goes wrong
Where the dark of night holds back the light of the day
And you've gotta stand and fight for the price you pay

‘Thanks for lettin’ me say goodbye.’

His words come just before he strikes her left hand, his aim true. She feels the heat creep up her arm, the stinging pain that brings tears to her eyes. She scrunches her brows and pulls back, fresh hurt to remind her that she’s getting her reward for having played the game.

There’s six of them, then, covered in blood and battling for a chance to see home. To be pardoned, or so they’d been told.

Long gone is the girl who’d protected the little one; the one who’d tried to fight off the peacekeepers; the one who’d done her best to hide; the sad faced boys, cut down as though they were no more human than wheat in the fields; the boy who’d come and tried to kill them; the other who knew her language, that she’d gone and pushed; the girl who’d lay waste to so many; the other that had been battle true; the one who’d tried to stop it all; the others who’d not been strong enough; the boy’s lover; the one that had been reasoned with; the foul mouthed girl who fell too early; the one called a traitor.

Her father used to say that her story is not the only story. Usually in moments when she’d given half-truths, but here it was felt all the more painfully. They were not fodder. They were the first in a generation of children that would reckon with hatred so deep it would continue until at last, someone would be brave enough to believe that they could not see each other as unequal because of who they were, but what they’d been forced to become.

Jack takes a knife across his neck and returns the favor to the one who’s led the call to kill; the brown haired boy that lingers in the distance, with the mercy killer not far behind; the drawling boy that stays locked with her, his lover lost, his fate entwined with Uxue’s, now. They set to take pieces from one another until at last, they have nothing left to give, and fall down forever. That’s what each of them wanted, for whatever their reasons may have been.

She wondered why the world needed them to break one another apart in order to make things whole again.

In eleven, she’d known harsh winters, and seen years when crops had been scarce enough that hunger was all they knew. She knows that there would be those who never understood why she hadn’t gone to the front with Taylor. Somehow, swinging back against the boy in front of her, she didn’t much care. There would always be those who failed to understand why a girl like her, with dark skin and dark eyes, slaving out in the fields, doing her best to care for her family, her little piece of the world, wouldn’t rise up to trust those who believed they knew better.

After all, they were the ones that spent more time pontificating about the way the world should’ve been than spending hours at another’s bedside, tending to wounds or sickness. More time on a battlefield burning through fields and massacring those that didn’t offer themselves up to resistance than those that made oats a little cheaper in the market so the mother of three could feed her children. Those that knew a community was not just the ideals but was made of people, honest to goodness people who prayed for peace, that wanted to know one another. Those that knew peace sometimes came from compromise, and that there were some things they did not know better.

She knew the Izars wanted freedom as much as anyone. But to yield to the same sort of thought that those who did not stand with them were the enemy was foolish. How much could they trust change that thought little of differences among them, instead seeing them all as the same?

Sacrifice wasn’t bowing to a new set of leaders that punished dissent. And freedom wasn’t being told to stand in line, lest they upset those who were too sensitive for criticism.

But she reasoned that there were plenty here that believed their trauma had somehow given them wisdom, rather than anything other than festering scars.

Tragedy was not a teacher; she was pain brought by all that had gone wrong. True wisdom came from an open heart, one willing enough to let others exist among difference.

They were too far down the road to ever back away from the death that reeked the fields, then. She imagined the truth of it all was that whoever walked away would tell the story of a single narrative. That they had won, that whatever their vision was, or became, was the only story.

And so she prayed that, in spite of all the blood, and horror, there would still be those that recognized the world they needed was for everyone, not just the few. That someday they’d find peace, not just under the thumb of a single person deciding what was best, but that goodness would come from each voice.

Or else, what was all of it for?

“I owe you that much,” She says to the boy, rubbing her arm, and pulling back, readying for another swing.

Did she want to go home? She wasn’t sure, then, save for the selfish wish she could see her family one more time. Maybe to see her fiancé, to marry, to go on with life as best as she could. But her breath was haggard, and she knew she was weaker than the ones striking out with knives and calling for blood. And so she would give someone the gift of telling her story, one way or another.

“Vámanos.” She readies herself, and swings forward, eyes closed, “HNNNNG!”

[Uxue Izar attacks Elmo Latch d10m unarmed]

JGFwwkRUvqunarmed

5022 -- Bruised Back -- 2.5 damage (Unarmed)

*The Price You Pay, Bruce Springsteen