table testing . [ Pogue ]

It’s the first thing he thinks as he gasps for breath and stumbles back from the creature in front of him, his vision pulsing and blurring at the edges. A moment ago he saw red, whipping his vision back from Bird and into the eyes of a hissing, shuffling creature in front of him. He sees red again now, but this time he feels it too, pain erupting from his stomach and coursing through his body. It clashes against the adrenaline that ran its course through his veins, the two forces pushing and pull and twisting and turning and collapsing and shredding. The palm of his hand finds itself pressed against the gash in desperation, and as he glances down with mouth open in pain he watches his blood ebb and flow between his fingertips, coating his hands in liquid sin before dripping to the ground below. 

Stumbling and shuffling his balance follows his mind and begins to lose itself, the tip of his sword driving into the ground as he uses it to steady himself. It takes a fluttering heartbeat in his chest for him to realize he’s standing in Bird’s blood. It tracks and follows him as he stumbles away from her, his brain spiraling as he tries to focus his vision on the shuffling, huffing creature that is before him. They’re both worse for wear and are wearing it well, the creature’s leg mimicking his stomach as waves of red flow from it.

Please just die. 

He doesn’t know if he’s saying it to the mutt or himself anymore.

Both the dead and the damned are creatures of habit and he is no different, burying his sword into the same gash he’d struck so many times as the creature lunges at him. He stumbles backwards and, without any balance to be found from the loosening grip on his sword, topples to the ground completely, a gurgle and a scream of pain flowing from his mouth as he hits the ground. He presses his hand to the gash on his stomach again and lifts his head from the ground, focusing his gaze on the collapsed mutt feet away from him. It’s limbs are twitching and slashing rapidly at the air, blood-curdling screeches and hissing flowing freely from its mouth. He watches the life leave its body in the same way he did for Kestrel, its screams transitioning to whispers before finally being lost to the soft wind of the arena, it’s once dangerous limbs finally going still.

His head falls back and he shifts his gaze to Bird, ringing chorus in his ears announcing the start of his own unravel. 

Adrenaline is nothing if not polite, and as it leaves his heart brain veins it makes more than enough room for shock and confusion to set in, dancing through his mind and along the pulsing black dots that bounce on the edges of his vision. He can feel his heartbeat claw its way through his chest, hyper aware of every single blade of grass and rock pressing their way into his skin. It’s comforting, the way the body can convince someone they are worthy of something.

Worthy of a kingdom.

Worthy of a throne.

Worthy of not being alone.

His mind is doing circles in on itself, sheltering reality behind smoke and mirrors and telling him that Bird was not dead after all, that the cannon that accompanied her falling to the ground had been nothing more than an insult from the heavens, some god-sent compliment to follow her own poison laced words. After all, he had yet to stare into the night sky and find a face of his fellow tribute staring back at him. In a heavy heart a small flame of hope flickers and starts to burn.

"Bird?"

Hope is dangerous in a place like this.

"Wake up..."

The blood flowing from his stomach is growing cold, ice spreading across his skin as the comfort of his own shock begins to wear off.

"Please."

The more he stares at the body the colder the ice on his skin gets. After five broken heartbeats it sets in, for the second time, that she’ll never wake up.

She stays sleeping within sheets of red. A part of him wishes he could join her.

Reality roots itself deep in his bones, before erupting from within his stomach in the form of pain.

He’s staring down the point of a sewing needle, watching it shake and twitch in bloody hands. There’s still dancing spots that fly through his vision, side effects tied to the dangerous concoction of lack of blood, a broken heart and a faltering mind. With every breath he takes it nearly falters and slips from his grasp, and when he tries to pierce his flesh with it he’s only met with the same pulsing black overlay across his vision, hearing himself scream out in pain but being too far removed from his own being to do anything about it.

His hand slams and slides on the ground beneath him, grasping at nothing before his fingertips brush over the familiar cool touch of a weapons hilt. Flicking his eyes to the discovery he recognizes it as a knife, pressed into the dirt and half covered with the grass him and Bird had once walked fought died on. He raises the knife to his mouth and clamps his teeth down on the metal.

Dirt and grass and metal and heartbreak spread their taste across his tongue. He finds anything is better than the taste of blood, though.

For the second time that day he feels bile rising up in his throat at the feeling of thread sliding through his skin, the smell of sweat and blood hitting his nostrils as his mind continues to pull itself from fantasy to reality. He has to look away at first, focusing only on the way the metal tastes in his mouth and the way the dirt granules slip and slide onto his tongue. By the end of it, though, he’s a sewn up witch’s doll of a man, with a lot less blood and half a reality still missing.

”I’m sorry, Bird."

His hands are finally still as he stops himself from breathing, feeling the cold chill of Bird’s blood pool itself around his fingers as he reaches into her cloak and grabs her bag. Her eyes are focused on the blood stained coffin she lays in, body collapsed in on itself and it takes everything in his heart not to collapse when his gaze drifts up and settles on the forced smile etched deep into her throat, layers of skin pulling back on themselves and a waterfall of blood falling from the veins inside. Fuck. The word flutters through his mind when he has to roll Bird’s body over slightly to pull her bag out from underneath her body, catching another small spurt of blood escape from her throat and dribble down onto her cloak.

He knows what he’s taking from her and it is nothing good.

Has all of the morals but none of the heart to rob a dead girl of something useful.

The eyes of her bird plushie stare into him like knives, her blood etching itself onto his fingertips as he holds it.

He thinks of Elijah’s deadbeat eyes, bags falling from them and the waves of sadness that cascade behind his irises.

The air swirls itself around him as he watches the body of the cloud spire thin, his boots pushing him up towards the top.

Running from the damned, he thinks of the stairs creaking underneath his weight as he leaves his older brother to wallow in a sadness he didn’t deserve to have to handle.

Running from the dead-

it was all he was ever good at