the stranger i've been // { will vs lys | day 7
Jul 26, 2020 12:47:32 GMT -5
Post by aya on Jul 26, 2020 12:47:32 GMT -5
well, i started out honest and true to my word
but somewhere i lost it, i took a wrong turn
now it's over, oh how the disguise has worn thin
are you familiar with the stranger i've been?
but somewhere i lost it, i took a wrong turn
now it's over, oh how the disguise has worn thin
are you familiar with the stranger i've been?
In the morning he wakes up still warm to his core, despite the chill that has settled over the arena with the fog. The sky obscured with gray wraithmist, the embers of Meredith's pyre serve as Will's sole sunrise.
There's nothing else visible in the ash. He burned it all last night: Bruce's letter, Cyro's drawing, the angel wings that came in on a silver parachute, the score tables from that game of Dueling Twelves they'd played that second night, every other blank page in his notebook. Did a hovercraft come for her bones while he dozed?
He doesn't stamp them out. What else could possibly catch? Let an inferno take the whole arena, for what Will cares, and take everyone with it. Her face was in the anthem last night. She was right: there is a limit to who gets put back together, and it lies somewhere between the knife buried in Hellemine's face and a full funeral pyre. A hungry blaze would take everyone out permanently. Will included.
Shouldering his pack, he turns his back on the indistinct remains of everything he'd given to the fire and sets off for the beach. He's not looking for — it's not like he has any idea where JJ and Terra are now. If they're even still together. If they're even still alive. But they'd been headed for the red sand before the thorn storm turned them around, so maybe — well, they either made it there yesterday and won't be anywhere near by now, or they're still there, tent pitched and sleeping in, reveling and laughing and carrying on just fine without him. He doesn't know what he's hoping for once he gets there, but he needs a direction and that seems like a good enough way to go.
The chill sets in the further he gets from the fire, the fog condensing and diminishing his vision. He huddles into his cloak, the smell of the pyre enveloping him with it. His stomach rumbles, then turns. The pie he'd eaten the other day was plenty filling and enough to sate him for awhile, but visions of his mom's Ratmas roast intrude like they're handed to him from on high, a glistening crown of lamb chops crisped and dusted with rosemary and black pepper, stuffed with buttery cubes of squash and sweet potato and studded with pomegranate jewels. The best part of Ratmas is the way the whole house smells while it roasts — savory, hopeful, like this might be the year that the food is too good to pick fights over dinner, everyone with their mouths too stuffed to antagonize or argue. It never lasts, but it clings to his clothes like optimism all the same.
The first time he sees a specter out of the corner of his eyes, Will hurls a knife on reflex. It digs into the sand with a muffled thud, the sound dampened by the haze and yet impossibly loud in the still silence of the suspended cloud. Something in the back of his mind asks What if that was JJ? Terra? and he spits to exorcise himself of the useless thought. If it were then he'd've killed them, the way he still might need to do one of these days. Better to do it on reflex before his conscious thoughts get the chance at sabotage.
Scowling at the stab wound in the earth, he kicks into the air, hoping he'll be harder to spot if he's airborne. Floating like a phantom and wearing a dead man's face, his body is invisible apart from the red right hand wrapped around a dagger handle.
The blood crusted under his nails catches his eyes and he thinks again of Meredith — not because it's hers, but because that's what he'd been looking at when she'd brought him that cup of tea on the train all those weeks ago. He's given up on trying to work out why she bothered with him in the first place. Guess he just had something she needed. That's why people put up with Will Johnwayne.
He catches a glimpse of another silhouette in the mist — his brain paying enough attention to repeat the question about who it belongs to — but he swallows the thought and throws his knife anyway.
"What," he drawls when he recognizes the figure as one of Mer's group, "no Sherman today?"
[ attacks lysander, throwing knife ]
eNi|tvy|M8throwing knife
[ 9012 -- Knife in Thigh -- 6.0 damage + 1 target practice ]
joe pug - the stranger i've been
throwing knifeeNi|tvy|M8throwing knife
[ 9012 -- Knife in Thigh -- 6.0 damage + 1 target practice ]
joe pug - the stranger i've been
