vanish beneath the surface :: fleur vs love
Aug 10, 2021 13:34:00 GMT -5
Post by pogue on Aug 10, 2021 13:34:00 GMT -5
L O V E
All he feels when he pulls the blade of his axe from Mauve's skull is pure calculated rage, wrenching it free with a grunt and a sigh and pulling the weapon up to his shoulder to let it rest. Rage is closely followed by warmth as Mauve's blood and bone fragments splatter onto his lower legs with the leftover force of the pull. He feels the liquid sizzle and burn into his flesh as he keeps his gaze focused on what's left of Mauve's face, cut through with muscle and bone and red and black. It's only when her head falls lazily to the left, pulling her eyes from the sky and away from him that Love finally glances down at the spray of blood that had scattered and dance up his calfs.
He frowns when he sees it, the tattered threads of a poisoned friendship bracelet still clinging to his ankle. The hints of blue and pink are hardly visible now, soaked through with the blood of both Mauve and Ariel herself, the anklet sticking to his skin as if a sopping reminder of what he's done. And he knows what's coming as he looks at it, knows that every heartbeat that hammers in hollow chest counts down the seconds until that pit in his stomach swells and drops, bursts into a million toxic butterflies and eats his heart into nothing from the inside out. It'd been six days of feeling knots and twists in stomach and vein, feeling his humanity crack and shatter only to rebuild itself in haste. An endless loop of rebuilding just to watch himself fall, human to monster and monster to human.
He'd end it, for better or worse. His fingers wrap around the bracelet and rip it from his skin in one fluid movement, eighteen years and six days of stifled kindness dissipating in the movement.
He leaves it on the ground in a puddle of Mauve and Ariel's blood, and the pink and blue threads are swallowed whole by the red by the time he walks free.
He grieves for what feels like seconds and walks for what feels like hours, one blood soaked foot in front of the other and his footsteps quickly lost and consumed by the wet soil and the blood it's already soaked with. The mist fades as he does but the night time doesn't, revealing the still bloody artifacts left around him within the arena. The echoes of two cannons still ring in his ears long after the lapping of the lake's waves fade into the distance, the chorus a reminder of his own sins and a stark contrast to the silence that sweeps over the forest trails as he walks. He'd been taught during hunting training back at the Academy that the only time a forest goes silent is if there's something dangerous lurking in the shadows.
A day ago, he'd have raised his axe in anticipation. Now, he thinks the only thing too dangerous to exist here is himself.
Ariel and Mauve's faces imprint themselves into the back of his mind, their memories carved with bloodstain claws into the ocean waves that still rise and crash in his own soul, drowning him slowly from the inside out. He hears their voices and he hears the sound of his blade scraping against skin and skull, little lines of red and bursts of blood and bone replaying in his mind in an endless loop as he walks forwards. Ariel fell on one end of a spectrum he'd been building with every passing day, the innocent ones and the terrible ones and the ones in between. Ariel's innocence betrays him as he thinks of her, a poison that eats slowly at diamond skin and turns his bones into nothing more than dust. Mauve sits at the other, with bared fangs and endless waves of unkempt hate. Her hatred eats at him, too, but it's not slow and steady like the memory of Ariel because it's dead and gone until suddenly it isn't, ballooning and growing until it implodes and scatters and resets all over again.
Their faces are still in his mind when he finally steps through the tree line and finds the field in front of him littered with picnic tables, the mist still clinging desperately to their form under the light of the night. His body lets go of the last pieces of adrenaline it has left as he stands, a wave of exhaustion hitting every muscle and bone in his body as he stumbles to the nearest picnic table and throws his bag into the dirt. Bones ache when he sits and his eyes finally allow themselves to drift to the sky, biting back the feeling that still threatens to rise up from the pit of his heart and shatter him whole all over again. Monster to monster, he thinks to himself, and forces the faces of Emerson and Chad and Six and Blade and Ariel to the front of his mind. Taint their memory and watch them fade, he's used to that by now.
It's easier to think of them all as monsters.
Four cannons, he counts them on his fingers just for the reassurance and assigns Ariel and Mauve to two of them, the other two left as empty voids with nothing left but to fill. He wonders if Julian and Waverly made it through, almost wishes they did before he catches himself in the act and cuts that thread loose. "Let yourself believe that I hate you.", Julian had told him under the light of the night, and he finds comfort in a different sort of facade now. "Hate you too." He responds to nothing but the ghosts.
When Waverly's face flashes in the sky he chokes back a face crack, bites into the sad sigh that wants to slip from his lips and swallows it down. Just a monster just a monster just a monster just a monster- He reminds himself desperately, It was coming anyways. He finally settles on, convincing himself that you can't hate what was always expected.
Sleep comes quickly for him when he finally collapses under the picnic table, as if it's been waiting in the peripherals of the mists and the shadows to swallow him whole.
It's easier to fall asleep knowing there'll be no one waiting for you to wake up.
He's stopped fighting the ghosts in his dreams, so when Ariel's face suddenly forms in the mists of his nightmares he doesn't even flinch, only staring coldly at the way she walks in silence with a permanent look of hateful fear etched onto her skin. It's worn like a mask around her flesh, unmoving and stoic and rigid and-
-her touch is one part fire and one part ice when her hands press to his cheeks. And he can't move, just like every other night in his fucking dreams he can't will his limbs to push away from the soul and the specter that stands before him. He feels flesh meet flesh meet poison and feels his own skin melt and harden under the bloody touch of Ariel Fenwick and pain flares up from the source and shoots into the back of his mind. It's only then that he finally screams, mouth desperate to pry open but he watches Ariel's open instead, the only thing escaping the deafening bangs of metal against metal and cannons in the sky and crumbling humanity and shattered soul.
The panic sets in double when his eyes snap open and the bottom of the picnic table greets his gaze and the nightmare gives way to reality but the touch of Ariel's hands doesn't leave his skin. He chokes on toxic breaths as he scrambles up, banging the top of his head against the table as he scrambles out from underneath it with fingertips clutching the object that is locked against his flesh. He pulls with every trained muscle in his body until pain threatens to bubble up and burst from the way the mask is locked onto his head, and it's only when he's delicately trying to use the blade of his axe to separate the mask from his face that the voice rings out above him with cheerful instruction, anger bubbling in his veins as he rises to his feet and grabs his weapon. Fucking carnival acts. He thinks to himself and the skies above, vision impaired as he stares at the moon before he walks.
When the figure finally materializes into his vision he doesn't hesitate to raise his spear and pull back his stance, measuring the distance between the two of them as his heart hammers in his chest. He doesn't know who it is, doesn't know what sins cling to their soul and their skin, but he knows it isn't Julian.
He tries to bite back the relief that washes over him for the briefest of moments. He fails.
"Who've you hurt to get here?"
He asks to the person, to himself.
He asks to the person, to himself.
[ Love attacks Fleur ; spear ]
Bg5JeFG|hUspear
[ SC on left bicep - 3.5 ]
Bg5JeFG|hUspear
[ SC on left bicep - 3.5 ]