ballad of the bruised lung [wyatt/sue v. word; day 4]

[Deleted]

W Y A T T  O ' C O N N O R

No longer hidden behind the smoke screen I spring in silence until my chest cries for compassion and my body longs for mercy. None truly to be found I break pace to stuttered steps and the occasional outcry of rebellion from an aching bone or muscle left unattended.

I did not trust Sue Tate enough to stay behind and watch the wreckage leave him in mangled bits and pieces or to see him take my head off of the mechanical veins that held it in place. Instead I left him to trust and worry alone, advocating from the sideline like my part of the task had been completed—I had saved him from himself, had I not?

But gratefulness turned to true terror and as I watched him fall apart at my feet I realized that my hands, covered in my own blood thanks to no other living soul but his own, had been the one to tear him straight down the center of his spine.

I had been spineless to begin with, two broken halves of a boy who pretended to be whole for thirteen years until his parents discovered the marks on the wall—ninety-five and I’m still scrambling for the broken pocketknife left in the district square of six.

I didn’t know what it meant to remember a certain touch until I missed cool metal against my palm eleven days after it had been demolished under my heel, but in the pause my venture takes away from Sue Tate I hold an outstretched palm to a colorless sky dig the opposite nails from four fingers against it until neurons fire the word pain across my skin like my body was the definition. To paint it as the only word I knew was mediocrity, I knew Wyatt O’Connor and the ways to spell it too:

Worthless,

Disconsolate,

Invaded.

[wyatt o'connor attacks word; throwing axes]
IxRBZDelthrowing axe
[shallow cut on forearm -- 3.5]

throwing axe

[Deleted]

S U E  T A T E

He drags the head and lost sanity behind him, dirty filling the wires it's made of. One hand on wires, interlacing the threads with the cut through threads of his spoken lies, the other laces itself with that of Death's, bony claws digging straight through his skin into the soul and sins below. 

This sun falls to the darkness, dimming light conquering the safety of the death of day, fake ball of light collapsing into the shadows below. And Sue Tate's mind falls to the darkness too, collapsing in on itself in a heap of bloody glory. 

He can't quite make sense of the thoughts in his head, but then again, he never really could. 

His Grandmother, before sickness overcame her mind, had told him stories of a boy who cried wolf, devoured by his sin and gone forever. Fitting, he thinks, as the head behind him clinks against a pebble, sliding in the dust and dirt below. 

He sees Wyatt as a dancing silhouette, axes thrown as the sun lights a battle stacked on top of his victory. And circling around him, with talons drawn and a message sent by Death in it's claws is a monster that he'd used two, three? days ago to bomb a tribute who'd bombed a member of Seven, grabbing her life as she fled the metal of the Cornucopia.

He stops, broken branch legs holding up a shattered glass body as he observes the fight. One hand on the wires, the other breaks the hold on Death's digits and reaches for a sword, its handle cake din dust and dirt after he'd dropped it into the terrain. 

He doesn't think, there's no time for that anymore. The boy who cried wolf and everything else sprints forward, sword drawn.

{Sue attacks Word with sword}

NtiNdDGasword

{miss}

{Accuracy day four}

sword

{}

sword�sword

[Sunrise Rainier D2 // [Thundy]]

Amelia the Word.

She was tough as nails - or so that's how she felt - taking to the skies with grace and ease. The bird was not a gentle one, for she was larger than most Words, and there was very little that she was afraid of. Predators didn't scare her, nor did a storm or the concept of death.

What is death to a bird?

Nothing, except the lack of flight.

There wasn't a thing on this earth that could scare her, and that's why the bird descended from the skies on that day. Pure curiosity flowed through her veins, and she could hear the cries and the stress from below.

When the creatures started to attack her, she did not panic. She chirped a valiant chirp and slashed forward with her beak, small and fierce, as a bird should be.

[Amelia the Word attacks Wyatt, beak (knife)]
og0R2_2tknife
2008 -- Shallow Cut on Left Forearm -- 3.5 damage
(Knife)

knife

[Deleted]

W Y A T T  O ' C O N N O R

Skin skimmed by a blade that no longer feels sharp, I barely flinch when the beak of another being tears across my skin because like every other soul caught in this limbo it believed it had a right to mark upon my skin. Unpainted canvas I had kept clean for eighteen years I watch the thin trickle of blood dance across my forearm like a roadmap of veins that were yet to be cut and when ninety-five catches in my mind like a nightmare stuck between the threads of a dreamcatcher I do not raise a hand to tear it free.

I was a firm believer in receiving what we were owed.

So when ninety-five catches in my mind as a thought I cannot shake free, I grip the axe in my hand tighter until my knuckles turn white, a deep contrast against the red that painted my skin like the signatures of everything—everyone that wished me dead.

Sue Tate’s name scrawled upon my calf, cheek, and collarbone I run a free hand over the marks like I can scratch them from existence, but letters only blur into the unforgettable and I forget that he is still standing by my side. Trust caught in between the knowledge of necessity and misfortune I do not speak to him, afraid of tearing apart his heart further I walk in fear of that which I do not know.

How many pages left from those eleven crumpled by impatient hands; which way do you spell Wyatt O’Connor without a negative undertone; how hard of a palm pressed to the shoulder of Sue Tate will break him before I have the chance to place the pieces back together.

I knew the signatures scrawled upon smooth skin and yet I still wanted purity to take the place of that which was sunken in by the weight of a greater greed.

[wyatt o'connor attacks word; throwing axes]
OStCP4sKthrowing axe
[miss-- 0.0]

throwing axe

[Deleted]

Filler bc not home :*

{sue attacks word}
O7AcQO3rsword
{Severed right foot at ankle (claw?)--9.0}sword

[Deleted]

W Y A T T  O ' C O N N O R

Fractured heart and bleeding hands I watch Sue’s sword slice clean through muscle and flesh until the sound can no longer be heard in the morning air. Fallen from glory any word or thought loses meaning as blade and blood mix with a guilt I cannot put a label upon. Half a heart to thank him loses its way in the space between us and instead our veins are filled with silence and we are left to bleed out on our own.

No thread to stitch up the bullet holes I do not think to bomb myself in the hopes of nullified ambition. Instead I poke at the bruises forming beneath battered skin in order to put them on display, a flashing sign of the broken boy and I do not bleed.

Throbbing beneath the skin strained veins let loose their hymn of hope as I peel dried blood from old wounds and watch it flake from beneath my nails, bits of a broken boy falling to a bloody battleground—I am wasting away.

(“Wyatt you areiamyouareiamyouareiamcan you do anything right?”)

Bloody nails scratching against marred skin ninety-seven is the broken record of voices I cannot stop with the rising horizon or setting sun— (“I cannot.”)

Standard of right and wrong torn apart by those eleven pages I crumble against the voices of my mother and father as questions and answers stay torn apart like missing matches in my mind. Never to be unscrambled in a dying mind I watch them shatter against the walls of a cracking sanity and fall at my feet like the cannons that sound in the distance. Never broken; always bent, I wipe clean the axe that sunk straight into the head of a mechanical Sue Tate, a monster never living— I do not know that the boy beside me stands for anything different. Answers never unscrambled I leave silence to fill our veins only to bleed out, voices of a thousand tied together by the thin strand of sanity we were both attempting to hold on to.

(“Wyatt, can you do anything right?”

“I can promise I’m okay.”)

Tall tales are always harder to believe the second time around.

[wyatt o'connor flees]
[other actions in maint]