brooksie bellisario | two | wip

[dars]

brooksie bellisario
sixteen, career

❛ i'm no good to no one cause all i care about is being number one ❜

X

[dars]

[PTabbedContent][PTab=1]

His first formation trial takes place exactly one week after his twelfth birthday. He doesn't really even know what to expect- he's heard so many different stories of what his older family members were tasked with and none of them were even close to the same.

He'll admit he has been anxious the entire trip over, picking at his nail beds absentmindedly and avoiding eye contact with the rest of the party: his father, his aunt, and his uncle. Even from here, he can see the beginnings of his father's first tattoo peaking from the lapel of his shirt.

"I think I want to spread mine across my back," he says, his voice inherently squeaky thanks to the earlier strides of puberty he's currently undergoing, "Like, by my shoulder blades."

His father's expression remains neutral and fixed, but he nods his approval.

It's always so cold on his birthday. People think of the last months of the year as winter- nice try. He was born on February 1st and he can't remember the last time there wasn't some kind of cold precipitation happening on his birthday. It was charming as a child, waking up and seeing that it had snowed just for him, but it gets pretty annoying pretty fast.

This year, the weather is sleet. Has been for the majority of the past two or three weeks. He's making a conscious effort to crunch through the frozen sheets of ice lining the path as they make their way to the base of the retired mining mountain. His parents renewed their wedding vows in the recreational area here. Ozzi had them install an extreme rock climbing wall and Brooksie was so young that he's hazy on the details, but he's pretty sure he had a distant cousin who fell and broke her leg in front of everyone and they all stopped talking to her.

"Your mother is at the top," his father says. Aunt Mina stands behind him, pulling off his backpack while his father continues: "That's roughly a two day trip. She expects you by tonight."

He quirks a humored eyebrow down at his son.


Brooksie's mouth falls ajar, if only for a second. The sun is due to rise in about two hours, and with all the weather, there'll be an early sunset. He's just been told to make a day and a half's trip in all of about 14 hours. Families often spend their entire weekends hiking this mountain and he, a twelve year old, has just been asked to run up it in the freezing cold rain and sleet.

Once his aunt removes his backpack fully, she takes the umbrella from his hands, exposing him to the elements. The rain stings numbingly against his skin and he keeps his chin down to save his face from it. He keeps his expression even and unimpressed so they don't know how terrified he truly is.

He realizes his father is staring at him, arms crossed over his chest. Brooksie makes eye contact and him, watches as his father sizes him up for only a moment before nodding once.

"You can do this."

Brooksie smiles.

The first few hours go as about as well as he expects them to. He alternates between a slow jog and all-out sprinting. He falls several times. His left knee is sticking to his pants and stinging, and he's pretty sure he'll need stitches from the jagged cut running along the length of his kneecap, but he refuses to let himself stop and assess it. If anything, the cold is doing a good job of slowing his blood flow down, so at least he probably isn't going to bleed out. But it's when he makes it to the stream that things get interesting. There are no remaining functional bridges in this mountain- those and the mining tracks were all destroyed once the mountain panned out. It isn't off limits to be out here, but each person's safety is left in their own hands out here. In other words, if he gets injured or mauled to any degree out here, it's on him.

The water is like slush, with sheets of ice coursing along the current at a brisk pace. It isn't terribly far- maybe a twenty yards or so, but he's not even halfway through his trip, the temperature is hovering around freezing, and since Aunt Mina took his backpack, he doesn't have a change of clothes. There's also the matter of the aftermath- the smart thing to do for his health would be warming up once he's across, but even if he started a fire in this weather, warming would take too long. He spares a minute to hike up to the nearest hill for some kind of a vantage point, and catches sigh of a tree jutting out over the water. It isn't fallen so much as it is looming, its branches weighed down with the frozen rain so that the entire top is hunched over toward the river.

"Easy," he says, making his way over to it. It doesn't take him long to climh- he has had lots of practice, thank you very much- before he's made it to the newest limbs of the tree. He strips them of their ice with a gloved hand, tests his weight against them a couple times before he pulls back on them as hard as he can. Then he uses their weight to fling himself out like a slingshot. He feels himself swing forward- definitely slower than he'd envisioned, but the tree limbs aren't snapping in half yet so he counts it as a win. He lets go at the precise moment the limbs reach their end, tucks his shoulder so that he doesn't land on his bad knee, and crashes into the ground with thunderous applause from the cracking of ice and, possibly, a rib.

He tries to gasp in pain but his lungs won't take in air. He struggles against himself, eyes bulging and face turning red with strain. Just when he begins to worry that he'll pass out he finally, with great desperation, swallows a lungful of sweet, precious air.

"Ow! Ow!" The child in him wishes someone were there to help him up. The competitor in him dares anyone to try.

It takes him a moment to pull himself up- he coughs, already feeling tears sting his eyes. He blinks them away- the cold makes his cheeks ache enough already. Get up, Brooksie. Get up. He needs to prove that age doesn't matter. He needs to prove that he's just as good as both of his older siblings. Better. He needs to prove that he is the best, because it's all he has ever wanted, and he knows he's supposed to be supportive of them and he is but. He wants to be great. He wants to be remembered.

So he runs even still.

By nightfall, every lungful of air feels sharp, the entire left side of his torso aches and is sensitive to the touch, he can't feel his fingers, and he's moving with a noticeable limp. He's even doubled over, the edges of his vision blurring. He hears his mother's footsteps approaching him but for all he knows, she could be right next to him or a hundred miles away.

"You made it, Brooksie!"

The last thing he remembers before he loses consciousness is his mother's hands at his waist aiding him over to the fire.

The last thought he has before everything goes black is his mother's voice on repeat.

"You made it, Brooksie!"

He made it. He made it. He made it.

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[PTab=2]

While he did technically succeed in his first trial, he wasn't as successful as he could have been. These things are tailor-made for each of them. Hours on end spent studying them, watching their movements, noting their strengths, exploiting their weaknesses. Everyone has a fatal flaw, and identifying it is crucial to survival and success. But that's the trick: you gotta figure that part out on your own.

Brooksie has absolutely no idea what his biggest weakness is. That isn't meant to sound like a brag- it's actually quite the dig at himself. Good fighters know this stuff. Better ones than him- he isn't delusional. It's like knowing that somewhere in the building you're standing in, there is a room on fire, but not knowing which room or how to get to it. He doesn't want to burn, so this year he's trying his damnedest to figure it out before it becomes a problem.

He slept through the last ceremony in his exhaustion, woke up with the perfect tattoo of a diamond right above his left shoulder blade. People in the family typically like the tattoos in places they can show off better: arms, legs, chest... He has this one distant cousin who wanted her tattoos on her face, and then she failed her second trial so now she has to go through life with a big scar to remind her of her failure dripping down her cheek like a 24 carat tear.

For his second trial, his father has escorted him to the forest all alone. They walk casually alongside each other for quite some time. The small talk comes fairly easy, and Brooksie peppers in a couple guesses as to what the trial may be, which makes his old man chuckle.

"You'll see."

Eventually, they come to a small coffee table. It looks especially out of place here in the meadow, as do the matching ornate chairs that accompany it. There are two cups on the table, perfectly similar. Ozzi takes one seat, so Brooksie takes the other.

"Have a drink with me."

Brooksie hasn't ever had alcohol. He's wondered what it might taste like, if it's as bad as they say it is, or as good. He stares down at the amber-colored liquid contained within the twin glasses, and then back up at his father, waiting for an explanation. His father nods approval to the glasses, but when Brooksie reaches for one, his father stops him with a calm hand.

"One of them is poisoned. Nightlock-derived, but not as potent. Probably would take closer to five minutes to kill over completely. Three before you'd be paralyzed. But you'll start seeing the side effects pretty quickly."

Suddenly the liquid seems... different. Less like he's looking at two glasses of brandy and more like he's looking at twin vials of snake venom.

"I-"

"You can choose whichever you want. I drink the other."

The most uncomfortable part of this entire situation is his father's calmness.

"N- No? That... what? Dad, y-"

"Choose."

He presses his lips together in frustration. If he was any less wise, he'd keep arguing but he doesn't, even though everything in him screams that he should.

"I don't want either of us to die."

Maybe he's not so wise. Oh well, he's only thirteen.

"Yet you have been asked to choose. Do it, Brooksie. Now."

His father's voice is losing patience now. He flinches, bites his bottom lip so that Ozzi doesn't see it tremble. He studies the two glasses, trying to find the slightest difference, and he can't. Same color, same amount, same temperature. He sighs and grabs the one closest to him. He's seconds away from choosing and loses his courage.

"You chose alcohol because I've never tasted it. I'd be able to taste to poison if this was water or something, right?"

"Right. Now, last chance."

Deep breath in. His dad sat down first. Which meant he wanted them to be seated in this way. So does that mean the cup closer to him is the poisonous one, or is his dad trying to test his loyalty to him? Or did his father choose his seat randomly? His fingers hover over the glass in front of him, and just before he's about to grab it, he changes his mind and grabs the one in front of his father. He drinks the whole thing, stopping to cough twice and gag several horrible times, but he finishes it off and wipes off the bits that are now dribbling down his face. It tastes so bad he almost hopes it's poisonous so actual alcohol might still have a chance of tasting sort of nice.

"Now what?" he asks, instantly regretting his decision to go through with it. A burn wouldn't be the worst thing, especially if it's on his back where no one would ever really see it. His father shrugs, a noncommittal gesture, and leans back in his seat.

"Look around, son. What do you see? You've been trained for this."

"Dad, I-" he feels frustration growing within him. His chest begins to burn right along with his cheeks. He looks around.

"Uh, ok, um. Trees? I see- I..."

Ozzy hisses in pain and Brooksie is on his feet. Other than the awful burning sensation in his chest and the warm sensation spreading through to his limbs, there's nothing. His father grimaces in pain and coughs again. He chose correctly. Or... incorrectly? Panic floods him by the time he gets to his father.

"Dad! D-"

"What do you see?"

Both of them scream, one from pain and the other from frustration.

"I don't know! I... I see-"

Trees. Rocks. Sky. Dad's fingertips digging into the ground as he chokes on air. Crap. Crap. Uh, Sticks. Dead leaves. There, those light blue flowers.

"Angel Elixir."

Used to combat most poisons.

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[PTab=3]

He's only fourteen, but his knees have never felt worse. He's going through his big growth spurt at the moment so his clothes all hug him a bit too tightly and hang an inch too high.

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WIP 4.

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WIP 5.

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