Round One: Blue vs Technicality (D3)

[ᴥ]

”No!”

The cry comes out a bit strangled ‘cause I’m choking on my own blood. I didn’t even mean to say it, the word just falls from my lips and sits there between us. This ugly, gnarled thing. I’m ashamed. Not that I’m dying but that I look so pathetic doing it. I was promised over and over again that I was the hero of this story. But then why am I in so much pain? I can hardly muster the strength to stay standing, let alone do it with any decorum. My gaps have gone greedy, my chest rising and falling unevenly as it becomes a conscious effort to keep breathing.

My pulse pounds slower, I think it’s giving up.

In spite of all this suffering, I cannot look at her without a little bit of fondness. Ridiculous, I know, but there’s too much of her and too little of me. I guess that explains how she can do all this and still look at me like that. At me, not through. No one’s ever bothered with that before, too happy with that reflective mask I'm wearing. With the boy that would be whoever they wanted him to be. That lays shattered at our feet now and all that’s left of Cal is my blood stained skin. She’s the only one who’s seen it. The only one who will. ”It hurts.” And sure, that comes out a bit whiny but I think it’s earned.

Her blade has found the same wound twice, splitting me open to let all those ugly thoughts spill free. She is mine, so much of me on her clothes, in her hair, on her blade. A twisted bit of possession that I cling to because it’s all I have left. She does not hate me and I do not hate her. And that is a kindness, however feeble. ”Can’t you kill me softly?” I’m still complaining, sounding every bit the petulant child I’ve spent most of my life pretending not to be.

”This isn’t surrender,” It’s just easier to pretend it is. Even half-dead it seems I’m a liar. ”Just a request. Just in case.”

They’ll send my body home without my heart.

Bury me the hollow boy they knew.

Blue has Cal.

She’s got me here.

”I think we should be proud. I think we’ve been wonderful.”

[cal attacks blue - sword]
FdnLg45___sword
[3.5]

sword

[nolan goode 10m / kaitlin.]

I wonder what it’d be like to work together.

Cal screams out no and I am taken aback, surprised; I like to think I meet him in the middle and pause, put my hand on his chest and let myself feel the way his heart goes beat beat beat. I feel more alive with my hands on him. A boy reduced to the way he exhales and a name half pronounced, where he comes from hanging around his neck like a leash. Cal has got one of those faces that feels like he was born to be an old time sweetheart, a boy with no grievances, iridescent. He belongs in fox fur on the silver screen, an invisible collar wrapped around his throat. He doesn’t even look that ridiculous in the white robe they’ve dressed him up in. Red and bloodied, he almost looks good.

It hurts, he says, and I let the pause take me. My hand really rests on his chest; I almost clutch at the fabric I find there, holding him to me, or anchoring myself to him, I can’t say for sure. Him looking at me, wide blue eyes. I bet moms back home say he’s just precious, treat him like a pet, mesmerized by the way he is bent and bruised. Another child in a violent place at the end of every day, no matter how kept away from the blood he might have been. Can’t you kill me softly?

“No one taught me how.”

Gentleness was not bred into me; from the world I learned how to chase that which carries me, to fly even when I am the last bird with flight. I, walking wound, girl with her eyes wide open / we both grew up walking on graves. Neither of us is under any delusion we have good luck.

I don’t know what to say to him.

My thoughts slow, ungainly in their coordination. It’s so easy to imagine I love him. I wear my sister’s anger, Benzo’s strength, Coppers rotten mouth, but none of those things feel like mine. Tiny heart thundering, we should be / proud, we’ve been / wonderful. It festers in my chest, a well-aimed question turned into an apparatus of torture. This body, still standing, standing still — it’s only when he cuts me again that I move. His mirror, my mirror, together we are a complete sentence. I nod at him, flower my garden of rage and agree; we are something to wonder at.

blue attacks cal, sword.

zKQCa1wOiNsword
3.5

sword

[ᴥ]

What else is there to say at the end of all things?

The wounds we’ve worn into each other have begun to bloom, torn apart by constant motion. The red pools beneath our feet give way to the dirt below, the shallow makings of our graves. It’s not so much a fight anymore - it’s a funeral march. There’s a part of me that’s still a desperate child, that wants to rally against fate. To lay down my weapon, to refuse to fight. It’s a feeble fantasy that we’d make it out of here together, but at least then I wouldn’t be dying alone. I know that they’d kill us both but at least it wouldn’t be so lonely.

Blue wouldn’t lay down her weapons, though. To the end, to the end, to the end. She’ll fight until she’s stripped herself down to her bones, and even then. Death will come the minute I lay down this heavy head, carrying her hooked sword instead of a scythe. No one taught me how. Yet another thing I’ve taken for granted, I guess. Until I met Blue, my suffering had been insidious, it crept into my lungs with a gentle kindness. Left my hands soft, instead of callused, left my skin an expanse free of scars.

Even now that is isn't, they’re all Blue’s.

”I’d have liked to.”

Followed by a ragged gasp, a mouthful of blood. I throw it up all over my shoes and that’s pretty embarrassing

This blade has made a home in my hand, fingers locked around its hilt as though it’s an extension of my arm. It’s comforting to know I’m capable of causing pain. That I am not a boy made for standing here and being hurt. There’s this resolve she has, another reason I should hate her. I am desperate to find a reason to keep fighting but she has not run out of them.

There’s no one I want to come home to.

So why do I keep fighting?

I’m scared.

I don’t want to die.

I tell myself that’s enough.

And I'll apologize later, if it isn't.

[cal attacks blue - sword]
4540Hok99gsword
[3.5]

sword

[nolan goode 10m / kaitlin.]

I used to think holding hands was the height of peace. I’d crawl in my and Indigo’s shared bed and curl up next to her, wrap my little hands around hers before falling asleep, held in that precious moment ahead of the loss of consciousness. The courage to sleep, to pause, thread our loneliness into each others, our mistakes into each others. It’s akin to putting lighting in a bottle, bright and impossible.

Hand trembling, we know we are loved. We know we are loved. Our hands, reminding us who we are. I’d have liked to. This is who we are. Each others mistakes, learning how to make better ones.

“I’d have liked that, too.”

It’s not enough. Nothing will have ever been enough. But at least we learned. At least we learned. 

I think I’d like to be moved by something death hasn’t touched for once. To be kissed by someone I don’t have to remember as a ghost. I would like a future that doesn’t feel like a graveyard.

The blood Cal spits out splatters across the grass and catches on the bottom of my dress but I don’t even try to step out of the way. My body can’t register the shock anymore, like I’ve exiled that part of my brain, a landmine somewhere in my body waiting to get triggered. It's easy to use that moment to push in even closer, press in until the ugly edge of the hook is right up against his throat. 

Relics of an an age we can’t touch anymore, we’ve crawled out ghosts. Our home a graveyard, Indigo and I were forced to survive on the kindness of a stranger. It’s easy to see now the differences between he and I, easy to see now the ways in which we are the same. Violence like a hand me down coat, ill fitting but wrapped around our shoulders all the same — be ruthless, Rotty shouts in neon purple. I can imagine Cal’s father tell him the same, in different ways, for different reasons.

"It's not enough to save us," I say. The future, a noose around our necks, we carry bullets behind out front teeth & crawl out of our graves, animals abandoned. This is how we come back. This is how we know what we are capable of. "It won't be enough, Cal."

His name tucked under my tongue, a fist curled around my heart. I wish we could grow on our own / we feel like a sunset growing towards the opposites horizon, towards that which it will never reach.

blue attacks cal, sword.

Z0w7kBjMd_sword
1083 -- Shallow Cut on Neck -- 4.0 damage
(Sword)

sword

[ᴥ]

And here we are again. Two sides of the same coin, locked in bitter disagreement. Pain begins to give way to something sweeter, the longer I look at Blue the less the rest of the world makes sense. It goes fuzzy around the edges, awash in electric euphoria. There's this stirring in my chest whenever she says something, an urge to disagree just on the off chance it might set her on fire. If only to see more of those pretty sparks skitter across her tongue as she demands I look at the world in a way I'd never dared to before.

"I'd have liked more." I relent, eyes locked on hers and in a moment of clarity I lean into the blade she's pressed to my neck. There's a smile on my lips, wrapped around teeth stained with blood. I've got my blade pressed to her stomach with enough force to threaten but not to cut. Locking us in a twisted sort of embrace, a forced stalemate. Her wrist twitches, more of my blood spills onto her skin.

She makes a home in all that's left of me and I don't care.

So long as she keeps saying my name.

"But it was enough," We walked the same streets as perfect strangers. We will not go home as such. Changed, by each other. With brutal violence that was somehow kind. "For me, I think, knowing I've made a home in your skull is enough."

Look at your reflection, Blue. Don't you see me there?

"We were never going to be saved, it didn't occur to me to try," I twist the blade at her gut, hands weak and wobbly. I've never cried where someone could see me, only ever in dark corners where shame would not escape.

Now, as I feel tears flow down my cheeks, it's all relief. "But maybe mattering isn't so bad, if you're the one I matter to."

We could have grown, with more time, into something special. But this twisted circumstance is all we have, and all that we ever will. So I lean into her warmth with my blade.

Not love, but the closest I'll ever come to it. Painful and bloody and so gloriously mine.

[cal attacks blue - sword]
RIqrb306UZsword
[3.5]

sword

[nolan goode 10m / kaitlin.]

My right hand reaches up, his chin held between my pointer finger and my thumb. It was enough / for me, it was enough / for me, enough / for me, for me, for me. What could I do for you, Cal?

I have only a price I can't pay, my life to give.

The future, a noose around our necks, we carry these words like bullets behind our front teeth & crawl out of our graves, animals abandoned. We were never going to be saved, something in my neck snaps, and my eyes sting, burn almost, until I realize I am crying, shaking all over. This is how we come back. This is how we know what we are capable of. A low vibration, a static thrumming through my whole body, I can’t catch my breath — “I save me,” breathless, electric, phantom fading, it feels like my voice doesn't really takes hold “I’m trying to save me,” if you're the one I matter to.

I matter / we matter, he and I; there is no story without the other at its roots.

It doesn’t change anything.

I want it to change everything / I want him carnally / I want with my heart in the pit of my stomach, something twisting inside me. Hunger as a hidden thing on fire. I let go of his chin and he has my bloody fingerprints on his face now where I’ve held him. Something lodges in my throat when I try to swallow, gooseflesh collects on my skin. His sword in my gut and my sword at his throat, his blood trickling down my knuckles; my eyes search for his hungrily / I hope he sees me shouting mine, mine, this blood is mine.

I take your life in my hands, Cal; "I don’t know how to say I’m sorry;" I don’t know how to say of course we have hurt each other, of course we have hurt each other.

blue attacks cal, sword.

joU78mMJc|sword
0

sword