life stained crimson / krueger, day 3

[pogue]

G  A  M  B  L  E

So many promises made, none of them kept.

There's a moment of silence that clings to his skin as the dagger enters Olete's eye, a hundred more across his body turning to stare at the sight of his only ally stumbling backwards, away from the blade and the boy and the girl and whatever was left of her life. He hears the gasp that rockets through her lungs, feels his own in kind, witnesses her muscles tense one last time and feels his own contract as he readies the spear for the next blow.

Hears a cannon- doesn't hear the way his own heartbeat exists in an echo chamber inside his chest for the briefest of moments, skipping a beat and then two until it all finally comes to a crashing halt.

His only ally, witness, protector, friend not yet made lays dead on the ground in front of him. He stumbles backwards, away from the carnage and the regret lets his jaw hang slack in the wake of a cannon and a life gone, bloody spear held with loose wrist and shaking limbs, a scared boy and his shadow the only things left standing as he stumbles away from the fight.

He doesn't know if it's mercy or irony that they allow him to exit without chasing after him, that they rest easy over one corpse and watch another turn on shaking heel and dart away. Something tells him that it's the latter, that the soft glow of red that comes from the cameras as he walks by tells him its exactly what the audience wanted to see.

That the spotlight that comes to rest on his form, burning his skin and causing the eyes that lay heavy on his form to blink in a cascading wave, is everything he wanted and everything he deserves for the things he's done, and for everything he hasn't.

He lays standing on twisted skin and broken bones, so many eyes yet still not seeing the purpose of why he trudges forward into the forest and into the night, clutching his spear like its his last lifeline- realizing it is.

Alive, for now.

Because Olete had laid with his corpse and pressed her fingers into his blood with thread and needle in the digits, watched into the wake of the forest and listened to his ragged breaths grow softer and steadier, nursed his fever until fire only laid dormant in the unhealed wounds. Kept him alive against all else, and stood in front of sharpened still and rusted morals when they'd been aimed for him. Kept still in the midst of his tornado and died in his wake, a dagger to eye and a cannon and another ghost clinging to his shoulders all that was left of her.

He thinks she still might have been breathing when he fled, soft and quiet and ragged and forgotten, but he couldn't tell.

Too little of a man and too much of a monster to even stay close as she took her final breaths, performance closed.

But he'd always known that's what he was, right?