the bell tolls for thee || xov v. axyl, day 8

[august vance d7b [Bella]]

The morning after Ines and Maggie died, not a single stormcloud remained to weep for them. The sun warmed their spring terrarium, constant and indifferent. Xov wondered what to make of their story, these two people who had taken care of each other, despite the wall between them, only to die a few hours apart. It seemed so futile, like a bad joke with no punchline.

The thought soured her mood as she stuffed her meager belongings back into her satchel, chewing on some canned food she’d found in the lodge. Beefaroni, eaten cold with no utensils. The day before, she couldn’t bring herself to eat with the memory of Maggie’s busted skull still present. When she awoke the next morning with the image still there, she decided to eat anyway, if only for the hope of stopping her hands from trembling. They hadn’t stopped since she’d wrenched the glaive from Maggie’s rigid hands, while her own weapon had revealed the contents of the dead girl’s brain.

They went on trembling regardless. They were still trembling when she fastened her makeshift sandals around her feet, a thin layer of woven reeds separating her soles from the earth. The more she tried to steady herself, the more her body denied her rest.

Xov let Go-go carry her through the woods without knowing where they were heading– three wanderers, two of them furry and unbothered; one of them chopped up, sullen, and bruised both inside and out, staring blankly into the passing trees. She was tired of wandering in circles in this arena, and of circles in general. Thought maybe the shape should have an easier exit.

Go-go smelled someone before Xov could see them. A low growl rumbled under the saddle, waking Gus, who was sleeping against the horn. Bristling, Xov pulled the bear to a stop. ”What?” she asked with half annoyance, half trepidation. Dismounting, she looked around them. The bear’s amber eyes were fixated on the space between the trees directly front of them, his body a rigid point, nostrils flaring on his black snout. A hunched shape appeared from the underbrush.

"Axyl?” Xov recalled aloud the name of the boy she had kicked out of the way to retrieve a sleeping bag from the Cornucopia pile. The thought of them all grasping tooth-and-nail for plush blankets seemed so ridiculous now that the snow had melted.

Her heart began its rapid drumbeat, cautioning her to run, but she stayed put, reaching cautiously over her shoulder for the unfamiliar weapon she now carried. The glaive, now washed clean of her own blood, was no less awkward than the pike she had used for the last eight days, but bore the promise of a new approach to everything.

The most superstitious part of her had hoped that Maggie’s weapon would imbue her with some kind of athletic prowess. In her head, Maggie’s calculated movements with the weapon played on repeat like a training montage. Practicing what she could visualize now had the potential to draw the line between life and death.

It made sense in theory, but she was still a scrawny teenage girl without much practice to speak of. She thought she had stayed alive this long simply because she wanted to live so badly. Or maybe she was just lucky.

Xov’s fingers tightened and loosened reflexively on her weapon, itching to finish the only thing that could make them stop trembling for good: to return her to the arms of her family. But despite Maggie’s taunting, she was not someone who could attack wordlessly, the way Garnet and Rhys had killed Juno. Even though it hurt so much more when she forced herself to meet Axyl’s eyes.

”I didn’t mean to break your leg,” she began in a formal tone. ”I would say sorry if it mattered anymore. I…Well, I am sorry. But we have to keep hurting each other.”

I have to hurt him, she assured herself as she closed the distance.

It was like a dam breaking, a release of potential energy, when she allowed her body to do what it was bristling for–a pulled-back bowstring, a coiled spring.

The blade thrusting forward; up. The only way out.

{xov attacks axyl, glaive}
O_1GAUqCThglaive
{9.0}

glaive

[pogue]

Axyl sits with Bennie's body for what feels like an eternity after pulling the bat, tooth and nail, from the soft part of the beast's neck. Listening to growls turned whimper turned whisper turned silence, shaking of a paw turned twitching turned stoic, waiting for a cannon that never comes. They collect Ines's body on a schedule from across the way, tossing up a few warning signs of red glare and lightning too close for comfort, trying to get him to move away from the scene of his own haunting so that the illusion isn't broken. 

He calls their bluff not on the back of his own fearlessness, but on the fragmented pieces of his own shattered ego.

Carving into him like knives, flesh and sinew pulled apart and threads of muscles ripped anew, Axyl can't bring himself to move away from a crime scene, lets the blood seep into him and dry with a palm resting on Bennie's back all the while, listening for something anything other than the sound of his own heartbeat hammering in hollow chest, dead eyes focused on the soft lull of the ocean waves- methodically pulling and crashing into the shore in rhythmic procession.

A small part of him believes that, if he sits there long enough, unmoving and silent and broken and bent, that all his ghosts will forget he ever existed in the first place.

The larger part of him, afraid to look over his shoulder on the merit of what might look back at him, knows he's too far gone for anything as hopeful as that.

It's why the numbness sets in like clockwork, why he's grateful when it finally does. Refuge, solace, there's a tingling in his cheeks where the tears once arced and bent down skin, dried quickly in the winds and left to blot at the corners of his eyes. He rises slowly and with heavy heart, digits still wrapped tight around his weapon and blood still clinging to the scraps of nails. None his own, all his making. 

His familiar still sits in a heap of abandoned clothes and blankets, left over bite of an icy arena still wrapped within the folds, and it's all Axyl can do to pause and unfurl the creature from where it rests, avoid the way it stares at him with the same expectation of going along on their next adventure, bury the feeling that he knows he should take it along- wrestle the fact that he knows what will happen if he does. Bennie's howls carve through his mind, tears form at the edges of his eyes. "You're gonna stay here buddy, okay?"

Speaking to a creature of comfort that doesn't know it's own existence, what it means, what it's done. Jett curls a paw around his finger and instinct causes him to pull his hand away, sever the ties and bury the bodies. "Here-" He pulls his food from duffel bag and places it softly next to the creature, catches it curiously following him with a silence he hasn't heard in days, a sadness he's known since before he stepped into the arena.

He leaves a new kind of ghost by the shore, forces himself to ignore the cries of a creature better off alone than with him, swipes away the tears just to convince himself it was worth it.

He's still numb by the time the morning sun arcs above the clouds the next morning, sleep having found him curled up and haggard, ragged breaths and broken heart. Auto-pilot runs in his veins, instinct in his bones as he grabs what's left of his things and moves somewhere, anywhere. His steps are not his own anymore, guided by a higher power and a force too lethal to bear- blood and ichor on the horizon.

"Axyl?" 

Old wounds, new beginnings. He turns from his spot in the brush and is met with the sight of Xov staring back at him. Blood coats both of their uniforms, and Axyl lets his gaze travel down to the glaive within her grasp- recognizes he's outclassed by steel and willpower alone, gulps and swallows and readies himself for the end he's always known was coming. The words dance at the edge of his mind.

You broke my fucking leg. 

"I didn't mean to break your leg." 

Axyl sits in silence at the words, watches her struggle with her own mortality and faces his own. "I would say sorry if it mattered anymore..." 

It doesn't, it can't- never did.

"I... well, I am sorry. But we have to keep hurting each other."

"Bit late on the draw there with the apology." Axyl snaps back, voice solid, unforgiving, empty, numb. 'But, you got that last part right." Even as the blade thrusts towards him he stands for a second, willing his muscles to move, forcing the ghosts to wait if only one more moment for him to join them.

[Axyl attacks Xov ; spiked bat]
_KvFdT6K0lspiked blunt
[7]

[Self Defense]
3-8

spiked blunt·3-8

[august vance d7b [Bella]]

”Bit late on the draw there with the apology,” Axyl bit back, ”But, you got that last part right.”

He swung, the heavy end of the spiked bat hurtling towards her face with unexpected strength. As she jumped back, the light caught a dull glimmer of the dirty nails jutting out from the wood, just before one of the rusty points tore a ragged piece of flesh from her chin. Pain flashed through her bone, into her neck, her teeth knocking together from the force of the blow.

Hissing, she cradled her jaw with her hand, the wound burning from the sweat and salt of her palm. It’s nothing, she told herself over the pounding in her ears, urging both hands to hold on to the hilt of her glaive.

”Ouch,” she grunted, a million obscenities waiting in her throat, but a thread still held her soul on, and she would not lose herself now. ”Did you find that thing? Or did you make it? It seems… appropriate I guess.”

Examining the weapon with apprehension, she wondered if Axyl had killed with it already. He must have, if he made it this far. The thought of it taking another piece of her made her skin crawl.

Had gentle Ines fallen victim to that terrible spiked club? Rhys, or Hal? Or maybe Axyl had been hiding in the woods this entire time–she hadn’t seen him until today. It didn’t matter anymore–she had no one left to defend. Marcus, Juno, Ines, Marceline–they were all gone, every person who had shown her a lick of kindness in this place. And there was no more reason to avenge; no moral ground to stand on, now that she was a killer herself.

It would never go away, that image of insides coming out, the pool of blood emerging suddenly from Maggie’s skull like a secret. Every muscle protested the movements that would make it happen again, to extinguish the lights in Axyl’s eyes forever.

No, no, no, no, no.

Deep down, she knew it would always–could only–happen like this. It would only hurt more to dwell on a thousand alternate realities in which she killed someone who deserved it. A thousand possibilities that didn’t exist. Maggie’s secondhand advice resonated in the corners of her mind. Get real.

Four of them left. She was three cannons away from freedom, meeting her family again in the land of the living. She had to try.

”I would try to make this painless if I could,” she lamented as she aimed her glaive for his heart. It was another useless apology, even if she didn’t say sorry.

{xov attacks axyl, glaive}
x8hh2rRaRjglaive
{stabbed in chest}

{sd on axyl’s attack}
3-8

glaive·3-8