Who Will Fall Far Behind - Ella

[chelsey]

U R S U L A L I B E R T I N E

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Who will love you?
Who will fight?
Who will fall?
Far behind.

The last time I stood in this room, it was Fitz Ripley’s undeniable tremors that quaked the disintegrating grounds beneath the soles of our feet. Figures in white suits led me to the door of his mortuary, a stoke look on their face as the brass hinges creaked open and the clicking of a knob rattled - “You have three minutes.”

When we were children, I made deals with the Ripley boys at a cost and a price much higher than it’s ultimate value. Our deals were always a formula, an equation of “If I -” and “Then you -” Their loyal service and the debt they owed me fueled my sick vanity and esteem, and their ignorance to my genuine intentions blinded their actions. When I needed something, when I wanted something to be done, it was always “Oh Little Ripley, won’t you make a deal with Ursula today?” And it was always the nodding of their heads as guilt poured forth from their naïve mouths, “Ursula, won’t you help me -?” But, when our youth diminished and melted away into cruel veracity, the light poured in their eyes and shined upon my rounded faults, so when I needed to fulfill my aching wretches of desires they turned me away with a crooked finger, and it suddenly became, “No, Ursula, no more deals.” My most loyal customers turned into the queen pawn of my own game, and - checkmate - I had lost. The silly Ripley boys, though, underestimated the desperation confidence a Libertine can posses, so, instead I shhhhed their truthful critiques behind the cobwebbed counters of our pawnshop, when the fresh dirt splayed across the brazen knuckles of their hands clung to my dimming demur as they offered up the day’s catch. “Little Ripley, I know you’re a thief, and I know your secret. Won’t you make a deal with me today?”

But, the deal I had to make with Fitz Ripley that day was one constructed out of an altogether different kind of desperation, leeched off the glistens and gleams of Penelope’s stark tears as they dropped onto the bloodless flesh of my hands - “Fitz, let’s make one last deal.” The seconds in our clock of three minutes raced down the waist of an hour glass, and gravity pushed me forward to him as I crossed the silent space between us and tried to gnaw away the familiar trembling in my hands. “If I protect your brothers -” because, even if I cannot give myself for Penelope Libertine, someone must, and, you, Fitz Ripley, must bring her home to me “- then you will protect my sister.”

His eyes flickered back and forth between confusion and anger, anger at the fact I’m spending our last three minutes together by asking him to give up his life for a girl who will die with a spear planted in her skull. When he opens his mouth to speak, to counter my philosophy and ask what makes me think he’d freely die for a Libertine, I answer his unspoken question before it even passes his lips. “I know you’d already give it away for her, anyway.” That’s why you volunteered, silly Ripley boy, that’s why you’re here now, that’s why I’m here.

Silence stretches and our time falls out the window as he stares at me long and hard. “Then, why bother asking, Ursula?”

The guilt thickly weaved in my voice cemented itself into an unreachable place in my ribs as I spoke to Little Ripley for one last time, the hands of a man in white pulling me away. “Agree to the deal, Ripley!” I beg as the door begins to close in front of me, my voice high and frantic as I try to claw my way out of Fate’s grip. My eyes meet his stale ones as he steps away from the closing door.

“I’ll bring her home to you.”

Fitz Ripley, you are in my debt.





When her aerial name settles over the sea of crowds like a fog of dusts, the faces around me turn to meet mine, smirks on their relieved lips. “Can you save her, still, Ursula?” They taunt as I watch her pale corpse body approach the steps of the stage. “Can you save her like how you saved Penelope Libertine?” I wait for Learna’s cries to echo over the square, begging me to “Save her, save her, save her, save her -” and I tell myself - Yes, yes I can save her, I will save her, I won’t let another one of my sisters drown. And the words “I volunteer!” rise like bile in my throat as her sturdy gaze washes over the shores of blatant relief. IwillsaveherIwillsaveherIwillsaveher -

Soon, Penelope Learna Libertine is gone.

And I have yet again failed at saving the ones I love.




Fitz Ripley’s piercing and dead gaze fills me as I cross over the old threshold, the repetitively familiar words, “You have three minutes,” a ghost in my head (like how Penelope is now a ghost in Learna’s). My arms aren’t fast enough when I reach out for her - desperate to remember the texture of her dress or the smell of Mama’s perfume on her skin. When my eyes clench shut, my vision reels back to exactly one year ago, where the edge of a silver blade dug deep into the smooth crevices of my skin, and Learna’s quivering voice echoed in my ears - “You didn’t make a deal with her.” The words were sharp enough to slice through the steel coils in my heart, and, like today, I melt into my sister’s embrace as the gashes on my wrist bleed, once again.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper into her hair as the tears finally ebb away at the corners of my blank eyes. I want to say more, but the speech clogs in my throat just as how the words “I volunteer!” had this morning and last year’s morning, so I only let my tears fade away into her flesh as my prayers of a quick and merciful slaughter drift away to a Heaven I’ll never reach.

With trembling fingers, I reach to my neck and strip away the pearl dangling from it. I place it over hers, instead, and watch it fall right next to her heart.

“I’ll see you soon, okay?”

And I told you to be patient.
And I told you to be fine.
I told you to be balanced.
And I told you to be kind.

NORMAL // ABAF99
EMPHASIS // 687859
CHARACTER SPEECH // 628F58
OTHER SPEECH // 847862
SOUNDTRACK //Skinny Love by Bon Iver

ooc -- I'll code this prettily laterrr. also using the same song from Pen's death reaction because ALL THE FEEELS

and also, I got permission to godmod from Windy woot \o/

[Tattletale]

.// learna antiopa libertine

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It was just like how I remembered it. Like as if Time never did run, with the walls still the same dark oak wood, the polished mahogany table bearing nothing but the fine layer of dust that settled everywhere. There were no windows, nothing to look out to except the blank wall in front of me, and I had been hearing the muffled hum of electricity somewhere above.

It turns out Time had been waiting for me — wanting for me. He lurked in the corner, watching, waiting, while I ran around in recklessly and unburdened by whatever there is. Naiveté used to play for my side, it used to hold me close like a darling Mother, to protect me from shame and from guilt — and upon Penelope's death, I feel her arms weaken, and I only hug her harder — to lift the corners of my chapped lips into a smile that knows

[/color] something; but not everything. A smile, so satisfied, but it appears on a whim and disappears just alike. It could've stayed, it should've, yes. But there was no rock, nothing for my waves to bounce back into the open sea. There was no foundation, there were none to be found to hold down that fleeting feeling. I wish I've found a honey, some sort of glue for it to stay, for those arms to shield me for an eternity. But they didn't, they faltered, and I was left scrambling to shape the melted wax that has become of my fortress.

And then, he jumped.[/color] Just like how I did when I saw the sea hiding behind their faces, when I saw that the light of the sun bearing down on them and shining off their greasy coiffs and tight braids and the glittering waves under the midmorning sun were very much the same.

I would be lying if I said that I didn't enjoy the fall. My muscles clung tightly to my bones as I sliced the wind, my arms outstretched far infront of me with my fingertips hungry for the splash. Falling was fine, so much fine when you knew someone was going to catch me, and I was more than sure that the ocean would.[/color] I plunged and it hugged me back, it hugged all of my entire being back. My fingers tried to grasp a piece of it, like it was a majestic queen and I was left clutching to the towering gown of frills and sashes. I waited a second, and then another, until it builded up into a minute. That was when the souls inside of me rammed themselves into the walls of my head. I had embraced the ocean, and now it wouldn't let me go.

Do you know now, Learna, how it feels?

A footstep, and then another. Each step seemed to fill my mind with too much, like those rare times when the sea turn its back to us and literally took our breaths away. The carpeting was plush, unlike our dying one back home. And then a beat. Home. Where I should've been, cradled in safe within those four walls. Where I would've been attending to the needs of the dead who just can't walk ahead and just be dead. But instead I was here, catapulted back to a year where I was scrawnier, where my hair was three inches shorter, where I hadn't grew by full two inches. I told you, Time never moved. He had been waiting for me. And as I plunged sat down on the worn yet well couch, distractions fled. The tide has receeded, the fishermen had gone back home. I was left with the desert, and a corpse underneath me. The same red hair, the same near-alabaster skin. Time had plucked her from beside me to inside of me.

(Her wails reverbrate to the wall and back. For now, there was no one to hear her. No one to hear her futile cries for help.) How it feels to really drown?

She was dead, and I was next.

My fingers were twitching. Where were my distractions? Come to me—[/color] the quaking of my body (I had a feeling I had done too much damage, and the souls weren't happy. Better keep their toy nice and shiny, but my insides were savaged)[/color] hadn't been that cruel to make a waterfall out of me once again, but the doors opened and maybe the waterfall wasn't me. Maybe it was Ursula, who came crashing down on me just like I had on her before. Her arms hold me tight, and I had to supress a small smile from coming out — I had found a better fortress than that treacherous naiveté. Maybe she really was the waterfall, because I feel hot tears down my back and it feels like currents sweeping me away, away from the shore. It wasn't long before I joined her in drowning ourselves, and this was only a crack in the ground. The worst was yet to come, but I had a feeling it would come faster than I had expected.

"I'm sorry," she whispers, and I wished that she would give me a bottle so I could keep those words in them and when uncorked, they would release into the air and I would hear them once again, in the midst of bodies near death and maybe I'm one of them. But unearthly things could only go so far, and by far I mean a dead end and my vacant body an inn.

She gives me her treasured necklace, a beautiful black one with gold veins grabbing on to it and a chain that had not a single speck of rust to be seen. I could only look at her, and then back at the necklace again, with confusion. "But you love it," I whispered, our voices now a hushed symphony under the still air of the room.

"I'll see you soon, okay?"

Not likely. I'm thirteen, with little training under my name, and was likely to die together with ten more tributes, my existence faded under the sea of blood covering lifeless bodies. Ursula was free, and it rang a tiny bell on how ironic it could be — she had caused more deaths than any sane person would be, and yet she remain unbounded, so far from Death's path.

But maybe she's running towards it.

I just manage a sad, small smile, because I had nothing else to say. What, that 'yes, I'll do my best'? My best would be a dust of speck on the Career's eye. That was it. That was all awaiting for me. Death, and nothing else.[/color] I had nothing else to do, nothing else to say, but then I feel a cold spot behind me, like a patch of liquid embedded on my dress. I didn't think her tears would reach that far, but then the crimson lines suddenly came into view that I wanted to bite my tongue down, pull my hair, scream for not noticing this the minute she came in.

I tried to stare them down, but they stared back. "Ursula, wh-what..."[/justify][/color]
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OOC -- [ Not even a new graphic nor lyrics </3 because it's like 8:30 but yay finally a reply~ ]

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