every sleep a little death { rowan's last }

[✨ zozo.]

{ disclaimer } 

Please, for the love of god, if you're thinking about jumping this thread and attacking anyone involved in it, then please, please, please don't. I just want one final send off. You'll have your bloodshed later but please know that if you do decide to ruin this, you really will be screwing yourself over. I hate to have to post this disclaimer at all but unfortunately I have to add this precaution and warning. Please, out of respect, think before you act. Thank you.

[presto][/presto]

{ rowan }

just when we think there is a chance 

there is never quite enough time left 

to prove our beliefs, to prove we are strong 

Monsters aren't lurking in the shadows of my mind or the corners of my conscience, nor are they placed between the spines of trees in the dark or snaps of branches in the daylight. Monsters are real. I can see them in the eyes of these children as they circle me. This place turns them into terrible, bloodthirsty, desperate creatures. I cannot run this time, but my god do I try.

I make the mistake of looking back.

And then they strike me down.

we just need some sleep 

we just need some time  

to catch our breath 

There is red everywhere - how fitting. My ear is on fire. I cannot breathe. I cannot register anything but pain - scorching, white-hot, incandescent pain. They've been waiting seventeen years to catch me and I've been running away all that time. But I'm too tired to run. Too broken. I succumb to my nightmares, letting out a gargled scream as the monsters attack me and I am broken apart - waiting and waiting and waiting to wake up.

"Please-" I sputter to no-one and anyone. "Please help- "

Wake up, Rowan.

But I don't wake up. Instead, I fall. And yet as a blade slices at my chest and I feel my body jerk in a final defeat and fall backwards slowly and all at once, I do not hit the dirt-covered ground. Arms encompass me, breaking my fall, and I close my eyes and let them drag me away from this madness. (This must be death - comforting, freeing, almost like I'm flying.)

Thank you, I want to whisper to my saviour. But my mouth cannot move.

A voice calls my name.

Rowan!

I'm so tired.

Rowan! Rowan!

For a second, I slip into darkness.

the fear that we feel  

in our troubled hearts 

is told to be what will make us last 

 

Their voices pull me back. In a blink of an eye I am looking at the sky and curious faces. (I flinch, but their eyes aren't twisted with rage and fear. They look sad, almost. Scared. But not scared enough to hurt me.) Everything hurts and everything is slowing down, a name floats to the surface of my mouth to join a face looking back down at me. Stella. And  Key, and Simon, and the others in the distance approaching with cautious steps instead of violent intentions. I want to say thank you but I can't. Instead I force a smile with blood-coated lips and reach up to grab her hand. They are not monsters - they are my saviours.

"Th-th-th-tha-thank-"

(It's too much. It's too much and not enough.)

With every syllable I speak my grip on Stella's hand tightens.

"I'll see you soon" I hear, a cacophony of canon-blasts and screams and footsteps and words fading in and out of the sky above. Towering over me, I feel warmth trembling at my forehead. I nod, slowly, even though every movement sends fire through my veins. Ice leaks from my eyes and I begin to shake - it hurts so much but I still don't want to go. 

"Sleep," someone whispers after a while, as if they have known all this time that that is what I've really been fighting for. Battling fear for so, so long, my fight stretching across days and nights and weeks and years. I'm not scared anymore. There is no more fear in my universe.

I do not slip into the comfort of darkness this time.

I fall.

we just need some sleep 

to dream away these fears 

we just need some time to clear our crowded minds

[Stare]

02:03:47OO

so let the light guide your way
hold every memory as you go
and every road you take
will always lead you home

Everything feels so cold.

It reminds me of my session before the Gamemakers, the way the blood felt too cool as it pooled around my toes. The way my insides felt the same. I know this is wrong. It’s something ingrained in me so deeply that no amount of excuses can make it go away. But a stronger part of me murmurs that right and wrong doesn’t matter anymore, and just like that I feel the numbness frost over my conscious and freeze my soul. Even my heart seems to stop beating for a moment. This is what is necessary for survival. There is nothing wrong with selfishness, not here. Something deep inside me, the part that remembers the books with the brave heroes and evil villains that Mama used to read to me, screams in protest.

But I don’t believe in bedtime stories.

My muscles strain with the ache of dragging her along, feet scrambling back to drag her away from the chaos. In that moment I’m not thinking about myself, or even Stella and Simon. All I’m thinking about is the girl in my arms and the amount of blood coming from her and the way her leg is so swollen and distorted. My breaths come in great gasps, as if the more I breathe the less pain I’ll feel blooming in my chest. It doesn’t help. Instead, it makes it spread like poison, and all I can do is whimper and bleed and stumble as I pull the dying girl away from the fight in a desperate attempt to save her. My mind jumps from the pain to its source. Kirito. We watched the stars together. We talked. We drank. And perhaps that’s the thing that makes it hurt so much more - the fact that I was stupid enough to get so close to the other tributes that in one death I feel the loss of both the victim and the killer.

Eventually we reach a quiet place, an empty place, where ghosts haunt the ruins of everything that once was. My foot catches on a bit of rock and I cry out as I stumble back, falling to my knees and doing everything I can to break the fall for her. I wish those eyes would open, if only so I could remember their exact color. I adjust her head gently in my lap, focusing on her face, wanting to remember everything about it. The moments are limited - soon it will be a corpse and not a girl that I am holding, and I’m desperate to hold every bit of her I can within me. There’s a desperate urge to do something, to heal her, to press life back into her wounds and stop it from pouring out as liquid scarlet all over my hands and the ground. I’ve always been practical, though, and even if I don’t know much about people, I know plenty about machines. Eventually there’s a point when there are too many broken parts, and there’s just nothing you or anyone can do. That doesn’t stop me from crying for her, though.

It takes time, but I slowly register other presences. I don’t acknowledge them, not until another approaches and I lift my head and almost cringe away. I know that face. But is he just another Kirito? Just another mistake? My muscles tense in anticipation for the fight, but it doesn’t come. He looks nearly as broken as we do, and my shoulders slump. In that moment I feel so pathetic, reaching out to someone who isn’t even my ally, but I do because he’s the only one who will understand even though tears are streaming through the blood on my face and my voice is half choked through the sobs. “I c-can’t fix her.”

I don’t know how long we all stay this way, mourning a death that hasn’t even happened yet, but eventually I hear a strangled sound coming from the girl in my lap. "Th-th-th-tha-thank-" She can’t finish, and I swallow back more tears. My fingers brush along her face briefly. I want to remember her. I need to remember her. I watch her fluttering eyes, her heaving chest, the way she shakes. She must be so scared. “I’ll see you soon,” I whisper, forcing my voice to be steady and gentle and calm and everything that I’m not.

When a part of a machine breaks, it needs to be replaced by something newer and stronger in order to function again. The thing in my chest is still beating, but it hurts so badly that it must be broken. So I allow the ice to frost over it, reinforcing all the cracks and locking out the pain. I make it like steel, and the tears stop flowing. I will not feel. I can’t feel. I got too close this time, but never again.

My gaze drifts up to the sky, a promise forming behind my lips. Kirito Miristioma, I will slaughter you. But not today. Today, what’s left of my heart belongs to Rowan Combe and her dying breaths.

I hold her until she’s gone.

it's been a long day without you my friend
and i'll tell you all about it when i see you again
we've come a long way from where we began
oh i'll tell you all about it when i see you again
when i see you again

[Avalon]

☽ farewell, rowan ☾

S U M M I T

trying to survive this endless fight
if we shoot them down, we can make it right
and they light the sky as they multiply

Everything around me flares up into a frenzy. A wildfire that blazes rapidly, quickly, devouring the good and innocent. I couldn't fully wrap my head around everything, to be quite honest. And to say that I was ready for what was to come would be an overstatement, something that was surely false. Truth in the matter was that I'm not ready, not entirely. While I felt the burning flame in my heart, one that rose and blitzed at the sudden adrenaline and determination and courage. It wasn't something that would so easily be stomped out in even the best effort of someone who demanded control. No. It's here to stay, and consume the wrong do-er's, those that have crossed the line set in mind. A wildfire to burn the kingdom that protected us, the four walls that guarded us, protecting us from the outside world, are crumbling down to bits and pieces.

A harsh, cruel world unravels before my very eyes, and it's more than I can handle. But it was perseverance of the mind that would pull me together and perhaps, just perhaps, I would survive for longer than expectation. And shutting down and out, escaping to an imaginary world, one that struggled to surface, wasn't acceptable in times like these. Reality is taking over brutally and perhaps it is time to let go of the world that I once dreamed of, slipping from consciousness.

Because once you slip.
You fall. 

no matter what they try,

they won't take away our will to fight
so if we shoot them down, we can make it right

Blood. Screaming. Fighting. Death. Cannons.
It's happening all too quickly, and all I can register is the pain that blossoms like flowers in bloom. It was one hit— two hits? I couldn't tell exactly, and in that moment the pain was forgettable, as though it was something that decorated my body. It didn't necessarily occur to me that I'd been struck, as a long, yet shallow slice slithered up my forearm. It was the scarlet drops of blood, that created a stained red trail, that alerted me more than anything, and with knowledge of it came the fiery sensation of metal upon flesh as it rips open new, fresh wounds.

Blacking out.
Vague moments fly through my mind, and with it came the memory of broken bones and blood that splattered like new gunshot wounds across the cornucopia. Coming two and two with my senses that managed to kick in once the rally died down, dwindling only to the final few people. And when I did, I searched desperately for my allies, those who we promised to protect with our lives for. However, among the remaining, they were not the heads to count for. But they wouldn't leave me? Would they?

["No, of course they wouldn't leave you!"]

["Yes. They left you, just like everyone else has. You're not worth it."]

It was a constant struggle, battling on inside the closed privacy of my mind, of my soul. To be left alone, in a dark place such as this, I surely wouldn't survive all on my own. I'm not going home, not even with my most valiant efforts, because my death had already been marked. And it was true, I couldn't live without the help of others, and for seventeen years, I was a dead girl walking. It was inevitable to escape my fate, one that was set upon me years and years in advanced.

For I am already dead.
And whether I liked it or not,
I am going home.
Whether it be a victor
or in a crate marked,
Stella Summit. District Seven.

they broke the walls we guarded
but we don't care about it
we'll finish what we started
so promise me that

And it was in that moment.
Time seemed to fall to a halt, the world working in slow motion as my attention shifts from the bloodbath to the heart stopping image that burns into my eyes, and etches itself deep into my brain. My feet and body involuntarily moving as one, make a straight line towards the figures that were disappearing into the distance. For it was Kiena and Simon, and it had escaped my memory for a slight second, right before it hit me like a train upon tracks. And I was stuck, at a loss for an abundance of words, except for one that I could only manage to slip from my tongue. 

"Rowan!"

The sound of my feet beating against the ground was at a perfect rhythm with my heart. I could feel the intense throbbing in my chest, and while my lungs burned, begging for air that failed to sneak into my airway, I couldn't stop. I was like a stampede of animals, of beasts, that raced through the fields, alerting that danger was nearing, but it wasn't for me. No. It was danger for Rowan, and it was something I wish I could stop. To tell her to persevere. To tell her to keep running, to run with me as the world came crumbling down upon us. To tell her that I'll stay by her side, as long as she doesn't give up. And as long as she doesn't give in.

["Don't succumb."]

And as I approach, heaving for the air that my corrupted lungs rejected for so long, I couldn't focus on anything else. Short breathes filled me up and while on the verge of tears, ones that threatened to race down the apples of my cheeks, I didn't speak. All I could do was comfort her, in her remaining few minutes— seconds, and so I did, for if these were mine, I'd want nothing more than to pass in the hands of those I care for. I kneel beside her, and gently wrap my hand around hers, in an attempt to keep her safe in my embrace, along with Kiena, who holds her head up right upon her lap, to keep her here with us, because we need her. I need her.

"Th-th-th-tha-thank-"

With every syllable she manages to release, her hand grips mine tighter and tighter.

"Sleep—"

My voice whispers to Rowan, as she lays as though she is sleeping peacefully. The tears threaten to pour out profusely, but it's for a good reason. And to be seen as weak for crying over the death of a friend, that is something that I do not care for. If crying is a sign of weakness, then so be it. But it is more than that. Rowan is more than just a friend. She is family. She is from home. And home is where she is will be going, waiting for me. 

Slipping my hand into my pocket, I retrieve my District Token. It was seemingly a plain, old vintage journal that had nothing but doodles and writing along several pages. But once you hit the middle, where the heart lives and the strongest part of the spine, you'll find what I love most. Lying in the middle is an array of crushed flowers, that scatter upon several pages, picked from the gardens that surrounded the little floral shop back home. Picking up a white lily from a page, I gently kiss the petals and lay it upon Rowan's chest. I leave her a little piece of home in her final moments.

I take a step back from Rowan and everyone, only to bump into the brick chest of a boy that comes from the same batch as I. My gaze instantly fixates on the boy, Sue, meeting his and it was in the second that it did, that I completely lost touch of of my world. A reaction so immediate and upon instinct, I send my face burrowing into his chest and the tears finally manage to spur out and create trails that never ended until they dropped off the tips of my chin. It was in my suffocating embrace, choking on the tears and heaves that forced themselves from my body that I felt his arms wrap around me. And after several minutes had passed, it was in complete reaction that was controlled by no one other than myself I slipped my head upwards and pecked his soft lips with mine, the scruff of his beard against my face.

we'll be the lionhearted
for we don't care about it
we'll finish what we started
so promise me that they'll fall

[Deleted]

S U E  T A T E

He shoots, one hand on the string while the others toys with the strings attached to his morals, plucking the threads until finally they snap

and they fall and fall and fall 

He breathes, one two three one two three one tw- until his own breathes catch in his throat, the hands of his memories wrapping around his oh so strong neck, choking out every ruthless ambition and untrusting sentence he'd ever muttered. The Bloodbath swarmed around him, bodies darting in and out, through and around his vision, slashing and slicing blobs peering at him from the safety of the corner of his eyes.

Their weapons glint too, but none of them touch him. 

He bites his tongue as a voice, a distant voice yells something at him, venom clinging to her words, poison dripping out of her lips.

For a moment, anger flies up in his gut, but the roar of sword against sword quells it and he moves on from the stale poison that hung in between him and whoever had spat the sentence. 

One hand on a bow that refused to hit anyone, the other rubs away the droplets of blood that cling to the lashes, to the lies of his eyes, blood drops racing down the contours of his face, clinging desperately to the curvature of his cheek before they fall

and they fall and fall and fall 

Elya Johnwayne's body falls with them, and Sue's jaw meets it on the ground.

There's an axe in her head, splitting it open like his lips split when he tells a lie. And there's bits of blood, brain matter, and Noah's imprint on the handle, dripping from it's blade.

Time does not stop, and as he meets Noah's eyes for a split second, he feels the branded 10 on his back burn through his skin, again and again and again. 

Time carries on, and it drags him with it, hand in hand with the lies that grasp at his neck.  

He does not wake up when he pulls and plucks the strings, watching them fly past every tribute he aims at. He does not wake up when his hands grasp at item after item, clutching at the edges of each lifeline before stuffing it into his backpack. He does not wake up when his eyes dart from tribute to tribute, watching their backs as they run to and fro, weapons glinting in the harsh sunlight of the arena. He does not wake up when Noah's arm brushes against his, leaving a birthmark of blood and death on the sleeve of his coat, fleeing before Sue could say- could do anything to defend him. 

He does not wake up when he watches the backs of the other tributes fade into the distance.

He wakes up when he sees a nameless, memory engraved tribute strike down a girl who's swatting slap still stings on his hand.

(and what happened there) 

And he nearly drops his bow as the tribute from One flee away from them, breaths counting one two three

The bow hangs loosely, interlaced between his fingers, dripping his regrets off of the string.

Three taps on his shoulder and as he turns one hand wraps around his beard and she yanks.

One snuffed yelp of pain that no one hears, theres tears that sit in the edge of his eyes. The girl from four, her fist whitens as she rips one two three hairs one two three hairs from his cheek. The bow clatters to the ground, landing in a puddle of someone's blood before leaning up against the folds of his pants. 

She speaks, but unlike the words of whomever had spat at him during the bloodbath, the poison and venom that hangs from her words goes straight into his system, mixing with his blood stream as he cringes in pain, eyes opening and closing in pain. 

"When I first heard there was a bearded lady, I imagined something more impressive." 

Ice and stone, her words come from an abyss that he's only just stepped into. 

She leans, one two three one two three inches closer, until her breath rips at his irises, scratching into his memory.

"I am not impressed." 

She tightens, just for a moment, and he winces again, a grunt of pain bubbling up from his throat. 

"Better try harder next time or it's —"

She slices at not her throat, but her chin, issuing a lifeline that only he understands. And the fear gurgles up out of his throat as she lets go, one cough two cough three cough until he loses count, letting a glob of spit escape his lips and splatter onto the ground, bits of it hanging off of his beard, hand in hand with the words of the girl. 

His mind screams to run as she dislodges an axe from Elya Johnwayne's head and rips it at him, metal glinting in the sunlight. But he doesn't, even though his mind is awake and his legs are at the ready. Instead, the hulking sliver of death buries itself in between his feet, spewing up dirt, dust, and every figurative drop of piss that had escaped his body at the fear of the words of Gunner La Torre.

"Don't fuck with my things." 

Noted. He thinks, one gulp cramming fear down his throat. 

It takes twenty counts of three of his heart slamming against the inside of his chest until the thoughts of Rowan Combe fill his mind.

When he was younger, he used to partake in the completion of puzzles with his Grandmother, who had decided to throw herself into the activity as a way to not let death take her just yet. And sometimes, when the digits of a little boy scrambled up the pieces, there'd be one that'd simply be missing, gone from the existence of an image. An absence, a missing ink, a broken piece of the puzzle. 

That's what he feels like now. A missing puzzle piece, a broken image of the forests of District Seven. 

An empty space of a girl who'd told him that it's rude to point. 

But she was home, and watching her fall fall fall had made him oh so angry. 

Boil, boil, sweat and toil. He stands with his fists clenched in the middle of the Bloodbath, staring at the Wealth that sat in front of them. 

Teeth grind as he grabs the fruits of worthless labor, pointless sweat and miraculous struggle, made worthless by so many factors in front of him. He knows Wyatt and Maya are here with him, but the boy from Seven does not know how to express the anger or the turmoil that is inside of him.

It's going to be okay.
Ha, he laughs at the phrase. 

The beeps come in threes, the sky bellowing at them from above. 

Beep.

Beep.

Beep. 

His eyes follow the souls of the dead ambitions, up and up and up until he spots three red balloons, falling slowly from the abyss above. 

Three things land at the hopeless boy's feet, nestled against the blood splatters of his shoes. A marker lands atop his head, sliding down onto his shoulders. Two packages of lighter fluid on his left foot, landing in the puddle of blood he's standing in.

And on his right foot sits a water gun. 

Taunting, taunting, he picks it up and hurls the children's toy across the bloodbath, watching it clatter clatter to a halt across the way. One hand wraps around the lighter fluids, tucking them into his coat pocket as the other hand grabs the marker, clamping down on the cap and popping it off, twirling the marker between digits. 

One stride, two stride, he grabs a piece of canvas paper and rips it in two, folding one half and tucking it into his back pocket before slamming the other half of the paper down against a crate. 

Scribble, scribble, his sweat dribbles down and falls onto the paper, a stain of indecency. 

He tucks the marker back into his pocket before holding the paper above his head for all to see.

THANKS FOR MAKING THIS WORTHLESS. 

It sits atop the paper, stained in this hell. 

One stride, two stride, he pulls a match from his backpack and twirls it between his fingers, standing above the watergun that he'd thrown across the Cornucopia

He spits sideways before going to work.

One, two, three pulls and he rips a short metal bar from a crate, throwing it down next to the gun. And sly fingers pull duct tape from bag, holding the bar in place as he wraps it around and around, taping bar to cheap metal. 

There's a match taped to the other end of the stick, directly in front of the spray nozzle, wrapped in sheets of duct tape. And he's pouring one of the bottles of lighter fluid into the water capsule, worthless anger fueling, driving his actions. 

It's makeshift chaos, born from anger and built from spite and regrets. The match is lit on the end, smoke rising from the edges.

One pump, two pump, three pump, he points it at the nearest wooden crate. 

Rowan had once told him it was rude to point, but with the way the nozzle was pointing, he thinks he has a right to disagree. 

A cloud of flame swallows the crates in front of him, setting them ablaze. 

One pump two pump three, he repeats the process until all that is left of the wealth are smoldering ashes and their worthless struggles, a piece of canvas paper sitting on top of a crate, half burned through. 

THANKS FOR 

Thanks for nothing. 

He exits the pile of ashes with a searing 10 on his back, and the spoiled fruits of his labor on his shoulders. 

"We have to find Noah." 

It's a silence between the trio, and he hopes that a fiery outburst doesn't warrant the departure of his own allies from him. Eye glance, eye glance, every one two three step he takes he has to make sure to hold a breath so he can listen to make sure their footsteps are behind him. 

We have to find Noah. We have to find- 

He stops, death in his tracks and training scores and flamethrower watergun on his back. Because in front of him there's a puzzle being put together piece by agonizing piece. He blinks, biting his lip until he tastes his lies. 

"I want to go over- I have to go over there." 

He's scribbling something on the other half of the canvas paper he took, sharpie in hand before his lips part again, one footstep taken before the words do.

"Please." 

He hopes they follow him but, this time, he doesn't hold his breaths to listen for their footsteps. 

He is silence, wordless, worthless, and unforgiving. And as he walks, ever so slowly, ever so unsure towards what could be his death or something even worse, there's a breeze that picks itself up from the bowels of whatever hell lay below, howling through the arena and blowing his breeze hairs left and right, forwards and backwards. 

He shivers, not because of the wind, but because the flame on the edge of the flamethrower he possesses had gone out far too quickly to abolish the icy feelings left on his memory. 

Rowan Combe was dead, she had to be.

She has to be. He tells himself.
She has to be alive still. He lies to himself. 

He takes place directly behind Stella and for the first time since the Bloodbath ended, there is nothing that is clawing it's way out of his throat. No gurgles, no whimpers, no grunts and certainly no words. 

What happened here He nearly thinks.
But it is rude to point, and even ruder to think.

And so he stands silent, grimace on his face as the puzzle piece in front of him fades from existence. 

It's Kiena that notices him first. The fixer, he'd broken a vase with her and, while his clumsy giant fingers had done their role in only breaking it more, she had fixed the object. Good as new. He'd like to say. 

“I c-can’t fix her.” 

He jumps, slightly, lies forcing him back down to the ground, before his eyes flit over to hers, bottom lip quivering before he bites down hard on it, pain washing away grief in a desperate act to retain manliness. 

He opens his mouth to speak, but all that can escape is a half word, a half cry of the loss of a piece of home. He nods once. Not twice, not three times. 

Stella takes one two steps backwards into the chest of a boy who'd had the indecency to point out her disability, and it is all he expects to be slapped or beaten or even killed. For these were not his allies, and although one was of home and the other of an attempt to fix, he was still their enemy. 

He feels her tears hit his chest first, and her head second. 

And he watches, he feels her break beneath his chin, emotions spilling out and leaving tear scars all across his chest. And he has never been one for emotion, but rather a cloak of lies and deceit, false truths and uttered regrets. 

He wraps one arm around her, and then the other, placing one too large palm on her back. Fitting, how placing one palm on the back of a girl in his District had gotten him into this mess.

And yet another palm on another back of a broken girl. 

He bites his lip, tears staining the corners of his eyes as he feels her every weep in between his breaths. Don't say it. He thinks, teeth pressing to lip. 

"It'll be alright. She-She'll be alright, wherever she is." 
His lies grin and cackle, tightening their hold on the back of his mind. 

He doesn't know if it's a relief or a grievance that he shuts up as soon as her lips touch his, for it's one of the rare shreds of human emotion he'd felt in his life. 

When he was seven, he'd convinced Loraine, a girl in his class, to kiss him through a white lie he'd told. 

And it'd been lip to lip, harmless smooch, but what he felt as Stella pecked his was an actual attraction from Her to Him.

And for the second time that day Sue Tate felt fear rush through his veins. 

He nearly opens his mouth to say something before Rowan herself mutters what he can only assume are her last words, pain and sadness in her words. 

He swears, he can feel her pain, he wants to feel her pain.

"Th-th-th-tha-thank-"

Stop. Please, Rowan, stop. Because he doesn't know if it hurts him as much as it should, but he knows it hurts her and

and he supposes, if someone from his home is hurt, is hurt and dying, then he's hurt and dying too. 

One moment, two moments too long that he sits in pain before he breaks the embrace between Stella and himself, slipping a piece of crumbled up paper into her coat pocket. 

His eyes are on the ground, and he swears he can feel Rowan step away from Stella with him.

We will kill him. All of them. 

I hope I don't have to see you again, Stella.

                                             - Sue    

It was rude to point, yes.

It was rude to think, yes.

It was even ruder destroy a piece of his own District's puzzle.   

[D6f Carmen Cantelou [aza]]

M A Y A X I A O Q I N G

I emerged from the monstrosity of the cornucopia like a silhouette of myself, wishing I really was as insubstantial as the shadows so that my insides might not feel so mangled.

The pitter-patter of footsteps either side of me forces lies into my head, a certain happiness and security which feels nothing but ice: difficult to take a grasp upon, the sensation on your skin - numbing; the raw substance eating away at your innocence until finally there's a release.

Something we're all searching for.

As we turn away from the treasure trove of plasma and gore, my mind replays the image of the girl dying: Elya Johnwayne. The blood-boiling sound of her skull splitting into two, her sense and wits exposed to the tyrannical world. Her heritage displaying itself like art in a gallery, except it stains our Earth with venom and woe so that every inch of its beauty is drawn out with heartbreak and hurt.

My eyes traced the axe in between the woven bones to Noah; a face bitter-sweet with satisfaction and regret. His essence imprinted onto the weapon which caused the death of someone so brutal and cold. Reflecting upon the vision, she deserved it. For being an utter bitch in the training centre and thinking she had it all at the tip of her finger. I hated her.

And now she's dead.

He's gone too, and with every part of my body and mind: I pray he comes back to us. All I can picture him as is a murderer splattered with oozing crimson; cuts and bruises littering his skin, metal seeping into his flesh: indifferent and stone. I need to know he's not like that. I need to know he's still alive.

I trail behind Wyatt and Sue now, the crackling of a fire born from malice and sin echoing into my ear. Behind us, the smoke rises up from the generous pile of what were once masterpieces to them and I, now nothing but charred and broken by a single spark.

"We have to find Noah."

The words penetrate my ears involuntarily. We have to find him. Dead or alive, I just need to see his face again and feel the same way I did when we first met: carefree and at home. Three is a magical number, but four is art.

The crunch of the ground in front of me begins to fade, the sound growing into something brisk, yet stronger.

"I want to go over- I have to go over there."

My gaze trails up from the ground, and on the horizon lies a vague scene. Beyond the shadows obscured by the ever-changing colours of the sky lies something intriguing to Sue.

"Please."

He darts off towards it and we follow close behind him. We can't lose another. 

We enter into a world where we are surrounded by a skirt of brown rusted scrap, the innumerable flashing fragments shine in the brilliant blazing light, for in this moment there is no weather; no wind, no cloud, just an atmosphere of subzero. The dirty ground lies vivid and sharp. The path ahead glistening like white quartz, yet ice crystals on weary concrete is all it is. Beauty remains overgrown to hide the horrible truth.

It's Rowan Combe.

She's dead.

Suddenly the light of the trail fades, it being swept over by a miserable and long shade of grey; my emotions fogged, my expression left cold and air like the silent air which swarms around us.

I pause in my track, my breath exhaling itself on the scene: white and blinded. Illusions and dreams shattered in the beat of a second, life dripping slowly from deep and gaping wounds which confuse themselves over her frame like craters and ravines. 

Kiena causes the sickening silence which makes my stomach turn, to break.

“I c-can’t fix her.”

I feel my knees weakened, my soul succumbing to the cascading time which is flying before my eyes; too fast for my simple orbs to keep up with. Instead, all I see is a mixture of colours and feelings drowning into one. It feels like an illness which has no cure, and it takes me a moment or two to escape from the parallel world which I have created.

I didn't know his victim too well. I'd seen her once at the training centre, tense but beautiful as she tried just about everything which was thrown to her. I peek down to her figure, my heart drenched by fear of death's power does not throb any more. Looking at her makes everything fall into an abyss.

Death: burning coal but no heat. No shape or image, nothing but lack of feeling: numb. She twists in my blended vision as I look over her again and again, my body paralysing itself with anger and upset, my breath whisked away from between my lungs.

"It'll be alright. She-She'll be alright, wherever she is."

He's struggling.

I edge away from it all, a second or two to compose myself before turning back to them. My vision relieves itself of the misery once again, and now is blinded by my naivety. Rowan's perfect face, her bones lying like a picture amongst the ruin and rubble and scrap. 

All that remains now is us tributes fighting a common enemy: death.

He entered this world as nothing but a mere traveller, entwined with the power to search through age and time and space and cosmos. And as all these pass by us, he grows, taking our elastic spirits with him as he journeys on.

Some of us submit to his mighty hands.

Others are left to observe the trail of constant decay and dishonesty, corruption and wither which is left in the path of the unadorned traveller.

"Sleep tight, Rowan Combe."

And whilst we watch them fall, we succumb to the injection of an eternal black which blurs our purity and honour.

We become the unseeing.

[brad bradford ★ d5b [arx]]

Simon Karnes

I've broken my hands so many times I've lost count. Since about the age of thirteen, I can remember looking down at my hands and noting the swollen joints and slightly crooked bones. Each disparity from the norm reminded me that I was different. I was something inhuman.

With each break the rage grew stronger inside me and with each comforting word from my mother the rage dispersed. It was an ebb and flow process, a delicate cycle of sorts. It kept me sane - well, sane enough. Punch enough walls, kick enough furniture, and throw enough breakable objects and you start to question if you ever are truly sane.

The Bloodbath proved I wasn't. Not really. Every sane thing I've ever done in my life was simply a facade. Or maybe my sanity has only ever stemmed from the loved ones around me? Now they are gone; I've lost all control I've ever possessed. The monster I've always feared has risen up in my chest, pumping rage through my blood while my mind tells me to do things I know I will regret.

Regret. So much regret. It plagues me through the night in my dreams, following me to the waking world. But I deserve all this pain, all this burden, every horrible twist and turn my life has taken is what I have deserved since the day I thrust a knife into my little sister's chest. I let my broken hand dangle at my side, let the pain radiate through my fingers and up my arm. I deserve this.

But the likelihood that this girl deserved to be sliced up and beat down seems barbaric. My feet refuse to bring me any closer than I already am; death doesn't sit well in my conscience. Nor does this seem like my place. I only know her name and District - (Rowan Combe, District 7.) - so who am I to tell her goodbye?

The guilt washes over me again in a sudden wave. I had nothing to do with this - but what if I hadn't lost control back there? What if I had been in my right mind and not some mindless beast? Would I have recognized my allies in the crowd? Would I have hit someone else a little harder, tried to find a way to save her - would I have cared?

Her attempt at speaking is feeble. The blood on her lips is visible even from where I stand; she'll be gone soon. I take a few steps closer, my feet refusing to stop until I'm standing over her, just behind the other's who cradle her on the ground. I swallow the lump in my throat. A crown and well wishes. Seems a send off befitting a queen.

I'm sure she was someone's queen. Every girl's got someone who looks at them that way whether they know it or not. I send a silent prayer to the queen and her loyal subjects. For when one heart stops, one is certain to break.

I don't mind when someone else steps in my way; I prefer it. I take a few steps backwards, the words of my allies and my enemies blend and slur - my mind can't make sense of any of it. I watch on, but I'm not looking at them. Just straight through them, waiting for Rowan's soul to rise up from her lifeless body and soar into the sky. But with each passing moment and each tick-tock of the clock I realize that I will never see anything.

She is dead.

[Deleted]

W Y A T T  O ' C O N N O R

I do not scream when the rush of blood takes the place of my left thumb, for it had never been able to hold that goddamn pocketknife, anyway. Every piece of existence that made up Wyatt O’Connor could be rearranged to spell useless—even that left thumb—you just had to look between blade and letter alike to find it.

Kamikaze mission failed I was only bleeding in the slightest save that one large tear, yet still my heart remained untouched, the longing to fall still beating deep within my chest—no longer rhythmic this was desperation.

Embers in my heart set alight by the flames in my eyes, widening at the sparks that set crates and hopes ablaze, the boy from seven standing at the heart of it all—at least he’s got something to give. There are no words exchanged between the flames, the simplicity of it all a newfound wonder we hadn’t had the privilege of since names spoken and complex words had sealed our fate.

It’s comforting to watch wealth waste away.

And though I would be content to watch even the ashes fall to the breeze like we were all bound to do, there’s a pause until Sue blows the ashes away himself with “We have to find Noah.” Lost behind the smoke screen his bleeding heart had showed vulnerability, the small traces of blood lining my own skin spelling nothing but useless. Maya says nothing, no change of pace and no unexpected informalities to be found on her tongue. From my own part a simple nod of the head as I follow Sue and his hatchet for a heart, despite my wishes to hear the crackling of dying flames for a minute more.

Sight trained on nothing and nowhere an aimless pace follows suit, the sudden stop of Sue’s feet a harsh awakening as I stumble left to avoid a collision, yet one occurs anyway, “I want to go over—I have to go over there. Please.” Desperation is a trait I am far too familiar with, the repercussions with which I’m acquainted in the same manner.

No resistance; no response—I follow suit because it’s step number two on a failed kamikaze mission.

A side character in my own novel I was watching chapter three play out with silence in my veins and passiveness in my throat, this is not fear. I have not been scared since my father pressed a pocketknife into my palm at the age of thirteen and asked me if I was afraid of growing up. I had shaken my head with false confidence—I was never afraid of something I would never live to see.

Eight bodies and seven beating hearts—counting is easier when you aren’t fighting back tears. It’s the hollow void in the expanse of my chest, the whisper that dismay was something correct to feel at this point in time, but it’s an empty word, dismay, six letters and I could spell something different.

Liable.

Step number one—bomb yourself to fix the bullet holes, (“Can you do anything right, Wyatt?”)

I watch beating hearts give pieces of themselves away in an attempt to bring the last back to life, but they can’t count through the tears—once a body is gone all that can be done is wreck oneself as well and the girl from three has it down to an art, “I c-can’t fix her.”

As if any of us aren’t beyond repair.

It crosses me mind to offer condolences but Stella Summit’s sinking steps beat me to it as she crashes into the chest of Sue Tate—I think to warn her to be mindful of his hatchet for a heart, to stay wary of the blade, but he slices through her clean before I have the chance, “It’ll be alright. She-she’ll be alright, wherever she is.”

I bite my tongue before involuntarily mentioning that hell has never had the privilege of being called alright.

I didn’t know Rowan Combe, but I knew with the words she spoke that brought her here like the other twenty-three she signed the ticket herself, a resting place six feet under and her coffin would be set alight by the brimstone.

Eight bodies, seven beating hearts—no one lived eight days to call themselves alright.

When she stutters, six hearts fall in rhythm and I’m left wishing mine to do the same, instead left with disappointment on my tongue and a flat line in place of heartbeat—bomb yourself to fix the bullet holes, but Rowan Combe had already beaten me to it.

Embrace broken and words exchanged my eyes train on the faltering body of the girl from seven, told to sleep by the ones who loved her most, but I could wish her nothing less, for all she’ll find are nightmares.

But she’ll be alright, Sue promised so.

White lies and black hearts, desperation is a trait I am acquainted far too well with, the repercussions with which I know in the same.

They’re saying I’m sorry in the form of goodbyes—I’m sorry I can’t save you masked as a “she’ll be alright.”

Hand lingering in pocket my fingers brush over page eleven of how to fix your child’s depression, and half a thought crosses my mind to hand it to Stella Stummit in hopes she can fix herself, but she’d have to pass it around and the dead can’t read.

Eight bodies and six beating hearts could all take the chance to skim over those eleven pages—the first step to fixing your child’s depression is acceptance, I read it on page seven. I’m sure this standard stands for death itself, but the state of the living leads me to think they’d never make it to step two—I’d given up on the endeavor long ago, instead taking on a kamikaze mission labeled failure when Rowan Combe’s cannon struck the air.

Step number one bomb yourself to fix the bullet holes—(“Wyatt, can you do anything right?”)

[✨ zozo.]

[presto][/presto]

{ rowan }

by tomorrow

we'll be lost amongst the leaves

in a wind that chills the skeletons of trees

There is a crown of metal against my temples tainted in blood and salt. Paper petals fall from the sky. I am weightless and floating, falling, floating, falling. I am not a whole - I am nothing, and yet I feel everything. I have no hands to stretch out, no fingers to touch the feather-light flits of paper, no voice to scream in delight with. Incomprehensible voices (or what I think to be sounds escaping from trembling throats) lift me up into the endless burning light. Across the universe I sail, the same pattern continuing for all of eternity. Floating, falling, floating, falling. Then I, and this eternity, come to an end.

At the end of eternity I find myself at the base of a tree, wooden steps carved around it's trunk and a harmony calling my name. Rowan! Rowan! Rowan! It sounds just like my-

"Mom?" I call out - certain, and yet unsure why.

Rowan! the voice calls again.

Rowan! Rowan! Rowan!

I begin my ascend - one step, two steps, a hundred more, around and around at lightning speed. I spin through days and years and the world is a blur. I become a beam of light, spiraling upwards, and yet if I blink I can see every single step I take in slow motion. Nothing hurts. There is a warmth here that surround me, hands brushing the rough, calloused skin of the staircase and as I rise higher and higher I can feel my footsteps dance through the stars around me. The world turns from white to blue dazzled with tiny specks of light leaking from a thousand different worlds. Still, I trek on. Upwards and upwards, dancing through time itself. And suddenly I am propelled forwards, feet grazing the leaves of the earthly staircase, launched high up into the sky and back down again. I do not scream. I do not flinch. Time stops for a moment or two. Then everything falls back into place, including me, and gently I am lifted into a daylight tinted with blue and hazes of green, perched in the highest branches of the thousand-year-old tree.

Rowan! the voice calls from above. I tilt my head to the sky but find nothing but white. Jump, Rowan! it pushes, as if conjured up from the depths of my mind. I turn to crumble into myself, but I find no fear shackled to my body. Instead, I look to the sky and close my eyes.

Sleep.

My body tilts backward and the air billows around my body. Falling, falling, f a l l i n g -

I love you, I love you, I love you Rowan.

- into slumber.

by tomorrow

we'll be swimming with the fishes

leave our troubles in the sand

I wake to a bed made of damp earth and dewy grass.

Through a hazy blur of green and brown I blink once, twice, and everything falls into focus. Leaves that stretch for miles. Crisp air heaved in through soft gasps. Golden beams falling through shrouds of branches, freckling the floor with shadows and glittering light. I breathe out and rise toward the blue sky, toes sinking into the soft ground as I step forward past the trunks of trees. (For some bizarre reason, the afternoon sky is alight with stars.)

I quicken my pace and step forward again, running one, two, three paces - I move a thousand miles a minute. One breath in, one step backwards, and I shoot back to where I was. Spinning madly, a giddy laugh escapes my mouth and the trees dance in the wind. Gold dust fills me to the core and I run, run, run, free at last from a forest full of monsters and left to my own world of possibility. Up, down, forwards, backwards, around and around and around - I laugh, and the forest laughs with me. I dance over the rib cage of the woods and fly over the spines of my dreams. Echoes of joy tower over me and I don't ever look back. I run for hours. Evergreen and gold fall away to traces of yellow and a blurred streak of blue catches the corner of my eye - in a millisecond I am frozen and staring at an ocean, white-gold sand billowing from it's edges. Curious, the breeze from the forest pushes me forward, whispers of trees gently edging me closer and closer to the fairytale scene I could only be dreaming of.

But I'm not dreaming. This is real - or whatever real is anymore. I cannot remember what is real and what is a dream, or what my life was before all of this arrived. I am a soul of the forest thrust into this brave new world (just to be sure I look over my shoulder: it is all there, vast and beautiful and fixed to my soul). Grass slowly fades to sand and I breathe in the salty air - gritty and foreign and surprisingly warm. I take a step and sink into the welcoming vastness of this magical place.

"Oh my goodness!" someone shrieks, and all of a sudden the world is encompassed in light. I turn to see a bundle of gold, freckles and laughter scoop me up and twirl me around and around and around. My feet barely find a gritty ground to stand on before she swoops me in for another hug, breathless and exhilarated.

"It's you!" the stranger sighs, hands at her face in awe. "Oh my goodness, you are just - I am so pleased to see you. Goodness gracious!" (I know that face but my mind cannot find a name. I cannot find anything in my memories at all.) "You're-"

"Tiger" I breathe, anything and everything flooding my existence."You're Tiger."

"No silly," she laughs, shaking her wild head, "I am Tiger - and you're-"

- "Rowan" another voice interrupts

Only now do I realise there's another girl standing behind us, laughing quietly to herself as she speaks my name. Unlike Tiger, brash and bold, she seems quieter. Wiser. As if she's been here forever.

I wonder if I've been here forever.

"What's your name?" I ask her.

She smiles. "Doesn't matter. I'm glad you're here."

I think I am, too.

and when the sun comes up

we'll be nothing but dust

just the outlines of our hands

 

"I'm dead, aren't I?" I ask after a while, directing my words to the mousy-haired girl in the sand.

She smiles. It doesn't light up the world like it does when Tiger beams, but I feel easier, lighter, safer when they do so. "You're quick to catch on. Not like Tiger. It took her a while."

I smile back - deliriously comfortable with where I am and all that is happening. A rolling tide washes ashore - bluer than anything I've ever seen. This place is strangely, eerily beautiful, much like the girl with the grey eyes. "Why am I here? Why any of us?" I ask, shoulder nudging in the direction of Tiger, darting erratically around the trunks of trees. I smile watching her, easing into all of this. She is warm and happy and harmless, really. I can see why Gavin liked her.

The girl shrugs, "I don't exactly know. This place was created for me. And then she turned up. And now you."

I don't say anything for a while. The stranger does. "You'll understand eventually. I call it the in-between." She nods towards the forest I awoke in, "I like what you've brought."

"I've brought?"

"Yes," the girl replies. "The trees."

Perplexed, I look to her for answers.

"Tiger brought the sun. And you brought the trees. They weren't here before you arrived."

For some bizarre reason, it all makes sense.

And yet nothing makes sense. Stars without darkness, forests at the edge of the ocean, three strangers that somehow know each-other's names. The water crashes against the sand and I join with it, sinking to the ground and floating through confusion. The girl does not stare or make a scene. Instead, to my surprise, she joins me on the shore.

The stranger without a name doesn't ask me questions, nor answer my last. A slender finger points to the twinkling speckles of light. "Let me tell you about those first," she offers calmly, lying down in the sand with no hand to shield her eyes from the sun. For a moment I wonder if they're burning, but then I realise that I too can look up and feel no pain. There is no pain here at all - or darkness, or nightmares, or fear. Just sand and stars and the endless sky.

"They all have names. Some from before, some from after. You see that one, burning brighter than the rest?" (I look and nod.) "That one is the reason this place exists."

The girl with no name is cryptic and mysterious and yet I feel like I could tell her anything about me. I feel like I could tell her anything about me and she'd already know it.

"Tiger has some, too. And you, it seems."

I look to the sky and names fall through my head like music. Gran Gavin Mom Stella Simon Kiena Sue. Like magic, they appear, a constellation of my soul and the people who I held right until the very end. Everything now feels as if it will be alright, and I relax into the sand next to her. 

"Better?" she asks.

"Much better" I reply with a grin.

Tiger gallops down back towards us, sand kicking up between her legs and ever as cheerful. "Magical!" she comments. "Simply magical. I've never been in a forest, did you know that? I still cannot believe you are here, right here, of all people! I watched and I hoped, I really did, and now here you are! Gavin will be-"

"Gavin?" I choke, and I swear the trees sway slightly in time with my body. Tiger looks to the other girl and the whole world lights up again. "Aria?"

Aria nods.

"Follow me" Tiger says, a hand reaching out to take mine. I do so in a heartbeat.

We walk along the sand linked at our fingertips until a figure at the edge of forever steps forward - all height and floppy hair and kind eyes. Tiger waves, electricity and warmth and light buzzing all over her skin, and the figure waves back and calls a name. My name.

"Rowan!"

I look back for a split-second to Aria the sand-stranger and Tiger the sun, and my words float through the air. "Thank you."

They smile. I blink - and then they are gone.

My feet do not stop moving. Distance closes at lightning speeds. For the first time in my life (and death) I am running towards my grief and not from it. In an instant we collide and the world explodes - my death bearing new life as stars sucked through eternity. He laughs, and I barely let out a "I missed you-" as we are propelled forward at the speed of light.

Never looking back, never letting go, every atom of mine infused with his, we fall as one existence into the rest of forever.

and when the moon shines

i will leave two lines

find my love, then find me

[✨ zozo.]

[presto][/presto]

{ thank you's }

"and when we do find each other again,
we'll cling together so tight
that nothing and no one'll ever tear us apart.
every atom of me  and every atom of you...  

and when they use our atoms to make new lives
they won't just be able to take one
they'll have to take two: one of you and one of me
we'll be joined so tight."

to my bb guardian angels cait, pogue, rave, mylee, avalon, azaleah, kire and rosetta - thank you so much from the bottom of my heart. i feel like you guys already know by now how grateful i am for your loyalty and love right 'til the very end of that crazy night. i am so thankful and lucky to have friends like you. your friendship, loyalty, laughs and dedication throughout has really made me feel so much better about all this. words cannot express. i adore you all. thank you so much.

to my wonderful alliance: stare, arx and avalon - thank you for all the excitement and planning and making me feel so welcomed and appreciated in leviathans. although i'm sad i won't get to properly thread with you all, i am so incredibly excited to see how you all develop and your journey in these games. kick some booty for momma rowan!

to all of you in this thread: your beautiful pieces of writing are so treasured. you are all so wonderfully, wonderfully talented and your writing is simply breathtaking, as are your characters. thank you for making this thread so special and meaningful. all my love <3

to shrimp and thundy - thank you for keeping your cool in the bb, answering my questions and my frantic-ness in the cbox. it's been a pleasure to have been in these games, albeit short-lived.

to kay - for always being there for me. <3

to elegant, tristen, python, kousei and rook - for reaching out to me afterwards and making sure i was okay. your words and support are so very much appreciated and valued, thank you <3

and of course to dars - thank you for helping me shape rowan into the character she is/was. for letting me use gavin to have rowan & him find each other again in the endless universe of fictional afterlife. i treasure that ship, those threads, your kind words and your friendship so much. thank you.

"each day is a little life
every waking and rising a little birth
every fresh morning a little youth
every going to rest and sleep a little death."