hang em high [sweetwater saints day 2]

[alex 🐺]

b e r l i n ; 

The boy crawls back to where Hisidro and Diana wait for him - his mangled body torn and bleeding.

They support him, his arms slung over their shoulders as he stumbles between them, only far enough to last a few steps before he has to stop.

They patch him up with the sun high in the sky - Diana escapes to gather medicinal plants, returning with a bouquet. Hisidro builds a splint for his leg and bandages him up with a small smile. The trust is not quite there yet but it is building into something.

He would never tell them this and will no doubt take it to his grave - but he is happy that they’re alive. Zion, well, he hoped the boy found some peace somewhere. Sweat beads down his chest into the darkness of his vest and he is drenched and cold, the blood loss covering him with ice in the arid desert weather.

“We didn’t even kill it, which is the worst fucking part,” Lin breathes, the taste of copper on his lips, his mouth bleeding, his arm bleeding, his legs crumbled beneath him as he falls to the ground once more. His leg regaining some motion, but he feels pathetic.  The vultures circling overhead more than an omen. 

It feels like it has been years since his body has been his own, and yet it has only been hours since they awoke on day two. He taps fingers that are not his against skin he can hardly feel, watches a chest rise and fall, and wonders if his empty shell would echo if Hisidro hit it hard enough. Perhaps they will find out in due time.

“But maybe we can catch a docile one. Look, just there in the distance - ” Berlin trails off as he hears hoofbeats approaching, flashbacks to this morning playing across his mind like a video on repeat, propping himself up on his pitchfork and watching the horizon, a herd of horses just like the one that tore him to pieces lingering not from where they had erected a small camp. Berlin stands at full height, leg, head, arm, and hand aching. They can patch up his wounds, but his finger is gone, laying in the grass somewhere. The patchwork tourniquet bloody and stained, but he wears it like a uniform. Red like blood, gold like stardust. 

The horses seemed gentle enough, and catching one meant quicker movement between sectors. Catching one meant that they had a leg up, nearly on par with the weatlth alliance.

They must think him suicidal, but how can he tell them he has already sold his soul?

How could he tell them that there was once life within him, something made of something more, something made of light and humanity that he ripped out? He spent too much time wishing he could connect his thoughts to his brain, his brain to his spinal cord, and all of it to the slow beat of his heart.

How could he tell them that his sister's scream when she drowned are the only noises that he can remember, the only memories that he carried before he took a scalpel to his chest, carved letters and ink into his body to remake himself into something more?

How could he tell them that he let himself get beat in the training center for years, hard enough to pull the spirit from his lips? Hard enough to make him forget her name even for just mere moments of blackness on the cold mats?

How could he tell them he chased his sister’s ghost for long enough to bring himself to his own knees - battered and broken, wearing his guilt like her death shroud?

How could he tell them that he had to keep running - that he would never stop running? How could he tell them that his scars and tattoos are a testament to the fact that is body and soul are burnt to a crisp? That his body and soul will never forget her? How could he tell them that his body was a ruined temple for a vacant god - smeared in ichor and rusted gold?

He couldn’t tell them anything, so he stays silent, limping towards the horses, his broken leg mending from their care as he pulls the rope from his sack, fashioning a lasso and whistling to Hisidro and Diana behind him. I owe you both, dies on his lips so he just points, letting them know his intentions.

What better way to conquer your demons than to chase them head on?

And hell, even if he failed, he could always use the rope to hang himself.

[berlin tries to wrangle a horsie ]

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[womp womp]

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[alex 🐺]

b e r l i n ; 

Kill yourself, Berlin Batalanto. The noose is right there in your hand. Hang your head and feel your neck snap under the weight of your transgressions. It would be freeing, wouldn't it? Letting the hate and anger and guilt flow of you like lava? 

The words careen around his mind and he bites his tongue as his lasso falls short, startling the horses and making them wary. They have only a precious few moments before the herd runs away, this he knows. A boy raised with the comfort of the ocean as his backyard, trying and failing to tame an animal he had only seen in books and movies. Foolish, foolish boy. If the injuries don’t kill you, your stupidity will. He tries again, his lasso raised high, imagining the rope a net and the horses a school of fish.

He was no Poseidon, no god of the ocean and the waves of fury his bannermen. He was no mariner or captain of a ship taming the waves below him.

He was a boy who had watched his sister fall to the depths of the ocean and he had done nothing but screamed. He was failure and in this game, you paid for failure with your life.

He was not chaos, his bones were not tectonic plates igniting the earth with every shift and every step. Fault lines did not run beneath his skin. He was fragile, he was not seismic. Blood and fire and fury pumped incandescently through his veins, but now, in the face of the magnitude of these Games, his faults, angels, and demons lay out bare before him, he is just a boy struggling to survive. And catch a fucking horse.

“These fucking animals, I swear to Ripred,” he mumbles to himself, rolling his eyes.

His uniform doesn’t fit right - the dark material drenched in sweat and yet he shivers in the bright sunlight. His boots jangling with each cautious step forward he takes - he is no god. He is human, battered and broken. He steadies his breathing once more, closing his eyes and exhaling the few demons he is allowed to shed. The strongest of them - the snake that wraps around his vocal cords and his heart, the beast that won’t allow him vulnerability in the eyes of two allies who have literally nursed him back to fighting strength - flexes and undulates.

Come on, Lin. You chose this. You fucking asked for this. Prove to them all that you belong here. He lets the lasso fly towards the twin of the beast that had wrought so much damage mere hours ago.

[berlin tries to wrangle a horsie redux ]

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[he shall be named ares]

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[ghosty]

h i s i d r o.

He could have sworn Berlin was following himself and Diana. He felt his heart richochet in his chest, repetition echoing in his ears. It hadn't stopped since he heard Zion's cannon firing, since the snake - he can't think about it.

Not now.

He'd seen Diana pick up Zion. He just turned, and ran. Hisidro, who was he kidding? He couldn't save any of them, even if he tried. He just hoped that he wouldn't be the death of them. 

He just hoped, prayed to Ripred, that he wouldn't hear another cannon already.

                                    { --- }


Hisidro heard him, before he saw him. Berlin. Ripred, he wasn't expecting what he saw. Mangled, torn apart. Bleeding. Hisidro, he felt the world turn blue. He'd almost left someone else to die. 

Diana hurried off, same reasons as Hisidro. Help. Berlin.

He'd never seen himself as a caring type. He was a runner, always shutting off emotions behind a facade. His sister always called him uncaring, cold. Heartless. Crocetti's were never meant to be caring. 

Always strong, always wanting more. 

But he couldn't doubt the small smile in his face, fixing up Berlin, couldn't doubt that he was starting to trust them. Whatever the fuck that word means in a place like this. 

"But maybe we can catch a docile one. Look, just there in the distance - ", a confused head turned towards Berlin. Ripred, did Hisidro want his confidence. Or stupidity. He wasn't sure which.

He watched, carefully as Berlin took his first steps in a bit. He'd never been around a career for this long before. Ripred, he'd never seen anyone this determined. 

But, Lin wasn't wrong. A horse would make getting around easier. His turned into his bag, pulling out the lasso rope he picked up yesterday.

Might as well use it for something.

[ hisidro rolls for a horsie!! ]


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[ success, horsie named Gem ]

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[D6f Carmen Cantelou [aza]]

I run the photograph between my fingers, holding it up in the air to try and place it in the skies—except I can't. The energy the skies once held between the cloud has dissipated; the destruction in the stars has been let go and it has been replaced by a feeling of melancholy. I'd like to think that the sky is looking down and feeling blue after what has just happened, but the air is dry, and the heavens have no tears to cry.

It doesn't stop me, though. I tell Berlin and Hisidro that I'm going to collect some plants to tend Berlin's wounds with, but in reality, I can feel the full force of my fragility. I excuse myself because emotion is everything; I am still human, just as I was before, and this is an outburst of love that is contained within tiny teardrops. They hold the sadness from the strings of my heart, they hold the words I don't want to say to myself. 

It becomes real if I do. I live in reality but sometimes it is easier to let it go a little, to dream so that you can freely breathe.

But only for a moment—reality is the most important. I do not want to lose touch of the stories told, the moments made, the people silenced. It is okay that the harshness of reality involves crying because crying is what makes people listen. I'm not ashamed to cry. Teardrops are the ultimate truth teller for me, because when I look in everyone else's eyes, they are glazed with glory.

I look in their eyes and I can't see them, I can't see the people behind the eyes. I'd give them a hug, heaven knows they need it, but something tells me they'd embrace me with a stab in the back.

Moments can cut like knives, but they are not evil—not like people.

I bring a bundle of plants back to Berlin, offering them to him so that he can start to be fixed. He's covered in blood and wounds; his arms and legs are raw, but he's breathing. It's a blessing after Zion.

"But we lived. We're lucky." I tell him, thinking of Zion again. "I don't think the creature will live long with a broken leg, anyway. It looked pained." As if it wanted to die, in a way; perhaps it would've been the most loving thing to do to put it out of its misery. Maybe ending a life doesn't always have to be something bitter, something that hurts—it could heal too. Dying with dignity is important.

Berlin motions to the distance and I hear that familiar beat of hooves against the ground and my heart sinks for a moment, before he points out that they are docile. I smile a little, it's half a grin, a somewhat sorry one, but it's there nonetheless because life is an echo. We've had Zion taken in an instant and now the world is giving back; an opportunity to have company again, to have a friend, to try and fill the Seven-sized hole in my heart with a horse. Of course, it would never fill a home-sized hole, no matter how hard it tried.

Home is my only cause. I start to think of Lenox Lachance and how she needed saving, and I saved her because I lead with my heart. It is the same heart that wants to bright light back into the eyes of the broken, to provide Zion's family with some sort of comfort and support, to do things for the greater good, to be a champion for the people who feel like they are made of china. From Lenox to Lex—I hope that she is watching me, I want her to see how I'm true to my words and to myself.

But it is Angel's lesson of patience that comes into play in these moments. Wrangling a horse would, of course, be a feat easier said than done. Berlin proves that quickly, his broken leg forcing him holding him back when he tries to lasso a horse into his life. He mumbles when he realises it will be difficult, but still, I watch from a distance in admiration because it takes great courage to be knocked down and get back up, facing the same creatures that threatened to take your life, but seeing them in a new light. It is a good thing, a loving thing.

His second attempt is surprisingly successful, the rope coming down around the horse to pull it out of the wild. "You made that look easy," I say with delight in my voice—I need it to fight off the despair.

I look up to the sky: sun ablaze, the ground dry under its spell. There's nothing sick in the air anymore, I can breathe as I want without feeling like I am inhaling a toxin or poison. I can only sense life, not death, the echo of what was shouted to the world when Zion took his final breath only moments ago. We have managed to restore some calm in this storm, and even if it doesn't last long at all, I'm grateful.

This is my opportunity to try and show the same courage as Berlin. I have not been knocked down as he has, not like Zion has, but I stand in harm's way armed only with a rope. My heart races but I'm not scared, I'm not scared at all, it beats when I look at the horses: beautiful and majestic. They are exactly what the world needs, and I only have love for them. "Aren't they pretty?" 

The rope is thrown into the air—a better air, a better sky, a sky with eyes that have seen death just as I have, a sky that no shadow can touch.

[ diana tries to get a horsie ]

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[ well its over ]

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[D6f Carmen Cantelou [aza]]

But, the arms of the sky reject the rope and it falls flat on the ground. The horses continue to run wild and free, careless and lost in thought as they dance elegantly under the sun.

"Darn it," I say, eyeing Hisidro as he makes it look completely simple, getting a horse for himself on his first try. I'm not losing faith or hope in the idea of getting my own horse, though, because practice makes perfect. I have learnt not to give up when you are dealt a difficult hand of cards; I have learnt to play better, to play smarter.

I reel the rope back in, taking a few steps forward to inch closer to the pack of animals that trot around. Every story with a princess involves a horse, and although most are sat on by a knight in shining armour as they are rode valiantly into battle, I want to parade around with something to call my own. There is something so regal about a horse that attracts me: tall and brave, mighty without becoming intimidating. They shine with strength, glint with honour and have a wisdom that has roots in their soul.

And though I am daddy's little princess—I have outgrown the unwritten rules of how to be a perfect daughter. I am a princess who is unafraid of getting her hands dirty when the time calls for it. I imagine my father is watching at home in awe of the person I have become; letting go of who he wanted me to be to follow my own beliefs and dreams has been far more liberating than living under his roof.

In reality—he's likely not watching at all.

It makes my heart ache a little bit, thinking of how he prioritises his money over his family. All the time lost due to office hours and locked doors, father-daughter days that went down the drain because there was paperwork to be signed, meetings to attend, men and women to win over. Reflecting on days gone by makes me wish I'd forced him to change before it was too late, before he was in too deep and could only keep his head above water through darkness, but I would have never known where to start.

I shake my head. He taught me the love that leads me today, at the expense of losing his own.

Though, I do imagine if I had asked for a horse, he would've tried to get one for me. He liked keeping me happy, and I couldn't see it back then, but I do now: he was buying my silence. Silence, because his corruption extends far further than the roots of our family tree ever could, and they have touched the lives of too many people for the law to turn a blind eye to. He'd get me cakes, the nicest food, pictures for my bedroom, strange and exciting objects which I couldn't even have thought of in my dreams.

Never a horse—but he would've tried. And just like he would've tried, I am going to try, too.

I inch closer yet again, before raising the rope into the air and squinting to try and execute the move to perfection. The open arms of the sky best try to catch it this time, and the stars of the night best align to bring a horse into my path. Berlin and Hisidro are probably waiting for me so that we can get a move on and settle down in a safe place under the stars for the night.

But love is a tender thing that takes time, it takes patience. I have both.

[ diana tries to get a horsie ]

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[ YAY ]

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