like a ship into the storm (qh vs. lc, day 4)

[goat]

She didn’t realize where her blade had swung until his head was gone.

His body tumbled as she drew her sword back, his blood splattering across her entire front. The purple fabric was already stained with dirt and the blood of day’s past. Some of it was Charisma’s. Now some of it belonged to her killer, too. When Delaney won, she decided she was going to frame this outfit, stick it in a glass box and put it on display for all to marvel at. It was a symbol of perseverance, a fabric trophy of what she’d achieved. That was two deaths on her hands, now. Two bodies that would never return to their families.

All she could do was smile.

She walked over, still clutching her sword, and leaned over the headless corpse. “I warned you,” she said, shoulders heaving, voice low and gruff.

And then she laughed, and she kept laughing, and she couldn’t stop laughing, and tears welled in her eyes but she couldn’t stop, and then the tears were streaming down her face and she was sobbing, and screaming, screaming at a head that couldn’t scream back. She wanted to stop. She wanted to keep screaming. She wanted to throw herself off the roof of the mill. She wanted to go home. She wanted her siblings. She wanted Charisma. She wanted so many things that she couldn’t have because the world was cruel and her parents had their own dreams for her and her name was carelessly plucked out of a giant glass bowl.

She dropped to her knees, the cold roof bruising her skin. She hated herself. She hated that she couldn’t be the stone cold, ruthless career she had made everyone believe she was. It was a farce, an award winning charade, and she was at the end of her acting career. She couldn’t keep everything in anymore. She clawed at the tears on her face and dug bloody scrapes down her cheeks and screamed, screamed, screamed.

“Get up,” Ridley hissed, but she couldn’t, couldn’t she see that she couldn’t? “You need to pull yourself together or so help me -”

“Get away from me,” Delaney sobbed. Ridley gave her arm a hard tug and she stumbled to the floor, landing hard on the palms of her hands. She watched as Ridley got Milo under her shoulder and barked some words at him, and then her, but she couldn’t hear over the blood pounding in her ears.

If she was a good career, here’s what she would have done— she would have stood tall, held her blood-dripping sword firm at her side and glared at the dead boy’s allies. She would’ve said, “Don’t think you aren’t next”, before storming away with her allies, strong and tall and proud. But she wasn’t a good career, so she couldn’t do any of that. All she could do was cry.


[ delaney flees with her allies. ]