knox . one . resub [fin]

[pogue]

o r i g i n a l

[pogue]

This world is

overflowing, with

broken things made by

broken people.

I am one of them.

[pogue]

He has learned three things in his life:

1.  Never let yourself collect dust

2.  To be broken is to be full.

3.  Ice is resolute.

[pogue]

0  1

"Don't let yourself collect dust." 

At seven he is skin and bones and everything in between, with blistering feet and bruised skin and the voice of a boy much older than him still ringing in his ears as he looks out at the crowd in front of him, ebbing and flowing in the morning sun and waiting to swallow him whole. He curls his hands and feels the gash in his skin reopen, blood seeping out from under the dirty bandages wrapped haphazardly around his skin. In his innocence he pretends that it’s liquid ruby seeping from his skin and splattering to the ground below, little red graves that are just as quickly lost to the sun and the stone as they are made.

No one has asked where the wound came from. No one cares.

Just like no one cared when not his father slid silver into his mother's heart and stained it red, since men in white forced roses to bloom from his chest. Since they pushed and pulled him into a room of white and talked to him as if he had not just felt ice pierce his heart for the first time. When he ran they did not follow, did not care. The streets and the shadows swallowed him whole that night.

He’s learned that not caring is normal for a place like One.

At such a young age he realizes humanity is nothing more than longing for what one may never have, pretending that one holds diamonds in their soul, oblivious to the fact that they are no more than coal.

That doesn’t stop him from trying to get what he wants, lost and forgotten in a sea of children too poor to be remembered in One.

His fingers twitch and curl in between the sea of flowing fabrics and shouting voices, rags darting through riches as he reaches into the bags and purses and livelihoods of his fellow citizens. He pulls whatever he can muster, watches the metal glint in the sunlight as if it is taunting him, fluttering heartbeat in a child’s chest longing for a life he knew he would never be able to have.

It’s when he pulls out a diamond that it stops him in his tracks, blood running sprinting cold underneath his skin and he twists and curls it in his grasp, watching the sunlight dance and bounce off the skin.

He’s collecting dust when men dressed in snow and venom grab his wrists and pull him out of the crowd, diamond scattering into the dust below and a gasp escaping from the woman he snatched it from.

They shake the dust from his skin and his bones with the butt of a gun to his head, rubies splattering from the wound and the darkness seeping into his vision as he hits the ground.

He wakes to a sweltering storm in his brain and a sea of pain emanating from the back of his head, men in white and black and drenched in riches speaking around him. He’ll make for a fine career. One says, casting his glance to him.

He says nothing. Later, he realizes he was already learning.

[pogue]

0  2

To be broken is to be full.

They make sure he is the former and never the latter, tossed and beaten and bruised until there are purple and black flowers constantly blooming underneath his skin, lines of red turning black turning to white in the scars that dot his skin. It's been eight years since they brought him here, threw him into a room with boys and girls that felt twice his age and twice his height, since he cowered in the corner and prayed that the shadows would swallow him whole and leave him forgotten in the dirt and the dust just like the world had always told him he deserved.

It takes a certain kind of spirit and soul to keep your humanity in a place like the academy and he is nothing of the sort, ice spread across a shallow heart and cooled until he can hardly feel its beat. With every swung sword and thrown knife and bruise laid on tissue paper skin he feels himself grow colder, follows the trail of poison as it courses through his veins and  spreads across his entire being.

It's all he can manage, a snake shedding his skin again and again until all that is left of the original is a cold and slow-beating heart, pierced daggers pulling at heartstrings that are long since rusted. 

They call him a snake because of his being, cloaked in the silence and the shadows and lurking through the halls and crowds with nothing but precision. He takes the title with as much glory as he can muster, embeds it into his skin and brands it into his being and lets everyone know just why they should be afraid of him. Because it's as simple as a sword clutched tight in the hands of a boy moulded to be a killer, venom dripping from the blade as it's swung through the air. Torn skin and rose petals seeping from the wounds, cries of pain and echoes of mercy echoing through the training center before he's pulled away from his opponent, told of pain and punishments that await him if he keeps this behavior up.

It doesn't worry him anymore, not like it used to in the early days. After all, a snake knows to shed it's skin and forget the wounds, leave the pain forgotten in the shadows he was born in.

[pogue]

0  3

Ice is resolute.

Until it meets fire.

He sees her when he is sixteen years old, drowned deep in the venom that seeps from his fangs and his skin and the sword that he clutches in his hands. It's all he sees anymore, the fear and the forgotten and the same kids that he once was are brought into the training center for the first time. He watches the shadows as they enter, sees the fear pour from them in the same way that it once did from his own heart, watches the shadows dance and dart through their forms when they are told what they are and what they will become.

It's pattern, ritual, consistent and branded into every piece of themselves: to be scared of the way the world looks down on them, to be scared of the way the ice pierces down into one's flesh.

But she has fire brimming in her bones, innocence and youth seeping from her bones and he doesn't know what it is about her-

Whether it's the way she fearlessly approaches a life that should be too new for her to not be afraid of.

Or, whether she can stare into the eyes of a snake and ask him what there is to do around here besides fight, fearless and bold and not to be forgotten. It's so odd, to have seen someone with a heart, to recognize that this is what humanity is.

He hadn't seen it since his Mother's forgotten form danced with him in the moonlight in his youth, memories long since dead and buried in the back of his mind.

He swears to protect her heart, to make sure the fire in her soul keeps burning in the world of ice she's been thrown into.

---

At eighteen he is plucked from that training academy and pulled into the fangs and the claws and the venom of another group, told he is elite and meant to be better than the others. They pierce his skin with needles and ink, carve a

He is but the skin of a snake, shedding himself over and over and starting anew. Each time a little colder, each heartbeat a little slower. He rubs the 2 branded on his skin, feeling the poison beneath it bubble up and through his skin, melting his flesh and exposing the rotting bones beneath. He realized the last time he saw her, hair like fire and innocence in her bones and everything he had never been given the chance to be-

When one is covered in poison, the only way to protect anyone is to abandon them.

So, who is she? One of his fellow Careers asks, eyes narrowed and ice pouring from their souls.

"A stranger."

[pogue]

Done!

Decided to start an Espada plot or something.

ripred_bot

[Tom]

Love this! Great work!