i threw glass at my friends & now i'm on probation [ rs ]

[heather - d2 [mylee]]

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Like the first, the second bullet I fire buries itself deep in the creature’s flesh, splitting the skin and muscles, nestling in toward bone. Unlike the previous shot, this one seemed to still the beast, the frantic movements of its briefly open eye glossing over into stagnancy. For the first moments that followed this observation, I held my breath, afraid that somehow both of the mutts would still be able to injure us somehow, but I should have realized that the only immediate danger still lurking was that of the tension in the space contained by the four of us—though I suppose it is unfair to bring Lenox or Garrison into any of this.

I hold the revolver awkwardly, thinking to tuck it back in my waistband but quickly registering the warmth that radiates from the barrel. I think of its heat pressed to the soft skin of my thigh, and I shudder, remember the way, years earlier, my father had rolled up the sleeve of his shirt to reveal the raised skin of his bicep, the brand his best friend from a decade past had made each mark the other. He had said how sound the logic had seemed at the time, right up to the point when he found himself screaming into the shredded fabric of an old washcloth, some tan and stringy thing he had shoved in his mouth to bite down on while his friend pressed the iron against his flesh. When the worst of the burn had started to subside, he had used his other hand (his left, non-dominant) to shakily hold the iron back over the flame and then press it against the thin skin of his buddy’s ribs. After, he had said, they sat shoulder to marked shoulder and talked about how they wanted to die, about what pain they didn’t think they could bear.

I want to believe that if pain waxes unbearable, the only consolation becomes the fact that it will be unable to sustain itself for any extended period of time. And despite my initial fear that my heart was going to slip out of my body to the glass below, I have come to the conclusion that this, for good or ill, is not the worst of it. With this in mind, I keep the gun palmed tight at my side as I turn to Lenox and Garrison and Fitz, say, There’s nothing left for us here. We should go.

--

Our pace has slowed from the morning, and I keep my eyes turned down, trying to not lose my footing on the uneven ground of glass that shifts beneath me with each step. Lenox and I appear to have taken the worst of it, but this suffering seems in line with the established pattern, and so we quietly come to a stop, Garrison and Fitz following suit.

I think about trying to settle myself down among the shards, but the dexterity required seems too much for the dull ache that remains settled in my lower body. I remember the day before, how Fitz had wrapped his arm around me gently and lowered me to the ground. It wasn’t a tender gesture, but something close, and despite longing again for help, I know it would be absurd to ask him for it, given the events that passed between us earlier. When our eyes lock, both of our bodies tense, I realize there is no compromise here, the only option being to dig one’s grave deep enough to consume the body fully. As I shift, the ground beneath me crunches jagged, and I spit, say, If you had remembered that you can’t shoot a gun with the safety on, Lenox and I might not have gotten so fucked up. If I can learn to place the blame elsewhere, at least for a moment, maybe I’ll finally get some sleep tonight.

[ table: pogue ]

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[ actions tbd in trib maint ]

[D6f Carmen Cantelou [aza]]

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Kane's bullet knocks the second beast out. The air becomes filled with a brisk chill, there are goosebumps down my spine and a silence in the air which sits like a bouquet of flowers at the foot of a grave. It looms before it is weathered away by the elements, the poison around us forcing it to die far quicker than I would have thought. Because with death, there's always a silence. It's a shock to the system, no matter who or what is dead. And surviving the shockwave is the hardest part.

I lower my gun, looking at the creature's remains. The eye that felt so deep to stare into becomes hollow. It looks how I have felt - there's a ghost trapped in that shell which longs for a peace it'll never see. The eye loses its monstrous nature, it's no longer nightmarish anymore, nah, it's gentle but uneasy, it's a dead body and it rests, hopelessly. I can't stop looking at it out of fear - what if it gets back up? What if it's not really dead or what if killing it just unleashed a bigger, badder beast?

The tainted silence in the air urges me to believe something has been released. A beast of some sort, if not the conventional.

Then it washes over me once more — that heavy feeling of guilt. The platform I stand on becomes unhinged and unbalanced, tilted by the added pressure on my heart and mind. I can feel my body becoming warm with the sense of impending doom my fear has instilled within me, an endless pit in my stomach forming to swallow the butterflies whole. Today, I killed, we killed — something, I killed something — but that still makes me a murderer.

This is living. The adrenaline from shooting the bullet wears off, the vibrancy replaced by a grey in my head that numbs all feelings of hope and happiness. Instead, all I can think about is how I'm held prisoner by history, how fate has its hands around my neck and it is waiting for me to choke, it is waiting so eagerly, on the edge of its seat, hoping that I will croak. And maybe I will, who knows — the novelty of the trigger disappeared faster than the ghosts of my past and I'm not so sure I'll ever feel so alive again.

It's all I can think about when we walk. I shoot a glance at each of the boys every once in a while, Kane's wounds mirroring those on my own glass body, Fitz and Garrison seemingly unscathed by the whole ordeal. Shards crunch beneath our feet as we stride onwards, the sky warming up to us through the illusion of a sunset, but it's never felt so goddamn cold.

"If you had remembered that you can't shoot a gun with the safety on, Lenox and I might not have gotten so fucked up," Kane snaps at Fitz. I shoot a troubled glance to Garrison, afraid that the death of one monster gave birth to another.

"It's fine, Kane, we live and learn," I say, stumbling over my words a little at the thought of living. "I'm sure Fitz won't make the same mistake again," I try to catch his eye. "Besides, they are dead, both of them... it's the little victories, right?" I try to convince myself that we're doing okay by surviving the situation because the reality feels almost too much to face. There's open wounds and open mouths — but if Diana's death taught me one thing, it's that a closed heart gets you nowhere.

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[ lenox does stuff which will be in maint ]

[pogue]

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"There’s nothing left for us here. We should go." Silence descends over them as the second mutt falls, smoke rising up from a shaking revolver clasped between Kane's bloody hands. Fit's haze remains stoic, unmoving, daggers staring down at the scorpion mutt in front of him. It sits in a pool of its own blood, limbs contorted and twisted in a heap of bones and bullets, twitching softly as it bleeds into the dirt.

His eyes are trained on Kane's back as they walk, trudging slowly through the piles and piles of glass that sit shattered in the sunlight. The ground crunches beneath their feet, a million shards shifting and fumbling beneath their weight. From where he is positioned he watches blood droplets fall and splatter themselves against the ground as Kane walks, red dripping from an opened wound spread across his chest. He counts the droplets absently as he follows the guy, one two three four, tallying up the heartbeats and the seconds of his own ally's death. He tightens his grip on the shotgun, feeling the icy chill of the metal against his skin, the echoes of gunshots sitting heavy in the back of his mind whenever he closes his eyes. His gaze lingers as his heartbeat begins to silence itself, adrenaline draining from his system as they made their way from the bloody scene, the corpses of the two dead mutts left to roast and rot in the sunlight.

He'd been lucky enough to escape from the fight with only minor wounds, stings of pain sparking from the shallow wound on his stomach as he walks, limping softly still from the gash that'd been dug into his leg the day prior, blurry memories of the Bloodbath still dancing in the back of his mind. Garrison, too, had managed to escape the fight with little more than a scratch on him, symbolic of a Career trained to kill or be killed. He wonders if he should have taken the Career out the night prior, slid silver across his throat and abandoned Kane and Lenox to the elements.

He's still pondering the thought when Kane suddenly stops in front of him, the rest of them coming to a slow halt as they finally rest, pain laced into their bloodstreams and the heavy reminder of their own mortality written into the glass shards they stand on, droplets of red marking their path away from the carnage. Anger still sits in his stomach and in his heart, fingers curled into fists and eyes staring down his own ally as he pulls the bag from his shoulders, resting it gently against the nearest glass pile and placing his shotgun on top of it. When he turns back around Kane meets his gaze, bags rooted under his eyes and breaths labored, blood stained over the front of his uniform. It's in the brief moment of a staring contest that Fitz knows exactly what is coming, memories of insults thrown and caught in the middle of a junkyard of Three flooding into the back of his mind.

"If you had remembered that you can’t shoot a gun with the safety on, Lenox and I might not have gotten so fucked up."

And there it is, salt on a wound sliced deep into a shattered ego and bruised pride. Immediately his muscles tense, breath caught in the throat and red seeping in from the edges of his vision as he steps forwards. Lenox recognizes the awkwardness of fury between them, voice chiming in from the edge of their staredown in an attempt at calming the storm that is already coming. He hardly hears her, teeth clenched and jaw locked as his gaze drifts to Lenox, processing her words as they fall dead to the ground. Slowly, he nods, beginning to turn away from Kane and bag towards his bag.

But he's nothing if not a cheap shot, dirty fighting laced into his bones. He proves it when he lunges towards Kane, his fist connecting with the boy's face as he presses his fist into his nose, watching his ally stumble backwards as he shakes out the pain from his own fist. It's a return to form for him, venom and poison and everything in between laced in his words as he throws them towards Kane. "I mean SHIT Kane-" He laughs, manic and distorted as rage floods through his bloodstream. "If you had just fuckin' died the first time the mutts attacked we wouldn't have had to spend so much fuckin' time dragging your half-dead ass around this whole arena!"

He steps forwards again, desperate to continue the string of insults and thrown fists before Garrison steps in between the two of them, pushing him back towards his bag as Kane clutches his face. "Fuckin piece of-" He begins, words drifting to no more than mumbles as he's pushed away from Kane once more by Garrison, taunting his ally once more.

"Go ahead, Kane. Die and make yourself useful." 

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