&& serpentine

" and i seek not destruction, but liberty. should i paint my hands red, then so be it. " kang jintae, xxiii.

[kaillusive]

[archyuna-blog]

everything that could

[arcjintae]

archyuna:

Her knees start to ache so she finds a spot in the corner to sit down, still sipping quietly at her water. As the silence ticks by, she’s at the end of her patience, and throws the liquid from her glass. It only takes moments for her to add to it’s volume, and a small flick of her wrist has it weakly shooting across the room, nothing more than a gentle splash against Jintae’s skin. It’s meant to be an annoyance, something to interrupt his training. And yet, while she has his attention, she’s hesitant to speak. Her gaze is focused on the floor, she can’t look him in the way, but she finally speaks, in a small voice.

“You should probably rest a little …”

he thinks simply and in extremes.

i. it's always all-or-nothing.

ii. putting your belief in something you cannot see, touch, smell, hear, nor taste is a foolish faith.

iii. there comes a time where moving on is pointless. you take yourself with you wherever you go.

he can't move on, so he doesn't; resigns himself to bitter blood. and it's been a little over a day since he's returned and the memories he's made haunt him by dusk and die just after dawn. it's when he's awake that he's not vulnerable. and so he's scared of sleep. by sleeping he's defenceless, and so help him god he can't face the demons he quickly crafted from brokenness.

allornothing, allornothing, allornothing. how do you live with yourself playing russian roulette to while away the days and always killing yourself off because of your impossible dreams?

he's awake, and so he does not think. he crafts delusions in the meantime to keep himself together. he ( they ) failed because of a minor ( major ) oversight and it wasn't a failure and in vain ( keep telling yourself that ) and it'll be fine ( the hell it will ).

today, he works hard. bound scars and bruises with bandages matter not. he beats on his instructor, releases the chaos and anger left dormant overnight with swings and punches and kicks that just graze skin. it frustrates him more. he works harder. through gritted teeth he's breathless, exhausted. he's stealing away energy that's not there - deserves to leave those cuts and bruises wounded. 

how could he be so careless? to let her down. let himself down. yes, how could he be so foolish to believe too, too greatly that he's a god among men.

there's no time to stretch his lungs. he hears the clock, swinging, swinging, ticking. like a gong crashing in his ear.

he sees hot red, feels cold blue. freezing in a stance, he rubs at and shakes off the droplets from his arm, catches sight of she whom he least wanted to confront. ( because she's the mirror of truth. she's a firefly burning bright in the night. and she's killed his light. )

he's still with tight fists when he frowns, relaxes stiff shoulders, and takes a greedy breath. the anger and seething red, red, red burns out when he comes over and kneels down in front of her. and he takes another breath because that's all he can do now to keep composed and not feed her his destruction so she may not ruin herself.

brows furrowed, he skims over her own bandages, bites at the inside of his cheek, “why are you here?”

it's hard to look up, let alone meet her gaze. it's coming to terms with yourself that failure is something to accept and learn from. yes, he acknowledges the failure and embraces that this isn't reality and he's still fast asleep. she should go away and not show her face around him.

“and doing what you just did will make it harder to recover,” he raises a brow, gestures to her glass, “which you should be doing, y’know.”

[arcjintae]

catastrophizing,

@arcmoonsoo

catastrophizing ( v. ) : the art in which you let yourself to be consumed by your innermost demons. you make yourself helpless and let your world crash down around you.

the country’s burning, the government’s committing genocide of its people, ( war-like men dreaming themselves boys, war-like soldiers dreaming themselves heroes, war-like dreams going up in flames and leaving nothing but empty, empty, emptiness behind ) and here you are, boy, dreaming yourself a true man.

it happens in a blur: the pairing up, the objective, the details; the details leave him dizzy and they slip from both his fingers and his memory. but he knows this, he must retrieve a precious object.  

moonsoo’s face is a blur. he studies the smudges and bleeding of skin with surroundings as much as his vision allows. it's like trying to make out a submerged object with water spilling behind his goggles. it's too much to process, and there's a few ( a lot ) of words caught in his throat. ( where do we begin? how should we do this? ) and in all of that is primal doubt. this is his - no, their - first mission. this is where everything matters. where he matters. where they make themselves legends or die trying.

“we should...” he hesitates, grip shaky on a pair of binoculars. the two were primed as art connoisseurs. his glimpse into the window of the mansion gives little away; backs of royally-dressed individuals and window pane. 

was it really as simple and easy as just walking in, posing as one of the invited, and getting out with the sculpture? he likes to think so. 

the theory of positivity begins with confidence and banishing away the festering doubt, else it becomes an open, spreading wound. lowering his head, he dips further behind the bush. 

the arc painted a sobering reality of what true men were. true men tore apart the sheep among their kind and bloodied themselves. true men would pay no mind to hesitancy or trust in their doubt when it came to their life or yours. it was always their life. and the dead, weak sheep men were a disservice.

“so, there's people in there. a lotta people. maybe it's better we don't make ourselves known.” and they're racing against time, and he takes a breath with each passing second. it makes the world turn and flash and maybe he prefers it like that. but he doesn't want to regret. but he can't fail. he wars with himself and spans a battlefield across his thoughts.

“and i have a feeling that this thing’ll be locked down. tight. we can try sneaking in.” he scans the upper level windows for any openings and purses his lips. shut, but still a possibility.

“those windows up there might get us in if they're unlocked. i can make a rope. you any good with climbing?”

[ffsrome]

— push and pull.

[arcjintae]

arcjaehwa:

“stop fucking,” he starts out, pushing the arcana to the other end of the maze, though the room between the two walls wasn’t enough either way before he continued on with “walking to damn close to me. i can hear your breathing and it’s starting to piss me off.”

it didn't matter how many days it's been. not when he's hungering for something more.

the walls are cold. goosebump flesh crawls down his fingers and up his arms, wraps around his spine and kisses his neck. he shivers. darkness swallows whole two figures wandering further and further into its embrace. should either of them shout out, their voices would carry for miles and die in the cracks of the walls.

through his laboured breathing is a string of wheezing ( and gasping for air when he punishes himself for self-suffocation. but it's not for naught, for he's onto something, someone, out there. they're trailing sounds behind them like blood droplets for him to come upon, and he's on their trail. )

“hey-” he grunts, stumbles back against the wall, and it once more kisses him cold and chaste, “you fucking.”

fight, fight. yes, good. that's what the walls whispered. you are a pawn in this game of chess. no one would lay witness to carnage in these shadows. and this is where secrets come to rest in a bed of the dead. it's then that his hand curls into a fist and he approaches the other male. no matter that he had to crane his neck to look jaehwa in the eye, he stood firm.

“believe me when i say you're the last one i wanna be stuck with,” turning away, ( he must not. he must not. it was a test. his fingers ached to splinter bone and trash the ground with shards, but he must not. ) and heaving a sigh, he let silence flood the halls again. nothing.

“go this way because i was trying to listen for something and you threw the trail off.”

may the corridors guide them in blindness, point the way with chills; lest they, too, walk between the cracks and die with lost voices. he grits his teeth and listens again, but the walls dare not speak.

"okay, how about you make yourself useful and give us some light here so i can see where i'm going." or else he'll shove his lighter up where the light doesn't shine and make the other male a human torch.

[fybaekhyun]

[arcjintae]

a rose and its thorns,

@arcsora

the walls seem to further stretch skyward. he's small, insignificant; even when he, too, reaches for the sky and finds himself empty-handed but for steel. and for once, there's silence. he welcomes it. 

sweat beads at his forehead and he wipes it away, follows that with a shaky sip of water. he douses his fingertips with water, tends to the aging wounds where curving claws of bone once protruded. the then pain of knife-like shards slicing through his skin trumped the fear of death by stomp of the spider from before. ( like a mallet slamming down on each individual finger ) but all there was to do was bear it for now, even as he lost feeling in two fingers. he was so close.

every time he reaches for the air, it's stolen away. should he dig into his flesh and pull apart his ribcage for closer examination of his lungs, he believes them to be shriveled - burned at the ends from the fire he swallows with every run. yet, in the wake of fire, he smiles. it's one of triumph, that he's a reckless youth with a god’s power in his veins. and he can't be stopped.

and the struggle to stretch his lungs leaves him with starry vision and vertigo that causes the sky-reaching walls to swirl and close in on him until he closes his eyes and looks away.

he's had enough of bullshit and partnering with the others for one day, but -

ah. sora.

now there's someone who relieves him. she never failed to meet his standards of, well, acceptability. it meant she wouldn't hold him back, wouldn't be the dead weight dragging him six feet under. a pendulum’s swinging in his ears, counting down to the very seconds until the final phase commences. he feels it.

“well, well, look who it is.” he clicks his tongue, sizes her up, and nods, pleased, “did you answer my call for a good partner or is it luck?”