ADIOS, ASSHOLE.

[echogroove]

[deathwent-blog]

[memories]

surprise, fellow kids. I bet you thought you’d seen the last of deathwent

[deathwent-blog]

DESOLADES‌.

     “Just a hunting cabin,” his eyes wandered off to the trees, as if the shapes of a building might insinuate themselves in the solid trunks of the trees. “Been there before— that was a lifetime ago.” Again his sight came back to the stranger, trying to measure him,his threat. Lots of bandits out there on those parts, but he hadn’t shot him yet, that was as good of an assurance as he could expect. “Could use some alternatives.”

      "YOU  LOOKING  FOR  A  PLACE  TO  HUNT?"   he knew he wasn't, but it seemed a wiser question to ask than the one he really wanted:   what are you running from?   he was in no place to cast aspersions on a stranger's intent, he was far enough from innocent on his own, but still he was wary.   ghosts haunted the woods, him among them—it wasn't wise to wander.   "know a couple off-hand.   most are falling apart, no one to look after them these days." 

[deathwent-blog]

OUTLOYAL.

“     HEY     don’t i know you ?   face seems REAL familiar   —   like you was in strawberry a couple’a weeks ago.     ”          a gloved hand runs along the bristles of a two day old beard.   the mind wanders until it settles upon the image of a torn, old wanted poster in the sheriff’s office.   one he might’ve idly taken a quick glance at while attempting to break micah out, and in turn lighting up the place for no goddamn reason.          “     wait, now i remember.   look, i ain’t here t’claim that bounty on your head.   hell, i don’t know if anyone is gonna come a’lookin’ for you any time soon.     ”          @deathwent gets a starter.

      THE  LONGER  HE  STAYS  IN  THE  AREA  the more it seems his time is up.   his cabin, once squalid and forgotten—now more home than not, is increasingly found by wanderers and fortune-seekers out scavenging the woods for any sort of prize they might dig up.   bounty hunters are their own problem outside of that.   he's removed anything remotely identifying from his cabin at this point and spends most nights in a tent on a ridge a ways above it, trying to keep as low a profile as possible.   figures someone would find him away from it, still, but then that's his own mistake for daring a trek to the river in the early hours of the day.

      "plenty of folk come looking."   he's hardly going to trust some random stranger's words, he knows better.   he’s been burned before.   "some of 'em find more than they bargained for, if you catch my drift."       @outloyal

[deathwent-blog]

MULTIPLAYR.

HE FEELS THE IMPACT, THICK CHAPTERS, PAPERBACK HEAVY, and it isn’t the force of the collision that startles him; he might have even seen it coming, as an inevitability. Jack grunts, catching the book in his palm before it could drop and bounce off of his thigh. He snaps the book shut between his fingers, shooting Gabriel a withering look that doesn’t quite hold its usual serrated bite. 

Jack offers him a measured look, now. It is a testament to their dynamic that he doesn’t feel particularly bothered. Gabriel was his superior before he was ever his friend, and sometimes these roles tend to bleed together, like watercolors. It is something Jack can respect, and trust to keep him focused.  He folds his arms behind his head, and uses the book to cushion the base of his skull.  “Saving the world. Not dying. You want bullet points, or an action plan?” 

      "AN  ACTION  PLAN  WOULD  BE  NICE, for once."   an action plan, a detailed list, a manifesto of intent done up in bronze.   it doesn't matter either way because the end result is the same: a war, a fight they might not win, the end of all things they once knew and held dear.   PESSIMIST is a strong word for someone willing to devote himself to a cause the way they both have, but lowered expectations have a way of hurting less when they're not met.   better to be surprised when a hand plays in your favour.

      it's not worth considering whether they've made a mistake in agreeing to this.   it's too late, they're in too deep to bid retreat, like some bad spy novel his mom never bothered to throw away: THEY KNOW TOO MUCH.   granted, he's sure they've got enough brainpower on hand to wipe their memories clean of everything they've seen without much fuss at all, so maybe it's an option after all.   it's not, not at all, but sometimes all a man's got is the WHAT IFS of his life.

      "how long they figure you gonna out this time?"   it's a softer question by scant degrees; he addresses jack's shoulder instead of his face.   they can play brave all they want but they're still young enough to be stupid where it counts.   "don't expect me visiting you this time.   i'm way too important for that now."

[deathwent-blog]

SYNTHMAMA.

Quinn’s attention, here, is hyper-focused. Every facial tic, every dip and rise in tone is carefully noted and mapped out. She’s studying his behaviors, trying to establish a baseline – an instinct born both from paranoia, and experience. She’s learned before what can happen when one doesn’t keep a careful enough eye on the power structures. Not even sixteen years of cryo can undo those marks; like fingerprints and pinpoints of ghosts scorched all across her skin.

“An occasion like that implies I’d be slated for combative situations to begin with wouldn’t it? My capabilities are better suited towards the labs, according to the evals.” Here, her head tilts, almost cat-like in the way her eyes narrow, and watches his approach. Quinn’s breath remains frozen in vitrified lungs as he bears down on her. The hairs on her neck rise; every instinct telling her to back away, maintain distance, stay SAFE. Instead, she doesn’t even balk. Her chin tilts upwards, a shadowy stare leveled clear at him. She’s not going to flinch just yet.

She doesn’t even get the chance to, anyways. 

Her vision blurs, and Quinn can only belatedly process the shift in perspective, in gravity and balance, before she slams down against the mat with another force to leave her winded. Fingers claw at the mat beneath her for purchase, back arching upwards before she’s twisting onto her stomach and trying to breathe, breathe, BREATHE. Gabriel’s voice sounds as if it’s coming from the outside of a fishbowl, illegible, but the bite of his tone only incenses her; plummets a normally icy demeanor into something far more glacial. She sucks in a breath, lets it hiss through bared teeth, before finally managing to exhale, and reevaluate.

Reyes stands like a wall over her. She could strike upwards, aim for the solar plexus – a palm heeled strike between the ribs, just like her father taught her. But she knows better. Knows that such a hit could barely even glance him, and would be too easy to predict. Instead, Quinn’s leg draws forward, until she’s in a low crouch; still appearing to gather her bearings. Her hair falls in a loose curtain, obscuring – and those eyes of hers are already tracking once again.

It’s the appearance of shock that masks her actions as she lunges forward. Quinn sidelines around him, still on her knees, before her elbow whips back, using both torque and momentum where she lacks the sheer strength Reyes boasts. It drives clean into the bends of his knees, and Quinn doesn’t ignore her instincts this time. One foot forward, then another, and she’s stumbling upwards to create distance between them.

“Don’t pin your tardiness on me.” A breath, shuddering. There’s a shudder all throughout her body – still winded – before she slides into a defensive stance. “It’s not very professional.”

      IF  SHE'S  LOOKING  FOR  A  FIGHT then he's more than willing to provide one for her.   she leaves a trail of fire in her wake, something that calls back to her evaluations and the several recommendations against selecting her as a potential blackwatch asset.   she's cagey and too-smart and he's more than willing to use both those attributes to his benefit if he's able to rein them in.   if not, well, that's a different arena of thought to approach.   had overwatch wanted to break her they would have kept her for themselves—gabriel can use that fire.   they need it if they're going to achieve anything at all in this world.

      a slight bend of the knee, at best.   a calculated move he's sure would put a lesser man off balance, but gabriel is more than both of those identifiers and she'd have more luck were he almost anyone else at all in the world.   unfortunate, he's sure, but she'll learn soon enough that he doesn't go down easy.

      "we left professional at the door, i'm afraid."   he eyes her up as he turns, gauging all the little things he might need to be aware of: her reaction times, her recovery, the way she's fucking WATCHING him as if she's doing the exact same.   it's good.   he prefers it to the stoic compliance of some of their better-trained agents and the dogged reluctance of the ones they inevitably have to cut free.   it's not much of a surprise that he keeps the problem cases close at hand, the ones that bite the hand that feeds—with the right sort of coaxing they're the ones most keen on loyalty and success.   they're the ones he can trust.

      let overwatch keep their shiny clean reputation, blackwatch needs the teeth.

      "i'll state it again, for the record."   his tone is as even as can be, flat and utterly professional despite his previous statement.   "don't waste my fucking time.   this is my last offer:   the door—"   he points, watching her intently, analyzing each and every little tic that manages to flicker across her face and making sure she's aware he's doing it   "—is there.   you are welcome to leave if you think you're too good for this."

      a single step draws him closer.   he towers over her like this even without the military-standard posture usually employed to make a point.   something bright and fierce hums just below the surface, something that reeks of the confidence that's carried him as far as it has over the years, but it's shifted somehow, twisting outside of himself.

      "or you can stay."   quieter, but not softer—a challenge in just as many words.   "and prove to me that you are."

[deathwent-blog]

WHAT   SHAPE   DOES   YOUR   PAIN   TAKE   ?

SEA  .

you're drowning.   a sea of emotions, responsibilities, people, things, everything.   you just can't handle it all, you need to escape, but you can't.   even talking to someone and being told it's okay, compliments, nice things people say, it all adds up to drown you further.   guilt, for feeling this way when everyone's being nice and you're not enough. will you sink or swim?

tagged   by   :   @valhela! <3 tagging   :   ive seen this a bunch now so uhhh anyone who hasn’t done it yet?   i’m looking at u @vaqueron

[deathwent-blog]

“you look uncertain.   i'll say to you what was said to me on the eve of my first battle: do not let your fears define you.”                           ▸   @valhela  /   sc.

[deathwent-blog]

“yes, you have talents.   enormous, wondrous powers.   but you should put the smirk away.”                          ▸   @xenovair  /   sc.

[deathwent-blog]

“come on, let's spice this up the way i did taco night.”                      ▸   @synthmama  /   sc.

[deathwent-blog]

“what the hell happened in here?”                      ▸   @puazo  /   sc. 

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

Nina Cassian, tr. by William Jay Smith, from Life Sentence: The Selected Poems; “Ghost,”

[deathwent-blog]

like this for a short/banter starter!   bonus points if you let me know if you want it for a specific verse! 

[deathwent-blog]

SYNTHMAMA.

@deathwent || since you asked.

The centrifugal pull as they bank the corner has enough force that she feels like she might compress down until little more than a sheet of paper. The muscles in her arms strain in an effort to keep her hands from trembling as they work. Her voice is little more than a hissed mumble, lost beneath the roar of engines. 

“Threading a needle while accelerating around an exploding building as an entire STREET is falling apart? Sure, Reyes: why not?”

      he’s listening, but only just; he drops the vehicle into a lower gear (manual transmission, how novel—specially modded by the feel of it; they’d stopped selling consumer models with it decades ago) and guns the engine to tear them out the other end of the turn.   “you wanna try the alternative?” he fires back over the thunder of falling debris around them, shifts the truck up to fifth and pins the gas, “i can take you back, just say the word.”

[deathwent-blog]

‘are you still alive?’

      rain can only wash so much clean: not sin, not loss, not pain, not anything that really matters in the end.   it carries away the thin veneer of dirt but what good does that do?   the rooftop is slick with it, dirt and rain alike, and the city below is quiet in the aftermath of the storm, bright lights like beacons against the night sky from where they’re perched.

      he laughs from somewhere deep inside, bitter and biting with wounds old enough to be canyons of grief— but for who?   it’s wrong to mourn himself, this is the decision he made, for better or worse, all those years ago.   to live, to die, to rise up from the ashes of his mistakes as if he might rectify them if he pushes hard enough, if he just tries—

      his head tips towards her, face blessedly obscured.   “alive as anyone else.”   but that’s not true now either, is it?   he doesn’t know what he is anymore, torn between the reality of death and the misery of life.   what’s the point echoes like a drumbeat in his head, but he knows the answer to that, too.   everything is the point.   for now, forever, whatever might come. 

—– soft angst *

[deathwent-blog]

DESOLADES.

      There was a twitch on his lips that was impossible to interpret, maybe a smile cut off, a sneer. He let his face rest, let the words sink before finally answering in that slow and measured voice. “Yeah well, I think me and the ghosts will be just fine. I got a knack for ‘em.” He didn’t get too well with his own ghosts but those were a different’t kind of spectre. “I’m looking for a cabin out here. Know anything about that?”

      he’s immediately suspicious, on edge in a way that’s grown so familiar it’s become a skin to replace his own.   his fingers flex against the grip of the shotgun still lax in his hand but he doesn’t raise it despite the instinct telling him to do just that.   “what sort of cabin?   seen a handful in these parts but they’re spread pretty wide.”