Tinta--Writes

Writing blog for @tinta--branca

[tinta--branca]

Tagged by my beloved bingus @rimetin thankuu u3u

No bingos but it's to be expected ;u;; I don't write a lot at the moment ;3;

I have no idea who to tag so if any of you lads don't want to do it it's ok !! Ignore! Otherwise: @fly-for-a-lifetime @gendervapor14

[tinta--writes]

bounty on their head or ambush for zhen and mc >>>:)))))

I chose ‘Bounty on Their Head’ because bits and pieces of possible routes will include something similar - Zhen hunting mc down in one way or another ;O;

And! For some extra pain! This is with a Zhen you romanced in the past ;u;

No warnings for this one I don’t think, just threats and a gun, ~1,230 words.

Bounty on Their Head

They don’t put out flyers with your face on them - your name, whichever you’re using now, stamped below in bold, angry letters. None of that. But you know they festoon meetings with your face - insurgent, criminal, traitor. They want you hunted like an animal, like the animal you are, and you reckon they’re right. To destroy the opposition, quell the rebellious spark you’re fanning, igniting, turning into a raging inferno - they can’t want that. Won’t want it.So you know they parade you in meetings, tell their children to eliminate you if they ever see you. No more ‘dead or alive,’ your first mistake was direct, hostile action. Repeated. Now you reckon they wish you’d died the first time.

You wonder, sometimes, if Zhen sees those pictures - if they recognise your face after so long. So long? A little over four years - they must, they must. You reckon they know, you reckon it hurts them. Why is the person they saw die still alive? Why is the person they fought beside opposing them? Why is the person they loved trying to destroy everything they still have left?You don’t think they’d understand. You want to explain, want so, so desperately to scream the truth at them, whatever it may be. Your truth, the pains you’ve endured, seen, you want them to know. You want them to care. You shake your head so the revolution can stay with an empty heart at its head.

———————————————————————————————————

“What the fuck are you doing,” the hiss presses against your ear, and the gun against the other. Your mind rings - arena, alleyway, Zhen. “Zhen-“ you start, smile dying on your lips as they speak, much colder than you remember.“Answer the question.”You try looking them in the eye, “The Corps needs to go down,” and search for any pain, any regret, does it hurt them to threaten you? Then why does it hurt you?“And they say you need to go down,” you blink. You hear the choice they’re making - the one you’re offering. The Corps or me? And your stomach drops as you realise which they’ve chosen.

“You’d do that?” you don’t mean to choke, “You’d kill me?”

You wonder if you could’ve predicted this - at any point. The gun? The words? The cold steel in their eyes? If, at some point while you’d still been able to rest in their arms, you’d considered, fantasised. Who is this. Who are they? You remember adoring them, once upon a time. Their hair familiar under your hands, crammed onto one of those hard bunks, or pressed together by the shoulder in one of those rumbling trucks. You remember the tear in their ear, how they’d let you fiddle with it, unflinching. How they’d crowd close whenever you were there, seeking out your hands, arms, ribs. You remember the way their palm felt in yours and wish they’d let you reach out once more.

Something like pain - you’re hoping, lost in it - flashes across their face. A grimace. Open to your eyes, despite the orders beyond your control. Zhen hesitates, and you want to tear your hair from your scalp when you find yourself lauding their doubt. “You say that like I’m choosing.”You want to laugh, spit, scream. But the hope takes hold, “And if you could choose?” because if they say it, you need to hear it. “If I could-?” their face shifts - anger, how rare. Directed at you. New, unfamiliar, the ground fractures beneath you, and the wall against your back begins to crumble. You reach out to hold on to them, but remember the cool steel against your skull and stop. Freeze.

“If I could choose, you wouldn’t be doing whatever the fuck this is,” they gesture at. What? The wasteland around you? You didn’t do that, the Gladiators did. You don’t mess with them, that’s for the Corps. That’s for your past. “You’d be back at the Corps, with us, with me, and everything would go back to normal.” normal. Normality. You evict the idea, “With you?” point the focus towards the fizzling, broken romance. The care you wish you could grasp, but lose all the same. Something breaks behind the ice in Zhen’s eyes. “With-“ then hardens, “With all of us.”Us. Collective. You break the hive and watch it trickle down your hands, sickly sweet. “You know I can’t,” you don’t want to, either. “I don’t know shit, apparently. Didn’t know you were alive, for starters - didn’t know you’d survived.” like you could’ve told them. Like you’d tried.“I couldn’t tell you,” a crooked half-truth. I couldn’t tell you because you’d tell Them. Telling you would be betrayal.“You had four years!” they wield the truth like a weapon, and it cuts deep. You figure they have a point, figure they’ve earned your blood - wonder if they can love it.

Something crumbles in your stance - you slump against the wall, deeper, barely taller than them, sinking against the weight of the barrel. They notice, and something shifts, dislodges - lost, suddenly, and you do not miss it. “Why,” used again. Manipulated again. Abandoned again, and you realise they’re hurting just as much as you. You’re hurting them in equal measure. “Why didn’t you say anything?” To me?“I didn’t want to go back,” your mind would’ve fractured. Already has. “I didn’t want to associate with the Corps anymore.” “I’m just that to you?” and how dare they turn it personal when it suits them. You glare, shift the pointed look to the gun. They have the sense to look ashamed, lowering the barrel, stepping away, pleading again. “What is this.”

You shrug, and it’s helpless. You don’t know. You try, “I know I loved you,” I know you loved me.They flinch, “What is it now?” is it hate? Do they hunt you out of hate? Out of duty? When does one occlude the other, when do they become the same thing. You wonder again if they could really kill you. Another shrug, “I still…” you choke on the words, and the revolution loses its hollow heart. “I don’t think I ever stopped feeling that way.” it’s a wheeze at best, but something crumples in their face all the same. In their heart. Grief? Anger? You can’t tell, not anymore. “Is that why I can’t kill you?” “Do you really love the Corps that much?” you dig deeper. You want to scream.

They don’t answer, and that is answer enough for you. You step away, trusting - trusting in risk, in pain - that they won’t shoot. Won’t raise the gun up once more. One step, then two, and they only watch as you slide from between them and the wall. Further, further, they watch, eyes locked with yours, and you almost trip on the rubble. “Don’t-“ their turn to choke. You don’t stop moving. Something changes, but you don’t know why, “Don’t let me see you again.” I won’t be merciful next time. How easily they let go. How easily they cut the tie.

They disappear behind the building, behind another - you build the distance. Build and return to a burgeoning army - a group intent on ruining and breaking Zhen’s dream. Not that they know. Shatter the nightmare, that’s how this ends.

[tinta--writes]

Of Hands and Healing

The only bad part of writing a part two to anything (part one is right here), is that if your title was bad the first time around, it must now be even worse.

But that is ok!! @echoise‘s Keith is finally getting some cool new hands (this was so cathartic for me to write, you have no idea), and it’s even more abstract than last time, somehow ;u;

To keep with the themes of part one, there are quite a few mentions of God (Catholic ones) in here, and implied nerve damage talk - the rest is soft and vague.

m!Sidestep, Steel, ~1,655 words.

You’re folded into the script this time, given lines and words and ideas - your name snug behind the colon, tucked behind half-truths and vague honesties. God drafts you into fear and pain - paints it across the letters and then over Wei’s face - tells you he’s wracked with pity and regret. Unable to understand why he is trying to help you - you also paint that over his face and say it’s suddenly his. Say you’re not writing his lines for him, running in rages and squabbles in your mind - you tell him the script is God’s, and you are not God.

He takes you through a hall of prototypes - each new material in your hands begging for opinion and appraisal and approval. Steel, Chen, Wei - looking for that approval. But you hold the synthetic skin and feel only static, hold the smooth metal and feel a pen scribbling black marks around and across and inside. Helpless, you realise, and almost throw hundreds of dollars on the floor just to watch them scatter into smithereens. Fragments. Pieces of you falling and careening as you close your eyes. Inhale. Break through and mutter, “Not this one.”

In mercy, in absolution, he takes it from you, forces a polite smile, and gives you another metal. You think it’s a metal. You look at it and it shines and it blinds you - it’s a metal. He puts it beneath your hands, asks you to feel, and you bask in the instant regret on his face. The balk and blanche of guilt - you let your anger wrap itself around and around, choking, constricting, then you let go. Wei’s mind softens and you let go, realising he’d have let you keep going. You let go, and the guilt is your own.

Wei puts a replica of his own hands in yours - offers you salvation through the dead, useless nerves. You flinch, mind turning blank, and stare. You see your hands around the metal - around the steel - recognise them as your own but feel nothing. The weight pulls at your forearms but leaves your fingertips numb. “Definitely not,” you speak to the scars over your thumbs and knuckles. I want to look like me. Not you.

Another, this time against your arm, perhaps in some vain hope of feedback. Co-operation - because you thrash and bite and growl, but your face stays pleasant and still. Just still. You know it should be beneath your hands - you know you should connect with your hands. Everyone does. Everyone’s connection to the world is through their hands. Yet, while yours are right in front of you, there is no connection. No Feeling. Nothing. You try not to remember what you’d once had - instead lavishing that attention on the hands of others: wonderful beneath your mouth, hateful beneath your fingers. Drink the poison from the fingernail and fingertip - you wrap yourself in what you loathe to call jealousy.

You give Wei a defeated look, trying not to turn angry - trying not to let the resentment, frustration, fury behind your hands, behind your face, behind the words that were written down for you explode. He notices, because of course he does. He knows you too well - you panic, draw away, then back into his orbit because you cannot let go. Refuse to let go. He knows the meaning behind every little twitch in your face and you hate that too. The anger becomes solid in your chest - it becomes your sternum and it goes through your ribs to trap your chest and make the breaths short and sharp. Like your words - when you speak, you ask, “Why?”

“Why?” he echoes, and you feel your mind skitter away from his. “Why are you doing this?” He decides not to play stupid, and you try to push down the gratefulness. You owe him nothing. “You agreed to let me help,” and you know. But that wasn’t what you meant. “Why does it matter to you?” you hear the words buzz in his mind before he can say them. He doesn’t - grateful again, and you shoot it down. “Really?” because you may as well take what is given to your face, lie or otherwise. Wei nods and you let it be enough, knowing you’ll rage and burn all over again if you press. If you press and aren’t given what you are looking for - rejection, an admittance that he’s lying to you, using you. So you let it be enough.

Every time you pick up another prototype, you don’t. Not really. You know you’re holding it - you see your hand holding it up, but the hand is not yours. It is joined at the wrist, but it lies to you in feeling and weight. Wei takes the synthetic monstrosity from you before you can drop it.

God cuts you from the wrists down and tells you you’re fine.

He wrestles another metal into your hands - it’s failure, this time. You can feel it - taste it - taste the iron in the blood. You hate it again, wracked with hate - wracked with disgust at the things given to you. In this sterile room - clinical samples which you turn in your hands before asking - no, pleading, “Why?” He dares, this time, “Because I c-“ “No,” and your self-worth plummets to the ground. “Why are you really doing this? Any of this?” He says nothing, of course he does, and you push again, knowing he’s hiding something. Has to be. Trying to make you rely, kneel, obey-

“Is it that hard for you to believe I care?” that anyone cares?

Static sits behind your fingers, sits behind your skin - not bone deep, not quite - fluttering somewhere within your veins, arteries, treating them to shockwaves of static in grey, white, black noise. And you can’t feel anything through that. You feel - you laugh, God laughs - the enormity of Christ laughs behind you, behind the throat you have, behind the arms you were given and then had taken away. Your body ends at the wrist because there is nothing after that. The blank space of your hands laughs - you laugh.

Of course it’s hard to believe - you expect me to trust you just like that? But he sighs, endlessly patient and just when had you earned that.

“I’d take you for a liar,” but Steel understands before you say it - you can feel the truth ringing in his mind. It almost makes you angrier, but you sober - bring yourself to heel, if only for a moment. “But I can’t do this.” He wasn’t expecting that one - opens his mouth to object but you cut him off, “Not like this.” A light, and you see Wei holding back a quiet smirk, “Not like this?” You shake your head, wrestling with the blistering, lying hope you feel crawling up your chest. Can you trust him not to fold you into his script? Can you trust him not to trap you in the same way he has been bound? Can you force yourself to rely on him for something as painful as this?

“Then we’ll find another way,” but he already knows. You look, and it’s hope. And you hide it behind yet another line, another script, another piece of code that tells you to keep your face blank and cold. But Steel catches you with a smile - echoed in turn - and you let something deep in your mind loosen, relax, and rely.

———————————————————————————————————

You can’t feel the cast around your hand, not properly, but Wei holds your free one in his to squeeze and reassure, lets you know patience is all he needs from you. He lets you talk him through the design, sketches it when you cannot, makes sure to smooth the scars and rough skin from the casts once they dry. “You’ll feel more than you do now,” never as much as you once could, but so much more all the same. “You’ll articulate better too - no more shaking.” None at all, not even the natural, human quivers you would get when cold.

But you look at your hands, criss-crossed with scars and blemishes and burns - look back at Steel as the static thrums beneath your skin. And you dive in headfirst.

You spend too many nights up drinking what you shouldn’t, looking at what you shouldn’t, doing what you shouldn’t. Breaking laws you don’t know the names to, making the government’s brow crease into a frown, and the Farm’s deeper still. A forgery - but better, he tells you - designed entirely on your own terms. Yours alone. His hands move in your stead, but he ensures that the mind is always yours - orders, always yours. Together, you break the Farm’s fingers into pieces, the government’s hands into fragments, and in active defiance, you move closer to daybreak. He plays God, and you act in kind beside him. You both play God. And when those hands are made and formed, you know they came from the maw of God.

———————————————————————————————————

You unfurl the script this time, scrape away the old lines with hands that move and feel and stand firm. The words, with their accompanying ideas - you wipe the slate clean until their imprints fade, tucking your name, Wei’s too, behind colons. Leaving the following space blank - no draft, no fear, no pain. You catch Wei’s fond smile from across the table and return it with an edge of ease - not as hard as before, but not simpler either. When he speaks, it’s warm - it burns, but you hold, hold - and wrap it around your shoulders.

The coffee cup sits warm and full between your palms. And you smile.

[tinta--writes]

and funeral/memorial for fallen hero, your choice of characters :3c

Exams are finally over so I can start writing more often!!

I used Seneca for this because I adore them so much and also haven’t written them in a hot minute ;O; So! Have a grieving Ortega missing their friendTw dissociation, n!Sidestep, m!Ortega, ~739 words.

In Memoriam

A good little soldier doesn’t cry. A good little soldier steels his face and draws his lips into a sombre line. Stands in line. A good little soldier is as a stone in the rain, you do not flick the water from your eyes. You do not flick away the tears. You breathe steadily despite the furnace burning beneath your blazer, scorching your skin through the shirt, turning it to cinders, dust, ash. You look at neither the coffin nor the ground - and the bitter taste of Marshal burns the inside of your mouth.

Marshal. Marshal - built to lead, command - a figurehead with its hands unbound. So why, you let yourself wonder, did those hands not reach them in time. Why did they grasp at the space left behind instead, grasp at the air just outside the shattered window, grasp at the idea of them somehow being okay. Alive. No. You school your mind, bring it to heel, scold it for wandering. Scold it for breaking, if only for the moment.

You watch the ornamental coffin being lowered - stuffed with pictures, flowers, tattered mementos of the two of them tangled up in death. You watch yourself watch the coffin - you see your eyes trying to follow it into the ground - jump in. Follow it. Tear them free from the earth - the one they were smeared against. Bring them back.You see yourself flinch, and then you snap back once more - a good little soldier doesn’t cry.

———————————————————————————————————

A good little soldier doesn’t forget. A good little soldier knows who works for him and understands their use. How to use them. A good little soldier always remembers - never forgets - and you find a sick, twisted pleasure in fulfilling that duty.You never forget, not really - their voice haunts you, full of mystery as it had always been, but detached and existing solely in your mind. “I miss you,” you manage, a year later - a year, you choke on the idea - and nothing stops the torrent. Of pain, of tears, of emptiness - that night, you watch yourself cry.

The office is a stark thing - soft colours, softer seats - you sink into the chair and try not to look out of the window. Be polite, look at the therapist. Be charming. Say hello to them.You memorise the palette - break a little, cry some more, look up at the purple frame, the blue flowers, back to them. Smile. Smile.

You talk about them eventually, avoiding the name for as long as you can, knowing the sound would bring your heart to its knees. So you talk around it, in riddles, just like they had - and you break all the same. Dregs of them clinging to your life, to your soul, and you don’t shake them off. You can’t. You can’t let go, so you watch your therapist watching you. You see yourself shake your head through their eyes, hear your voice through their ears.

“Their name was Seneca.”

———————————————————————————————————

A good little soldier doesn’t cry. A good little soldier lives in the moment - streaking like lightning from decision to choice to action. A good little soldier never hesitates, and you push down the anger that surges when you do. A pause, a punch across the face, and you snap back into the present. Getting slow, getting old, but you shake it off again. Deep breaths, let the pain curl in the back of your body, press it up against your spine, let your fists do the talking.

Villains are easy - uncomplicated, something to focus on. A reprieve from your mind and out, out into the exterior. So you swing and fight and pull them from your mind once again: they are not beside you. They do not warn you when a punch comes for your head. They do not push the fists clear of your face - the bruises, the cuts - you grit your teeth and wrench your heart back into the present.

———————————————————————————————————

A good little soldier is always composed. A good little soldier keeps their head screwed on straight and never lets it lose its ice. A good little soldier never loses control, but their name escapes you despite it all. “Seneca?” They turn around, dropping something - your heart stops - and that voice hits you again.“Ortega?”

[tinta--writes]

He Suffers You In Joy

@awkward-screeching‘s Sidestep walked into my house and ripped off my wig (they would never, but you get the idea), so I made my last written piece before I get absolutely wrecked by exams about them ;U;

n!Sidestep, m!Ortega, ~907 words.

Suffer me, suffer me, they suffer you and tolerate the husk of your mind, cradle the shattered shell flowing only with air beneath. Suffer it so you may remain in circulation - never outdated, upgrade the engine - they keep you around because you are useful.

Kerbside me, you’d ask, never out loud lest they hear - comply - but always letting the idea turn in your mind. A rotation of thoughts - chasing your own tail, watching it shorten, snapping at it with a broken jaw - you chase and corral your way into life. A semblance: you breathe, you eat, you go to therapy like a good little- Like a person who wants to get better. And you will - you’ll give it one hour to make it happen, to tear the orange from your body - you were always too blue anyway - and set yourself free.

Jailbreak from your mind, take the Rat but leave the withered plants as decoration, sabotage their escape by draining the roots. Hide the spiracles beneath the jacket - we’ll crush you like the insect you are - you’re above monologues, so you stop listening. You want to stop listening. You want out: out of the lies that became reality, out of the mind that hounds you to death, out of the body that feels neither right nor wrong but clings all the same.

Sometimes you do escape, allowing your psyche to curl up in Eden’s - dusty, sometimes, but soon becoming elegant and almost graceful. The body is beautiful - to you, to Mortum - it is smooth, unscarred, young and everything you knew would fix you if you could attain it. You curl up in Eden’s mind, and he smiles like no other - snark, but soft in its charm - he bewitches and bewilders, and for a few moments, you forget the bother, forget the mind that sees everything, and become Eden.

So it’s no surprise to feel the flesh cringing away from your skin as you stand, in all your magnificent, tiny, quivering fear before Ortega’s scrutiny. Judgement. Like you’ve handed him the axe, bid he have at it as if you hadn’t already cleaved and hacked at pieces of yourself in the hope that you’d rearrange, come back better than before, having fixed it all. But you’ve fixed nothing, stirring only the solution you’ve diluted yourself into - a quandary of pieces all belonging to different puzzles.

You’ve eschewed Eden’s panache, leaving behind only Chris. Chris, who kills the plants they touch because they cannot even care for themselves. Chris, who fronts with a joke every time lest you notice the pain beneath. Chris, who stands now in fear and in clarity, waiting for their antidote to strike them down.

“Hey,” soft, like mercy. “Chris, listen to me,” because honesty pays in what? Not in life, for this is just existence. Not in kindness, because you can feel it falling away. “Orte- Ricardo,” I am Saboteur. I am everything you hate. “It’s okay,” how? “I can’t say I understand, but I trust you.” Mistakes - you’re covered in them, Ortega.

“C’mon,” he coaxes you over to one of the sofas, and you let yourself remember where you are. Rangers’ HQ - had you hoped that in hearing you say those words, something somewhere would have ordered your demise? Guns in the walls, perhaps? Ortega himself? His mind buzzes beside yours as you join him, allowing a tentative arm over your shoulders, pulling you closer. Like he understands. “Chris,” he repeats, and this time you find it in you to look at him. “Why?” He’s suffering you. For a moment, you think he may play dumb - but in faith, in confidence, he says, “Because you never killed,” low standards, then. “You never threatened, or even spoke - you came to the hospital, and,” a sigh, but it’s tired above all else, “And stupidly, I fell.”

You’d ask, but you do him a service in turn, reaching for the hand that hovers beside yours, pulling it into your lap for fear of. Of what? Everything? “So,” he’s patient - older, different, no less kind. “What now? I’m still… y’know.” he squeezes your hand - comfort, you take it. “Step by step,” he concedes, but you catch the corner of his mouth turn up at the inadvertent pun. Yours twitches too, and you manage a laugh - or a gleeful gurgle, mixed with unshed tears. You catch him looking at you - at the rare smile over your face - and you cover it sheepishly with your free hand.

“We need to see more of that,” his voice is hushed, but his hand tightens around yours - excited - thrilled. You smile again, and this time clasp both hands around his, letting him see that slow, precious grin once more.

Suffer me - he suffers you, gladly, and in his suffering he is full of joy. He cradles your hands in his, letting no air travel between, massaging the circulation back into your hands. He suffers, but you see it unabashedly this time - no pain, no struggle - this is not difficult for him. You’re not sitting on the kerbside, no longer chasing the tail of your errant thoughts. No, today you breathe, you eat, you go to therapy and let Ortega hold you for a little while. Today, you try to get better.  

[tinta--writes]

Anger Born of Worry

Finally got to your last prompt @echoise​ ;U; And on that note, I am also deeply sorry because this one is. Mean.

Tw general violent imagery, ~1,031 words.

Play the old dog - play it in string or breath or dried skin and then let it simmer, recollect, circle back as one unit in your mind as you remember. Remember which panel raises into a gun, which one slides back and offers you smoke bombs, which one pulls at your real tendons and shapes them into a punch. You draw back your fist and, amidst the crumbling explosions, rattling rubble, you give out an exultant, resounding laugh.

The hound quietens after the battle, dropping to rest, macabre in its stillness, draining from your mind and leaving it all clattering gears and spinning discs. You stretch your arms above your head, but they stay staunchly by your side - did you damage the joints? “Did you damage your joints?” something snaps, and you’re flung back into reality, hobbling off the top of a Gladiator carcass with Zhen by your side, supporting the body that, once perfectly synchronised, now staggers like a broken child.  

“What?” the buildings in this area stand taller than you’re used to seeing - less destruction, less pain, can you care? - they cast long shadows over the ground, over you, and you struggle to see anything when you stagger inside them, cradled by the coolness. Your eyes, hazy still from staring directly into the Gladiator’s smouldering eye - death’s eye, or so you’d been told - burn inside your skull. Your throat itches in tandem, still buzzing from laughing and cackling yourself hoarse.

“Did you damage the joint?” They're irritated this time, tone flatter, eyes searching your body for injuries, avoiding your face. “No,” you don't know. You don’t care. For the first time you feel alive and full of purpose - a lesion does nothing to change that. You won’t let it. “Have you even checked?” they know you haven’t - they know you too well - but you don’t give them the satisfaction. “Yeah,” why hadn’t you returned sooner? Why hadn’t you separated yourself from the rubble all those years ago, ready to fight again? Why did it take you so long to get over yourself and run into battle once more? The resentment builds and simmers under your skin.

“Bullshit,” Zhen mutters, but you raise them a challenge instead of ignoring them; maintaining the peace. You’re still here to fight - the dog growls again and for a moment you let yourself forget the leash. “It’s not like you know,” they do, you both do. They splutter, incredulous, but do not peel themselves from your side. “Did you forget to take your injuries seriously? Did you just-“ a sigh, rattling inside their chest - you feel it against your ribs - before they try again, “We can get you checked now, then?”

You do not miss the melancholy in their voice, nor the way their eyes drop, not having looked at your face even once since you’d started talking. But the petulance builds too, barking, saying I’m capable. I’ve always been stronger than you. Better. So why are you treating me like a bumbling child? “Stop acting like I don’t know what I’m doing,” this time they do look at you, and pain hides behind the confusion. “Wha-“ “Stop treating me like I’m some new recruit, like I don’t understand how to fight,” that’s not even your job - what would you know?

They say your name, tired and full of a hurt you do not have the bravery to confront, pursue, explore. They say it again, and you wrench yourself from their side. Stumble, stutter, but stay upright - spine straight, you’re twice the soldier they pretend to be. Bluster, bluster, you break and mould reality in your mind, minimising them - too small to sting you, too small to hurt. You tear out the needle, thrash against the collar, and meet their gaze.

“May I remind you which particular division you belong to, Velite?” they cover their pain, this time. “May I remind you that I have worked as a Bestiarius for a decade - that I well and truly know how to do my job? Or will you, far from expert in gladiatorial combat, keep trying to tell me how I can be of best use to the Corps?” Your breath shudders inwards, but when it comes out, it is as firm as stone. “Perhaps you should focus more on how you can be useful to us, rather than pushing your insecurities on me.”

Your eyes pinpoint the emotions - blankness, agony, rage, nothing once more - as the hound revels in the taste of blood. It circles in your mind, howling for more, but you hold it back, collar digging into your palms, preventing it from leaping forth and tearing and taking and maiming more. Maiming a relationship already frayed, tearing through the last few threads connecting the two of you - keeping you together. Your grip loosens.

When they speak again, their voice scratches in their throat, and you feel your heart flinch. “You’re of no use to anyone if you’re dead.” You'd expected them to rage in return, torn into your chest and rummaged around until enough damage had been done. Cut another thread. But this broken voice is entirely foreign, and you leave your face blank for fear of betraying your surprise. Your pity.

The dog hisses - hisses - and whines as your mind slows. “I’m honestly not sure if your first worry should be me, then.” They don’t face you, and you avoid looking at their eyes - looking at the wound you'd made. “Considering your history, I believe I am justified in my concern.” surprise climbs the rungs set about by anger, and you find yourself looking down at those warm brown eyes, now frozen over, boring into yours. A rigid fear swims beneath that muddy ice, but you ignore it in favour of looking at the staunch sorrow instead. A staunch sorrow which you cannot place, make sense of, nor identify. Something catches in your throat, the leash wrenches you back, and you walk away, cutting at those last few threads lest they tighten and pull you back into guilt and forgiveness.

[tinta--writes]

Arena Pain

Everyone has it Not Great in Arena, and that doesn’t exclude you - so I wrote some MC pain (with a tiny bit of comfort/hope at the end) to explore that ;O;

Tw for dissociation, a big ol panic attack, and vomit talk, ~604 words.

You can see your legs stretched out in front of you, askew across the floor as you lie crookedly against the wall, propped up at best. Your hands rest in your lap, but they are numb and full of static, unfeeling against your thighs. You can see your shins, but anything below your gut is silent, as if it had never existed. Both deeply sick and eerily calm, your stomach coils and struggles beneath your skin - you won’t vomit. Not again. Drained dry of both bile and the little food you’d managed earlier, you leave the chasm in your abdomen to yawn emptily, longing for a respite that eludes you still. You breathe out - the corners of your mouth are sticky, but you do not notice it.

A heartbeat - it comes from outside your body, but slams against the inward-facing plane of your sternum. Uneven, struggling, you choke out a noise - some sort of sob, or a gurgle - and it resets its broken rhythm. You don’t know how long you’ve been here, nor could you approximate it with a feeling. You’ve been here forever, you’ve never been here. Everything is empty, yet your mind screams and swelters with a chaos you’ve spent years trying to lock behind flimsy doors.

Something knocks against the outside of the shack you'd been gifted - you feel it in your chest, but you do not hear it. Your name follows, but you do not recognise it. The voice changes - first it is Tumelo, then an old love whose name slips through your hands, then a harsh bark that you do not recognise save for the taste of bile in your mouth. You choke again, and feel something fall - dribble down your chin, disappear beyond the precipice.

You look at your legs once more and a sob tears itself from you again. The knocking becomes more insistent and you almost whine, heart quickening to follow the pace. Too fast, too fast, and you crumble over the edge. The lethargy drains away, sitting at the back of your ribs as they are filled with this new, suffocating panic. Something spasms, perhaps in your leg, and you pitch sideways, spluttering more bile onto the floor in front of your face as you shake on the ground.

A gunshot. You hear a gunshot - your chest hears it, stutters as your vision darkens despite the distance between your eyelids. A gunshot, and someone walks in. A hand falls on your shaking shoulder, but you feel it as if through layers of static. Someone says your name in a manner so gentle your mind screams it must be deceit, it must be full of lies, but they prop you back up and clean your mouth despite the way it shakes and gibbers around their hands. You realise the gunshot was the sound of the door being forced open.

Slowly, you’re able to see your legs again, now neatly aligned so you may imagine comfort despite not being able to feel the blood flowing inside them. Your left hand buzzes, bones indistinct from muscle and skin, but your right is held in a warm grip, a thumb soothing over the battered knuckles. Tumelo speaks softly beside you, not expecting you to hear him just yet, nor to understand. He murmurs naive nothings against your head, but the experienced depth in his eyes betrays his reality. With a sigh, you let your body drift back to you - let it return and recognise you - before waiting for your mind to follow and attempt the same in turn.

[tinta--writes]

You Said You Would Let Them Go

I’m slowing down a tad with these prompts due to exams, but @echoise​ here’s a nice angst piece with Delwyn and mc from Arena :O

Tw for general violence, heavy injuries, and what could be seen as implied death, ~861 words.

You inhale, and it’s dust - your lungs, entirely organic, choke around the invasion and leave you coughing. You retch dryly, try to roll over, but find a crushing weight keeping you pinned to the ground. It presses down on your ribs hard, and you heave again, spluttering. “Why-“ it’s a croak, if anything, but a hand reaches through the dust and scrapes at your scalp, finding purchase in your hair, and wrenches you upright. Your knees burn, but you do not dare shift them. You turn your eye - the only one currently working, you realise with a sickness in your gut - and try to see through the smoke.

Someone calls your name, and you drag your awareness from the figure you can only vaguely make out, wreathed in smog, to the voice. “Where are you?” your mind chokes as it tries to remember what happened - who you fought, who was there beside you, why you’re on your knees.

“Don’t come any closer, or we’ll shoot you.” the voice comes from above, and the hand in your hair tightens, pulls, and you gasp, inhaling more dust. “Where are they?” you hear him this time. Delwyn. Your heart stops. The voice leans down, and this time you recognise it, “Tell him,” it sneers in your ear, through the static. The hand twists, and you manage a small, “Delwyn?” the noise distorted by your rasping, clogged throat. He immediately calls out your name, and your vision swims as you hear him approaching, shuffling quickly through the upturned earth.

“Don’t come any clo-“ the hand clenches and slams your face - or whatever is left of it, you realise - into the jagged ground beneath your knees. You don’t even gasp, your face too numb to register the wet warmth covering it, trailing down it, painting it. Your breath shudders inwards, and the voice beckons you, “Shut up.” as Delwyn finally bursts through the smoke.

He gasps, and you imagine you look a mess - you try to smile, and something falls out of your mouth. The hand pulls, tilting your chin up, and through one blurry, watering eye you manage to look at the poor man. Not daring to speak again - could you, even if you wanted to? - you twist the smile higher, ignoring how it drops when he looks away, unable to bring himself to look at you. Instead, Delwyn turns to the person behind you, holding you up, holding you in the palm of their hand.

“What,” his teeth grit, disturbing the words. “Have you done to them.” most of the damage is not theirs, you don't think, but your mind almost splinters as you attempt to recall where exactly it came from. You daren’t poke the viper coiled in your mind - you let it curl back up - a spring, a bomb, sweltering, ready to explode - and content yourself with watching. “Oh, does this upset you?” your neck is twisted again, and you feel your eye roll in its socket. “It’s almost like you had the chance to avoid this-“ “Shut up.” you cannot see Delwyn shaking, you cannot see the offering in his hands, you cannot see the tears running down his face. “You said you’d let them go if I did this for you,” you hear something clatter, and Delwyn’s voice raises in pitch and volume. “You said you’d let them go, so why-“ his voice brakes off, choking; pointing at you.

The voice tuts, and the back of your head loosens - they let go, and you pitch forwards, hitting the ground again, feeling it press against your nose and eyelids. This time, you stay down. “You really thought you’d get them back?” too naive, he’d always been too naive. “They’re a war criminal, they know things we should kill them for knowing, they actively oppose everything we stand for. And you think we’d give them up? Even in return for your greatest secret?”

Silence reigns for a long moment, or perhaps you simply cannot hear anymore. Your vision is a swimming blackness, and your body is filled with static - you can feel the transitions between organic and mechanical matter beneath your skin, the difference between your real and fake skin, both peeling and charring from your body. Your body. Is it even yours anymore?

Another hand, smaller this time, soothes over the space where the other had pulled and yanked, threading itself in your hair. You don’t know if you whimper. You don’t think you care. Someone coos your name, another tells them to back off - we’ll shoot, we’ll shoot, we’ll shoot. “Soon.” a promise, a threat, and you can’t manage nary a twitch. Someone shouts, and the hand leaves, trailing apologies after it because I failed you. You trusted me. I’m sorry, I should have known. This isn’t over.

You exhale, and it’s dust - your lungs, a clogged mess, choking around the invasion and relenting as you drown. Your body tries to convulse, but you do not feel it, left instead slumped on the ground, deaf and blind, as somewhere, somehow, someone thinks of you.

[tinta--writes]

Paint It Black

I am a simple lad - I fall in love with a character, and end up writing a needlessly complicated thing about them. @echoise‘s Vi is. Powerful. And I’m one frail person writing a little study on her relationships and identity, it seems ;u;

Tw violent/burning imagery, f!Sidestep, ~509 words.

You pick your fear up off the floor - you pick it up and wrap it around your shoulders - a cloak of flames; spewing, sputtering, chasing at your heels and decorating your ankles with red. You let it lap at the fear, foster it into growing, subsiding, and then finally consuming it - fuelling the inferno - as you wreathe it closer still. Indistinguishable - inextinguishable - you lose all semblance of shape as the net tightens, heats up, and broils beneath your skin; slipping above the surface and concealing your nature. Your body. Does it melt the braces in your legs? Does it wilt the purple bruises on your knuckles and turn them into black, charred stains? Does it take your heart and make it hunger for more and more?

The silver melts easily - because of course it does - and you mould it to your skin, replace the splints inside your shins, say it sustains the fire burning within. Like a phoenix - you scoff: you’re more than that. You don’t have to die to burn brighter - you just can. You just do. You consume knowing that it fuels you - you take in the myriad, trap it beneath your flesh, and cast it down into the flames below.

The flowers wilt and drain, colours falling away into black. Always black. You can pick the petals and wilt them yourself. Drain them. Take that orange and darken it, scorch it, deepen the tone until it blends in with all the rest. Water evaporates when you look at it - your eyes are embers, green coals full of seething ire, and you turn that steam to smoke.

The lightning is all bite, followed by a hollow bark - a bark you want to silence. Humiliate, disprove, outclass, and then mute and smother until it becomes nary more than a pitiful moan. You already have, really, but it’s not enough. It’s not what you want, not yet. You want to stamp that bolt into the earth, reduce it to only a stain smeared over the ground, never to burn hotter than you. Never to shine brighter than you. Never.

Amaranth takes the purple and broils it black. Iris takes the orange and chars it beyond recognition. Violet takes the thunder in her hands and sears it into the earth. She crams the ash into her mouth, lets it fall, fester, and disappears back into the flames.

She picks her anger up off the floor and tightly wraps it over her fear, over that broiling miasma, and wears the cloak over the inferno. It spews, sputters, and chases at her heels, painting her skin red, not letting you know whether she bleeds or not. She doesn’t. The anger consumes the fear, and in turn it is swallowed by that never sated, always starving blaze. Violet wreathes it closer still, pulls it against her skin - against the surface of her mind - a warning, a threat, a weapon. A promise: what she cannot have, she will burn.

[tinta--writes]

Reflection of Reality

Wrote this while dysphoria was kicking me into hell - it’s calmer now, and I realise I don’t really want a beard. But the me that wrote this may have, so yeah. It’s a mess.

Tw for dysphoria and now that I think of it, cancer imagery, ~438 words.

The mirror plays me a horror film - reflects to me a reality I wish I could tear from my chest. Tear out the tumours and let them drain out onto the floor; tell the mirror that this is the correct version of reality. This is how the story was supposed to go. My hair would not be a pencilled stubble, and my jaw would be strong - both in wit and in form. I would be tall and wonderfully powerful, my body a dependable pillar of shape and muscle. Of manhood and reality. Not this. Not this broken prison - this flimsy cage that bends too far inwards and then back out again, built for a job it will never come to complete. This body is a lie, and I tell it to everyone I see. Because they love the lie, and why would I take that away?

In another world, parallel yet different, my voice would be beautifully gravelly, full of deep, rich tones that would never come out forced nor jilted. It would sound like a deep music, all bass notes and spoken cello. But I’m a grating violin on a good day - whispering flute, squawking trumpet - I’m all the wrong shapes and sizes and noises. I yelp and it’s a squeal, I laugh and it’s a giggle. My eyes are soft and my lips thin, offset only by a large nose that resembles that of the father that beat me. The same eyebrows, a reflection of him - the only masculinity within me and it reminds me only of pain and fear and anger. I used to want to cut it off, too.

So I watch the horror in the mirror, see the past reflected in tandem with the present, stuck between the two like a lost child, suffocating in a body that matured incorrectly. In the most disgusting way I had ever dared dream. I’m all tumours and odd growths, left to fantasise about hair where it should be and strength where I yearn for it. I am vile in every aspect, a crawling monster only on good days - days in which my legs are all chorded muscle and veined spectacle. But today I live as a twisted creature - a reflection of a broken humanity. You look and you behold a woman. You look, and she is average - the shell betrays nothing. But inside, it holds a battered book and scribbles, edits, and cuts out what should not be there. Inside, it crafts its own reality again and again to hide from what it sees in the mirror.

[tinta--writes]

Go Through Me

I’m 100% gonna do the rest of the ones you’ve suggested (not just because they’re Arena-focussed I swear ;u; ), but for now, @echoise​, I have stolen Keith once again and because it is Bad Things Happen... well, I’m sorry ;A;

Tw for injuries, implied death, and a weird dissociation sequence in which Keith fights something that exists both within the physical world and in his mind.

m!Sidestep, Steel, ~1,319 words.

It connects with your face, and Evenfall shatters. Evenfall splinters, breaks away - peels from your eyes and nose and lips and reveals Keith. He shows him Keith and then he splinters again - arms, legs, skin, bones - pieces of Evenfall scattered amongst pieces of Keith, taunting him - put this back together if you can.

You don’t get back up, not when the numbness in your hands has crept up inside your arms, coiling in your shoulders before nestling itself in your chest. A heart full of static, spine too, barely keeping your ribs suspended above your lungs, heart - the cavern in your chest that rattles with every breath. You try not to breathe. “Keith?” Wei doesn’t try to help you up - you can almost taste the fear in his mind - he dreads breaking you, scattering the shards further. But you’re already broken. He doesn’t want to make it worse. Is that even possible?

“Chen,” formality is a window and you’ve bolted it - professional even when lying in your own blood. Professional because beneath that there is a broiling ocean of anger because you’re better than this. You can fight harder - you should be fighting harder. Get up.

“Keith,” it’s less desperate now - warmer in a way that cloys and pities, so you get up. All in one go - wrenching your mind alongside your body, feeling it wobble, seeing the black spots drip and dash over the world around you. On your feet. One feels broken - you look up at him and see one big dark stain. “We need to get out of here.” We can’t win. Not this time.

You don’t know what it is, the thing attacking you: a monolith, yet invisible; covered in spines, yet unable to grip or conceive - all you know is that it reeks of the Farm. It reeks of the Farm, and it’s winning. You swallow the panic - bile, you savour the reality of the taste - and look again at his face.

“It won’t get to you,” you can hear it breathing - can it breathe? It hums in the corner of your mind, drinks away at those dark edges, laps up the shadows and wreathes them around its impossible body. “Not if it can’t get through me.” Oh, but it can. You know this, and at first there’s anger because again, you’re better than this. You have to be. But then there’s despair because you’re not, not in a way that counts, and at this rate Wei will have to watch you die again. You will have to die again.

“It already has,” you hate how he chokes, unable to parse the fragments - pieces of Evenfall trying to jam his incompatible shapes with yours, forcing armour and skin together, fusing the two until it almost covers the blood painting your chest. “Then we get out,” caged animal - use the anger to hide your fear - that thing will pry open your head and drink the terror from inside. You can feel the drain - blood and fear - leaving and sustaining and fuelling.

It flickers inside your mind - a body in reality, an imprint mirroring itself in your mind. How do you fight that? How do you wire your mind and body separately - tailor them to face each opponent without stumbling? Without falling? The black spots streak across your shattered landscape - smoke occluded in turn by its arrows. Rain. It rains in your mind, but outside it burns and burns and burns.

“Keith!” and you snap out of it. “Keith,” and you grab his hand and begin to run away - God, where is away - from its body. Your mind flails as your hip struggles to keep up with the chase - it thrashes like a caged animal but no. You are the cage. Your mind is the cage, and you can contain its mind in yours. You tighten, magnify, minimise your consciousness, corral the beast, press it down and make it submit because you are Keith. You are the cage.

It connects with your foot, and Keith shatters. Keith splinters, ankle numb, but Wei is there. Wei catches him. You. And does not stop - he runs, leaving you free to descend into your mind proper. He is the body, you are the mind. Your hands are always gone, but now your feet follow - the cage of your ribs, your professional rage, your aching face - you disappear into the cage and begin to rattle the bars.

Its breath is louder here, humming over the fire you know is raging outside - burning city, burning mind. You hit the bars with a fist, feel nothing, and the breathing stutters. “You can’t get through me,” Evenfall tells it, all lies and panache. “Don’t you even dare think of Wei while I’m still alive,” because you are. Because Wei is only a viable target once you are truly beyond the point of no return. It hums louder, agitated, but you cannot see it in here - not with your eyes. You can taste the acidity of its existence, the smoothness of its mind - all intent, all harm - but you cannot see its indecipherable body. You cannot catch a glimpse of the monolith, nor get a peek at the spines. You can only trust that they are there and wave away the accompanied fear. They are out there.

“You’ve lost,” Evenfall listens. It listens. Keith listens, and wonders which one he is talking to. “Go through me, or die.” It only breathes now, and it is with a crawling kind of dread that you realise it isn’t here with you anymore. Not really. The cage shrunk, condensed, and quashed it from your mind. Expelled it out into reality - the true reality outside of your mind - and you begin to gasp and wheeze. Out, out. You need out. You claw your way out.

“Keith, can you hear me?” it’s a sorrowful rasp, waking you from the nightmare, pulling you out of the cage. It connects with your face, and Wei shatters. Tears, a weight on your broken body - you look up and see his face, twisted in grief? In pain. He shifts and you whimper - as does he - and between your chests you see… nothing. No, you see a gap - you see blood and shards of armour - Evenfall, Steel, Keith, and Wei spilled all over your chests, soiling your skin, flesh, bones.  

You force yourself to look at him once more, “I can hear you, Wei,” strict and practiced, clear despite the disorientation. “I’m sorry,” one of his hands finds yours amongst the blood, between the both of you, but you do not feel it. “No,” you push one hand into his hair and feel nothing. “It got through me.” and now it’ll get to you. “I’m sorry.” You pull him closer, a frail semblance of comfort - an attempt he welcomes with sobs.

He does not blame you, not with the way he cries and gasps. Not with the tenderness of his hand over yours. But you bite down on the blame - grant yourself this last piece of anger, if only for yourself. For your own sake. Beyond this, you can still hear its breath - the bars have been blown open. The cage is defunct. You’re obsolete.

It connects with your face, and Evenfall shatters. Keith splinters - breaks away - Steel collapses in your arms and Wei’s weight squeezes the breath out of you. The fragments melt together - into each other - scattered and uneven yet trying so hard, in these last moments, to fit together. To fix something - anything - before it all falls apart one last time. It connects with your face, and you see no more.

[tinta--writes]

Magnetic

I had a little Moment yesterday night and I needed to get it out in favour of panicking. Cyclical patterns make me uneasy and I feel like I’m at the start of a new old one - so here I am trying to predict the cycle again.

Death/violent imagery, ~341 words.

I’m magnetic - hypnotic - I bring you close, into my orbit, and pull your gravity into mine. Closer, closer, unbearably so until every breath you take is an exhale of mine. Loop, waltz, pace and circle like an eagle - dancer - whatever suits your fancy. My fancy. My mood; a dictator putting forth slogans the way I put forth façades.

I’m magnetic - a fragment that tugs, wrenches, and then tears because too much, too fast - doomed to fall apart. The future is a rose and I rip her petals away, down to the thorns, audacity and anger in the same three moves. Magnetise, hypnotise, monopolise.

I’m magnetic - you love me because you have no choice. You’re addicted and I step in turn, always forward, only stuttering back when I lose. Lose against the sweltering, squamous thing in my head. The thing that tells me to erase you from my reality. The thing that tells me I’m safer alone - better alone. Because alone I am everything. Beside you: nothing.

I’m magnetic - easy to talk to, easy to adore. Easy to pick apart and vivisect - made to watch, even comment on, the atrocity you don’t know you are committing. I watch you pick pick pick off the skin, examine the bone before cracking through to the marrow. You tell me it’s beautiful. I preen despite it all.

I’m magnetic - you’ll get bored because I didn’t retain enough. I didn’t try hard enough and now you’re leaving and who I was with you is leaving and I’m leaving and I’m gone. Enough died in my arms because I did not adore her. Enough died and I watched it happen. Enough died and the hilt was in my hand.

I’m magnetic - hypnotic - I bring you close and let you play with me. Play me. You enjoy the warmth of my orbit, the humour of my gravity. Closer, closer, and just when I believe you’ll stay, you’ll wrench and pull and tear my breath away.

[tinta--writes]

Burns

Managed to finish the first bingo prompt! @sidesteppingthefuckout let me use their wonderful Chase Becerra for this angsty little piece :O

Tw for many, many references to burning and burn scars ;o;

m!Sidestep, m!Ortega, ~1,393 words.

You know better. You know better because they taught you, in your unending faith, that connections are built only from frost. A tenuous bridge - you ford the canyon. You ford and reach for a turned shoulder, grasp it and it burns. The bridge - a cloying thing made from ice and frost and distance - peels in rivulets. Down, down, down, and away into an ocean preaching your miseries - your woes. You follow and drown in its midst because you didn’t know better. You didn’t know better and this is how you are punished.

Alone, you find yourself in gelid safety - nobody can come in nor see you through the warbled white. You build your world from ice because you know better: you know everything is doomed to burn away, leaving you stricken - horrified - forced to watch it peel away because you reached out too far, unable to draw your arm back in time. Unable to stop the burning. So you build yourself from glaciers. Hew every choice, every avoidance - you make it from frost and rime. Skin alight, flesh afire - you’d scream if you didn’t know to pull the ice around you, let it overcome you before you can make even a single noise. Before you reach out and let them know again - get burned again - you know better. So you numb yourself over, and say it’s better this way.

Sometimes, you let yourself wish into the darkness, illuminated only by screens that know neither what you want nor what you need. But they serve, and the ice tells you that that’s enough. Your hope persists: if only they could somehow see - reach into your charred heart and give you exactly what you need - what do you need? Connections? Love? Do you truly need anything, or is it all a greedy, festering want disguised as humble need?

But you daren’t ask - you expect them to guess, perhaps, because you should know me well enough by now. Because did ten years mean nothing to you? A cloying ten - sure, fragmented; shattered - but you remember. You remember my mouth, one half full of fire and desert, the other flameproof and silent. You remember, so why do you still not know a damned thing?

You suppose it’s justice - some merciless law scrawled somewhere, dictating that you should fade and vanish and go. Because the puzzle is already complete, and your shape and colours and size are all wrong, wrong, wrong. But you wedge yourself in there - force it, force it and you’ll make it - before being scorched once more. Recoil. Nurse the wounds with your tears and watch the scars form, first within and then creeping from bone to skin. Watch as nobody notices the new burn in your heart, but hear them harp on and on about those on your body. You guess it’s justice. A case of morality, then, that you left them and now have nothing. You abandoned them - you plummeted out of their lives - and this is your punishment. Does that hurt you? Are you allowed to hurt, for something so inane?

“Eden,” you’re not burnt here - you’re beautiful. Clean. Confident, but the heart is the same. “Ricardo,” smooth, even - your skin is a blank ocean. A template. And Ortega is drowning. “You look tired,” you don’t. You wonder who he sees when he looks at you, and decide Chase can stay buried. “Perhaps I am,” his apartment is too spacious for your liking. For Chase’s. But Eden revels in it - in the space - you let him. You let him get burned over and over because his skin will always stay beautiful and meaningless. The only heart getting charred is yours. It’s not like you can deny that the lie feels good. Liberating. Eden is connected, Eden is burning - but he is a phoenix, rising again and again and embracing the flames, the kisses, the burns. You’re just the ashes.

“I’d tell you to rest more,” Ortega looks at you - upright, blank, beautiful. He does not look at you like that. “But you already know.” the playful wink is a bullet but you’re armour and you’re steel and you’re dying. “I rest enough,” cheeky, charming. Chase is dying. “Plus, I could say the same for you,” old man. “You look just about ready to drop dead.” he doesn’t, but your skin is burning under your clothes, the heat building and scorching, so you throw the spark elsewhere. Can he see the smoke streaming from your collar? Sputtering past the nape of your neck and into the air between you - does he know? “Perhaps,” he flirts and you circle him with words - barbs, but they are soft and smooth. Not like the scarred truth you hide underneath. Underneath what? A younger, infinitely more alluring lie? Is this what you want?

So when he kisses you - no, Eden; always Eden - is it guilt? Is it irritation? You play up the act - kiss back with lips that are all smooth and all skin and never itchy, dry, or fragmented. You’re nothing - nothing at all without the connections that define Eden. Eden is something - you cling to that because you are nothing. You are nowhere. You are Chase Becerra, and that means nothing at all.

When you awaken - when Chase awakens - you are nothing. A blank slate covered in charred marks - a cinder of a person, left to smoulder until he is finally blown out. Stamped out. But Ortega’s hands are too kind and Anathema is not here: stamp me out, but they only look at Phantom, Chase, Eden - they only look and you cannot stand the staring.

So you drag your body up - out, out of the nightmare. Drag it to the computer, check a line of code yet seeing nothing at all. You take a swig from the empty cup of coffee - feel that cold sludge against your lips before it recedes once more. Melts. Burns. It’s dark, a ridiculous hour, and the right side of your face itches, down to your neck, pouring that dry, sandy rasp into your torso and arm. You would scream in frustration if you could muster up the feeling.  

Your phone - cast aside; out of sight, out of mind - shows you the number of bridges you have yet to burn for yourself. Ortega’s name, his words a sordid litany piling up on the screen. Saw a really big dog today! Chen stopped to pet him. Hung out with a friend earlier - I think you’d like him, he really liked his coffee. Sounds like someone else I could name ;) I miss you. Do you want to hang out tomorrow? I know a nice place. I promise it’s quiet!

You pick up the offending device. It blinks insolently, blaring blue screen tempting and teasing but powerless. You know this. You know better. In your mind, you throw the phone across the room and watch it shatter. In your mind, you finally break that gelid string holding Ortega in your orbit. You in his. In your mind, you force Eden back into the hospital and let him rest forever. In your mind, you burn everything. Set it all alight. Watch it become cinders and ash and smoke.

But in your reality - no, it isn’t yours, you’re nothing - you shut the sad thing off. Let Ortega fade, but you do not delete the messages. You do not cut the string. Melt the ice. Not brave enough - not strong enough - out of sight and mind but never gone from your heart. And that still hurts. It still burns. The phone is just another thing that perpetuates the slow, agonising death this bond must endure. It’s just another tenuous link keeping you from burning. From freezing. So you put it down, crawl back to your desk and take another empty swig. You let the toxic haze of the screen sting at your eyes. You let it hurt a little, but you break nothing. You let yourself smoulder a little - scars decorating scars - but you melt nothing. You set yourself alight, but you do not burn.

[tinta--writes]

Hey lads!! I got my Bad Things Happen Bingo today so I’m just throwing it out here in case you have any requests (I’ll be sticking to Fallen Hero and Arena, but feel free to suggest other things and I may give em a stab!)

Send as much detail as you wish with your request (whether it’s to do with a prompt preference, your own Sidestep ref, Arena RO, etc.) and I’ll do my darnedest :O

[tinta--writes]

Scream

Read a wonderful character study last night (it’s here and it’s everything), so I did one for Dmitriy because they’re a joy to write and I was inspired as all hell :O

Violent imagery warning, Steel, m!Ortega, n!Sidestep, ~264 words.

You scream. It's a horrid thing - a gurgling overlay that mutilates your voice as your throat tears up inside. You're choking. But your face doesn't heat up, nor do your hands shake. Your humanity is screaming, but your face is a stone - your scream is carving a gaping oval for your mouth, but your lips manage nary a twitch.

"What do you think?" Steel shows you the code - the patchwork that composes his armour, hating himself enough to trust you. You scream. You mutter, "I think the problem is in this line," and your hands move, you explain, and nothing shakes. He is none the wiser as you scream your mind raw.

"Would you like some coffee?" Ortega acts like he knows you - you're not silly enough to call him naive, so instead you scream. "No thank you," you can make your own, and you can do it better. Everything you do you can execute better in solitude. Alone, where you can scream and cry until your heart is content once more. It won't be - it can't - so you let your faith drain away as you scream and scream and scream.

You scream. It's a horrid thing - you choke on the blood in your throat. Through the armour, through the fire - you're choking. You're choking. Your face does not move behind the mask, and your hands are numb, messy things full of air and static. Your humanity is screaming, but you are a stone. Your nature is crying, but no tears may fall. You're screaming and screaming and nobody can hear a damned thing.

[tinta--writes]

Seneca

Pro-tip except it’s not from a pro: if you incorporate the character’s name into the theme, you can also use it as the title.

I’m messing around - here is my attempt at getting into the head of @unlucky-words‘s beautiful mc, Seneca Strangelove :O

Some light injury imagery and one very vague implication of suicidal ideation - those are the warnings for this one.

n!Sidestep, m!Ortega, ~1,032 words

If you’d grown up normally, would it have been a gift? The quicksilver pouring from your unscarred, segmented lips in adorable burbles - would it have been beautiful? Your oration, would it have been wondrous to those around you, those lucky enough to listen? An amorous, truthful speech for those fortunate enough to hear it - would you have been praised: wonderful, breathtaking, amazing? Would your name have been appropriate - would it have meant anything at all?

Or would it have been a wretched business - jealousy covering the ears you’d dreamed to reach. “End your voice,” they’d whisper, command; you’d obey, no doubt, and fail once again. Was that it? Had you always been doomed to fail - fall - since the beginning? You harp on - another empty sentence - you weave the words, avoid untruth, yet say nothing of value, and wonder where in the lie you stand. Beginning, middle, or is this the end.

“I wish you’d tell me,” of course he does, because it’s so easy to wish for something you don’t know will destroy you. You smile, lips sealed, and he sighs. Of course he does. Disappointed, unsurprised - you take his hand and show him the next few steps. “I know.” He remembers the rhythm, squeezes, but falls silent. And if you grant him the mercy of a little hug - ask, dodge, disappoint, comfort - you justify that it’s just the next step. Cyclical choreographies must be completed only to start once more. Play the song again. Rinse and repeat.

Reliable. You can rely on upsetting him with your quicksilver, confounding him with your half-baked truths and lukewarm lies. Conversely, you can rely on the pain in your chest if you choose to break the cycle - you can rely on the horribly literal heartache. You can rely on his safety if only you can keep him in the dark. Keep the bag over his eyes. Blind him, if you have to.

Gabriel lies too - not as beautifully, you’d never let him - but the base sequence is the same. Dealt in triplets, a half-truth, a truth, then a bold-faced lie - and why, God, why, does it hurt him too? You steel yourself, grapple at your chest - broken ribs, shards of glass, the sky - and compose your fractured psyche. Mortum asks, of course she does, and you go quiet. Laugh it off. Gabriel can laugh. He can snark and banter and jibe, but he cannot be soft. Sweet. He cannot - that would be too cruel. You’re not cruel. You’re not.

So you let him move - let him be Gabriel (but no, no, he is Seneca), and desperately hope his heart does not hate yours. Not in the way it should. Not in the way you deserve. Because you know there’s something ticking away beneath the shell of his skin, beneath your heart beating in his - under it all, there’s still something left. You’re certain. And you can only hope it doesn’t hate you.

Sidestep is a lie. You cannot think about that. You cannot think about Ortega, bloodied and angry, looking up at you. Up. Since when. Since when was it so angry - at you, no less? You’d have reached out to help him up if your heart had let you, but it told you to quit it, and you’d listened, suffered the cracked ribs, and pushed forward. Pushed forward and taken, taken so you’d have the guarantee of a home later rather than a van - taken because anything is a significant sum when added to nothing. And if you’d shattered the old Sidestep on your way out, let the mask crumble in your palm, you’d said nothing of it. You’d let the small exhibit suffer your same fate - brought it down in brotherhood and let it burn in solidarity. We’re the same, you and I.   Rest in peace where I could not.

“What are you thinking about?” his hand has yet to leave yours. You wonder: if you’d grown up normally, would this have been a gift? A simple relationship, blurred at the edges with complication and ambiguity - would it have been a gift? “Words - oration, speeches, all that.” Or would it have been a wretched business - plagued still by your beautiful, air-filled words. A broken string of empty, “I love you,” and “Trust me,” with no real depth because the mouth they pour from is built from and segmented by lies. “You’re good at those,” the fond smile only hurts, and you mimic it in pain. “I know,” and you see how the frown tries to weigh down his face before he pushes it back, up, and away.

———————————————————————————————————

“Sen, do you trust me?” it’s a trick - you realise and he doesn’t - so you bite your tongue. “Yes,” because you can’t lie, because you can almost hear the then why won’t you tell me anything. What are you hiding? Why are you hiding?

“I’m glad,” you start, stop, pause and stare. Ortega looks at you, you close your mouth - agape like a goldfish, candid, because even on flesh you cannot lie. Cannot hide. “I trust you too.” And it isn’t empty - it takes a liar to know one, after all - there’s something lurking behind those words. Lurking, but soft. Open. Warm.

You let the smile overtake you - you’re smart enough to let it creep out, knowing the consequences of stifling it behind… what? A frown? You’re not Gabriel. You are. You’re not. “I’m glad,” that means the world to me, “Even if there are things I cannot tell you?” One tiny truth, out into the ocean. “Even if there are things you cannot tell me,” he affirms, and mimics the smile. Freely. No weight, only warmth and, if you dare search deep enough, some kind of acceptance.

This is anything but normal, but you take the gift and lock it in your heart - the quicksilver in your lungs cannot reach it there. It’s beautiful by itself, and for the first time in a truly long while, you let yourself love that.

[tinta--writes]

Bleeding Heart

My mood has crashed this week so I’m using it as an opportunity to develop Dmitriy a little more :O

Lots of blood imagery in this one, n!Sidestep, implied Ortega, ~360 words.

Bleeding heart, they’d said, and you hadn’t taken them seriously. “Sure, just sputtering,” you’d dismissed; waved away, and gotten on. Bleeding heart, they’d admitted in your arms, challenging you to drop them. You didn’t, but in retrospect, you wish you had. But you’d stuffed that heart back inside their chest, back into yours, and you’d scrambled off into infinity, letting them chase the trail of blood.

Because caring is like exposing your ribs, wrenching them apart, and asking someone to rummage around inside. And you’re too smart to care. It took you embarrassingly long to realise, but there’s liberation in enlightenment. You’re liberated, cold, besieged no longer by the poison of care.

So when they asked for your help, pulled apart their ribs for you, you’d chastised them for their mistake before reaching inside. This time, the heart comes out, you’d thought. Out into the sun to shrivel and die. But yours would stay safe behind your chest, ribs, flesh. Behind a wall of ice so thick it would do no difference to have it wrought in stone or steel. No blood passes in the cold, because you deny that it’s still there, congealed in your aorta, vena cava, arteries, veins. Congealed, because you do not permit it to flow. To bleed.

“It’s for a friend,” and you’d believed them, believed that their heart bled for their friend. You wouldn’t care, but you’d believe. Because you’d understood once, even if now you are but a shell performing actions. A tool. Indestructible.

Bleeding heart, they’d said, and you’d scoffed. “I drained it,” you’d lied, because honesty had died a brutal death ten years earlier. Bleeding heart, you’ll never admit to - let them see only the frigid, unfeeling, inhuman lie you put across. Let them forget more and more with each stony expression - let them forget what a smile could look like on your face. Forget that you know how to cry, how to hurt - forget so they may too. Be fine with that. Let them dehumanise you, let you dehumanise yourself, drain away every last bit of blood and feeling until you can almost hide it all away.