#pourin one out for him rip brother

[august-undergrounds]

chat i think it would be like super cool and sexy of me actually to carve some big nice lines in both of my arms on the last week of work and see if anyone has enough balls to ask me about them. saw a loserboy earlier with such pretty purple scars working construction and now it won’t leave my head

[itsicantbelievethis666]

A Cunning Woman - Chapter 1

1920 words. Clearly this is an extrapolation of the feud between Bray Wyatt and Finn Balor; I’ve been bouncing the idea around my head since the feud first heated up. There’s no smut in this chapter, but that may come later.

No copyright infringement is intended and I claim no ownership of any intellectual property herein. 

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The clanging and  screeching of old hinges rips into my head as the cell door is flung wide open, smashing against the one stone wall. A heavy thud follows, accompanied by a pained shout and moaning. The voice is male, but the strain of what’s just happened to its owner distorts it beyond recognition otherwise.

Then, one of the guards – Harper, I figure, with at least the willingness to speak, chides him, “You’re going to be here as long as our brother Bray wants you here, little rabbit, just like that thing over there.” I can feel the finger pointing in my direction. 

Silence echoes through this place a moment before the hinges screech again and the door smashes shut, and the locks clang. The heavy footsteps fade off, but the moans of my new cellmate linger. He’s in pain and struggling to get to his feet, but I’m in no condition to help him. 

Christ! I’m so sorry they’ve done this to you. I wish I could help you. This is all my fault.  

Whatever Bray did to me – Christ, how long ago has it been? – has locked me inside my body. I am able to breathe and to swallow, but I can only take liquids and, even then, I’m made to shuffle my body along the floor to reach the bowl that is plunked down three times a day. I can’t use my hands; everything is pain. I wonder what they’ve done to this poor sod who has joined me. My attempts to scream are lost in whatever’s surrounding me. 

“You bastards! I’ll get you all for ‘dis!” His voice is accented and defiant, if pained, as he pounds in vain at the door. He’s in much better shape than I am, by the sound of it, but not for much longer if he keeps it up. I have to calm him the only way I have left to me. 

Little rabbit, please be calm. I send the message into his mind, hoping against hope that he might be attuned enough to hear it and, perhaps, heed it. I manage to wriggle my way forward, past what debris still remains on the floor of this cell. Thank God I can still feel something covering me completely. I have no idea how I must look to my new companion. 

There’s a shuffling away from me, but his voice drops to a whisper of dread and disgust. “Who-Who are ya?” 

Please help me. Please help me, so that maybe I can help us both. I can’t be sure if my words reached him or if he’s merely reacting to the sight of a wrapped body writhing on the floor. Another sharp pain – my knee, I think - shoots through me and shatters my thoughts. 

A pause, then, “What d’ya need fer me ta help ya?” If I could sigh in relief, I would. My companion can “hear” me. 

I…I don’t know how Bray’s got me. I need you to tell me. 

“What’ you mean?”

I can’t move. I’m blind as a bat and I’m in pain. Oh, God! It hurts! He’s hurt me badly, and done things to me that will keep me from healing myself, unless you help. I need to know what he’s done so it can be undone.

Another pause, another shuffle that grows louder, and then the cloth shuffled and twisted over me until I can feel damp, cool air. A gasp follows and I can sense him turning away in horror.

What’s he done to me, little rabbit? A fresh wave of pain from my side shocks me into a desperate stillness.

His answer is a barely audible whisper. “Jaysus…I t’ought he was sick fer pourin’ a bucket of blood all o’er me after a match. I never t’ought….” His voice catches in a sob.

What has he done? I’m not sure I want to know now.

“You look like you’ve been melted. Your limbs – oh, Christ – it looks like he’s broken your arms ‘n’ legs in about a half-dozen places. The rest of ya – it looks like you’re in a skin cocoon. I don’t know how – Jaysus – how you’re still even alive.” He lifts up my head and shoulders, cradling them, and shuffles his position so that they rest on his legs. 

So Wyatt thought to let me rot here forever, unable to speak, unable to see, unable to move and unable to heal myself, and, until tonight, with no prospects of relief, let alone escaping. Until Harper and Rowan, those idiots, made a huge error and brought me a little rabbit. 

They’ll learn of their error soon enough. I know what he’s done to me. I need you to help me undo it. Please. 

“Undo it? Jaysus – I wouldn’t know how to undo this!”

Nonetheless, you can help me. You have it in you, along with that demon.

“Demon?” he exclaims. “How the feck do you know of dat?”

You have much inside you, little rabbit. Please! You can help me. Lay your hands where you think my eyes may be. 

A brief silence again fills the cell, then I feel something over my eyes - his hands press gently over them. I incant silently. A handful of thin flesh falls away under my new friend’s hands, falling from my face to the floor when he pulls his hands, partly in horror. 

My God! The sight of my companion nearly kills me then and there. He looks like something from an Old Master’s sketchbook; his face at once angelic and kind, his eyes like the sea. For the first time in so many years, my heart stirs, even as I despair. There’s a look of concern on his face as he realizes there’s a human inside this…shell of atrocity. I am weeping with bittersweet relief.

Thank you. You have done me a great kindness. I know this must be…difficult for you to comprehend or accept.

“It’s a bit overwhelmin’ t’say de least.” He answers, then, “Oi! you’re a she! Christ! I can’t leave ya danglin’ like this.” He finds his courage. Ah, well – being female can have its advantages.

To his credit he is methodical, as far as he can be. He has learned the incantation and repeats it. He lays hands across my nose, over my mouth, over the top of my head, to my neck and shoulders. Under his hands, my arms knit together perfectly, as though they had never been broken. My legs are freed and healed completely. The flesh patches fall away, until they are gathered and dumped in a pile in the corner far opposite to where my companion and I could bunk down. The pain subsides almost completely and I heave and sob in relief. 

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m not hurtin’ ya, am I?”

No, no, far from it. You have lifted a great burden from me.

At last my torso, alone, is left. I stand in the middle of the cell, determined that this was an act I could do alone. My hands wander over my stomach and pressed, my mind incanting the counterspell to Wyatt’s evil.

Nothing happens. 

I look at my companion. My voice cracks and croaks from lack of use, but manages something of a noise. “I’d need your hands again to complete the work, I’m afraid. Leave it to Bray to make me dependent on others.” 

He grows flustered at the prospect, sheepishness creeping. “Ma’am, I’m not sure I’m – “

“I understand,” I answer resignedly, crossing my arms. “I must look a sight.” 

“Tisn’t dat, ma’am.” He looks at me earnestly. “‘Tis dat you’ve been through enough from him and I don’t want to add to it. I know what ‘e’s like.” 

I can’t blame him. He doesn’t know me from Eve. “I’m healed enough to keep going, at least. It’s not as if I need anything there anymore. What’s left to heal on me wouldn’t be worth the indignity to either of us.”

I look at my hands. The skin is a little looser than I remember and there are new lines over the backs. I run my fingers through my hair and found it had grown long enough to reach my tailbone, and was lighter, the grey starting to show. “What year is it?”

My cellmate tells me. 

“Jesus, little rabbit. I’ve been here nearly five years!” I then catch a full look at my helper. He is barely dressed; black trunks and boots, with armoured sleeves of a sort covering his calves. He’s crossed his arms and is huddled near the bed of straw in the corner. 

I pick up the rumpled pile of fabric in which I’d been wrapped; an old robe, large enough to envelop me completely when I was immobilized. I look around the cell quickly and found a skeleton wrapped in a second robe, a brown one with a rope belt with three knots. “Which one would you prefer?”

He looks at the skeleton with renewed horror. “I can’t wear dat. He was a monk – Franciscan, I tink. I can’t…can’t bear to put it on knowin’ he died in ‘ere.”

“Then you can wear the one I had on,” I answer, tossing it to my new friend. “Wherever he’s gone, he’s not going to need that robe. And it’s getting cold down here.” I take a few good strides across the floor and gingerly pluck the robe and belt off the poor friar’s bones; despite my care, the skeleton comes apart and ends up as a pile of bones. I whisk the robe around my shoulders and put my arms through the sleeves, wrapping it closed and cinching the waist with the belt before walking back to my new companion. 

I sit down next to him on the straw. “We’ll have to bust out of here as soon as we get the chance. When Bray sees what’s been done, little rabbit, he’ll kill us both - you for helping me; me just to be rid of me once and for all.” 

He mumbles, “I have a name….”

I’ve only piled on to another’s torment just now by giving him the name my enemy and jailer had. Sure, Wyatt had me half-morphed into silence and tortured, but I’ve always wanted to be better than him. I’d spent ages desperately trying to be the nobler creature. I have slipped. 

I’m so sorry, my friend. I’ve disrespected you. More than to hear the words, I want my friend – my rescuer, even – to feel my contrition. What is your name? “It’s Finn. Finn Bálor.”

“Is maith bualadh leat.(It’s good to meet you.)”  I say. “Would you know the time, Finn?”

“I’d say near two in de mornin’ now,” he answers.

“We’ll have a few hours to rest before those lunks come back. They’ll be expecting you – they won’t be expecting me.” I pile some of the straw into the corner to lean back into it, my legs curled under me. I pull the hood of the friar’s robe over my head and my hands into the sleeves to cover myself.  “You can sleep next to me. It’s cold down here.”

Finn piles a little more straw against the wall, then leans back next to me. As if by instinct, he turns towards me and pulls his legs up under his robe, then pulls some of the excess fabric over me. He drowsily muses, “Normally, I’d have to know a girl’s name beforehand.” 

“Abigail,“ I tell him, as I give myself over to sleep. “My name is Abigail.”