#this ramble brought to you by: I am not okay about Skizz!

[oscars-dumbass-central]

Chapter Sixteen: And I think you'd like me // If I wasn't such a fucked up, mental wreck of a human being

“Run,” she had whispered, voice as quiet as she could make it, but that didn’t matter. It had heard them.

Words: 1479

( Masterpost | Chapter One | Chapter Fifteen )

Zed was pretty sure that there would be dents in the floor by the time he stopped pacing. He pulled at small bits of pilling on his sweater as he continuously glanced at Jimmy who was meticulously taking apart his heavy rifle and oiling any part which seemed like it might possibly need it. 

“Are you sure I can’t—” 

“Yes,” Jimmy didn’t even look up from the rifle laid out in pieces on top of the crowded countertop. “It’s just going to be me and Doc going, you need to stay back here, okay?” 

“Okay,” he sighed, leaning against the wall and watching Jimmy return to his quiet work. His face was pinched in concentration, a deep line forming between his eyebrows. Usually Zed would’ve smoothed it out, but he didn’t think that’d be appreciated at this moment. 

Sliding the barrel of the rifle together smoothly and beginning to pack all of the different oils and cloths and tools away, Jimmy finally looked up and Zed. “I don’t want you getting hurt,” His footsteps were barely audible on the floor as he came to stand beside him. “I’m worried enough about Martyn as it is, I don’t want to be worrying about you too.” 

“I can fight, I’m not as weak as you guys think I am,” Zed leant against Jimmy’s hand and placed a hand loosely on his hip. “And don’t you think I worry about you guys constantly too?” 

“I know, I know,” Jimmy brushed his thumb along Zed’s jaw gently. “But the kind of stuff we’re heading into now? You don’t want to see that.” 

“Then why are you heading into it?” 

“I don’t have a choice,” He shrugged, glancing away and out of the window at the dark grey hanger walls. “I’ve seen this kind of stuff since I was a kid, was the only way to survive for a while.” 

Pausing for a second, Zed pulled him closer, wrapping his arms tightly around him as if he never wanted to let go. “Just be safe, okay?” 

“I’ll try my best,” Jimmy said after a second, hugging him back even tighter. But he let him go after a few seconds, hoisting his bag higher up on his shoulder and glancing over to Doc who was waiting near the back exit. “I’ll be back soon.” 

.

Martyn pressed his head against the cold metal of the cage wall as he tried to focus on anything but the throbbing pain which seemed to wrap itself around his head like vicious vines. Pretty much everything hurt, but his head was in agony. The cold metal was a small amount of relief but it only brought everything else into sharper focus. So he’d often end up retreating to the soft and blurry world of the pain to avoid the voices crying out and the people laughing as they dragged people out of the cages and to void-knows where. 

But every now and then the knocking would return and he’d force himself up on to his elbows, and to just pause and listen for once in his goddamn life. And that was what he was doing when Skizz who was half-way through a ramble about something— his husband maybe? Because he was apparently married —when the door of the room was kicked in and an all-too familiar man with slicked back brown hair. 

The man from the bar was dragging a far too young deer hybrid in by their antlers as loud laughter admitted from the far room before the door slammed shut, taking the sickening sound with it. 

“New blood,” Skizz whispered as if he was almost worshipping the words, and right as he finished savouring the syllables the room seemed to erupt in the same buzz of frantic worry and worship. 

“What’s going on?” Martyn asked, contorting himself to see the scene better. The young hybrid was crying, deep and ugly and heart wrenching sobs as they tried to kick the man away, their hooves managing to make contact with his knee at one point. 

Swearing and screaming as he hit the ground, the man was back on his feet within an instant and pinned the hybrid down by their neck. They glanced around the room frantically, trying to search for anything that could help them when their gaze landed on Martyn, and stayed there. 

For a few moments all he could see were their wide and distraught eyes, the terrified look on their face which just for a few heartbeats wasn’t theirs, but another’s. For a few seconds, Martyn wasn’t in that cramped cage which pressed against his bones and hurt his joints, but he was in a dense forest, his breath coming out in heavy clouds of fog for the sun hadn’t been there for days at that point. And he was standing there, eyes locked with a woman across the clearing they’d found themselves in, the hood of her bulky jacket pulled back to let the moonlight brush across her features gently. Her fern-like antennae swivelling back and forth near constantly picking up on unseen and unheard signals. 

.

“Run,” she had whispered, voice as quiet as she could make it, but that didn’t matter. It had heard them, and they stood there, frozen, eyes locked as they heard the great beast beginning to crash through the trees. It yelled with a voice which was not its own and far too human and familiar to either of them. 

He turned his back on her and ran. 

Behind him all he could hear was a scream, sharp and sudden and gone as quickly as it had started. Then it screamed with her voice, with all of their voices. All, but his. It hadn’t collected his yet. 

.

The next thing that Martyn saw was the blood dripping off of the bent cage bar in his hand and the crumpled body of the man below him. His chest was heaving, his knuckles pure white around the metal, he stared at the still terrified deer hybrid for a few seconds before finally breaking the silence. “You look so much like her.” 

And with that he finally glanced down, seeing a long bone-handled knife sticking out of his gut, blood soaking into his already filthy shirt with each breath in. 

“Oh,” He paused, glancing up at the hybrid who was braced away from him before dropping the bar down onto the ground with a far too loud clang. “I’m not gonna hurt you,” He crouched down beside the uncomfortably still man, digging through his pockets until his fingers wrapped around a slim metal ring. The keys clicked together softly as he pulled them up and turned to face Skizz’s cage. 

“What the hell just happened?” Skizz was lying down, head propped up on a fist. “You were acting weird. Like you weren’t you.” 

Snorting, Martyn shrugged. “I guess,” He continued to flip through keys, testing each one but they all just refused to fucking work. “Hels dude, I don’t think any of these keys work for the fucking stupid cages.” 

“Can’t you just break through them like you did with your’s?” Skizz shrugged and that brought Martyn’s attention to his wings— or in this case wing. Formerly pristine and smooth white feathers were coated in grime and bent out of shape, and also one of them was fucking missing. 

“What the fuck did they do to you?” He asked, voice barely concealing the rage and anger and a thousand more words for pure fucking fury which screamed through his brain. His hands gripped tighter around the bars and all of a sudden all he could hear was static which coated his mind and vision. 

Sliding his foot back he focused on that pure red hot rage which coursed through his body and mind. With a single sharp movement, he felt the brackets of the cage door begin to twist and warp out of shape. His arms were screaming at him, he could barely remember to breathe as he pulled. But he pulled and pulled and pulled and all of a sudden, he was stumbling back, the barred door held tight against his chest. 

“Lets get out of this fucking place,” he spat the words as if they tasted foul as he spoke them, tossing the door down with another heavy clang. As soon as he started to breathe again and the red around the corners of his vision began to disappear, his limbs felt heavy and numb. His entire body felt as if he was forcing himself to walk through heavy viscous syrup. 

“Martyn,” Skizz’s voice felt like it was coming from a different room, but his heavy hand pressed against his shoulder. “Are you alright?” 

“Yeah, yeah,” He waved him off, “I’m fine,” he slurred as he went to take another step, but his legs buckled and he collapsed onto his knees. He went to respond, but the cold darkness began to sink into his mind and he passed out— right as yelling and the sound of gunfire erupted from behind the heavy door. 

[shadeswift99]

If you wanted to break someone, what would you do?

I would give him a family to fight for. I would give him a campfire and a host of companions to shout and sing with behind safe walls, brothers in arms, a banner to fly and a shield to hold high for his king as they march for the sunrise. I would give him a battle, a proving ground to spill his love as blood and sweat for the cause, for that family. I would give him a purpose. I would give him a destiny.

And then...I would take it away. A sword to cut the strings of his bond, his family flung to the far corners of a new, crueler world, leaving him alone again and stumbling without the expected solid ground of a shoulder to lean on. And I would watch him try to build it all up again. I'd watch him find first one, then two more, call them brothers over and over again until they half-heartedly say it back, push them together like opposite poles of a magnet as they repel and bounce back from each other and simply fail to understand. I'd watch as he figured out what they were missing, tried his hardest to become that king under whose banner he used to thrive to them.

I'd watch him fail. I'd watch him protest as they say they have no leadership, speaking as though he isn't even there, as though they were not leaning on the shields he made them with his own hands. I'd watch him finally fall silent as this flaming mess he tried to lump together and call a "family" threatens to kill each other. Tries to kill each other. Succeeds. I would place that man at the top of a hill, give him a little hope, give him the hint of a laugh of camaraderie and the chance that maybe this might work out after all...and then I would shatter him against the cliffside with the arrows of enemies in his back, anyone who could have stood behind him and shielded him from the blows long since run away for their own safety: each in seperate directions.

I would take it all away again, and it would hurt all the more with the final, long-fought acceptance that this time, it was never real to begin with.

And now, from who would the finishing blow come? When he had been cast out alone, the darkness almost a relief compared to the faces he tried to insist with closed eyes were those of the past and not the present, when his only comfort is blood and his only solace is throwing all caution to the wind and seeking glory one last time: glory at the door of a castle tower, glory at the end of a sword, glory at a second final death charge into the unknown...who would I send to be his final war horn? Who would do him the honour of a hero's fall?

There would be none.

No horn. No glory. No battle. He would be shot, once more in the back, while running away.

And there would be no king.

But there would be a single red scrap tied around a wrist and a faded scar running across a neck. He would be a ghost, all this man tried to be, all that he failed to be, all the comfort that he cried to and all the bravery and spirit he wished he had when his own haphazard militia denied him to his face and laughed at his pain. And the look in the eyes of the Red Once-King when he fires would be nothing but disappointment. And the man would not live long enough to turn and see it.

But he would see it when his eyes close. He would see it in the stars as his life drips into the grass, in the end even that too forsaking him. And when he next rose, ghostly and inconsequential, his spirit, the thing he tried so hard to inherit when his own had always burned so strong all by itself...will finally, finally be broken. He would stay in the forest, looking down at his body, lingering on. Waiting to move on until somebody happened by and laid the man he tried to be to rest.

No one would come.

No one ever did.