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Three Ways to Say Goodbye [explicit]; Work in progress. A present for @MS.
Topic Started: Feb 8 2013, 11:38 PM (81 Views)
Miss Exposition
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The Patchwork Princess
three ways to say goodbye.

i. She gives a speech the night before the war. Crystalline words drip from her mouth like molten glass, each incendiary syllable a stab, a flaming match, a battle cry. Her voice crackles in the dank air of the Catacombs, setting the walls aflame, sending electricity shuddering through the taut bodies assembled belowground. Montag is less a girl than a god, less a child than a behemoth, and the roiling congregation roars her name and sings her praises and trumpets the revolution, long live the queen, burn the city down, we fight with you.

At midnight, Vinny sees her hovering on the fringes of No Man's Land. Ripped tulle pools around her haunches; a trace of sickly-sweet ruby wine clings to her wet mouth. Her bones tremble under the anemic moonlight filtering from the cracks of sky above; her faded paper crown drapes itself over her head like a corpse. Wisps of cigarette smoke tangle with her hair--she's drunk, she's vulnerable, she's scared.

"Goddammit, Vinny," she says, her voice a brittle, hoarse croak. "We're gonna die, aren't we?"

He can only stare incredulously at her, a tattered, too-loud laugh escaping his throat. "God, no, Monty. Why would you go about saying somethin' like that, huh?" He is greeted with silence; he doesn't push it, he knows the fate of a inexperienced girl like her. "Get some sleep, will'ya? Can't fight those bastards with a hangover."

A ghost of a grin plays at her lips--it's the first and last time he sees her smile like that, real and soft. The next morning she's on the front lines and her mouth is red and taut and strained again, stretching to release a battle cry as if it were her last breath, parted to let out strangled exhales and barely comprehensible orders, contorted in a silent moan of terror as she sees him through the crowd. The blood of her people already glistens on his fingers. Her ragtag, colorful colony is nothing more than a stew of crimson, their bodies mashed into indecipherable pulp at his feet.

Monty hates to wait and he reaches her quickly; it's a small act of mercy, in retrospect, not having to delay the inevitable. She looks up and smirks at him--a final, forced act of defiance--and he makes art from her body, his blade lovingly scissoring a line from the flimsy crown of her head to the quivering cleft betwen her legs, his hands slowly, deliberately carving a bloody statue in reverse. Her skin complies and quivers beneath him, sliding off her marble bones, pooling around his toes like soiled paint rags, her muscles twisting and arching and finally succumbing to his masterful strokes and clear, smooth lines. Her corpse is a beautiful thing, a mangled, colorful masterpiece in his hands, a study in stringy red paint and twisted, torn limbs, a striking contrast to the crumpled gold crown that lies on the ground under her toes.

---

ii. The news sears through the Catacombs like a plague. The artists scream and wail and make loud proclamations, recite overwrought elegies, slather painted paper crowns on the walls. Below ground, the revolution roils and mourns, a chaotic symphony of salt tears and shivering, lost followers. Above ground, McKenna Reavyn bows her head, closes her eyes, and moves on.

It's nighttime. Her soldiers murmur amongst themselves, eyes trained on the smoky fringes of the city. It's been a day since their conspirators on the inside brought the Academia force field down. They know full well they could be heading in at any moment. They just need McKenna's command.

She trains her eyes on the ground, catching a flash of crimson through her peripheral vision. "Hey," she whispers--it sounds so bare and worn, the singular noise coarse against the still air. Vinny responds with a half-smirk and sad eyes, and McKenna can't help but look away even as she speaks again.

"How many of us are--?"

"--Half."

"Injured?"

"Most of us." It's less talking than he's accustomed to, but the bulk of his words are stuck in his throat and it's easier just to swallow them tonight.

McKenna nods absently and rakes her fingers through her hair, a tattered breath leaving her throat as she stares down at the crevice in the ground. "...We're heading in now. There's still hope. You tell them that, alright?"

He offers her a resigned grin. "You're mad, Miss McKenna, goin' in there. If you only saw the way he went through Monty and the others--"

She cuts him off then and there. "She didn't know how to shoot a gun, did she? We'll be fine." McKenna casts a steady, maternal glance at her band of soldiers, taking another deep breath. "We'll be fine. And by morning, we'll take the Spire down. You have my word."

There's a brief, fierce silence then--one where he loses all conscious hope and brushes his chapped, wind-worn lips against her smooth cheek and withdraws, his expression unreadable, his heart sinking as she lowers her head and turns her eyes towards the city.

"Just once," he finds himself saying. "Just once before this all goes to hell."

She grits her teeth and nods, finally turning around to catch his eyes--but she's met with nothing but the sight of a hole in the ground and the stretch of The Outskirts behind her, taunting her with its emptiness.

McKenna steels herself. Tells herself there's no time for sentiment. "Alright, you lot. Weapons at the ready."

The city streets are eeriely calm. McKenna doesn't know whether to be relieved or frightened. Fleeting shadows dart across the rooftops; eyes peek from the shutters above. Some belong to friends--silent sentinels, rebels, fellow artists in the shadows. And others... her eyes flash, her feet stop, and a platoon of soldiers stands at attention behind her.

Before her is a singular man, not the metal monolith she was expecting at the outset. A singular, poised, lethal man--and McKenna tenses, slinging her gun into her hands reflexively, anger swelling uncontrollably within her as she catches hint of the feral hunger in his stance. A ripple of clicks resounds behind her (the sound of a band of loyal followers following her to hell) and she finds herself shooting without warning or discretion, aiming at his heart and head and body, at the hands that disembodied Montag Alvarez and the feet that crushed the skulls of children too young to die. Gunfire screams through the empty street, the brief, bright flashes illuminating the masked sentinels that have gathered in a silent show of support on the rooftops--and yet she finds, in the chaotic blur and the whistling of ammunition in the air, a vice-like hand on her respirator, sees the ghost of a twisted smirk in the inhuman mask before her glacial eyes.

The gun clatters out of her hands as the respirator twists in his palm, the cool material tearing away from her skin--and she attempts to take in a ragged inhalation, her throat tight and taut and grappling for air, her body a hollow tube, her twisted mouth parted in a desperate attempt at oxygen. The monster convulses with silent laughter; the respirator in his hands quivers and trembles and crumples in his fist, and there is a certain tenderness to the way he presses his taut palm against her lips, hushing her protests, silencing her before he crams the bent respirator into her mouth and past her jagged teeth, her dry tongue--

--Her lips contort to form a silent scream as the fine corners of her mouth stretch and contort and tear at the seams, helplessly accommodating the misshapen hunk savagely forced into her throat. She tastes tiny streams of metallic blood and bitter plastic and the acrid stench of his fingers, hears the muffled impact of bullets as he takes them in, recoils, becomes whole again. And all the while loud, excruciatingly painful stars are dancing in her hazy vision, indistinct yells are thrumming in her ears, slivers of her crumpled respirator slice into the tender skin at the back of her neck, the benevolent sentinels watching from the rooftops become devils leaping from the air and ravaging her men below. Her eyes roll back, her knees buckle and bend, her windpipe bulges with grotesque clarity, her body heaves uncontrollably, prevented from breathing by the very apparatus that once kept her alive--and he withdraws his arm from her throat, his fingers coated with warm, wet blood, small slivers of her muscles pulsing under his nails.

The last thing she registers, as her blood boils and crackles under her skin and her mind succumbs to suffocation, is the sight of her loyal followers on their knees. On the floor. The dead. The Fallen.

to be continued
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