She settles, one leaf among thousands, a pile stacked miles high and spread miles wide, a beautiful rotting expanse. Her feet sink in for a moment, breaking through the slippery people like mud before she found her balance. A walk from the Kennel to the morgue contained ages outside of time. Fragments everywhere. They cut the feet and tore up her mind.
The sawbones settled against the door of the shed and allowed metal to march up her back in hard lines. It supported a tired neck. The leaves froze into a plane of ice, shell-thin, with a deep, deep chasm beneath. On this surface a crack drifted like a stray hair blown across the surface of forever. Harmless, troubling, it settled too. Next to her.
The word “Smiles” etched through the surface with urgency and tiny glasslike sounds, a razor-thin word, and there the crack halted. Her eyes traced its trail back toward the Double Tap, toward light and laughter and song. Her name was written several times across this surface of glass, bound to a simple flickering shadow.
Other shadows spoke quietly by the entrance to the grave. They ignored the sawbones and the shadow as if they existed in different worlds entirely. They were not wrong.
The sawbones met its eyes levelly and found she could not see them. Not really. They were circles within a circle. They were meaningless disks of color, light, and dark. The shapes meant nothing to her, and she was so tired. There were no words to describe how greatly a sane person could want a needle under their skin, no words to describe how it became life itself, how it could replace the very need to survive. This did not matter. She dug her nails into her skin instead and dryly labeled it as compromise. Wanted to laugh because this was the victory. This was the better ending, and better by far.
The mouth of the shadow moved, a shape, and words flooded the leaves around him into neatly burnt messages. The touch of its helmet had shattered the glass, and now they sunk slightly into miles of rotting vegetation the color of fire and dirt. The messages piled, burnt explanations, questions, wonderings. She read them as she pressed her thumb into the crook of her arm.
…may not recognize me.... I… hoping you… tell me who I am…
The sawbones made her own words surface, nearly wincing as she tore the silence in her. She saw the bled one, telling him to be well not a half hour before with her face breaking because he needed this good ending; he could handle the possibility of loss but he wanted to believe it would be well so much, she had no heart to explain otherwise… she saw him speaking at this place to her months ago, until anger burned through her as though the fabric of everything could be sublimated in rage and her hammer left her hand to dent the rocks in front of them. (And hadn't he always been there. Even understanding why the sawbones still...) And now, there was green around the shadow’s arm, a breathing green knitted in her sleepless hours. Pictures. Pigeon.
Limits were guidelines, not rules. The sawbones brought the world to focus with the effort of one moving a mountain, felt her headache spike to a migraine, and she began to speak, pulling words from her mouth with clumsy fingers until her fingers scraped numbly at the empty bottom of her skull. They spoke until the sun rose, she and this one. Itai, Pigeon. The broken bird. The collection of face, act, word bundled neatly in her mind.
These beings around her.
Why did they hate themselves? They should be their own, it should be as simple as breathing, but instead they lived like strangers in their own bags of skin, wondering.
Why did they feel guilt? They should know regret for their faulty actions, but if guilt was really so altruistic, why did they continue even when their victims forgave? Because they hated themselves.
Why did they beg, grip, weep for friendship? Were they so empty of their own self they needed others to define them? Because they felt guilt.
The sawbones was human. This was no secret. And yet for every similarity she shared with them, differences spun canyons between them. Her thoughts only distressed them. Her words only unsettled them. Her silence only assailed them. And it had always been this way.
And yet, right now, a warm trickle meandered down her arm. Skin clogged the space between her fingernails, scratched gouges. The wave hit her like a wall, almost pried open her jaw, almost asked where Troika was, where Sergei was. Where Adam was. Where any seasoned Vegasian was. What she would have to do to get it. Knowing Templeton had it was a knife in her head. It pried at her. Instead she raked her arm repeatedly in the dark. As if one could yank away veins like ribbons--she didn’t desire veins like these. Her broken bloody headspace right now was hers, was the closest to theirs she could imagine. Better by far than a psion’s pull.
Itai, Pigeon. The broken bird, its ways.
“I am… a bad person.”
It was bleeding over. He would not think this if it wasn’t for the influence of his past few years.
“There are no good or bad people.”
“He was a fool. He cared for this town.”
“You were a fool,” she responded. To some it would seem harsh. “You are the same person.”
This was a surgery. If he lived he would be healed, but any surgery could kill. Right now, she was half finished and had lost all feeling. No chance of getting this done. He had gotten truth from her. He needed some lies to bandage him, and those she could not give. Into the predawn. Steps like raindrops.
At GDI people watched them arrive, but they didn’t know. Her fingers scraped the bottom of the skull and found nothing to pull up. Her thoughts and these people were so far apart she could not imagine how to bridge this, to force understanding. The mountain once moved with the last dredges of her effort was falling on her and what were words? Flickers of color on the edge of her vision. Simple tasks became confusing impossibilities.
The sawbones was a being of opportunity. In a lull, the broken bird had given her his side. She slowed for only a moment, fragments and a breath of instinct guiding her action. This was the ideal choice. In this they could understand. In this they would be given a chance.
She could feel him, the shift in the air around him. The moment she paused he tensed in mid-step, warring with two impulses. The conflict gave her the piece of a second she required.
Break his wings. Make him tame.
The broken bird snarled out as his leg crumpled forward. Wet snap of Achilles, dry grate of steel being drawn. She must have been hit with a bomb in turn. The chicken man (he understood, he knew) could explain the rest to the group, and the broken bird had been made honest with his response. Worlds curled up around her and when she opened her eyes she was on a picnic table. It was lighter. Words flew through the air like bullets.
The thread puppet seemed bulky in her hands as she gave it to him. Staring bird, confused. When had she stood? The key felt like a window in her head as she unlocked the door. When had she walked? The world drained of color as she fell into her bed.
Smiles opened her eyes to a full-throated yellow morning. There is absolutely nothing inside her. No emotions, no drives, no things except for herself and the weariness of months pressing into her face and into her hands. Her smile in response to this is tired. She is her own. She can see the damage clearly. In a little bit, just a little bit, she would be well again, and it was about time.
The stiff smile fades, only a remnant of her injury. She reaches for her scarf like an old friend. Sunlight shines through her like a window, and she is literally nothing. Everything is gone while she recovers from this. She does not feel their stares, and she hardly registers their words. They come in spurts and strangenesses, here and gone, shapes and motions in unreadable patterns. She forces focus only when she feels it is needed to avoid further prying and attention. They tore bits of her away, those who ask if she was alright. No, but she would be. And she had not had a promise like this for half a year.
The broken bird perches with one of his flock, and she watches it blankly. Assessing. Her side aches; yellow infection like sunlight strains the stitches as though she were a garment on the verge of tearing. No doubt he had ripped some of her organs, though Amberli had patched her well.
She could function on this, but it would be a while until it healed entirely. A reminder.
Words came from them. Both of them, sounds. The sawbones could not tell if they were directed at her or not. She could not read them. Right now there were only her duties. Watch for threats during the portioned hours. Heal the injured. Clean the campsite. Watch the fluttering birds so that their madness didn’t consume them whole. A thought floats across the surface of her when there are no other thoughts, and it tastes slightly of distress.
Would he be completely different?
The sawbones settled against the door of the shed and allowed metal to march up her back in hard lines. It supported a tired neck. The leaves froze into a plane of ice, shell-thin, with a deep, deep chasm beneath. On this surface a crack drifted like a stray hair blown across the surface of forever. Harmless, troubling, it settled too. Next to her.
The word “Smiles” etched through the surface with urgency and tiny glasslike sounds, a razor-thin word, and there the crack halted. Her eyes traced its trail back toward the Double Tap, toward light and laughter and song. Her name was written several times across this surface of glass, bound to a simple flickering shadow.
Other shadows spoke quietly by the entrance to the grave. They ignored the sawbones and the shadow as if they existed in different worlds entirely. They were not wrong.
The sawbones met its eyes levelly and found she could not see them. Not really. They were circles within a circle. They were meaningless disks of color, light, and dark. The shapes meant nothing to her, and she was so tired. There were no words to describe how greatly a sane person could want a needle under their skin, no words to describe how it became life itself, how it could replace the very need to survive. This did not matter. She dug her nails into her skin instead and dryly labeled it as compromise. Wanted to laugh because this was the victory. This was the better ending, and better by far.
The mouth of the shadow moved, a shape, and words flooded the leaves around him into neatly burnt messages. The touch of its helmet had shattered the glass, and now they sunk slightly into miles of rotting vegetation the color of fire and dirt. The messages piled, burnt explanations, questions, wonderings. She read them as she pressed her thumb into the crook of her arm.
…may not recognize me.... I… hoping you… tell me who I am…
The sawbones made her own words surface, nearly wincing as she tore the silence in her. She saw the bled one, telling him to be well not a half hour before with her face breaking because he needed this good ending; he could handle the possibility of loss but he wanted to believe it would be well so much, she had no heart to explain otherwise… she saw him speaking at this place to her months ago, until anger burned through her as though the fabric of everything could be sublimated in rage and her hammer left her hand to dent the rocks in front of them. (And hadn't he always been there. Even understanding why the sawbones still...) And now, there was green around the shadow’s arm, a breathing green knitted in her sleepless hours. Pictures. Pigeon.
Limits were guidelines, not rules. The sawbones brought the world to focus with the effort of one moving a mountain, felt her headache spike to a migraine, and she began to speak, pulling words from her mouth with clumsy fingers until her fingers scraped numbly at the empty bottom of her skull. They spoke until the sun rose, she and this one. Itai, Pigeon. The broken bird. The collection of face, act, word bundled neatly in her mind.
These beings around her.
Why did they hate themselves? They should be their own, it should be as simple as breathing, but instead they lived like strangers in their own bags of skin, wondering.
Why did they feel guilt? They should know regret for their faulty actions, but if guilt was really so altruistic, why did they continue even when their victims forgave? Because they hated themselves.
Why did they beg, grip, weep for friendship? Were they so empty of their own self they needed others to define them? Because they felt guilt.
The sawbones was human. This was no secret. And yet for every similarity she shared with them, differences spun canyons between them. Her thoughts only distressed them. Her words only unsettled them. Her silence only assailed them. And it had always been this way.
And yet, right now, a warm trickle meandered down her arm. Skin clogged the space between her fingernails, scratched gouges. The wave hit her like a wall, almost pried open her jaw, almost asked where Troika was, where Sergei was. Where Adam was. Where any seasoned Vegasian was. What she would have to do to get it. Knowing Templeton had it was a knife in her head. It pried at her. Instead she raked her arm repeatedly in the dark. As if one could yank away veins like ribbons--she didn’t desire veins like these. Her broken bloody headspace right now was hers, was the closest to theirs she could imagine. Better by far than a psion’s pull.
Itai, Pigeon. The broken bird, its ways.
“I am… a bad person.”
It was bleeding over. He would not think this if it wasn’t for the influence of his past few years.
“There are no good or bad people.”
“He was a fool. He cared for this town.”
“You were a fool,” she responded. To some it would seem harsh. “You are the same person.”
This was a surgery. If he lived he would be healed, but any surgery could kill. Right now, she was half finished and had lost all feeling. No chance of getting this done. He had gotten truth from her. He needed some lies to bandage him, and those she could not give. Into the predawn. Steps like raindrops.
At GDI people watched them arrive, but they didn’t know. Her fingers scraped the bottom of the skull and found nothing to pull up. Her thoughts and these people were so far apart she could not imagine how to bridge this, to force understanding. The mountain once moved with the last dredges of her effort was falling on her and what were words? Flickers of color on the edge of her vision. Simple tasks became confusing impossibilities.
The sawbones was a being of opportunity. In a lull, the broken bird had given her his side. She slowed for only a moment, fragments and a breath of instinct guiding her action. This was the ideal choice. In this they could understand. In this they would be given a chance.
She could feel him, the shift in the air around him. The moment she paused he tensed in mid-step, warring with two impulses. The conflict gave her the piece of a second she required.
Break his wings. Make him tame.
The broken bird snarled out as his leg crumpled forward. Wet snap of Achilles, dry grate of steel being drawn. She must have been hit with a bomb in turn. The chicken man (he understood, he knew) could explain the rest to the group, and the broken bird had been made honest with his response. Worlds curled up around her and when she opened her eyes she was on a picnic table. It was lighter. Words flew through the air like bullets.
The thread puppet seemed bulky in her hands as she gave it to him. Staring bird, confused. When had she stood? The key felt like a window in her head as she unlocked the door. When had she walked? The world drained of color as she fell into her bed.
Smiles opened her eyes to a full-throated yellow morning. There is absolutely nothing inside her. No emotions, no drives, no things except for herself and the weariness of months pressing into her face and into her hands. Her smile in response to this is tired. She is her own. She can see the damage clearly. In a little bit, just a little bit, she would be well again, and it was about time.
The stiff smile fades, only a remnant of her injury. She reaches for her scarf like an old friend. Sunlight shines through her like a window, and she is literally nothing. Everything is gone while she recovers from this. She does not feel their stares, and she hardly registers their words. They come in spurts and strangenesses, here and gone, shapes and motions in unreadable patterns. She forces focus only when she feels it is needed to avoid further prying and attention. They tore bits of her away, those who ask if she was alright. No, but she would be. And she had not had a promise like this for half a year.
The broken bird perches with one of his flock, and she watches it blankly. Assessing. Her side aches; yellow infection like sunlight strains the stitches as though she were a garment on the verge of tearing. No doubt he had ripped some of her organs, though Amberli had patched her well.
She could function on this, but it would be a while until it healed entirely. A reminder.
Words came from them. Both of them, sounds. The sawbones could not tell if they were directed at her or not. She could not read them. Right now there were only her duties. Watch for threats during the portioned hours. Heal the injured. Clean the campsite. Watch the fluttering birds so that their madness didn’t consume them whole. A thought floats across the surface of her when there are no other thoughts, and it tastes slightly of distress.
Would he be completely different?