We Are The Last Of The Legion, The Last Of The Bastion, The Best Of The Bastards, And Slave To None

[Emprexx Plush]

((Marco Hart Continued From Princess Of The Night))

There was an ending to this story that echoed the sound of rushing water.

It rang poetic, didn't it? Revelation at the apex of a climb on autopilot, mementos selected with recognition buried under recursive distraction, entwined fear and yearning for incompatible states of truth to resolve to singularity, conviction towards conclusion regardless of result, it all felt so familiar didn't it? Purpose changed, of course. Before he scanned the island from atop the falls for evidence that the game was just that, a game, a trick, cruelty but of a familiar kind. If he reached the summit today he would look over the island for...evidence felt too cold a word. Memory too painful. Maybe he didn’t know a word for what he was looking for, he just knew what he wanted to see if he made it to the top.

The menagerie where Nick had been the first person to ever speak his name aloud.

Winding trail across from the waterfall leading up to the cave where they’d spent most of their nights together.

Exhibits in the museum where they’d had the only thing he could properly call a date.

A rising sun over the doors where he hadn’t held himself together well enough to say goodbye until it was long too late.

Marco couldn’t be certain that he’d see any of them until he was there. Angles, terrain, it was fuzzy in his head from the last visit. He had been so preoccupied with what he couldn’t see that he hadn’t taken the view properly. If he could only have one, he would probably have asked for that facade of a sun. An image to fixate on that conveyed what was laying inside the temple without looking at it directly in his mind’s eye. That was poetic too, distractions to keep him from thinking about what he wasn’t thinking about, it felt appropriate to close the circle. A sun that didn’t shine, churning water, words too silent to be heard because they weren’t for anyone who could still hear them.

Then he would fall.

Because he had promised himself that he wouldn’t make Nick watch him die, and it wasn’t fair to make anyone else do it either, but if he reached the top of the falls he would be alone. His death would be unobserved even by the cameras; his body would simply disappear into the downpour. It would be horrifying from the inside, but not for long. Marco recalled that when falling to your death, it was advised that you go head first. If your legs hit the ground first they might just break, and if the fall wasn’t enough to kill you outright your death would be slow. Just helpless in a puddle of your own blood and fragmented bone, hoping shock knocks you out soon. It wasn’t much different in water. At this height smacking into the lake below would be like plummeting into concrete. Going head first ensured that if somehow he survived the trip over the falls he would almost certainly be knocked unconscious and drown to death in his sleep. No one would have to watch. No one would be at fault. That was the way to go if his story was over. If there was nothing left for him after Nick.

Marco loved him. Enough had passed between them to feel comfortable that was not a delusion. He had loved him in a manner that could only be built through trauma, he had loved him through bond and fear and violence and idolation and acceptance and words upon words that he echoed just to stay in the moment where they were still in each other’s arms, that feeling that any moment Nick might stop his trembling hand, kiss him on the forehead, and pull him to his feet to their next destination. He was so happy to love and been loved by him. He would never love anyone else like he had loved Nick.

But Marco’s story did not belong to Nick Ogilvie.

Nick was not special. They weren’t predestined, soulmates, anything like that, so when he felt he would never love anyone like him again there was some fantastic element where he wanted to believe that what they had was truly unique, but there was also the hope that if he ever had the opportunity to love someone again it wouldn’t be because they both felt too fucked up to be loved by anyone else. That hope was one facet of what drove him on. One possibility of a life stretching onward where the island only represented one brief moment. Marco’s story did not start with Nick. It would not end with Nick. It would not continue for Nick.

There was an ending to this story that echoed the sound of metal scraping on stone.

Poetic too, in its way. The waterfall was not the first place Marco cut someone with the glove. He was far away on the shores below the first time he swung it. Dead night in the woods surrounded him the first time he put it on and brought an edge back to its blades. Here, though, picking up stones he would not allow himself to remember. That’s when he made the decision. That first time he picked up a rock on the trail. Hefted it. Examined its qualities. Tucked it away next to a weapon he still couldn’t force himself to look at. It felt so far from Kayla, but it was right here that he had made the first concrete decision that he was going to hurt someone. He hadn’t started a single fight since then. The only person he’d hurt was Garnet when she decided to try and beat his sense of survival back out of him, and he’d held back even then. Always restrained himself. Let the violent urges wash through him and chose the more practical path they left behind. Wouldn’t it be appropriate, then, that he was sitting here on the trail when he put himself on a collision course with another corpse?

He could kill her. Marco knew that if he had to...no. Just if he wanted to, he could kill Marceline. He wouldn’t be doing it for Nick. In all their time together Nick had never once struck out for revenge, and not for lack of opportunity. There were no mumbled hopes that someday he’d get to kill Darlene, or Adonis, or Yuka, or anyone else who had hurt him and the people he cared about. Nick wouldn’t want him to spend his days chasing revenge, or to throw his life away trying to fight Marceline head on. There at least they would agree. Pound for pound Marceline was better armed and way more comfortable with violence. Unlike Nick she did see it as a means to an end, revenge was a worthy goal in and of itself, Marco would never charge her and come out of it still alive. He might as well plunge over the water’s edge instead. She had differences from Marco as well though. She carried more than she had to; the sword was totally unnecessary, but she brandished it like a trophy. She was filthy and bandaged and covered in blood, so she wasn’t particularly clean about anything she had done. She had allowed herself to be discovered by Katelynne, and it was only their lack of arms that kept their numbers from overwhelming her. That spoke to impatience.

Marco was patient.

Marco had studied this island round and round in their trips. He knew where every remaining supply of water, every shelter, every hidden path, every blind corner, every sudden drop, every secret, every advantage this land had left to give up was waiting. That was exaggerating. He sounded like some sort of half-baked Rambo remake when he put it like that. It just felt good to assert power in the one place he had it, and consider how he could use that against her. Marceline would over exert herself. She would take stupid risks. Play stupid games. Exhaust herself and her resources down to a husk of the wild-eyed psychotic that had burst into the temple. Marco could imagine himself finding her then, parched and fatigued in the corner of one of the houses thinking she’d found a safe place to rest off her mistakes. Too delirious for anything anyone would consider a fight. She wouldn’t even be able to raise her arm to fire.

Then Marco would slit her fucking throat himself.

It was an ending. He could become that version of himself. There was nothing left for him here but time and no one to spend it with who truly wanted him. If he slipped away without Katelynne now and spent the rest of his life chasing after Marceline, he might just catch her vulnerable before the end. He could give up everything for that. It was possible. He couldn’t deny there was a lot of temptation in the thought.

But Marco’s story did not belong to Marceline Carlson.

Cliche enough to say that killing her wouldn’t bring Nick back. Entertaining that thought alone would have been as hypocritical as Marceline expecting some kind of closure for killing Nick. An endless cycle of revenge that had been done to death in every form of media he could imagine. Marco didn’t abandon the idea of killing Marceline because of ethical or philosophical high ground he pretended only he was enlightened enough to attain. It just...it wouldn’t mean anything to him. All the urges, the violent fantasies, the grim certainty of their fates, the rush to jump in front and take down threats to them himself, at the heart of it none of it stemmed from personal satisfaction bordering on sadism that came from the act itself. Almost every time Marco had wanted to lash out since Kayla it had been framed around protecting Nick, and now that he was gone, it, it wasn’t so much that there wasn’t a point anymore. It was just that in some sense it wasn’t even about saving Nick from danger as much as it was Nick valuing him as protective. As an equal. Someone who could make him feel safe and valuable. What he was really trying to do was parrot the love language Nick used to make him feel worth all of the risk, and there was no one left to hear him. Hunting Marceline down wouldn’t please Nick. It wouldn’t fill the hole left inside Marco. So if he let himself get consumed with the idea to the point that he left the last person alive who might stay with him behind to hunt for a girl he might never even see, what would be left for him in the best case scenario? What sort of person would he be on the other side of revenge? Was Marceline’s dying whimper really the note he wanted his story to end on? No. Marco’s story did not begin with Marceline. It would not end with Marceline. It would not continue for Marceline.

There was an ending to this story that echoed nothing.

It had no grand gesture. No unifying theme. No goal beyond a single word: Continue.

The version of Marco he wrote for himself in this ending still loved Nicholas Domnhall Parkhurst Ogilvie with all of his heart, and always would, but he did not need to die for him. He wanted to see Marceline Carlson die for what she’d done, but he didn’t need to kill her. This Marco never saw Nick’s body again, and if he watched Marceline die he would do it from behind a screen. This version of Marco sharpened his glove only to put it back in the bag and hope he never needed to pull it out on another person again. He knelt at the top of the waterfall only to wash his face, and did not look over the falls for ghosts he was not ready to see. All he saw was his rippling reflection as he painted his face in memory of two pairs of hands that could no longer do it for him.

Marco didn’t know if the man he was looking at was good. He didn’t know what the man he was looking at wanted. He didn’t know what sort of ending the man he was looking at would get.

But he was looking at a man.

That is where the ending to his story began.

It was enough.

((Marco Hart Continued Elsewhere))