SOTF Archive/SOTF Classic

She was losing. Hopelessly losing. Willow had been carefully about picking fights. It was easy to avoid fighting, easier to win when you didn’t need to fight. This hurt a lot though. Like a rag doll, she was caught in Garnet’s embrace ready to be harmed.

They grappled. Garnet reset her feet, screaming through the pain. Willow forced her arms back, the buzzing arc splitting the darkness, once, twice. Garnet leaned her face away desperately as it sparked, closer and closer.

Breathe.

Garnet backstepped and wrenched Willow around with all her bodyweight, throwing Willow as she fell in turn, clattering to the floor facefirst.

She had forgotten about the bodies, about the chandelier, about the scenery. It was a strategic mistake. There was something sticking out of her ribs. Something new. A new hole.

She coughed out blood again. Black. Darkness was creeping on the edge of her vision, but maybe it had been there all along. She didn’t know. She blinked. Fuzzy. It felt like the carpet in her grandma’s dining room. The one she had laid on after killing her. She didn’t take a piece of her. She missed her.

Willow, softly, began crying.

Garnet lay in a heap on the floor. She wanted to scream and didn’t have the breath. Her ankle blared, fading just a little to spike the pain, over and over again.

She levered herself up on her hands. She couldn’t see anything, night blinded by the flashlight, bright spots smeared across her eyes.

There was only sound. Her own whimpers. Quiet sobs. A pitter-patter of blood dripping onto the floor.

Garnet stood. Her leg tried to drop out from underneath her. She forced her weight onto her other foot.

More sniffs. Gentle crying gasps.

“Willow?” Garnet muttered hoarsely.

She’d heard a wet, gristly thunk, a tearing noise to go with the cacophony of Willow’s own fall.

Would that be enough?

Was it over?

Her fingers dug into guts and flesh. Not hers for once. She searched. For a tool, an escape, something to change the ending.

“I guess you—”

—deserved to go home. She laid her head back. Her fingers were growing cold despite the warmth. It wasn’t pleasant, but it felt better than she expected.

No, that was a lie to make herself feel better. It felt horrible. Dying sucked. Her guts were opened. She felt them trail out. If she stood right now, they would immediately drop to the floor. She tried to remember where she put the duct tape. She couldn't.

She cried. She didn’t want to lose even if—

she didn’t want to be a loser anymore.

“Garnet?”

“You hurt bad?”

“Guess.”

Her voice sounded weak.

“Still playing games? Fucking hell. We… we still doing this?”

“Depends.” She sniffed. Large tears rolling on her cheeks. “Personally,” she raised her body, letting the dulled chandelier sway in her guts, “I’d like to go see the stars.”

Garnet laughed. Didn’t sound much of one, though.

Of course she did.

Garnet limped towards the voice, groping in the dark. She could just barely see a silhouette in the gloom. One hand touched the chandelier, then Willow’s shoulder.

Willow had thought dying would be more romantic. It was anything but. She wanted to vomit. She wanted to cry. She wanted to do anything else than to lay wasting. She sobbed.

“I… I have no idea how you survived this long, dumbass.”

Her finger pressed the switch, jabbing Garnet with the stun gun in the side of her neck.

“Wha—”

White out.

There was the scream of Willow followed by the squelching of her guts slipping out through her back. She screamed again and again as she shoved her hands under shirt, ripping a piece of tape and then she screamed again when she plunged the piece of plastic in her wound.

For a moment, Willow was only wails and laments.

Her cheek touched the floor.

Distant screeching.

Her eyes opened. What…

Her eyes closed.

Something moved nearby, scraping and kicking against the floor.

Her eyes opened.

A shadowy figure, writhing.

Her eyes closed.

Had to…

move..

Willow flipped Garnet onto her back. It hurt. She felt it move in her body. Willow stared at the body, the features of the girl in the darkness glowing from the flashlight. Her eyes dragged across her cheeks to her nose to mouth then back to her eyes.

She sat on her chest, waiting the breathing to stop so they could start again.