SOTF Archive/SOTF Classic

((Blaise And Carl D'Aramitz Continued From And Now Those Days Are Over and We Are All Ghosts))

To be brutally honest one could be forgiven for forgetting which of them was the aggrieved athlete. Aurelien's pace seemed to just barely keep pace with their own, but then again he had taken a leisurely route to pursuing his revenge. The desire was there, that had shaken them from the moment he'd caught them in his field of view, but Blaise was starting to talk themself into the notion that while his spirit could not be halted his body had run out of steam well before they had crossed paths.

Was it an arrogant supposition when their entire plan revolved around outpacing him? Certainly. Arrogance was not always unearned, no? It was a point of fact that they had won more fights that counted than he had by score alone. Eleven to none, numbers did not lie. The self conscious chatter of luck and error seemed as far away as Aurelien's footfalls, which was to say not so far at all objectively but an infinity apart functionally. They had already cleared the garden. A gaudy sun marked the temple's entrance and it was approaching rapidly. They did not bother to slow themself down looking over their shoulder. Once they were across the threshold they could buy time dodging through discarded trappings of decadence long soured until the time was right. As long as they were inside in the dim light he would not be able to anticipate their ploy. Still, some show of resistance before hand would be necessary to keep his suspicions low. One hand touched the door's handle as the other pulled their pistol from their right pocket-

Head’s up.

Which bridged into three realizations at roughly the same moment.

Aurelien's steps proved far more rapid than expected as they reached for the door.

Their grip proved far less sure than expected as their pistol jostled to the ground.

The door proved far sturdier than expected as Aurelien slammed their head into it face first.

He had heard, not too long ago, that the human body was able to perform extreme feats of strength under serious duress.

((Aurelien Valter continued from And Now Those Days Are Over, And We Are All Ghosts))

He’d had no idea whether that was true at the time, and while it had been a point of mild interest, it hadn’t grabbed him enough for him to actually look it up whether it was fact or fiction. He couldn’t even remember where he’d read about it anymore, the origin of this knowledge lost to the same depths that had claimed when and where he’d learned about tennis handshakes.

Well. He was running at full pelt now, feet thudding against the ground, and the wounds and scars and broken bones covering every inch of his body had vanished. The mace in his hands felt weightless, singing through the air, vicious metal head trailing slightly behind him as he ran. He had been energised, totally refuelled. He felt as though he could take on anyone and everyone.

There was only one person in his sights though.

Blaise was moving slowly, taking their time entering the temple, because if he knew one thing, it was that arrogance, thy name is Blaise D’Aramitz. They were also so goddamn cocksure of themselves, that they were fucking untouchable. They walked with an infuriating swagger through the halls of George Hunter, rendering every encounter and relationship and emotional state they ran into just that notable bit worse off. They had killed, because they could. And they had killed again, because they thought they could get away with it scot free. And they had killed again, and again, and again.

They could have killed him already. Their mistake for thinking he’d let an opportunity slip through his fingers.

Aurelien snarled through his bandana. He felt his left hand leave the mace, rearing back, ready to seize hold of Blaise and not let go until everything was over. They were reacting now, trying to turn, trying to raise the gun up to defend themselves. Too fucking late.

He grabbed the back of their head, using his momentum to slam them forwards, smashing their face into the wooden doorway with a sickening crack. Aurelien had broken plenty of bones and plenty of wood during his short time on earth, and he felt sure he had just done the former once more.

His fingers tangled into their hair, and he pulled them back once more, slamming their face into the wood with another satisfying thud. The second slam was enough for the door to judder ajar upon impact, and Aurelien lashed out with his foot, kicking Blaise inside.

He took two steps forwards, crossing the threshold, both hands back on the mace again, already coiling back to swing it down on top of them.

Their right index finger kept twitching around a trigger they couldn’t feel. It was there. It had to be there. They had felt the gun fall from their hands but that did not make sense, it was not part of the plan. The ghost of it floated weightless in their hand pointed back toward where they were certain he held them and they kept squeezing, certain any second they should hear the click.

He smashed them into the door again and kicked their body indoors as if they were garbage unworthy of his effort. They should have returned the gesture with barbs of such magnitude they would be lost on a

On a

On...

Blaise’s vocabulary had failed them. Any taunt they could have spun to distract him was oozing out of their head through the caved in space formerly occupied by their nose only to drip right back in when they opened their mouth to speak. Carrying the metaphor through all the way there was a cliche observation about how they might be choking on their own words.

They did not think of metaphor. Only the glint of a large metal object about to descend on them. Their head swam too much to crawl out of the way. What fingers remained on their left hand fumbled with their second gun too awkwardly to fully pull it from their pocket.

“Feughugh!”

But they had already lost what they meant to say when they felt the shot twitch wide within their jacket. The glint swayed above them and they kept pulling with no certainty what if anything they were hitting, that same useless spasming over the trigger repeating from right to left after their pocket stopped jumping four shots in.

The glint overhead had disappeared.

They started to crawl away just as something smashed into the wood over their left shoulder.

There were too many infuriating facets of Blaise d’Aramitz to count, but one of those many, many reasons was exactly why they did what they did.

Most pertinently, it was because they simply didn’t give a shit about another human being. They did whatever they wanted to, because whatever the repercussions where, if it didn’t hurt them personally, then there was no harm done - at least, that was what Aurelien presumed went through their mind. But when they did need to wriggle their way out of trouble, for whatever reason, they always had something up their sleeve; some excuse, some answer, some lie. They left a tangled web behind them, and those knots would often catch up with them, but in the heat of the moment, that hidden ace, that pocketed weapon, that was enough for them to seize the day.

Their pocket shredded into tatters, and Aurelien had no time to react, the meteorite strike of his mace falling to earth, unstoppable in its motion. The needles tore through his jacket and shirt, not accurate enough to cause much more damage than shallow scratches and a hiss of pain to spit from his mouth, but it was all that was necessary for his aim to go wide. The mace glanced off of Blaise’s shoulder and smashed into the floor, shards and splinters of wood flying out of the crater as his weapon made impact. He twisted, ready to rip the mace out of the ground, and at that moment, a surge of pain flashed through his side

“Fuck!”

He glanced down, spotting the needle jammed into his side, spots of blood staining his dirty white t-shirt, and now the blood in his veins had reached his eyes, and as another jolt emanated from the wound in his torso, he roared and let go of the mace, dropping on top of of Blaise. He grabbed their shirt, tight enough he thought it might rip. Their face was coated in blood, their nose buckled and shattered, pain apparent in their expression.

Not enough. It wasn’t fucking enough.

There was another crack as his fist collided with their cheek. He reared back and swung again. And again. And again. His aim was wild, his punches heavy and ungainly.

But there was power behind them, pure adrenaline soaked rage, and it didn’t matter to him where he hit anymore. Just so long as he got blood on his fists, and something beneath him broke.

Repetition inevitably led to familiarity, and familiarity inevitably led to disinterest. It was an immutable fact of design. The most innovative ideas became common place with enough iterations, so it stood to theory that if Aurelien broke enough of their bones the experience would become mundane. An outfit lost its luster after, at the absolute most, three appearances. Surely there were more than three bones in the human face, no?

In practice the flares of excruciating pain under his fist were not so simple tp identify. Which spoke to a break, which to a splinter, which to a fracture, which simply made them want to scream if waves of blood and their jaw lolling on its right side did not render communication infeasible, a series of immaterial distinctions that if they were more capable of rational thought would be the most incensing aspect of the experience: that their undoing would come in uniform, indistinct, unadorned misery raining on them from a mind too singular to understand the value of variety in misery.

Or some bullshit like that if they were capable of holding more than two thoughts.

The first was swallowed by the aforementioned sensation of Aurelien beating their face raw.

The second was of options.

One gun was lost in the doorway. Another ran empty. A knife waiting in the lip of their left boot was too awkward to reach, too ineffective with the gash in their shoulder where the mace kissed it on the way down. Parker's axe only pressed flat into the flesh of their back, it could not be retrieved in this position. Their newest oldest addition sat awkwardly against their left breast, they could not retrieve it without him noticing. Which left only the knife worming its way to their palm from inside their sleeve.

Aurelien leaned into another swing.

They twisted blindly into their own and felt solid impact as the blade embedded it somewhere in his arm.

The arm that continued unheeded into their face and wrenched their fingers from the handle.

The arm that then withdrew, promising more pain and the loss of their only accessible salvation.

They did not have time to chastise themself for idiocy before their left hand lurched towards their boot.

Part of him had hoped, after the first few punches, that Blaise’s head would crack back against the wooden floor, and that they’d go limp, and go down, and stay down. He doubted he’d stop at that; even if he wanted to let up smashing their face into a fine pulp, he didn’t think his body would even let him. He wanted this to hurt. He wanted Blaise to feel as much pain as they had inflicted since waking up on this godforsaken island.

But more than anything, he just wanted them dead.

They didn’t go down quietly though. They struggled and flailed, weak, aimless swipes and claws at his arms, as bones broke under his fists and blood stained his knuckles. His breath was heavy and harried, trapped beneath his bandana, as he reared back, fist raised in the air, and swung back down into the ruptured nose and blackened eye.

Something caught Aurelien’s arm as he landed another heavy blow, though, the same sensation you got snagging your sleeve on a branch or a door handle. He raised it up again, taking a glance at his forearm.

He saw the knife, embedded deep into it, blood staining the olive green fabric darker still, puddling on the floor beneath him. His face twisted, contorted with anger, and as Blaise lunged for their boot, he grabbed their own sleeve, no time to pull the blade out before doing so. He moved forwards, digging his knee into the crook of their elbow, pinning it to the ground, hissing as the combined efforts of the needle and knife shot shards of pain through him.

His hands wrapped around the handle of the mace again. He lifted it above the head, Atlas holding up the world, and if it hadn’t been a bloody disfigured mess, he was sure he’d have savoured the look on their face for just a moment. He moved his knee out of the way.

The mace came hurtling back down, shattering Blaise’s arm upon impact, the snapping of bone like a gunshot, splinters from the floor catching and burying themselves in their skin. He breathed heavily, sweat soaking and mingling with the blood caked into his bandana, and he was about to swing the mace back up again, ready to bring it back down on their other arm, now frantically foraging inside of their jacket.

The sight of them weakly holding a flashlight, the thing almost slipping from their fragile grasp, was enough to give even him pause, however.

Hesitance. That would be his undoing.

Blaise’s plans were often foolish. More often nonsense. Most often impulse without consideration of benefit or consequence. Any attempted through-line from one plan to the next zigged and zagged with inebriated piloting until it vanished entirely only to turn up elsewhere in maneuver that would leave any observer throwing hands into the air with disbelief. Very little proved how inane, how improbable, their every instinct was than flinching for a dagger they knew they would not reach with such certainty that on some level when they felt the mace shatter through their bones there had to be some relief hiding under all the resulting screaming that it did not land on their face. It left their body spasming. The sight and smell and sound of guyshards of bone popping through skin washed with blood left them retching. Under any equal circumstance they would be guaranteed death in the next stroke.

The next, though. Not now. Aurelien hesitated in his desires, certain as they were. Blaise did not hesitate in theirs, as inane as they were. So they drew the flashlight from against their breast.

It had always been the trump. Were it not they could have attacked him anywhere, but it needed to be dark. He needed to be close. In any other conditions it would not be effective, little more than a weight on their jacket threatening to tear the seams of their improvised pocket. With his confusion, and the darkness, and their proximity, even though he saw it coming he would not realize it was the only thing they owned that would bring him down in one move. He did not try to stop them as it raised in line with his face, as much of his face as they could see through swollen vision, as focused aim as they could take with their body falling apart underneath him.

A bright flash intruded on the darkness creeping over their vision.

Impulse was Aurelien’s guiding force in life.

It was what drove him to do the brave, exhilarating, daredevil, and, to be perfectly honest, reckless and foolhardy things that he did. He didn’t need to think twice about throwing himself out of planes, or hurtling down rocky hillside tracks on a mountain bike, or beating his most despised person in the universe into broken bones and bloody flesh; if the answer to ‘will this give me a serious adrenaline rush’ was ‘yes’, he was already on his way to doing it.

Of course, reckless impulse led only to disaster if you practiced it too much. You could get away with it once, twice, tens of times, but sooner or later, somebody was going to get hurt badly, and there was every chance that somebody was yourself. Wading into a skirmish on the soccer pitch headfirst and finding yourself face to face with a guy built like a meat factory. Running out onto a frozen lake without taking a second to check how thin the ice was. Not checking his brake lines, his tether strength, whether his protective gear was properly secured. Aurelien had experience of all of these, and thus, experience with each of their repercussions.

Was it irony, that a moment of hesitation was what had finally taken Aurelien down? He’d never properly grasped the concept of what was ironic and what wasn’t, the word being misused so frequently, and outside of his native tongue. It was absurd, what Blaise was doing. They barely had the strength to hold the flashlight, let alone bash his brains in with it. If they had been hoping for a moment’s respite by the sheer brass balls of taking a torch up against a mace, then it had certainly worked.

Was it ironic, too, that he had traipsed across the whole island in search of bloody vengeance, when the only thing Dante would have wanted was for Aurelien to let go? He didn’t know. He wasn’t smart, he was fully aware of that. Not academically smart, certainly not, and not especially socially so either. He knew, without question, that he loved Dante, though, with all his heart. And he knew that all he wanted was to do right by him. What would he do if he saw Dante again, and his boyfriend had nothing but disappointment in his eyes?

Aurelien was given no time to think about that question as the muzzle, for that was what was truly in Blaise’s hands, flashed and roared. He had time to blink, and that was it, as the shotgun blast impacted, shredding through his skull, ripping it apart, his final thought, his last memory of Dante, blown away like dust in the breeze.

His body, lifeless, collapsed on top of Blaise, the mace wedged between them, a stake through the heart of the ungainly, bloody heap in the middle of the temple.

The air, finally, was still.

Blaise did not have time to register their victory, such as it could be named, before a heap of dead weight came crashing down on top of them. To be quite clear there was time. So much time. It would have been possible to have moved while they took the shot assuming the level of competence that it took to leave a dozen bodies behind in as many days. Perhaps one could be generous enough to say the shot had to be straight, there was only one opportunity after all. Then the only time would come after clicking the switch, but would that be so difficult? Aurelien wavered and wobbled and tumbled much like the felling of a great old tree, it was not so unimaginable to escape him. One movement to the right or the left, no, the left had been quite thoroughly denied to them by their injuries so they did not need to waste energy making a decision. The right was the only path, the one they should have been on as soon as they saw the flash. One little shift. Would that be so challenging? No. Of course it would not be, they should have managed it easily.

Blaise did not have time, as they did not have the strength in their broken body to heave it to the side, as they did not have mind to understand that they should before he began to topple, as they did not have breath to scream when his body tried to wring it from their lungs like blood from a stone.

Blaise had nothing.

The air was still.

There was nothing in way of a response. There was nothing requiring a response. There will be nothing further.

Two bodies lay in the temple. It was right that they not stir. Disturbing them would be an error.

Fuck off.