Every Lover's Got A Little Dagger In Their Hand

every lover's got a little dagger in their hand

❝ the more you freak out, the faster you’re going to bleed. just take it easy. ❞ / anatoly :]

Anatoly could hardly hear Jamie over the blood rushing in his ears.

Or maybe that was the pond water keeping pressure pinned inside the delicate inner-workings of the exposed organ. there was watery plant-life clinging to his limbs. cold and wet as his clothing hung and stuck to him like a grotesque mangled scarecrow. his own hands dark with blood and mud and the green syrupy chlorophyll of the plant-life he’d inadvertently dredged up in his struggle. His lungs heaved and bloated their veins like inflated wild streamers in his chest, pained like a lightning strike, either trying to gouge out the water from each of its tiny pockets, or shuddering a terrible frozen shaking throughout him; body heat as a distant memory. 

He would’ve been terrified of suffering from a heart-attack if not for the fact he could barely find the mental distinction between the sections of his chest. ribs and stomach and collarbone fusing in his clouded nerves, his more delicate senses useless against the intensity of his panic. a drowned rabbit’s heart racing when the crane dives into the lake reeds, not expecting it to wriggle its way out of its talons, not expecting the canine to hound in after the both of them, wolfish and smart and vengeful, not expecting both to emerge on the bank; and it not to. 

Anatoly could already only barely remember. A pounding dream of water and color and movement, the muffled sound of gunfire, the tangling of many limbs, the scramble for the surface and the blood that bloomed around him.

His own blood, he knows a breath after he can breathe at all, his own blood.

Teeth marks stretch and mar the skin of his right shoulder down his arm to the joint, like a beast not biting but dragging as though trying to pull the flesh with it, interrupted only by the clean ( or cleaner ) tunnel line of a grazed bullet; likely going for the head. Cloth flaps uselessly in his shivering, or slaps in on itself, the fibers clinging to each-other, greatly like how Anatoly now does to Jamie. Unintentional. His arm is almost black with his blood. ( you think his other hand might be locked into it’s grip on your coat, too cold to move, the joints disobedient and him, unaware, but desperate. perhaps not for you, but for safety, for survival. )

The words take root a 10~20 seconds past their origin date, and his wide dark eyes glance up at Jamie, looking shallow, and dazed, and already dead.

( at least when he starved it was a quiet shutdown. at least when he starved it was easier to look at. at least when he starved, by the time you’d find him, there was nothing to left talk to. )

He isn’t, his body screams even if his mind hasn’t quite caught up yet, he isn’t he isn’t he isn’t he isn’t he-

The first sound that emerges from his throat is entirely incoherent, the attempt of language lost entirely on waterlogged vocal chords and shivering that goes down his throat & chokes him. His second attempt is better, a word — or more accurately approximated sound — that Anatoly taught to mean something like ‘okay’ where he came from. A mother tongue that comes more naturally than English in his distant but confused state. he stops squirming as much, at least for a minute or two, before he starts again like a compulsive writhe, before stopping again. he murmurs something in that same language as he tugs back at the hand locked to Jamie’s coat before seeming to realize what had happened, and changing to the other hand, attempts to roll up the soaked sleeve of its own wounded arm overtop the gashes that may or may not have been wrapped already by the time of his realization. 

Had it been 10 minutes since he was pulled from the water, or 20?

It wasn’t as though he had a watch, either way…

They feel as though a wire threatening to snap, and it all feels too familiar.

━ the world around them thrums with a life that threatens to suffocate them. they have suffocated it in the past. perhaps this is how they recognize the pressure it places upon them. perhaps they are only feeling what it is everyone else feels under this godforsaken mountain : the weight of miles on their shoulders. the weight of magic. thick in the air, it threatens again. empty threats, but their windpipe rattles with anticipation in motion.

pacing. movement. to never stop, a future or present of paperwork endless but as is their will, such is one of their many fatal flaws, is it not? ━ to be so determined, to be so capable. such not to disallow failure, but rather, to disallow retreat.

they will do this. they must do this. this is who they are.

their death lies waiting for them, and they, waiting for it. eventually, they will win. how it is always an eventually.

the mountain is no longer there. it has not been in a long time. ━ a falsehood their mind forgoes, the threads they've lived and will live tangling on themselves, the brain not meant to contain memories to the caliber of which they know and keep and never shed ━ they feel slightly lightheaded with their own existence; a rattle, shiver, stop. ( you're being spoken to. answer. his voice ringing like hollow bells. )

you are in the hall. the grey wallpaper reminds you of winter. you cannot remember to which house it belongs anymore. ( toriel's, asgore's, the home they are yet to live, the home they were born in / a never-ending absolution of places of your past, places of your future, and place you are in; always leaving sooner than you expect. )

" There is, but not like━ " not like this, not like you, not like us. " ━not with them. " is how they choose to conclude, hands running through hair, dark eyes closed. tense like a lightning rod waiting in the negative air for that positive strike. tense like a storm cloud, cotton ball, cheek bone. maybe its him they're waiting for. intuition like a signal they're tuning into, when the frequency is right. his world, the one they don't belong to, the one he's stuck in. or maybe not. the world shivers in double-vision. they can't tell if they see him at all.

" I don't want to put this onto them. " I can't put this onto them. " There are strength in numbers, but I'm the support beam, they're the tenants, right? I keep them up so they can live. I keep them... " they trail with an inhale, realization striking cold the back of their throat of how selfish that sounded; as though they needed them. they didn't. that's one of the hard parts.

" Sorry, " like trying to atone for a mistake and speed past it all at once, no less sincere in the effort regardless " I'm just a little stressed. Give it an hour. it's not your problem to deal with me. " ━ I'm not acting the way I should with you, the way I want you to see me, even if you've already seen too much.

@quillheel asked ; ❛ this isn’t our fight , Gaster . it’s my fight . ❜ from Frisk to Gaster !

It cannot help the solemn expression that crosses its face at those words. They are ones that have been used far too many times. He has his.. reservations about the human - he has seen what they are capable of, both at their best and worst. But there is merit in the fact that they settled for the happier ending. It must take solace in that.

And such moral conundrums are not solved by this mentality. Feeling the need that everything rests solely on ones own shoulders can lead to a worse condition. That, and perhaps they have endured enough fighting.

"And why must that be the case? Is there not strength in numbers?"

SCREAM (1996) dir. Wes Craven

mostly-experimental de stuff from the past few months