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Summary
revenant [noun] · someone who has returned, supposedly from the dead.
Series
- Part 4 of outbreak (mczu)
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Bookmark Notes:
the only word that can express the emotions I am feeling right now is AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
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tbr
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Bookmark Notes:
nothing but one giant, purpling bruise that keeps bleeding and bleeding beneath the surface with no place for the hurt to go but in . It pools and it aches and it floods. He doesn’t know where to put it all; there’s no place to put it. All he can do is bathe in it, blood and pain and anger alike.
But violence is a language Etho’s learned to speak, and he’s starting to worry it’s the only one he’ll ever understand.
Etho follows Cleo inside willingly, though plagued with unease. Suspicion is an old friend of his, perhaps the only one older than Cleo herself, and it’s one that sinks its teeth into him and is not keen on letting him free. It spares no one, not even Cleo— the only person left in this world that Etho would, at least at once, have considered a true friend.
He wants to trust her. But he doesn’t. And he’s not sure he ever can. There’s too many years between him and her and who they were before. So many that it feels more like a lie than any sort of old truth. As if somehow whoever he was becomes less and less true simply because time has diluted him down to nothing but memory.
Shame burns hot through Etho’s face and to his ears. He shrinks into himself the slightest bit, a gesture that makes him feel about as young as Cleo’s words do. That is to say, young enough to be a different version of himself entirely — one he’s sure he wouldn’t recognize if he saw him in the mirror. To step in that version’s skin, albeit for a brief second, frightens Etho more than he cares to admit.
To survive, inherently, is to adapt. To survive this long is to evolve into some other creature entirely, changed until there are more parts that are new and crooked than those that once were. Survival of the fittest, except the true fittest where the dead on the streets. The rest of them are simply buying their time.
“What if this is it?” He asks Bdubs, who is becoming more a faint reflection of himself than the actual thing. As if the darkness is slowly closing in to take him back again. “What if this is all I am?”
Easy.But easy for who? If he dies, that’s that. His suffering ends and Etho will be the leftovers of it, and the only one left to deal with the consequences. It’ll be him that isn’t spared. He’s never been spared by his own actions before. He’s got no reason to believe it will start now.
Mouth dry with the bitterness of ash, Etho doesn’t say anything. Silence is as much an answer as anything else. Half of staying alive is knowing when to shut your mouth.
They’re made of the same kind of thing— desperation sewn between sharp teeth and the knowledge, not the fear, that they’ll probably be the last ones standing.
grovels at his feet with no more dignity than a sinner in church. Etho’s never felt so sure. He’s never hated himself more.
doesn’t dare to back down. Neither can Etho. It’d go against their nature to do so.e looks at Etho the same way everyone else has— like he’s a dog who’s bitten his hand and needs to be put down before he can hurt anyone else
The answer, Etho has learned, is this: the shambling, hollow husk. The what instead of the who.
He’d been smart when it wasn’t his life in the balance; There isn’t room for those things here. They’re animals now, and animals only had one thing: instinct.It’s hot and painful to swallow, but not as painful as turning her head and realizing she was here and he wasn’t. Nothing hurts as bad as knowing he’d been in her grasp and slipped out just as easily— that she had let him.
Adrenaline envelops him the same way nostalgia might, like returning to your childhood home and feeling the familiarity of it all in your bones. Suddenly and all at once, but knowing you’ve felt this before. That you’ll feel it again and again— and at some point your bones find a way to make room for the stretch of it.
Fear is distant, numb. A fond but distant friend-turned-stranger. Anger, however, burns. A furious burst of flame through his chest, as his chest heaves and he braces every muscle in his body for a fight. How many times will he end up here, under these men’s boots, his meager belongings stripped off his back? How many times will they bleed him dry and leave him for the sculks? How many times will death tease him?
Cleo paces furious lines across the top of the freight car, clutching a cold wooden bow in her hands. Etho’s bow. Why had he given it to her? She should’ve known better than to let him go. He had that look she’d seen a million times— the glassy-eyed disconnect of a man not yet dead but well on his way. A man who’d given up. Surrendering his bow, he might as well have hacked off one of his arms and given it to her. A death sentence carved out of wood and taut string.
It was as good a goodbye as she’d get. It was all he could give her.