InsaneJournal

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--Lua knows how life is supposed to unfurl, yes, like the sing of a high-tensioned rope.

First dance, first love, strings of explosive memories of first times that chain, chain a mind to keep it from contemplating that, the unbearable, that for all the Firsts there will be a Last, At Last, The End; at the last an end and an end unknown, broken, bleeding and alone or in bed with a lover or lost in the woods or as a babe in arms; life is black and white like the colour of shadows and shadows laugh like Ladd does; she will die. She was born to die. Her terror tastes like tears, tears like salt, salt like blood, blood like birth.

--Lua knows how her life and death should have unfurled, and oh how the rope keens—

Her birth on bloodstained sheets, first steps, first words, first birthday. First love, first dance, first kiss. First man, first marriage, her only for a good girl. First child. First grandchild. The end. It begins for the next and the next until all the world had lived and died, died, died, she three times over as mother and self and child; life is a lie of control. Death comes garbed in black and white, stripped of colour as life is stripped of choice, and Lua cannot sleep, cannot weep, cannot think for the terror of loss and unknowing, she lives in a blanket of clouded grey lest she scream and shriek that broken no--

She did say no. A defiant little word into that vast grey terror of unknowing. Not said to Ladd - never. Ladd got all her yeses instead.

--Lua knows death waits at the end of this rope.  For a time, she is well with that thought, for she is in Ladd's arms.

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Her first steps are forgotten, that once upon a time under the eyes of loving parents, for Lua flies

barefoot across the edge of knives she went, she came, she took Ladd’s hand, she wondered if freedom had always been so close that

Her first words lost themselves on memory as the wind takes what she would say now. Her first birthday, if she tries, she almost remembers a photograph that held mother, father, her, cake, candles. Everything blurs. No one smiles in black and white, not like Ladd smiles

across the mouth of his gun; he blew, a breath; that mouth to claim her nipple with fire’s ghost in the metal, it wept on her skin with tears not of pain, but almost

Her first kiss. A fairytale.  She can still claim her last; Lua’s lips find the pulse at Ladd’s neck raging, the cool of cologne in her nostrils, sweat on her lips. Parental lips must have kissed her on cheeks and brow, each kiss as familiar as grey, as indistinct as ash, as mindless as industry. Lua remembers her first true kiss, sharp, clear, coloured as bright as Ladd’s bloodied grin stretched to swallow the world

where his teeth met through her on her – yes - around her – hard, cutting, and oh - for the lips he kissed were not of

Her eyes can’t open against the sheer force of the wind, but it doesn’t matter. She knows what he looks like, her technicolour knight. The first time Lua saw Ladd, she saw blonde and blood, and him, in colour; she saw in him a choice; her death could be her own to master and no master of hers; she laughed in death’s face as she smiled for Ladd.  Their first dance, silent but for silk on suit, a hissing assent, and she tries to remember that softness against the scream of rope so loud she wants to weep. Her ankles turned on the bodies he’d freed from their fate, dead flesh so soft so wet, until she surrendered; he carried her then as he does now. The unchained dead marked her with blood, Ladd’s particular bright benediction

surrendered to that crimson tide he held her firm, he holds her close; he mastered death and her alike with her back on cool blankness and his heat above, within, without, all, burning; all the world is white like his smile and red like the blood neither hers nor his, but – yes, yes - he owned everything upon those sheets - her, the blood, the blade, the gun, and she wanted, still wants

Their first fuck loosed his laugh, and loosed her; his voice, and her shame; his throat, and her hunger; she can’t hear the memory of that bright proud sound over his rising throaty shout. Fireworks spiral patterns of pain behind tight-closed lids, a hundred colours she never let herself acknowledge before for fear she would cry to lose them; he screams, screams, and she spills--

under her back hot metal rolled, a thousand spent shells that her hips and his both broke bled and burned; they patterned red on white sheets and married gold with gold and grey blossoms - but - no – not grey, for her bruises were always as blue as his eyes

Weeping, these are not her first tears, even if they’ll be the last. The first time she ever thought anything worth weeping over was when he went to leave and left her alive. He wiped tears and fear away with his laugh. Blood speckled – speckles - his cheek, his jaw; it was – is - under his nails – it flails, flies, ribbons, banners, binds, splashes, drowns him; at least it’s too fresh to be black.

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Ladd grabbed the rope. And – yes - of course, he had to.

After all her willing assent, denial comes to Lua's lips as a whimper.

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He offered her a choice for her first kill. Her choice, her first kill: herself.

He offered both, the knife the gun, and she picked the blade because she’d not seen him use one; the metal was bright like a rainbow and cold but his eyes, his eyes, his smile is was bright dull, it falters

he

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screams

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The first time, the only time Ladd ever said no to her, when he put down that blade.

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But not a proper no. He promised: later, and she waited, patient, undemanding, because he was death’s master and when it was time she would know

As the rope pulls taut, Lua knows that promise - the first promise he ever made her – he’s going to break

his arm

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Ladd's blood is a sheet beat to tatters on the wind; colorless, yes, like ash.

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