𝐊𝐄𝐄𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒 [?] 𝑜𝑓 our ᴰᴱᴬᴰ

the bleak lanes of birmingham paled in comparison to the bustling streets of london,   still covered in smog but without the sense 𝑜𝑓 𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛,    the cobblestones had only been bloodied in the shadows of an alley,    A FRIEND/a foe brought to their knees over something as trivial as borrowed money.     but birmingham was different,   darker in its vengeance and ᴵᵀˢ ᴹᴱᴿᶜᵞ.    it was a city that you think had 𝚐𝚛𝚘𝚠𝚗 𝚝𝚎𝚎𝚝𝚑 in the years that the shelby name spread,  like a black smudge of soot on the map of england;   rife with gambling and killings each signed with 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑡𝑒𝑠𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑒𝑎𝑘𝑦 𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑠.     you entered the city with a purpose,     to be a good man for your country.      (hadn’t the years spent at war been enough?)    felt as if you owed every piece of yourself to the country that forgot,    that moved on.     the ones ᵂᴵᵀᴴ ᴾᴼᵂᴱᴿ had not seen the beaches,   nor the fields.   they had not witnessed man killing man,    instead read about it printed in papers;    the ink was black unlike the red that coated your palms in moments of anguish.     when man does not view the nightmares of war as horror,   he is doomed to reenter.      you sometimes think that is why you found neither friend 𝑛𝑜𝑟 foe in thomas shelby—     he too is marked the way you were.     when eyes close,    a strangers features faintly twist in mind,  𝚊 𝚑𝚊𝚕𝚏-𝚏𝚘𝚛𝚖𝚎𝚍 𝚐𝚑𝚘𝚜𝚝 standing in the corner of the room.     all flesh is grass,    how human life cut short in the midst of the 𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑡𝑟𝑢𝑡ℎ.      the truth,     religious or otherwise—not that you were a man of much faith— had settled in small heath.    people whispered it amongst themselves,    passed around like old wives tales;    children repeating what they heard on a gravel football pitch.      it drowned out the gunshots,   the screams of beatings.      eyes reopen,   fingers pinch the bridge of nose and find her,     and it is only for her that a smile is offered.

a child raised on ᵀᴴᴱ ᴮᴬᶜᴷᴮᴼᴺᴱ of violence,     knew the cool touch of a blade before you knew your 𝑚𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟'𝑠 touch.        the shelby name is a heavy one,   glistened crimson in the 𝚙𝚊𝚕𝚎 𝚖𝚘𝚘𝚗𝚕𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝  and was shrouded in victory in the ᴳᴼᴸᴰᴱᴺ sun.    THERE ARE PLENTY OF THINGS THAT MAN CANNOT DO,     AND SO THE BLOOD THAT CAME BEFORE YOU FASHIONED THEMSELVES INTO GODS,        the streets of small heath became 𝚊 𝚙𝚕𝚊𝚢𝚐𝚛𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚍 𝚘𝚏 𝚟𝚒𝚘𝚕𝚎𝚗𝚌𝚎,   of blood spilt onto the cobblestones,   of mothers who would mourn their sons long before the ˢᴼᴵᴸ was split.    a birthright/a death sentence.  the differences between the two became blurred as the years pass by,    the poison of power leaked into your bloodstream through the booze&ᵀᴴᴱ ˢᴺᴼᵂ,   a taste of what it felt like to be 𝐀 𝐆𝐎𝐃.      (but you remember that you are ᴺᴼᵀ):     still a coward in your brothers shadow,    you still hesitate on pulling 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚝𝚛𝚒𝚐𝚐𝚎𝚛 𝚘𝚏 𝚊 𝚐𝚞𝚗.    but you can’t ignore scarred knuckles,   the thrill that comes with the chase,   the winning with ᴮᴸᴼᴼᴰᴵᴱᴰ notes clenched in your fist.    small heath became a kingdom unto itself,    its citizens faces were lifeless,   ᴰᴱᴬᴰ.    a town of people desperately pretending to be alive.   you think that you’re above them,   that life still spills from you 𝚒𝚗 𝚠𝚊𝚟𝚎𝚜 like it did when you were still a kid,  just a boy playing solider in the street—        you wanted to be like them,   to be them even if it meant laying dead in a landslide,  a ℎ𝑢𝑟𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑏𝑢𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑡𝑠 above your decomposing corpse.   you would have died for something then,   right?   bigger than yourself,  bigger than small heath,  the whole of birmingham.     but you were still ᴬ ᴮᴼʸ playing make believe,   own gun tucked inside waistband,   never fired.

ASK MEME,       the things they’re saying, is it true?

“     yes,     ”       you were not ashamed of everything you had achieved in those short november weeks:         you had managed to dethrone the majority of gotham’s reticent rulers,        their pockets still laden with all they had taken from your ephemeral nonage.       the abrasions of your youth still lingered and as they spent their final moments in your company,       gasping for only the breath that you took out of their lungs,     you wondered if any of these acts you committed were even enough.       you sobbed in relief at their departures,        feeling the ache of two blistering manacles subside as you shed the chains of your fate along with them,       and yet you think you could’ve accomplished more,      inflicted more.      nothing seemed wretched enough to replicate what you had been through:       a boy starved, beaten, blackened, cut, drugged, tortured, suffering, suffering!        what child deserved that?        that’s why your singular shades of sorrow could not be so easily reproduced for your foes:       it had begun in your very first moments of life and had only ever declined henceforth,      turning torturous the moment a powerful man decided your life was not worth funding,       nor the rest of the unwanted children.      

and yet, starlight——    annie looks at you like that:         infused with so much pain and dejection that it makes you feel as though you’ve done so much wrong,      that all of your strife had been put to an inadequate use.       you knew that it was all a little performative,       the charisma that came from such a toneless weather mask exhilarated you,      unlatched all that words you had long repressed with a tumultuous thunder.       you feel a sudden shame as though she embodies all of god’s light and you are in perdition,      your day of judgement finally upon you,        though your feet remain planted upon these mighty mortal plains.      you’re not sure what there is left to say to @norgodly besides the bitter truth,     though the single word you spoke left behind a rather pungent taste:      her limitless virtue soured all your stunts,        made them appear cruel and hyperbolic.       without the mask and all of the grandeur,       you were just annie and edward in a room together again,       though new cuffs embellished your wrists,        forearms patterned with so much hate for what your life had once been.       the only time you had felt love or admiration was when you turned on the camera,        the echoing chants of no more lies flooding the city streets beyond your squalid cell.     you were a hero.      just like annie. 

“     i was gotham’s reckoning.      don’t you see?     a revolt for change in our city needed to happen and i was the catalyst.     whilst everyone else stood by,     i did something.         i made things happen,      i got people talking about all the corrupt pricks that decided the city’s fate for us.        if you want a real change,     annie——       you have to strike at the source.      then everything else simply…       falls into place.    ”

gotham was on fire,     and you did not think that you could stop it.   for decades,  its streets had been  lined with suffering  whilst the politicians lined their pockets,     a godless state far from the idyllic suburbs your foster parents raised you.     memory had always been a rope around your neck,    seen with your own eyes how easily light can become dark,     how it can twist so easily into destruction.     you had hurt people long before you knew that you could,     untimely ripped from mother’s arms,     blood stained her cheeks in the wake of your birth.     you swore that you would be better,    that the altars to the dead would mean something,   to atone for the sins of another.    you were afraid of fire,    afraid of your house burning down in the middle of the night under your touch     you burned your body long before the curtains had the chance to catch.    you still pray,    palms pressed together and whispers of hope until your knees bled red.     there was no hope here,     the fire that burned through gotham now burned through you:      how could you help when everyone had been weaned on violence,    to reject all else?

if god is real,    why did he give so many agony when they deserved    a childhood?      you had heard the stories,    researched the way that the city began to crumble.        the corruption ran deep into the city’s bones,    entered the bloodstream and quickly began to infect.    you wondered now if there were any innocents left in the city,     or if they had become guilty by association;    all dangling on a string,   bending to the will of the politicians and crime lords that used the streets for their own gain.      a puppet to a higher power your whole life,   through  ill fed faith  and through vought.    there is oblivion inside you,    to be known is what everybody wants,   isn’t it?   you became a hero knowing that you could save others,    give peace in a way that you will never find.      there’s a certain horror in knowing.     knowing that you could have stopped this,   knowing that you failed just as much     as anyone else.     you feel like a false prophet shining in 𝑔𝑜𝑑’𝑠 𝑙𝑖𝑔𝘩𝑡;     you taste ash and choke on the laughter you can no longer make,       chaos drenched in glory-blood.

this world had been unforgiving even before your birth,    even before it was reclaimed;   greenery now forced its way through the hardened asphalt,    engulfed the abandoned cities and climbed the skyscrapers,   a fuck you to all those that came before.   you would argue that it was healing,   but clickers walked the streets, the decay of once familiar faces now left with nothing but old photographs,  blurry memories of once held dear.      home no longer existed,   the wooden structure left to rot,   abandoned in the wake of the dead in hopes of finding safer shelter.   you cannot blame these people for leaving their homes in search of refuge,    many cities you had found yourself in promised themselves a safe haven for those running and those who grew up there.    they told promises that they could not keep,   let the city be overrun and you could only hope that some of them got out alive.

a god alone is a sight almighty, but two is unprecedented;     a power unrivalled and though bullets would pierce their mortal skin time and time over,     their names were promised an evermore.          * they figured it better to reign supreme in a miserable place like this than nowhere at all.        their ambitions never stretched beyond the length of watery lane,       nor would it ever,        not when greetings were hailed by strangers as a mark of respect to their ever-spoken omnipresence.        outside the achromatic gratitude of warfare,        isaiah wondered where else a man like him would find such widespread honour;        at the very least,        in birmingham he would always have shelter,     money.       he would not be forgotten by their country’s figureheads the moment his feet touched home soil.         though isaiah supposed what he partook in here was a different kind of battle;       one where foes were embellished with freshly pressed shirts that cost more than his outfits entirety,         wearing plumpness as an ode to hedonism.       each side held guns,       a blade.           but here,       war was envy,      of a dismal class that each of them were desperate to break free from just as soon as they noticed the intangible manacles fastened around each wrist.      they lived in the darkened shadows of their relative’s heroism, whether father or brother, it did not make the difference.      neither of them had been mature enough to find the darkest place of themselves in the blood-watered meadows of france,      and yet the reputable valour of each soldiers return made them long for same fate,         as though now combat were the only way to prove that they too were men.        they longed for pain as though it were destined for them,      bludgeoning their knuckles in whatever scrap presented itself to them on an evening just like this.        over and over again.        isaiah wonders for a moment if they will grow old together;            ever-furious with this dealt hand,         seeking out strangers to brawl in back alleys for a fistful of dirty notes.      [ though the betting wasn’t what mattered,     it was the thrill of it,      of finally feeling what was deserved. ]        would it always be this way?     he wondered.        they didn’t seem much for settling down,       not when the company they sought to keep was that of their own.        their friendship stretched far beyond the bounds of what might be considered ordinary,        there was a depth of understanding shared that was seemly inimitable;       isaiah almost laughs to think that their settling would likely be beside one another,        aged and jaded and bitter,        wondering why they could never get a good woman to stay with them.

“      is that so?      ”      isaiah can’t say he disagrees with the sentiment,      but he finds the look on finn’s face one to be savoured;        a flash of annoyance that his irritable humour only wishes to dig deeper into,        to twist out with a knife until their hands are on each other again.       shirt, face, throat.         the bruises form an elegy to longing;        as though his blood is finding passage to where his fingers had touched,       a coloured coaxing to bring back what had been lost.      it paints desire in primitive form,      harsh blackenings that he doesn’t quite yet understand,        and the alcohol surging through isaiah’s body only seems to deepen it.          “       well             ain’ you  the dreamer,     finn?         is that all ya fancy?       back-alley brawlin’ until one of us gets left face down in the gutter?”

you play a god that you cannot answer to,  your sense of justice swayed by an empty chamber,    of blood ties that sought a higher power.    you knew nothing of the language of kings,  of the brave that wandered the streets with true purpose.    everyday you wake to the same,    name being pressurised into diamond, the same black smoke billows out of the factories and the same day repeats itself.    fight for the thrill,   to feel something beyond the high that comes from powdered tables,   chasing something that never arrives.      the violence that leaked from your very essence was foreign to your bloodstream:      against yourself/it was justified,     your hand twitches as if begging for blood,    as if it was what you had been born for.   but a soul softer than what you would have asked for,     too many good men already left to rot in the shallow graves dug for them,  or the watery end some met along the canals.       you had been taught since you were only a child to have both feet firmly on the ground,  warned you of the brutality that could stem from the fists of a shelby man,  of how a blade could be wielded to give yourself power.     (warned that there are always rules for mortal men and that it is  an eye for an eye),  that adulthood comes hand in hand with blood,  a partner that drags you into a brutal dance.     you were raised on the stories of glory blooming on laurel wreaths,  you had never been oblivious to the blood that was shed to create the legacy that you protected.     you were not sure you would live to ever take a claim to your throne           the bleak landscape of watery lane was your kingdom,     and you were two gods looking down on it.    in ways,   you find it funny.    both would fight until knuckles bled and bruises blossomed like fresh flowers beneath skin,     before retreating to the dark cavaities of rooms where you could not be seen:    heal yourself with the burn of alcohol and the glow of a cigarette the only light.     the hum of the train   yet to leave   the station haunts your thoughts,     an orchestra of bullets patter on your window, sliding down the glass like rain.    there is a certain emptiness to your childhood home now,   thought it better to set it ablaze;   maybe salvage what remained of your soul from the ashes.   you think it haunted now,      memories shift around the room that you are often too high to understand.    the wallpaper is torn in many places, the kitchen as if it hadn’t been cleaned in months (you certainly hadn’t) and the loneliness that crept under the baseboards dissipated when isaiah made it a home for a few nights longer.   

time out of your cell felt close to susceptibility.      in a short time,     you had made those four walls your home,       and it was far more than you had ever been entitled to in those long thirty years.       far more was a warm bed and hot meals,      and the sheer disgrace of it was that you were not a little boy anymore,      but a criminal with a rap sheet that read more like a grocery list.       it didn’t seem fair.       and now you were here in arkham,     safe to prosper among like-minded individuals who longed for retribution just as you had,     shedding light onto the injustice of all they had experienced on and off of those dismal streets.      and yet you were stolen from where it was safe to be analysed by another stranger;       these probing eyes of hers felt something like assault,        prodding and poking at your pocked forearms that you couldn’t hide beneath the short sleeves of your jumpsuit,       trying to understand from both your appearance and dialect what makes a freak a freak.     but you were an open book,       any chance to divulge your traumas and gain their sympathies was an opportunity to be taken.        your methods to teach had been temporarily suspended,        (put aside as the shackles that bound your wrists together prevented you from showing,      though it did not stop you from telling).       and not often did you tire from the sound of your own voice. 

“      i don’t perceive anything.     i know the truth.       about everything to do with this city’s corruption,       that it’s just a cesspool of fraud and delinquency and so many lies.       but no one wants to hear.       no, no, no      …       no one cares as long as the rich keep getting richer, right?      as long as the rest of us die quietly.       it’s only polite.       you must see that,     agent starling.       the sheer, mindless injustice of it all.       ”      you dissect her veneer as she had yours,       trying to tease out some recognition from the front she wore.        “   you’re not from gotham, are you?      i mean,     your voice is a dead giveaway,       but all this…     it’s just a work trip, right?      all that way for little old me.   hm.      i don’t know whether to be flattered or worried.       ”

1.   what parts of you had to die in order to survive childhood?   what of you has been fossilised in amber just waiting to be discovered long after you have left the earth?  the haunted halls of the orphange,   the endless rolling fields that bozeman brought did not speak of the blood that stained the grass,     soaked through the soil and nourished the earth.       2.   some things in your landscape don't always die,     simply domant,   frozen.  at any time, you could reach into the earth and touch the skeletons buried  six feet below:   coax them from the darkness with a beating heart and suddenly:  you are a child again.    you don’t remember ever knowing your father,     you were just a girl when blood stained cotton shirt:     almost a blessing.        gotham was cold,     had walked the halls of arkham and could have sworn that you had been there before,   where the screams reverberated against the walls and carried through the endless corridors.       the remainders of past cases left a bad taste in your mouth,    own career suddenly stagnant in the aftermath of victory where for most:     it would be bigger than ever.      this was another chance,     a stray bone thrown in your direction.      if he wants to talk,    you’ll listen.

“  and what is it that  you perceive  to be the truth,    mr. nashton?   ”       the answer to samson’s riddle;    (what is sweeter than honey? and what is stronger than a lion?)      every day you wake up and your hands conjure up ghosts that you weren’t sure ever existed at all:     you question if there is anything even there at all or if your palms were just stained with ash,   smoke clouds where you created faces.      the stone halls of arkham asylum reverberate the screams of those who came before,   some of the greatest horrors you had seen locked behind doors and left to rot.     once, you dreamt that a fragment of your mother was caught up in   the entrails of a dead man,    with her fingertips stained a red resembling the same colour of her lips before they too turned blue.     there is a ghost haunting you,    it looks just like you,    a couple winters had weathered your skin but the resemblance was uncanny:    unable to be consoled in those moments of terror,   each body resembled a knife where love should be.    any  belief of god  you had left under your fingertips has been scraped away.