#mahmur

a sigh is heaved out, and with it smoke from the cigarette sadie is very glad to be smoking right now. does nobody round here think anything through? and yeah, sadie gets it — gets the impulsive need to act, the same kind of rash desperation that's led to her chasing any talk of stray o'driscoll boys — but she also knows how not to get dead. she's known it all along; she just didn't care all that much, for a long while. still doesn't think she's gonna make it to old age. any hope of sitting on a rocking chair on the porch with white hair is long dead, burnt to ash and left to ruin up in the grizzlies. she's just here for however long she's got, now, 'til someone shoots her.

it takes another drag of her cigarette before she actually speaks, free hand resting on her holster. ❝ it's prob'ly a trap, so...our lives? you wanna walk us into an ambush, marston? ❞

AN AUTOPSIED FAILURE MADE FLESH AND SINEW, expunged like a gangrene, then thrown to the wayside. left to rot in the cesspool of all her past mistakes. gone, out of sight. a clean break. or so clea had hoped. yet the figure standing before her now tells a different story. rampant permanence in the form of a half-forgotten nightmare. HER MOST DEFECTIVE FEAT TO DATE. this figment of her ruinous design, spun by her own hands, coming back to haunt her. torment her. ❝ what’s there to be curious about, i wonder? ❞ head tilted marginally, auburn tresses following suit. she stonewalls any attempt at cordiality, not once trying to hide the liquid scorn tucked neatly behind her teeth as it leaks vitriol into her words. the crux of the issue is that she doesn’t know what to expect. resentment, perhaps. choleric ire at her careless abandonment, no doubt. but the sentiment runs both ways.

clea thinks she might loathe her. it. for forcing her to reckon with the ugly truth of her shortcomings, when she’d meant to avoid them indefinitely. pretend their very existence didn’t strike her numb as they projected her every insecurity tenfold. undeniable proof that the skills she’d harnessed her whole life were lacking, imperfect. ❝ i didn’t anticipate seeing you again so soon. or at all, if i’m honest. ❞ her fingers flex, chroma coursing through her like a live wire. A TORRENTIAL DOWNPOUR ITCHING FOR RELEASE. she should unleash it and be done with it. erasure with a flick of her wrist, until this crude spectre of her making is vacuumed into the black hole of nothingness, dissipated into the aether as though it was never there to begin with. yet any further action is aborted in favour of remaining transfixed, anchored in place by the dead weight of indecision that refuses to let up. ❝ why have you sought me out? certainly not just for a chat. ❞