#wri.

jukeboxes that somehow work and health department papers that were undoubtedly forged.      smoke and sin in the air,  thick enough to suffocate.      guns on hips,  sharp smiles,  the smell of blood on the first four knuckles—  these are the kinds of promises made to people like him.

outside,  ashley graves claims breath after breath of fresh air,  but he is not saved.      the figure,  tall and dark beside him,  has a cigarette pinched between his fingers.      this is how they meet—  obscured by smoke and the ravenous darkness.      they haven’t seen each other’s true faces.      truth is,  one of them will likely die before they ever get the chance to reveal such wounds.

the nights were getting darker, and everything was happening at the wrong end of a very long tunnel.   

@tengallon said,  “you made sure we survived.”  (hm. slayer verse.)

            “i reckon that’s my job,”  a crack in the mask,  a grin on his lips, “keepin’ your sorry ass outta trouble.”

they’re back in the barracks now,  just the two of them,  sweating bullets in the residual heat.  from under ashley’s sleeves crawl his tattoos — eternal reminders of his feats,  trophies engraved into skin.  ( * not memories — history. )  hidden on his back lies the reaper.  this is what raylan gives his thanks to.  this is what the corps gives its thanks to.  this is what puts raylan in debt to him,  and ashley doesn’t want that — too often has someone been left owing,  owing,  owing him until the debts eventually grow too great,  and must be paid for in blood.  unlike his god,  this is not what ashley demands.

@deputyfangs said,  “did you ever get to the end of the dream?”  ( re “in the dream i am always posthumous” )

miles to midnight.  it’s dark out — as july fades into the far distance,  autumn falls upon them.  night descends over the hills even faster now.  days become weeks.  weeks become months.  and ashley keeps waking up from the same old dream.

in the dream,  he dies.  ( this is where it all begins. )  he dies the hero,  receives the medal,  he loses his life on that beach.  for good.  in the dream,  he bleeds out under dry desert sun.  in the dream,  christian bears the marks of the enemy.  in the dream,  the bullet misses,  thus ending the task his life had been set upon.  the bullet misses,  and he’s as good as dead.  dead and gone.  dead as a fucking doornail.  in the dream,  dirt showers over his grave,  and no one is saved by the preacher man’s words.  in time,  it would play out as scripted.  there were hungrier things in these wilds.  in time,  ashley would give up,  and a dozen hawks would descend.  in the dream,  he is always posthumous.  there’s a certain victory in seeing things through to the end.

slim fingers wrapped around the neck of an ice-cold beer.  christian wrapped up in a quilt,  ashley in a flannel.  seconds slowly tick closer to midnight, and closer still as ashley stares into the vastness before them.  the dark.  the sky.  the dark,  which cannot harm him.  

when the hostility dissipates, he’ll only be left with his grief. ( it’s that time of the year, again. his mother’s funeral. mother’s grave. dead flowers, withered, like mangled hands reaching to pull him into the deep, dark earth. his time has not yet come. and yet, his gravestone stares back at him. waiting. ) when the hostility dissipates this evening, in the sanctuary of his spartan apartment, he’ll be left with nothing but his tears and his sobs, ugly and visceral, ricocheting off bare walls.

either the chief deputy remembers, or raylan’s using his gut feeling against him. someone notices something, some subtle shift in behavior, a glaring crack in the carefully constructed mask that was deputy marshal graves.

the chosen are blurs of red and white to his naked eye. ( they go down in quick succession—dropping without a sound, ceasing to exist as they vanish into the bushes once again, forevermore. ) jacob’s training and conditioning couldn’t save them. their god couldn’t save them, nor their father.

“i’ll figure it out.” what he means is, he’ll burn that bridge when he gets to it. what he means is, he survived being pinned to a mountainside by the enemy sniper. for three days and three nights, they exchanged fire. ( in restless dreams, he can feel the gravel bite into his skin as he crawls through the underbrush. his eyes burn with exhaustion, with stinging sweat, unforgiving as he struggles in the desert twilight. he counts his bullets, his breaths; the beat of his heart, which has not yet failed him. ) what he means is, running out of bullets would not kill him. running out of time, however—such was a thought he rarely entertained. fear was the mind killer. fear inflicted panic, inflicted trembling hands, inflicted death. fear had eventually seized the peggies, which he picked off, one by one. pratt’s voice had trembled with it as he spoke his address under the watchful eye of the eldest herald.

( just because you caught me / does that make it a sin? ) ashley does not know what his hands do to his gun, nor how they twist around the grip, but he knows that they shake. tremble, tremble. unceasing like the blows of his father’s fists. unceasing like the sunday sermon ashley attended the morning after, burst blood vessels in his eyes. red seeps into his peripheral vision. someone in the room weeps.

christian stands like a deer in the headlights. his words are careful, his movements are calculated, but he’s no longer the hungriest thing in the room. ( this is where their chief goes wrong — he assumes that ashley had his fill of blood in the corps. the chief assumes that the sergeant died when the corps disbanded. he didn’t. ) two deer in a clearing. the hunter with the rifle tucked against his shoulder. the hunter with the blood in his teeth. blood under his nails. blood staining his skin. a pair of amber eyes pins ashley where he stands, pistol held in vice grip. the brown eyes of the scientist are shut tight enough to hurt. to ache. ashley knows what he’s thinking of, what the scientist believes — he believes that god will strike down those who trespass against him. he believes that god has a plan for him. he believes that divine intervention may still occur, unaware of the presence he already finds himself in. unaware of the fact that god has already intervened. unaware of the fact that it is him against god, it is him against the reaper. fucking death dealer.