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Post by Gladiolus Amicitia on Oct 2, 2021 13:30:54 GMT -6
"I fought already?" Gladio mumbled. There was something casual about his confusion, like his misplaced memories were no more important than a misplaced sock. He had existed in this space before, grasping in the dark for memories that never formed in the first place. He'd learned not to worry about it anymore. It was life in this place, like the perpetual cold and the moldy bread. His head throbbed, but as Ignis positioned himself to help Gladio to his feet, something in his shoulder lit up in a flare of pain. He inhaled sharply between his teeth and stifled another groan. It was hard to inventory his injuries. Ache flowed into burn flowed into piercing agony until the whole of him hurt.
He bent his good leg and pushed up, rising from the floor by inches and leaning on Ignis like a crutch. His bones were cement. The nausea hit him again, harder now, and he wobbled before collapsing into a seated position on the lower bunk. The metal squealed under his weight.
"We were in the yard..." Earlier in the day, hours before the fight. "...Then I woke up here."
Gladio scrubbed a hand down his face, over the swelling around his eyes, over the misshapen wreckage of his nose, over the sticky rivers of sweat and congealing blood. He wiped his palm on his thigh, and it was only then that he took a good look at Ignis and the series of fresh wounds marring his face.
He'd fought so Iggy wouldn't have to. He fought to offer his friend some measure of protection from the animals in this place and he couldn't manage that much. Failure settled like a stone in the pit of his stomach.
There was something disturbing about the casual cadence of Gladio’s lack of recollection. Ignis waited a few beats, sure that the memory of being in the ring would come back to him quickly enough. However, nothing but silence followed, as well as the hitch of Gladio’s breath as he began to push his body up. As Iggy went to lift underneath his friend’s shoulder, he felt something … off. Gladio’s shoulder had a strange amount of give. The Shield, though, was pushing through the pain, and Ignis cursed quietly as he wrapped his arms around Gladio’s midsection to help pull him up and support him bit by bit.
The metal frame of the bed protested under Gladio’s weight, but he was finally off the floor. Ignis listened to Gladio’s explanation, and found himself suddenly angry and ashamed by his lack of sight. If he could see, he could look into Gladio’s eyes for signs of a concussion. Even without that, though, he was sure that the Amicitia had one. How many times had this happened to him already? The idea that this was a casual, common occurrence made his stomach twist into an unpleasant knot. Iggy stepped away only briefly, grabbing the soaked, cold rag from the edge of the sink. He shooed Gladio’s hands away from his face, before placing the freezing, torn cloth to his cheek, to begin mopping up the mess that Rurik and his goons had caused.
“You already fought, yes,” Iggy mumbled, feeling for the rivulets of congealed blood with his left thumb before scrubbing them away with the rag in his right hand, “Two matches. The first was against one man, and the second was against two. You won both bouts.”
He tried to keep his voice as neutral and matter-of-fact as was possible, considering the circumstances. But, with his nose swollen and throat tight, it came out hoarse and coated with a thin layer of resentment toward their circumstances.
Gladio had noticed his injuries at that point. Ignis smirked and shook his head, forcefully tilting his friend’s chin upward as he dabbed at another cut, “It’s not your fault, Gladio. Rurik baited me into the ring. You told me before that match started to run as soon as it was over, but I’m afraid all logic and reasoning had left me at that point. I’m positive they wouldn’t have let me escape unscathed either way.”
He had beat up on Rurik’s men in the yard, after all. A blind man toppled two goons with a metal bar, after he’d been given protection from entering the ring by Gladio. They would have hunted him for revenge at some point, taken his blood as payment.
“They dislocated your shoulder,” Iggy interjected before Gladiolus could find any words to continue to blame himself for the incident, “I’ll get it back in place, and you know just how much it’s going to hurt. If you vomit, do mind where my feet are when you lurch forward.”
He set the rag down and placed his hands on either side of Gladio’s right shoulder. He told his dear friend that he would count down from five before moving.
He snapped it back at three.
But its too late, to go back. I can see the darkness, through the cracks. Daylight fading, I curse the breaking. The day is gone.
Post by Gladiolus Amicitia on Oct 2, 2021 15:11:42 GMT -6
DAY 10
Time passed in long days and longer nights. Gladio stomached the pain in his knee enough to hide the severity of his limp when they were out in the yard. In their cell he did everything he could to ease the fire in the joint; stretching, massaging his knuckles through the stabilizing muscles, binding it with strips of old bloody hand wraps for lack of any other material. Nothing helped.
It took the guards a week to pay Gladio his owed fight purse. He assumed they wouldn't. It wouldn't have been the first time the authorities of Gorgon didn't hold to their word, because honor wasn't currency behind the prison walls. It was evening when Zarubin showed up and threw Gladio's winnings onto the floor before slamming the steel door behind him. He never uttered so much as one sarcastic "Big Guy".
On the floor sat a heap of grey fabric and a brick of processed condensed nutrition sealed in mylar. Gladio picked up the blanket, shook the bugs out of it and threw it onto one of the bunks. He tore open the packaging of the nutrient bar.
"No point saving this for later," he muttered. It only afforded the other inmates the opportunity to steal it.
He broke the bar roughly in half. It was dense, dirt-colored, with an entirely artificial texture and smell. Gladio couldn't tell by the stamp on the packaging because he didn't know what year it was in this place, but he assumed it was long expired. An emergency ration from some long ago war kept boxed up in a cellar.
He handed Ignis the slightly larger piece, then limped over to the wall and leaned against the spot below the small square of barred window. He took a bite of the emergency bar and it tasted like compacted cardboard. He chewed it for a long while. In Gorgon, it might as well have been a delicacy.
After a few bites he said, "Hey, Iggy... Tell me what you'd make if you had a kitchen right now. Fully stocked. Describe it to me."
It didn’t seem possible for life to return to some sort of “normal” after what happened with the fight in the ring. And yet, there they were, going back to the mess hall and the yard, whispers and stares following after them. Somewhere, blearily in Iggy’s exhausted and frozen mind, he knew this was absolutely absurd and horrific. Yet, the part of him that fought for nothing but survival had taken over, and he moved with the motions day in and day out at Gladio’s side.
The cold made for a decent enough healing balm. The swelling in his face had gone down significantly after a day or so, and the scars were healing up. Iggy insisted on cleaning and checking Gladio’s scars as well, making sure they were healing up as best they could. His own sense of humor had turned more morbid than it should, as he considered offering to break Gladio’s nose and reset it once they were out.
The joke died in his throat.
They spent the days healing, and Ignis wasn’t sure what to expect next. Everyone seemed to be satiated by the blood spilled over a week ago, at least, and things had been eerily calm -- for the world’s most horrific prison, anyway. There was still an awkwardness to Gladio’s gait as he walked, his knee still aching, but otherwise they appeared none the worse for wear.
Evening fell, and Ignis paused from attending to one of their coats -- patching up a hole best he could with the small amount of adhesive he’d managed to sneak away -- as he heard boot steps approaching from the outside. The steel door creaked and groaned as it slid open, only for a moment, before it was slammed shut again. Iggy shook off the ringing such a noise always caused for him, before attempting to make out what had been thrown on their floor.
Gladio had already crossed the small expanse of their cell, picking up one item and shaking it around. Fabric. Ah, it must have been another blanket. It landed in a heap next to where Ignis was perched on the bottom bunk. It smelled of must and mold, but felt a little less grating than the other one they had. The sound of crinkling packaging broke the muted silence, as Gladio tore into their other item.
Iggy took the offered item, turning it over between his fingers. It was dense and dry, and yet it smelled less offensive than the gruel they were served day in and day out. “Thank you,” came his quiet, but sincere reply, as he took a bite of the gift they’d been bestowed. It was flavorless and difficult to swallow -- yet that, all the same, was a blessing in disguise.
Gladio spoke, and Ignis couldn’t repress the small, sad smile that came to his lips. He hid it quickly with another bite of the bar. How long had it been, since Gladiolus had eaten something other than gruel, moldy bread, and old, stale rations? Had he given up on ever getting to eat real food again? Iggy hadn’t been in Gorgon long, and certainly not as long as Gladio had been by a mile, and yet he already found himself pining for what he’d lost.
“If I had a kitchen right now…,” he mused, leaning against the steel frame that supported the top bunk. Indeed, what would he make? Fully stocked, set with ingredients of all kinds. He could picture it -- his old lodgings back in Insomnia. The gas stove, the perfectly maintained cooktop, the drawer filled with spices, the cabinets and fridge stocked with fresh ingredients. He pictured looking out of the window and seeing snow.
“Something warm and spicy,” Iggy finally settled on an idea, as if he were looking at his own recipe book and flipping through the pages, “Delicate, yet filling. Do you recall the crustacean curry I’ve made before? I believe I got the idea for the recipe from a book Noctis picked up around Ravatogh.”
It seemed a thousand years ago and yesterday all at once. Ignis had been surprised to be handed the recipe book, a gift, but he made good use of it, “It’s a spicy red curry. The type that warms your mouth and throat, and it seems like you can feel it in the pit of your stomach. The smell of it lingered around camp, as it took hours to stew in the flavor.”
The taste of the ration bar was nothing like he was describing, and yet Iggy took another bite of it as he continued his explanation, “The cygillian crab is sweet and tender, and infused with that curry flavor. I can’t recall the amount of spices I used. Nearly every different chili powder we had, cumin, cinnamon, coriander, cracked pepper, ginger and garlic. The sweet peppers taste rich, swimming in that sauce. The recipe makes an entire stew pot’s worth, and between us we could clear the entire thing.”
He paused a beat, a genuine small and quiet laugh leaving his lips, “Well, you could probably eat the entire thing on your own. But I’d put up a fight in allowing you to do so.”
The smile on his face lingered for a moment, slowly falling as he chewed another bite of the cardboard ration.
But its too late, to go back. I can see the darkness, through the cracks. Daylight fading, I curse the breaking. The day is gone.
Post by Gladiolus Amicitia on Oct 2, 2021 18:55:18 GMT -6
Ravatogh. Gladio remembered the blistering heat of the place, the lava flows. Down the mountain, out onto the road... He remembered the outpost, too. If the thought hard enough he could pick out the hard cover of the recipe book in Noct's hand. Was he remembering, or just creating the image of it in his mind because he'd been too focused on seeing Noct safely to the royal tomb to notice details like that?
He made an agreeable noise in the back of his throat and listened as Iggy continued.
Gladio let the back of his head rest against the wall and closed his eyes. He willed his mind to conjure taste and smell and texture from Ignis' descriptions. To transform the flavorless chew between his teeth into the sweet crunch of peppers, the tender flake of seafood. He ached for the taste of spices, for vegetables, for food that hadn't been left to rot or go stale. For something that would give him strength instead of simply keep him alive.
It felt like the memory was hovering just at the edge of his mind, enough for him to know it was there but not enough for him to taste the chili on the tip of his tongue.
He opened his eyes and stared down at his teeth marks in the brick of assembled proteins and carbohydrates. When we get out of here, he wanted to say, but he didn't have it in him to give voice to the words. The image of the four of them sat around a campfire seemed so remote. A thing that was but wouldn't be again.
He shook his head at himself. Don't be a crybaby. There was no use in being morose about it. Iggy was here, that meant they had to get out. So there would be a when we get out. Because there had to be. Because it didn't matter that Gladio hadn't been able to dig or fight his way out of Gorgon yet.
"There's no probably about it," Gladio said. "Right about now I could eat a behemoth and ask for seconds."
DAY 23
It had been two weeks since the last snowfall and the yard had gone grey-brown as the tracks of the prisoners tramped down the white crust of snow into a muddy slush. Gladio walked in step with Ignis, sweeping his eyes over the assembled groups and the odd straggler like a radar. He guided his friend here or there with a nudge of his shoulder or hand. They steered clear of Rurik's goons. There was nothing to be gained in starting anything with them when they'd bring trouble to the pair all on their own.
"...Another week. Maybe two." Gladio speculated as to when he'd next be pressganged into fighting again. His knee healed up about as well as it could have. He could walk on it. Maybe run, if he had to, but it would forever be an exploitable weakness. One solid kick and whatever pieces of him his body stitched back together would come apart again. Maybe worse. Maybe to never heal again.
A chill wind blew through the yard. There was a dampness in the air that made Gladio's joints ache and suggested the absent snow was on its way back. He stopped in his tracks and sneezed into the crook of his arm. Ahead, a huddle of four of Gorgon's basilisk pushers muttered conspiratorially amongst themselves and eyed Gladio with their soulless zombie-stares.
When Ignis first arrived in Gorgon, the ground was covered in a thick layer of snow. It had crunched under his boots, muffled sound, made it more difficult to walk in an area where he already had no mental map. Even now, though he had been in the Yard nearly every day, Iggy had no concrete ideas of what the place looked like. The snow was gone, turned to nothing but slush and mud, but still the world around him was somewhat difficult to discern.
He was familiar with the path he and Gladio typically followed. There were groups and individuals who tended to keep to themselves; their own little pockets of outdoor space. Rurik’s men tended to be the most mobile, but Ignis had come to know most of their voices. Names didn’t matter, and it’s not as if he would get an honest answer if he ever asked for one. Many people muttered about Gladio as they passed by, but they nearly all stayed away.
Ignis corrected his path as Gladio’s hand gently nudged him. It irritated Iggy that he couldn’t be self-sufficient here, but there simply hadn’t been enough time to learn, and the freedom to do so was stolen away from him permanently. Everyone in Gorgon had a target on their back, though they varied in size and prize. As Iggy was a part of Gladio’s team now, his target was already large -- and his disability made it even larger.
Disability. Gorgon had forced him to face the cruel, blunt fact that Ignis was still half the man he once was. Without his sight, he lacked so much. He’d been doing decently well in the outside world, and Iggy hadn’t considered how hindered he’d be in a place like this. The thought gnawed away at him every night as he attempted to sleep in the unforgiving cold. He was a liability.
Thankfully, conversation dragged him from his self-deprecating thoughts. Mindlessly, he’d asked when Gladio would be forced into the ring again, hoping to hear that there would be a decently long time between bouts. It didn’t seem they’d be so lucky, however. Iggy frowned deeply when he heard that Gladio may be back in the ring again so quickly. Their more minor injuries were healed -- Ignis was none the worse for wear, in the grand scheme of things -- but he knew that Gladio’s knee was still likely recovering. Though his limp was gone, he could hear his friend struggle with the pressure put on it when going up stairs or pushing himself up into the top bunk.
“A week or so…,” the words left Ignis’s lips with a sigh, as he ran a hand through his dirty, matting hair, “That’s … much too soon.”
It was obvious, and cruel. The world would not wait on Gladio to fully heal. Iggy hid a shiver as he tugged his warm hat back on, pinching a bit of his cheek with his teeth as he mulled over the thoughts in his mind. It would be impossible to convince Gladio to let him fight, wouldn’t it? And really, how would he truly fare in the ring? Ignis was strong in his own right, but brute force wasn’t his style. Everyone in Gorgon’s walls played dirty. And the crowd would absolutely go wild, watching a blind man die.
Gladio stopped, sneezing heavily into his coat. Ignis paused next to him, instinctually reaching for a handkerchief that wasn’t there. Ah, well, perhaps he could fashion one out of a sleeve at some point. In the meantime, Gladio would have to mop up his nose with his sleeve … which would have driven Ignis insane nearly a month earlier. How easily things could change.
A conversation caught his attention. Iggy knew better than to turn toward any conversation going on nearby, as even though he was blind, people would still call him out for daring to look at them. There were voices, perhaps four of them, all mumbling on nearby. While he couldn’t catch their entire conversation, Ignis overheard differing parts of it. About money owed and who would pay. Someone was due to receive a dose. Basilisk?
“Gladio,” Ignis mumbled quietly, knowing well there was no one close enough to them to hear him speaking as he turned his head closer to Gladio’s shoulder, “What exactly is Basilisk?”
But its too late, to go back. I can see the darkness, through the cracks. Daylight fading, I curse the breaking. The day is gone.
Post by Gladiolus Amicitia on Oct 17, 2021 23:35:41 GMT -6
He'd managed to avoid the subject until now. It hadn't been intentional, and he hadn't realized that he'd been stepping around it like he was barefoot on a floor covered in broken glass until Ignis said the name. Basilisk, like foil between his teeth. Gladio looked past the pushers, to a distant point of nothing hovering in front of the far wall, tangled in the barbed wire, and he summoned the Basilisk up from the pit he'd left it in.
"It's a drug," Gladio muttered, his voice low and flat. His jaw was stiff. He didn't want to elaborate further but his silence would invite questions that he didn't want asked. Even if they weren't asked out loud. "They make it in here. There's a crew of prisoners working for the guards. I heard there's some deal with the same people on the outside who are in on the fights."
The tangle of underworld politics was beyond him. He didn't even know what country he was in, just that none of the condemned behind Gorgon's walls knew the names Lucis or Niflheim. It didn't take a genius to figure out that Warden Demichev's corruption informed the swing of every guard's baton, that Basilisk flowed through the veins of the prison because he willed it. That was all Gladio needed to know. Absently, he cracked his knuckles. He could feel the empty eyes of the pushers still on him, like prickles of electricity dancing up and down his spine. Faintly, the ghost of something burning in the crook of his elbow.
"Sometimes they dose people up for a fight. Fresh meat, the ones who don't want to step in the ring. A shot of it and they're foaming at the mouth trying to claw the other guy's eyes out." He added bitterly, "It sells."
Then it wore off, and the condemned were consumed by fire and ice and the rabid jaws of need until the need bled out of them in a cold dark pit...
...or it didn't, and they fed it, or died.
Gladio sneezed again and wiped his sleeve across his nose. The smear of mucus froze on the surface. A dozen yards away, one of Gorgon's walking dead shuffled up through the slush towards the pushers. Even among the damned masses he was a pathetic figure. Tremors in every movement. Fingernails gnawed to bloody stubs. Gaunt and pale with a face spotted by open sores. Gladio's stomach twisted up in disgust. He turned away from the scene, nudging Ignis to do the same, and began to walk.
"I'm good for it, you know I'm good for it, I just need a little more..." the hollow voice pleaded.
It was worth giving the pushers their space, if only to get away from the sight and the sound of the pathetic and desperate begging. Maybe Gladio couldn't spare Ignis from Rurik's boot on his neck, but he could shield him from that fate.
But the voice in the back of his head, the weary one that spoke up after the third or fourth failed escape attempt, the one that muttered to him in The Hole and at night in the brief respite between the screams of Gorgon's victims. That one wondered - if he couldn't do the former, what made him think he could do the latter?
"Please, come on man, come on--"
The hollow voice grew frantic, then angry, and the sounds of a scuffle cut off whatever pleading words he had stuck in his throat and turned them into wordless, guttural noise. Rustling of fabric and the wet sounds of footsteps preceded the sharp crack of fist to face. The dry snap made Gladio think of a broken jaw, even though he hadn't seen the strike.
He looked over his shoulder in time to see the junkie stumbling backwards, landing at his and Ignis' feet, with two of the pushers calmly closing the distance.
A drug. Ignis wrinkled his nose in disgust and familiarity. More than once he had wandered into Sonora’s poorer areas, obviously difficult to distinguish to a man who had been blind a mere few months, and stumbled upon drug addicts languishing away in back alleys, left to suffer and die in the cold. Drugs were an inevitable part of life in a world of classes and money; the poor flocked to it to ease pains they otherwise couldn’t and the rich, bored, sought the excitement. It was a problem that Ignis thought he would someday be advising Noctis about.
He couldn’t imagine the horror of a drug concocted within Gorgon’s walls, but Gladio painted the picture well enough. Something that brought an average man completely out of his mind and set his veins alight with a fire to fight, turning the rational into the rabid. Of course it would sell. If Gladiolus hadn’t been there to advocate for him, it was likely that Iggy himself would have been jabbed with Basilisk and perished in the ring, nothing but a bloodied corpse twitching and begging for relief.
Iggy turned as Gladio nudged him in a different direction, away from the footsteps much further away from the two of them, where the drug peddlers stood. A dread icier than any of Gorgon’s nights settled in his stomach as he listened to the obviously suffering individual beg for a drug that would further kill him. Dead with it, dead without it … The poor soul didn’t stand a chance, once he’d been given his first dose, from the sound of it.
The horrific desperation in the man’s voice. He sounded like a man possessed, and yet also like a man dying in a hospital bed. His voice trembled and cracked, pitched high with desperation fueled by a need to survive and relieve pain.
“Perhaps we should get you back inside,” Ignis spoke, if only to cover up the sickening pleas from the dead-man-walking that had quickly caught the ire of the pushers – escalating into a scuffle, “You’ve sneezed four or five times since we came out here. Not that a few degrees would make much of a difference, but–.”
A body stumbled closer and closer before collapsing right behind their feet. Ignis paused, feeling the shift of the attention in the air. He mentally cursed the moment his boots stopped in the muddy slush. He should never have stopped moving forward. Giving any sort of indication to these men that they could speak to him was the worst possible outcome.
And yet, it was because Ignis Scientia couldn’t shake away his humanity. The urge to stoop low and help the injured man to his feet was still there, despite knowing that the man would turn him over in an instant for the very drugs he’d been slugged over.
“Apologies,” Iggy remarked quietly to Gladio with a sigh, well aware that he’d put them in the path of danger for doing nothing more than stopping his feet.
But its too late, to go back. I can see the darkness, through the cracks. Daylight fading, I curse the breaking. The day is gone.
Post by Gladiolus Amicitia on Jan 22, 2022 14:51:53 GMT -6
The exhausting feeling of inevitability settled on Gladio's shoulders.
"Is what it is," Gladio muttered to Ignis. He turned to face the oncoming storm. His right foot slid backwards by inches and he held his hands at stomach height, popping his knuckles in the dimming murmur of the yard. A reflexive stance. The basilisk junkie squirmed in the mud.
"New friend, huh?" one of the pushers asked with an aggressive upward jut of his chin.
"Junkies aren't my business," Gladio said. His voice was cold as stone. The basilisk junkie grabbed at Gladio's pantleg in a desperate scramble for footing and Gladio kicked him off. The junkie made a pathetic sound and fell back into the mud.
The pusher flashed a rotten toothy grin but Gladio wasn't watching his face. The evasion of eye contact wasn't out of fear or deference. In the scope of his vision he watched hands for a twitch of fingers, like the curl of them around the handle of a makeshift blade. He watched the position of their feet, the shift in weight. He watched for a tell in the angle of the shoulders. He watched for the shadow of more bodies in his periphery. He watched for these things at all times and in all places.
Exhaustion lived in the deepest core of his being.
The pusher's silent partner took a step off to the side and Gladio reflexively took a matching step. The air was thick with tension that Gladio hardly noticed. Its presence was expected. He couldn't remember what its absence felt like. The silence stretched on until Gladio broke it.
"We done here?"
The pushers considered long enough for it to be uncomfortable. Their decision was silent, and they turned and trudged back to their compatriots with wet tramping steps, the mud sucking at the soles of their shoes. Gladio didn't like it. He ran his tongue over his teeth and tried to decipher their motives and couldn't. He turned back to Iggy, ignoring the existence of the shuddering junkie in the mud.
"Let's go."
A loose crowd of inmates stood between them and the prison doors. A pair of guards looked down on the grimy masses from their towers. Another patrolled between the fences with a working dog whose breed Gladio couldn't identify. Gladio led a weaving path through the open spaces in the crowd. He watched hands and feet, stances and shoulders. An electric current ran up and down the length of his spine. His fingers itched and a fist closed itself around his guts.
The door was fifteen feet away.
Somewhere in the back of the crowd a man lifted his head and set his shoulders and the moment Gladio saw him, the moment he recognized one of Rurik's stooges, was a moment too late to stop the makeshift blade. He made a grab for the man's wrist. The blade sunk into his flank up to the tape wrapping that made its grip. The energy of the crowd shifted instantly. Gladio threw a headbutt, cracked skulls with the knifeman. Both of them stumbled backwards in opposite directions. Gladio pressed his hands hard against the hole in his side as the fire began to course through him.
The air around them became thick with tension. Ignis kept still, just a couple of paces behind Gladio, listening intently to everything around them. The group of pushers all shifted, their bodies all turning to face the two of them and the junkie in the mud. They traded words, short and tight, and the junkie’s body was easily forced back into the mud as Gladio’s foot made contact with him. Ignis balled his hands into fists at his side as he sank his teeth into the meat of his cheek, keeping his mouth shut.
They had to become as cold as everyone else in Gorgon just to survive. Throwing away so much of their humanity. In any other world, Ignis would have helped the man to his feet and at least offered him the chance to go somewhere for help. No, in another world this man, this drug, and this prison wouldn’t exist.
The face off turned to nothing but charged silence. Iggy strained to listen for anything out of place, from all directions and from the gang in front of them. No one else was approaching, thankfully, but the pushers seemed to be calculating their next move. He heard one of them shift, and Gladio shifted right with them. The silence was only finally broken by Gladio’s question – which sounded more like a statement.
The pushers seemed to contemplate this for far too long. Ignis shifted, ready to move at a moment’s notice if they decided that they were certainly not done. Thankfully, they finally turned away and began to wander back toward the rest of their gang. Iggy released a held breath quietly. It seemed there was no need for a scuffle in the mud, at least not for today. A relief, since Gladio was still healing up from his previous fight.
Ignis followed Gladio as they moved toward the doors back inside. He could hear the quiet muttering of the crowd of inmates, probably 20 or so of them altogether near the entrance back to the prison. Iggy stepped through the sinking mud, following Gladio’s weaving path through others, careful to keep himself small enough not to brush shoulders with anyone else. His breath was caught, a hard lump in his throat as the oppressive atmosphere began to weigh back down heavily. There were too many people around them. The hairs on his arms stood under his coat and on the back of his neck.
It felt like twine, stretched too thin, waiting to snap.
Then, there was movement. The mud squelched under feet as someone in the back of the crowd began to move. Ignis reached forward a moment too late as Gladio slipped out of reach, and in the next moment all he heard was the rip of fabric and a pained breath. Ignis cursed loudly, the crowd moving around them, skewing his perception. The sound of skulls colliding was near deafening, but Gladio stumbled back toward Iggy, and that’s all he needed. He rushed forward, using his sliding momentum in the mud to whip his leg through the air – making contact with the good too-stunned from Gladio’s headbutt.
It was too little too late. The energy of the crowd became chaotic. There was no time to consider the extent of Gladio’s wound. The blood was in the water. If they lingered, the sharks would come.
“Gladio!” Ignis shouted over the rumble of the crowd noise, rushing the few steps back to Gladio’s side and hooking his fingers into his friend’s sleeve, “We have to get inside, now!”
But its too late, to go back. I can see the darkness, through the cracks. Daylight fading, I curse the breaking. The day is gone.
