Catharsis in times of sacrifice

It took a long while, and a lot of deep breaths. But I finally managed to calm down. It felt good to finally let that out of my chest, but at the same time…

I feel like an absolute asshole.

But I still don’t feel like forgiving any of them. I can’t even make sense of it myself.

After I calmed down I looked back at her. She looked a bit better, but also, I think I noticed her wound bleeding a bit. It felt wrong to see her like that.

When I look at her now I feel pity for her, but when I look back and think of how she gave me the silent treatment for months… That feeling gets a bit more bitter. Truly, how to even approach this without feeling like I’m betraying myself while doing it?

I tried not to be so bitter, but it was so hard. At the same time, regardless of that, I felt lighter than I had felt in weeks. Finally I could be honest and give someone a piece of my mind, even if doing so was… rough.

Finally I had someone who was honest with me and told me what they had been thinking of me all this time. That also had not happened in a long time. Even Swerans, as honest as she is, kept having her secret meetings with the other two when we were not talking. Lyra is now the only one who has ever been upfront with me ever since I arrived.

Which, in a way, only makes me feel like a blind fool. I could not walk anywhere in the village without everyone looking at me with pity, but somehow I did not figure out that they actually were feeling pity? To be honest, I should have seen it coming from a mile. The idea that no one liked the situation… I didn’t even stop to consider it.

I looked at her again. I didn’t know how to start breaching the topic. I just racked my brain but nothing felt right.

Lyra had another idea in mind.

Lyra saw her dress sticking to her because of her dry blood. It was only getting dirtier, now ruined after so much fighting. She took her rosary out of the pocket she had hid it into, even that had now a blood stain soiling it.

She felt dirty, she felt wrong.

The idea that everything had been dirtied enraged her, but in the end, she simply sighed in defeat. It was meaningless at that point. She unsticked the dress out of her skin by force and then ripped the upper part of it away of herself to at least get that bit of dirtiness away from herself only to see that her own skin was also covered in dry blood.

It sickened her. Even the interior cloth that covered her chest had been stained, but she didn’t feel like pulling that one away. Definitely not in public.

There was only one way to improve this situation, but doing so felt so… aggravating.

She looked at the sky, at the stars, and after a very weary sigh, finally said the words she had been avoiding from the start.

“Didn’t you say that you would dress my wounds?”

I looked at her dumbfounded. Even after everything, she expected me to still do that?

Although a part of me wanting to tell her to go to hell, I approached her, looking at her with weary eyes, trying to decide what to do. She simply looked back at me, too tired to care about my suspicions or distrust.

“What are you looking at?” She said, with no bite in her words.

Well, if this is how it is, I may as well follow through with my word.

I returned for my first aid kit and got to work. I knelt in front of her, trying to decide how to start treating her. First, I tried to clean the dry blood as best as I could, soaking some chiffon with water from my canteen, being careful not to touch the cuts with it. I did it slowly, carefully, trying not to think of the fact that I was doing this to a girl.

When I looked up to her face after I cleaned her, I noticed that she was looking at me like she wanted to throw daggers at me again. I was about to complain to her that I was helping her and to stop doing so, but she spoke before I could.

“I’m sorry.” She said.

Once again, I was dumbfounded, with one of my hands still holding a piece of bloodied chiffon in her chest.

“You are sorry?” I asked, unbelieving.

“Don’t make me repeat it because I won’t. Clean your ears, because you will only hear it once.

I behaved like an idiot this whole time. I ignored you everytime you talked to me and I was way more stern than I should have been. Is just… I could not bear to see you taking so much kindness and looking so gloomy and miserable about it and I did not stop to think about how you saw it all. If I had been in your position… I probably would have punched my own face.” She said, with a small dry laugh in the end.

“So yeah, I’m sorry. I hope you are happy now that you made me say this shit.” She said, looking away as she finished.

I finished cleaning the dry blood out of her, trying to fight the words that wanted to come out from my chest too.

In the end, I just gave up. I may have been as tired of it all as she was.

“I’m sorry too. For screaming at you and… for escaping the hut and burning it on fire.” I finally said.

“You better be. You scared me shitless. I jumped into the flames to look for you” She said, turning her head back around towards me. Her eyes completely serious.

“I didn’t think you would do that! I thought you hated my guts!”

“I do, but that doesn’t mean that I was going to let you die in a fire!” she said, getting upset again and standing up.

“Wait, don’t move, you’ll bleed again.” I told her, grabbing her by the shoulders.

She was still upset, but she allowed me to sit her back down again. I took out the ethyl alcohol. I should not feel this touched by the fact that she didn’t want me to die…

But I’m touched by the fact that she didn’t want me to die.

“Okay, I’ll try to disinfect the cuts now. This will burn a bit, but I need you to withstand it, it will only last a moment.” I said, waiting for her approval to do so.

She simply nodded. She looked confused by it, a bit fearful, but she didn’t move.

“Anyways, I am sorry about it. But I think you almost blew my head away a moment ago, so let’s say we are even. Okay?” I said, holding a piece of cotton with alcohol about to touch her skin.

“Fine, whatever. I wasn’t gonna WHAT ARE YOU DOING” she screamed, moving away as soon as the cotton touched her wound.

I looked at her, surprised by her reaction.

“I told you it would burn.”

“Yes, but why are you doing that in the first place? aren’t you supposed to be healing me, not burning me?” she asked, touching the spot that was still hurting.

“Yes, but this is part of the process. It will make less probable that you get sick later. Just trust me here, can you?” I said, holding the cotton in my hand, raising both hands at my sides as to signify that I meant no harm.

She looked at me with distrust, but after a moment, she did return.

“Just do it quickly then.” She said, gritting her teeth, and closing her eyes.

“I’ll continue now, it will only last a moment.” I said, warning her before touching her again.

She simply nodded, still with her eyes closed.

I could hear her winces when the cotton touched her. She flinched, but this time she remained there. I did my best to do it quickly, and finally, the wound looked clean. It would be great if I had stitches, but that’s not something I know how to do.

“You did great, finally, we can go with the bandages.” I said, looking at how many of them I had left in the kit. She sighed in relief, although her chest still felt like it was burning.

I had her raise her arms, and as well as I could, I started bandaging her chest, remembering how Swerans had done the same for me before.

She looked anxious, but nowhere as bad as it was before.

This time, it was me that broke the silence.

“You know… I think I can’t exactly blame you for not wanting to talk to me.” I finally said. Mumbling the last words.

This time she was the one who looked at me in surprised.

“I’m being honest, I… can’t put myself in your shoes exactly, I can’t imagine how it feels, but I can try. If you were so mad about what they were going to do to me, I would not want to get close to me either. It would probably get me… angrier, right?” I said, trying to put myself in her headspace.

She looked at me like I had a monkey on my face, before simply looking forward.

“Yeah, something like that. But… I was also angry at you, you know. You have no idea how much of a luxury treatment we were giving you. We gave you food for months without you even working!” She said, her voice still rising in disbelief.

“Where I am from, that kind of thing is not that strange, so the thought hadn’t even crossed my head. I… was taking a lot of things for granted that I should have not.” I conceded, with a bittersweet feeling when thinking of my father.

She nodded, looking at me glad that someone finally understood what she had been thinking.

“But I do have something that, well, I’m biased here, but something that I do not understand.” I said. still going around her, bandaging her.

“Well, shoot then? what don’t you get?” she said, sounding genuinely curious.

“Why did you accept being my caretaker if it bothered you so much?”

She took a moment to breathe and think. I actually thought she was not going to respond, but when I was almost finished, she started talking again.

“I had refused. Very vehemently. But my mother insisted, again and again, that I had to be your bodyguard.” She admitted.

I clipped the last of the bandages and looked at my handiwork. It was a little bit shoddy, but it would work.

“So, you were obliged to do so. That one I can definitely understand.” I said, with a sigh.

“Let me tell you, I did go pretty far to try and not get involved with you, but my mother didn’t really leave me choice. It wasn’t a battle that I could win, so I conceded.” Lyra said, with a small sigh.

“Yeah, I can definitely understand that one too. I don’t think I have won a single thing ever since I arrived here.” I said, sighing even deeper than her. Looking back, I also did not before arriving here either.

“I’m not surprised. They didn’t train you, and I saw how out of shape you were when I took you to the forest. You need to choose your battles very carefully with a body like that.” She said, cheerily.

“Is not like I want to be like this you know? I have been trying, I have been able to grasp the darkness out of the ground and all. And compared to some of my friends back home my physical shape is enviable, let me tell you.” I said, slightly offended.

“Yes, but I don’t think you understand how weak you still are.” She said, her voice turning serious.

“You don’t have to say it like that!” I said, more than a little offended.

“No, listen to me. I have no idea how you got out of the village back then and to be honest I don’t think I want to know. But with your meager strength you would have lasted half a day at most outside the barrier. You are weak as shit and you were sticking meat into a veil, you would not survive. Guaranteed” She said, with complete seriousness.

“Geez, thanks.” I said, frowning.

“But even so, is not like I can make you stop being weak, at least right now. But I can tell you this so you can save us from headaches next time.” She said, leaning towards me. “Choose your battles. Carefully.”

“Is not like I chose to be here you know?” I said, still angry.

“No, but you did choose to escape the village and I can tell you that you chose wrong.” she said, again, hoping that I would understand.

“So what? should I have just turned belly up and waited for my death?”

“No, you should have chose the correct battle to fight, and then put all your meager strength into it, is that so hard to understand?” She said, getting even closer, she seemed to be getting heated again. “You can be weak as hell, but you escaped the village anyways didn’t you? You can do things, you just have to get your head out of your ass and actually put all your effort into the things that truly matter!”

As she said that, the light all around us dimmed for a moment. Everything got dark, all figures indistinct.

And then a ray of light shot to the sky, right from the top of the mountain.

The time for the sacrifice had started.

Both of us were stunned, looking at the bright light illuminate everything. Lyra sat in the ground, deep in thought again.

“Just… don’t fight a battle you can’t win.” she said, finally settling down.

I looked at that light, and in a way, I only saw my own death. I felt as if my life flashed through my eyes.

Choose your battles wisely.

Ever since I got here I wanted to punch Howard’s face, Lyra’s face, the scarred man’s face, even the visitor’s face. I wanted to lash out to everyone, but it was futile.

What is it that I must do to survive this place?

When I looked into that light, it was like it illuminated my thoughts.

If I’m weak then I should choose a single battle and stick to it, giving it my all. What is it that I must face in order to have a chance to live another day?

The idea that appeared in my mind gave me chills. I turned around to look at Lyra.

I would need her help. But if I was lucky…

For once I think I might be able to do this.

Countdown for the cut: Six hours before the end.