Yankee
TruthHurts
princess
Plank SinatraOswald Connoly and Diamond Frost- Team DEO? Dorm
Oswald simply sat in silence as Diamond waited, stewing in his own helplessness. He could feel the tension in the air, though he was a bit taken aback at her outburst. It was almost like looking in a mirror, honestly. The only difference he could see was that Diamond was practically throwing a temper tantrum over this.
Not that he could blame her. They’d all been under an extraordinary amount of stress lately, and Oswald might have done something similar himself if he wasn’t in this damnable chair.
Standing out of the wheelchair one more time, letting out a hiss of pain as his side protested, Oswald calmly walked over to Diamond’s bed, slowly sitting next to her. “You too, huh? I...I’m not good at this kinda stuff. Talking things out, telling other people about how I feel. I usually just let it out into a punching bag, or back home, someone dumb enough to go against me in the ring.” He let out a small chuckle at that.
“It’s funny. I went from being among the toughest back home, to practically the bottom of the rungs here at Beacon. I make the excuse that it’s because I’m not supposed to be fighting other people, but that’s not really realistic anymore.” He was missing the point here. Take it back around, dammit!
“What I’m trying to say is...on that mission, you and Emerald got a glimpse at my worst nightmare. At something I was certain I’d never see again. Something the very existence of which has been killing me these past few days.” Oswald’s eyes were clearly covered in a film of tears at this point, and he was staring intently at the floor. “I...I’m not going anywhere, because I don’t really have much anything worth going back to anymore.”
He took a shuddering sigh as he tried to hold back his crying. “I have my parents, and I love them, gods do I love them to death, but...but they don’t know how to deal with me. They haven’t for a while. I’m so different from the kid I used to be, even though in other ways I’ve barely changed.” He had to debate going into this next point. He wasn’t sure if he could handle talking about it.
Finally gathering the will to get up again, Diamond sat alongside Oswald. “Preaching to the choir. I guess we do have something in common. All I have to go back to is the street or jail, so yeah...” she sighed, casting her gaze to the ceiling and finding a small crack in the paint of particular interest.
The mission… “Is it bad that those things don’t scare me? I tried to be afraid, but all I feel is just… anger.” she said, “Same with Cobalt leaving. There’s a bit of sadness but mostly it’s just rage. I¨m not angry with him, just angry in general.” And it is maddening. the annoying voice in her head noted.
When the conversation steered towards what was there to come back to, Diamond chuckled, dryly without humor. “This-” she said, tossing her arms about the room, “-is what I have to come back to. There’s just jail and the street further back than this. It’s not much, mind you.” she said, giving Oswald a smirk and joking punch to the shoulder.
“Ya know, I wasn’t really too scared of what we saw directly. I’ve seen and fought some pretty bad shit, but even though that was probably the single worst thing I’ve had to deal with, I was more afraid for, well, everybody besides me.” Oswald started to sink into himself, knowing that what he was about to say would probably send up a dozen red flags with Diamond, but he wanted to be honest with her.
“I’m not really afraid of getting myself killed. I used to be, but I really just don’t give a damn anymore. What I’m afraid of is...that I’ll have died not doing everything I could for this world, and for the people in it. I don’t do the crazy things I do for myself. I mean, I enjoy the rush from fighting, but it’s not like I enjoy getting the crap kicked out of me half the time.” He let out a small chuckle as he continued.
“I know it’s stupid, that I need to take care of myself, I just...I’m not doing any of this for me. When we go on missions, I’m not jumping in front half the time to take the glory, or to say I’m the best Huntsman ever or whatever. I’m doing it because I know that I can take it.” And even when he tried to avoid this topic, even when Diamond had almost managed to drag him away from it, Oswald found himself coming back to it, like he always did when something went wrong.
He took a deep breath and mentally prepared himself. “This is not the first team of trainee Huntsmen I’ve been on. And it’s not the first time I’ve lost team members. When I went into that cave during our first mission, it was like walking into the past for me. I...really, really don’t like thinking about this, or talking about it, because it always ends the same, but I might as well tell you why I’m so fucked in the head.”
“I’m the last walking member of a team of eight. And I was their leader. I...I got six people killed because I wasn’t prepared for the worst, and I’m still not prepared for it, clearly not after what just happened this weekend.” He’d managed to avoid crumbling into a sobbing mess, but tears were clearly trickling down his face. Good enough.
As things took a turn into the dark, Diamond finally gathered the courage to look at her arm, still in its transformed state. She knew what happened the second the door shut behind Cobalt and that overwhelming anger took her. It was just like… back then. The sight of the obsidian appendage made vivid recollections of blood and gore rush into her head. She shook her head and with that thought gone her harm finally returned to normal.
She did not expect Oswald to share something like that with her. It made her a little happier that he would though. That changed nothing on her want to slap him for being ready to throw his life away. But last time she crushed a glass in her hand and she learned her lesson, for a week or so. “I have half a mind to break a couple more of your bones for thinking like that.” she scolded, “Whatever the reason, however deep you think you sunk, stop sulking and get the fuck back on your feet, you’re far from having the worst life. Even I am, and I slept in cardboard boxes with nothing but a tattered coat I found in a dumpster to keep warm and with my only source of food being the same as my clothing store.” she said in a frustrated tone, “I feel insulted when people talk about dying so casually, so would appreciate if you stopped, and found a reason to live.”
Sighing, she calmed down. “I suppose, since we’re sharing the darkest secrets of our souls… There’s one thing I am afraid of like no other. I can’t believe Esther seen it after a few days, that bitch is as good as they say she is. I’m afraid of what I can do.”
Extending her arm, Diamond tried to focus. It was a hundred times harder to do so without an amok fueling her, but slowly her hand turned black again, fingers turning into sharp talons. “It’s that anger I talked about. Did you ever feel something like it? Deep, burning feeling in your chest, like you will combust and burst? Like you had a divine right to just destroy everything and everyone in sight? It can take you over, consume you. I… I suppose you know by now I did some time for thieving. But the officials have no idea just how much they didn’T know. Rich people mansions, galleries, dust depots, … I raided them all and they will never nail me for it. But… when I was cooling my heels off, some asshats sought to… take advantage of me. I don’t remember what happened next, just the rage before, and how I woke up amidst of a bloody pulp that was left of them. So you see, you’re not the only one not quite right in the head.”
Huh. That….was certainly unexpected. He’d known about her thievery, but she’d killed people as well? Actually, by her own hand, ended somebody’s life?
Fuck, they had too much in common. “I know that rage all too well, Diamond. You’re not the only one who’s done that kind of thing. I wonder about myself, though...it was different from what happened to you. We weren’t defending ourselves, not exactly, but we’d decided that he couldn’t go unpunished.” It looked like they were going to be here for a while.
“We call it the Great Siege of Brookeborough. It’s been a little over two years now. Some psychotic sonuvabitch planted an assload of Dust bombs around our wall. One of the watchers caught him after he’d only managed to put down a few, and he just ran off. He had to have used a Semblance, or some kind of secret passage to get away, because he just...disappeared. But they knew who they’d seen, and while the others got to work on defusing as many of those bombs as they could, they sent enforcers after the guy.”
“The explosion killed about fifteen people immediately, and the resulting fire killed nearly ten more. We’d barely gotten that under control when the first waves of Grimm came. Up until then, it was more like a trickle, the locals coming to check out what happened.” Oswald started rubbing his hands together in nervousness. “That’s where things start to get fuzzy. I hadn’t slept for maybe a day and a half by then, along with the rest of my team. We only ended up with a four-hour shift, and we were almost more exhausted by the time we woke up.”
“Long story short, after a week of fighting Grimm, it was just me, Blaine, and Cerise left on my team. Cerise got impaled by a Nevermore feather in the last few days, though. She’s paralyzed from her waist down. Blaine…” Sobs. He couldn’t help it. Oswald finally broke down, his ribs protesting agonizingly as he took deep, shuddering breaths trying to get it out.
It took a moment to compose himself, but Oswald finally managed to get himself under control. “I was just checking on him one day, I was still their leader, I...I thought he was doing better. Instead, I found him fucking hanging there. He’d been dead for half a day by then.”
“So when the council finally asked for recommendations on what we do with him after his confession and while they waited for everybody to get their lives back together, I invoked a Pre-War law that had never even been used before.”
“We made him live bait. Only the worst for the worst, a punishment for the worst traitors to Vale’s military. Five of us brought him from the village, we walked with him for maybe an hour, and then we figured that was far enough that nobody would hear him.” Oswald was staring solidly at the floor now, guilt, anger, and some small amount of sadistic pleasure on his face.
“He was already restrained, well enough that even in top condition he wasn’t getting away. But one of the others, he was so enraged by seeing this guy like that, he snapped. That was the first hit. He snapped his kneecap like a fucking twig. And I don’t know what it was, but that just….that set us off. We beat him within an inch of his life, and we left him there while we waited nearby, up in the trees.”
“And we watched the Grimm tear him limb from limb like he made my friend, my brother, watch our teammate get torn to pieces by an Alpha. And we just watched, like monsters ourselves.” By now the anger and the sadism had gone, replaced only by guilt and self-hatred. “I try to tell myself that it was for the best, that he needed to die, but...even with that, we didn’t have to do that. We could have just made it simple. One shot. There would’ve been a fucking mile of volunteers for that.”
“I dream about him a lot. It’s usually about my team, but he worms his way in there every now and then. I don’t...I can’t forgive myself for what we did.”
“As for giving up, trust me, I’m not planning to anytime soon. I’ve got a lot of work to do until I let myself die. I’ve still got a few things left living for. Cerise is still alive. She’s...doing better than I am, a lot better. Her poker face sucks, but she didn’t take things as hard as I did. I know my parents would be destroyed if they outlived me, but…being here, at Beacon, and knowing there’s still work to be done, monsters to kill, and people to help is what drives me. I don’t know what I’d do if we suddenly eradicated the Grimm and found world peace, but I guess it’d be worth losing my drive.”
Diamond listened, but didn’T really judge. True, she did not condone unnecessary taking of life, but the convict was already sentenced to die, so how didn’t really matter in the end, and she told Oswald as such. “Now, good to hear you are still driven, because I need you alive to whack me on the head if I ever snap again. I’ve only heard them describe it to me, but what I heard I did…”
She grunted, shaking her head and the thoughts of that day off. “How about we leave this emo zone and go do something else? You want to work on that project of yours? My only sparring partner candidate just got jailed, but I really could hit something right now, might as well be a piece of metal if you’re OK with not getting a hands-on approach.” she suggested, not really having anything to do with her day.
Oswald chuckled a little at Diamond’s pessimistic humor as he wiped his face of the remaining tears. “I didn’t have any plans, so I guess that could work. As a matter of fact, I actually have two things I’m trying to work on. And I’m not really sure which one is gonna be harder…”
“New weapon AND picking up a chick? Talk about challenge!” Diamond said in a mocking tone as she got up and wheeled Oswald’s ride closer to him. “Bring it on. It can not possibly be harder than taking Vanhomrigh’s fire with nowhere to hide, and I did that yesterday for minutes on end. That is hard.”
“Wait, who’s picking up chicks?” Oswald’s face showed his sudden confusion as he carefully got into the wheelchair. “I was talking about adding a force shield projector onto my shield…”
And then the other part hit him. “Wait you did what now?!”
Diamond giggled. “I hired her to give me extra classes. Let’s just say she got… displeased… When I destroyed her main weapon. I swear I am still twitching with how many volts she pumped into me. And then I snagged her wallet and had the gall to gloat. I spent half an hour trying to not get killed by ten Atlesian knights.” she sighed with a smirk on her face, “Good times. Ready to go?”
“You people are fucking insane. Let’s do this.”