OPEN.

[bloodandbrass]

Comments

hardlydead

[bloodandbrass]

[ from here ]

you got one easy way to prove me wrong about all that shit. do it or let me be right.

[hardlydead]

Do what?
Write you an autobiography?

"It all started when I was six" or some shit.

[bloodandbrass]

or just stop lying about how no one ever beat you.

first time you ever fought, you telling me you won?

[hardlydead]

[ it takes a while for him to reply, easy to think he's just not going to if not for the way the typing dots stay on the screen while he writes, deletes, thinks. school's a blur of sore knuckles and bloody lips and meetings with disappointed adults that mean he's going to be sore all over again later, teachers earnestly telling him and his parents how smart he is and how sad it is to see him wasting that on getting into pointless fights. ]

[ and anything to do with-- with certain people. the memories don't always come as easy as they should. that should bother him more than it does. ]

Nah.
School was a real eye opener about how nobody fights fair I guess.

[bloodandbrass]

[ it annoys him that david finally admitting that he did lose fights, even as a kid, is almost satisfying. it brings the frustration down a little although not nearly enough to let up completely.

nobody fights fair. same as it's always been. ]

so you learned early. that why you won so many fights after? aim for cheap shots first?

[hardlydead]

Cheap shots, learn to read them. Whatever works.
Didn't really bulk up til my late teens so I had to be smarter.

[bloodandbrass]

[ he gets an uneasy sense of recognition reading that, which pisses him off. ]

weapons or fists?

[hardlydead]

Fists. Feel like that's obvious.

[bloodandbrass]

weapons end a fight a lot faster.

[hardlydead]

Not as satisfying though.
I know you know that.

[bloodandbrass]

sure. but they make sure you never lose against some idiot who thinks his fists are all that matter.

[hardlydead]

Yeah? Why don't you just use a gun then?

[bloodandbrass]

used to. didn't end up here with me or i'd shoot anybody who trespassed.

but you know there's an even bigger difference between those and regular weapons than fists and knives. it ain't even close to the same and that thing knows it.

[hardlydead]

[ key difference, he figures. evan fights because he feels like he has to, david fights because he wants to. in some ways he envies evan, envies having a reason. but he's not gonna get into that. ]

Can't say I'm mad you don't have it with you.

[bloodandbrass]

be grateful. i had the best aim out of everyone i knew.

[ that is to say, he always hit his target. ]

[hardlydead]

You kill everyone else?

[bloodandbrass]

not all of them.

just had a better eye.

[hardlydead]

Just born to kill, huh?

[bloodandbrass]

raised to it. mostly used the gun for hunting.

[hardlydead]

When you say hunting, I'm assuming animals and not people?

[bloodandbrass]

where you think i got the traps from?

[hardlydead]

Not exactly the craziest thing to imagine someone using bear traps to catch people out in the real world.

[bloodandbrass]

didn't start that way, though. didn't think of using them on people til i saw one of them up on his hind legs, trying to break out that way.

didn't work. but i got the idea.

[hardlydead]

So you did use them to trap people before this place then.

[bloodandbrass]

sometimes. people don't look down in a mine.