Work Text:
Hunched behind the Creakling's house, holding an axe, Jaw felt nothing but the moss beneath his feet. He waited silently, hearing the voices of Rusty and Katie grow farther away. It was almost time. The handle of his axe was worn and scratched. A rut where his fingernails dug in had formed after. Still, it felt smooth and natural- like an extension of him. Just as it had the day he killed his only teammate.
He's never much understood the concept of remorse. If a thing has been done, that's the end of it. It's not like there's anything forcing him to think about what he's done- and yet everybody seems to hold regrets. More so, they'd questioned him after the death; "How could you?" With his axe. "Don't you feel sorry?" Why should I? "How do you look at yourself?" With indifference. His honest answers seemed to disgust them.
Jaw remembers how it felt to hunt down Wade, but it never truly felt like much. (He and Wade were friends, why didn't he want to join his team? It would have been so much easier.) He remembers the look in Wade's eyes as he went from denial to fear to sprinting through the forest. It looked so…genuine. As if he wouldn't just come back from the dead.
Wade had hardly spoken to him since.
Finally, the voices of CC's teammates can't be heard at all. Jaw does his best to smile- maybe he won't have to kill today. Maybe CC will just join willingly. But life is never that easy, and as he chases his target through the open field, he can't help but remember his first "recruitment". Only this time, he can hear the desperation in his voice, he can almost taste it on the wind as he sprints after him. In the end, it's all the same. He watches as CC collapses under his swing, the warm tint fading from his skin as he becomes what Jaw has always been.
His fingers find the rut in the axe, which now has small purple vines branching from it. He closes his eye a moment, feeling the leaves on the hilt and the papery violet petals. An extension of him.