flicker in the dark // k&t vs t&c ; day six.

[✨ zozo.]

      ↳ T U N E W A L K E R

Brody Loomis is coming to kill her.

She braces for it, shuts her eyes tight and stays coiled forever and ever and ever. She waits for his blade, feels the hot wrath of his breath on her cheek, drops of spittle finding the freckles on her face. Her hands are still clutching Andrew and she stays like this, crying and waiting for the end in the dark, until his blood runs cold underneath her palms.

Tune feels the life fade out of him, wonders if Brody is staring at her in the dark. Watching. Waiting. She deserves it, she deserves it, he said she was good. Screamed it. Andrew was good too - but Tune had stayed silent. Even though Alice from One had said such nasty, terrible things to her, they were nothing compared to what Tune had done.

("I've already killed one career. What's another?")

Another is a shadow, the feeling of eyes focused on the back of your head. Another is goosebumps, shaking, opening your eyes only to find the dark and terrible truth of you. Another is a ghost, haunting you. Another is Brody Loomis, coming to kill her.

When Carly finally finds her all Tune can do is shake and cry, falling into her embrace. There is nothing else left for her to say. Nothing she can say. All of her energy has been stolen, replaced with exhaustion and fear.

Andrew is dead, and Tune might as well be, so they stay in the dark together - Tune clutching Carly tight. Don't leave me, her vice grip begs. Don't leave me here to die.

The anthem echoes into the cave - Tune whimpers at its sound. Sleep finds her in groggy waves, shuddering awake with gasps. Brody is here, right up in her face, his mouth tears open and he swallows Tune whole. Purple eyes, a pool of blood, Andrew's body is gone by dawn.

And Brody Loomis is coming to kill her - Carly, she realises in horror, too. Footsteps, she's from Twelve. Tune knows the sound of death walking through cave tunnels all too well.

Tune strikes without hesitating, hurling an axe into the dark with nothing but a scream.

[ coding by griffin ]

tune attacks kiptyn, throwing axe 1/6
KA2Y7vGV1Wthrowing axe
8.5

throwing axe

[heather - d2 [mylee]]

K  I  P  T  Y  N

Stumbling forward toward the cave's true entrance, there was only one thing on my mind, Find Tex repeated like a mantra, as if I would maybe eventually convince myself to believe in it, and that finding him still held the possibility of fixing anything at all. It’s slow going, and with each step I practically felt my wounds weeping--the new tear on my good arm, the deep gash and puncture in my stomach sobbing and gurgling in the dark.

I told myself stopping wouldn’t do any good, that it would just expend more energy when I could eventually bring myself to start again, but still the temptation remained, my body  full of desire.

When it seemed as though I should be getting close to the outside, it appeared that the light was weaning out, quicker and quicker with the passing minutes. The day can’t be over, I whispered to myself, recalling the three--no five--cannons that had already shaken the cave and threatened the collapse of its mouth. The thought of Tex’s body crumpled and bloody behind me crossed my mind, but the image wouldn’t stick, as though I simply couldn’t believe in a world where I was still stumbling around without him.

It was never about admiration with Tex, but rather something stubborn and apocalyptic, like the images of Gingko trees standing vibrant and lifeful in the wake of a destroyed city around them.

I was crumpled by indecision then, trying to determine whether my odds were better roaming about in the big, dark world or staying put and waiting out the night curled up on the cave floor. I had nearly stressed myself into some fitful sleep when his body tumbles over mine, his ankle caught by my extended leg.

Tex? I whimpered, expectantly.

I stayed still for another moment, and then rolled him off, took him by the shoulders and shook him hard. What’s the matter with you? I asked, running my hands over the visible parts of his body, searching for wounds to match my own. But I found none leaking or spitting, only the blood on him deep into the process of caking dry.

I need you to help me, I’d told him, and received nothing but silence in response.

*

When the anthem comes with dawn, we’re both awake, and Tex seems ever so slightly more responsive, but not by much. A number of faces I don’t know, Alice, and then the boy with Tune outside the tavern, and not Tune, god knows where, hopefully away from me now. Did you, I start to ask, then think better of it, then ask anyway, Did you kill one of them?

I don’t know what his answer will change or what answer I want, but his response is to pop the cap off a vial of thin, purple liquid, so watery it seems it might evaporate into the air if given the chance. My first instinct is to back away, remembering the feeling of his strong hand on my jaw, the tube he forced down my throat. But he doesn’t take even a step toward me, just stays planted and opens his own mouth, dumps the contents of the container down, and I see for a brief moment where it gathers at the back of his throat before he swallows.

What is that shit? I ask him, but before he can respond, or before I hear what he says, an axe comes hurtling out of the dark behind us and cuts deep into my arm, its origin point one I cannot seem to locate by sight or sound until she screams. Tune.

I’m not keen on seeing her again, and it’s clear the feeling, while perhaps driven by something other than malice, is still mutual. I suppose intention has never really mattered much, not in any meaningful way.

[ table: pogue ]

[ kip attacks tune; glaive ]
_Q30xLgxN7glaive
[ deep gash on right forearm -- 8.0 ]

glaive

[pogue]

He's still clutching the vial of purple when Kip finds him, wavering on the edge of his own extinction and wondering if he can stomach it. Truthfully, Kip is the only thing that stops him from chugging the entire thing, falling into the void and letting it claim him.

"Tex?" Familiar, once forgotten, now remembered.

He faces a standoff between his heart and the leftover corruption that still sits in his veins as he looks at his ally, shock and sadness carving into his cheeks and silence on his lips. "What's the matter with you?" 

Nothing, everything.

He doesn't sleep that night, too afraid of what ghosts will come to haunt him if he does so. Instead, he nervously clutches his spear in one hand and the sponsored vial in the other, a threat and a promise and no clue which one was which. It's only when the rock sky above lights up with trumpets and grandeur that he's forced to make his decision, Brown eyes looking to the faces of the fallen and catching Andrew staring back at him, Kip's eyes finally seeing the blood that still hasn't dried against his skin, his voice following.

"Did you-"

He knows what comes next, can sense it in the way Kip's tone rises and falls like sitting on a crashing wave, clutches the bottle of corruption in his grasp as he waits for the inevitable. "Did you kill one of them?"

The proof is already written across his own skin, it's a question that doesn't need asking. Alpha's life has been caked to his flesh for far longer than Andrew's but they both hold the same amount of space on his soul, red and black and burning against his skin with every passing second. His entire body shakes in response to Kip's question, teetering on the edge of his own sanity, standing halfway into his own coffin with no sign of getting out. Red and purple call to him from the vial in his grasp, tired eyes looking down at the promise of not feeling any of it, of not seeing their faces in the shadows that dance on the cave walls.

Selfish, weak, he pops the cap off and raises the vial up to his lips, feels it burn as it crawls down his throat. "What is that shit?" 

You'll find out, a voice in his head promises.

But before he can, before he feels it, there's a scream and the scent of iron suddenly fills the air. Tex blinks, once and then twice, follows the path of the axe and hears the echo of the shout bounce and scatter against the cavern walls. He knows that voice, has looked into her eyes and seen the slums of Twelve and a life not worth living. Familiar, haunting, Tune Walker.

But familiarity is dangerous in a place like this, proven true by the way the axe slices through the dead air of the cave and into Kip's arm, tears through flesh and sinew alike and he watches as red spills out to the ground, illuminated only by the ethereal glow of the slime on the cave walls.

It's horrible timing, or maybe perfect, maybe both based on the way he stumbles backwards from the sudden attack until he feels the jagged edges of the cavern walls press into his back once more. Adrenaline comes in waves and floods his body as he looks at his former ally turned foe coated in scarlet, feels purple dig into his veins and the same fiery rage bubble up from the pit of his stomach. Adrenaline to anger, fear to fighting, boy to man, man to monster.

He pulls his spear from the sling on his back and feels it lace between his fingertips, bloodshot eyes tracing the path that Andrew's blood had charted down the weapon before drying, mixing with Alpha's and that of long since dead mutts. 

His unraveling is silent, just as it was before, all caught breaths and raging spirit and broken boy. He waits for their new enemies to round the corner before he strikes, one of which he knows and the other he does not feel the need to.

Familiarity was dangerous in a place like this, he proves it true by thrusting his spear towards the only thing left to remind him of home, bloodshot eyes staring into the face of Tune Walker.

[Tex attacks Tune ; spear]


_RxLxtZfBispear


[Block]


[Accuracy ; day 6]

spear

[3.5]

spear·spear

[eulalie blake 1a 🍒 tris]

Broken hand reaching out in the darkness, bloody prints on the cave walls like way markers, a path home that she'll never be able to find again.

For a long pause of silence, there is only pain and sorrow in the pitch black, cannon blasts echoing through her like gunshots. Like this is the first night she has ever felt agony. Like this is all but a memory, and she's already lived it. Her oldest scars ache as much as the newest ones, as much as the raw flesh of her burnt fingertips, and the cuts that have torn through her fineries and left her looking worse for wear. Bioluminescent fungi shines a spotlight on her features, in flashes and in glimpses, and for several hours she tries to make her peace with the absence of control in her grasp.

There's just the emptiness, and the endless journey, and the way the madness and pride in her bleeds out of all her wounds and into a whisper of regret. Victor of the Ninety-First Hunger Games, self-crowned, sorceress of flames who could barely stoke an ember. Who in her madness, nearly lost a part of herself, a trauma she would be unable to shield and hide away from the world. She stills furious, in the way that she feels tricked, and used, and with enough audacity to think: why didn't they warn me about this?

She remembers every cruel thing she said, every merciless desire she spoke into existence. Carly is not a girl who goes about building kingdoms, she takes them. Slight as she might be, all vicious bark and such a seemingly harmless bite. Even in the nothingness, even when it's one-sided and she cannot see her audience, she knows the gamemakers are watching her. Every camera rolling, every dark corner is a confessional booth waiting to shelter her every wickedest secrets. She stares straightforward, bloodshot and damned.

"You will never put me in danger like that again."

Always, like a fledgling goddess of luck, she scorns the odds and rolls the dice of her own crafting. When she wants to win, she wins. It has always been as simple as that. Fairy lights on the ceiling, her vision shifts in her tiredness, turning glowing mushrooms into something beautiful. Something to trust. When she finds Tune, bloodied and glowing in the cavern glade, nothing in her knows how to hesitate from throwing her arms around her friend. The things she said are things she refuses to give power to; there will be no narrative where she does not fight viciously for her bond with Tune, and with Andrew.

It's a short-lived victory. A manifestation that comes true at a price. Her fingers curl in Tune's dark strands, foreheads meeting, their sobbing sounds shared only with each other and the corpses in the shadows. No one else. Only the two of them, heiresses of destruction, the killer queens and their white knight. Andrew Priest. Bright and sure as the sun.

Here, his light does not shine.

And when they hear the shriek in the night, the wings flapping ever closer, until it all quiets and Cookie is gazing up at them in the terrible, lovely light. Even before the anthem, even before she is forced to stare up at his face and process a thing that she will never be allowed to have closure for, they know. Both of them do. It means only one thing, one impossible loss that neither of them will ever be able to come to terms with. That she will never forgive herself for. She told him that he was going to die there. Like it was an afterthought, the simplest thing.

And, yes, it's true that she knows what winning means. Even as she holds Tune close to her, and she dares to think that she may be able to evade the knife aimed so carefully at her heart.

---

What is there to lose in the ashes of the ashes of their burnt down love?

Their hands part like a foreshadowing, like wraiths in the night who know what they must do to survive. To conquer. They've been playing this part since the very first day, long before the world had ever dared to push them to their limits and see them for the calamity they so rightfully are. Carly and Tune, and Andrew always, sentinels of the cave system and all the tragedy that has transpired here.

All it takes is a footstep. Her sickle is removed from her belt, and she swings at the outline of a form in the fungal glow, light blue and purple and a tint of crimson as red as her rage. Recognition for the boy she wills to die.

"Here we are again, Nott." Her blade is like a whistle signaling death. She wills this. She will sacrifice any soul necessary to save her friend. "You didn't run far enough away, did you?"

carly attacks kiptyn ; sickle
1gx0Fxcvs_glaive
4.0

glaive

[✨ zozo.]

      ↳ T U N E W A L K E R

Tex-

But it's too late, the axe has already landed.

Tune wants to tell them to run - well, she wants to tell Tex to run. But Kiptyn is back with a vengeance and the vambrace slides off her her arm with a crack and here we are again except Andrew is dead and this isn't a field by the tavern and she's not letting her guard down to patch up her district partner. Eyes locked with a ghost - Tex's got that violence from before, purple scars up his arms. Tune wants to free him from it, and knows damn well she can't.

Her glaive blocks the first strike, but Tex is fast - too fast, she cries out in the dark, "Carly!" - here we are again, the tavern, a cave, perhaps she is reliving the same day over and over again.

She wants to tell Carly she warned him to run. She warned Kiptyn Nott so many times - but she has no more words left after Andrew. They seemed to have died with him in the night.

So she speaks with a stumble and a strike in the dark, hoping Tex can hear her through the violence.

[ coding by griffin ]

tune attacks kiptyn, throwing axe 2/6
1||89i9iDIthrowing axe
3.5throwing axe

[heather - d2 [mylee]]

K  I  P  T  Y  N

Here we are again, Nott. You didn’t run far enough away, did you?

I doubt she can see it, but I cast Carly a sympathetic smile through the cave’s dark, by which I am saying, I never have.

The back alleys and side streets, the gentle touch of Robin’s hand on the small of my back as I picked a lock, cracked glass, shimmied out the cover board on a crawl space or attic door--even that one time we stood, dumbfounded, and stared up at Six’s big, blue sky, joking about crawling down the family’s chimney. We could be those kids’ fucking miracle, I’d joked, and Robin’s chuckled response, There’s no world in which you’d be the gift anyone would want to see under their tree.

We’d stolen jewelry that day, picked up a hint of it in the advertisement for an estate sale and tracked them down after, watched the place for weeks passing binoculars between us and laughing at the boy their teenage daughter was sneaking in every Tuesday night, the strained nonchalance between them. We could ruin her life, I’d told Robin, We could ruin everything they’ve had, just like that.

But I’d stuck with Robin because I didn’t think he much cared for ruining lives, just wanted a little more for his own, and I admired that sort of honesty, of admitting that there was something else you wanted for yourself and that you’d do what you needed to get there. I think that’s where he ultimately fucked up--he realized he’d reached the limits of his own desire, and wanted it to spill over to the right places, but you can’t control that chaos.

I’ve thought of him here every morning, caught in the delusion of thinking that his face will somehow find the sky, that before I die I’ll get confirmation that he’s dead, too. And when I think of the limits of my own longing, that’s where they end, a clean edge, and sharp.

But for now I imagine Carly watching me through the dark, expectant, waiting to hear my voice obedient and pleading, the cracked confession I wish I had it in me to make. No, I didn’t run far enough away, and it’s a shame because I thought I'd been running this whole time, but I don’t say that because it’d be too easy, and it implies that I’ve somehow known what I’ve been doing all along.

If I reach out now, even with my bad arm, I think I could touch Tex, maybe graze his shoulder. I could touch Tex, but I’d be doing nothing but affirming the existence of his body, and I know that sometime while we were apart something changed in his mind, and I’m too afraid to linger there but there’s a part of me that’s scared and certain I’ve caused it.

When I look at him--I mean really, look at him--I see the same emptiness I saw in Robin’s eyes the day I told him I couldn’t follow him, not really, and not wholeheartedly.

How just minutes before I left him, my quiet voice had whispered to him, and we were separated only by one heavy, wooden door:

All the new thinking is about loss
In this it resembles all the old thinking.

I want Tex to say Robin's part, but we don’t have the time, so I look at him, and I mean I really look at him through the dark between us, and I beg him like I've had faith in him my whole life, Tex, help me, and I know that something in him can hear me, otherwise he’d have killed me last night the minute I was within arm’s length, Please, please don’t let them kill me.

[ table: pogue ]

[ kip attacks tune; glaive ]
zFEiIVGXLIglaive
[ shallow cut on left forearm -- 3.5 ]

glaive

[pogue]

His thoughts are shattered, broken, half-hearted remnants of the boy he once was. Even as he swings, heart fights brain fights corrupted body and he knows what he's doing is the highest form of treachery, stabbing out towards a girl who kept him alive five days ago, who'd looked at him as a human and not a number. In some ways he holds back when he strikes, in other ways it's Tune's ability to falter back just out of reach, the tip of his spear hardly grazing against the armor on her arm.

He hears it fall to the ground as he steps backwards, catching sight of the mirrored interaction of Kip and Carly to his left, little red line dripping in the soft glow as Kip falters in his counter attack. It's cold, heartless, the way purple sits in his veins and red in his vision and fire in his heart as he looks at his only ally. Kip looks back, desperation laced into his gaze and axes laced into his grip. Tex hears it in the back of his mind, forged through survival and five days of bandaging each other's wounds, brotherhood. The conflict is written all over Tex's face, visible through the way his hand shakes as if holding back a strike at Kip's neck, gaze faltering.

In heart, blue, he does not want Kiptyn to die. In red, purple, he knows he has to.

But numbers are numbers, it's a compromise of his own design as the adrenaline surges once more, corruption and sin sweeping over him in waves as he looks back towards Tune, towards the girl who'd wrapped his wounds day one, who'd made the mistake of thinking he was noble enough to return the favor.

Fear meets fury, mixing together in his gut and bubbling up to the surface. He tastes the words before he speaks them, sulfur and cyanide, lets them burn his tongue as he looks towards a spit image of home, a tribute, a girl, a friend- "You shouldn't have helped me that first day-" 

Empty, heartless, voice a growl. There's purple that streaks through veins underneath thick skin, hardly visible in the soft ethereal glow of the slime on the cave walls, making him appear more like a specter than anything else. Dead man walking, a ghost, the corruption vial he'd been sponsored pierces into his bones and wraps sharpened claws around what's left of his heart, severing what was left and replacing it with what must be done for him to go home.

Selfishly, he's thankful for it. 

"-maybe then I wouldn't have split Andrew's neck open."

Selfishly, he strikes once more.

[Tex attacks Tune ; spear]


0qmo6b|Q|fspear


[9.5 +1]

spear

[eulalie blake 1a 🍒 tris]

In the glow, it's hard to see the truth for what it is.

But still it reveals itself.

Like frightened boys hiding in the shadows, and cruel girls thinking of all the vengeance they are owed. They play their parts like none of the rage has been bled from them yet. It's hard to know what's real here, where the sun cannot reach, and what is still lost to the purple haze. Standing across from her, she looks at Tune, and in those eyes she can see it.

The only darkness she can trust.

Her love, this love, is a shade of mahogany wood.

And that love...

Cinnamon burns on the stovetop.

All her fiercest dreams are ashes now.

She holds her sickle like it's a death sentence; simply because it is. Because no matter how hard she scrubs the once-polished steel, this blade will always be responsible for severing at least one lifeline. She knows the squelch of a heart stopping beneath the force of her. Like just her presence is enough to will it so. "You shouldn't have helped me that first day." Her head tilts to the side, and the story starts to unravel.

When she imagines the life of her dreams, it's more than just surviving the Games.

She moves to the Capitol, gets the high paying job she's been striving for, meets her new roommate Tune and the boy named Andrew who lives just across the hall. And they're just kids, not warriors, and they have years instead of days to make sense of the way their heartstrings tangle around one another. And she would have loved them, as much as she would have wanted to love him, and now she will never be allowed to have that. When she stares at the palm of her hand, she imagines if she would trade the gold of a crown just for the feel of his fingertips again.

For the possibility to exist with both of them outside of the war.

"Maybe then I wouldn't have split Andrew's neck open."

The guns fire without any concern for the glass shattering inside of her chest; and when she lunges for Kiptyn, she does it with all the fury and mercilessness of a lightning strike.

"Grab him, Tune." She can't bring herself to worry about the potential of betrayal; she prioritizes all of her hurts in a pretty little line. The guillotine waits. "I want you to force him to watch what we're going to do to his friend."

carly attacks kiptyn ; sickle
Scd9Iw2KtAglaive
severed leg
10 + 1 blades

glaive

[✨ zozo.]

      ↳ T U N E W A L K E R

Texas' words hit harder than the blade in her stomach. That's what she thinks the hot pain is at first, starting in her core and spreading outward, forcing a scream like nothing else out of her lungs. It cracks against the dark, stumbling backwards -

Tune looks to Carly, secrets spilled with her blood. She shouldn't have helped Tex, he's right. And it's her fault Andrew's dead. It's her fault, it's her fault -

Carly says her name and Tune collapses into the shadows. Her spine hits the vined walls with a thud and she wants so desperately for them to swallow her whole, to wrap themselves around her body and turn her into another ghost in the dark. Because Andrew is dead, and it's her fault, and Tune knows it - Tex knows it, Carly knows it -

She had betrayed them. She knew it then, Day One in the fields of the tavern, and she knows it now. I'm sorry, the phrase echoes. Unsaid, useless. All she can manage is a gasp, a groan, something in-between. Palm against her stomach, it stings something sharp. She will die in these caves, death-sentence handed to her by her own hand.

Texas will-

Kiptyn will-

Brody will-

And then Carly -

But Carly always has a plan, and Tune always obeys. So she staggers upwards, wounded animal, heaving herself toward Tex. He will pay. He will pay. He will pay.

Tune looks him dead in his cruel purple eyes when she flings an axe at Kiptyn Nott's head.

[ coding by griffin ]

tune attacks kiptyn, throwing axe 3/6
2WSEU1eJ5|throwing axe
8

throwing axe