call up the storm [carly vs tex ; day 7]

[pogue]

The sky lights up in purple after Kiptyn Nott dies, little vials of purple floating in the evening sky. It's a sadistic form of support, he knows it as he walks along the walls of the Cave, away from his ally and his district partner and the death the clung to them. With shaking hands he collects them all, clips the vials to a strap on his waist and feels his form grow heavy until he finally collapses to the ground near the river, listening to the way the water yells in whispers.

There's evil that runs through his veins, mixes with the leftover adrenaline and claws at what is left of a crumbling heart, forces his eyelids open and pulls gaze to the midnight sky. He doesn't sleep, he can't, sitting somewhere in between the Caves and the River, in between life and his own coffin, unaware of if the way the night rolls in and never leaves is a sign of what is to come of him. He feels his bones scream and veins ache, yelling in protest at what the sponsored liquid is doing to his own body but he cannot stop, trembling hands and shaking soul and chasing the thoughts of those he's killed and those he's lost with a burn in the throat.

They slink in like poltergeists every few hours, turn his own thoughts upside down until all he can feel is the emptiness and the longing, a sharpness in the chest and a sadness so painful that it feels like it will kill him. Part of him hopes it does, another won't let it, because every time the thoughts creep to the forefront of his mind there is another vial from the sky laced in between his digits, pressed to his lips until the rage and the fury swallow the world whole again, until all he can feel is his weapon in his other hand, until he's a shell of the boy he could have been.

The night comes in and never leaves, the arena bellowing and yelling at who remains that it wants the waters to run red with scarlet. He answers its call with one of his own, piercing scream of pain and fury shouted into the coming storm, a statement and a question of what will come of him all in one.

He gets his answer in what he can only feel is the morning, in the way the cold rain splatters against his skin and loosens the dried blood caked against his flesh. It leaves him looking feral, streaks of red clashing with the purple veins that now bulge underneath his skin. Something dark slinks in from the edges of his vision, black auras dancing in his vision no matter how much he rubs his eyes as he walks along the riverside. The purple liquid carries side effects with it, he feels his body cracking under the pressure and his heart slowing as it creeps into his veins, runs through his system and pulls anger up from his gut.

Something odd happens as he makes his way along the riverside, darkness of the storm hiding his skin and spear dragging along the ground by his side. He thinks it a side effect of what is in his system, or maybe just a consequence of what he's become, but he feels his own footsteps bend and meld into the arena itself, as if he's one with the way the ground beneath him rumbles and shakes, as if he can feel the rage the arena spouts from the skies. He becomes nothing more than a hollow shell, slinking along the riverside like a shadow, purple still coursing through his veins and holding rage in his hands.

It's the only thing that keeps him going, it's why he feels nothing but rage when he sees her.

It's why he's so easily able to creep up on Carly Volkov as she kneels by the water.

In the split second before he lunges he catches his own reflection in the shattered waters, all purple and red and bloodshot eyes threatening to break through the waters itself. He catches Carly's eyes shift, focus, widen before he grabs the back of her hair and pushes until her face shatters the water and his reflection dissipates into a million bloody streaks. 

A shuttered breath crawls up his throat as he holds her thrashing form, rage in purple and gaze in red as the water bubbles up with what's left of her breaths, feeling the way the ice cold of the water splashes against his face as she tries to swipe backwards at him. It's only when her own breaths finally start to slip into nothingness that he rips her head up from the river and finally lets her breathe, gasps for air piercing his ears. It's pure rage that drives him, pulling and twisting before he attempts to toss her back to the riverbed with all of his might, mud and streaks of shared blood splattering up his clothes and into the waters.

"You probably think I'm doing this because of what you did to Kip." His words drip into the dead space between them as he looks at her, voice foreign even to himself, growling into the darkness of the storm. He feels something warm slink down the side of his cheek, nearly mistakes it for a tear in honor of his fallen ally, but one swipe of his hand and he's met with black liquid seeping from his pores, coursing through purple veins and spat out like insults. "I'm not." 

His spear splits the earth as he steps forwards along the river bank, looking towards Carly's form as she coughs up a mixture of water and life. Dried blood gives way to the river as he raises the weapon from the ground, the tip following the way Carly's throat heaves with shallow breaths as she finds air once more. "I'm doing this..."

She misses Andrew, that much is true. His eyes look to her throat.
He'll make her look just like him.

"- because I really, really want to watch you die."

[Tex attacks Carly ; spear]


dianfUoyDpspear


[8, +1 strength]

spear

[eulalie blake 1a 🍒 tris]

And when she reaches for her sickle, she finds two.

One crossed over the other, like a dead boy's hands folded over his chest. Laid to rest. There's no closure. Only the morning light pouring through the cave entrance like a portal to another dimension. The darkness holds her in its mouth, three days of trials and tribulations, and it feels like glass digging into the palms of her hands. A mountain she wants to climb; an obstacle that tears into her until all that's left are the memories.

Andrew Priest is dead.

Tune Walker is nowhere to be found.

For the first time, on the seventh day, Carly is forced to stare at herself and see a girl in total isolation. With only her steel, and her pride, stripped of all the treasures that gave this experience more meaning than what it's destined to become. Since the first day they spoke her name, even now in the depths of her own undoing, she has known she would return home. No matter the sacrifice, regardless of how cruel she would have to become. It's inevitable.

But she still grabs Tune's weapon, holds it in front of herself, all while feeling the blade of it stab through her back and pierce her heart. There's no blood to prove her suffering is real. Just scars, and a fading hue of purple, enhanced only by the glowing mushrooms along the cavern walls.

Ultimately, she can force herself to understand the situation she's in. For her to survive, Andrew had always been fated to die, and to be as selfish as she is, Carly has no right to fault Tune for making her own decisions. She's counted the faces in the sky, too.

This morning had always been scripted to break her heart; and she's been robbed of the experience. She wakes up to the cold, the emptiness, the words she might never get the chance to say. For a week, they are the most important things to her, and then the image shifts. It ceases.

She tries to make her peace with the absence of them. But her grip tightens around the handle, and her lungs constrict, and before she can stop herself she's throwing the glaive out and away from herself, spiraling out of the dark and disappearing in the halo of light.

Her hair hangs in her face, breath coming quickly, shoulders trembling.

"Hey." There is no one else here. She hesitates as if giving them the time to listen, time to remain with her. The silence does not yield to her voice. "I love you."

It's meaningless now. Dying roses on the gravestones of dead friends.

She knows this, and she cries while no one is there to see the girl beneath the image she's so carefully crafted. There's no rage. No power. Just sad, blue eyes, and the one debt she'll never be able to repay.

"Both of you."

When she steps into the light, hours later, warrior at dawn, she leaves their ghosts in the quiet dark.

Her softness, too.

---

She's kneeling by the river, trying to scrub the filth from her skin and the bloodshot haze from her eyes, when the world crashes into her.

With all the force of a tidal wave, right against her spine, she barely has the time to yelp before her face crashes towards the earth. Only to meet water, slicing through the surface and plunging below, just barely able to register the feel of fingers curled up in her hair. She thrashes in the dark blur, so quickly torn from her peaceful contemplation and dragged so forcefully into the one thing that had frightened her about this situation. This is no longer an alliance game, it's just person to person warfare. She screams, chokes, claws for her survival in the murky depths.

And just as quickly as she's sunk into the river, she's jerked out of it, tossed like a ragdoll against the bank and crashing against her side. She gasps for breath, spitting out the water that felt like it was flooding her chest. Trying to blink through the way her gaze distorts, trying to make sense of a thing that can't even make sense of itself, she stares up at the one ghost who dared to follow her. Texas Lovell, looking far worse for wear than how she left him in the shadows.

He can't hide from her now; not when he's forced her to collapse in front of him, sacrifice on his alter, her mind races to find a solution and her lips part trying to summon the right thing to say. "You probably think I'm doing this because of what you did to Kip." She shudders, remembering the way she so coldly told Tune to hold him and force him to watch the murder of his ally. Like it was the simplest thing. Like once upon a time, she was the monster between them. His veins are purple beneath his skin, eyes so full of rage, black rot clinging to him like war garb.

The voice he speaks with is not the same voice she recalls from his interview. It cuts into her like river stones. "I'm not." He hefts his spear like a bolt of lightning, like his fury has come to life in his grasp. "I'm doing this..." she desperately tries to reach for her sickle, detached from her belt and tossed aside on the shore, in the moment he approaches her. She looks at him with fear, and he looks at her with indifference. "Because I really, really want to watch you die." Her fingers have just wrapped around the hilt when he thrusts the blade through her thigh.

Like a butterfly pinned beneath a sheet of glass; she considers a future where she plays the victim. Her tragedy immortalized on film. Sad little girl torn apart by something so much bigger than her. Two gunshots echo in her mind, she feels the halving of her flesh like it's a metaphor come to life, like she's already been hollowed out.

"I've got bad news." Her voice is a rasp, tired and suffocated and so full of pain. But she pulls herself to her feet, red blood stains blossoming beneath the fabric of her uniform, agony that she wears with pride. When she glares at him, her gaze is blue, only blue, and she makes her peace with the fact that she will have to tear this boy limb from limb to rid herself of the threat. It's necessary.

"When I die, I'll be a hundred, cozy in my king sized bed surrounded by all the things I've earned for myself." She dares to stoke the flames, challenges a tribute who has none of his humanity left to gamble. He listens even as she raises her arm, pulls it back, channels all of her ambition into the swing. "And you'll just be a name on my list of kills." Clarity, clear as crystal, she can see her dreams beyond the force that threatens to ruin her.

Aiming for his heart, shattering the fragments of his mind.

"You should have drowned me when you had the chance." The guillotine falls to meet his neck. "Stupid boy."

carly attacks tex ; sickle
GkMrNBPEtyglaive
3.5

glaive

[pogue]

His weapon crashes into Carly Volkov's leg like a tidal wave, blade carving deep into her thigh and pulling red up the surface. His teeth slam into each other as he does so, squirming form of a girl caught off guard managing to pull herself back before he could drive the weapon into a spot more lethal. Part of him respects it, watching Carly crawl to her feet even with her own life seeping down her leg from the wound. She works through staggered breaths, clutching the handle of her sickle against all odds, dripping in blood and water.

In the wake of her strength he finds his own thoughts fragmented, distorted, lace din purple and red and burning like fire. The liquid he'd drank comes in tidal waves as he looks at her, crashing against the front of his mind before drawing back so incredibly quickly, a coiled snake waiting to strike again. It feels like treachery to think of his sister when he watches Carly's strength bubble up to the surface, to feel the way she fought against her own dying breaths, to have seen the life in her eyes burn bright even against the inevitable.

Jaw clenched, bloodshot eyes waver, the tip of his spear points forwards despite feeling his hands shake in the wake of the corruption leaving him if only for a moment. He counts his heartbeats waiting for it to come back, for a tidal wave to swallow him whole once more and for the emptiness to take him again.

Reliable, terrible, it does. He sees purple and then red, a body to add to his list, a cannon to fire, a girl to kill.

It's amusement that drives him to let Carly drone on about her life's ambitions, about wants and needs and reaping the spoils of her sins. It's realism that leads him to furrow his brow, cock his head to the side like a confused child as her dreams spill out like blood to the riverbed, culminating in a declaration of his own mistakes. 

"You should have drowned me when you had the chance. Stupid boy."

His lips crack into a half-grin, gums stained black and teeth stained yellow bared in malice like an animal's fangs. He meets with fire with rage hot enough to match, laughter like a hyena running through his mind and blood-stained fingers wrapped around the tip of his spear. He respects her tenacity, but she'll die nonetheless. "Maybe I should have." The river seems to echo his statement, swelling and crashing against the muddy soil as if an applause to the show they're providing. "But I think I want to watch you suffer first." 

The rain pounds against his skin, sky illuminating like a titan shouting, purple veins charting through the sky and Carly takes a page from their book, lunging forwards and thrusting her blade towards him. It's one part reflexes and another corruption, the way he raises his arm to block her strike and feels the blade carve into his skin. Pain blooms like a flower from the source, subtle and striking piercing underneath blood-soaked skin.

A new line of red opens up as he glances towards it, droplets of blood gathering at the surface. He lowers his arm with a swiftness, feels the droplets fly from his skin and splatter to the waters below, the current swallowing it quickly as if starving for bloodshed. He watches it dissipate into the heart of the arena they stand in, realizing it's exactly what it wants. "You speak like you've already won." His eyes go from the current back to Carly, pointing his spear towards his opponent and letting it shake in the winds of the storm. "Tell you what.." Hopes, dreams, a life worth living. Crash, shatter, reality feels cold even as fiery rage burns inside of him. "When I put this spear in your gut and watch you die, we can both pretend the soil is that king sized bed you dream of." 

Offer on the table, heart on his sleeve and rage in his veins, he moves before she can react and stabs downwards with his spear.

[Tex attacks Carly ; spear]


vtxn3vI|pYspear


[4.0]

spear

[eulalie blake 1a 🍒 tris]

His arm catches her blade, black blood and regrets spilling to the surface. She clamps her teeth down on him, still sucking in ragged breaths, trying to ignore the hot spike in the center of her chest. Every word feels like she's swallowing gravels, like her head is below the surface again, cheek scratching against pebbles. Her limbs are aching as the adrenaline flows in and out, thunder clap in the sky and a snap of fingers in her mind. She refuses to lose her footing. Endlessly, she has a vice grip on herself.

Until he slits her throat wide open, she will always have something to say.

"Maybe I should have." The waves rise and fall around her ankles, white foam against the muddy bank, approaching and breaking apart in an endless loop. It should be peaceful. Her legs shake beneath her, the last thing she has to worry about is a dead boy she could have loved and a missing girl she wants to love longer. It's background noise to the force charging to meet her, the monstrous addict and the devilish schemer. Maybe karma comes back around.

Maybe the next time it swings at her, she'll break its arm.

She glances at the vials secured around his waist, the ill-purple hue across his flesh, the way his eyes seem like they're searching the perfect place to start tearing her apart. "But I think I want to watch you suffer first." River-born goddess, she stares up at a heretic and scoffs. Like it's the most ridiculous thing. Like in the back of her mind, in the back of her throat, she might ever be able to switch off the memory of her face screaming under the water. Robbed of air, stripped of control, so easily pushed aside.

"How the fuck did you let this happen to yourself?" She steps closer, wincing slightly at the way her skin tears around the wound on her thigh, a blood red flower unfurling. "You've let them make a mockery of you." She doesn't always mean to sound cruel, just honest, but her tone often ebbs and flows between the two. Logically, she recognizes that in the state he's in now, nothing she says will get through to him. More rational still, she already has a good idea of who will have the favor in a physical fight between them.

But she's wickedly clever, and just as resourceful. She belongs wholly to herself, deeply, even if her knuckles burn white hot against the handle of her weapon, even if an aftershock of the rage and the hunger still sparks like an ember in her mind, ever so steadily stoking her courage and her superiority complex. "Look at me. I've made the Top 8, and they have the audacity to send a mutt for me to kill." He's a boy who deserved better, just like she's a girl who will have exactly the life she deserves.

He's in the past tense. Even now, she will grant him the dignity of separating the monster plotting her demise from the boy who once was Texas Lovell. "You speak like you've already won."

"Because I have."

She says it firmly. No hesitation. If manifestation helps her secure her goals, then fuck it. There won't be a single day where she wakes up thinking she doesn't own the sun. "Tell you what..." he inches closer with his spear again, like a bloody tide, like a thing she wants to watch disappear. Part of her fears he might just come back. "When I put this spear in your gut and watch you die, we can both pretend the soil is that king sized bed you dream of." Her heels dig into the earth as she braces for impact, her reply an offended huff.

Texas strikes, just grazes her skin, but there's a wound inside of her. It bleeds. She imagines him like a playground bully trying to steal her favorite toy, her fondest dream, and her selfishness charges into the battlefield.

"Hard pass." He's taller than her, and yet when she gazes at him, it's like she's glaring down. She won't allow him to be the nightmare he wishes to be.

"I'm not a pretender, sweetheart. Watch me get exactly what I want."

carly attacks tex ; sickle
L_prbKMgkaglaive
3.5

glaive

[pogue]

His blade connects softly against her flesh, little red line on already blood-stained skin, dripping softly into the water as he rears back and regains his footing. The current pushes and pulls against their forms, mirroring the way they swing and heave weapons neither should have ever had to hold, breathe the last broken, rotten breaths of lives not worth enough to live.

For a moment they stare at each other, weapons held and blood drawn and fangs bared. He follows her gaze as she looks down to his waist, hears her scoff and look at him as if he's nothing more than dirt against her shoe. As if she's anything better. "How the fuck did you let this happen to you?" 

Let it, as if it were that easy, as if walking into a purple void was him laying down and dying, as if he hadn't faced a hundred doors slammed shut in his lifetime and finally given in, alone and lonely and hurt all the same. "You've let them make a mockery of you." That is what gets him, makes his teeth slam into each other and grip to tighten, white-knuckling his spear and feeling the water grab at it underneath, as if to claim it, him, as its own. As if it isn't true. "Mockery, yeah..." His words taste sour against his lips, shot towards Carly in the wake of her newest claim of grandeur.

"I'm not a pretender, sweetheart. Watch me get exactly what I want." 

She strikes as confidently as she talks, stumbling forwards on open wound and slashing out with the sickle laced in between her fingers. His own body reacts with a slowness, leftover from the way his own veins are dissolving at the source and the way anger and pain have rooted themselves in his bones. He feels blade meet skin and pain meet nerve ending, scarlet paper cut wrapping around the side of his bicep as he pulls backwards. Brown eyes look down to the new wound, back towards Carly, as if he's admiring the way their wounds seem to match each other, freshly made and never to heal. Two reflections, both shattered. One accepts it, the other thinks it untrue.

"You're not getting anything."

In some ways it's a threat, in others a promise, in others a realization. Words slip into the air and hit the water already rotten, wilted and broken. He feels poison dance on the edge of his lips as he looks her up and down like something feral, feels pain wrap around the newfound cut on his arm. They drip red in unison like a fatal last dance, little droplets of what's left of their lives hitting the disappearing into the waters as fast as they land. "Look in the mirror, Volkov." 

Carly Volkov exists on a high-horse ready to be put out of its misery, limping through the world calling everything she touches gold,  refusing to ignore how it all wilts in her wake. He's used to it, knows that he's been looked down on for his entire life and more, scarlet 12 carved into his back and dripping crimson into his legacy. He's used to it, or at least he should be, but there's purple that roots itself into his heart and makes him seethe as her words replay in the back of his mind. She's no better than him, wounded and bandaged and broken nonetheless. "I mean-" Girl in pain, boy the same, if anything else he'll make her realize that she's not as pretty as she might think.

Then he'll make sure of it, blade and blood and torn through flesh.

"I might be ugly, but at least I know it." At least I can lean into it, his own mind bargains with distorted reality, rage and pain and gnashing teeth driving him forward on shaking breaths. "You think you own the world, but you're just groveling at the feet of the exact people who put you here." 

It's sad, he wants to say, bites his tongue as he looks down at his own reflection dancing in the water. Purple and red seep in from the edges, "we're both mockeries, huh?" Words under the skin and blade itching to meet them, he unhooks purple gold from his waist and holds it out in front of him. From his view he watches Carly's form twist and fold in the purple haze, glass vial blocking her form and dousing her world in violet. "Why don't you start acting like it?" He mutters, a wounded animal biting back. Catch.

Even as he tosses the vial towards her he feels his body wanting to clutch it against his chest, shatter it against frail skin and drink the purple liquid until he can't feel anything else. It's the rage that fuels him as he dashes forwards, doesn't wait to see if Carly catches a cursed gift, stabs forwards before he feels the consequences of giving up the only thing that he's come to rely on in this arena.

[Tex attacks Carly ; spear]


E0a3KwyZoZspear


[8.5, +1 strength]

spear

[eulalie blake 1a 🍒 tris]

It's not that she's unable to recognize when she's losing — it's that there's nothing in her that knows how to stop. Her heart pounds in her chest, hateful words burning through her ears, fingers curling around river sand soaked with her own blood and full of sharp gravel. Texas Lovell is trying to kill her; he even says so. Every movement aches, every breath is labored, every dream she's ever had trickles out of the gaps in her hands like dust. The crown has never felt more intangible.

And gracelessly, ferociously, she screams and throws the dirt right into Tex's purple eyes.

She ducks below the smokescreen in the few seconds that it spares her, racing up the bank and securing herself on the stable earth. It's funny how grateful she feels for the grass beneath her feet, the way the water is churning in the storm and not churning inside of her lungs. When she swallows, it's like swallowing glass. Her every word is soaked in red. "You're not getting anything," cuts through her mind, and she grits her teeth around the audacity.

"If you think I have anything at all to prove to you," she says that last word like it's venomous, like just the notion of him is toxic to her health, "then you clearly never learned how to pay attention." A girl sneers down at the goliath, all too aware that in a matter of moments he will close the distance between them, and he will thrust his spear into her skin, and she'll feel small again. She knows this.

Her mortality stares at her deeply; her morality turns away.

"What do you think the historians are going to say about you? When it's all said and done and twenty-three of us are in a cemetery plot." She laughs, hides the sparkle of tears in her eyes behind her cruelty, spreads out her arms as if to gesture at the grand joke they're telling. "If you're going to end my life, then at least make it fucking worth something." If he wants to be a monster, she will slay him / and if he wants to be a mountain in her path, she will fell him. "You want to kill my future, the one I've given everything to have, for the lifetime of nothingness waiting for you? Really?" Her laugh is a honeysuckle nestled in briars.

"That'd be the irony I deserve," she whispers more quietly to herself, so sad behind the guise of her pride, so close to having all that she could ever want; only without Aneesa, and Andrew, and inevitably Tune by her side. Alone and separated from the only people she would ever sacrifice her ambitions for. Maybe that's why, even now in the belly of the beast, she tricks herself into believing that anything is possible. That she can conquer a boy that has gone mad with his bloodlust, with his own twisted goal, who so easily sees the victim beneath all of her bravado.

"You think you own the world, but you're just groveling at the feet of the exact people who put you here."

"How else do you think you win?"

Carly Volkov feels nothing for Panem — and everything about succeeding. "Wake up from the sob story. Pull yourself out of the grave they're trying to push you into." Beneath her robes, her gunshot wounds ache, old aches bleeding into fresh ones. "This nation hates girls from Nine just as much as boys from Twelve." There's nothing she has to hide; she is who she is, and her scars belong wholly to herself. She's drug herself through impossible odds for the better half of her life. That doesn't stop now.

Even when he tosses the vial in her direction, and she side steps it just to hear it shatter on the ground over her shoulder. His treasure becomes a waste / and he charges, and the point of his spear tears through her back as she tries to spin out of the way. She catches herself on her palm, tries to silence the splitting of nerves into a dull ache, a vibration she can hide under the ceaseless drumming of her heart. It's a song she wills to play forever, a desperation that always forces her back up on her feet, even as she trembles and seethes and bleeds. She stares him straight in the eye as she tries to murder him.

This nation hates girls from Nine just as much as boys from Twelve.

"I just made them love me."

carly attacks tex ; sickle
dJfji4Nkcpglaive
9.0 + 1 blades

glaive

[pogue]

The shattering reaches his ears just before he charges into Carly's form, spear in one hand and dying life in the other. Rage comes through like a wildfire as he watches Carly twist on her heels in an attempt to avoid him. He waits until Carly twists herself away from him to lash out, blood-soaked granite wearing a new blanket of red as he carves his sins into her back. Crimson blooms like flowers at the source, rooted deep in the torn through flesh and sinew and splattering to the water below. His gaze drifts down to watch a new layer of scarlet spread into the river, gone as quickly as it appears, wasted away into the arena itself.

The sky cracks with lightning as Carly throws dirt and grime directly into his eyes, as if to laugh at his misfortune, at their downfalls. He gasps in frustration, then in pain as he feels her blade mirror the wound he'd just carved into her back, stumbling back into the water and feeling it swarm around him as if a threat, a promise to swallow him whole. The rain is quick to assist, swiping away at the grime and streaking red and dirt down his cheeks.

They dip into purgatory once more, mirroring the swayed movements of two broken kids dying, slipping red into the water and staining it permanently. There's still purple and rot that runs through his veins but it's beginning to wane, newfound pain fighting against the numbness of the poison he'd swallowed, killing him from the inside out, so slowly but so surely.


"What do you think the historians are going to say about you? When it's all said and done and twenty-three of us are in a cemetery plot?" 

"Same thing they'll say about you." The answer writes itself on his face, in the empty stare that's seen the void and watched it stare back. Nothing. "a crown won't save you, Carly Volkov." He's growing tired of the grandeur, the delusion, the proclaimed royalty of a broken girl looking down on him. That she's given everything and more, that he hasn't. She hasn't seen everything to give, hasn't seen everything to lose. He'd show her.

"You want to kill my future, the one I've given everything to have, for the lifetime of nothingness waiting for you? Really?"

Now it's his turn to laugh, no tears found in his gaze, pain rooted deep in his gut from his own wounds. "Yeah, Volkov. I do." He coughs up something red, feels it splatter on the inside of his mouth. "Guess I'm just selfish like that."

Their silence tells the pain between them, laced into the dead space they share, half in their coffins and half in hell. The next time she speaks there's a somberness that hands heavy above them.

"This nation hates girls from Nine just as much as boys from Twelve." 

"Exactly" He groans, feeling his own life seep out from the newfound wound. Tip of spear punctuates his point as he directs it towards her, words loaded with more blood than his weapon will ever collect. "Now you're getting it." His words call her bluff, catch the way her voice wavers in the wake of her own emotions, insecurities. "So tell me, Volkov. Are you taking what you want or just begging for scraps?" He knows the answer already, can see it in the way she speaks to the skies instead of him, asking for their approval over and over and over-

"I just made them love me." 

"You're convincing yourself, not me." 

His words still hang heavy in the air as he charges once more, this time with added grit and all things rage, a crashing tidal wave that slams into Carly's form and sends them both tumbling forwards into the water.

He'll leave her the same way he found her, drowning in her own delusions and begging for one last bit of life to be thrown to her.

[Tex attacks Carly ; spear]


a5F5uTYajospear


[8.5, +1]

spear

[eulalie blake 1a 🍒 tris]

Their bodies crash like thunder. River titans locked in an endless war, bleeding blasphemy into sacred waters. Texas throws her to the tide like a sacrifice to the raging storm, and she stumbles, hands clutching the loose sand beneath them as if her fingers are digging into life itself. Her hair blows into her face, drenched from the rain, from her failed drowning. Every fiber of her being aches.

And yet she's breathing.

And yet she can speak.

"A crown won't save you, Carly Volkov."

"I'm saving my-fucking-self, Texas Lovell."

Blade against blade, muscle to muscle,, she meets the beast standing in the way of her fairytale with her full force. When she screams, he roars — and when she bleeds, he triumphs — and the loop goes on and on endlessly. Her sickle slices clean across his back, he claws at the dirt in his eyes, the waves approach and flee, and the lightning illuminates all the terrible things she can't escape. They match each other scar for scar.

"Guess I'm just selfish like that." He scolds her like she's child, like she's only seventeen, like there's ever been one thing in this tiny existence that could be called fair. She doesn't owe him a damn thing. No one knows Carly Volkov as deeply as herself, nine chapters deep into her unpublished memoir and with countless more to write. Who is he to take that from her? Who is she to steal from him? They play tug-of-war with their survival. "Now you're getting it."

His spear point glares at her face, and she slaps it away as if it's not coated with her blood. Her eyes glare daggers into his soul, manifesting a blade ripping through his heart. "So tell me, Volkov. Are you taking what you want or just begging for scraps?" The thunder drums a funeral march, and they sway to it, hurt to it. He slams into her, and she tumbles like a princess slipping from her pedestal. "You're convincing yourself, not me." His spear strikes a familiar nerve.

The agony that flares is a feeling she can retrace behind her eyelids. Red as her rage, red as her humanity; she thrashes in the water and glares up at his purple sneer, at his hatefulness and his honesty and the way she just wants to bash his skull in. Over and over, all because she wants to, and nothing to do with being doped up on her own self-hatred. "I'm taking it. It's mine." She says it over the churning water, over the sounds of her pain, his attempts to drown her. "So get the fuck out of my way."

carly attacks tex ; sickle
lUGt8Op0A8glaive
8.0 + 1

glaive

[pogue]

Give and take, push and pull he crashes into Carly and immediately feels the risk and the reward streak up his thigh and explode into the water. He feels his spear carve into somewhere on his opponent's form, feels her blade land somewhere on his as they fall into and underneath the swell, a final crack of lightning shouts in glee from above before the world around them is muffled.

Her scream under the water crashes into his ears, his own is a concoction of blackened blood, a crimson blanket swirling around them as they once again trade blow-for-blow and life for life. By the time he once again pulls himself above the surface all he can do is limp backwards on the heels of his own mortality, cough up Carly's latest reminder that she is just as dangerous as delusional, taste it in iron on his tongue and feel it in the back of his throat. 

"I'm saving my-fucking-self, Texas Lovell." 

He cracks back with a rumble of thunder, a groan, pain laced into the words. "And look where that's gotten you." 

The water swells in the wake of Carly's confidence, lightning applauds her bravery even as she looks her fate in the eyes and dares it to blink. "I'm taking it. It's mine." Fangs bared and tattered heart on sleeve, dripping red and spitting purple back and forth like a deadly tug-of-war. The words dance on the edge of loosened lips, violet rot and scarlet seeping from the cracks Carly's blade has left on his face with desperate swings. It's none of ours, he wants to say, can hear the words carve themselves into the front of his brain and so desperately wants to spit them out to her, to hurt her deeper than scarlet roses blooming from skin, to destroy her endlessly, completely.

Instead he falls short just like so many other times before, soft spoken shadow of a boy turned into what lurks in nightmares, shattering and putting himself back together hastily over and over again. There's a grin that slides across his face, yellowed teeth stained red and dribbling some vile mix of red and purple, fused to black and dribbling down his chin as Carly makes her last stand in front of a boy she wants to cement as nothing more than a memory.

"So get the fuck out of my way."

Piece by piece he falls apart into the shallow waters below, piece by piece Carly Volkov joins him. It's delusion and adrenaline and something rotten that causes him to straighten a spine that has long since cracked under pressure, press his weight into the water and look at his opponent as something other than human, a number, a target, a coffin ready to close. When he speaks his voice is a growl, feral, inhuman and so far gone- too far gone for anything good to come of it again.

Bleeding giant and broken boy, he feels the water rise to meet him and desperately try to pull him under. He won't let it.

"No." 

Rot and death, he charges forwards once more.

[Tex attacks Carly ; spear]


KUEiOpJeA7spear


[8, +1]

spear

[eulalie blake 1a 🍒 tris]

For the longest time — for a terribly brief amount of time — the world has tried and failed to snuff Carly Volkov out.

Two bullets could rip through her body, a metal rod could break her bones, her best friend could die on national television, she could get rigged into the Games only a month after nearly cementing a place for herself in the Capitol. And she would work her fingernails to bloody nubs dragging herself through the carnage, over every obstacle in her path, against any and all odds foolish enough to stack themselves against her. Simply because she wills it so.

She's already proven this and more.

But she still remembers those days in physical therapy with Aneesa, hands held as they would talk about all of the things they would never have. And Carly would smirk, and she'd squeeze her friend's palm all the more tighter, and she'd dare to hope for something bigger. Brighter. Penthouse suite, roses on every open surface, more knowledge than a girl from Nine could ever know what to do with, a place in a world that would value her, support her, want her.

The tragedy is that Carly has resented the life she's now so terrified of losing.

Now all of her greenest pastures are soaked crimson.

There's a burning sun just behind the clouds — dark and thundering and so full of fear, of rage. Lightning dances in the sky as she goes back in time. She drops a handful of dirt atop Aneesa's casket, stares up at Andrew Priest's face like a northern star, in the distance she can almost make out the sound of Tune's voice screaming in pain. Through all of her deepest hurts, she has survived; she stepped out of that cave and into the day.

"And look where that's gotten you."

In the water grappling with her own death, knuckles white as bone around the hilt of her sickle, spitting up water and blood as her head rises in and out of the choppy waves. There's a shark with purple eyes, but he looks like a boy, and he has the gall to say the same thing she's heard for the better part of her life: "No." He claims she won't win, refuses to allow some small flicker of hope that she could still trick her way out of this. The thunder claps as if to wake her, to urge her to her senses.

Bite for bite, their blades carve out pieces of one another — until the water is red as her passion, and the day is dark as his fury, and the end is coated with every single shade of them. "Fuck you," she barks just as harshly as him, all thanks to her own emotions and her own power and her own will to go out with every fiber of her being fighting. She slices her sickle across the river's surface, a mock swing only to make him flinch and to send a wave rising to meet Tex's eyes.

And she makes a break for the shore, tries to ignore the way her skin feels like it's unraveling around herself and how every step feels like she's shouldering the storm raging overhead. But she claws her way up the muddy bank, gasping desperately and with every ounce of her strength, grass and blood and grime beneath her, until there's nothing but her feet on the earth and the feeling of the inevitable just over her shoulder, always closing in, following like a shadow. But damn the fear.

She runs with what little energy she can spare, boots mimicking the drumming sound above her, in her own chest. Until she reaches the tree-line, open palms crashing against bark. She struggles to find her breath, hands shaking with the flood of adrenaline and the trickle of blood she's losing. "Do something," she croaks out quietly, voice too strained to be sensible. She swallows, grimaces, sinks her nails into the wood and starts ripping with the full extent of her strength.

"Fucking do something!" Splinters, sawdust, her every nerve ending stings as she peels off the unassuming bark of a wide tree, revealing the inner machinations of a hidden camera within the trunk. The perfect viewing spot to see the war that has taken place along the river. She places her hands on either side of the lens, forcing herself to be the central focus. "Look at me, gamemakers. What the fuck are you all doing? Help me!" She dares a glance over her shoulder, at her shadow, emerging from the depths and approaching in her wake.

"Do you want an addict from Twelve as your victor? He's going to kill me. You have—" she struggles to think of some loophole, some magic password to make the arena open up and transport her to safety. "You know I'm better for the narrative. I don't care what you do, make all these trees fall and crush him, hit him with a lightning bolt. Just save me!" Her voice is as raw as the tears streaming down her face, fists crashing against the sides of the camera, driving the point of her desperation home.

She never planned to go back there.

But she'd give anything.

Wiping her tears in the silence, in the sound of her own pleas going unanswered, she turns on her heels to face the monster running straight for her. And she inhales, and she clenches her jaw, and she forces herself to realize that the only person in this world that can save her is herself. So she runs to meet him, to meet the deciding blow, and she screams at the top of her lungs like it's the most honest thing she's ever said.

I will not go quietly.

carly attacks tex ; sickle
9lyoDxGScKglaive
severed arm
10 + 1

glaive

[pogue]

Something breaks in between them as his spear finds a new home on Carly's body, red pulled out from the source and spat into the waters below. Twisted dance and twisted blade, crimson sleeves and withered heartstrings they stumble backwards away from each other once more, admiring chunks of their own mortality as they both fall to the waters. Drip by drip, blood for blood and fangs bared in harsh malice. 

The arena sets its own stage as they stare forwards, longing for something more and not being given it, empty audience and empty hearts. Blood-stained hands twist around his makeshift weapon, white-knuckling stalagmite until all he can feel is what is left over from his fading pulse, purple and rotting and slipping ever so softly into the storming sky.

Eye to eye and blood to blood, Texas Lovell and Carly Volkov stare at their own shattered mortalities with nothing but bloody weapons to keep them company, desperate to see who cracks first.

"Fuck you." 

Fracture, Carly casts her life into the water and turns desperate for the shore, for an offer she's realizing she'll never receive. And it's something sinister, the way for only a moment purple drains from his veins in the wake of his own death, that he can watch Carly Volkov run from him, human, and think of his own sister, of mortality and life and death and despair. Of watching life twinkle in eyes, of watching it fade. He thinks of the flowers laid by her tombstone the day she died, thinks of how he watched them turn to dust day by day.

How cruel, he thinks. To remember someone so beautiful with nothing but a wilting life.

How cruel, too, that purple and red take over in the span of a fading heartbeat, that he watches Carly run and feels the void laugh up from his gut, rage and fury spreading once more through his veins, always winning.

It's why his face is anything but the stoic boy he started as, twisted and contorted and a mockery of all that he never had the chance to become. Blood, dry and wet, new and old, clings to his skin as he stalks his prey from the shadows, a murky shape in the wake of a dying girl, his own sins falling into the water as he walks after her. So cold, calmly, fire in his veins and ice in heart.

"Do something. Fucking do something!"

Drip. There's a cape of red that trails behind him as he approaches Carly once more, spear in one hand and life in the other. She claws at her own coffin until there are wires that greet her desperation, stoic in the way they stare unblinking.

"Do you want an addict from Twelve as your victor? He's going to kill me. You have—"

A boy far from the crashing tidal wave he once was can be seen from the cameras, emerging from the water with a crown sewn into his temple, cast in purple and stained red just for the show. Through her please there is emptiness, a single answer, a boy and a spear and something rotting inside him.

"You know I'm better for the narrative. I don't care what you do, make all these trees fall and crush him, hit him with a lightning bolt-"

But those who could-

"Just save me!"

Won't. 

They end on the same page after so long, blood soaked book and torn pages and the same writing over and over again, that they are both nothing to whatever rests above. That they will be cast away as soon as of no use, a receding wave, blood washed away, left clean. Carly realizes this, too, he knows this. It's why his face sits in stone as he finally gets within distance of her, underneath all that blood and purple rage and opened wounds he is nothing but a broken boy.

Face stoic, jaw clenched, he stares mortality in the face and doesn't offer mercy.

Even as she turns to face him. Even as she takes one last stand.

Even as-

blade meets flesh once more and he feels something deep inside his right arm falter, vein and muscle and tissue blood-soaked skin peeling back to expose what's underneath. He feels her weapon slam into bone and gasps as a new level of pain explodes from what's left of his shoulder, bone snapping under the weight of a final stand, limb barely left hanging through shredded scraps of his own flesh. 

Broken dance with broken people, force unstoppable meets a boy so deeply rooted in his own hurt that he cannot be moved. Texas Lovell screams in agony and rage and nothing in between as Carly slams into him, feels his spear lock against her flesh in some form of twisted retribution, wound for wound and life for death. It's all he can manage before the spear held in his hand collapses to the waters below, nerve endings pulling apart and pain from the nearly severed limb taking hold of him.

Their embrace turns into a battle of guts and dissolved glory, blade in flesh and flesh in blade and it's with all his energy and left over adrenaline that Tex barely manages to reach forwards with his opposite hand, limb shooting out like a serpent and wrapping around Carly's throat. He feels her pulse quicken and hammer against his fingertips, adrenaline coursing through their bodies in one last stand before death, halfway into their own coffins and no chance of getting out. Bloodshot eyes and severed heartstrings, he looks into the eyes of Carly Volkov and knows he has won.

"Go ahead," He dares through gritted teeth, voice a painful gasp of what feels like his last few breaths. His hand tightens around her neck and it's as if he can feel his own breaths catching in the back of his throat, shattered mirror to shattered mirror. "- take what's yours." He dares, begs, pleads, turns his back on his own morality for the final time and dangles Carly's life in front of her eyes. It's an offer of golden crown and poisoned heart, passed off as simple even though he knows she doesn't have the strong to take it.

After all, he is selfish. He knows this, just like he knows he stands in Carly's way, in life, in glory, in the kind of thing each and every one of them deserved. "Take what's yours." He stammers once more, purple liquid spilling from the back of his throat and down his chin, voice heavy as if he's scolding a child. Grip tightens once more, he starts to feel something give underneath flesh and can't tell if it's his own or hers anymore, purple rage and scarlet rot bubbling up from his gut amidst the waves of pain that course from his body. "TAKE WHAT'S YOURS!" 

He is the thunder that echoes through the sky, drowning out the flashes of lightning and reminding them all of what they must become to survive. He yells into the face of a girl who does not deserve this, spit and blood dribbling out from yellowed teeth, hand on throat and final stand coming to an end. "TAKE WHAT'S YOURS!" 

Again-, tighten.
"TAKE WHAT'S YOURS!" 
An unfair deal, a dare he knows she can't execute.
"TAKE WHAT'S YOURS!" 
Broken boy, broken girl. He looks into the face of his own mortality.

"TAKE WHAT'S-"
and kills it.

Something sinister, something red, the camera light blinks off in the distance as it zooms in on the carnage placed in front of it. From home, an audience watches as a girl's life is snuffed out by a shadow of a man, yelling into oblivion until it finally yells back, a cannon. A reminder.

[Tex attacks Carly ; spear]


KtLMX5aa27spear


[3.5]

spear