Round One: Bambam vs Holt (D2)

[hesper hart 🐺 d9f]

The tribute stands with bare feet in loose dirt and mud below the dark, damp arena. If they look up, they see light and dust pouring in from the cracks in the wooden flooring. And already, they can hear the cheers, the calls for death. A man-sized bird cage comes to a stop at the ground in front of them and if they aren't wise enough to step in on their own, the peacekeepers will shove them inside. Once the gates are locked behind them, they'll know for sure though: this is officially it. No amount of hope will save them now. Only sharpened steel.

As they rise into the arena, the crowd's applause grows overwhelming in its noise, bleeding into a force of sound like a wall, pushing the tributes further into their cages.

"What an exciting show we have planned for you all today!" A voice the tributes may or may not recognize as belonging to Harlan Godfrey booms over any other voice to be heard.

The tributes will notice that they are standing in a courtyard, with a lush green carpet of grass, and they're surrounded on all sides by a gigantic hedge maze. If the tribute bothers counting, they'll also notice 12 different gates encircling the area, each with a bulky padlock the tributes will be able to make out with ease. As if calling to them, the key ring at their hips grows heavy.

They also notice another cage like their own on the other side of the courtyard, occupied with their own district partner. At the same time, both cages will open. As both tributes climb out of their cages and into the arena, they'll both notice a table nearby, full of rather basic-looking swords of all sorts of different shapes and sizes, though some are obviously missing. They'll also notice a few of those swords have been left lying in random places on the grass, undeniably covered in blood.

"Up next to fight, our District Two tributes: Bambam Ramshackle versus Holt Sickings!"

---

Weapon: Sword

Holt Initiative - 92.15
Bambam Initiative - 0.0

Retro Engine Link: Here

Reminder that tributes have not been granted any stations for this games including weapon modifiers, accuracy, first aid, or even stealth. As a result, both tributes will need to make non-attack intro posts before they begin attacking. If tributes refuse to fight each other, please let me (Dars) know asap so that I can schedule mutts for your fight. As always, 24 hour posting rules are in effect and will be enforced.

This fight will conclude once either tribute has died, and you both have until Friday, 28th of April at 6 pm pst to finish them yourselves, or mutts will be deployed to finish the job.

[pogue]

He leaves the reaping with two souvenirs:

The first is a flower blossoming around his right eye, purple and blue bleeding into one another and expanding downwards from the iris, a bag and a half of a black eye painted across an ugly mug. Truthfully, he should have seen it comin', has known BamBam for far too fucking long to not anticipate a white-knuckled fist to chart a path directly toward his temple, especially after what he did. 

But, he tosses himself some slack for not being entirely in the moment. After all, he'd just watched his name be signed in crimson and gold on a damn death certificate. His first instinct is to cover his face and duck for cover, and his second is to return the insults BamBam tosses towards him with venom and a fist of his own, swung out to the world and the gasps of the crowd. 

They trade blows and they trade words, an entire childhood of friendship with cracks running through it laid bare for the world to see.

It's only when Adder curls her own fist into the folds of BamBam's shirt collar that the scuffle comes to a sudden halt, the victor's presence made known by practically tossing 

Holt Sickings is just as nimble as he is scummy, though. And he's very scummy.

It's why he's too quick for Adder to get a good enough grip on his shoulder, a hand missing a digit slipping through the folds of a torn shirt as Dart dances backward with an "Euuughww", a scowl and a glance at Adder, meeting fire with fire. Righty tighty, his right hand curls into a fist before he releases it into a half-assed point towards Adder's left, missing thumb and all. "Keep the fuck away from me, lefty loosey."

There's a quick revel in what he feels is a victory, a turn towards BamBam and an egging on in the way only a Sickings could do.

The second souvenir is an ego, bruised and bloody. In between the lines of a string of expletives slipping from his tongue, Adder finally got a hold of his shirt, this time with her good hand.

The ground feels different when you hit it unintentionally, legs swept out from underneath and all the gravity of a hopeless situation hitting you dead in the chest. It took his breath away, for a moment, set the world spinning and riddled the edges of his vision with spots and the edges of his mind with numbness.

He wonders if dying will feel the same way.

──────

Holt presses a dirty fingertip to the half-healed black eye on his face as he sits in the dirt, wincing at the way a wave of pain bursts out from the source and settles into the roots of his skin. He'd known BamBam could throw a punch, but it'd been years since he'd been on the receiving end of one and the impact site on the side of his face sits pretty as a reminder. Every so often he touches the side of his face to make sure its still there, or maybe to make sure he's still here, or maybe to make sure where he's sitting and what he's done and what he's about to do isn't just some cracked out fabrication Ryder had spit out around a late-night fire, a story spurred on by a puff a puff and a pass.

The pain subsides, but the realization never does. It's real, it's all so fucking real.

He can tell by the way the dampness roots itself in the folds of his toga, mud and soil caked between his toes and fingertips as he drags a hand mindlessly through it, counting the specks of dust that fall through the ceiling above and into the god rays of light, floating softly towards the darkness of the shadows, the only things gentle about a place like this. 

There's an eternity of waiting in his own coffin, his skin caked with dirt and sins before the sound of rust and abandon comes to life, the cage suddenly dropping through the ceiling and hitting the floors with a metallic thud. Holt remains motionless, only for a moment, a last-ditch effort to tempt whatever part of fate he thinks might want to see him live, but the sounds of figures in white shuffling behind him and gun barrels raised tell him everything he needs to know about what is in store for him.

With all the grace of a broken and bruised dead man walking Dart Sickings rises to his feet, takes one step forwards and then two as the soreness shakes from his muscles and settles back into his heart. The last thing he does when he steps foot in the cage is looks out towards the Peacekeeper's, catching a glimpse of his own warped reflection in their helmets, and then settles on the wrinkles of a man far too old to be sending children far too young to their deaths. The man gives him a solemn nod as if to wish him luck.

As if to be sentimental, as if to care.

Holt Sickings responds the only way he knows how: a middle finger on fire stuck out between the cage bars and towards the man, then towards the Peacekeepers. "Fuck yourselves- fuck all of you you fuckin' pieces of **** and ******* and *** *** *******."

The only piece of Dirt Sickings that remains in that underground bunker after the cage rises is a fresh glob of spit, hocked through the bars of the cage at the last moments as he rises into a new coffin, splattered in the dust and the dirt and the echo of a fiery string of expletives.

As if to pay him back, he's met with the sting of sunlight on eyes too used to the ease of the darkness. He raises a hand to block it as if it'll do anything, feels sore muscles groan and beg underneath tissue paper flesh

Dart Sickings has always been a rat, a runner. Now is no different.

The first thing he does when he steps out of the cage is flee towards the nearest wall of the courtyard, fingertips ruffling through the vines and the foliage that tower above him. It takes only seconds for him to curse the ground he stands on, the metal flesh of iron bars scratching against his fingertips.

What's left is a boy dripping venom and vile, expletives cast out towards the void and the void yelling back at him. A hand glides through short hair, a keyring hangs heavy from the waist of his toga, a boy looks out into the world and realizes it's less of an arena and more of a coffin.

His eyes sweep over the crowd, cheers and jeers and desperation for blood looking back at him and only growing louder as he raises the same middle finger he'd thrown at the caretaker, before letting his eyes drop to the girl, friend, ally-turned-enemy who steps out of the cage across from him. Welcome to the fucking reunion.

All out of options and resources, Dirt Sickings finally looks to his District partner and shrugs, letting the venom settle on his lips before spitting it out. "So..."  His gaze shifts, counting the reflection of sunlight on the swords that litter the grass and the table in between them.

"When do we rekindle the friendship?"

[gm bourgeois decadence [aya]]

The 8th Annual Hunger Games starts minutes after names are drawn. I won't take the blame for that, but I'll sure as shit take the credit. I'd've been perfectly happy to watch you get picked apart on the TVs in the window of the electronics shop — at least until Mr. Garcia chased me away for bumming the customers out with all my cackling.

But, yeah, if they were gonna give me the opportunity to wring your fuckin' neck, why wait?

I'll be honest, I don't really remember if I started cursing your dirty-ass name or throwing punches first. Maybe it was both at once. There weren't a lot of thoughts going through my head, mostly just Holt Sickings, you bitch. Oh you goddamn bitch. You motherfucking goddamn —

I don't have to tell you that. You were there. I know you heard me. And even if you didn't catch my drift, you sure as shit caught my left hook. Never see that one coming, do you? Bet you can't now, not with that shiner I gave you.

Do your knuckles hurt too? You threw harder punches when you were twelve. Still, my nose bled for half an hour. I spattered a crimson rorschach test all over the dress whites of that pig that grabbed me when Shotgun Ames got too busy dropping your ass to keep me from hopping back in to go another round. I should thank you for that — that probably counts as the best game of pin the tail on the whitecoat we've ever played — but we both know it's not gonna happen. Call it even for when Death Trap fucked your face up good.

I wore it better, by the way. The busted nose. No contest.

---

I'm not going to lie to you, Dirt Sickings, I couldn't get through this without you. I'd've damn near lost my mind between the reaping and today without the dream of bashing your head in with a metal pipe to get me through it. You don't have a brain, by the way — your empty-ass head caves like a jack-o-lantern. Just thought you should know.

A sword will do the trick, too, I guess. You're busy with the scenery; I study the hardware. I pick one up off the table, studying the metal — carbon steel, about the length of my forearm, sharp and delicate. Seems fancy, doesn't it? You're Shear Hill trash as much as me; if they wanted this to look good, they should've given us some rebar — don't you think? I don't know what the fuck I'm doing with this thing. Stabbing can't be that hard.

"So..." You give up with the hedges the minute I test them with my sword. Some twigs and leaves drop to the ground, so I think about what kind of fucked-up giraffe topiary I could make with this thing. My blade finds metal — I guess that's what you found, too. "When do we rekindle the friendship?"

"Steal enough parts for me to build a time machine," I suggest, glowering. My stomach growls. Seeing you at the other side of the cage — our twin buzzcuts and twin togas, your black eye and my nose crooked to match yours — for the first time I consider that I might be hungrier for bread than blood.

Jerking a thumb towards the hedge walls, I start asking the real questions. "Can you believe you're gonna die in fucking Highland?" It's only half a joke — not the easier half, either. "That sucks for you."

[pogue]

It's an hour before Shotgun Adder Ames seeks them out again in the dining room, and by then Dart has sauntered through every hallway and crevice of the train car like a rat in the dead of the night, desperately looking for a way out even though he knows there ain't one. He intentionally sticks away from BamBam's side, both for obvious reasons and for the fact that every time he's near her he's got an instinctual fist curled up at his side, waiting and ready to make her face look like his.

Eye for an eye, y'know. Especially when it benefits him.

Slumped in a chair across from BamBam, counting his sins and trying to carve his name into the wood with a splintered piece of brass he'd pulled off from one of the more rusted railings towards the back of the train. Adder Ames enters with salt and snow in her shadow and Holt feels the room's vibe shift from fire to ice, his eyes drifting up towards her and a scowl on his face. He's got insults for days that line up on his tongue, biting them back if only because the ache in his back still pings with the reminder of the world turning upside down back at the reaping.

"Drink the wine. Calories." 

"You gonna pour us a glass?" Ah fuck, tongue biting is over. Holt spits the words out on instinct rather than intelligence, wallows in the silence for a moment before it bites back at him with discomfort and an icy glare from Adder and, well, BamBam looks like she has for the past two hours: pissed. 

There's a pile of cheap aluminum building up when Adder speaks again, fingers with dirt under the nails peeling off the top of a wine bottle that cost more than his life. "Be mindful of the cameras." and Dirt has to stifle back a laugh, or at least, he would have tried to if it hadn't already slipped through his lips, gaze intent on the bottle as she continues. 

"Try not to give them anything else to work with." Wine greets his lips, savor and swallow. "Or what?" He asks, leaning forward. There's no joke on his lips anymore, no shit-eating grin or smirk to wipe away. "What'll they do, kill us?" 

There's irony in there, he settles in its shadow before speaking again. "You tellin' us this to help, or to make your job easier, Ames?" He's seen the footage and watched the bloodbath Adder clawed her way out of, knife to neck and blood to body. There's a spot of wine that rests on his thumb as he jerks it towards BamBam, flying and spattering against the table, staining it red.

"Either way, tell it to the firecracker over there. She started it." 

──────

"Steal enough parts for me to build a time machine."

"Then I'd get us both outta here." Holt holds his hands up like he's praying to an empty church, preaching to a false choir, like what he's done hasn't already stamped out any camaraderie laced between them. There's a smirk on his face but it's hollow, instinctual almost, carved rotten years ago and cemented with a million successful runs and poisoned with a single bad one. Holt takes a step forwards towards his own demise and feels his lungs shake inside his chest, outward composure betrayed by his own body. "Would probably be a lot more successful than Death Trap ever was." BamBam's glare is returned with his own, but he can't help but to feel hollow as he tosses the insult towards the void, looking at his own reflection across the way. Dirt Sickings, bent nose and all, can still feel the electric hum of that bike underneath a seat too thin, rattling bones in the shape of stolen metal a chorus to their own childhood.

It's almost enough to make a boy sentimental. Almost.

Their banter is as real as their bloodlust, two sides of the same shit-covered coin tearing each other down, and Holt knows better than to leave a gal like BamBam unattended with less than ten feet of distance and a weapon in her hand. He'd seen that fucker close the gap between herself and Rusty faster than a fuckin' bullet more times than he could count. Eyes on the prize in the form of a walking corpse, Holt's gaze remains undeterred even as he crouches down and lets his fingertips sweep the grass for the rusted hilt of a sword he'd seen laying next to him. Plastic brushes against his skin, fake luxuries for a fake game with real consequences and real blood, the weight of the sword heavy as he white-knuckles it.

"C'mon now-" He starts, and sniffs the air like it doesn't smell like blood and sulfur, "- some people back home would be honored to die in a place like Highland." Another half-joke, riddled with sarcastic bullet holes. The smirk drops, the venom simmering on his tongue, and Holt looks back towards his former friend with malicious intent. The tip of his sword carves an X into the turf without even realizing it as he speaks, holding eye contact with BamBam like his life depends on it. It does. "Not all of us need to die like Shear Hill shit stains."

He sounds like his Mother.

"Besides," He starts again, a fan of his own damn voice. "I ain't the one dyin' here, Bam." There are memories laced into the shortened name, and he almost course corrects back to where they currently stand, all blood and betrayal. "But even if I do, I'm takin' you down with me." Dart Sickings is good for no promise, but there's metal in his voice that tells the world this is one to keep. He points the sword at her neck and pretends like he's slicing it, X marks the spot, two busted and banged up kids doing their last stupid thing together.

They were always going to be the death of one another, whether back in the slums or here.

"So whaddya say, BamBam?" Foreign weapon in calloused hand, his malnourished body fights the movements. "Should we make this Highland look like Shear Hill?" 

He doesn't wait for her answer, tensed muscles firing off as he takes off towards her.

[Holt attacks BamBam ; sword]

D7BhNn5MNGsword

[8.0]

sword

[gm bourgeois decadence [aya]]

I'm gonna be honest, I didn't pay a scrap of attention between Drink the wine and when you jabbed your thumb at me like an accusation. Too busy trying to decide if I could brain you with one of the bottles before the neighborhood's claim to fame suplexed me. You're still unconcussed, so I'll let you do the math on that one.

Anyway, all I hear in your complaint is the compliment. Yeah. I am a firecracker. And don't you fucking forget it.

"Snitches get stitches, Sickings," I growl. You've got a lot of stitches with your name on them.

---

"Then I'd get us both outta here."

Man, that almost gets me. Is that how it is? In this sci-fi fantasy of yours, we're still friends enough that you wouldn't leave me for dead? I almost give into the instinct to laugh along at your antics, my cheek twitching in betrayal, hinting at a smile and threatening to pull the rest of my face along for the ride. But then I remember: you owe me that, Sickings. You owe me that in the here and now.

And then you have to ruin it — just a little bit — the way that you always do. You keep my girl's name out of your dirty fuckin' mouth. I can practially feel my molars sanding each other smooth as I chew back the impulse to chew you out. Death Trap did nothing wrong. But I'm choosing my battles here, and defending the honor of the baddest set of wheels in District Two isn't the hill I'm here to die on.

"C'mon now — some people back home would be honored to die in a place like Highland."

"Some people are upjumped bootlicker idiots with nothin' but greed between their ears." It's not an honor to die. It's something that just happens. There's nothing noble about your heart bursting while you're sitting on your golden fuckin' toilet seat. I can die like the Shear Hill shitstain I am with just as much integrity.

Can you feel that? I know glaring daggers is just an expression because if it were an actual super power you'd've keeled over with a million holes in you by now, looking like one of those shot-up houses down at the bottom of the hill.

"Besides," you're so fucking sure of yourself — the longer you talk, the less it sounds like bluster, "I ain't the one dyin' here, Bam." I snort. That's a little too familiar for where we are these days — don't you think, Dirt? "But even if I do, I'm takin' you down with me."

I can see what you're doing. The monologue. The sword thing. I know what you're thinking. Is that your strategy? Make me remember all those spring afternoons we spent chasing each other up and down Quarry, trying to crack each other over the head with sticks, scrambling up those short little trees with the white flowers that smell like — how did you describe them? A radish with B.O.? A dead trout all dressed up for a night on the town? Get me feeling soft enough to go easy on you?

It works. I'm embarrassed to admit that, but it does. I should've seen that lunge coming a mile away.

When your rusty sword carves a red rift down my leg, it feels like — never mind. Don't want to spoil it. You can get the idea from the ragged wheeze, the one that sounds halfway between unravelling laughter and an engine backfiring.

"Like Shear Hill?" I echo, putting some test weight on my wounded leg. Hurts like a bitch. "Yeah. Gonna make you look like that stop sign across from Granny Coyote's house." That smile from earlier wrenches itself up half my face. "Bright red and full of holes."

Fuck it, if we're feeling sentimental, let's go back for some games.

Tag. I'm it.

[Bambam attacks Holt, sword]

nmVboSYR0hsword

[1184 -- Deep Gash on Forehead -- 9.0 damage]

sword

[pogue]

"Snitches get stitches, Sickings."

His attention rips itself from Adder and back towards the girl across the table, bottle of wine in his hand and swig still in his mouth. He washes it around like he's cleaning his teeth, as if red would be better than the yellow stains that rot the inside of his mouth.

What's that saying, an eye for an eye?

Shear Hill residents are ready to prove it true at a moment's notice, edit be damned. All curled fists and thrown punches, acting before speaking and dead morality. He knows it well, BamBam does too. Holt leans forward on his palms now, seriousness washing over the shit-eating grin that once adorned his face and stares daggers into BamBam's eyes.

"Sometimes the stitches are worth it." 

──────

Yep, definitely eye for eye.

The blade of his sword carves a smile into BamBamb's leg and he watches her suffer like it feels good, brown eyes catching the sheet of blood that trails from the wound and blankets her leg in a warmth that quickly runs cold. 

He's seen blood before, enough broken bones and metallic gashes in skin back in Shear Hill to last a lifetime and then some, but he's never seen so much of it drawn from the tip of his own pen, never seen it pour like a waterfall from someone's leg, never been the one so responsible for it.

He's killed a friendship, but never a friend. 

Something sinister claws at his heartstrings in the name of entertainment, eyes wide shut and focus drawn and BamBam returns a scarlet promise with one of her own, blade swung wildly and it's all he can do but swing himself backwards in a desperate attempt to dodge the blow. He stumbles on his own feet for the first time in his life, and for the second time in his life he collapses onto his back, this time without Adder's help.

He thinks the dodge works at first, because pain and shock is cruel like that. It's only when he feels warmth pool on the left side of his forehead that fire streaks underneath his skin and he gasps, instinctively presses a palm to the newfound wound before pulling it away all scarlet and sin. 

He's quick to climb to his feet, glaring daggers back at BamBam for the first time in their little scuffle, uncertainty balancing on the edges of his vision along with the black spots. A fight like this is far from over, will never end even if one of them collapses into the dust and the dirt. 

Two has a way of carrying things like that, burdens for burdens, tearing itself apart from the inside out. 

"Hey now, keep Granny outta this." His face is coated with a mask of its own now, tangible red pouring in a sheet across his features, emphasizing the way his face contorts in its hunger and starvation, the way he bites his lip to try and feel anything other than the burning that roars from the gash in his forehead. "She's only got one good eye but she's a hell'of'a shot- she could take you down now all the way from Two." 

Every part of him hopes she does, set the sights and pull the trigger, if not on one of them then on the audience member that loudly screams to them about who Granny Coyote is. Inside joke, outside wounds.

"This the stitches you were talkin' about?" Dart calls towards her, ragged breath and heaving lungs like a mirror to BamBam's crooked stance. They've done everything and nothing together, games of tag on rusted out trailers until she'd fallen through. He'd laughed until he'd seen the muscles and bone of a cut on her arm, then it was every expletive in the book spat out at once. "Still worth it." He croaks.

And it is, they are, all of this is. At least, that's what he convinces himself as he stands in the shadow of an open coffin. There's a family back home in Two that will continue to live even with him gone, who would know that he stepped up and got himself killed for it, who would benefit from the plight of others and claw their way towards better things if only fate would let them. Cause that's what a place like Shear Hill does to a person like him, like them. Takes you blind and points you towards the most dangerous path, turns friendships to rivalries and bodies to blood.

Like then, like now.

"I'd do it again- if I had to." He speaks after what feels like an eternity on his own, and he knows she knows what he's talking about. More loyalty to his own last name than the memories they'd shared, better off barely alive than solidly dead. But even with the sheet of blood over his face he can feel his eyes waver, blinking back the way there's guilt and sentimentality that cuts deeper than whatever wound BamBam could lay on him. I had to. Cause that's what Two does even better, turns all your closest allies against you and then forces you to remember them forever. And then it forces you to kill them.

*To speed things along, we'll be attacking twice per round from now on


[Holt attacks BamBam ; sword]

CbNRVgh4LHsword

[3.5]


sword

[0]

sword·sword

[gm bourgeois decadence [aya]]

"We'll see."

---

You have to know I'm feeling some type of way, otherwise I wouldn't've let you get back up like that. Even now I can't tell if I hit you with some kind of botched warning cut, or if I aimed for your neck and went too damn high. You look a fucking mess, by the way, face painted red like — can you imagine if we grew up during the era of the food fight? In our days, no one was willing to waste so much as a packet of ketchup — Ripred knows I had enough condiment dinners to last a lifetime — just like... relish: what a delicacy — but can you imagine? At least I know what you'd've looked like if I could've dumped a pot of tomato soup on your head. Just like this.

I hope it hurts.

I hope it doesn't.

"Granny Coyote could take all of us," I hedge. She could. You'd be an absolute dipshit to doubt Shear Hill's front porch sniper. Older 'n dirt and she can still shoot the legs off a flea from a block away, so long as it's on her good side. Maybe — maybe — Shotgun Ames could take her in a fair fight, but it's Shear Hill — no one's fighting fair. If you do, then you're a sucker and a rube and you deserve what's coming to you.

"This the stitches you were talkin' about?" You're all bluster all the time, and now's no exception, sounding about as wore out as I feel when you double down on your bullshit. "Still worth it."

Is it, though? I don't believe you, Holt Sickings. I don't believe you one bit. I don't know you these days like I knew you before, but I know you better than that. I don't know what you got from selling me out, but didn't we wind up here together in the end anyway? I can tell you that you're gonna die here — and I'm right — and you can tell me the same — and, much as I hate to admit it, odds are that so are you. So really, what did you win? Your asshole mother isn't as disappointed as she used to be back when you'd let me stop in for a glass of water? Your dickhead brother gets to use his last remaining brain cell to examine whatever mechanism is buried down the barrel of a gun? Someone named Sickings gets to stand here in a hundred years and get compared to your punk ass right before they're shredded to ribbons too?

Great fucking prize. I know I'm trash but still, it sucks to be worth so little. Less than your dignity, which you'd sell for a dime.

I probably should tell you that, but we both know it's too little too late. You keep on thinking you did the right thing — maybe you'll feel less fucked up about it when you die in the grass here. (And yeah. If you want a hand to hold while you're bleeding out, I'm not gonna deny you that. You know me. Sentimental.)

"I'd do it again — if I had to."

Bullshit you would, I want to say, because I really don't think so. At least I don't want to believe it. Maybe it's cause you're a runner before a fighter — maybe cause you've got a coward's heart — or maybe cause you're pragmatic as any Shear Hill kid and you know that selling me out didn't earn you diddly squat. Maybe the way you can't get your sword up again. I wave one glancing blow off of with my arm; the other is like sidling down the alley on the left of Granny Coyote's — generously, I can only assume you're aiming for the bushes.

I grit my teeth and try to lie, but I can't. "Yeah. I know you would." I know Calder and your Ma and them all matter to you, even though there really isn't a level I understand it on. This part's the truth, though: "That shit fucking hurts, Dart."

Because you could've —

"You could've —"

You should've fuckin' talked to me. Oh, I'd've been madder than a hornets nest about it but — you and me go way back, you know? It's not always everyone for themselves, y'know, it's —

I look out for my people, okay? You shoulda just fucking asked. If you were in a tight spot. I could've helped. I know I've never been the thinker of any operation, but — I dunno. We could've rubbed our brain cells together — all three of 'em that we've got between us — and I could've helped. Right? I bet I could've if you gave me the chance.

Glowering, I trail off. "— doesn't fucking matter now, does it."

Hunger Games, right? I'd be an idiot to break off this blood feud prematurely. I don't want to like you again. That shit's gonna get me killed.

The thing is — and we both know it — "You didn't have to."

[Bambam attacks Holt, sword - 2x roll for time efficiency]

J8w701PrFgsword

[1003 -- Shallow Cut on Left Shoulder -- 3.5 damage]

sword

[1012 -- Deep Gash on Back of Head -- 9.0 damage]

sword·sword

[pogue]

"Yeah, I know you would."

It punctuates the end of his pitiful attacks towards her, better off a runner than a fighter and the nicks and bumps and nothing more to prove it. Holt heaves a painful breath, fighting back the instinct to bring his hand up to the wound on his forehead and coat it with stale blood. He's just about to move in for another strike, bouncing on unstable legs, when BamBam speaks truth into their own little void. "That shit fuckin' hurts, Dart." 

He stops in his tracks, three feet under already, and stares towards her like he has anything else to do. It's the first time they've acknowledged it in anything other than fire and brimstone, curled fist and sharpened sword. Pain, the inner kind, plucking at heartstrings and rattling against bruised bones. The kind you swallow down and shut up about back home, the kind you never speak of. 

"You could've-"

Told her about it. Taken the fall himself. Fought back. Never done it in the first place.

But he never had those option, did he?

Shoulda, Coulda, and Woulda fuckin' run shit in District Two. There's not a person he's met back in Shear Hill who wasn't forced to live with their own regrets, who wasn't cannibalized by 'em every single day. When he was a kid he used to think it'd be different, that cutthroat behavior and survival amongst all would mean anything more and nothing less. Now he stands in a blood-red toga, dripping in his own mortality, realizing he was wrong.

"You didn't have to."

And that's the cruelness of it, that they'll never be able to see black eye to black eye on the way their worlds turn, on what their worlds mean. BamBam's heart is cased in rusted metal and the roar of an engine because that's all she's ever had, that's all he ever gave her. He knows his is different, that he his family ties exist as a noose around his neck, that a last name bends and breaks itself just to keep alive. That for his family, whatever the word means now, it was worth it.

Because he had to. He had to.

He doesn't know anymore.

"I had to, for-" my family is what he means to sew onto the edge of the sentence, uncertainty and fear now threaded into his voice, but there's sense that's knocked into him in the form of metal and blood, the blade of BamBam's sword slamming awkwardly into the right side of his head before trailing down the side of his body, paper cut left in the wake of an explosion. Words, no, sounds escape from his lips like he meant to finish the sentence, garbled up nonsense more encased in spit and bile and blood than anything else. He stumbles backwards, until his body collides with the grass and the gates and it takes all his strength to keep hold of the sword, fire and brimstone exploding from the newfound wound on his skull.

Death knocks in threes, and with each one there's a pulse of all encompassing-pain that shoots through his entire body. He wonders, for a moment as he stumbles away from BamBam, if his own brain is showing, if that meant that despite all of his stupidity and all of his actions he had a brain after all.

His vision dances with the black spots that now pull in from the edges, the green of the turf muddied with his own mortality and the way blood still drips from his forehead into his eyesight, staining his vision with some fucked up rose-tinted glasses. Dart Sickings, fastest kid in Two can only stumble away from the girl he faces now, because everything hurts and the world is eating itself alive and then coming for him next, severed friendships and severed heartstrings and all.

Hold steady, his fist wraps around one of the branches of the garden wall until it feels like his body no longer will collapse into the fake grass below him, until he can gather the ragged breaths that seem to claw their way out of his own throat and speak clearly against the blood loss. "I used to-" He blinks a few times, because with each word there's a new twinge of pain that cracks into the side of his skull, "The bushes behind my house- you used to sleep there." It's past the point of useless jabs and heartfelt blades, because his own mind is bending at the seams and he doesn't know if he knows what's real anymore, but he knows what he wishes was. There's a memory, foggy and cloudy but still there, of flattened bushes and his Mother's sighs of disapproval. She'd thought it was an animal, and she was only slightly off. He knew better.

"I put food out, in the brush. One time." And it's the truth, told plainly and simply like it even matters. A little bandana of crackers and a single shred of the meat they'd had, all they could afford, none of what they could give away. 

Ma had snatched it right back when she'd seen it, a scolding and a slap on the back of the head that he coulda sworn was the most painful thing he'd experienced. Now he knows otherwise. "It never got to you." He thinks there should be a sorry somewhere in there, spoken into existence just to mark his tombstone, but Holt Sickings is Shear Hill born and raised and sorry doesn't exist in those streets, in these veins. 

"Calder was gonna take the heat." He jumps now into wherever the blood takes him, men in white and loaded guns and a family name on the line. "Bad run." He puts simply, his gaze drifting from counting the black spots on the ground and up to BamBam again, wavering and forlorn. 

Drawing unspoken dots that only a person who knows him, a person like BamBam could connect. 

"Family."  

[Holt attacks BamBam ; sword]

x6Eiu6gbtWsword

[3.5]


sword

[8.0]

sword·sword

[gm bourgeois decadence [aya]]

"I had to, for-" I don't think I want to hear it. I don't think you want to say it. I don't think I've ever cut someone off so literally before.

I'm telling you, swords were a mistake. Maybe it's counterintuitive if you're some kind of bloodthirsty Capitol dipshit with no imagination, but this would've been a lot cleaner if they just gave me a tire iron or something. A crowbar. A pipe wrench. If it's heavy and I can swing it, I'm not picky.

You don't deserve this botched execution.

Feels a little fucked up, seeing you crash into the gate like that, a reminder of just how stuck we are. Dart Sickings doesn't get trapped — that's one of those little facts of life I'm used to taking for granted, like fighting possums every trash day, like shit rolling downhill, like gravity. Reality doesn't play by the rules here, I guess.

"The bushes behind my house —" My empty stomach fills itself with lead before you finish the sentence, freefall plummeting like a stone kicked over the edge of the world and into Rockfall Quarry, same way it always does the second I know I'm busted. "— you used to sleep there."

I wire my own jaw shut out of habit — I don't fucking talk to cops — but I know my burning cheeks snitch on me anyway. I never thought you found me out.

It's stupid that I'm standing over you with a sword and still feeling a little embarrassed about that. I guess, it's just — I feel stupid for feeling safe there. I feel stupider because I know that I was. I feel stupider for resenting the way that changed.

"I put food out, in the brush. One time." You could be lying — I know you know that's gonna get me before you even say it — and I know I'm doing a bad job of biting back my reaction. I worry at my lip until I taste blood. Doesn't take long.

I'm not gonna say thank you, by the way, so don't hold your breath for it.

"It never got to you."

No, of course it wouldn't. Not with the possums or the geese or your Ma on the prowl. You'd have to be an idiot to leave food out in District Two and expect it to wait around for its intended recipient. You'd have to be a big, softhearted idiot.

We both grew up since then. Shear Hill isn't a gentle teacher and its lessons come at everyone real quick — you wised up and I did too. Want to hear another secret? Sometimes I still miss that idiot.

Then I remember you've just invented new ways to be stupid. "Calder was gonna take the heat. Bad run." Of course he was. It was probably his fucking fault. Then, like it's a real explanation and not some bullshit copout lie you've been trying hypnotize yourself into believing, you have the nerve to tell me it's cause "Family."

Fuck family.

Maybe it's different when they're not dead, or when they're only gigantic dickbags 80% of the time instead of all of it. What do I know? Maybe your Ma was only a huge uptight asshole whenever I was around, or only in the interesting stories from home you shared. Maybe your Pa didn't expect everything from you for next to nil in return. Am I reading into things too much? Maybe I am. But you know what I think, Holt?

That's not fucking family.

Family is —

It's when —

You know —

Fuck.

It's when a couple of factory workers commit tax fraud together and come to an agreement with a street urchin to pass their audit. (Pour one out for Auntie Beastmode, she was a real one.)

It's when you steal back that tarp to go over the sandbags bricking up the living room wall even though you it isn't your house and you live in the basement anyway.

It's when you let someone make a getaway on the back of your bike, even when he makes the muffler drag on the ground so you'll have to replace it later, and even though everyone knows exactly who that death trap belongs to.

It's when you trust someone enough not to change the padlock.

It's when you smuggle out the fluffiest blanket this side of Highland to soften the sleeping cardboard we pulled from that dumpster.

It's when you leave — what was it gonna be? A cheese sandwich? Stale cornbread? Crackers and jelly? A hardboiled egg? — out in the bushes behind your house cause you know I'm fucking famished and still too proud to ask.

It's when you take care of each other on purpose. Not as an afterthought. Not as an obligation.

Fuck.

You.

"I'm not your fucking family?" I don't know why I ask — I don't think I want to hear that, either.

[Bambam attacks Holt, sword - 2x roll for time efficiency]

Rbk9jP51uGsword

[1019 -- Stabbed in Chest -- 9.5 damage]

sword

[1189 -- Shallow Cut on Forehead -- 4.5 damage]

sword·sword

[pogue]

It's not enough, really, it never was.

His sword carves a sin into BamBam's body, and even amongst all the red and black he's still waiting for it to feel anything like he thought it would. Anger and malice, iron and ire, putting an end to a squabble he started in the first place. He's a hypocrite like that, always has been, always will be. For what's left of him, at least.

Dirt Sickings would sell his own soul if it meant someone with the same last name as him could breathe a few more breaths. 

And it's not about selflessness either, no, his angel wings were tarred and feathered and burnt from his back ages ago. It's about survival, rebuilding, etched into a family line after the War and written in the folds of their scarring skin, branded into the minds of boys who would never know better. Survival, not of the fittest or of the fairest but of the ones who were willing to climb up the ladder and saw it off for the one's below, stairway to hell and all.

"I'm not your fucking family?"

It's a battle cry, punctuated by the metal threaded between BamBam's dirty fingers piercing through his chest. That pain he feels immediately, a breath caught in fire caught in his own throat, a gasp and a stumble and collapsing onto his knees. Looking up at the sun, at the people cheering for his death, at the world he would never see, even as he stops himself from collapsing with a shaking hand slammed into the grass below. 

Something is closing in now, the swing of a scythe, death knockin' on his door. Nowhere to run, the only place to hide being six feet under.

He sits in the shadow of BamBam's swaying form, catching the way her blood splatters to the ground below and following the trail of burdens he's left on her body, gashes and cuts not deep enough to kill. It's like looking in a mirror and not recognizing the person staring back, drawing the line at a friendship and doing everything in your power to make sure it goes no further, to make sure it burns. All of it.

Because family is blood and not water, at least that's what he's been told all his life. 

It's three knocks on the door to let Ma know it's you at half past three in the morning and not some men in white, secret handshakes and secret burdens.

It's taking the heat for the latest of Calder's antics and troublemaking, too caught up in the bad for his own good and too stupid to realize it, brotherly love in the form of forehead flicks and punches so hard they leave bruises.

It's stealing a shiny new piece for Pa and the typewriter the family has had since before the war, broken and blitzed beyond repair. Every year he swears he'll fix it, once Summer comes around, y'know? He never does. Ma calls the parts his collection.

It's making this entire thing a whole lot fucking harder than it has to be. 

The turf on his knees claws at loose flesh like it means to claim him, like his corpse would do well on grass just as fake as he is, buried six feet under and screaming for an audience of no one. His lungs fight inside hollow chest, breaths so ragged they come out like pained wheezes and slip in between the dead space between the two of 'em, quickly lost to the roars of the crowd and the shouts of finish it! from the nearby audience members.

Holt, Dart, Dirt Sickings and every other nickname that he's ever worn spills out from him now, cascading down his head and his chest and his legs like some crimson set of armor, a robe for the damned, a red noose for a body that's already hanging. His eyes, weak and wavering, look up at the girl who rooted herself in his soft spot and never let go, a million Summers spent sweating and swearing until the sun went down, trust and glory and knowing no better than to trust a name like Sickings. 

She never changed the padlock.
He knew she wouldn't.

She doesn't show him mercy.
He knew she wouldn't. He's happier for it.

He's glad to know her like that, even now.
Even after everything he did.

There's that shit-eating grin he could never seem to get rid of, carved on his face in crimson and sorrow, flashes of guilt and anger and disgust and regret and everything in between rooted in the gasps of pain.

He speaks, he means it, he doesn't-
He doesn't know.

"I wish you were, Bam."  

[Holt attacks BamBam ; sword]

PcvN2ut6kTsword

[0]


sword

[3.5]

sword·sword

[gm bourgeois decadence [aya]]

I'm not gonna tell you I didn't mean it. I did, Holt. I swear I was trying to stick you clean through the heart. Clean. Swinging around this upjumped toothpick is nothing like trying to brain you with a baseball bat, and I wasn't trying to make more of a mess of things.

"I wish you were, Bam."

Don't say shit like that. Don't say that like you mean it. C'mon. What am I supposed to do with that now? Where do I put that?

I shake my head, slowly, watching you struggle to go down swinging. Look at you. You should be darting on outta here. Not trying to tag the only thing you can reach — my leg, again — just cause what else is there? Locked in this Highland fucking garden, no other options but to fight to the death, right?

The way you collapse into me — I get that it's just cause I was there. You'd've tipped over into the grass if I took a step back, and that would've been the smart thing to do, but I — I wasn't gonna drop you, okay? I've got you by the — do togas have collars? I've got you by that.

You remember that summer at the quarry lake when Rusty swam smack into that submerged pylon and knocked himself out? I thought for sure that fucker was gonna drown. I was the closest and you know back then I didn't have the stamina to keep a kid twice my size above water on my own. We got him to the shore, tag-team style, and until just now I forgot what it feels like to grab a fistful of shirt and try to keep deadweight from sinking under.

The right thing to do is put you out of your misery — I know that — but I can't unclench my fist to let you down. Can't do it. Guess your Ma was right — I'm no good.

Instead I kneel with you. Your blood's on my toga, on my hands, on both our faces, and under my fingernails like some kind of messed-up manicure — Shear Hill tips, all the rage in the Capitol for the fall, can you fuckin' imagine? Your chest heaves like that time Death Trap got water in her engine — shuddering and hitching, it's a death rattle, and stealing me a new oil filter isn't gonna do the trick today.

Wish I could look you in the eye, but anywhere else feels safer, so I grit my teeth and glare daggers into the audience instead. Still thinking about how you wish I was your family.

One thing you should know about me, Dart Sickings: "I am." Dumbass. I've always been.

I ease you down into the grass, onto the sword that I hope you've forgotten is still lying there.

[Bambam (nominally) attacks Holt, sword - 2x roll for time efficiency]

UVDiLRRCKOsword

[1073 -- Miss - 0.0 damage]

sword

[1159 -- Shallow Cut on Left Thigh -- 3.5 damage]

sword·sword