Round One: Greer vs Romeo (D4)

[eulalie blake 1a 🍒 tris]

Greer is a girl unfolding — and cruel as he knows it is, Romeo watches her as she does so. He robs her of the decency of simply being a prisoner begging for the right to continue living within a society that will always want to crush her beneath its heel. All for a crime she had no hand in committing.

Now, all he wishes for the sum of her existence is to be dead.

A memory; the foreshadowing of a night terror.

He cannot risk the opportunity for her to go for the kill. She digs her feet into the earth, wills herself to remain, and he stands there gazing at her — focusing on the sharp ache that has flared across his back. In the process of dodging, her blade cut deep into him. And now all he can feel is the fire of that pain consuming him.

When he thinks of what all he would be willing to do to go home, carrying out this particular task seems like the lightest of them. They are strangers, able to grow briefly familiar before being asked to slaughter one another. They're both rational enough to understand that it is only human nature to want to survive. If her blood is the key, then he will soak in it for all of Panem to see.

"I'm not a quitter, Romeo. I'm not going to just toss my weapon and run." He knows this intimately, hawk eyed and quiet as they drift in and out of each other's space. Until he drives his rapier through her soul, something within Greer will always command her to stand. Ever the shark, ever the calamity — he wonders for a moment if all that running had been from himself. Trying to get away from the inevitable detonation.

"We're both too smart to pretend that running was ever an option." She burns like a star collapsing, so bright in what might be her final moments, ready to sear her suffering into the weave of the universe for millennia to come. Always, forever, some aura of Greer will remain. She has fought for that much. And so long as he is the one to walk through the exit door, she can have whatever afterlife she pleases.

"You're going to have to be the one to do it." Again, he has known this. Ever since the dance began, and now to this point. He side steps her swing, the tip of her sword scratching at his exposed thigh. To survive, Romeo Wilder must kill Greer Halstead. There can be no other outcome. "And I want you to look me in the eyes when you do." He approaches, arm drawn back, townsman about to cast the first stone at the witch. The rage is a red sea that churns inside his mind, so safely hidden behind his calm expression.

If this is a trick, a lure to draw him close and leave him vulnerable, then damn the consequences. If she has a death wish, then think of him as the reaper. "Is that how you want to go?" He's close now, darkness peering into darkness, silver blade glinting in the shadows. He is playing a trick of his own. "Watching yourself die in my eyes?"

The serpent strikes, and it does not let go.

romeo attacks greer | rapier

7|mq_aV0hhsword
stabbed in neck, 40

sword