1,000,002 | bad influence (day 4)

[LAIN 🍽 1M | Mattio]

U L Y S S E S.

Fuck, dude.

I stay away from the boys as they cluster around Caspian. Who truly knows what to do in this situation? Get close and join the mourning or keep your distance. It feels impossible to do the right thing. Say you're sorry. Cry. Tell a story. When Mom and Dad died in the accident, my grandparents expected me to just know how to act. What do you mean, of course you should know how to look at someone you love in an open casket! No. It's never that simple. After the fight dispersed, it was Torian who ran to Caspian's body, and it was Jayson who joined him with the other half. Grandma clung to Mom and Dad after everything that happened. Mourning was drawn up like a scale for her, and it wasn't okay to beat her in the competition. A sick habit in the sight of death, I hold back by the trees. Surely, they don't think the same way as Grandma, but I'd just rather not chance it.

This part of the arena looks like a warzone, even in the darkness of night. Half-stripped bark from the tree trunks blow in the metallic wind. Blood is everywhere. From my ankles down, I'm drenched in puddles sprinting back and forth from one fight to the other. Others are much, much worse. Caspian and Lara. Perry, Jayson, and Torian. Fuck, my boys don't look great. A couple more moments of fighting and they might be on the ground too. Larissa took Perry to the skies again, Bellamy in tow. There's not going to be any more fighting today. And if there is, it'll be uncomfortable for the people who aren't on my side.

Arms folded, I look over to Jayson and Torian again, glimpses of a still Caspian between the boys' movements.

A tear slides down, one so slim that I hope the darkness can't catch it. Why him? Caspian… you could see in his eyes that he was already shattered into a million pieces. Why'd they have to tear him in two? Why'd they have to break him again?

Table by Rave

[Python]

Torian had never lost anybody before. His parents were alive, his peers all healthy and taken care of, and he didn't have any pets. Losing someone permanently, even after only knowing him for a few weeks, was new territory. Knowing it was going to happen didn't help, because nobody ever knew how it was going to happen. Torian had assumed he would be the first to go, and Caspian would be the one in this position, staring down at his corpse. Torian wanted to stay alive, but he hated that the nightmare had been reversed. Even worse, he couldn't look Caspian in the eyes, not without freaking himself out. That image was seared into his brain like a permanent brand.

This is what real trauma is.

He stood next to Caspian's body after everybody left. A hand was pressed into his side because it was bleeding severely, yet he didn't have the energy to reach into his bag. The person responsible for that wound was laying somewhere nearby, and Torian was pretending it had nothing to do with him.

I killed somebody.

Nope, no, we're not doing this right now. Pretend she isn't there.

The only solace was that Caspian died painlessly. Severing the spine was one of the quickest imaginable deaths, allowing Caspian to simply leave this world without having the burden of thinking about it. A good thing, because Caspian probably wouldn't take it well.

He said nothing to Jayson and Ulysses, waiting for their orders instead. There was nothing he could say or do to fix this situation. He didn't know how to process emotions like this. All he knew was what he read from textbooks, and those empty words on paper didn't exactly guide him in this moment, when he was feeling so hard he could implode.

The question is: now what?

[lance]

J A Y S O N

You'd always wondered how it'd felt, losing someone you'd cared for. Yes, you're fully aware of the many assorted relatives you'd lost to the Games in the past, yes that statement still stands true. Something something good old side effect of your great great grandparents reproducing like rabbits and spreading your blood and your name across what had to have been a quarter of District Eight. You'd felt nothing when watching your own flesh and bone spill onto whatever assorted arena the Games happened aside from a vague, minor interest. They may have been your family, but they sure as hell weren't your loved ones.

Well, you weren't wondering now. Caspian may not have been your family, nor was he loved by you, too short was your time together to facilitate such an intense bond.

And yet.

And yet.

Human emotions have this funny habit of not conforming to the binds logic tries to put over them. Here was this boy who you'd known for all but a matter of weeks. A month ago, you had no idea who the fuck Caspian Einfallen was. And now, he was the first person whose passing made your throat close up and your eyes burn, made your voice crack and your heart ache.

All because you couldn't help but treat this entire thing like the game it claimed to be. Flirting with death was nothing new for you; actually seeing it head-on, seeing the consequences you claimed you were so fond of toying with smack you full in the face, and, well...

Torian said Caspian didn't suffer. That breaking the spine takes away the ability to feel or something like that. At worst, his consciousness was still there when his head fell from his shoulders; no matter what, it was gone by the time it landed in your hands.

And in your hands it remained. You'd carried it back, of course. Torian had grabbed his body, so it only made sense. Not that the dead give a shit about what happen to them, but, well, it didn't feel right to leave him in two pieces. At the very least, when the Capitol hovercraft comes to pick him back up, they'll have an easier time of it.

Yet, stubbornly, you refuse to place it. It's a shell of what Caspian once was, ghostly white and cold now that his lifeblood has left his body, yet it's still a physical tether to one of the boys whose fate you'd tied yourself to. Logically, you knew that this had to happen for you to return home.

(And yet maybe emotionally, you'd hoped to take his spot for yourself, knowing that by going first, this exact pain might have been avoided.)

You stand there over his body, his head in your hands, until the whir of the hovercraft sounds in the distance. And fuck, you can see why everyone calls it a heartbreak now, because what is this feeling inside you if it isn't your very chest splitting open in agony?

Hot tears forge twin rivers down your cheeks as, for the last time, you look upon Caspian's angular features. Slowly, carefully, because fuck what the dead think, you're alive and you care enough to be gentle, you touch his forehead to yours. Then, a ghost of a kiss, warm lips against cold, a reminder of what could have been, had you been a little less patient.

(Or a little more skilled.)

Then you place his head next to his body, and watch as he's carried away to parts unknown.

"Goodnight, Caspian," you whisper to the stars after it's gone. "Hope I don't see you anytime soon."

Then, you turn towards your two remaining boys. Torian, young yet impossibly strong. Ulysses, the third side of a triangle you'd discovered too late had three sides.

"I'll be back," you murmur, just loud enough to hear yet no louder still, for you do not trust your voice to rise any higher for fear of breaking.

Then you mount your gryphon and take to the stars, where Caspian now belongs.

elegant