claw you when you're down :: axyl / hugo

[pogue]

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Axyl wears his pride like a badge of honor and his stupidity like a cloak of invisibility, pulling at the seams of his own sanity as they trudge on and away from the bloodbath. He can't stand to look back at the cabin that looms over the lot of them, its shadow pulling and tugging at his form as he hobbles up and away.

Running from the inevitable, it's all he's ever been good for.

And look at him now, broken knee and swollen heart, the leftover remnants of a black eye and bruised bone sticking deformed underneath his skin. Hit dogs holler and Axyl Willoughby is no different, a string of expletives laying in his wake, scattered around amongst the snow and the blood droplets jumping from his wounds.

Hugo offers him help once, then twice, then nothing more once he refuses it in silence. Boundaries drawn, boundaries followed, he can respect the decency to not treat him like a maimed animal any more than he's already treating himself, all balled fist and pent up teenage aggression. Hugo's decent like that. Some part of him can't ball up the nerve to admit he needed him back there, probably still does, probably will until he's dead and gone in a few days time.

But there are signs, hidden in the way he spins around on his one good heel when he realizes the darkness has swallowed them whole and split them in two. Misstep and tumble, there are white-knuckles that curl into themselves just to stop the shaking as he wills to steel whatever nerve he's got left. The night comes kicking and screaming, ever forward.

Deepened voice, cleared throat just to stop it from cracking. "Hugo?" He calls, once, twice and a little bit louder.

[Familiar Roll]

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[Attempts to catch a mount]

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[Attempts to repair bone pit generator]

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[alex 🐺]

We crash into each other like two careening planets, two stars intent on supernova before gravity pushes us apart. The blackness engulfs us like a black hole and I squint to see my hand in front of my face, my heart pounding in my ears. We stumble forward, legs drunken and unsure.

It feels like it's been years since my body has been my own, and yet it's only been hours since we awoke for the bloodbath. I tap fingers that are not mine against skin I can hardly sense, feel my chest rise and fall, and wonder if my empty shell would echo if Axyl hit it hard enough. Perhaps we will find out in due time.

My face hurts less now, but my pride is wounded and I know Axyl wants to lash out, an animal caged for years, battered and bruised after mere moments against others. We’ll get our chance though. My bag is heavier than before, loaded with scavenged materials to help us survive the night. 

The familiar warmth and smell of the boy from Six beside me vanishes, and I hear my name echo in his mouth from yards away, my breath daggers in my throat. It sounds good - my name - out of his mouth.

How the fuck had he gotten over there so quickly? How had I moved away from him so quickly?

“Axyl? Axyl! D-don’t move, I’ll find you.”

familiar roll

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mount roll

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1-17·1-2

[pogue]

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"Axyl? Axyl! D- don't move, I'll find you."

But move he does, never been one to listen to directions or listen to consequence. The storm rages on as he moves forward, calling for his ally periodically just to listen to his own shouts get plucked from the air and swallowed whole in the wind. The edges of his mind wander as he trudges forward, running from an inevitability and pretending there's light at the end of the tunnel he's trapped in.

But he's wrong on that account, so hopeless and naive. The only light that catches his eyes and threatens his soul is the flashes of light that arc and bend across the purple of the sky, raw fury laced into the boom of thunder and the crack of lightning. What he sees up there, marked in shadow and bathed in fear carves a chill into his spine and cracks it apart completely. Something sinister, something alien, something deadly flaps its wings in the distance and dive bombs to the ground for a second, rising back up to the skies once more.

"Oh." He manages to stammer out, wrapped in a whisper and falling to the snowy ground he stands upon. Then, something more aligned with what was left of his character, laced with a false sense of sureness.

"Fuck that."

And he's off, but nothing close to fast. He hobbles on his one good leg and winces at the fire that still rages within the other, ghost pains turned real as the brush of the ground trips and stumbles him. He doesn't dare turn to look at the sky once more, can't pour out the name of his ally for fear of it reaching whatever was up there in the sky.

Instead, by unlucky fate alone, something else finds him.

One moment he is hobbling forward and the next there is a tree root laced in his path, sending him stumbling down in a crash of inglorious execution. He hits something sharp and feels a crack, waits for a new wave of pain but feels nothing. Instead, his eyes flutter open with the sound of a sigh pulled in their wake, body shuffling as he pulls himself back up from on his back to sitting on his ass.

Sitting on his ass in a pile of bones. Death and blood still linger on some of the carcasses, scattered around amongst a myriad of items forced to be abandoned- whether by fear or by force. he gulps, swallows and feels only dust root itself in his throat.

Whatever it was up there in the sky had an appetite. He refused to be the next course on the menu.

[Scavenges Bone Pit]

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1-7

[pogue]

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There's a knife in his grasp that he found shoved into the ribcage of something not quite human, his other hand palming the skull of an unfortunate traveler as he scavenges the pit he'd fallen into, ever so wary of what was up there in the sky. With every flash of lightning above he lets his gaze wander for a moment, then two, searching to spot the flapping wings of a beast up there in the sky, begging the fates that it remains there for as long as he needs it to.

Day one of the Games and his gold mine is a pit of bones and blood, the stench wraps around his skin and clings to him like his own misfortunes.

"Guess it's just me and you, pal." He says to his newfound friend, a decision made to stay put like Hugo'd wanted- if only because he probably couldn't get out of the pit on his own with the state of his knee.

"Yeah! We're lookin' a little worse for wear!" Axyl puts on the voice of an actor as he moves the jaw of the skeleton he'd been palming for balance up and down, a mockery of his own situation. Or maybe more a reflection of his own mental state, withering away into the purple fumes that crawl from the sky above. "Yeah, you're real skin and bones, and uh-" He tosses a glance at his newfound friend and sees only the dull yellow of faded bones. "Just bones, I guess."

It's when he moves his hand away from the mouth of the dead that it unhinges completely before cracking off and falling to the bottom of the pit completely. Axyl frowns, shifting his gaze from the skeleton to the unhinged jaw bone laying what feels like a century away. "Fine then." He judges, turning away. "Silent treatment it is."

But it doesn't last long, the cracking of brush and shuffling above and Axyl freezes, a million and one decisions flashing through his mind until he lands on the worst one: freeze. Look up to the sky, then to the noise. "Oh, come on."

Staring lazily at him from the top of the bone pit is a polar bear, black eyes looking at the form of a boy who could be taken down with a single swipe.

[Scavenges Bone Pit]

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