darkness at the heart of it | crass knuckles, day two

[alex 🐺]

We seek refuge in the Mines in the cool light of day, the temperature low enough that the sun barely kisses my skin in warmth. It may be a foolhardy folly that bears sour fruit rather than the comforting taste of safety that we so crave, but the blizzard seems merciless, hellbent on destruction.

If I’m being honest with myself, the things that I heard in the forest and the Fold make me want to know that there’s something hard against my back, even it if is Axyl Willoughby or worse, a piece of stone.

We’ve left Butch at the mouth of the Mines. He grunted at me as his gaze turned towards Mors, who seemed almost excited to accompany us into the darkness. My hand grazes Butch’s side before we leave them, my heart heavy.

As we venture deeper into the Mines, the darkness envelops us like a thick fog, rendering our eyes useless. I can almost feel Axyl's presence beside me, his breaths shallow with anticipation.

"Axyl," I whisper, my voice echoing faintly off the stone walls. "Do you think we're approaching the end? The middle? Something?" The only response is the distant sound of dripping water, a constant reminder of the dampness surrounding us.

Feeling along the walls, my hands brush against the thick cables that snake through the darkness like serpents. The bulbs overhead remain lifeless, casting eerie shadows that dance on the walls. "I hope we ain’t lost," I mutter, more to myself than to Axyl. The thought of being separated in this maze-like expanse sends a shiver down my spine. I quicken my pace, eager to find a haven from the cold that seems to seep into my bones. Mors floats along, almost bored in her demeanor. It's no wonder she feels at home in a place that feels like it could be our tomb. 

My ribcage feels like the wrong size for my lungs, my heart pushing frantically against the bones that sit too close. It was a mistake coming here, I nearly say out loud. My heart pushes blood to a skull and a body full of poison, insistent murmurs of those lost crawling through my ears and never leaving my brain. We carried ourselves from the Cornucopia to here, weighed down by injuries, corpses walking, bloody steps of iron and bone as I fall apart and remake myself with snow and steel.

As I fall away from myself. I hope Axyl will catch me. I grip the scavenged axe tightly. I know Axyl is doing the same with is bat.

A chittering noise grows in the distance, like the tinkling of windchimes, echoing off the walls in a cacophony of eerie whispers, gunshots and cannon blasts as they reverberate. "Do you hear that?" I call out, my voice tinged with unease.

“We aren’t alone, buddy.”

White knuckles crack and beg for a fight. The violence written on my fingers aching to be sated.

[pogue]

"I hope we ain't lost,"

"Ain't lost." Axyl snaps back with a quickness, biting his lip at the way the venom tastes leaving his tongue. He's not much of a morning person, especially a morning spent massaging the cold out from his own digits, grinding teeth just to feel some fiery warmth in the pain. Axyl regrets the shortness as soon as it slips from his lips, doubles back awkwardly and verbally sprints from the idea of confronting it clearly. 

"Don't think we're lost. I haven't seen that before."

He points the end of the bat towards the wall and traces the outline of spray painted lines in the dark. They say nothing and everything at once, a whisper and a warning. The arena responds in anger, chittering sounds out somewhere in the distance greet them and Axyl feels his stomach sink for a moment, straining eyes glancing through the darkness.

Not much of a night person either.

"We aren't alone, buddy." 

His hand tightens around the spiked bat laced within his grip. "Never are." Axyl whispers back, wincing at the way his voice bounces off the walls of the mines and fires back at him. Grit teeth until bloody gums hurt, the arena taunts their every move with bumps fastened into the dirt, taunts their every word by throwing it back with a fraction more venom than anyone could be used to.

He taps the bat against the sides of the walls, the cables greeting the spikes with a rubber thud and a metallic hiss whenever he strikes at the metal braces that hold them afloat. The sound causes the foreign being cradled in the tarp on his back to stir, only for a moment. Damn thing had curled up around his head in the dead of the night and'd had the nerve to get mad at him when he'd woken up thinking Hugo was suffocating him.

Apparently, the end of a bat was a lot less threatening when you looked like a stuffed animal. Even worse, Bennie had taken a liking to the little thing.

His eighteen year old mind can only imagine one thing worse than being a tribute: being a father. And right now, he's both.

Crazy how a bat feels more like home to him than Six ever did, and even crazier that it feels anything close to right when he holds it in his grasp like it was meant to be. Trade of a lifetime and a bloody, done deal. The darkness has a way of pulling bottled emotions back up towards the surface again, a million messages in a bottle floating along and waiting to be shattered. He swallows them back down with what's left of his own spit, taste of iron and ore greeting his spirit.

"Fuck me. Fuck us."

Because he's seen this wall before as they hang a left, spotting the odd spray painted markings on the wall that he'd noticed through the darkness an eternity and a half ago. He sighs, tugs on Hugo's sleeve to get him to stop for a moment and removes the creature from the bag on his back as gently as possible before he lets his back hit the wall, sliding down to the dust and gravel below. "Can we just- hold it for a moment? Retrace the steps?" It's half an excuse that he tosses out into the darkness, dripping with shame and wounded pride. The other half is reality, wincing at the twinge of pain that shoots up his leg as he twists it only slightly the wrong way.

Axyl's spent a lifetime trying to stuff them down until he can't feel anything at all anymore, only to end up in a coffin of his own accord with a knee half-shattered and pride fully broke. He looks up to Hugo, then to his knee and back to the darkness. "You chose some shit company, eh?"

Morning, night. Ain't much of a person at all anymore. More so a burden.

[alex 🐺]

Axyl's words cut through the darkness, sharp and pointed. I can sense his frustration, his discomfort, as he grapples with the cold and the uncertainty of our surroundings.

"We ain't lost," he asserts, though the bite in his tone hints at a deeper unease. I nod, more to myself than to him, trying to shake off the chill that seems to seep into my bones.

I would follow him nearly anywhere. It's a shitty realization, hitting me with the force of a blow to the liver repeatedly (which hurts like a bitch, by the way. You're pissing blood for days.) But with Butch and Mors lacking any sort of skill in speaking, he's the closest thing I have to a wolfpack and he's clearly the alpha. I've taken the role as beta as willingly as putting my head in the mouth of a lion and hoping that it wouldn't bite my face clean off.

His gesture towards the wall, pointing out the spray-painted lines, brings a flicker of hope. They're a guide, a sign that others have passed this way before us.

But the chittering sounds in the distance remind us that we're not alone. We've never been alone. Surely the Gamemakers are watching through darkened eyes in the dark, the grid of stone a camera with sensors buried deep picking up each change in step and tenor of breathing, our biometrics telling a tale of stupidity.

When Axyl suggests retracing our steps, I can sense his weariness, his longing for some semblance of control, like breaking a glass between your fingers just to feel something, even if it's the warmth of blood running down your hands. I nod, offering a reassuring smile, though I'm not sure if he can see it in the darkness.

"Let's take a moment," I say, my voice soft, echoing loudly. "We'll figure this out together."

Fucking hopefully asshole. You're an idiot, Hugo Basterd.

Axyl carefully sets down the tarp-wrapped creature beside him and slumps back against the wall with a heavy sigh. I lean against the wall, certain that if I sit down, I won't be roused back up, the cold seeping through my clothes, the only sound the distant echoes of our breathing. The weight of our situation presses down on us, the uncertainty of our next move hanging in the air like a thick fog. Like gas across a battlefield and we're the idiots without masks.

"We'll figure it out," I repeat, more for my reassurance than for Axyl's benefit.

This is fucking madness, chaos even. Two days in and we're lost like two idiots trying to dig to the center of the earth, our blades blunted and breaking.

But try as I might, I could never be chaos, my bones were not tectonic plates igniting the earth with every shift and every step. Fault lines did not run beneath my skin.

I'm fragile, not seismic. Blood and fire and fury pumped incandescently through my veins back in Two, our lives forever forged on the run and traded to the highest bigger, a pack to be reckoned with, but now, in the face of the magnitude of these Games, my faults and failings, angels, and demons lay out bare before me, and all I am is just a boy struggling to survive.

Axyl looks up at me, his eyes reflecting pain and determination.

"You chose some shit company, eh?" he says with a wry smile, attempting to lighten the mood. I chuckle softly, the sound echoing off the walls around us.

"Could say the same about you," I reply, a hint of warmth in my voice. "Everyone else turn you down before you found me?"

[pogue]

"We'll figure it out." 

Axyl's always struggled with the how, never the why. It's why he got himself locked up for a year, it's why the halls of the mine feel so much like suffocation, cell doors and the ringing of silence.

He catches himself gripping the bat in his hand tight, too tight- white knuckles sear in pain and he finally forces himself to loosen grip on the weapon, pulls his aching hand back into the other and hides it from view. "Could say the same about you,"

Axyl motions, wild and exasperated, to his half-healed knee. Y'think?

"No shit, sherlock." But it's said with love. And a little malice. "Everyone else turn you down before you found me?" 

That one sits heavy in the air for a second, Axyl chewing on the thought and the words chewing on the edge of his tongue. Truthfully, he didn't really know what had drawn him to the boy from Two- besides the unfortunate meeting he'd had with him halfway through pissing off the side of the roof. Bucket list item completed, ally gained. His mentors woulda been proud of him, not that they'd put much stock in a kid like him anyways. 

"Ha, yeah-" Guess he couldn't blame them. Axyl's no catch, but he's in good company. "You ain't even bottom of the barrel. I had to dig under that shit to find you." 

There's a lightbulb that lights above his head, hardly useful in the darkness of the mines. "Oh, wait-" He digs within the duffle bag he'd pulled from the arena grounds, dusted and caked with dirt, pulling out the set of walkie talkies and not daring to press the button just to hear the beep and static. "Found 'em while exploring the arena. Crazy the kinda shit you find." Axyl turns the walkie-talkies over in his palm and catches the scuff marks on the back, wear-and-tear of being forgotten in a place like this. Soft, meek, something washes over him in the darkness amidst the fire emanating from his leg.

"Y'know, my brother used to have a set back in Six."

The realization hits him in the gut then in a knife to the back, a realization and an act of treachery all in one. "Uh-", his voice tapers off into the silence, the chatter of something not quite there swallowing it up in the distance. His brother, flesh and blood and everything in between. Axyl wonders if he's watching him now, turning over a pair of children's walkie talkies in his hands and if he can see the way his face contorts int he darkness, pain and longing rooted deep at the core. "- yeah.. found 'em in one of his storage bins when I moved'in with him a couple back." 

Selfishness has embedded itself in his cause as an act of survival, only one day in and trying so desperately

And, after all that longing and realization and pain and suffering and self-realization, what can a boy like Axyl do but to run? What other choice did he ever have but that- dance on the coals or face the flames. You end up charred either way.

Maybe that's why he runs, showing the scars he carries on weary shoulders in hopes that whatever follows him will treat the wounds like payment, deem him worthy of mercy if only to keep the chase going.

"Never got to use 'em, though." And that's the painful truth- that even his memories are limited to an end before a beginning. There's a sadness that follows in the wake of his own words, one he's tried so hard to bite back through acts of rebellion and youth, grinning from ear to ear like a mask. Silently he offers it up to Hugo, sitting in his shadow and treating the cold something like a hug. "Here. We can use 'em if we get lost in here." 

There's something there, a smile in the somberness... an acceptance, or maybe a form of camaraderie, or something of youth.

The cameras don't catch it. Axyl does.

"What about you?" He asks softly, tiredness in his voice. "... what even is Two like, nowadays?" It's a genuine question, but he punctuates it with a grin and a defense mechanism, anything to keep himself going. Like Hugo said- they'll figure it out.

"Besides, y'know, the shit and stuff."

[alex 🐺]

Crazy how quickly trust builds here. How the walls of the Mine can feel like comfort and the breath of a stranger can feel like the most welcome sound.

Axyl's grip on the bat tightens and then falls slack, and I can sense the pain in his hands and the weakness I know he must feel in his busted up knee. The cold definitely isn't helping.

"Could say the same about you," he says, his voice filled with a mix of mirth and malice. I know he's trying to lighten the mood, to deflect from the weight of our situation, but I can't help but feel a pang of guilt. Guilt for burdening him with my presence, guilt for needing him to be the alpha when I'm the one who should be leading.

"You ain't even bottom of the barrel. I had to dig under that shit to find you."

My bark of laughter and the nod that follows has no home here, but the humor helps to forget.

"Fuck, man. Should I just- I guess I'll go fuck myself then. See ya."I gesture behind me, as if to leave, but we both know that ain't going anywhere. That choice was made for me the moment I threw his arm around my neck and we hobbled to safety.

As Axyl pulls out the walkie-talkies, a glimmer of hope flickers within me. It's a small gesture, but in this darkness, it's a beacon of light. My body feels empty. Almost as if I wasn't really there; my mind's somewhere else. Right now, my mind flies away to Six as Axyl talks about his brother, eyes on his cracked and bruised hands, cradling a pair of walkie-talkies like a symbol of a life foregone.

"My brother used to have a set back in Six," he says, his voice tinged with nostalgia and pain. I can see the longing in his eyes, the ache for a connection severed.

"I'm sorry," I say, my voice barely above a whisper. I can't imagine it, can't even think what it would be like to lose Pops and the others. Sure, we had spent enough time in the district jails to know that they were cleaned on Tuesday so you sure as shit didn't wanna be there on a Monday night when the toilets were backed up and overflowing. But we had never really lost anyone. They came back - broken and bleeding and beat up, but the wolfpack only grew. It never got smaller.

Axyl's offer of the walkie-talkies, his attempt to bridge the gap between us, touches me in a way I can't explain. It's a gesture of trust, of camaraderie, of two lost souls trying to find their way in the darkness. I take the offered one from him, sure not to touch my hand to his, and I nearly drop the fucking thing.

Idiot.

As he asks me about Two, I feel a pang of homesickness, a howl and a hole in my chest wrapped in wire and set ablaze. Good thing I'm bent over fumbling around for the gift that I just dropped. 

"Two is... complicated," I begin, struggling to put my feelings into words. "Everyone's tryin' to survive the only way we know how or die trying." I'm conscious of the cameras watching our every move. How bad I could make it for Pops and the pack. I lick my lips, tracing the comms button on the walkie-talkie.

"That's one story. The other is that it's fuckin' paradise on Earth, brother." The lie rings in my ears but I hope my grin sells it, faux bravado and flourishing. I nearly gag at the thought of it and Mors just levels me with a look. Stupid half-sentient familiar. 

[pogue]

"Fuck, man. Should I just- I guess I'll go fuck myself then. See ya."

No. Don't.

The thought catches him before he can even do anything to react to Hugo pretending to leave, his head snapping up from the walkie talkies and towards his ally. Axyl's gaze follows the path that Hugo could chart away from him, shadows of the mines ebbing and flowing in the distance, pushing and pulling at threaded seams of his own sanity. 

His stomach drops, flutters, if only for a moment. Because Hugo turns back with a grin and Axyl carves one of his own onto the side of his face, goes back to flitting with the items in his hands as a form of distraction. There's a seed planted in the front of his mind, roots cut into the folds, a recognition of his own hypocrisy and his own selfishness. A boy like him, running so quick and so often from what could have and should have been, now folding at the thought of someone doing it to him.

It's another drop in the bucket of his own thoughts, his own mortality rotting from the inside out. "I'm sorry," Hugo whispers, but it's an offering neither of them can afford to give or had the guts to take. "Don't be." Axyl shoots back, and it's a little more tight-knit with his own shame than he meant it to be. "Nothing to be sorry for." 

There's a truth to the last part- neither of them owed condolences or refuge to the other. Hugo Basterd had nothing to be sorry for when it came to Axyl, and vice versa. But Axyl can hope, and wish, and crawl back to his own vices in running from the facts of the matter at hand, laid out between them in crimson and black, drowning in the shadows. Nothing to be sorry for, it's as much to convince himself as it is to assure his ally.

Hell, even their offerings are botched: Hugo drops the walkie talkie and his own crackles to life in his hands, beep beep of a communication line screeching from his grasp for a mere second. He folds the device into his shirt, Jett stirs to life softly to his right and twitches within the folds of the tarp. There's a heartbeat that hammers in his chest, then another before Hugo locates the walkie-talkie. 

"Idiot."

It's half joking and half serious, muscles tense and whispers from the mines increasing for a moment in response to the disruption. They settle themselves eventually, but Axyl doesn't risk getting caught off guard again, climbing to his feet and replacing his previous stance with one much more on edge. Back to reality.

"Two is... complicated," Axyl senses it, a mirror of his own hesitation, of something empty in the words. Grit teeth, he watches Hugo fumble around in the darkness and drowns in the somberness they share. "Everyone's tryin' to survive the only way we know how or die tryin'." 

Axyl follows Hugo gaze briefly up towards the walls of the mines, catching the soft hue of red from a camera following their moves. He may not be the brightest- fury of youth and laced with naivety, but he wasn't fully stupid. The real Games exist on a layer above them: cameras and spectators and public perception. He swallows the spit he has left as Hugo sets up the playing board.

"That's one story. The other is that it's fuckin' paradise on Earth, brother." And there it is, pangs in his gut at the mention of brotherhood "Well-",

Axyl buys in to both the game and the bravado, extends his hand and helps Hugo up from the ground. "If Two values anything in loyalty, you should know you made 'em proud." 

The words are hollow, he knows that, but the look he throws towards his ally says more than whispers, shouts- Thank you. For everything so far.