trading ghosts . jupiter / safina, day five

[pogue]

His question hangs in the dead air between them like a noose, wrapped around his own throat and tugging him closer and closer towards his own grave. Jupiter feels his own heartbeat threatening to shatter his chest, hollow heart and blood flowing between his veins as fight turns to flight turns to freeze, his own ragged breaths mixing with the echoes of Vera's cannon.

He still grips the the throwing knife from his back pocket in a recognition that his life depends on it, until it feels as if his fingers will split under the pressure, flesh and sinew alike pulled apart at the seams. He thinks it's something to do with the comfort of his own danger, the reminder of his own mortality- the reminder of Safina's, too.

Or, it is as it always has been: his own fear, his own cowardice. Shaking, scared little boy staring at the face of a lion, standing amongst the corpses of the damned. He's readying himself for war, gripping steel and waiting for Safina to swing at him once more, desperately trying to plan an escape from the inevitable.

"Nope-"

Jupiter's blood goes cold, ice flowering in veins that once ran so red with pure rage. It's something so terrifying, everything so foreign, to go from red to blue to white in a moment. Gnashing fangs turned gritted teeth, fire in his eyes cools over and instead is replaced by forced stoicism, swallowing his own pride and foregoing a reaction to her words even though they shock him from flesh to rotten core.

-" I've got two under my belt now. Nori Halliday was my first." 

Jupiter lets his gaze drop to the weapon at her hips, drip drip dripping with crimson that melts right into the sands, sun falling from the sky and stretching both truths and shadows. He can respect it, district girl turned killer twice over. They were both drowning in something toxic, dangerous, venom and death at their fingertips. "You?"

She throws it back at him and he can feel something sting within him, melding with the fire that still bursts from the wound in his knee. It takes all of his willpower and more to let his reaction seem unimpressed, to stare into and through Safina's form, to level a playing field that sits so uneven. Still- he can sense in her form that the danger he was sitting in is beginning to pull back, not nearly enough for him to put his own knife down, but just enough fro him to relax muscles that were threatening to snap at any moment.

He was getting somewhere. Slowly, unsurely.

"Claimed my first yesterday." He states, and something in his shadow stirs, ghost of a girl he left dying, Lucia. Turning a body into a bartering chip, saving his skin by offering that of the girl he'd killed. 

"Lucia Valentine."
It's the first time he's said her name out loud, ghost in the making.

Bare his soul and let it burn, in fire and ice he melts into nothing but a beast once more. Cocked head, straight voice,

"... you know her?"

[D'Arcy Mason d6b [Tyler]]

[googlefont="Cinzel Decorative"]

Safina Roy

trading ghosts - I

Jupiter's expression is unreadable, a calm sea refusing to disclose what currents hide in its depths. The wounded animal defiant to the beast toying with its food. "Claimed my first yesterday," he begins, and I sense the fire fueling me lighting up anew. Not in a burst of fury this time, more like… a pride, perhaps. Maybe Jupiter has impressed me with this news, or satisfied my expectations for the tribute from District Two. Hadn't he been someone I had expected to be a killer from the start? Or perhaps I'm proud of myself, for standing now with the life of the deadly boy held closely in my own hands.

Then I start to really take in his words. His first kill was yesterday. I think back to who else had died besides Nori that day. I remember the two other girls lit up in the sky. I can still see one of them throwing around her knives. My wrist tingles with the ghost of the bloodbath.

"Lucia Valentine."

My eyes light up with a triumphant fire. I can picture Lucia's face clear as day, wedged in there with the faces of her two allies and the face of the poor girl they sliced to ribbons. The moment I had vowed to seal their fates with my own hands. With the fuel of the beast I had honoured that vow, sending two of the killers to meet Serelis in death. Now here I was, faced with the man I can credit for helping me accomplish this personal victory.

It seems there are two beasts in this arena, not one.

Perhaps he sees my triumph, the new way in which I'm looking at him. He cocks his head. "… you know her?" Oh, Jupiter, if you only knew the favour you'd done for me. I flash him a sly little smile. "You could say that. She had a debt she owed me…" I pause, eyes intense as I considered this killer before me. "… but you seem to have collected on my behalf."

I still feel the burn of the beast, craving more blood and death and destruction. Now that I knew the kind of beast Jupiter was, it was hard not to scratch at the itch to take him on, right here and now. A hunt for the prey that haunts this desert seems so dull when there's a fellow hunter in the mix. Less competition for the thrill of the hunt in this dog eat dog world.

Only that annoying part of me still untouched by the demon I have become is still there. Ever since I first noticed it there, I haven't been able to ignore it again. Like a cut on the knee, invisible to the mind until you see the blood trickling down your leg and the sting starts its stubborn pulse. This part of me still holds on to the days of watch spent with Tide Evros. The brief moment of escape into the show on the tablet with Artemis Shei. This annoying little voice screams out its protests, still fighting its tiresome fight to try and reign the beast back.

I won't let that happen. I like this feeling of power that rushes through me, fuels me to do what I need to do to get out of this sandy hell. Gives me the strength to do what I must do to win my life. I cannot let it tame the beast. I'm confident that it won't. I'm terrified that it could. Even with the odds stacked against it. Maybe it's better then, to leave another beast lurking between the dunes and helping to keep that stubborn voice at bay.

Jupiter Graves is more useful to me alive than dead. For now.

"Alright, go on. Our fight's over today." I pull back the hunger for more spilled blood, take a few steps back from the wounded boy before me. "As a thank you for your service." I pause again as I think once again of Artemis, of Tide. Still somewhere out there. Still alive. Still standing in the way of my survival. That little voice still screams.

"Try and collect a few more for me."

[WC: 701]