your bones or your soul | { mackenzie / nico }

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

There was a war within him, pacing the halls of the infirmary. On one hand, Nico Thorne was alone in there. He'd been alone. Justice had been there for Jacinta when she woke up, Jacinta for Mackenzie, and it was his turn to pay it forward. And he wanted to, he did. On one hand.

On the other, Nico killed Diana. He'd been so close to saving one, yet again, only to have it ripped away from him, and he knew it was the point- Even when you win, you lose- but she was right there in the final stretch. All she had to do was cross the finish line, and it was Nico who had prevented that. He should've hated him. He shouldn't have been here at all, really. But then, how could he blame him? How was he any different than Mackenzie?

Both underdogs, both doing what they could to survive. The people Nico cared about died? Mackenzie knew how that felt. The beasts of an arena made it hard to find sleep? Mackenzie still had to medicate at night.

Hell, Nico had even killed an Elsu; Mackenzie still saw Dove's face from time to time.

A nurse poked her head out, clipboard clutched against her chest.

"He's waking up," she said with a smile. He had a decision to make. He could leave now, when Nico had not yet seen him. He could leave and officially wash his hands of him and be done with it. Or he could stay. Leave or stay. Leave or stay. Leave or-

"Can I see him?"

The nurse nodded, a bit too cheerful for comfort. She could've taken some notes from Daphne. He tried to step past her, but she stood in the way of the door, smiling eagerly.

"Uh, is there... something else?"

She looked over both shoulders to make sure no one was watching before leaning in close enough to whisper.

"Could I have your autograph?"

In times like these, when everything seemed to be wrong, it was hard to remember that so many people looked forward to this. So many people called in sick to work so they could watch this from their living rooms. So many people spent thousands of dollars to send their favorites gifts. Even when everything seemed to be wrong to Mackenzie, to so many other people, it all seemed perfectly alright.

"Sure," he said, scribbling his name down on the clipboard and walking past her.

The room was empty and smaller than he remembered the room he woke up in being. It was simple enough: white walls, a window covered by blinds and green curtains, a long, thin bed which was holding a still unconscious Nico Thorne. Various tubes jutted out of his arm and chest; Mackenzie hadn't sustained injuries nearly as severe as Nico's and the Capitol had pumped him so full of drugs he wasn't sure if he was awake or dreaming for the first week or two after he woke up. He couldn't imagine how Nico must've felt.

He twitched and the nurse cooed by his side, "Nico? Nico? My name is Nell, I'm a nurse. Can you hear me? Are you in any pain?"

His eyes fluttered open; it was strange seeing him so close. Those eyes made for war, the smile that looked almost as dangerous as the frown, the sureness of his set jaw. Nell nodded to Mackenzie, smiling again as she went. He stepped up closer.

"Uh, hey."

He searched for the right words to say for a long minute before realizing there weren't any.

"I don't think we ever met before. I'm Mackenzie."

His lips felt sticky and his throat was dry; his palms were sweating. He wished he would've smoked before coming inside, just to calm his nerves.

"I'm not the face you wanted to see," he huffed out a small laugh, "You probably don't think you need to see anyone right now, but trust me,"

He took a seat next to the bed, leaning forward and resting his elbows against his knees.

"You do."

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

When the hovercraft comes, Nico is still standing.

For a moment, he had left his head tip back, and he just stood there with his eyes closed, facing towards the sun. Later, years from now, he knows that people will look at the image and remember the look of absolute peace that fell over Nico Thorne when the games finally came to a close. They will see him bathed in sunlight and warmth and think it was a celebration.

But Nico is a hollow tree on fire.

Every year, the Capitol will play back this moment and force him to watch, will make him remember the moment where it felt like he had burned away all the parts of himself that he had fought so hard those games to earn. Standing there, with the sun painting his olive skin gold, he feels the moment when the cameras shut off, and knows that he has only a moment of true quiet here before he will be taken away from this place. It almost makes the hollowness in his chest ache, and he whips his eyes open to take it in one last time. Diana is dead at his feet, but he doesn't even see her anymore, looks only to the sunflowers that had claimed Francis as one of their own. "I'll look for you everywhere," he says to the flowers, knowing that somewhere among them is the soul of the boy that he loved. He wants to say more, wants to say that he knows he lives on among every atom of nature, that Nico will look for him among the tall pines outside Twelve as well, that he'll see him in the floating specks of dust one sees when the light shines just right, that the dragonflies in summertime will make him think about Francis flying, that the thought of it makes him happy.

He wants to tell him both that he hopes he made Francis proud and that he's so so sorry, that he fulfilled the promise he made to the boy that he loved, but he had done it at a terrible price, that he had lost the teachings he had fought so hard to learn along the way.

Was your promise worth it?

He knows his answer.

It does not change the cost.

He remembers getting on the hovercraft, but he does not remember what came after that, thinks that perhaps the put a syringe into his skin and made him sleep. "You're going home now," a woman who had thought she was being kind had said to him as his eyes fell shut, desperate to get one last look at the place where everything had changed.

Then there's only disorientation.

The sound comes first.

He knows that there's a voice coming from somewhere nearby, a woman's voice he thinks at first. She babbling to him about the numbers, about how it looks like he's finally getting ready to open his eyes, something about brain waves that he doesn't catch and the pattern of his heartbeat, but then she's quiet again and Nico can feel himself starting to slip back into the darkness—or was it fire? Nico can't remember anymore. He tries to though, knows in the back of his head that people will ask him how he felt right after he won, that people will ask him what he drempt about in that sleep, but he can't remember. All he can see is endless darkness, an abyss so wide he doubts it will ever be filled.

But then—there she is again.

Nico? she asks, like maybe he won't remember himself anymore, like maybe he needs reminding. Are you in any pain?

He doesn't know how to answer that yet,
but he flicks his eyes open all the same.

It's the light that hits him next.

It's all wrong, blue-toned and terrible, too crisp and too white and too much. It makes him close his eyes again almost immediately, and on an instinct he had nearly forgotten, he lifts his hand to try and block out the light. But—that hand had been taken from him, severed clean off at the elbow by the very same girl he had killed... how long had it been? He'd been about to say to himself he'd killed Raven two days ago, but that can't be true. The weight of his arm back makes his eyes flash open again, and he stares down at it in complete confusion.

It's his own body that disorients him next.

He stares at the palm of his returned arm once again, and for just a flash, he wonders if maybe he was right, maybe he had woken up the next day and realized that it had all been a long nightmare and none of it had ever happened. He had never been reaped, he had never changed, he was still just a boy from Twelve with murder in his fate rather than in his past. But then he turns his hand over, and his knuckles are free of scars, unmarred and pristine brown skin there instead of the ruined knuckles of his first.

"Uh, hey," he hears, and is suddenly brought crashing back into reality, into truth. ""I don't think we ever met before. I'm Mackenzie." It's absurd, really, that the boy introduces himself, as though Nico hadn't watched with eyes riveted on the screen three years prior as the boy from Seven became a victor, as if he wasn't exactly one of the people Nico had thought about in the moments after killing Diana and becoming a victor himself. "I'm not the face you wanted to see," he huffs, and even in his disorientation Nico can read the discomfort in the other mans voice. "You probably don't think you need to see anyone right now, but trust me, you do."

"I know who you are, Pryce."

He can't help it that old habits die hard, and unkindness has always been his fatal flaw. Though, he's not sure his tone fits his words, a kind of incredulity coloring the words that in another time would have been spat out with a roll of his eyes and a half-huff of sardonic laughter. He's not wrong that Mackenzie is one of the last people Nico would want to see, but the list of people he does includes too many dead people to be taken seriously anyways.

Not my arm.
Not my arm.
Not my arm.

The thought rattles around as he stares down at it, and in a flash he tries to sit up more fully to look down at the place where he had lost a leg too. Had they really done this to him? Made him whole and healthy without asking if he wanted it? He brings his hand to the left side of his face, trying to trace the place where Hisidrio's weapon had sliced across his skin and opened up a wound that ran through his eyebrow and down his face, over the other that had matched it across the hollow of his cheek.

In there place is only smooth skin.

"The scars?" he asks, feeling panic starting to take hold, setting every nerve ending on fire. "Do I still have the scars?"

He needs them, those scars, the ones that Francis himself had helped Nico to patch up, the ones that Francis had run the tip of his finger over, the ones that Francis had kissed. They were like a permanent mark of Francis on his body, a thing that would remind him every time he looked in the mirror of the man that Francis had fought to help him become, a reminder that he had to fight that fight all over again for the sake of the boy he had lost.

The scars? he thinks again. Where are your scars?

Was your promise worth it?

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

Every victor had the same secret. Maybe it was what kept them up at night, put a bottle of liquor in their hand, made them self destruct in any way possible, but at one point, it was also the only thing that saved them. That tiny little secret that had a way of taking root in the very soul of someone, squeezing the abdomen so hard they couldn't breathe, was both a saving grace and a person's undoing.

They wanted the others to die.

It wasn't something most of them would ever admit to, lest they be considered heartless monsters, but it was true. Some small part of him, deeply inside, was happy with every canon that sounded. It sounded more cruel than it was; in reality, he just wanted to live. He wanted the chance to grow old, to fall in love, to have his heart broken, to feel. All of them did, in their own ways. Mackenzie himself hadn't ever thought about what he wanted his life to become until it had almost been taken from him, and he watched Nico with understanding eyes.

What did he want his life to become?

Nico's hand searched the areas that had been scarred last time he touched them; Mackenzie could see the fear welling up in his eyes.

("Do I still have the scars?")

It wasn't the pain he wanted to remember. It was the sacrifice. The scars were his punishment for fighting back. Maybe they made him feel alive, or maybe they were a reminder that he almost wasn't. Mackenzie's right palm began to burn and he wished more than ever that Daphne was there to help him. The pills she'd given him were in his room, and he'd been actively avoiding the 7th floor at all possible costs. He clenched his hand into a fist, then used the other to reach out and touch Nico on the shoulder.

"No," he said. It came out as little more than a whisper. "They're gone."

He stood again, tucking his hands into his back pockets to keep from fidgeting. Nico would have plenty of reminders. Maybe he didn't realize how much his life was going to change now. Maybe he did, and that was what terrified him so much.

"It's over," he carried on, "well, this part, anyway."

It was easy to say. It was also unfair. He flashed his palm at Nico, chuckling a humorless laugh.

"On the last night I can remember seeing Wynter Rochelle, she was so close to death that she couldn't speak. So she um," even now, all this time later, it wasn't easy to talk about. This part of Mackenzie's life was supposed to have ended two years ago; it seemed hypocritical for him to tell Nico he shouldn't be afraid anymore.

"She wrote this on my palm. 'Thank you, friend.' When they drugged us the next day, after Wynter died, I was asleep. And I still don't remember her dying. I know what happened, but I don't remember. All I remember is the nightmares."

The buzzing, the screams, the canon.

"I did it in my sleep: carved it into my hand. I think part of me wanted to make sure I remembered."

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

No, Mackenzie whispers, presses his hand into Nico's shoulder, and it feels like the end of everything. The scars, the one's that Nico had fought so hard not to get and had known, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he would bear for the rest of his life, be it 3 days or thirty years. The scars that, the day after Francis had sunk into the sunflowers, Nico had stared at for far too long in the small pond's reflection.

He remembers sitting by the water in the arena, staring down at himself. He'd killed Jayne only hours before that moment, but it hadn't settled with him yet, not really. Fuck you, Nico Thorne was an empty echo in the back of his head as he stared at his own reflection. He had thought about putting his hand into the lake, slipping off all of his new armor and dipping his whole body under the water. But there was blood on him, and he deserved to be covered in it.

They're gone.

"No," he tries to say quickly, but the word is barely an echo in his throat. He feels the panic rising in his throat, thick and cloggy, and he feels like the air is the same air that's back in Twelve. Cloyingly thick, too full of smoke and soot to be anything but a death sentence.

"It's over. Well, this part, anyway," the Victor from Seven goes on, and Nico knows that his answering look is not a kind one, can still feel the feral and horrible thing that he had become in those final moments of the game coming back, the wolf he had fought to rein in with Francis's help creeping up his spine as the horror and anger and the abyss settle into their new home in his bones. There's no humor in Mackenzie's laugh, and Nico recognizes the hollowness of it all the well. He had thought himself ruined, fleeing that fight and leaving Jessica's body behind, running away from the violence instead of staying and slitting Saturn's throat himself. He had vowed that he would never let himself feel like that again, that final night he had wrapped Francis in his arms and pressed his lips to his temple.

Nico had sworn that no matter what death befell him, he would spend his last moments at peace, that he would look to Francis and know that his death had been worth it.

But this?

This is not the dawn that he was promised. He had watched Francis fall into the earth, turn into that thing which he had loved so dearly, and Nico had sworn that even if he couldn't give his own life for the boy from Five, he would fight for it all the same. He had looked to his scars and his wounds and promised himself that his anger and his pain would be his guiding lights, that he would look to the sun and rein it in until it was a weapon ready to strike. 

But here, now, with the harsh light of the Capitol shining down on him, the pull of the abyss is stronger than ever.

He listens, at first only absently to the story that Mackenzie begins to tell. He only vaguely remembers the girl that he's talking about, Wynter Rochelle, knows that she was a tribute in Mackenzie's games, but not much beyond that. He supposes that's the point, that the Victors are supposed to wipe clean the slate, make sure that all that blood is worth it. 

The Capitol's pretty little prizes. 

But then Mackenzie holds out his palm, and Nico drowns. 

I think part of me wanted to make sure I remembered.

It makes Nico's stomach churn, the sight of those words carved into the other victor's skin. "So you didn't get to keep your memory, but you kept your scars," he says, and he can hear even in his own ears that his voice is cracking. There's water welling in the backs of his eyes, and Nico doesn't know what to do, doesn't know what to feel, doesn't even know how to breath. "Which is worse, I wonder?" His lower lip starts to quiver, and there's a terrible trembling building in his chest. It makes him want to last out, but there is nowhere to go, no one to hit save for this boy that is only trying to be kind. "Bearing the marks that changed you, or remembering exactly how much it hurt?"

He swallows, trying to stifle the tears that are building, but a single one slips out. I'd rather remember, he almost says, but then he's clenching his fists at his side, and he looks down again, staring at the fresh skin of his right fist, unmarked, as though it had been there all along. 

He isn't so sure. 

"Stupid fucking question," he says, trying to calm himself with his anger, trying to bring him back into a world that he knows, that he understands. "There's no answer."