The Bloodbath

[WT]

[Samiyuq Hernández Huapaya | post 11 | attack 10 | 1147]



Things happen quickly, then: sword meeting new flesh; scuffling behind hir; the dark-haired tribute collapsing into sand, no time to give the body even the modicum of respect ze tried to give Jonas' and Era's; turning to find Maeve, dancer and lover of caticorns, who made her choice when it came down to it and did better for herself than she or Samiyuq expected, also falling, no time to tell her allin ñan^[1] either; the tribute ze'd skimmed past standing in her place—

—and the arena, for a heartbeat, after all the clatter and chaos, is quiet but for the spectators.

Automatically Samiyuq takes a long step back, eyeing both remaining opponents—which is what they are now, what ze needs to let them be; how ze feels about it still can't matter—with wary consideration. Out of place, ze had thought of the third tribute's soft dark eyes and unpracticed stance, but they're still standing, here at the end, apparently plenty willing to sink metal into life. Ze doesn't know what to expect of them—doesn't know what to expect of either of them, at this point, and keeps hir sword in the open space between hirself and them, too wary to move forward or dare either of them to do the same.

It's the familiar voice that breaks the silence. "Land of the free, huh?" Watcher asks hir, too bitter for someone that young and just bitter enough for someone who's seen that much death. "You don’t still believe in it, do you?"

Samiyuq thinks, rapid-fire, of Era describing hovercrafts gunning down even the people who had pledged themselves to what the politicians called the right cause—loyalty, faith, sacrifice rendered meaningless; of being scolded by teachers for speaking runasimi in hir own free time and doubling down, over and over, until hir parent told hir be proud, I will always be so glad that you're proud, but stop doing this in school; they won't ever go easy on you, and your future is too important for you to be in trouble this often, while even that young ze wondered what future they could be imagining for hir; of hir parent themself, a farmer who only ever wanted to raise goats and send money home, cut off from the family they came thousands of miles to try to help—and for what? A sense of control for people too rich to know hardship, who may never even see the name Achik Huapaya Iturri on a document but somehow think they're a threat?

Ze's old enough to remember when the imaginary lines Panem chose as borders closed, and then the lines of communication after them. Ze barely remembers hir grandparents' voices from telephone calls, now that they've been crowded out with crackling radios and blasts and the detritus of piled years, but ze knows hir parent dreams them as often as ze dreams of blood and bats; they rarely talk about it, but they're too often awake in the night when Samiyuq hirself can't sleep, already waiting in the kitchen with milk on the stove or trailing out to find hir in the barn before dawn.

A person can choose a place themself, for all the right reasons—and do nothing wrong, and learn to love it, and walk apparently unfettered their whole life there—and learn twenty, twenty-five years later that it was a closing prison all along.

"No," ze says. This moment deserves truth—they deserve truth. "But I have to believe in trying, or there's—there's nothing." Hir voice cracks; ze swallows hard. "I have to believe we can try, or there's no point." To any of what ze did, what they all did—to anything.

They scream, and Samiyuq is too exhausted to join in, but ze feels at once unbearably ancient and every bit as young as that scream sounds. Worn down, that's the heart of the feeling; and ze fights it, because that's how they win—convincing everyone that there is no point in trying—but hell, it's been a long time. It's been a long fight. Today. The war. All of it.

Ze's still breathing, though. For now. Just for now.

"We have to do this the right way. Not the way they’d want this. Not how we might." Nothing is right about any of this, none of their choices are good, but Samiyuq raises hir eyebrows, a silent I'm open to suggestions—and Watcher makes a lobby for honor that draws the same voiceless not-quite-laugh from hir as Kastilla's farewell. So sardonic about the idea that anyone could believe in freedom, and ze understands that—but so ready, too, to insist that people can take a stance, that there are types of people who keep the world from changing but that there are other ways to be.

Ze's glad.

"You understand me, yeah?" they add to hir directly. "Some folks don’t have it, some folks lie to you and say they have your back but – it’s about your word." Your back, I'll watch, they told Kastilla, and I'll watch yours, Samiyuq told them, and ze thinks, still, that they both meant it at the time. Ze nods. "And I swing, you swing, and she does, too." Ze looks to the third tribute, aims to meet her eyes, and nods again, gravely. "Until there’s one of us. No one gotta take more than they can handle. And whoever that is – don’t fucking waste it."

"Circling our targets, then, ah? You to me, me to her—" Samiyuq looks again to the third corner of their triangle— "her to you? Sure. Nobody in white up there has any honor." Ze adds a jerk of hir head toward the stands, smiling mirthlessly and one-sided at the thought of how someone at a computer might even now be patching this moment together for the air. If they don't decide to grow a spine and broadcast a bit of truth for once, ze hopes it's a pain in the ass. "Might as well prove they didn't beat it out of us, too." Ze readies hir feet in the shifting sand, adjusts hir grip on the hilt of hir sword but doesn't bring the weapon forward, and takes a deliberate breath. "Let's go."

Knowing it's coming doesn't make it any easier to handle when Watcher—Yupaychaq^[2]—actually moves. The sword goes high, Samiyuq pivots the wrong way, and ze gasps out loud as it scores across the back of hir head—maybe it's adrenaline in action, maybe Yupaychaq is simply that strong, but the swing comes in harder than ze expected from someone compensating for the blood loss of a newly lost arm. For a split second ze thinks that might have been it, for hir, wavering on hir feet and seeing black—and then ze blinks the aftershocks of agony out of hir eyes, straightens, and pivots to face the other remaining tribute.

"If you're the one who goes home," ze says, breathing hard through the pain but steady, steady, speaking as steadily as ze's held newborn kids and weapons and bats' wings, "live whatever life you can feel best about."

Which is nothing but a gentler way to say don't fucking waste it, perhaps, but it's the version ze needs to hear, too; and it's all the warning ze feels ze can give her before ze steps forward, sword first.



[D5M|N Samiyuq Hernández Huapaya attacks D11F Persephone Vega, sword]

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[Deep Gash on Left Bicep -- 8.0]



[1] Have a good journey (lit. good road).
[2] Person concerned with honor.

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[Python]

Persephone Vega, D11F, Attack 9, 1170

Breaths caught in her throat; her heart was on a sinking ship, dread freezing every organ in her chest. "She's gone under water now." Persephone did not want to possess this power to steal lives. First the boy from her own home, and now a complete stranger. It didn't feel any better or worse - the guilt was steady, wrenching. She didn't know this person's name and yet she had slain her where she stood. Unprovoked, without reason. She could argue in her own favor and blame the Capitol, but did that change the consequences?

Time was frozen. Persephone took several breaths - in, out, don't panic, too late, ah - and lowered her sword. The smell of blood was rancid, metallic, sticking to the back of her throat until she coughed. There was dust in her eyes, sweat dripping behind her neck and down her temples, and suddenly she remembered that she was being observed. An audience was staring at her, waiting for her to act. Or were they staring at the other two? Was it still possible for her to fade into the background after what she had done?

Even now, she didn't like spotlight. She wanted to disappear, hide in shame. Yet the only way to disappear was to die, and she couldn't accept that so easily. How had she come this far?

Antigone screamed, and tears began to well in Persephone's eyes. This was a moment of truth that she couldn't swallow. Two people were about to die; she could not coexist with the girl from Three who deserved more. "We have to do this the right way," she said, as an audience continued to stare. Persephone didn't yet understand what she meant. Was there a right way to kill people?

Honor. A concept she didn't often have to think about. Nobody cared about honor or pride in Eleven - that was a Capitol ideal, something found in storybooks. What did a wallflower in a greenhouse have to offer to make her honorable? She was just one small root within the larger branches of Eleven's agricultural system, and she had been content with that. Too content, as she realized when speaking to Antigone. There was more she had to offer to the world, and now it was too late.

There was a small twinkle in her eyes - a moment of realization. Antigone was suggesting a fair fight. A way to even the odds and break the mold of conformity. We won't be playing the game - not the way they want us to. When the boy spoke next, Persephone nodded in agreement. She was terrified, exhausted, regretful, but the Capitol had not beaten human decency out of her.

She made an effort to stand back and watch Antigone strike. Chest puffed out as if to tell the Capitol, I'm waiting my turn, because that's what a good person would do. And then a sword faced her, cutting deep across her arm. She winced and groaned through gritted teeth, wishing she would have defended herself a little better.

"If I go home, please forgive me. And if I die, please don't forget me, okay?"

Because that was now her worst fear.

[Persephone attacks Antigone - sword]
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Shallow Cut on Back -- 4.0 damage

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[WT]

[Samiyuq Hernández Huapaya | post 12 | attack 11 | 1008]

Maybe they never would have been friends, Samiyuq and Yupaychaq, for reasons trivial or fundamental; maybe they could have grown up a street apart and simply never taken an interest in one another, or met in the rebellion but found their approaches, their beliefs, impossible to reconcile. Or maybe, in some other life, they and Kastilla would have made an inseparable team, holding one another up through long and miserable operations and keeping one another company through long and miserable nights. Not knowing aches, and the first and loudest pang of grief when Yupaychaq falls is for the life extinguished, but the second is for the chances that never even kindled—every branch of life that nobody in this coliseum ever got to explore, every version of Yupaychaq's past that a kinder world might have offered.

"Allin ñan,"^[1] ze murmurs again now, because it feels like there's time for that again—and how strange, to feel safe facing a stranger who killed two people within minutes, but Puchukay^[2] held her sword when she could more easily have broken their agreement. That's enough, if not for genuine trust, for Samiyuq to risk bending hir knees long enough to touch Yupaychaq's and Maeve's shoulders and nod with apologetic respect to Maeve's opponent, the one ze finished off—long enough to look up from hir precariously balanced crouch to survey the now-calm field of sand one more time, all the bodies whose names ze knows or doesn't and whose stories ze may never learn. All the lives cut short for no reason except vengeance over a war the Capitol already won.

They only won that war, though. District Thirteen lies smoldering, its citizens massacred, but hearts smolder too, and ideas; there's a longer war to be fought, and people fighting it even now—people making the hard choices, digging their heels in, fighting in their own ways and for their own reasons the way Yupaychaq demanded and Samiyuq and Puchukay agreed to. Today has been about little more than surviving, Samiyuq won't kid hirself about that, but only because there's something out there to survive for.

Ze looks to hir final opponent again as ze pushes hirself back up from the sand with hir free hand, considering what little ze knows about her: that she's willing to kill without a word but also willing to agree to offered terms; that her gentle face hides the type of resilience that too many of Panem's children have had to learn; that she speaks fairly little—at least under stress and around strangers—and accordingly most likely means every word she says. Please forgive me, she said, and please don't forget me, her courtesy at odds with their location and her own actions but nevertheless seemingly heartfelt.

She said those things more to Yupaychaq than to Samiyuq, ze thinks; she knew them somehow, and trusted and respected them enough to listen to their words. But Samiyuq is the only one left now to answer, hir voice quiet now that ze no long has to yell over screams and clattering but more matter-of-fact than mild. "I don't think anyone watching this," ze begins—and then reconsiders, eyes flickering for the barest moment to the stands before settling back on Puchukay. "I don't think anyone with a heart watching this could forget you. Me, either." Whether ze lives another thirty seconds or another seventy years. "Even if we wanted to."



[D5M|N Samiyuq Hernández Huapaya attacks D11F Persephone Vega, sword]

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[Shallow Cut on Back -- 4.0 at Python's discretion]



[1] Have a good journey (lit. good road).
[2] Final.

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