between a tomb and a dead place // kenji + emmett + kestrel

[lance]

"There's no thrill."

The admission falls from his lips as easy as blood seeps from your hand. Another score, another marking, another tear of jagged flesh in Emmett Le Roux's arm courtesy of your own two hands and steel blade. Though it's really quite hard to tell that the knife was silver when you found it, so coated in the other boy's is it now.

And you stand, breathing heavily through your own two lungs, a slice on your dominant forearm the fruits of the other's labors. Ordinarily, you'd shrug it off - a few cuts and bruises were nothing to you at full strength - but you're not. You're still scant minutes from revivification, half-dead before you had even started, and you realize that's the only reason you're still even standing, the only reason that Emmett looks as near-death as you feel. Were this a battle of equals, two titans at full strength, you'd have to be damned near in need of a miracle to claim victory.

But this isn't that. This isn't something where he can pull out all of his well-oiled tricks and whittle you down without tiring himself. The stamina reserves, the whole Career stick - that meant nothing when you were both reduced to the same half-dead ground zero.

And for the first time, you realize that perhaps your suicide charge wasn't in vain. That your last stand may not be the last time you draw breath into your lungs. That your wish to die with fire in your eyes and a scream in your throat may yet be delayed into another day. That you may yet see the rising sun with your own two eyes.

Somehow, that thought terrifies you almost as much as dying. And you realize that, perhaps, that's who you truly were deep down. Not a dirty street fighter here to take the Games by storm, but just a scared seventeen year old kid from a lower district who may very well claim the mantle of something deemed impure. Cursed. Rotten.

"I made a promise." There's red staining his teeth. You're not sure why that's what you notice of all things, but you do.

And then the weight of those four words, the unspoken assumption that follows, sinks in. And just like that, a grip holding your lungs hostage loosens, and you let out the first truly stable exhale you've breathed out since before Nine had died on Emmett's blade.

"I understand." It's a surprisingly soft tone of voice for a boy so used to taunting barbs and screams of anger. When you look Emmett in the eye this time, there's no anger, no fear, no panic-inspired mania. All of that has been shoved to the back of your head for one precious moment. Right here, right now, you're not two fighters, two pawns in a game standing on opposite sides of a pre-arranged board.

You're just two boys. Two terrified boys forced to harden up into something - someone - else far before they should have.

Your mind briefly flits to Patricia, how in her own Games one of her allies was a girl from One who likewise carried the heavy burden of a name she never asked for on her shoulders. One and Five, brought together in the darkness of a cave - only this time, there's no friendship to be found. No happy ending as they split off into the darkness.

How perfectly ironic. How so very sad.

"You have to keep it, don't you." There's a chuckle that follows those words. "Yeah, I understand." You've never made a promise like that before, not while so much was on the line. But right now, it was as if you were in the other boy's own head, his thoughts mingling with yours to create an understanding as you dance before the gates of hell. "If you kill me here and now, Emmett, you had better keep that damn promise, then."

Your grip on your blade tightens. Now, more than ever, you cannot slip up. You cannot show weakness. One wrong move, and it'll be your blood that pours out onto the dirt, never again to return to something resembling life.

"If-if the opposite happens..."

Goddammit. You thought you'd gotten rid of all of your tears.

"Then know that I am sorry I had to break it."

With the last of your strength, you lash out.

A titan must fall, one way or another.

kenji attacks emmett; knife

MzXkZ_RHadknife

2187 -- Stabbed in Eye -- 40 damage

knife