ghosts in bloom ; bb v. ffg ; day six

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

I'm not ready to die.

The words are nothing but a whisper, and I barely have time to even think about them before I'm trying to dodge the girls blade. I'm not fast enough though, and when I raise my arm to try and defend my face, the sharp edge buries itself into the soft exposed skin of my forearm and I—there's only red. Between my arm bleeding and the place where I can feel Lys snapped my knee, I am starting to get delusional, can feel myself teetering on the edge of a place that I have been ready to go to for what feels like centuries.

I grin through the pain, the fire making me absolutely manic in a way that I haven't been in a long time.

"There she is," I say, breathe heaving through the shallow bouts of laughter bubbling in my chest. I'm not looking at him, but I here JJ come to my defense as though it's noise coming through a fog. Everything is cloudy and wrong and not right and don't fucking touch her and I'm shaking I'm shaking I'm shaking because wasn't that what I was supposed to be saying? Shouldn't I be shouting at Kenji right now for looking at JJ?

But. I'm not ready to die. That's what the girl had said.

"Neither was Helle," I say, my laughter suddenly dying, but it's too late because I am already distracted and Lys's fucking morning star is coming at me again and I barely have time to smile that off-kilter thing that always scares everyone away before—crack.

I am coming apart at the seams.

"Yes she does!" I shout, or at least I think I shout it. "She deserves it just as much as I do!" I think I must not sound right because my voice is all jagged edges and my vision is somehow blurry and sharper than it has ever been.

I am trembling all over, like there are little fires burning their way across my skin, and I'm pretty sure that it's the adrenaline that pitches me forwards because I know that it's not even any conscious decision I am making any more.

I want her dead.

More than I want anything else, I think. And that terrifies me because JJ is standing right there and I want to die for him, want to protect him, want to make sure that he makes it all the way to the end and doesn't have to lose any more pieces of himself in the process but—she killed Helle. She killed Helle.

For that, she deserves to die as much as I do.

Even more.

✩  terra attacks arabella, misericorde  ✩

XZ0L2ruau5knife

[ block ]

✩ accuracy ✩

knife

[ 2131 - dg right thigh - 8.0 ]

knife·knife

[k!ah]

a r a b e l l a .

Down in the deep
Where the sirens sing
And hide in the muddy water
Blood on my hands
And the moonlit sand
But I'd die just to keep them under

"Don't. Fucking-"

A blow to the chest and her breath is stolen. Her heart falters as she crashes to the ground, wheezing fire a groan of agony escapes her lips. She couldn't breathe. It was like the air around her had been stolen, replaced with a blazing ember that was determined to burn through her lungs, to combust her frantically beating heart.

Hand pressed to her chest she rolls to her side, tears welling in her dark eyes as she fought through the searing pain. She had thought his first blow to her chest had been torturous. She had been wrong. This was agonising. It was like her own body was fighting against her. Screaming at her to give up, to just stop breathing .To stop fighting. To just stop.

"Touch her."

Tear filled eyes turn to the boy, lips still desperate to breathe in the air that surrounded her. "She..." Arabella fought for breath, grounding through the pain she threw as much venom as she could into her gasping voice, "touched me first. So if you..." Breathe, Bella, breathe. "want this want to stop..." A sharp pain surged through her and she flinches, grimacing her face to ride out the wave. "Tell her to stop. Otherwise your wasting your breath..." And her's too.

"Neither was Helle,"

Eyes traveling to Terra she begins to stand, her face pulled back in a grimace of pain. No... too mustn't have been ready to die.

But had that stopped her?

No.

Arabella had thrown that knife and watched at it penetrated her brain.

"She deserves it just as much as I do!"

Lysander turns to Arabella, an attempt to reassure her that Terra was wrong. That She didn't deserve to die. But didn't she? She was a murderer. An attempted murderer. A child killer. She didn't deserve to live, she didn't deserve the love that she had in her life now. The kindness that Cyro had looked at her with. The gentleness that Lysander and Meredith had shown her. She didn't deserve it.

But. But she didn't deserve to die any less than the girl before her. The one that once again tore her knife through skin of her thigh, burying it deep into her flesh. A growl of pain once again ripped through her, as she bent over to nurse her wounds. The moment caused the broken bones of her chest to retaliate, sharp serving pain burst through her lungs.

Arabella Shirley was dying. Fear surged through her. She was going to die here. Bleeding. Broken. Alone. Lysander would have to flee, have to leave her broken body. She hoped she took Kenji with her. She hoped that he would protect her. Even though she still didn't trust the boy, she didn't want her last ally to be alone.

Summoning as much strength as she could she turns back to Terra. A fierce determination rushed through her. If she was going to die, she would make sure that Terra would know who she was. She would let her name haunt her. The same as Helle's terrorised her sleeping and waking hours. Arabella may die, but her name would not. She would make sure of that.

"And my name is not Eleven." She hisses, as her body gets accustomed to the new position. The pain in her chest eases for a moment before it flares with the expansion of her lungs. It seemed like Jamison was on a mission to tear her chest open, revealing her bloody beating heart, only to crush it between his fingers, to feel its pulse fade along with her life. "Its- Its Arabella Shirley. And you better remember it. B-Bitch!" she growls, the curse uncomfortable on her lips. She would apologise to Ellen once she saw her again. Cause she would, see her again.

[ Arabella attacks Terra with sword ]
_m026mlZe6sword
[Shallow Cut on Right Hip -- 3.5 damage]

sword

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

He told himself as he watched the girl- Arabella Shirley, as she claimed- that what he was doing was good. That he was protecting Terra, that he was protecting himself, that he was doing what was asked of him an no more.

But what she said rang true. Perdita fired the first shot. Terra swung first. And maybe that made them the bad guys, and maybe his following their lead made him just as bad. He could feel the beginning of a storm of overthinking beginning to overwhelm him. He willed it away. Not now, he thought, not yet. Because if being the bad guy was what it took, then he would do it. There wasn't much he wouldn't do, in fact. His life thus far had been vastly unlived, so he knew it wasn't the past that he was fighting for. And the present was only a nightmare that seemed to get worse and worse by the second, unveiling layers of Jamison Wolfram, a boy who was supposed to grow old, that he wasn't aware existed and certainly wasn't sure he was proud of. So what, then? Why did he fight?

The future.

It was all he had. And even if the nightmare was never ending, he thought he'd rather live as a monster than die before he got the chance to see.

"Arabella Shirley."

He said the words like they had teeth, like they could hurt him if they wanted: reach up and bite him at any moment. It sounded like a warning on his tongue: another victim in an endless cycle, not unlike JJ himself.

It wasn't fair for her to be there. It wasn't fair that she'd taken Helle's life, and it wasn't fair that any of them were there. But she was a product of circumstance, and though he wanted his vengeance, he wanted not even an ounce more from her. An exact payment, then they were even. An eye for an eye.

A life for a life.

A person's own name shouldn't have ever been the last thing they heard; he could tell by the gasps of air that she wasn't long for this world. Killing her now would've been a mercy, he told himself. Killing her now would've been best for all involved. He could end the pain, and use the opportunity of her friends grieving to take his own and leave and never look back.

She looked as broken as he felt.

"It was never about who struck first," he said; his jaw sang with the same hurt that filled his voice.

"It's about who struck last. That's the person who got to walk away."

[ jj attacks arabella, morning star ]
Fg_hC20w_5spiked blunt
[14097 -- BROKEN RIGHT WRIST -- 6.5 damage +1 strength]

spiked blunt

[eulalie blake 1a 🍒 tris]

She watches her arrow disappear into the storm.

The stranger focuses all of his rage on JJ.

It doesn't bother her. Not now that she's stopped gambling — at least for today. Her life is no longer on the line, and there is no one here worth protecting. Even with the boy from Seven calling out for her help, even with blood rushing down Terra's arm in a wave that seems to have no end.

She keeps her mouth shut.

She covers up her own scars.

It's as she lazily reloads another bolt that she catches the end of the conversation, narrowing her eyes at the figure in the distance and listening to the murmur of his words. "—murderer versus murderer," the crossbow clicks, breaking the monologue until it starts anew.

"—when I fought that career boy."

Something twists inside of her. Slowly, and painfully, a gasp without sound. She clutches the weapon tighter, until her knuckles are bone white, closing her eyes for just a moment. She thinks about all of the faces in the sky, betraying herself long enough to remember who she has lost up to this point.

As if she ever forgot them.

As if this game of pretend hasn't been obvious from the start.

There's a throat bleeding out in her mind. It floods every thought, every action, until she's rising to her feet and letting the crossbow hang by her side. Something that tastes like peaches rises up in her throat, and she forces herself to swallow it back down. Her shoulder aches, and she blames it on a cut.

She remembers Niko crying there.

She remembers holding him through the night.

"He was dead," her own voice echoes, coming to a stop as his smile appears for just a moment. Just as quickly as she blinks, a burst of light before the sun begins to set. He's laughing, and then he's not. He has so much potential, and then he doesn't. He's lying in the water, and he's not moving, and she leaves him there.

She tries to block out this revelation, the confusion that starts to eat away at her. Two bodies still on the ground, her footsteps retreating, anthems that don't add up, stone doors that won't open and the screaming of a ghost within. She forces herself not to think about these things. The boys she abandoned, this trick being played on them, the fact that she isn't punishing herself.

"Emmett."

Her mind catches up with her body.

Her lips are numb.

She's standing in front of the murderer now, with her weapon lowered and her voice breaking. "You killed Emmett." Here stands the girl that fired an arrow through this boy's leg, who kept firing shot after shot, right in the path of his morning star with her chest exposed for him to crush. She should be afraid. She should run.

There's a crack of bone behind her, an exhale of air — but she doesn't turn to look, doesn't flinch when a body thuds against the ground. She studies the tribute in front of her, learns the curve of his face and the side of his body that carries his weight. The way his fists clench, how clever his eyes are. This is the person who finished what she started.

Not a paper bird.

Not a ghost in a tomb.

She had wished Emmett dead the minute her crossbow was aimed at him, wished the same for Niko when he stepped in the way. She has wished this for everyone, every tribute in this arena, and still does. It feels like a shard of ice in her chest, a kind of cruelness that isn't quite as numbing as it should be. It still hurts. She still remembers nursing Emmett's hangover. Getting drunk with Niko to drown out the pain of losing him.

Childhood stories.

Stuffed animals.

Bodies in the water.

They're dead, and she's grateful.

She hates herself for what she says next.

"Thank you." She looks to the ground, forcing herself to continue. "He shouldn't have come back. I watched him die for real." Then she lifts her gaze to meet this new ghost, this memory of a boy that has helped her to figure out the twist of the 85th Quell. "What you did for Emmett was a mercy."

She spits at his feet, every trace of Niko's peach liquor and all the softness in her that went unspoken. Let it fester there in the dirt. "You're not even a person anymore." She turns on her heel and returns to her allies, not bothering to guard her back. There's so much adrenaline inside of her that she's not quite sure what she's capable of.

But she will not die. That much has been confirmed.

"Search her corpse, and then let's go.
She'll just be back tomorrow."

But he won't be.

They won't be.

And it breaks her, but she stands strong.

perdita does not attack, stays with jj & terra

[lance]

"You killed Emmett."

A new voice rings out from behind you, even as your blow smashes through the boy's helmet and draws blood on the soft skin beneath. You turn, and the sniper emerges from her nest. Immediately, you do recognize her - Perdita from Four, just like you had suspected. Regal. Beautiful. A volunteer just like yourself, and of the Careers the one that had stuck out the most to you as a threat, aside from Emmett himself.

Perhaps it is that very aura, that gravitas that surrounds her, that causes her to walk directly up to you. Slowly, confidently, with full confidence that you will not strike her down without hearing her out first.

You hate how accurate that assessment was. For here is the first person in the entire arena that you have met that knows his name, that put that connection together, and though you stand tall, there's no denying that you're fighting back the shame and nausea of your kills with a carefully woven shield of pride. It's armor that you've carried heavy for years, hiding away shame and emotion beneath the mask that people wanted to see - that you wanted people to see, and though it may serve a different purpose here, the general idea is the same.

But you'd shed that armor once before. You'd let tears flow in front of others. Butchered an innocent girl who had no business being anywhere close to the Games. Struck down a boy who, in another lifetime, could have been an ally.

No.

A friend.

But you cannot let weakness show. Not in front of Terra. Not in front of the boy you've beaten half to death. And certainly not in front of Perdita from District Four.

So you cross your arms, ignoring the dripping of Seven's blood from your weapon as you match Four's glance with a cool glare of your own. "I did," you respond. "Got a problem with that?"

You know firsthand how hard it is to keep your head in control of your heart when it comes to the arena. Living proof is in the fact that you'd told yourself that you'd kill or leave Steel when it came to it, that she was just a means to an end, and yet you couldn't suppress the human in you, couldn't expel the guilt and worry eating you up inside that through your own negligence, you may as well have condemned her to a fate worth than death.

Maybe this girl was the same way. Maybe Emmett was to her what Steel was to you - a kindred spirit found in the midst of an unfortunate situation who kept her strong, kept her sane, someone who she had cared for far more than she should have.

Hell. You'd met Emmett exactly once before you'd been forced to strike each other down beneath the earth, and you'd almost developed those feelings for him.

But what leaves her mouth after a moment of mutual regarding isn't a swear of vengeance, nor a bolt fired into your heart from point blank range.

"Thank you."

It's gratitude. And even your normally stoic poker face cannot hide the surprise that washes across your face for just a second before you return it under your control.

"He shouldn't have come back. I watched him die for real." So that part at least, you'd guessed correctly. "What you did for Emmett was a mercy."

You have merely a second to contemplate the meaning of her words, wonder why death would ever be considered a mercy when there was so much life out there to live, when she spits at your feet. An insult universal across the twelve districts, not just back home. An insult you recognize all too well, for you'd received it and dealt it out in turn.

"You're not even a person anymore." And with six words, Perdita from Four gets your blood boiling, faster than you've ever felt it get heated before. Not once in the fights with the rich fucks back home, not when you were fighting the boy from Six and his bodyguards from Ten, not even when you'd dealt with the ambush and subsequent tearing of flesh at the hands of Bird Ivy from Twelve and her lapdog of an ally had you gotten so heated so fast.

And as she walks past you, not even bothering to keep an eye on her back, you force down every urge that wells up within you that yearns to smash her head in from behind and splatter her brains across the flora. For you know that striking out in anger is a poor idea at best and a downright suicidal one at worst, that this is a Career that just taunted you and even if you were able to kill Emmett when he was half dead, this girl is far from it and would likely turn the tables on you faster than you could blink.

So instead you swallow down the molten lava, and spit it back out on your own terms.

"No wonder Emmett was so easy to kill when I fought him," you say, lying through your teeth because easy was the last thing that that duel beneath the earth was. "After whatever you put him through, Death was probably preferable to whatever lay before him back up here."

No acknowledgement, so you dig the blade in further.

"And at least I was a person before I died the first time." There's a fire raging in your eyes, and it is only the dim realization that Lysander's ally from Eleven has already fallen, that Terra Markov is still someone you consider a friend, that stops you from just outright charging with a snarl on your face and Seven's blood arcing behind your swing. "Wonder what'll happen to you when it's your turn. Will you be reduced to a mindless husk, or will I just see your face in the sky that night instead?"

You return Perdita's gift of saliva with interest after her retreating form.

"Emmett deserved better than you, anyway."

And without a second thought, without even checking to see if Lysander or one of your foes is following, you walk away in the opposite direction.

kenji flees

[gamemaker sloane ♕ kaяi ♕]

lysander.

"Irritated by me? Then live like me.
Think you can walk in my shoes?
Look at me now, I’m your complex, bitch"

Her vision blurs.

The world around her becomes muffled. The others are talking, but she can't hear a word they say. It is drowned out by the pounding of blood in her ears. It is drowned out by the sounds of her own screams.

"No. NO!"

Her body crashes to the ground, broken and bleeding. The other three stand towering over her limp, helpless body. Hazel. Cyro. Meredith.

Now Bella.

She had failed them all.

Lysander reached out with a feeble hand, as if she was trying to grasp the life out of the air and put it back into her body. Her eyes filled to the brim with tears, but she refused to let them fall. She was not sure what Kenji would do to her if he saw weakness, so she forced herself to choke them back, no matter how much it hurt. Her throat burned with the effort, but she would not let them see her crumble, not again.

For once, she would not fall apart.

Her eyes met Bella's murderers, their hands and weapons still blood. The two trying to catch their breath.

"I won't forget this. I will find you."

She placed her weapon back into her bag and turned around one last time before following after Kenji to somewhere safer.

"And I will kill you."

She couldn't avenge her sister, Hazel, as she fought for each breath. There was no one to blame, but Arabella was her second chance. A chance to save someone else. She would follow those two to the end of the Earth. She would get her revenge.

Even if it cost Lysander her life.

elegant

( lysander flees )

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

The girl wants me to know her name.

Even as she swings her sword towards me, the very tip of it grazing my hipbone and making sharp droplets of blood collect on the black fabric there, she wants me to know her name.

It doesn't matter in the end.

JJ swings his morning star and I can hear the place where her wrist snaps, can hear the hitch in the girls' breath that tells me this is it, this is the end. The pain of the body finally overcoming the strength of the mind.

She lasted awhile.

I can give her that.

I watch her crumble into herself though, her chest broken and her wrist shattered. There are long, thick trails of blood all over her where my knife has gouged into her, and through my manic haze of pain and anger and grief and an unadulterated need for her to just stop fucking breathing—the sight of all that red makes me smile. All I can do is watch her die, watch the life fade out of her, shake my head in terrible amusement as her allies leave her. Absently, I register something has happened with Perdita and Kenji, can feel tension and grief rolling off of her in waves when she tells us to search the girls' corpse. It's Arabella Shirley, the girl from Eleven said, voice trembling. And you better remember it.

I sure as fuck won't.

"I don't fucking care what your name is," I say, standing over her now. I don't even remember moving closer to her, don't remember deciding that I didn't give a fuck about Lysander's threat. My knee is trembling and I can feel my own blood hot on my forearm, a thick stream of it pouring out of me still. I am still shaking all over, and when I fall into a crouch, my knee feels like it might fully shatter in protest. But a horrible part of me wants to look in this girl's eyes when I say this. "You're just another dead girl to me now."

I look up finally, eyes trained on the backs of Kenji and Lysander, and know that one thing above all else is now truer than ever.

"And your allies aren't going to be far behind."

I look over at JJ, scared of what I'm going to find there. Scared of the pieces I will find, scared that I'll be the thing that he is scared of most of all. JJ had spent the entire fight defending me, and for that, I grab the girls' bag and toss it over to him. He's the one with the kill, and as much as I am distraught that I am entirely incapable of protecting him from the awful reality of being a murderer, there's a hollow space in my chest ringing with pride.

"Thank you," I say, looking him in the eye. "Truly."

✩  terra is a demon & goes nowhere ✩

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

filler! will fill in when i get home!!

[eulalie blake 1a 🍒 tris]

leisure filler before work!!

we're just vibing

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

I am so tired.

It's the kind of tired that you feel all the way down to your bones, the kind of tired that makes you want to sit down and think about not moving again for a very, very, very long time. JJ and Perdita want to leave right away, but I stare down at Arabella's corpse. It still feels strange to say her name in my head, like I don't want it, like I want to burn it from my brain.

What had Perdita said? That the tributes were coming back the next day?

Some terrible thing in the back of my brain wants to sit here and watch to see if she's right. Wants to see it happen so that the first thing the girl from Eleven sees when she wakes up is my face, and then my knife finding a new home in her eye, killing her just the same way that she killed Helle.

But JJ and Perdita want to go, and there is no longer a life in which I could ever imagine letting JJ simply go on without me.

I am startled by how much I wish that we could tell Will what we've done here, startled by how much my heart aches the second that thought pops into my head and I realize that maybe, just maybe, he'll never know that we were able to avenge Helle. I want to curse him, want him to know that he made me want to cry, made me feel weak-hearted and foolish and—I want him to know that him leaving almost buried JJ and I. But right there at the center of my heart, small but strong, is the want to tell him about our day.

The want for him to be here.

I want to cut his throat for what he's made JJ and I feel. I want to cut his throat for hurting JJ like that, for leaving him with no one but me. I am not a good friend to have.