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open casket || wade & beck
Jul 19, 2020 18:40:51 GMT -5
Post by [nyte] on Jul 19, 2020 18:40:51 GMT -5
He chases nightmares. The Eighty-Fourth Hunger Games, The Eighty-Third, Disctrict Six's grief and District One's apathy - he'd his pick of poisons.
Beck burns them into him, like the cigarette smoke coiling deep in his lungs he's full of their grief and feels better for it.
It's a habit.
A vice.
a cure
And he carries so many of them now that letting go might break him. So instead, he simply forgets how to breathe.
Pressure builds behind his eyes, black spots darting across his vision as his chest heaves in instinctual desperation.
His lips part to a stream of smoke and he feels terribly hollow once again.
This side of victory has seen more bad days than good but Beck was certain today would be something special. He hasn't dared to come to the beach since returning to Four, keeping his eyes off of the horizon as though that could erase the memories contained by her frothing rapids.
Of a cage and a couple dozen graves.
He hasn't heard from Hailsham for months, he hasn't tried to reach out. He didn't want to know. I won. It's a spiteful thought, one meant to be spat from bloodstained lips. Fuck you I won.
He'd killed for the right to call his body his own. He'd lost so much of himself within that arena, but not all. There's still this terrible thing ticking away in his chest, fingertips burnt and calloused from the way he's let his cigarette burn down. He's got a voice he lets the Capitol use and a smile that paints the inside of news papers across Panem.
Beck was certain, of everything he did in that arena, he would never regret finally living for himself. It had to have meant something. He needs it to mean something.
So Beck Hailsham decided to go home.
Boats make him queasy. Though fighting back nausea throughout most of the trip turned out to be a welcome distraction from an impending anxiety attack. Hailsham is rotten to the core, a fiend made of madness and concrete.
He'd survived. He'd made it out alive.
And now he's headed back into the belly of the beast.
His arm aches, as it always does. Beck smooths his hand over the prosthetic though it does little to soothe the sharp pain. It's no wonder he can't move on when ghosts choose to linger like this.
The sea smells metallic, salt sticking to his lips as he leans over the boat's edge. He wants to see her arrive - the one monstrous memory he knows he cannot face. The reason he's suffered through the rest.
When Hailsham appears on the horizon, she looks hungry.
--
It's empty. The doors to gilded cages are left ajar, no longer leaking warm golden light between their bars. Stale air sticks to his tongue, gone humid from the early stages of decay. His steps echo around empty halls and they manage to make something as small and pathetic as he larger than life.
Nobody has lived in Hailsham for some time, that much is obvious.
It's empty. Everything he fought for, bled for, killed for, is nothing but a memory. It stands still, as though in mourning.
Did they kill them? His thoughts grow panicked the deeper he ventures. His feet still know which paths to trace leaving ample time for Beck to get tangled in these toxic threads.
Maybe they thought he was going to expose them. Maybe they got rid of the rest and ran like the cowards Beck had always known they were.
More lives taken by his hand, more needless death. Beck would never have the courage to expose his home-
he was ashamed of it.
Something rings out from behind him, a soft sound that could have been lost within his own labored breathing or a trick of his imagination. But it's enough to bring him back to the arena.
It's so easy to fall into old habits.
He's started carrying a knife with him whenever he leaves the house. There's no particular reason, only that he feels exposed without the weight of one against his hip.
Instinct works faster than his tongue, the hilt of the blade twirling between his fingers before launching it in the direction the sound had come from. It's not a warning, it's not a bluff. He strikes to kill.
(Though the way his hands are shaking make that an unlikely outcome.)
In this moment, he doesn't care if he's hit his mark. It's better them than him.
He has to survive, he has to live because he won. He beat the Capitol and he beat Hailsham.
Right?
"Who's there!?"
Beck burns them into him, like the cigarette smoke coiling deep in his lungs he's full of their grief and feels better for it.
It's a habit.
A vice.
a cure
And he carries so many of them now that letting go might break him. So instead, he simply forgets how to breathe.
Pressure builds behind his eyes, black spots darting across his vision as his chest heaves in instinctual desperation.
His lips part to a stream of smoke and he feels terribly hollow once again.
This side of victory has seen more bad days than good but Beck was certain today would be something special. He hasn't dared to come to the beach since returning to Four, keeping his eyes off of the horizon as though that could erase the memories contained by her frothing rapids.
Of a cage and a couple dozen graves.
He hasn't heard from Hailsham for months, he hasn't tried to reach out. He didn't want to know. I won. It's a spiteful thought, one meant to be spat from bloodstained lips. Fuck you I won.
He'd killed for the right to call his body his own. He'd lost so much of himself within that arena, but not all. There's still this terrible thing ticking away in his chest, fingertips burnt and calloused from the way he's let his cigarette burn down. He's got a voice he lets the Capitol use and a smile that paints the inside of news papers across Panem.
Beck was certain, of everything he did in that arena, he would never regret finally living for himself. It had to have meant something. He needs it to mean something.
So Beck Hailsham decided to go home.
Boats make him queasy. Though fighting back nausea throughout most of the trip turned out to be a welcome distraction from an impending anxiety attack. Hailsham is rotten to the core, a fiend made of madness and concrete.
He'd survived. He'd made it out alive.
And now he's headed back into the belly of the beast.
His arm aches, as it always does. Beck smooths his hand over the prosthetic though it does little to soothe the sharp pain. It's no wonder he can't move on when ghosts choose to linger like this.
The sea smells metallic, salt sticking to his lips as he leans over the boat's edge. He wants to see her arrive - the one monstrous memory he knows he cannot face. The reason he's suffered through the rest.
When Hailsham appears on the horizon, she looks hungry.
--
It's empty. The doors to gilded cages are left ajar, no longer leaking warm golden light between their bars. Stale air sticks to his tongue, gone humid from the early stages of decay. His steps echo around empty halls and they manage to make something as small and pathetic as he larger than life.
Nobody has lived in Hailsham for some time, that much is obvious.
It's empty. Everything he fought for, bled for, killed for, is nothing but a memory. It stands still, as though in mourning.
Did they kill them? His thoughts grow panicked the deeper he ventures. His feet still know which paths to trace leaving ample time for Beck to get tangled in these toxic threads.
Maybe they thought he was going to expose them. Maybe they got rid of the rest and ran like the cowards Beck had always known they were.
More lives taken by his hand, more needless death. Beck would never have the courage to expose his home-
he was ashamed of it.
Something rings out from behind him, a soft sound that could have been lost within his own labored breathing or a trick of his imagination. But it's enough to bring him back to the arena.
It's so easy to fall into old habits.
He's started carrying a knife with him whenever he leaves the house. There's no particular reason, only that he feels exposed without the weight of one against his hip.
Instinct works faster than his tongue, the hilt of the blade twirling between his fingers before launching it in the direction the sound had come from. It's not a warning, it's not a bluff. He strikes to kill.
(Though the way his hands are shaking make that an unlikely outcome.)
In this moment, he doesn't care if he's hit his mark. It's better them than him.
He has to survive, he has to live because he won. He beat the Capitol and he beat Hailsham.
Right?
"Who's there!?"
