empty hands and broad shoulders // { will vs kahinta | day 9

[aya]

[attr="class","w460"]

all those years of blood sweat and tears you cried
you've got less to show than you have to hide
well lady luck and all her charms i've never known
i'm just a man with empty hands and broad shoulders

He wakes up feeling like he's been pressed to death beneath giant stones. Quarry witch. He groans; his hands folded across his newly-mended breastbone rest like rocks. Wrapped around a knife, its handle metal instead of polished bone, they hardly feel like his own. More weight. Instead the stone hovers inches above him, catching his meditative breaths and reflecting them back into his face. Alive or undead, the difference is semantics and the Johnwayne has never really cared to split hairs like that.

Shutting his eyes again, Will wriggles into the stone, resituating himself for a nap. Shit. He could sleep for another twenty years and be perfectly content with that. It's not that he needs his beauty rest, or that he hasn't been sleeping well in the arena, or anything like that. Dying is exhausting, and even though he wasn't an active participant in the matter, coming back to life is hard work too. Nothing wrong with sneaking a few extra hours.

It's whatever calamity echoing through the stone cavern that finally rouses Will, grumpy, from his slumber. He scowls as he scooches out of the stone loculus, gracelessly dropping four feet to the ground. He hits the limestone and crumples, the twisted knife clattering with him. All things considered, it's hard to complain about feeling like one giant bruise. There are worse indignities in the world than clumsily pulling himself to his feet like a newborn fawn on ice, supporting himself on the wall as he reaches down for his dropped dagger.

Each step he takes away from the hole in the wall where he woke up is easier than the one before it. Either stretching his patched-together body is all he really needed — 'walk it off' is practical advice to alleviate everything from shinsplints to death, apparently — or he's plied with whatever has kept him going the whole previous week. Sure isn't interesting watching kids get stabbed once then keel over and die. He doesn't have to remind himself that there's an audience; hundreds of gemstone eyes glower at him in the dull torchlight.

The corridors wind and snake. Piles and stacks of sentimental garbage rest against the walls and sit displayed on podiums, as though Will is supposed to care about it. It's like walking through an exhibit-sized version of the box of junk that Bruce had given him for his birthday that one year. Calling it heirlooms or referencing legacy didn't stop trash from being trash. What sort of emotional reaction is he supposed to have towards decades-old notes and doodles, with someone's math homework, with letters to and from people he's never met? Putting something on a pedestal doesn't mean it's important.

Scowling, he aims an impetuous kick at the nearest artifact: a wooden wheel with twelve spoke and a rusted metal rim. It shudders under his foot, barely even serving its purpose as a wheel enough to budge. His toe throbs in penance for his tantrum, but nothing else interesting happens. Useless piece of junk, just like the rest of it. It's too unwieldy to bludgeon someone to death with and without its three brethren it's not rolling along anywhere.

He makes his way to the center of the catacombs, counting to four on his fingers. How many cannons yesterday? He'd been too dead to see the anthem. How many lived? Who was left? He sits on the spiral staircase to rest, then to lounge, his legs kicked up. It would be easier to do the math if he'd bothered to commit names and districts to memory, but he can work off of his own apathy just fine.

There's still blood under his fingernails. He doesn't know whose anymore. Might be his. Might be Lysander's. Might be Meredith's. Or Jem's, or the hounds', or might even be his father's. So many people have bled out beneath his knives, and while it's not that he takes pleasure in it — despite all the accusations to the contrary, he isn't a monster, it's just that he was born in District Two and his name is Johnwayne and he's got good aim — but it isn't like it bothers him either.

Whistling to himself, he digs at the crusted blood with the point of his knife. He did what he had to. Some people are dead because of him. Some people lived longer because of him. He has no idea who is which, all the information on dead and alive lagging by a day and Will's last update wholly missing. Jem might still be alive, though it's hard to say what with that last knife he'd buried in his chest. Terra and Lysander had been down here yesterday — easier to write them off as dead. Status unknown on JJ, and there's the possibility he's still kicking, but as much as Will wants to have faith in the boy from Seven, he can't imagine how long he'd make it on his own.

There were... what, twelve of them alive yesterday? Twenty-four minus how many faces had there been in the anthem? And how many cannons had he counted?

He's shitty with names but might just be worse with numbers. He stops whistling for a moment to run through it out loud again. "One, four, four, maybe five, maybe five, maybe six... wait." Will screws up his face, fending off the incoming headache from the focused counting. He tries in the negative: "One, two, three, six, ummm... Helle. One of the eights? Two of the eights? Fuck." And then everyone he can remember, in no particular order: "There's Mer, dead; JJ, don't know; Terra down here yesterday; Sherman, dead; Helle, dead; Jem, don't know; Lizzy, here yesterday too; Me, sorta alive I guess; uh... District Fours... District Tens..."

When he realizes he's not alone, he takes the opportunity to rope someone else into his counting rather than trying to size up the threat. "Hey," he calls out, still focused on digging the crusted blood out of his nails with the tip of his knife. "D'you have any idea who the hell's still alive?" Maybe in the scheme of things it doesn't matter. But who's to say that in the scheme of things, any of this matters at all? "Terra and Lysander were down here yesterday. That Jem boy must still be alive. Elsewise I got no idea." In another year, they'll all be reduced to some new set of mementos, more trinkets on pedestals stacked up in a dusty reliquary, handed down like heirlooms to another generation that has more important things to worry about than what befell Will Johnwayne. So why does he need to care about who's already been reduced to memory?

empty hands and broad shoulders - joe pug

[newclass=".w460"]width:460px;[/newclass]

[wimdy]

For a moment, Kahinta thinks maybe she's drowning.

The darkness on all sides of her sets her lungs to fluttering, breath held tight as her hands curl hard around something against her ribs- no more crystal constellations- before dropping it with a clatter and slamming up toward the surface. Instead, she finds only stone, rough against her hands as she presses her palms flat, exhaling heavily around the tremor that rattles her chest. A shallow breath in, confirmation that she's not trapped beneath the red waves, hands scrambling for the scorch of the sun among the clouds. It's a mercy where she doesn't deserve one, but she'll take it all the same.

It takes a while for her breathing to grow even, for the pain that's settled deep between her ribs to subside enough that she can inhale and not feel the flash of a blade hard against bone. Everything hurts. That shouldn't be a surprise, not as her mind starts trying to piece together how she ended up in what seems to be a tomb before remembering sharp eyes and sharper words. I win, and that ache blooms again. Not yet, and it fades. In, out. The words echo in her skull with each breath, and Kahinta loses herself to the quiet for longer than she knows.

When she finally manages to pull herself from the stone and stand, unsteady and unprepared for whatever is to come, she's faced with winding corridors lined with statues of those long dead, of sunflowers blooming from the cracks. The walls are thick with shadows, torches casting long silhouettes that stretch until they disappear into darkness, obscuring any real detail from view. Her eyes catch all the same as she passes by winding trails of final resting places, loculi filled with flowers and scraps of paper she cannot find it in her to read and beads strung down to a cross. Kahinta is in a tomb, and the thought sends her stumbling into the wall, fingers running over smooth polished gems cut like eyes. Not yet, she thinks, promises whispered into the dark of another person's hair just as true thought into the dark of the winding catacombs.

A sound, distant at first, and Kahinta wonders if she's spoken out loud as she moves forward with her fingers wrapped tight around the handle of the knife. It feels wrong in her hand, too small and too damning after she'd buried the last one in the dirt instead of another girl's heart. The sound echoes just a little, bouncing off the rock and around her head as she creeps forward, quietly marching heel-toe until she can hear the voice of a boy from just down the corridor.

"There's Mer, dead; JJ, don't know; Terra down here yesterday; Sherman, dead; Helle, dead; Jem, don't know; Lizzy, here yesterday too; Me, sorta alive I guess; uh... District Fours... District Tens..."

Hiding in the shadows doesn't last very long.

"Hey, d'you have any idea who the hell's still alive?"

Walking forward in the dim torchlight, Kahinta squints a little to make out the shape that's lounging on what seems to be a spiral staircase leading up, up, farther than she can see in what little light they've been granted. District Two, she thinks. Something Johnwayne, brother to Someone Johnwayne. He's sprawled back on the steps, working the knife in his hands, but Kahinta doesn't focus on that, instead keeping her eyes up as she carefully moves forward along the cavern wall. It's the first time that they're actually interacting, that she can remember. Maybe a blow thrown in the Bloodbath, a look in the dining hall at the Training Center, but never words. How strange, to still be meeting people after so many days. It feels easier than seeing someone like Callum or Dom would. It shouldn't, but it does.

"Terra and Lysander were down here yesterday. That Jem boy must still be alive. Elsewise I got no idea."

She doesn't know who any of those people are by name, but that's three by his count, and Kahinta knows at least a few more. Who really knows if they're still alive, in all of the confusion? The weariness in her bones drags enough that she hesitates, words caught in her throat and knife heavier than it has any right to be in her hand. Another day, and she doesn't want to use it, not that there's much choice left in the matter. Kahinta will hoard bloodless moments while she has the chance.

"A lot of cannons with no faces the past couple days…" With a sigh, she tilts her head up to stare at the carven stone of the tunnel, barely flickering with light. A lot of faces left unaccounted for, especially since she hadn't made it to see the Anthem the night prior. "Hard to tell. I was with Oberon and Callum- uh, Ten and Twelve- before the fog, so they might be out there? I think- I think Kenji was still around? He was on his second shot already though. Maybe- Hold on."

Kahinta turns to the tunnel wall Johnwayne's left, lifting the knife in her hands and setting it to stone, wearing uneven lines into the rock as she begins to count off what they know again. It's a list with more names than she wants to remember.

"I mean, this is two days ago at this point, yeah? Never saw the girl from One in the Anthem, so she probably made it back. The boy from Three maybe? Perdita and Dom were both still out there. Saw Dom on the beach, and Perdita's who-" Her mouth puckers a little, like she's bitten into a bitter fruit, remembering the way Perdita had felt against her back, breathing deep against the tide of exhaustion. A knife in her chest. A promise.

"She's out there," she says instead, refusing to breathe her own death into the confines of the cavern all around them. Not yet, and she meant it, means it. "Anyway… Kenji, Oberon, and Callum, maybe. Oberon's kind of useless, though, so he's probably gone or on his way here. The boy from Seven, and Nine? And you said Terra and Lysander? So that's- that's eleven, not counting whatever happened while we've been-" Her hands motion slightly between them, around them. While they've been whatever they've been. Alive or dead or something in-between. It doesn't matter, the technicality of it. For one of them, it won't be a technicality much longer.

There are so few tally lines left.

Kahinta backs up until she's leaning on the wall across from him, crossing her arms over her chest, knife tucked against pristine white fabric. With a sigh, she tilts her head back and forth, feeling the give in her neck with a subtle pop that sounds much too loud in the quiet between them. She'd wished for quiet, so long ago on the train, but now that she has it she wishes for anything but, finds herself filling the space instead.

"How many you think we're actually at? I mean, all the white capes could've died yesterday, I guess, so that could be three or four more dead actually dead," she muses, lifting a hand idly to scratch at her neck as she tries to find something else to say, but everything feels empty. She's stalling, but it's not like it'll do any good. Her eyes drop to find her partner again, eyeing the way he picks at his nails with the knife for a moment before flitting back up to his face. "Not like it matters, I suppose."

table credit to the
incomparable shrimp

[aya]

[attr="class","w460"]

He remembers her name. Small miracles. Something less dehumanizing about knowing the name of whoever it is you're about to murder. Whatever that's worth. But he remembers.

Jones. Right after Will Johnwayne if they'd ever got lined up by alphabet. Same age, too. He doesn't think about how if she were from Two how they'd get sat next to each other during school assemblies, or how she'd probably make fun of the dangerous over-gelled spikes in his hair while they waited in line on school picture days, or punch his arm for heckling the valedictorian during graduation next year. He doesn't think about how if his dad's namesake — Cowboy Dan — made enough sense that he was from Ten, she might be so used to hearing his name dull-droned before hers during attendance that it sounded more a mantra. Jenkins... Jermain... Johnson... Johnwayne... Jones...

"A lot of cannons with no faces the past couple days…" A lot of kids with no names. Will looks up when she sighs. "Hard to tell. I was with Oberon and Callum - uh, Ten and Twelve - before the fog, so they might be out there?" He doesn't recognize either name, isn't sure he'd recognize either face if he ran across them again. "I think - I think Kenji was still around? He was on his second shot already though. Maybe - Hold on."

It's all too much to keep track of, and he should be grateful when she starts diagramming on the wall. Instead, Will winces with every cut she makes in the stone, wishing he didn't ask. Not because of the noise. Not because the roster of the dead is longer than he'd expected and not because it's shorter than expected. Just at the way the blade's point is worn down against the stone, jagged and uneven. Great. After getting his chest crushed in, it's just Will's luck to be murdered with a dull knife.

"I mean, this is two days ago at this point, yeah?" He cocks his head to the side, shrugging something like agreement, though it's getting beyond his capacity for abstract thought. "Never saw the girl from One in the Anthem, so she probably made it back. The boy from Three maybe? Perdita and Dom were both still out there. Saw Dom on the beach, and Perdita's who-"

Killed her. That much is obvious from the look on her face. From the delicate way she dances around confirming it. "Anyway..." From the way she moves on. It becomes a list: Perdita and Dom, yes. Kenji, Oberon, Callum, maybe. "The boy from Seven —" ("JJ," he mouths to himself over the worms of guilt wriggling beneath his ribs, unsure he's still allowed to speak the other boy's name.) "— and Nine? And you said Terra and Lysander?" He nods, counting on his fingers again, Jones to his rescue before the names outnumber his digits. "So that's — that's eleven," So many. So few. "not counting whatever happened while we've been —"

"Dead." He'll breathe reality into that word, even if she won't. Whether or not she hears him, or if she's too lost in thought staring at her tally marks like they're an unsolvable equation, or if it doesn't matter that it's both a truth and an untruth, Will isn't sure.

"How many you think we're actually at?" Will doesn't know. Could be four. Could be six. Could be more. "I mean, all the white capes could've died yesterday, I guess, so that could be three or four more dead actually dead."

He doesn't understand the rules to this place any more than he understands that by the time the equation is solvable, it'll be too late. Jones dismisses the futility of doing the math better than he could. "Not like it matters, I suppose." He shrugs, sitting upright out of his lounge.

"Yeah. Guess not." He tosses the iridescent knife back and forth in his hands, gauging its aerodynamics. The twist will put a spin on things — counterclockwise, maybe. A cannon fires, its percussive knell echoing through the marble corridors and reverberating Will's broken bones. It has more soul down here.

Glancing up at the ceiling, as if this is just the ruckus of a nuisance upstairs neighbor, he quirks an eyebrow. "Would it be too cliche for me to stare you down and say —" clearing his throat, he puts on a deep, grizzly action star voice "— 'One less now,' you know, all brooding and villainous and shit?" He cracks a grin, detaching the blast from the names and the names from the tally marks, because that riddle is unsolvable too. It could be JJ's. It could be Terra's. It could be anyone's. Will won't know until he's back on the surface or back in the Capitol with a crown on his head, and by then there's no question that there were cannons with their names on 'em too.

And he's not sorry about it, but he does feel something a little bit like that when he makes the punchline his knife, slung sidearm across the cave before Jones gets any other ideas about which of them is leaving and which of them will be buried here for a second time.

[ attacks kahinta, thrown twisted knife ]

REJVAHsxWithrowing knife

[ 9130 -- Knife in Cheek -- 7.0 damage + 1 target practice ]

[newclass=".w460"]width:460px;[/newclass]
throwing knife

[wimdy]

"Dead."

It sinks like a pit, like a girl held under the waves by the weight of so many choices that can't be taken back. A slash to her chest deep enough to make her cough blood into the dark hair of the girl who had thrown the knife before falling to her knees and tipping into the petal coated earth. I win, and she wants to tear her hair out, scream and shatter herself against the walls. Not yet, and she looks down at the clean cut of her fingers, the stark white of her uniform shrouded in dark, but not yet dark enough with the blood she promised to bring back to see with her own eyes.

No, not dead. Dead is a sealed promise. She'll keep that one locked behind her lips until it's true.

For the time being, she takes the quiet, contemplative comradery where she can get it. It's different than haunted words in the dark, in the fog, in the cold. There's something warm about the cavern glow, and Kahinta finds her shoulders relaxing back against the wall as she settles a little. Johnwayne sits up across from her, tossing his knife back and forth idly. "Yeah. Guess not." The rumble of the cannon, like caged lightening somewhere far away, shivers through her where she leans against the rock. A reminder, she thinks, where she does not want one. Changing numbers do little for them in the dark. Ten or nine or eight don't matter when one and two are all that's left underneath the earth.

This is not a friend. It's wishful thinking to let herself believe otherwise.

Damn Arabella and her talk of the stars, Callum and his book, the blurry photograph of two children from District Ten baking with smiles on their faces.

Her partner glances up, disaffected be it by act or in reality. "Would it be too cliché for me to stare you down and say, 'One less now,' you know, all brooding and villainous and shit?"

Kahinta laughs, can't help herself for the way her chest squeezes around the noise that draws from her stomach, smile stretching her round cheeks up as her eyes fall shut for a second at the way he grins in response. If he were there, Oberon would probably beat her over the head for it. Perhaps she would have broken her own bones for it in days prior as well, but there are ten, nine, eight, who knows how many tributes left, and she has cracked open rib cages and split the chests of boys who cry over kittens and held a girl beneath the water with her bare hands until the struggling stopped and been thankful for it. Each moment she breathes, she's grateful for the breath in her lungs, even as she feels herself grow colder with each new swing as she bears down on anyone in her path. (Not everyone. Not Oberon, when she could have pushed him into his grave. Not Dominic, when she could have secured him in the arms of his ally in the shallows. Not Perdita, when she slept and would have been none the wiser to a knife sliding deep beneath her ribs.)

If anyone deserves a villain, it's her. Kindness in equal measure means nothing when she's shown so little to the others she's robbed of their own families in favor of her own. She doesn't regret it all the same. Let her burn, or be buried, but not yet.

Her laughter breaks around the knife that carves their continued score deep into the apple of her cheek, striking bone before clattering to the floor. Teeth clenching around a pained gasp, Kahinta throws a hand up to her face to cover the wound, feet trying feebly to draw back farther and finding only the wall, kicking Johnwayne's knife off to the side and away from them both. She blinks quickly as she raises her own knife before her, blinking back the tears that have gathered unbidden, gaze fixed pointedly on him as she stills.

This is not a friend.

"Maybe a little, yeah," she hisses, words tight in her throat, pain flaring with every shift of her jaw. "But the last thing I heard yesterday was, 'I win,' so at least you're in good company. Everyone here fucking sucks." This is not a friend, but the lies feel rotten against her teeth all the same. Dropping her free hand to expose the long red gash in her cheek, she rocks forward on her toes a little, a half step with little movement forward. The tears haven't stopped, despite the familiar feeling of resolve hardening in her chest. "This fucking sucks," and the words are a quiet punch, just barely a whisper above the scuff of her boots as she moves forward with her knife held before her.

table credit to the
incomparable shrimp

[kahinta attacks will w/ knife]
VxVn3q0D_rknife
[shallow cut left calf 3.5]

knife

[aya]

[attr="class","w460"]

Cowardice is easier from a distance. If that's what it is that Will just did, severing an unspoken truce with the flick of his wrist.

Does it count as betrayal if there was no contract? Counting and commiseration swapped for one last laugh seems to Will like an equivalent exchange.

It was supposed to be cleaner than that, in any case: a compassionate path for him out of the catacombs through the Jones girl's temple. Operator error, that stupid corkscrew knife blade brought his aim down an inch and the margin of error is too slim on a knife when you're throwing it.

Damn it.

And now he's without a weapon, save for his two fists and his whole body, well-trained but crumbling.

"Maybe a little, yeah." When she growls at him, her knife in hand and his cast aside like a bad decision, abandoned on the stone floor along with her laughter, Will does not tremble. He deserves the venom and the glower, and locks his eyes on hers while his instincts twitch for a direction to flee in. Cowardice is easier from a distance.

"But the last thing I heard yesterday was 'I win,' so at least you're in good company." At least there's someone else still alive who's as big a piece of shit as Will Johnwayne. Cloaked in black, do they look the same? Do they move the same? Laugh the same? Same mask? Same face? Maybe everyone who's taken one look at Will and decried him for a monster just had him mixed up with some Johnwayne pretender.

Seventeen years of first-hand experience to the contrary debunk the idea of his reputation simply being a case of mistaken identity. It doesn't take a genius to figure out why his neighbors took their bouts of tag or murder the messenger inside as soon as someone spotted him. Easy enough to figure out why he got thrown over the edge into the lake first whenever he muscled his way into a game of king of the quarry, and it wasn't because his cannonball splash height was a spectacle that put everyone else's dives shame.

But it's not wrong to take one look at Will and smear him for a Johnwayne. It may be beyond his control, but there's no denying who raised him.

"Everyone here fucking sucks." At least she'd given him a chance to make her mind up about him. Does that settle it, then? Once and for all? Will Johnwayne: Not a monster. Not heartless. Human, yes. A boy, but one who fucking sucks.

He can live with that.

"This fucking sucks." That much is undeniable.

"Yeah. I do too." He's done caring about it.

Over and over again, Will was selfish and got chewed out for it. And when he did a selfless thing, he got accused of worse. "You were gonna find that out anyway." He's done trying to redeem himself for things he did, for things he thought, for the name he was given when he was born. "I only did this morning." Dying really puts things in perspective.

When she rounds on him, Will retreats two steps up the stairs, her knife tracing a line down his leg as he scrambles backwards. It's a trap to climb much higher; the door behind him is a dead end until Jones nails him to it with the point of her knife, at which point it will open but not for him. His eyes light on the knife he'd thrown, halfway down a corridor glinting in the torchlight.

He can't go back; the only way out of here is through it.

Instead, he leaps at her, arms wide for a flying tackle. King of the quarry!

[ attacks kahinta, thrown twisted knife ]

dofKt1bOWEunarmed

[ 5194 -- Tripped -- 0.5 damage ]

[newclass=".w460"]width:460px;[/newclass]
unarmed

[wimdy]

It's the twitchiness of him that makes her stomach flutter, a swell of uncertainty underneath her skin that she's grown accustomed to trying to shove down deep beneath the surface where the clouds can't touch any longer. What day is it now? She can't remember; it doesn't seem to matter, not when she can feel the heaviness of her bones so clearly with every move, and sees it reflected in her partner as he stands on the steps that lead them back to the world above where things will only continue to get worse with every step they manage.

There's nowhere for them to run.

Kahinta almost wishes he would try it so she could pretend she couldn't find him in the caverns all around them, but he dances up the stairs as she lashes out with her blade to catch only his leg instead of his abdomen. There's no running for them, not in the dark where there's nowhere left to hide.

And she's so good at hiding, from herself and from the world, from the people most important to her. For years, she'd hidden inside her own head, childish innocence and ignorance heaped onto the scales, unbalanced totally in the favor of fantasy over reality. Castles built into the treetops and something great beyond the planes of the earth etched deep into her bones, like she was made for song and dream to dance with through the long hours of the night. She'd been soft with it, cradled far from the harsh truths by her family and herself alike, hands soft against the tear of wood and eyes wet at the loss of a calf. How much had she lost in her softness? Years of not knowing her sister could be torn from her and pieced back together again, whole-y un-whole. The aftermath of life-long dreaming feels like breathing into consciousness in a tomb, surrounded by everything good the world has chosen to lock away where no one can find it again.

Waking up hurts, and it never stops. Kahinta wants so badly for it to stop.

"Yeah. I do too." She blinks, lashes wet and a little dazed, wondering if she'd spoken out loud words she never wanted to reach for, but as he continues speaking, she remembers the words she had actually breathed into the air. "You were gonna find that out anyway. I only did this morning."

His eyes twitch down and behind her, and Kahinta has only a moment before she feels the collision of a body against hers, their legs a tangle as she stumbles back. On the ground, a glint. She keeps moving with the force of the impact, righting herself as she creates space, and blocks him from the knife down the corridor.

"What, find out that you sucked?" she asks, panting through a breath in the moment she keeps at bay, furrowing her brow. This morning? Kahinta shakes her head a little, squinting and wincing at the way her cheek pulls, the warmth running down her face and onto her neck, soaking into the collar of her shirt.

If Kahinta had taken twelve, thirteen, sixteen years to realize she could be just as awful as the rest of them, who was she to judge Johnwayne for finding out today? Her dreams had been selfish, and her detachment had been selfish, and her reality is selfish, and her dreams are still selfish. Nothing has changed. She'd have to cut down to her bones before she'd be able to find an ounce of something that isn't self-interest, even in working with Libertas and Orcus and Vulcan. Nights spent making weapons trades and tracking Peacekeeper movements and wishing the world would burn, but only because her sister had died, because she feared her own name would be drawn from a bowl.

But how many of them in the graveyard had sworn to something bigger, or kinder, or more loving, and turned to blade and broken bone all the same? Maybe it would be different, someday. Maybe she'd keep drowning in self-interest even after the world was washed clean of the Capitol's stain.

"I don't think anyone who comes here gets to not suck once it's all started." That doesn't feel right either. Daemon had severed limb from body again and again, but had stitched her up with gentle, bumbling care all the same. Her jaw snaps shut around whatever damnation she'd been about to levy their way, all of them, all twenty-four, unable to bring herself to say it when all she can feel is the phantom touch of a fingers in her hair. She has to believe there's something more than selfishness, even if it runs too deep in her veins to bleed out. "For what it's worth, it's not all that you are."

Try as she might, she can't help how conflicted she feels even as she darts forward, open hand raised to cradle against the back of his neck as the other slashes at his throat.

table credit to the
incomparable shrimp

[kahinta attacks will w/ knife]
Z10hhF7ZVQknife
[slit throat]

knife