when i'm pushing daisies you'll have a garden {fast+bi day4}

[rook]

you die
and words don't do anything
it's permanently night
and i won't feel anything
we'll all be laughing with you when you die

The adrenaline is still surging through me as I pace around our makeshift camp, hands fidgeting, running through the dried blood in my hair. I can't sit still, I can't eat, I can't sleep. This is so fucked. Every day it gets worse in this hell and I can feel my own demise breathing hot on the back of my neck. I want to throw up, I want to scream, and yet I'm too tired to do any of that, too exhausted to do anything but go along with this sick facade.

I slump down on a rock and stare out to the halogenic green horizon glowing faintly against the spreading darkness. There are no constellations here, no moon or flickering stars.

Only erosion.

I think about what I said to Nanette, how I had to use words to scare a fourteen year old boy away so that Silk wouldn't kill him too. I'm so jaded from pretending to be someone I'm not, wasted on this tough girl act when really I'm too much of a coward to do what everyone else is. A fighter, yes. A killer? Never.

And all the while I can hear my uncle Wednesdae's voice taunting me, coward, coward, coward. That's all I'll ever be.

Because I can never do what he did. I don't have it in me to go pass that threshold, dive into the red and let it consume me. Let it corrupt everything I am.

I'm not that.

Saylor stands looking at me with what I can only assume is some form of pity. After a short silence he props himself beside me and blinks, shimmering eyes piercing the night vale. We've been here before, he and I, only last time I rejected his company. I think now, after what's happened to both of us, he's the only person I have left.

"I think I'll take that therapy session now, if the offer still stands."

Saylor Bell may be the last friend I ever make.

"Ha, that feels like ages ago now." His laugh is humourless, lifeless almost, and it fills the silence for a few short seconds, "But yeah I can listen. Reckon that's about all I can do."

I don't know where to start. I could go back to when I was a journalist, sneaking into rich kids parties to get the scoop on all the vile shit their parents got up to, or to when I got in my first fight, or when I watched old footage of my uncle get stabbed through the chest by Peridot Myler some twenty-five years ago, when he was no older than I am now.

I suppose I start with how I got myself into this mess.

"I didn't volunteer by choice, you know. I owed some bad people a lot of money. I was dead before I even raised my hand." I admit, visions of being drowned in the docks the night before the Reaping, a brutal warning of what was to come if I didn't find the money.

The deadline, the Reaping, my escape. But you can't escape a man like Jonah Higgs, with his assets all over Nine, his men on every street corner, his money in the butchers and the greengrocers, in the Peacekeepers pockets. He sees everything, and his influence spreads beyond the District all the way to the Capitol.

The note. A threat on Ken's life if I didn't return. Until that moment I thought my actions only affected me, and I was okay with eating my just desserts, I deserved it. But Ken? If they touch her. If they kill her too... Fuck.

"And now I'm here and if I want to get back and save someone I care about from the same bad people, I have to kill." I say, the equation that simple. Like Silk says, kill or be killed. If only it was so binary.

"And I've seen it, and I've seen what it does to people, what it's done to Silk. She may not know it or care about it, but she'll never be able to undo what she did today. Ever." There is fear in my voice, because I don't want that to be me. I look at Silk and I see Wednesdae. Kill at all costs, enjoy the sport of it, bathe in the glory - even if that glory is dripping red and stinks of decay and rot. Even if it dissolves away everything you are and makes you as cold as the bodies you stand over.

But if I don't join her in this twisted ritual, then Ken's death is my fault.

"And I have to do that too. Else I'll be dead, and you'll be dead, and back home Ken will be dead."

I suppose death is the only constant in all of this. Who am I to decide who lives and who dies? Who are any of us? My head falls into my hands and I stare at my feet, tapping anxiously, waiting for the answer.

"I think I owe you an apology," He says, turning my head as he laughs that same dead laugh again.

"I kind of resented you for a while. You and Silk always seem so fucking strong, like you knew what had to be done and just did it. Easy." The word hangs in the air for a few seconds, and I feel my chest sigh heavy. None of this was ever easy.

"I can't say anything is gonna be okay. In fact I’m pretty sure nothings ever gonna be okay again. You've been trying to take this on alone since I met you but you're not. For right now you’re not. Whatever we have to do tomorrow we'll do it. If this place has taught me anything it's that wounds heal, long as you’re alive to feel 'em."

I almost want to believe him, buy into the idea that we can recover and be strong from all of this, but I know it's a lie. Even if one of us somehow survives and wins this thing, there's a sad truth to the Hunger Games that no one ever wants to admit...

No one ever really makes it out alive.

"Hah, try stealing money off a mafia boss and betting it all on yourself to win a cage-fight. Then tell me how admirable a trait being 'strong' really is." I say, staring down into my empty water canister, wishing it was full of something potent to sip at and numb the night away.

"Being 'strong' is why I'm in this god damn mess, Saylor. If I was just passive I'd be living a normal life as a journalist back home in Nine." I admit, thinking back to how good I had it in my little apartment. Only a person like me could take something as good as that and fuck it up so badly.

"Passive didn't save me, either. I had no enemies, no friends, no family. I was as safe as they come. But here I am. Here we are." Saylor says, offering some much needed perspective, and I find myself nodding slowly.

"Here we are." I echo.

It's strange the bonds you form here at the end of the world.

"And I'm glad it's you I’m here with." I add with a smile.

He looks at me and it's both impossibly happy and sad at the same time.

"Til the bitter end"

go fuck yourself
i'm mean, not nice
you said it twice
you said it twice
don't you have somewhere to be at seven thirty?

lyrics - when you die MGMT

[gamemaker artemie 🦉nyte]

- s a y l o r -

It was us or it was them. I repeat the mantra with every step, hands clenched into fists at my side. Silk doesn't look much like a person since it happened, still brandishing her spear soiled by Revan's curdled blood. She's the killer she was raised to be. I've made so many empty promises to these strangers I've come to love, but I never thought I'd live long enough to keep them.

Silk was only true to her word.

Perhaps that should be comforting, but I'm just scared.

And Revan's dead, but I haven't missed the way his ghost clings to us. His blood dries, like Turner's does, full of malice. Though I didn't deliver the killing blow, I still killed him. I still feel responsible. I decided his life was worth less than mine. I let him die. I'm so weak and I'm so fucking selfish.

I can see how hollow we've become. Running away from an obvious victory, only grateful that I needn't hurt anyone else. I think I understand what Reagan meant, now, about how mercy is stronger than blood-lust. There are no villains in this arena. At least none that I've met.

We set up camp somewhere safe, or as safe as the arena can be. It's hard to shake the feeling of eyes stuck to the back of my neck - whether that be a hidden camera lens or an enemy's gaze, I'll never know. I've long since decided it'd kill me care.

Fridae looks smaller than I've ever seen her, hands shaking in spite of her obvious attempts to quell their unrest. It's unsettling, a problem I'm desperate to fix. A couple of hours ago, I'd have probably told her it would be okay. I'd have uttered as many empty promises as it took to soothe that unnerving expression of her's.

But I don't want to lie anymore.

I'm silent as I sit next to her, leaving enough room between us that you'd hardly think we were friend at all.

"I think I'll take that therapy session now, if the offer still stands." I remember how much it stung the first time she rejected me, how small she'd made me feel with so few words.

I could hold a grudge, but I don't want to. I've never known a friend, much less a friend like Fridae Drummond. "Ha, that feels like ages ago now." We've made so many scars in the mean time, and have so much more to live for, "But yeah I can listen. Reckon that's about all I can do."

It's strange to watch Fridae fall from grace. She tells me about why she's here, about every mistake she's made. It's easy to hate volunteers, to pretend we're more worthy of surviving than them but-

"And now I'm here and if I want to get back and save someone I care about from the same bad people, I have to kill."

Maybe we only ever pretend they have a choice.

"I think I owe you an apology," My hands clench at my sides, wanting to reach out to her but knowing she doesn't seek comfort the same way I do. "I kind of resented you for a while. You and Silk always seem so fucking strong, like you knew what had to be done and just did it. Easy."

Easy. The thought is spiteful, gone rotten since I watched the way Fridae's face twisted when she talked about home. I'm sure she'd cringe at the pity, but I think it's a wonderful thing to have. If not simply because it's proof that someone cares.

"I can't say anything is gonna be okay. In fact I’m pretty sure nothing's ever gonna be okay again. You've been trying to take this on alone since I met you but you're not. For right now you’re not. Whatever we have to do tomorrow we'll do it. If this place has taught me anything it's that wounds heal, long as you’re alive to feel 'em." It spills out of me in a single breath, I can't bear to look at her. It's more than shame - I've never known something like this. The look in her eyes might actually break me and I don't think I have the time to figure out why.

"Hah, try stealing money off a mafia boss and betting it all on yourself to win a cage-fight. Then tell me how admirable a trait being 'strong' really is." She hasn't looked at me once since we've started speaking. I wonder if it's for her sake or mine. We're separated by a couple inches of dirt, but somehow much father apart. "Being 'strong' is why I'm in this god damn mess, Saylor. If I was just passive I'd be living a normal life as a journalist back home in Nine."

I think about home then. A lonely farm, as far away from my family as I could afford. I think of how strange my siblings looked, seven years older than I remembered them being. Made into strangers that share my blood. "Passive didn't save me, either. I had no enemies, no friends, no family. I was as safe as they come. But here I am. Here we are."

Fridae is wonderful for all of her flaws. For every dire mistake that landed her here. I wish she was that quiet little journalist in Nine, but I'm so grateful to have known her.

I can't say that, I don't think she wants me to.

"Here we are." She echoes, as I clench my fists around the dust between us. "And I'm glad it's you I’m here with." She smiles and I wonder if I've ever seen that before.

So I smile too, "'Til the bitter end."