acatalepsy | emerson's last

[alex 🐺]

She chokes on saltless air in a field of green grass and feels blood covering her lips.

Each breath feels like a chasm has opened inside of her, magma coating her lungs. Emerson Le Roux never saw the boy from Seven. She didn’t realize that as she was shouting for Jules and Love, he was seeing red, raising his poker, and finding soft flesh at the base of her neck. 

Death comes quickly for Emerson Le Roux.

The tentpole falls from her hands and her knees buckle underneath her and she can imagine Love saying something absolutely ridiculous about being on her knees, bowing before his false coronation. She would curse him for his insolence because they all knew she was the queen here. She imagines Emmett falling to Kenji, sees Silk take too many hits and crumble before her, her family laying all around her, their deaths in slow-motion. They all take their place in the family tomb. 

“Jules, g—go,” she tries to say, her right hand coming up to staunch the bleeding, even though she knows it’s no use. Her fingers slip against the wound and she's shaking. Love’s going to absolutely give her so much shit for this if she makes it out of here alive, probably saying something about making a mess over his hiking boots, but even that doesn’t seem likely.

Emie coughs again, ichor splashing on the ground in front of her, red marring the earth, before she looks at Love, pleading. He’d understand, she hoped. They may have made a devil’s bargain with him, but he would keep Julian alive. He had to now. “L—Love, get him—get him out of—”

She can hear waves crashing against the shore and knows that it’s her heart beating its last as she bows to the grass.

She thinks she can see a sandy beach underneath a sky full of stars. Megáli Gáta, Areto had told her last night, and she hears the girl's words once again, fainter now, fighting against white noise and static when hours ago it had been so clear. It had been like a song, a melody that Emerson wanted to be sung only for her. She should have kissed her when she had the chance. She wished she could see Areto once again, but she was long gone, lurking somewhere in the safety of the trees.

"They say its hide couldn't be pierced by any mortal weapon. It devoured every man that sailed to challenge it and was awarded a place in the sky for its prowess."

She wasn’t immortal, that much was true. Her skin is scratched and scarred, her flesh is pink and pliable and her blood burns red, not gold, decorating the idyll all around them thats been disturbed by their sport. 

Her last thoughts are of Emmett and Silk, of Julian and Love, of Areto, her story etched in steel, sparking against flint. She surrenders to the darkness, the light swallowed in the depths.

The lioness breathes her last breath to the sound of the ocean, salt on her lips, and the sky burning bright above her.

[pogue]

M

L   O   V  E

Truthfully, Love Bellisario saw the boy from Seven lunging towards Emerson with several heartbeats to spare. Just enough time for him to alert his ally, for him to launch the hunting knife into Reece's heart in one swoop, for him to save her in all of his morality. But Love had never rested heavy against a crumbling moral pillar, had never claimed to be a knight in shining armor for any of these people, had never bound himself to their lives like they did to his. Would Reece Jackson be doing him a favor? All bloody spear and desperate lunge in Emie's blind spot?

Does a hunter call out to the prey before he fires the killing shot?

He makes his choice in tense muscle and silent voice, scraping the warning call from his lips and choking them down.

He lets Emerson Le Roux die.

He blinks and sees red spill forth, warning held down on the edge of his tongue until it is purposely too late, until the spear is already being ripped from the soft flesh of Emie's neck. "Emie!" He calls, voice injected with false concern and he's running towards an already dying girl, watching the blood spill in crashing waves from her throat as he catches her falling form. His eyes drift to the only other alliance still there, shock riddling their faces as he spits harsh nothings at them, muttered swears and curses.

His footsteps are heavy as they run, her blood spilling out over his forearms as he does his best to not bounce her in his arms, gaze drifting down every so often as her breaths become ragged, labored, as if drawn out from Death's hand itself.  “L—Love, get him—get him out of—” Emie stammers out in between choking breaths, face pale with blood loss and missing that distinct Le Roux snarl he'd grown to love. And he wants to tell her that he'll let Julian die the same way he did her, wants to yell at her to not dare put that expectation on him.

"I will." He finally mutters, hardened gaze locking eyes with Emerson Le Roux one last time.

One last lie for a dying girl.

There's already cracks on the facade that Julian wraps himself in as he carries Emerson towards the group, fool's gold armor riddled with splintering veins ripe for the shatter. By the time Love lays her down in a coffin of grass and daisies he can tell the boy is about to fall apart, icy blue eyes drifting up to Julian's face and then over to Waverly before finally resting on Areto's new form rising from the bushes a leap and a bound away, silhouette standing firm against the heat that wafting up from the earth below.

He holds back a snarl as he rises from the dying pride of the Le Roux family, Emerson's blood clinging to his skin and coating his hands and forearms in gloves of sickening red. It brushes against his uniform as he pulls the knife from his pocket, Emerson's final act to permanently mark him as deadly, sick, twisted. He stains the hunting knife red with her dying breaths as he holds it, fingertips tightening against the handle and flashing the sunlight in Areto's direction. It's less a threat and more an acknowledgement of suspended danger, Love's mind racing to twist the situation into something sponsors could fawn over.

His eyes flash to Julian's shaking form, hourglass turned upside down and shattered and he knows that he doesn't have much time to make his decision. A broken career boy day One of the Games was nothing to write home about, much less anything that Love could work with.

One twist of his form and a flick of his wrist and he launches the knife into the only camera in their vicinity, dancing sparks and spat static falling from the shattered tech as his weapon embeds itself into it. It's borrowed time stolen from the hands of the ones who are watching all of this, and Love knows if there isn't something worth seeing when the Gamemakers resolve his actions then they wouldn't like what comes next.

He steps forwards, bloody palm pressing softly into Julian's lower back. "You've got about a minute and a half before they get eyes on us again." He whispers into Julian's ear, "Cry if you need to, break if you need to, but don't let them see it." A bloody print is left on Julian's back as he moves his hand down and laces their fingers together, tightening his grip and running his thumb against the top of Julian's hand in the false support of a showman, finally resting his head on his lover's shoulder.

Go ahead. He thinks tauntingly, gaze drifting down to the fading form of Emerson Le Roux.

Hurry up and die, little lion.

[tick 12a / calla]

A R E T O

► ► ►

The cannon goes off while she's doing the headcount. Ariel's eyes widen and Blade flinches, Avriel looks at Areto and she glances back over her shoulder. The trees are sparse where they've stopped to rest, but the pines are full and the grass is thick. Areto can see the distant shadow of the welcome sign, but they're too far to make out any kind of figures.

The sound makes her heart jump into her throat and she subconsciously counts the four of them again. A steady sense of unease pollutes the air, something distinctly off in the way that the silence grows.

"Stay with Avriel," She tells the girls, "I'll be right back."

There's a sputtering of voices coming from the cornucopia, faint and murmuring, but when Areto creeps closer through the brush, she only sees the last alliance picking through the remains of the bloodbath. She feels terribly exposed in the field like this, with only the coreopsis for company, but the other tributes are too focused on their spoils to notice her. She sees no body laid on the ground, but there's a trail on the grass that stands out starkly - red against green - so she follows it. Maybe it's foolish to go on her own, without a weapon, but she needs the peace of mind.

And she knows that her body is a workable weapon. She is brave - not stupid.

But even then, Areto freezes against a mass of crumbling concrete when she sees a flash of gold and a uniform stained red. It's like the whole word narrows to one singular point. She looks to the huddle of bodies unseeingly and feels her fists clench around air. There's a cracking in her ribcage, a great expanse of grief that's never been there before and she doesn't know how to quiet it. It rises up and out of her throat and leaves her gasping against the grass, falling and digging her nails into the soil in a way that would make her mother quake.

Love glances up suddenly, and Areto knows he spots her by the look on his face and the flash of the blade in his palm.

Julian looks distraught beside him, but Areto has no time for him.

It feels like there's a cluster of bees under her skin and she vibrates with it. It's not fury. Not quite. It's something that simmers and eats away at her bones, turning them brittle and she feels like they may snap against the wind. The ground turns uneven and she almost stumbles as she stands again. She watches Love rest his head on Julian's shoulder and feels sick. They stand watching Emerson's body, like one would watch a particularly expensive vase that a child knocked over.

She moves for Love as soon as he throws his knife away. Her feet hit the ground like thunder and she feels like a tidal storm in the way she rips him away from Julian and shoves him at the shoulders. She wants to break his nose and dash his head into the cement pedestals over and over until that evil, horrible look is gone from his eyes.

"What did you do?" She hisses, burning and vile and unthinking.

Her fist finds the front of Love's uniform and she gets in his face, suddenly uncaring of the way she's outnumbered. She'll fight them all with her bare and bloody fists if she has to.

"I told her she couldn't trust you." And she snaps at the words, teeth gleaming like an animal, but she can't look at Emerson. She's seen death countless times on the island - old and young and justified and not. But she can't bring herself to turn and look at the beast of a girl who was hunted and silenced for sport.

Ḕ tā̀n ḕ epì tâs, she remembers parroting to Emerson, honour or death.

But the world is cruel, and there is no honour in boys that have skeletons in their smiles.

“Did you even wait before her back was turned?” The words scald her tongue but she lets her mouth be the pyre, "Did you look her in the eye when you betrayed her?"

[napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.]

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

It all happened too quickly.

“Step back, Waverly,” he said as he flipped his knife in the air, a gleam of gold when it caught the light. The knife landed back in his waiting palm, sharp side down. Julian flashed an equally whetted smile at the girl from Twelve. “We’re leaving our new friends. Care to leave a friendship card, Nora? Maybe a numb–”

And then – boom. The first cannon, and it shattered through his entire being. He bent forward, huddling as if away from a land mine, as the sound rang through the earth. He would have to get used to that sound soon because he knew what it signified: death. Who had been picked first? Julian mused as everything slowly began to reach a small calm.

Out of the things he wanted to see there, she wasn’t included. She had to have been the last on that list, a thought he shelved for later, a scenario he thought he’d have ample time to brave up to.

He didn’t expect to see her golden hair, a halo in the sun, to suddenly be laid out across the verdigris. He didn’t expect her throat to be stained scarlet red, quivering with each ragged breath. He didn’t expect to see her. It couldn’t be. It was too soon. All the sense in the world and this lacked every single damned ounce of it.

“Emers—” he finally gasped out. “Emerson.”

Julian scrambled forward, the world suddenly spinning too fast for this slow, aching burn that had ignited itself behind his ribs, right under his heart. He looked around wild-eyed. The sharp end of the weapon in the hand of the boy from Seven, it had blood on it. “You fucke—” he snarled, all lion, taking the first step to launch himself towards the male. Something—Love—yanked him back by his wrist. “Let me go,” he hissed, wrenching his arm free from the other’s grip. His rage ... it burned. In this current, wretched moment, it felt like Julian could disintegrate everything to ashes and embers with its white-hot keenness.

It was Emerson’s gasp that quelled it. Slowly, shakily, he turned around, afraid yet knowing of what he’d see. It wasn’t a lion there, but a girl on the cusp of death. She was a sun, and then suddenly she was the cold, unending dark.

It all happened too quickly. Dazed, Julian followed along as Love picked her body up and they left the other alliance to their spoils of war, following trails in the grass, taking what feels like something between minutes or hours that by the time they rest his rage has turned jagged and turned to sharp grief.

There was so much blood. Julian’s breath snagged on the lump at the back of his throat. “Emie,” he gasped.

But the girl before him has ceased to be the cousin from his childhood. In fact, with pale waxen skin and throat smeared red, she was ceasing to be anything of a sort at all as she slowly bled out, and out, on the grass. Not bright-eyed, gold-haired Emerson who loved wrestling boys down, not radiant, belligerent Emerson who picked her own battles and won them all—not anything. Just a girl – yes – watering the ground. Ridley’s words came back to him with a new sharpness then, whetted by grief: your name won’t matter in there. Emerson’s hadn’t. She was dying and being a Le Roux would not, could not, change that.

“Jules,” the other stammered, making Julian quickly wipe the dampness on his cheeks away. “G—go.” He shook his head. He reached for her other hand, this one quivering too, and held it tight. “No,” Julian said. “I’m staying with you.” The ‘until you go’ went unsaid.

And many other things went unsaid, many stories left and abandoned in his head, but nothing Julian said can ring stronger than the final breaths of a warrior who'd fought her final match. In that moment he understood that Emerson had been the stronger out of the two of them. Her last breaths, and she used them on a plea for Love in his sake. She was a warrior until the end.

And so it was true: this journey had always been quicker for Le Rouxes, quickest if they burned brightly. Because this grey world of theirs, it hated and resented all things bright and lovely.

He let the flood at the back of his throat escape in a choked sob, but the sound became something stifled as Areto burst through the trees. She immediately lunged, not for him, but for Love. “Hold it,” he hissed once he glimpsed the look in her eyes. He reckoned he wore a matching one.

Julian looked at Love. “If it was him, why the hell would he still be alive, Areto?” The words rang hollow, spoken from the newly-bore well of grief in him that stretched like a cavern to dark depths. He looked away. “It was Reece, the boy from Seven.” A name he wouldn’t forget, that was for certain. He wondered if he felt proud of what he had done, killing a career, a Le Roux nonetheless.

And the fortune thing was?

Julian could find out for himself before giving him the same fate. 

[gamemaker sloane ♕ kaяi ♕]

There was no sound.

Just a deafening silence.

It echoed throughout the Arena. Waverly's mouth opened wide trying to release a blood curdling scream, but she heard nothing.

It all happened so fast. The boy, the spear, the blood. Emerson, laying on the bloody grass gasping for her last breaths. She had faced Death before, she had even helped deliver her father to him, but this time He seemed more ominous, more ruthless, starving for more blood on His hands. Waverly knew this time He wasn't going away as quickly as He had before.

Just like that, He had taken someone who trained her whole life to destroy Him. Just like that and He decided that today would be her final breath. Emerson was the girl who was supposed to live. Emie was the girl who had everything to win. The look, the skills, the knowledge.

But now she is the girl who died first, bloodied and broken with her cousin and two strangers by her side.

Emerson is dead.

And she is sure to be next.

If He could destroy someone like her so easily, what is keeping Waverly alive? A simple snap of His fingers and the girl fell, all He would have to do is look at her before she crumbled to the ground. Her life is a string, and all He had to do was simply cut the string. What type of backwards world were they living in?

None of it seemed real.

Not even as Love launched a knife at the camera, not even as Julian quickly sobbed over her dying body, and especially not as the girl from Four stormed towards them, screaming at Love for his betrayal. None of it made sense, not even as Waverly stood there staring at the scene around, bruised and covered in blood. Some of it she was sure was her own, but part of her hoped some belonged to others. She wasn't sure what type of condition she is because right now she feels no pain.

Right now she feels nothing.

Areto.

The name of the girl finally registered when Jules spoke. She didn't know her, she barely even saw her at the Training Center, but still she felt the need to speak up, no matter how terrifying she may be.

"It...It's true. The boy from Seven. We were almost out. It..."

It should have been me.

But those are words that are better left unspoken.