flicker in the dark // k&t vs t&c ; day six.

Broken hand reaching out in the darkness, bloody prints on the cave walls like way markers, a path home that she'll never be able to find again.

For a long pause of silence, there is only pain and sorrow in the pitch black, cannon blasts echoing through her like gunshots. Like this is the first night she has ever felt agony. Like this is all but a memory, and she's already lived it. Her oldest scars ache as much as the newest ones, as much as the raw flesh of her burnt fingertips, and the cuts that have torn through her fineries and left her looking worse for wear. Bioluminescent fungi shines a spotlight on her features, in flashes and in glimpses, and for several hours she tries to make her peace with the absence of control in her grasp.

There's just the emptiness, and the endless journey, and the way the madness and pride in her bleeds out of all her wounds and into a whisper of regret. Victor of the Ninety-First Hunger Games, self-crowned, sorceress of flames who could barely stoke an ember. Who in her madness, nearly lost a part of herself, a trauma she would be unable to shield and hide away from the world. She stills furious, in the way that she feels tricked, and used, and with enough audacity to think: why didn't they warn me about this?

She remembers every cruel thing she said, every merciless desire she spoke into existence. Carly is not a girl who goes about building kingdoms, she takes them. Slight as she might be, all vicious bark and such a seemingly harmless bite. Even in the nothingness, even when it's one-sided and she cannot see her audience, she knows the gamemakers are watching her. Every camera rolling, every dark corner is a confessional booth waiting to shelter her every wickedest secrets. She stares straightforward, bloodshot and damned.

"You will never put me in danger like that again."

Always, like a fledgling goddess of luck, she scorns the odds and rolls the dice of her own crafting. When she wants to win, she wins. It has always been as simple as that. Fairy lights on the ceiling, her vision shifts in her tiredness, turning glowing mushrooms into something beautiful. Something to trust. When she finds Tune, bloodied and glowing in the cavern glade, nothing in her knows how to hesitate from throwing her arms around her friend. The things she said are things she refuses to give power to; there will be no narrative where she does not fight viciously for her bond with Tune, and with Andrew.

It's a short-lived victory. A manifestation that comes true at a price. Her fingers curl in Tune's dark strands, foreheads meeting, their sobbing sounds shared only with each other and the corpses in the shadows. No one else. Only the two of them, heiresses of destruction, the killer queens and their white knight. Andrew Priest. Bright and sure as the sun.

Here, his light does not shine.

And when they hear the shriek in the night, the wings flapping ever closer, until it all quiets and Cookie is gazing up at them in the terrible, lovely light. Even before the anthem, even before she is forced to stare up at his face and process a thing that she will never be allowed to have closure for, they know. Both of them do. It means only one thing, one impossible loss that neither of them will ever be able to come to terms with. That she will never forgive herself for. She told him that he was going to die there. Like it was an afterthought, the simplest thing.

And, yes, it's true that she knows what winning means. Even as she holds Tune close to her, and she dares to think that she may be able to evade the knife aimed so carefully at her heart.

---

What is there to lose in the ashes of the ashes of their burnt down love?

Their hands part like a foreshadowing, like wraiths in the night who know what they must do to survive. To conquer. They've been playing this part since the very first day, long before the world had ever dared to push them to their limits and see them for the calamity they so rightfully are. Carly and Tune, and Andrew always, sentinels of the cave system and all the tragedy that has transpired here.

All it takes is a footstep. Her sickle is removed from her belt, and she swings at the outline of a form in the fungal glow, light blue and purple and a tint of crimson as red as her rage. Recognition for the boy she wills to die.

"Here we are again, Nott." Her blade is like a whistle signaling death. She wills this. She will sacrifice any soul necessary to save her friend. "You didn't run far enough away, did you?"

In the glow, it's hard to see the truth for what it is.

But still it reveals itself.

Like frightened boys hiding in the shadows, and cruel girls thinking of all the vengeance they are owed. They play their parts like none of the rage has been bled from them yet. It's hard to know what's real here, where the sun cannot reach, and what is still lost to the purple haze. Standing across from her, she looks at Tune, and in those eyes she can see it.

The only darkness she can trust.

Her love, this love, is a shade of mahogany wood.

And that love...

Cinnamon burns on the stovetop.

All her fiercest dreams are ashes now.

She holds her sickle like it's a death sentence; simply because it is. Because no matter how hard she scrubs the once-polished steel, this blade will always be responsible for severing at least one lifeline. She knows the squelch of a heart stopping beneath the force of her. Like just her presence is enough to will it so. "You shouldn't have helped me that first day." Her head tilts to the side, and the story starts to unravel.

When she imagines the life of her dreams, it's more than just surviving the Games.

She moves to the Capitol, gets the high paying job she's been striving for, meets her new roommate Tune and the boy named Andrew who lives just across the hall. And they're just kids, not warriors, and they have years instead of days to make sense of the way their heartstrings tangle around one another. And she would have loved them, as much as she would have wanted to love him, and now she will never be allowed to have that. When she stares at the palm of her hand, she imagines if she would trade the gold of a crown just for the feel of his fingertips again.

For the possibility to exist with both of them outside of the war.

"Maybe then I wouldn't have split Andrew's neck open."

The guns fire without any concern for the glass shattering inside of her chest; and when she lunges for Kiptyn, she does it with all the fury and mercilessness of a lightning strike.

"Grab him, Tune." She can't bring herself to worry about the potential of betrayal; she prioritizes all of her hurts in a pretty little line. The guillotine waits. "I want you to force him to watch what we're going to do to his friend."