Survival // [C4, Day 1]

Survival // [C4, Day 1] Oct 21, 2022 14:43:20 GMT -5

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Post by pogue on Oct 21, 2022 14:43:20 GMT -5

[CW: Cash purposely wounds himself in this post. If this may disturb you, please skip.]

C A S H

There is a sinister moment that embeds itself within his brain in the midst of the Bloodbath, white-knuckling rusted steel and swinging wildly at beings he will never know. He knows the fight is wearing thin, can see the numbers dwindling, can see the way new waves of red beginning to spill on the bodies around him. He's weaved his way in and out of the fight, ducking into the Cathedral and back out through shattered windows and back doors, hidden himself in plain sight and shadow and let the fight around him go on, only swinging when he knows his target's back is turned.

It works for him, not for others. He watches a blade slice into Terra's arm and stops himself, eyes wide and heart beating and items clutched tight to his chest. Crossroads draw themselves in scarlet in front of him, to stay or go, to fight or forget, to give his life in bravery or claim it in cowardice. Heart slows in his chest, heartstrings sever, bones ache. A choice is made.

He strips bare the notion that a boy from Five cannot be just as sinister as the world he was pulled from, that he could not drip with scarlet and let it taint his heart, that he cannot play the Game just like the rest of them.

He leaves.

Turns, bloody weapon and beating heart and skin still clean but his soul can't say the same, his last look of the Bloodbath is of his own ally swinging wildly into the bloodied shapes and shadows of their fellow tributes, hopeless and futile and everything in between. There's a voice in his head that tells him it was necessary, that even if he had gone back to try and help it would have meant nothing, that Terra was a goner, that he had to make sure he wasn't one too.

Lungs beat heavy against the inside of a tired chest, skin still itching and bones aching from whatever they stabbed him with just before the Bloodbath. He swears he can feel it crawling in his veins now, ripping underneath flesh half-rotten, a constant sense of uneasiness that taps and claws at his bones and threatens to rip him apart from the inside out. His breaths are ragged as he runs away from the screams and the bloodshed and clashing steel, images of a boy strung up in bloodied rope inside of the chapel flitting through the forefront of his mind. In his Eighteen years he had never seen the Capitol kill one of their own tributes before the Games even started, it sends a vile thought into the back of his mind. It means they are all marked, it means they are playing a new game with new rules-

- A cannon fires, he slows to a crawl.

New game, same outcome.

He stares at nothing for what feels like an eternity, listening to the echoes of her cannon until it slips into the void of an overcast sky. Something awful, shock and awe, survival and sour thoughts racing through his brain, he staggers into a nearby cluster of rotted trees for cover as he catches his thoughts. It's with admiration that he admires his own skin, unharmed and pale underneath an overcast sky, devoid of red except for the occasional splatter of blood that wasn't his own. The realization of his own selfishness sets in quickly in its wake, that he had left his own ally to die, that he had already stepped into what he'd despised on big screens in District Square-

- that he'd never had the choice to be anything else.

"Terra's dead." Eyes wide. But he doesn't believe it, can't.
"Terra's dead." Furrowed brow. Like he can undo it.
"Terra's dead." Ice in his voice, but I'm not.

He steadies himself on the nearest branch of a rotted tree, feeling it threaten to snap underneath the pressure and grips his axe tight in shaking grasp. He had ran from the Bloodbath to make sure he didn't follow in Terra's path, cowardly and venomous, but Cantara and Carsyn did not know that, did not have to know that.

He raises his axe up to his face and stares at the reflection of a boy long gone, obscured and melting into the sheets of still-wet blood from his other tributes. Wolf in bloody sheep clothing stares back, and he knows his truth can never be written in stone. To himself he is a coward, survivor, sleazy and shady and everything he needs to be. To his allies he will be a boy that only ran when he was forced to, fought back against the tributes who'd attacked them, distraught and broken over the loss of an ally.

A boy like that does not wear skin without wounds.

It's why he tears off the only piece of wood with any life remaining from the tree he leans against, places it in between his teeth just like his Dad had taught him when he'd split open his shin on a rusted piece of farm equipment, stitches found and wound sealed and pain like fire underneath the flesh. This wouldn't be as clean as that, he recognizes the fact as he turns and faces the tree, presses the axe against it and twists it in his grasp until the blade points towards his own shoulder.

It's clear what he is about to do before he even moves forward, red lights of the camera stuck into the rotting tree turning its sight onto him. Hollow voice counts down the seconds until he opens his own soul, 1- 2-

There's no three, only a quick rush forward and the blade of an axe embedded into his shoulder. His teeth slam down into the branch pressed between them but he tastes nothing of stale wood, only feels the fire explode from a wound deep in his own shoulder. Flesh and muscle and sinew come apart all at once on his body, deep wound carved into his left shoulder and blood spilling out onto his chest in waves. He tries, fails to stifle the scream that escapes from lips pressed closed, gasp and cry and tears welling up on the edge of his vision.

It's what feels like an eternity before he is able to steady his own breathing enough to once again grasp the axe, heavy damage done and the job nearly completed. The rest of his wounds are shallow at best, scrapes on skin and thin lines of red running across his chest and torn into his uniform. By the time he is done he is coated in a sheet of his own blood, a mockery of the Bloodbath, a liar and a cheat and something that looks like he fought his way out. Then, with his own mortality on full display he stumbles forwards towards where he had seen Cantara and Carsyn sprint to.

By the time he breaks through the clearing of rotted stumps and hanging souls he doesn't have to do much work to make it look real, choking on ragged breaths and wincing with every wave of pain that crests out from the wound embedded in his shoulder. The pain brings tears to his eyes and he brings the tears down his own cheeks, feigning his own grief and feeling heart shrivel in chest. "Is she?" He stares at Cantara with an answer in his own irises, shaking hand pressed to the wound at his shoulder- "I tried to fight them off, but they-" Gaze drops, he counts the amount of blood splatters on the ground, traces the footsteps of allies he will have to kill to get home, "-they hit too hard." Axe slips from his grasp and embeds blade down into the ground below, little mistruths clinging to steel in the form of blood droplets.

The lie burns heavy on his lips. He swallows it down and sits in the silence of his own survival.

[Maint. stuff in maint.]