{ ache to come home somehow || roger + scout vs reflectors

The minute the hound's three heads stop snapping and struggling, Roger is at its belly with his knife, cursing the beast under the wind as he guts it in search of his devoured thumb. Left-handed, the pirate makes crude, desperate work of his butchery, fervor and futility at odds with one another. He severs arteries in vain.

After the adrenaline wears off, he sits back on his knees. Blood paints his arms to the elbows, phantom jaws biting his thumb off with every throb of his pulse. Even if he finds his finger, what's the use? He can't very well reattach it and expect anything but infection.

It's mine. I want it back. Jolly Roger can't justify the sentiment, but pain doesn't listen to reason.

He skins the cerberus and finds nothing beyond welcome distraction. Retroactively, the career boy convinces himself that was the point in the first place. What else was he supposed to do, sit around and cry about it? Done is done. Fingers don't grow back. It's permanent. All of it — the Games, the wounds, dying — it's all permanent.

Rocking his weight from his knees to his heels, he sinks backwards. Kneeling upright has his back aching, and so a sigh accompanies the relief of slouching. It's all permanent.

Scout finds distraction in the monster's corpse after Roger does, fashioning it into a hooded cloak while he grips his wrist and stares at the ceiling, grimacing himself to sleep.

In the morning, he wears the skin of the beast that bit him and feels all the better for it.

This morning, their travel is slower: Thumb replaced with searing pain, Roger can't provide effective piggyback rides for long periods of time. But Scout's foot is still busted, so the District Fours are constrained to choose between two hobbled paces. It takes ages to get anywhere — but it isn't as if either of them have any other pressing engagements.

When this day's horrors — backlit by hellfire — come charging, the pirate draws his knife with his left hand. His brain's already numb to what he must do: this is permanent. And he'd rather permanently kill someone else than the alternative.


[attr="id","rSpeech"][roger attacks reflector 1, horn knife]
Ctgg|ibSknife
[attr="id","rSpeech"][2082 -- Block --]

[attr="id","rSpeech"][accuracy reroll]
knife
[attr="id","rSpeech"][2047 -- Shallow Cut on Right Forearm -- 3.5 damage]