all that you will ever be {day 6 - machaon vs lucrezia}

Everything was fucked up.

The air felt poisonous, a rancid stench staining the inside of his nose until it fogged the innards of his mind. They were surrounded by oceans of blood that bubbled like water in a pot, and they hissed louder and louder with every step. With one wrong movement either of them could stumble into these pools and melt their own skin off. He could think of no death more horrifying, but the steel glinting in their hands warded off such a foolish thought. They would tear into each other, they would bleed. I could die here. Nothing would prepare him for that agony.

”I’m not sure what to believe anymore.” said the girl, and in a world where Hell and dragons were real he had to agree. But there were some things – silly concepts and religious exaggerations – that he simply refused to believe, no matter how much it could inspire hope. God? There could be no such merciful being if Machaon was here, and the girl was there, and Natalie was in a hovercraft, and Lucia was in an early grave. If God did exist, then he was pointless. Why live this life when there was paradise waiting? What possible endgame could there be but nothing? Blackness swallowing one’s consciousness whole. That was the only world he could see, and the only one he would accept.

Instinct was not enough to keep him steady. Jagged rocks paved a clumsy path to his enemy, and the palms of his hands were slick with sweat. In the heat of the moment, he couldn’t calculate what went wrong. His foot caught, his aim swaggered, and there was the sickening sound of sawing through human bone. The girl screamed and it sent his heart through the cavern floor like an anchor. Perhaps it would pull him into the boiling blood and devour him alive, because he could believe in karma.

He collected himself and found her laying on the ground, foot detached from the ankle. A trail of blood droplets connected stump to foot, but it was not tangible enough to keep her whole. Shit, I didn’t mean to do that, and part of him pleaded to say it out loud. Another apology lodged in the back of his throat, and for what? She wouldn’t believe him, she wouldn’t care. He fucking crippled her – did he even deserve to have himself heard? He knew everything was fucked up, especially when a grim thought crossed his mind; kill her now. He could do it. She was vulnerable, struggling among rocks and blood to climb to her feet.

No, he would not stoop to that level.

He waited for her to balance against her spear. ”Tell me Machaon, is it worth it? Is it really worth it?”

Worth it to kill? To maim? To fight in their Game?

”Probably not,” he admitted, ”But here we are.” Here they stood. Players of the Game.

Losers of the Game.

She jabbed at him with her spear and he side-stepped quickly enough to avoid the worst of it. The edge cut across his thigh like a scratch; a fresh welt of pain that was less than what he deserved. ”All I know for sure is the God I pray to stopped listening to me long ago.”

His will to pray had died at Lucia’s bedside.

”Or maybe nobody was ever there to listen,” he said, and if Atlas was here, he would probably call him a pessimist again. Missing him was already a fresh ache in his chest. ”I don’t believe in any God. It’s kind of…”

He swallowed and exhaled, wishing he could forget everything. He loved Lucia, but missing her was more painful than never knowing her. He could say that about everyone he knew in this Game.

”Pointless.”

Machaon had lost himself in this place. The gentle nurse back in Eight would’ve never laid a harmful hand upon a woman, yet he had murdered one and continued to pursue the death of another. Desperate times called for desperate measures because it was kill or be killed, no matter if it opposed every moral ground into his bones since the age of five. The Games was a challenge to abandon those morals for the sake of relying on survival instinct, or be lain to waste if one was too stubborn to sell their soul to violence. Machaon wished he was brave and honorable enough to keep his soul and take the route to a clean death, but his hands were already stained black. It was too late for that. Even in another world, he was too weak-willed to become a sacrifice. I’m sorry, I don’t want to die.

She didn’t want to die either. Was that fair?

Since when has life ever been fair to any of us?

He wondered what his mother would think. Could she forgive him for every piece of the girl’s body hacked away? Would she be disappointed or ashamed? He knew she expected him to die, and he knew she expected him to fight for her, but hope and horror were two different feelings. She could be disgusted with him. She could be cheering for him. He wished he could hear her; the only music was the bubbling of blood puddles and the harsh voice of his opponent, who seemed too stubborn to abandon her beliefs. That was fair. Admirable, even.

”What I say is what I believe.” He watched blood pour from the side of her head, painting her golden hair the way it did Natalie’s. The ring in his bag weighed a thousand pounds – a cruel reminder of what he and his former allies had “accomplished” here. To a career, perhaps they were heroes. To him, they were just predators in the game. They outnumbered, they conquered, and now they would pay in blood. Despite all of that, he still wished the best for Atlas and Justice. It was too late to wish the same for Natalie.

She swung at him with her axe this time, steel nipping into the flesh of his back. It stung like a burn but it was not enough to hinder him.

He claimed not to believe in a God, and he wasn’t sure the girl understood why. ”But then, who will save you?”

”Nobody.”

Justice, Atlas, luck – he had relied on them for so long, and he credited his beating heart to their efforts. Without them, he would’ve died with Stevie among the fire. He would’ve burned to ashes and the Capitol would’ve sent him back in a jar instead of a casket. There was nothing else here to save him but himself. What would a God save him for? What was his life worth? Not more than Natalie’s, or Stevie’s, or Petra’s, or Lucia’s. He had determined that Petra’s life was worth less than his own when he butchered her, but he didn’t really believe that. He was simply performing what was necessary to survive. He knew damn well there was no supreme being to rely on.

”I’m responsible for saving myself and that’s all.”

He painted a red smile across her abdomen and blood dribbled out to match their grim surroundings. Jagged rocks threatened them from above and sizzling pools of what he hoped wasn’t human blood hissed everywhere else. The air was hot, humid, and suffocating, burning the odor of iron into his brain. It was organic yet poisonous, a stench that reminded him of deaths in the past and warned him of the deaths to come. He was familiar with death’s shadow, the way it washed the color from someone’s skin and erased the glimmer of livelihood in their eyes. He was familiar with death’s whisper, the way it stole the breath out of someone’s lungs. Now he was familiar with death’s perfume, the iron of oozing blood and putrid, dying flesh.

A pyramid of pale faces were stacked in his conscience. They were all ages, sizes, and genders, most of them taken by sickness. Lucia’s powder blue eyes were the first to stare back at him, the first death he had seen up close and personal. At the time, it seemed that was the worst of it. The love of his life going limp was what left him quiet and bitter for so many years, and now he was having trouble imagining what she looked like. Now it was Percy’s gaping chest and Stevie’s eyes socket staring through him. Now it was the desperation in Petra’s eyes and the determined expression on Natalie’s face that haunted him where he stood. It was their corpses he remembered the strongest.

He felt naïve for thinking Lucia would be the end of his torment.

”So headstrong,” like it was a compliment, but he didn’t view himself as someone stubbornly refusing a truth. It was grounded in him – a pure disbelief in anything that could exist beyond science and reasoning. As a nurse, it was difficult to see anything but a bitter ending. When someone was gone, they were gone forever. Their memory faded, and there were no ghosts to rest a comforting hand on his shoulder and assure him that everything would be okay in the end.

This was the only life he would live. He intended to make it last, if he could. Through her laughter he spoke, ”Watch me,” because she didn’t think humans were capable of saving themselves. But that was the Game; rely on others until you’re forced to rely on yourself. Justice and Atlas had carried him on their backs like luggage for many days now. The final test was here. Could he save himself, or would he fall to her axe?

And if he did save himself, what next?

She claimed to think it didn’t matter as long as one could “be happy.” Is that what he fought for? Happiness?

I don’t know.

If this was his only life, his only chance, then he didn’t want it to end so early. The future was bleak and didn’t promise him golden glory or love, but something was better than oblivion. Perhaps he was fighting for what little hope he could scrounge. Perhaps there was no hope at all, just a fear of the unknown that was much stronger.

”I don’t know if I can be happy after this shit,”

Pointless.

”Can you?”

He wanted to end this as quickly as possible. His sword carried the weight of unforgivable sins and sliced across her hip, although it was shallower than the others and not enough to slow her down. They were dancing a silver dance with their steel, decorating the hellscape with too many harsh shades of red. Some of his wounds were already crusted with dry, rusty blood and the rest were leaking like pipes. It was the easiest way to think of the human body – a delicate pipe system, a maze of arteries and veins that he could split over and over again with his sword until her body couldn’t compensate. It seemed like such a miserable death; a slow weakening of the body from blood loss, losing one’s grip on reality until they were numb, then dead.

He would rather go out with a bang. One shot, an instant death, no suffering, and no time to contemplate his fear of the unknown. He didn’t want this girl to suffer either, but it was too late for that. His sword was not an extension of his arm and his experience was not noteworthy. He was still clumsy, still prone to the stress of his surroundings, and easily distracted. She had managed a cut across his chest and his thigh, prompting him to back away before she nicked something important. She didn’t seem the vengeful type, but they were killing each other. Her goal was his death, and his goal was hers. Neither of them wanted it to be that way, but that was the rule of the Game.

”You see, the thing is, I don’t think I’ve ever been happy,” she said, and he wondered what it must’ve been like to feel hollow for eighteen years. Was it worse to feel happiness and have it stolen away, or to never feel it at all? To die without experience life. That was depressing.

”I was happy until I watched my girlfriend die,” he replied, and suddenly he was back in the training center again with Stevie, Atlas, and Justice. Their eyes bore into him as he repeated those dreaded words of his past during a light-hearted game. Leave it to himself and Atlas to make everything grim. ”Now I can’t even tell you what I’m fighting for anymore, because it’s not happiness.”

It was life.

”Maybe there’s still hope for…something.”

And again, he tried to kill her. It would shatter any hope she had left of finding happiness, and he had become a villain for favoring his own life.

Or maybe I’m just fucking human.

”I’m…I’m so sorry.”

He exhaled a fragment of the weight from his shoulders. Everyone in the Games had snarky responses and clever retorts to belittle their opponents, but this girl retained her empathy. It had been awhile since anyone apologized for what he suffered. It was an old wound, fresh and reopened after more corpses branded themselves into his memory. New horrors reminded him of old tragedies, and part of him didn’t want to live and see the day where these fresh corpses became old tragedies.

His sword grazed her flesh again and he sighed in frustration. Either he was slowing, or she was using every remaining ounce of her strength to evade him. It seemed neither of them were skilled warriors, so the fight could drag on until both of them were too exhausted. One slip up, and one of them would fall.

”Please, please just kill me.”

And it might be her.

His heart sank because this wasn’t the first time he heard this plea. Patients withering away in their beds like flowers in winter would tug his sleeve and beg him for a sweet release. They were dying anyway, they would always say. Just get it over with. Help me. I don’t want to suffer. I don’t want them to watch me suffer. Just pull the plug. Give me a bottle of pills.

It didn’t hurt any less hearing it now. ”I…I want to go home,” she said, and he wondered what twisted part of her mind imagined death as a home. Or did she believe that a white heaven awaited her? Freedom from hell, a life after life. People wanted to believe there was a paradise after all of this. A place where people didn’t cry, people didn’t bleed, and peace was absolute. A fucking fantasy world, he called it.

She lunged at him with her axe again, contradicting her own request. He ducked away and blood dripped down his face in warm rivulets. She wanted to die, but she fought anyway. Maybe there was a spark of hope kindling within her – or maybe she didn’t want to die with her tail between her legs. There was pride in going down with a fight. The Capitol always glorified it. ”So and so career had struggled until the very end, sword still in his hand as blood soaked through his shirt..”

Ridiculous.

But not completely insane.

”Where do you think home is?”

He swung because it was not here, not for him.