{ play for keeps // dan vs jem [au 67th finale]

A tumbleweed blows past.

Shutters and saloon doors thwack... thwack... thwack against the splintering sides of the abandoned buildings they're still stubbornly attached to, swaying in the breeze like forgotten sheets on an old clothes line.

And at high noon, the battered Conestoga wagon creaks down the wide Main Street of the ghost town, cloud of dust drifting wraithlike behind the covered cart. The phantasm and its spectral trail stop dead at the end — of the street, of the town, of the Games.

Two boots hit the dirt, spurs spinning. A hocked loogie and the point of a spear follow, as Dan Johnwayne slow saunters away from his rolling home. His and his alone, since that vengeful bitch Kinkade saw fit to split Jem Morgan off their little group.

He understood why: Clearly, the two Career boys — the two real ones — were too much of a threat combined, and a quick, decisive Games is so much less interesting than a protracted, bloody mess.

Dan Johnwayne left to his own devices was much more liable to make things interesting — by those standards. With nobody around to impress, there was nothing stopping the Cowboy from playing with his food before he gobbled it up.

The wagon — his wagon, the one he stole, the one he drove 'round hell and back — was decked out in mementos of his conquests: The massive claws of the Scorpion King mounted like antlers above the wagon's mouth; The two broken spokes on the front wheels from mowing down that pitiful prettyboy fishlicker (when Dan had gone back to put a spear through what he thought was the boy's face, it had been the closest thing to an act of mercy the Cowboy had ever shown in his life — even if he just wanted the gurgling noises to stop while he looted the bloody mess); The red trail that marred the white cloth of the wagon's cover, in the shape of Dan's axe splitting open the soft head of — what was District Eight's name? Bowers?

And inside, of course, were the bits of rope that the sea bitch had gnawed her way through the first night, when he'd thought he'd want the company to replace the Troutmouth her partner had seen fit to brain. Dan would've preferred to drag Jem's district partner with him — after all, it was easier to keep a one-legged prisoner than keep around a scorpion tail as a paralytic — and hell, she might've even come willingly — but the vulture took her before the end of it all. That goddamn Kinkade wasn't about to let him have a single goddamn nice thing.

It was just as well. Cowboy Dan was never accustomed to having nice things he hadn't stolen for himself.

And the fish girl was nothing but grief all the while. It took another day and a half for him to tire of the whining and yelling and escape attempts. The hundred and first "Why?" made it through his stubborn head, and when the Johnwayne realized he didn't know the answer, he'd shrugged, said "Good point." and hauled her into the ravine, net and all.

Night by night, the sky lit up with faces — but never Jem's. And night by night, the only thing that surprised the Cowboy was how badly he was hoping to see it. He wasn't scared. A pretty, polished face like Jem Morgan's was the sort that the Cowboy lived to ruin.

But everything went according to the map laid out by the Cowboy in the Training Center — "Why don't we clear the field," he'd said, "you and me." Dan had held up his end of it — the brutal Johnwayne brought down everything in his path. And, if he was standing in front of the Cowboy, Jem did just as well. It was always meant to come down to them, to this — and maybe that's why the Gamemakers divided them.

The District Two toes the dirt in front of him, shoots his one-eyed glare down the empty street between them. It may as well be an ocean.

A tumbleweed blows past.

"You ready, Jem Morgan?" he hollers over the wind. His left hand tips the singed cowboy hat in courtesy, revealing the red wreck wrought on his right side: the empty eye socket to mirror his sister, the angry tar burns marred with grit and shrapnel scoring the side of his face. The Gamemakers, with their booby-trapped present, had sought to render the Cowboy as ugly on the outside as he'd proven himself to be throughout.

He closes the distance, right hand curling around the handle of his axe. The bit may have been blown to twisted metal, but three days of hacking and hewing had proven the jagged edge to be structurally sound and every bit as deadly as anything else the Cowboy happens to swing.

"I promised you we'd play for keeps." A horrible chuckle bubbles up out of his throat: menacing, bemused, excited. His hand twitches — again — a souvenir of his head-to-head battle with the Scorpion King. "And I told you I'd get you back."

He feints left, brings his axe around.

His rage clouds his judgement, fury fuels his strength at the expense of strategy — Elya always told him as much — and violent anger would always be his fatal flaw. But Cowboy Dan does not hate Jem Morgan. He doesn't hate him at all — so it should be no problem at all to kill him.


[attacks Jem, axe]
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[ 11131 | Shallow Cut on Stomach | 4 damage]