that light that rages|Day6|Artemis v Sullivan v Nell v Kass

In one commiserate howl, the night cries out for Sullivan Plier. Cannons, the droning of the lost, serve as the beat for an astronomical funeral procession, and he can feel death crawling up the walls in waves. For the second day in a row, 9 and 4 stole another of his souls. Sullivan was not built to lose people, to lose people so frequently, and yet Blue and Hanaa and Alphie all are missing from this moment. Where did he go wrong? Did he ever go wrong?

When he runs away from those faces, they follow him. Sullivan sees blonde hair and pink lips when he closes his eyes, and so he refuses to close them. But he sees blood seeping from the bodies of his loved ones when he does even that, and so he weeps instead. Sullivan Plier hangs his head low and breathes in deeply, and he lets his frustration run down his face in thick, hot streams. The salt burns, digging graves into his cheeks and lips and chin, but that doesn't matter now. It's never mattered, really.

Sullivan thinks back to what he did to get here. He thinks about how many miles he's crossed since taking his place on the stage back in District One. He thinks about how many hands have touched him since taking his first step in the training building back in the Capitol. And he thinks about how many breaths he's taken since Royce took his last in the shadow of a glaive back in--

Sullivan's breath hitches, and he vomits against a nearby wall. He took a life. He took Royce's life. That body had a name and a face and a family and--

Reality hits Sullivan like a brick, and he sinks to the floor, unconscious. 

/

When Sullivan wakes, his hand runs up to his mouth slowly, rubbing the remnants of dried vomit out of his beard and onto the outermost layer of his many-layered body. Pain radiates throughout this head, likely from him having fallen after passing out, and he looks around him slowly... far too slowly for a man on the run in the hunger games. Sullivan doesn't remember waking up in the night, let alone messaging them, but when he looks down, his watch is open to a conversation with Oblivion. 

Oblivion: Go home Sullivan. Go home

Sullivan: Oblivion?

Sullivan: Oblivion, I'm trying

Sullivan: But

Sullivan: Are you okay?

Oblivion: So cold

Oblivion: Numb

Oblivion: The grim reaper is here

Oblivion: I'm sorry

Sullivan shudders, Oblivion's last message having been sent hours ago, and he can feel his throat tightening as he sends out what may very well be his own last message. 

                Sullivan: I'm sorry, too.

He lets the screen go black before breathing again.

/

When Sullivan finally rises, he's greeted by a robot kin to the bunch that he'd faced on day two. It seems distressed, perhaps at the mess he'd made on the wall, but it does not move even as the boy from one struggles to sneak past. Instead, it continues to beep incessantly. 

Maybe it knows what he's done. Maybe it wants to remind him of what he's done. He's reading too far into it, he's sure, but that doesn't stop him from trying to find meaning in the frustrated beeps of this futuristic gatekeeper. 

He doesn't realise that he's alone again until he hears cries from down the hallway, at the other side of the cable bridge. Sullivan knows that he should turn away, that he should retreat, but some part of him tells him:

This is exactly what you need. Take it.

And so he takes it. Sullivan follows the noise. 

/

On the cable bridge, Sullivan is greeted by the same faces that have haunted him since day four. 

"Come back for more I see. Are you lost? Or just dumb?"

9 speaks first, her tone piercing holes into Sullivan's chest, and against every last one of his instincts, he opens his mouth to respond. "I," his voice hitches in his throat, stomach acid having wrecked the already hardly-used passage. "I didn't ask for this." Sullivan is quiet, fingers gripping his gun until they are paper white, and he stumbles as he feels the first laser whiz past his ear. With the second one, he isn't so lucky. 

"I didn't ask for this." He speaks again, louder this time, and watches close as two more lasers tease him from the other side. Sullivan's chest aches from where 9 had gotten him only moments before, but he still raises his very own barrel and aims cautiously. 

"I didn't ask for this!" 

Red fills his vision as blonde and pink align with his sights. 

Sullivan feels the cut of the lasers before he sees them, on his neck and on his arm, and he lets the tendrils of pain wrap around his torso more and more with every shallow breath he dares to take. 9's response is quick-- quicker than he had expected, at least. But the adrenaline that fighting brings does that, doesn't it? Turns time into both nothing and everything. Turns time into both suffering and bliss.

"Look around you," she says, voice as cold as the surrounding air. "None of us asked for this." And she's right. Even volunteering is not asking for death, nor is it asking for pain. It is asking for glory. For salvation. The girl from nine knows this, and that's why she's here. "When you need to do something for the people you love, it's not a choice anymore." She's right about that, too. 

Sullivan wishes that he had volunteered for something noble. Somewhere deep inside of him, there are bruises that remain tender. They lie in his heart and in his brain, buried deep away from the surface. They still hurt, and perhaps they always will. But Sullivan thinks about how he is here because of them. Because he never learned how to heal. And he realises that if he dies now, he will never get to. 

Instead of offering a reply, he wipes off the blood from his face and turns his gun away. He won't be responsible for this girl's death. Instead he looks at her partner in crime, the other source of his pain. Smething inside of him drops.

"You're the one who killed them," he chokes out, steadying his aim on the boy from four. "You killed Hanaa. And you killed Alphie." Sullivan thinks, for just a moment, that this is probably the most he's spoken the entire games. Maybe being alone brought something out in him. But he knows now what he has to do. There are no colors to guide him in his feelings this time. 

"Are you going to kill me, too?"