Like Tears in Rain // 84th Finale

He dreams of velveteen wildfire. It promises retribution, a vicious crimson that covers ground faster than he can run. Eyes linger somewhere behind the thick smoke curling toward the treeline, a gaze he cannot meet bores holes into his broken skin full of contempt and something just a bit sweeter. Beck thinks it might be love but he's not known it well enough to be sure.

He's certain, only, that he cannot let it catch him under any circumstance. He sprints through lush green undergrowth gone grey around singed edges. The trees weep an unusual hue, darker than the honeyed amber he'd learned to associate with the arena. It smells sour too, like rotten copper, clinging to Beck wherever he brushes up against it.

Exhaustion runs bone deep, he doesn't allow himself a moment's respite tearing tired breaths from swollen lungs. He can't stop. If the fire catches him he knows the unspoken fate that awaits. He can't stop.

He wants nothing more than to breathe but it's like the fire has taken up space in his lungs. He's burning up from the inside out. It should hurt. He knows the pain is there but only because it's supposed to be. Instead his agony is fear, a cold sweat down his back and the terrible realization that he's been running circles this entire time.

The last thing he sees is velveteen wildfire and the eyes hiding within.

She smiles.

--

Beck wakes up but he still can't breathe. He clutches at his throat, sticky with blood and ash. There's nothing left of Laurent although he knows he didn't move from the spot where he'd landed the final blow. They'd swept him away in sweet memories, leaving Beck with another wound that had already begun to fester. All that remains of those he's killed are the scars they've left behind.

He traces them idly with his finger, wincing as the callouses built up on his fingertips catch on open skin. It's angry, red and raised in it's vain attempt to fix itself. Because that's all it knows. Wounds are made to heal, to pick up where they left off even after having been broken so many times over. It wants to keep on living because it knows no other alternative.

The storm rumbles overhead, worse than ever before. Winds hiss in his ears, volatile threats to uproot the world around him. He knows well what this is. Charon has come to usher in the end of days. Here lays a final dawn and Beck is cattle to be led to the cliff face. Even if he had it left in him to rebel against this makeshift destiny he wouldn't.

He remembers well the ending he'd caught traces of within Sophie's hazel stare. Sadness that had tasted more bitter than sweet, spreading across his tongue as he'd spoken those final words to her. Delusional, hopeful, vulnerable, desperate. He curses everything he is and cannot help but be. He hopes his eyes mirror hers as he forces himself to his feet, walking with the winds instead of against them.

Laurent had asked him how people accept death, how they lay down their weapons and let her swallow them whole. He can hope that he'd found his answer somewhere within his final breaths or even tangled within what comes after but he doesn't believe that. Beck cannot go quietly. Whispers will be screams and blades will draw blood before the bitter end. There is nothing worse than death.

That has to be an absolute truth or else he doesn't know what he's been fighting for.

Delusions of grandeur have never meant more than a home. To be loved. To belong. To wake up each morning without a trace of those endings that lingered like shadows wherever he dared to look. Entering the games had been a means to an end, a chance to have this fever dream that has kept him awake since childhood. It was worth it, it would all be worth it, if he could be happy. This is the first time he's ever dared to hope that life could mean more than surviving. It feels dangerous and forbidden and far too familiar.

The storm takes him along well worn paths, just impatient enough to make him fear being swallowed up. As though the fire still roaring in his mind's eye was more than the sinister workings of a guilty conscious. His feet ache, still too stubborn to acknowledge their missing piece. A part of Beck Hailsham has died, by now it's probably begun to rot if the beasts in the arena hadn't picked it to the bone. He knows that, but his body refuses to listen. So, his feet keep aching.

He stops only when the winds do, crying out as the clouds break open and bleed sunlight strong enough to make Beck physically recoil. It's been so long since he's found himself swallowed by silence that his thoughts near scream. He panics, looking for a trace of what the storms abrupt end could mean.

But it wasn't over. He can still see the winds in his periphery, the tempest still bends the arena to her will. As he gazes into her she gazes back at him, three sets of eyes sewn to his skin alight with keen curiosity. She's sparing him, momentarily, but for what reason?

Ah. Of course.

The reason is a boy, a jigsaw puzzle of missing pieces and wearing an expression that the sun's awful glare keeps him from reading. The storm begs for action, winds picking up as he takes unsteady steps toward his opponent. He'd found another ending but he cannot tell whose it's meant to be.

"Well, good luck." He mumbles, the words sounding as broken and pathetic as he feels. Not enough to justify the way he dances for them. The music starts up anyway and he strikes alongside it.

And he hopes for terribly dangerous things.

In a world of monsters and men Beck thinks he fears only the latter. Whispers cut deeper than guttural screams, hands hurt better than claws ever could. Beck has looked for strength within numbness and found only decay, so when Walter's sword grazes him it hurts more than it should. And he's glad.

He looks up at this boy who dances to a tune of frail fear, a desperate staccato which mimics the thumping of his own broken heart. He's looking at a killer, same as him, but there's no point in waiting for Walter to grow horns. Things were never that easy. There's hope within every wound dug deep into his skin, a hope that had been burned by no one but Beck.

When he mentions Noel the pain sears better and brighter. Grief had once brought him to the point of seeking vengeance and he'd quick found that he despised the taste. He didn't know if this boy had killed her but he knows that nothing would change if he had. He wouldn't find it in him to hit harder, it would not fill him with fantastical strength and turn his eyes red with blood lust. They were killers by necessity, not by nature. He chose to believe in their humanity.

If Beck Hailsham were born to die then let him die an optimistic fool to each and every end.

"I'd like to think I'm not." He says while blood drips from the axe's head, running thick over the knuckles wrapped tight around it. The corner of his mouth quirks in something of a smile, appreciating the irony of meaningless words.

Life is not so wonderfully cliche as heroes and villains. There's a bit of both within Beck but neither drives him forward now. This desperate greed of his is little more than an instinct, a will to survive that he cannot deny. No matter what that makes him, a hero, a villain, a monster, a man; Beck will fight.

"Make me into whatever you need me to be!" Winds tear at his throat, forcing him to scream above the gale. He's angry at the world, he's angry at the Capitol, he's angry at the gamemakers and the fools that line their pockets. He's angry at the shit cards he'd been dealt and he's angry at himself for volunteering.

But he cannot bring himself to be angry at Walter Blake. Whatever legacy the boy decides to bestow upon him is the one he'll choose to carry. If his back breaks beneath the strain of it all then so be it. This is their only chance to claim Eternity, only one of them will live past these next few precious heartbeats.

Death has never been so close, it breaths down his neck raising goosebumps along his skin. It calls for him in whispers drowned only by his own ragged breaths and racing heart. She knows he's so, so tired. She offers him rest. She knows he's scared so she offers him peace. Her embrace holds everything he needs if he would only give himself away. The veil between them has never been so thin and

Beck has never felt more alive.

"Because I'll kill you if that's what it takes to survive."

Kinder, Walter calls him. Not kind. A meaningless distinction that warms him in every way it shouldn't. He speaks awfully familiar words, ones that Beck is sure he's tasted upon his own tongue before. It's unsettling to hear his thoughts and fears in a stranger's mouth.

Yeah. He likes being kinder.

He fights the urge to turn his eyes toward the sky and search for a star to wish upon. Those things that had seemed dead and dull, hanging listless in a navy sky were suddenly threads of destiny. He'd once pretended that a neon world was bathed in grey scale in some stupid bid for self preservation, as though he couldn't miss what he refused to acknowledge. That didn't work anymore. Beauty found him wherever his gaze fell, it stole away his senses whenever it had the chance. Within the course of these games life had somehow become worth living.

There was so much he could do better. Home called to him in pastel colors, stinking of salt and sea. He and Walter were carving out a better life with every strike. The days have stretched on like centuries and nothing will ever be the same. No matter who makes it out alive they will be perfectly ruined in every way the Capitol intended.

He carries them. Those he killed and those he loved, the faces he remembers and the names he does not. He wonders if Walter carries them too.

He fears that it takes a man much stronger than the two of them to shoulder a burden so heavy.

"That's good." He gasps, blocking Walter's first blow but finding that his blade bites into him regardless. It's been so long since things hurt like this. He'd been numb since he'd slain Gala. Choosing not to feel Sophie's death or Noel's death or Laurent's murder. Old habits die hard and Beck was a coward by nature. "I want you to keep fighting."

They don't deserve to die. Not Beck, not Walter, not the corpses they have carved and the ones that desperate children had crafted for them. They deserved a lot better than this. A chance at a life that wasn't very good but far better than anything they'd ever had.

Hailsham would not have him. His life and his death would be by any hand but theirs. He can't think about after, he can't bring himself to hope for it. He couldn't be sure what better even meant, he'd never known anything but this. He's scared and tired and ruined but he'd rather this than that of a stuffed pig made pretty for the slaughter.

He's got black lungs and a blacker mind. No one would want him. No one but Beck. And he's so fucking proud of that. "I don't intend to make this easy. You better do the same."

That's his wish upon sightless stars.

The sound of a sword digging into his skin is sickening. It cuts deep, but not completely, and he can do nothing but feel the way his body gives into the blow. He scrambles for purchase, panic stricken as his center of balance once again shifts. He knows nothing in this moment, not his name nor his agony, he can't even recall who he fights or why they do.

He just knows he cannot fall.

The sharp edge of the javelin digs into his palm where he clutches it, biting his tongue to keep from screaming as he puts weight back down upon his foot. Adrenaline throws his heart into his throat to keep it beating and he drowns on his labored breaths as he looks up at Walter through vision gone hazy. "...hate the ocean."

It was vast and endless and a goddamn cage. The Hailsham island didn't need bars and locks where riptides would do. The scent of salt and sea made him sick, sand stuck to his skin and rubbed it raw. To Beck it had always been an omen of death.

"And the academy." He manages, voice heavy with something suspiciously close to pity. Beck had wanted for nothing growing up, he'd no reason to wallow in hedonistic filth as he had much of his life. He had a warm bed and soft sheets and a fireplace in the far corner of his room that he'd never lit. He had everything Walter spoke of so fondly.

And a storm cloud hanging over his head.

"I haven't been off the island much, I can't vouch for Four." Though he suspected it was as rotten as the rest. This disease infected all of Panem, there was nothing worth saving. "The Academy is-" He can't bring himself to say it. Beck doesn't want to be remembered as a pig bred for slaughter.

"I have a fireplace. It's pretty nice. But I can think of better things." He'd never wanted a mansion. He didn't care for grand staircases and polished railings. The way the light caught in chandeliered ceilings gave him a headache.

He wanted a home. "Like a family or my freedom."

It's a cruel joke just how much the arena has taken from him. Walter's blade arcs, glinting off of the sunlight and it slices clean through him. Blood sprays to the tune of his heart and it looks so fantastical that he has to stifle a laugh. "Lucky I'm left handed." He mutters, more to himself than to Walter. The pain is so immense that it's merely become background noise.

He's got to fight. To live. To keep what's left of him together because he's so fucking scared this is all going to fall apart. That he's doomed to become a broken husk regardless. He can feel the walls of the little wooden box closing in on him and it's dark, so fucking dark. He can't die here.

"Noel wasn't my sister. I've never had a family, that's why I was in the academy. They take us in." He doesn't bother to explain why, he doesn't think he'd be able to form the words even if he wanted to. The Hailshams were a product of capital and greed, meant to line pretty pockets because they were so worthless. That was the only bond Beck shared with the others.

Since Bell died, that is.

His words come between labored gasps, it's taking all of his energy to stand upright. The world is a pretty haze of horizon and hell but he can't tell which he's standing in.

I haven't lived. The words, once again, taste like his own. He wishes that he could lay his weapon down, that he could accept death like Laurent had told him Georgina did. Making a martyr of himself would make his heart lighter, but that didn't matter if it were still. "I can't do that, you know I can't!"

There's tears in his eyes, the kind that taste like fear and frustration. "I'm scared. I don't want to die. I can't." Beck has just begun to live, the sweetness of the air was intoxicating. He dreams of a world where he won't have to wake up afraid.

And he keeps pushing onward.

He can't look away. They're both falling apart at torn up seams. He's cried more over the course of the week than he has in his life, the tears coming fast and hard as he looks at Walter. His sword hits his skin and he cannot help the pathetic sound that leaves him. Somewhere between a gasp and a sob. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'll try."

There ending is not a graceful one. Adrenaline keeps him upright but it's fast fading in favor of grief. Strength is a funny thing, leaving him at the very moment he needs it most. He's scared that Walter was right. He's scared of what he's becoming. All broken glass and missing pieces.

He raises his good arm to his forehead and checks for horns.

The winds die and all he hears is pain. He's choking on his sobs, hand shaking as he struggles to keep his grip on his axe. Blood coats his skin as naturally as if it had always belonged there. Look. It whispers and he turns his head away. Look at what you're capable of.

Death cannot have Beck Hailsham.

He doesn't believe that anymore.

There's no warm thoughts of home as he advances on Walter, looking a predator but feeling much like prey. His stomach churns and hesitation fills him. He searches for words to make it better but he knows they would do nothing for Walter. Any comfort he dares to speak would simply allow him to keep playing the part of a good man.

He's so fucking good at pretending.

"I won't let them forget us." He'd lost this game by playing the part. The Capitol could bestow a crown upon any of them but that they are the true victors. Their eyes stick to him, unseen but finding only joy where there should be compassion.

He wonders if they're happy, if they're foaming at the mouths as they watch Beck become undone. He lets hatred fuel his strike.

"I promise."