gatekeep, gaslight, girlboss {day 6 fight}

Bastian drives off and leaves me in the dirt, and I honestly can't tell if the cannon that fires seconds after is my doing or a coincidence entirely. But my head's spinning and my gut's on fire and I don't know what the fuck went wrong because once again I had a clear path to the end I so desired and once again I took the fucking coward's way out and the pain carving jagged bolts of lightning on my insides is an unwanted reminder that I am still very much fucking alive-

Against all odds, against my own fucking wishes and desires, I'm at the top fucking twelve. Me, having made it this far without any fucking help from the world, outside this bubble or within since the Sixes were cut down in our mad dash for victory or death. Me, who lost the will to live once the weight of the arena started fracturing my sanity into tiny bloody pieces. Me, who survived alone out in the wilderness for five fucking days with no assistance from within and no gifts from outside. Me, the fucked up orphaned street rat with nothing to lose except the fucked up life already guaranteed to not make it to thirty even without the Hunger Games.

I stand, and live, because Bastian Fray saw me jump onto his vehicle, nearly behead his boytoy of an ally with a single stroke of my blade, and still believed that I was deserving of a warning shot. That I was deserving of his mercy, when I'd done jack shit to earn it. Hell, I was the fucker that'd gotten lucky way back when there were still twenty four of us, the fucker that'd killed one ally, crippled another, and taken his hand off when our blades turned on each other, severing any chance of the tenuous bond we'd formed in the weeks leading up to then surviving, let alone thriving.

And he'd had the fucking audacity to give me a warning shot. A waste of a bullet, fired into thin air. And I should be grateful, should be fuckin' ecstatic that one of my deadliest rivals - a Career at fucking that - can't find it within his poor little indoctrinated heart to kill me right there in cold blood. And instead, I'm incensed. Like, to the point where if I was a mutt, there'd be flames dancing in my eyes and steam pouring out of my nostrils.

Look at me, fucking pissed off because I get to live instead of die. I'd ask what the fuck is wrong with me, but I'd long since given up on answering that years ago.

The vehicle does not return, and eventually the heat ebbs as the crushing feeling returns. Another fight survived, another pair of my rivals outlived. There's clearly nothing wrong with other tributes finding their deaths in this snowglobe of a prison, so what the fuck is wrong with mine? What makes me so special that I can survive going head to head with mutts and Careers with only a few wounds to my name? What makes me so unstable that when I'm threatened with death I want nothing more to live and once that extra life has been assured I want nothing more to die?

Once again, I find myself with too many questions and not enough answers. Good thing Death absolves you of all living concerns, eh?

A rumble of an engine pierces my conscious, sets my hackles on edge and buoys my heart out of my stomach - but it's not Fray, the fuckface, unless he slimmed down and dyed his hair black. The surge of excitement ebbs away like the tide - but then the jeep drives past and I catch the face of the driver and wait a fuckin' second-

"Oi, Cedric!," I call out to the driver as my body reacts before my conscious brain can catch up. "Wait up!"

I break into a jog, the lightbulb burning bright over my head burning any lingering thoughts of Fray and disappointment out of my head. Maybe it's genius, or maybe it's the epitome of stupidity, but here, on the eve of the fifth day, I've decided that I've had enough of trekking out here on my lonesome. I've never been an introvert by nature, and there's only so many days I can spend on my lonesome with nothing but the homicidal muttations out there for company before it gets old.

'Sides, what's the worst that could happen? He'll kick me out of his jeep? Or he'll agree and try and kill me in my sleep? There's literally nothing that can happen that'll leave me in a worse spot than now.

"Slow your skinny ass down and let me in!"

All I know is that if I spend another night with nothing but my own thoughts to keep me company, I'd go completely insane. And I can't do that to poor Avriel.

---

But maybe there's no point in worrying about whether my mental break will hurt Avriel or not. Cause turns out that while I was parkouring onto moving vehicles and breaking down because I didn't get a bullet in my brain, Aneesa was the one that took the fall.

It's funny that seeing her face in the sky is as significant as it was. Here was a girl from a different walk of life from me back home in Nine, someone I'd never have known if not for the most fucked up of coincidences, and someone who I never would have formed a connection with if it hadn't been for Avriel. One look at that sorry motherfucker and I knew that I had to do something - losing both of us so soon after he'd beaten his own ghosts back into the void would break him in a way I wasn't sure he'd make it back from.

And my chance of a heroic martyrdom of a volunteering were snatched away from me by the hands of fate, so maybe making things a little easier on this poor soul who tried to ignore his own fracturing pieces by keeping ours together was my way of making up for it.

Problem is, it was always supposed to be her to get out of here instead of me. Five days and five nights of breakdowns and butcherings and one heat-of-the-moment murder solidified it for me that there's nothing of me worth saving - any last vestige of a redeemable quality of Zane Holbrook was lost and broken somewhere out there in the forests, somewhere between the murder of Iden Averill and the death of Arthur Rollei. She was the one with an alliance who would protect her, a life she could return to, a soul that may yet avoid letting the weight of the world break her like it did Avriel and myself. I barely knew the girl, and yet it was glaringly obvious - there was much more potential lying in her future than there ever was in mine.

And now she's dead, and I'm Avriel's last hope.

Fucking hell.

[insert overnight musings with cedric once cloodaddy gets back from disney!]

---

We're driving through the foliage where I killed the bird the next morning when all hell breaks loose.

Cause see, this might have once been the hastily constructed imaginary territory of an artificial being once but in the days between when I'd slain the forest's defender and now there'd been a hell of a lot of upheaval. And I'm not sure if it was pure chance or subtle nudging on the Gamemaker's part (because lord knows I've seen terrain changes that have veered tributes off track in many of the old reruns) but when we break into a clearing, it's a fucking party of rivals.

I'm not sure just how many there are, really, and I find I don't really care. Cause there might be enough faces here to make up the rest of the arena's population, and some of them are even familiar - I see Arthur's murderer lash out at the kid whose nose I broke way back when - but there's only one I care about.

And sure enough, there he is, half-dead boytoy still in tow.

"There," I point out to Cedric, and had I not already experienced the entire emotional spectrum over the last week I'd almost be scared as to how serious I sounded with just that one word. Because, like, it's me. Seriousness isn't in my vocabulary. Wasn't. Whatever. "I owe Fray there for yesterday."

And dammit, I thought I'd had it all figured out - a night to sleep off, a day to let the news sink in that I'm Avriel's last champion sink in, and I'd foolishly believed that I'd reformed. My life had meaning all of a sudden, even if it meant devoting myself to a boy I wasn't even sure I could save. But one look, and turns out the wound is fresher than I'd given credit for, because all of that? Tossed out of the window.

The jeep doesn't even have a window. That's how serious this was.

There's no protest from Cedric, and for the second time in as many days, I find myself hurtling towards Bastian's jeep. Only this time, this is no spontaneous act pulled out of my ass - this is a plan.

A half assed plan, to be fair. Hell, this time, I'm not just reckless, I'm stupid too. Like, seriously fucking stupid.

But then our jeep pulls level with the others, and I don't think - not of my own safety, not of the burden of my home and my mentor who I couldn't help but not find a soft spot in my heart to reserve or - and I just jump. Again. Onto a moving vehicle. Cause yeah, if you haven't already figured it out about me, I'm a bit of a slow learner.

This time though, I land on all fours, right smack dab on the front of the jeep. A windshield separates me from Bastian Fray this time, but perhaps that's for the best - this time, there's no getting caught by surprise.

This time, he has no fucking excuse.

"Make sure you don't miss this time, darling," I yell into the wind, the honey dripping from my words laced with the venom of my shark's grin. "'Cause that's a fuckup I'm not gonna forgive twice."

Honestly, I hadn't even forgiven it once. But I've always had a soft spot for pretty boys. Sue me.

My first attack takes the form of a hilt smash, cracking the glass separating me and Fray. My second is a perfect copy that widens the fracture, and my third, powered with anger and adrenaline alike, breaks through the glass entirely.

And my fourth? Well, my fourth attack aims right for Fray's bleeding heart.

Go figure, it takes more than a witty quip and a single slash to cut down One's golden boy. You think I'd have learned by now, with how I'd crippled one of his allies and ended another, with how I myself had survived everything from a beak in my arm to a blade across my forehead to a bullet in my gut and still lived and breathed to struggle endlessly against the void.

But then I think back to Arthur from Three, and how he fell with one single strike to the brain, his puppet strings cut just like that. And that's not such a bad way to go, really - hell, I doubt he even felt anything. Here one second, gone the next, quick and fast. It's how I'd like to go, when the time comes. Lord knows it's what I've been striving for. Death might be inevitable, but there's plenty of space to fill in the details.

And I don't know why I'm trying to replicate the process with Fray here, not when that's far from what he deserves. Perhaps I have my own sense of mercy, twisted and fucked up as the rest of me.

Heh. I always got the vibe that the boy with Victor's blood running through his veins and my nobody ass had more in common than one might see on the surface.

Whether there's intent or not in his retaliation I cannot tell, only that my mirrored image blows a kiss through my heart instead of a bullet through my brain, and when my leg erupts in pain I'm not sure whether to laugh in relief or scream in frustration.

Karma at its finest. I play with my food, and I get played with in return. It might be fun beneath the sheets, yes, but not so much in the throes of mortal combat.

Yet as relief that I haven't disappointed Avriel fights with my frustration that Bastian at a point blank range still finds himself unable to kill me, Cedric steps up to the plate, his sword on fire - dangerous and thrilling at the same time - as it drags itself along Bastian's arm. And someone else might find themselves annoyed that their sacred one on one was interrupted, but pride was never one of the deadly sins I ever had the pleasure of knowing, thanks to my childhood.

(And really, my philosophy with just about anything is the more the merrier anyway so, you get my gist).

But it's not until I really look into Bastian's eyes for the first time that day that I see it. The fire, the fury, the swagger, the determination, all of the traits I had admired in this muscly golden boy back in the training center were gone. His bravado remained, yeah, but you know how they say that when you've experienced what someone else has been through, you can see it?

Yeah. Sometimes I forget that I'm not the only kid who's been broken down into a hollow shell of themselves in these bubbles of doom. I almost want to put my sword down and give him a hug.

"That's a rather pessimistic way of viewin' yourself, isn't it?," I ask instead, because comfort was never my strong suit but being an ass came as naturally as breathing and this is probably the first time in my life where that's been a good thing instead of a death sentence. My leg burns from where it was just struck by the hammer of Fray's vengeance, my body trembles as the constant war my balance is fighting ebbs and flows with the tide, yet my sword arm remains strong and my shark's grin never wavers even as one eye winks in response. "You should really learn how to cut yourself some slack, golden boy."

Fighting or flirting or comfort aside, it's with a single minded focus and reckless abandon alike that I swing - and hasn't it always been fun to break pretty things, Zane?

"'Cause fuck knows I won't."