gatekeep, gaslight, girlboss {day 6 fight}

I've never considered myself a guy with anything resembling a strong survival instinct.

It's easier to go down the list of all things sinful and depraved that one can do in a shithole like Nine and find out what I haven't done than what I have. The dividing line, really, is what little of my moral compass formed before I was left to rot with the lowest humankind could become. I saw the damned, the shriveled shells of the people they had once been, so consumed by addiction and desperation that they were little better than the stray dogs, hurting and even killing for one more desperate, despicable day.

I'd always prided myself for never becoming one of them over eighteen long years of life. Told myself I'd die before I'd let that happen to me. Guess this is karma's way of telling me to pay up, or else.

And I've handled the "else" before. The "else" is always some sort of punishment. Some crony will beat me black and blue for sticking my dick somewhere I shouldn't have, or some old fuck will get a little too attached after I used their bed for food and refuge during the winter months, or I'd find out the hard way that the human body can go weeks without food if you do it right. But I'd never broken. Never hurt, never killed, never crossed the line from human to other. That's what I called em, when I was being nice.

But the Capitol has been grinding kids down to their rawest animalistic instincts for nearly an entire damn century now, and I was a damn prideful fool to believe I stood a chance otherwise.

So why am I not dead? It's simple, really. Cause for all of my trials and tribulations, for all the boundaries I pushed and all that I suffered in return, there was one thing that always saved me.

I'm a coward.

Throughout my life, there never came a point where I didn't put my own self preservation above a chance at unwanted pain. Yeah, that fooled, you, didn't it? Me, the same guy who risked beating after beating because me and the girl of a minor gang stooge had the hots for each other to the point that the stooge himself called me a masochist. Me, the same guy who used his young and nubile body in all the ways Mother Nature at her rawest form intended and in all the ways modern human society frowned upon. Me, the same guy who'd endure weeks without food before he'd break something as fragile as his own morality. Me, afraid of unwanted pain. You heard that right.

Why else would I kill the bird, the rodent, before they had a chance to savage me to the end I'd claimed I'd wanted? If death was what I craved then I could have just sat down and them them peck my eyes out or bash my head in. Why else would I turn and run after watching Arthur get his brains stabbed out, or when I realized that Bastian and Elizabeth together couldn't coordinate well enough to take me down?

For all that I've sacrificed, for all that I'm endured, I've never had control over my own life. The closest I've came was when Gunner snatched me out of the mess of Nine in the midst of brimstone hellfire and gave me a roof over my head, a warm bed to sleep, a place I belonged, but even that was only granted to me at his behest. So me, that little selfish kid who's mad at the world for fucking him over before I ever was born? Well, he didn't have control over life, so he wanted control over his death. And that death was to be quick and painless.

And Bastian Fray would give that to me. He'd certainly proven himself willing, once, back when I threatened his Career pals and his hegemony over the wealth and all that it stood for. He'd given me a chance yesterday, right before I nearly shaved the top of his boytoy's head clean off, and that was a bluff I never should have been afforded in the first place.

But today would be different. I don't just jump onto moving vehicles twice in two days for just any boy, yanno. I'd strike and I'd force him to choose and if he valued his life even as remotely as I valued mine, he'd do what Careers are trained to do from birth and end my life with the squeeze of a finger.

Quick and easy. The most I ever wanted from my shitstain of a life. The least I ever deserved after what that life put me through.

And truly, I believed. I placed my blade against his neck and gave him a choice and it wasn't until his lips brushed up against my own, a tantalizing ghost of better times, that I realized that my trust had been grossly, sorely misplaced.

Once again, there's no lead bursting in and out of my head in a brilliant bloom of crimson. Once again, I don't blink and then just stop. There's no cold metal, no flick of the lights, just a heated brush of what had been, what could have been, and a quick, sharp shove.

It's my body that hits the ground with a resounding thud but it's my heart that shatters at the impact, and I want to hate Bastian Fray so much, for the unrealistic expectation that a life of privilege and luxury and belonging to the bloodline of a boy who had already fought and suffered and survived this hellhole of a trial would make the choice I never could.

But then I remember Avriel and how hollow he looked, and I remember the rumors I heard in the two weeks I went from rags to riches in the most literal sense. Five's newest victor drinks herself into a stupor every other day to forget the pain and suffering she experienced. Four's felt too much too soon and when his family stepped up in a failed attempt to continue his legacy it broke him. Two's latest victor hasn't been seen since he'd gone mad over his opponent's corpse, and whether that's because he's imposed a voluntary seclusion on himself or the Capitol sedated him is anyone's guess. And fuck, even the bloodline that Bastian belonged to - who hasn't paid an inkling of attention to the Games and not seen the wreck his relative Justice had been in the years after his victory?

I want to be angry, to let my anger spear Bastian Fray right through the heart in a controlled rage, but then it would be misplaced, and the rational part of my mind that knows this holds just enough control to prevent that. But I've never been good at stifling my emotions, at holding everything in when it burns and yearns to get out, so instead of an arrow, straight and true, it explodes in a surge all at once.

"Coward!" I scream as the jeep rolls away, and whether I'm yelling at him or myself I honestly can't say. So I do it again. "Fucking coward!"

And there's wetness burning canyons into my cheeks and a sandstorm raging rampant against the walls of my throat and I hate him but I cannot hate him because why won't he do what needs to be fucking done no what I want him to fucking do and "You cannot fucking do this to me, Bastian Fray!" and it's the first time I've ever spoken his full name out loud and and and-