tragedy comes in twos {ellis vs. oswald}

a drawing called "child"

The monster is borne from fire and ashes. It writhes into the blackened sky as smoke writhes, body bulges as stacked skulls bulge. It cackles flames, its voice is hissing, the pounding of its footfalls like the shuddering of God. It opens its mouth to eat the world.

All rooted within the mind of a very small boy with large eyes that stare milky into its own reflection, in the face of a bomb, offered to him like a birthday present.

"no." is the caption. small print. "that's not me."

a comic called “father”

Oz and Snuff have gone out to the layer of tarmac caked over what should have been Snuff’s backyard. They have stacked various alcohol bottles in towers and toss balls at them to see if they shatter when they hit the asphalt. The sun is low, and on one side of the tarmac a mangy alley-cat reveals its bald stomach to the sun, paws tucked to its chest, purring softly as it twitches its tail. Oz flicks his ball forward. It bounces across the tarmac once and then overshoots. Snuff takes his turn. He doesn't put enough force behind it and the ball rolls the other way.

As Oz takes his turn again, Snuff glances nervously at his house. Within one of the windows is the shadowy figure of a woman, slumped across a sofa as though dead. He swallows.

OZ: God dammit…

He’s missed again.

OZ: [as he is handing a ball to Snuff] Sun's in my eye.

Snuff glances around. The sun's behind them, but Oz doesn't seem to notice that. Snuff takes aim, flicking his knuckles forward in jerks as though to test the relationship between his fingers and momentum, and then throws.

The ball skips forward twice, then rolls to the side.

SNUFF: Are you upset?
OZ: That my best friend throws like a girl? I'll get over it eventually.
SNUFF: [fighting back a grin] Not what I was talking about.
OZ; [taking the ball from him] You're just trying to distract me!

With sudden violence, Oz flings his ball overhand, copping his best impression of a professional baseball player.

The ball rockets into the sky, over the broken-down fence, nearly crashes into the neighbor's window.

OZ: [total despair, flings his hands over his head, with a slight whine:] How is it this hard...?!
SNUFF: [peering at the bottles] I was talking about my mom, actually.
OZ: She did something wrong?

Snuff shrugs, picks up another ball from off the ground. Oz watches Snuff's face as he tries to take aim. Snuff's throw is weak, half-hearted.
OZ: She's just tired. I get it.

Snuff stares at the bottles. How they refuse to budge.

SNUFF: She used to not be.

Snuff's hands rolls one of the balls between themselves.

SNUFF: [very quietly. he's been wanting to talk about this for a while. peeking at Oz out the corner of his eye to gauge the reaction] It was different when Dad was around.

Oz is winding up his ball. The motion is cut short. His eyes gaze falls, he glances round at Snuff. Snuff turns his eyes away. It wasn't the reaction Snuff wanted.

an animation called "son"

He slumps against the ship's gunwale, his body leaned like a sack of potatoes, yielding completely into its own weight. His limbs are bent like a dropped puppet's.

His ship has gone still, as though it too sleeps. Its mast cuts across the over-large moon, shining bright white in the deep pitch of the night.

The anthem is a screaming, cutting noise. Slowly, Oz's eyelids twitch apart one moment, slide closed another, pry themselves apart once more as he stiffly angles his neck so he can watch. His neck doesn't move as though it's structured around vertebra and cartilage. Moves more like a set of creaky wooden ball-joints.

The faces are silvery discs flickering in the sky, brightening the world with a cold aureole. Le Roux stares down at Oswald from the sky -- as he had only a few days before, suspended in the air by living vines. But then his body cut across from the moon; now the glow of his face rivals the moon.

It...occurs...to Oz...that...if he had just...not...hesitated...then...maybe...Peter...wouldn't...but...Peter...it doesn't...make sense...and now, knowing that the Le Roux was gone...that moment...in time...just seems so...useless...but maybe that's wrong...maybe it's all wrong...it's all wrong...it's all wrong...he's....he's glad he...he's so glad he didn't...he's so glad...

And the moment in time is lost forever.

Orville. Aglow, as the Nakoms had set him aglow, the gentle halo of his face feathering into the night. Beautiful boy, looking out into the world with eyes that see, one final time. And Oz looks into those eyes that had seen. Forces himself too. Will hate himself if he looks away from Orville again.

We need to keep you.

And Orville is gone.

Orville's district partner, too. And then--

Oz's chest rises as though in physical pain. His breathing stutters in his throat.

Nowles.

She's smirking down at him, eyes angled with their sharp, predatory glint -- they seem so much more intelligent than they do in person, for some reason...

It doesn't make sense to see her. The arc of her confident smile. The tilt of her chin...

It was supposed to be her. It was going to be Oz first, and then Nowles, if Nowles died at all. This wasn't right. It wasn't what anyone hoped for, planned on. Not even Oz, as much as he wanted to prove her and the whole fucked-up world wrong.

And now that he had, it was just so wrong. So perverted. Like he'd had shit flung in his face.

He hadn't wanted it like this.

For a moment, he expects Nowles' hologram to speak to him. Throw some barb at him. Ask him if he pissed himself during the Bloodbath, so he can grin cockily at her and chirp, "What, you into that?" But she can't. And he doesn't. She's gone.

He wonders what she went through. He knows she lost an alliance member -- he knows that she had put a hit out for Salazar and Le Roux. She must have gone through some serious pain before she went out. Maybe, all that shouting and bitching was just a way to cope...Some people are like that. Some people are like Esther, who let the sadness rot them away inside-out. And then some people are like Nowles, and they let the sadness blow them up.

She's gone.

She'd been like an anchor to him, after the reaping. Final vestige of home, as strange and volatile as she was.

And now they're all gone. All those lives that mattered. Each and every one precious, as strange and gruesome as they all turned out...

Where did Ellis go?

Loneliness is a thing that settles like snow. Cold and nibbling, across the skin. Sinks deep into the heart. Weighs it down with a cold, icy, wet feeling. It collects, flake by flake, heaping. Until there's nothing left but itself. Such light flakes at first, but once it collects it's such a cold, heavy mass that what's beneath it has lost the power to free themselves. Even while his gaze tries to pierce the remnants of the night, searching for a hand or a figure to brush it all away. Anyone. Ellis. Nowles. Avriel. Peter. Esther. Celeste. His mother. Mya. Snuff.

Snuff...

When was the last time someone touched him?

It...had been Ellis, he remembers. All too clearly. A little over twenty-four hours ago, maybe. Ellis had cradled Oz like he was his own--...and Oz had sunk into the embrace and fallen asleep, like he was Ellis' own--...

Weakly, his fingers trail up and down his arms. He presses his back against the gunwale, wondering if he can find some warmth there. This time of night, he would press his back against Ellis', make sure he was still there. Sense the warmth of him, sense the breath of him. Know that they were both still alive, and that it was okay to be alive while they still were, despite of everything.

The gunwale is hard, it does not shift -- it creaks in protests as Oz pushes harder against it.

father, iii

Oz stares at him for too long. Throws, misses, doesn't notice.
OZ: ...What was he like?

son, episode ii

But it's the rain that clears the loneliness away. Soft, pattering kisses across the face, the hands, the bare arms, the mouth, the eyelids that have shut again. He turns his face up to the sky -- lets the droplet draw streaks down his cheeks, through his hair. The rain's neither too hot nor too cold, but it sucks the excess heat out of his skin, and he eases into the sensation. Eases enough that the corners of his mouth turn up in a slight smile, that his lips part in a little sigh of relief.

He's distracted from his own thoughts and weariness, and now he notices the stillness of his ship. Joint by joint, he rises. Out of coal? No-- he peers over the gunwale. He just reached the end of the line.

In the first few shimmers of morning, the remnants of the Junkwall rises like a cracked rib-cage over the world, thousands of shipping containers scattered in random worthless geometry. It looks as though a flood has overtaken it.

The idea makes his heart nearly stop. He casts a suspicious glare up to the rain. Not sure why. Not that the rain had anything to do with the Junkwall. The Junkwall had fallen days before the rain had.

Still, he wonders...been thinking about floods lately, that's all...tries to thrust it out of his mind as he stares out over the broken jagged edges.

Keep moving.

He worries that there's no point in it.

Keep moving.

What if he just stayed on this little ark of his and--

Keep moving.

It's the animal in him. Tells him that to move is to live.

father, iv

SNUFF: I just...I think...I remember, this is my favorite thing to remember...He used to pick me up and let me ride on his shoulders. And I would feel like I was going really fast, and I was really really high up, so I would hold my arms out like this [demonstrates -- he looks like an airplane] and I would pretend to fly like a bird. And I felt like a bird. I would hoot like an owl...

OZ: Weren't you scared you would fall down?
SNUFF: No. Never.

son, iii

The brightening sunlight slashes across Oz's eyes.

Not his own. The others'.

Bulging white and strange in their hollow pits. Ellis beside him. Not Ellis -- the other Ellises. Their images halved by these jagged slashing demarcations, a sense of laceration in the aesthetic of it all. Like they were two characters in one of the Capitol's bullshit video games (he'd seen a few of those -- a few arcades at the training center, the tributes were never allowed to go in).

Oz stares into his own eyes. How they made him look so -- different. And Ellis, too, was different. Both bordering between beautiful and evil at once. Something bestial and sleek. Not human, in either parts. Too pretty to be human, too vengeful to be human.

The skin of Oz's hands itch. Trembling, fingers bent like claws, he reaches for the poster.

Howling like a wild-cat, he rips it off the shipping container's outer wall. He shreds it apart with all he has -- his fingernails, his stomping boots, the wrenching of his body to twist the paper until it rips. Paper scrap flutters around him, falling to his feet, soaking up the puddling rainwater and disintegrating into mush.

His eyes swivel around.

A thousand of his own eyes stare back at him. It's like at the reaping, when he stood on the stage and gazed out into a thousand faces. Waiting for him to betray one of their own. But those faces had all been different people, all been District Nine -- not his own -- not Ellis' --

"NO," his voice is a monster's.

And the walls of the shipping container's echo him. Not with sound-- Out the corner of his eye, he sees the writing on the wall. Large, impressive, jagged. "NO."

Across the other walls, fringing the posters-- "NO." "SHUT UP." "ASS-HOLES." "GET BUTT-FUCKED." "ELLIS IS A DICK." "BOO, MONSTER!" "I LOVE HIM."

The rain won't wash the words away.

They draw his eyes to a figure, coming round the corner of a shipping container. A hunkered, lumbering thing, limbs listless, the sallow face drawn in a grimace as the dark-ringed eyes peer back at him. Shuffling skin crammed tight into an encasement of metal, the encasement weighing down on the body, curling the shoulders, curling the knees, pressing down as a boulder presses down.

Oz gasps. He only guesses from the mech that it's a tribute. He reels back.

A voice creeps out from the mech and the skin-- "They want us to fight."

Oz stops short. Stares at what he can't believe.

father, v

OZ: ...I wish I could have met him.
SNUFF: Yeah. Me too. He would have liked you.

Oz lifts the ball again. He throws.

The alcohol bottles shatter across the tarmac.

son, iv

What's happened to him?

Only yesterday, Ellis had tilted his head back into sunlight. His smile caught the sun, and his eyes had flashed at Oswald and Orville. He looked nearly elfish, the length of him caught between the sky and the wind of his ship. Only a few days ago, he was bravado; only a few days ago, he was this pillar of strength pulling Oz to safety; a kind word that softens the night.

What happened to you?

Oz can't cough the words out. His mouth hangs uselessly, his eyes stare uselessly.

"I'm not going to hur--"

The world is trembling.

The last few heaps of the Junkwall shudder around them. The containers slide off their ragged heaps. Their bodies pound into the sand like the fists of a god, it shakes everything, it sounds like the world's become a thunder cloud. Oz's lips clench tight, he doubles over, hands curling around the back of his neck, as though that can do anything.

The world stills. All it's shaking has seeped into Oz's body and he contains it within himself. He peeks up. At the wall encircling them.

He flings Frog-legs at the nearest container, hoping the mech has enough strange to shove it into just the right position to make an opening large enough for a tribute with a mech to slip through--

A flash of light-- claws, tearing at the glass of his broken windscreen, ripping it apart as though it were paper, casting it aside. Oz gasps, reels back. He sees jaws snapping, fangs bigger than his head-- the distorted screeching of a robotic cat as it tries to twitch its glitching writhing body through the slight gaps in the wall.

Oz staggers back.

To call it "unfair" would be useless. But he knows, now, that he should have let Canvas Hope kill him.

To live is to suffer.

With slow, awkward steps he turns to face Ellis.

"Oz-!"

The look in Oz's eyes suggest tears, but none come.

"Please don't kill them-!"

They're dark wells.

"I'm sorry, I-"

At the bottom, a slither of light is reflected.

"I can't let you...I can't let you kill them."

The face of the boy charging him cuts across the reflected light.

Ellis goes for where Oz is vulnerable now.

Oz shrieks as the knife bares down. He writhes like a worm pinched between two fingers, body twisting and flailing to get Ellis away from him, as the knife blade sinks into the cushion of his seat, flashes in the sun as it rises, come down again, he feels his face sting as though it's been slapped.

Frog-legs swings as the shriek becomes guttural.

an animation

Ellis' hold on Oz is crushing. He can't breathe. His rib-cage flutters against Ellis', and it can't expand enough to draw in breath, although he keeps gasping -- trying to gasp. But what's in his mouth isn't air, it's the stench of Ellis' sweat as the heat of his skin and his mech broils into Oz. It's all around him, no matter which way tries to wrench his face away from Ellis. He's going to suffocate.

doodles

A few days ago, someone held Oz in their arms.

It was after blood had gotten all over him, and Oz had fallen down from the sky, and he couldn't get back up.

It was after a kind blond boy's eye spurt open.

They had held each other for such a long time. Oz couldn't help but, for a moment, feel loved. Like, for one moment, the world can stop, and be safe, because this person is holding him in his arms, and he's holding someone in his arms. And their hearts can pound at the same steady rhythm -- they can feel it, how the heart-rate calms during an embrace between friends -- and there is only someone's arms, nothing else. Warm and strong, in their way. Hands braced against the back as the elbows loosen. Between protectiveness and protected.

He wants it. He wants it so bad he could scream for it.

an animation

"LET GO OF ME!"

For a moment, the crushing stops, but only because Ellis wills it.

Oz flings himself out of Ellis' grasp, too hard, he falls backwards onto the ground, barely catching himself with his elbows -- the shock shoots an electric pain up his arms, wells in his shoulders.

Ellis is coming.

a drawing

The house is empty. The walls are bare. He's just come home from elementary school.

His backpack spews crayons of all colors. With the glee of vengeance -- if a young child should know vengeance -- he rubs the crayons into the wall, dragging them across the pale bareness, making the walls blush with all sorts of interesting hues: blues, reds, greens, yellows. And what patterns and landscapes they make! Look at what he can make! Checkerboard here, polka-dot there, a field of bright chalky flowers, an ocean filled with smiling fish with a smiling fisherman. All very pretty, prettier than blank walls and empty space.

His mother would come home and rage. And he would stand before her, watching, hands folded politely in front of him. Sad to have done it to her, but he felt inside of him there was a necessity in it.

The house was just too empty when he came home. The drawings filled everything in.

Quietly, he raises his hands up to her, requesting to be held. She refuses him, disgusted that he would even think of such a thing at this time.

an animation

The creature before Oz once held out his hand to him. Oz had been clinging to life and the rim of a land-ship (they were the same at the time). He'd been nearly thrown overboard by an enemy's bullet. His feet were dangling, he was suspended between life and death, the world was trying to shake him off. And then this large, strong hand came down, and plucked him up, and didn't let him go until it was safe.

"Weren't you scared you would fall down?"
"No. Never."
Not when he was there.

Oz stares at the knife in Ellis' hands, blade flecked in his own blood, his breath stuttering through his teeth. He swipes at his cheek, a sudden furious motion. Shoves his palms into the sand, dragging and kicking himself away from Ellis' shadow as it creeps closer.

Ellis' eyes are wide, hollow, distracted. Oz can't tell what he sees. Only that they don't see him. Nothing about Ellis conveys -- understanding. The way he mumbles on and on about his own family, the way he talks about Oz as though the cause of some ruination. The hunger and despair that glazes over them.

Deception. It's come for everyone else in the arena, and now it has Ellis by the throat. It's plucked his eyes. He cannot see, it's dragging him down. The way his face looks -- it reminds Oz of Celeste's face, in that bad dream he had before he they made him fight Canvas. When she was dead, and he trying to revive her, and nothing he did could work.

Is that what happened to Ellis? Did a part of him die? Is that even possible for people?

People. Such a strange idea. Ellis is a person. And what's happened to him, what's happened to that person Oz had -- loved. Loved, truly, sincerely, as he had never loved before, because before the arena he hadn't loved at all, too young to know what love was, only that it made him want to hug his mom when he could tolerate it and want to see his friends, and that was all he knew of it.

Strong, sturdy hand. Reaching out for him.

The knife comes down. Oz flinches into a tight ball, tries to twist away from it--

Something's wrong.

There's an absence, something's wrong, there's this liquid heat across his face, just enough to feel scalding, a lot's coming down, something's wrong, something's missing, not numb, can't be felt, something's missing--

The pain of absence stops his heart for a moment. He's pressing his body deep into the dirt, pressing his hand deep across the hole in the side of his face, he's screaming ("You hurt me! You hurt me!") and the scream wilts but the violence of it remains as a shudder in his body.

Don't trust the pain.
And is the absence of something trustworthy?

He doesn't know what's trustworthy anymore. Nothing seems real, nothing moves as though it's real. Everything comes at him in shocks, like the events in the nightmare. Everything just happens. The only thing telling him he's awake is the pain, and even that gives a numbing feeling.

He only knows for sure that the knife is still in Ellis' hands and that there's blood on it and that everything is wrong.

With short, trembling movements, Oz rises to meet him. Frog-legs' knife darts forward. Their eyes meet as Ellis comes to meet the blow. Oz stares into the depths of them, wondering, though vaguely, if there's still a person in there.

Nothing's made sense in so long...

Is it possible that none of this is real. That he'll wake up soon. Is there any chance at all.

"Why did you save me?" he blurts out as they're braced against each other. His voice fissures as reality fissures. "All those times..." The fight on the land-ship. After the fight with Canvas. Did that actually happen? Was that actually Ellis? "Did you hate me those times, too?" That idea -- that all along, there was this possibility that Ellis...that he...

Oz's blood ignites. Anger flares in his eyes as they pierce straight into Ellis'.

"Was I a fucking murderer to you, then, too?!"

animation

"Murderer" was such a poorly chosen word.

Canvas' blood is still clings to the frayed the hem of his shirt.

Maybe he ought to die. Maybe he ought to lie down and let Ellis finish what he started.

Life was never going to be what Oz had hoped it would anyway. But that knowledge is so painful, like a poison, a mixture of painful heat and painful cold, fighting to rip the body apart in two separate directions. He chokes on it. He is thirteen, and quick to despise the world around him, to the point of bitter spite. Because, in his mind, he can picture a world better than this one. Something simpler, something purer, where beauty can live.

He doesn't think beauty can live in a world like this one. Not for long. Dies very quickly.

doodles

He was drawn to paper for its blankness. And the fact that his mom was sick of him doodling on the walls.

On blank paper, there are infinite possibilities. Even the very body of a scrap piece of paper can be whatever you want it to be, origami and shadow puppets have shown us that. But the pencil and the paper -- something about that duality between possibility and making has a beauty and harmony to it that those inclined to the medium recognize, perhaps not at first, but respond to all the same. Oz has not recognized it. He has not recognized that he might be talented. That talent is equal parts time and equal parts objectivity (standing alone from any person's opinion). Yet he responded to it, until he told himself to hate it.

He hated it because it was beautiful in a world without beauty. Because it was harmonious in a world that preferred cacophony. Because it was freedom.

In the sweep of a pencil, the only limits are the skill of the hand and the flexibility of the mind. Sure, he has little skill, but his mind is stronger than he thinks it is. It bounds and leaps from one ridge of decision to the next. It twists from possibility to possibility, acrobatic, finding the opportunity in fantasy and comedy.

He -- as Canvas had been when he painted -- had been Chaos. Creation. A god -- of sorts. Some religions distrust art for a reason.

Granted, he never really made anything beautiful. But what he caused was beauty. He drew because he was a sad moody pre-teen who needed to preoccupy himself and wanted to find a reason to laugh, so he made it himself. He showed it to Mya and Snuff, and they laughed, and made fun of him because the drawings were never beautiful, but that made them laugh more. In a way, he began to find a delight in the grotesqueness of his own immature talents, and he built on that. Because there is a sheer beauty in making someone laugh that is raw and true.

Beauty is here to ascend us. We look at the paintings of the Renaissance so that our souls may soar. "A man made this," we say to ourselves. "We can make this. This can be us. We can be beautiful. We can be around beauty."

Laughter is here to ascend us. We laugh because we can't keep crying forever. We laugh because there is a happiness despite the sorrow.

"In sorrow, find happiness."

So much easier said than done.

a sketch

Over the sands, there are twenty pages. Across each is the portrait of a child or teenager, delicately sketched and shaded to a pristine photo-realism. And yet they are unfinished. Where is their color? Why isn't the line to this one's nose finished? Why do some look less defined than the others? Why do some even look a little faded?

They aren't done yet. All of them.

Sierra. Celeste. Pope. Esther. Kareem. Lucien. Fatima. Peter. Lottie. Maze. Sven. Canvas. Wes. Bowie. Izzy. Parker. Orville. Isaac. Rafael. Nowles.

They were all blank pages. The potentiality of them was outstanding. The beauty they could create with their being infinite. The preciousness of a single life is beyond the understanding of most men. And yet they lie across the sands, incomplete, with no one to finish them.

Four still lie blank.

Four and twenty.

Twenty gone. Four remain.

It never occurred to Oz how close he is. He had never really felt the closeness. Really, what does it matter how close any of them were or are.

Twenty lives are lost. Three will have to go.

They are all so incomplete.

Oz himself is incomplete. He may never know the speed of a car. He may never know what it's like to kiss someone he loves. He may never know if Snuff...minds...what he said about him, before he killed Canvas...or if Snuff even knows he was talking about him...

He may never stand at a punch bowl with Snuff and see Mya in a prom dress and realize, for a brief moment, that she has played a trick on the both of them and has been a woman this entire time. He may never be kissed by his mom again, whom he never hugged enough, especially after he enrolled in middle school. He may never be a cartoonist.

Was it all for nothing?

No.
He's worth it.
The beauty of his life makes him worth it.

And Ellis, too, is incomplete...Oz can't let himself forget that.

animation

The knife is in his chest. A wet, clucking hack as he bends around the blade, clinging to the arm holding the blade, because that's the only way he can stay standing.

Muscled arm. Strong, sturdy arm. Won't let him fall.

He waits for his heart to stop. It doesn't. If anything, the pounding is worse. His entire body ripples with its pulsations.

It's strange. At this point, he doesn't feel pain. Only the bleeding. His mouth tastes like iron. His lower jaw sags and he feels the blood ooze down his chin.

In short, shuddering motions, he peers into Ellis' face. A sickly yellowish glaze discolors the whites of his eyes. But the pleading and the anger is gone. It's bled out of him. There's only acceptance now.

He sees the ghost of a human in Ellis' eyes.

"Four'n'twenny...," his words run together. "Z' at why you came back...cuz I'm the eas'est...?"

After he had went back to Ellis. After he had killed Canvas so he could protect him.

But then why didn't Ellis let him die sooner.

Beneath Oz's hands is warm, supple skin, rippling with strength. He clings to Ellis' arm. He won't let go, he needs it.

"Haf to be like this?" he goes on, though it hurts so much to speak, his throat constricting and twisting around the words, and his lungs can't get enough breath, yet he persists. "Why couldn' we jus'...jus' go out 'n' face...what's out ther...like...we used to...wif Pete 'n' 'Sfer..."

Things had been so much better when they had been alive.

Why. Why do they insist on taking the beauty away from the world. Why do they sap it out. What right do they have! Why do they rip it all apart and then cover it all up in glitter and make it jagged and strange to look at so only those who pretend to be intelligent understand it, why do they look in the eyes of a child and tell him that he is not enough, why do they crush the child, what right do they have to crush the child--

What right have they to tell the world that to live is to suffer.

His fingers feel along Ellis' arm. Strong arm, beautiful arm, arms for holding and protecting, Ellis was so beautiful once...

A memory.

"Peter...tol' me...not to like you...'n' I liked you 'nny-way...," he mumbles through the blood. "Cuz you...were...so...not an'fin' like I had befo'...never...had a...dad...befo'..."

The knife rips out of him, and so does the blood. He vomits it out onto the sand, onto Ellis' arm.

He holds on for all he's worth.

"I love you, Ellis..."

"Man is the animal that loves." -- Archibald MacLeish.

doodling

Though Ellis shoves him away, Oz knows. It's written in the tears coursing down Ellis' cheeks. He's still human. Thank God.

Oz is more relieved that Ellis is crying than the fact that, miraculously, he can still stand. There's hope there. Those tears are the first signs that the Ellis he had known and loved is still alive. That the monster possessing him hadn't won him over completely. They run down his face and cut through the layers of grime and blood. He can still hurt, knows what it means to hurt...And even if he won't admit it, he loves.

Parker didn't cry when she killed Celeste. Those careers didn't cry when they killed Esther. As far as Oz could tell, even Bowie and his group didn't exactly bat any eyes when Peter died, as kind as Bowie had been to him. The expectation of a tribute isn't to cry. It's not to recognize the humanity of those around you, or even in yourself. It's to grow fangs and be a monster. Rip one another part until there's nothing left. More often than not, the monsters justify the slaughter. Canvas tried to do that, too. Even said he was proud to be a monster.

Why? Were they born that way? Or is it like with Ellis, or even Oz himself when he killed Canvas...unnatural, new, strange, a poison pill crammed down their throats?

They've lost themselves, then. They forget that there's always a choice, in everything. Even if someone's being held back, pinned down, knife to the throat...there's still a choice, there, isn't it? Of not giving the attacker the satisfaction...Of course, that takes a lot of courage, and Oz doesn't think Panemians know what courage is.

He looks at Ellis and on his tear-streaked face he sees what Panem and her cowardice does to twenty-four children, year after year after year, because Panem is a country of monsters and cowards. So few humans left.

But his Ellis is still human...they haven't taken him away yet.

The tears remind Oz of when Peter died, and the world had seemed so heavy and empty all at once, like there was nothing left. And the anger of having seen three friends being totally destroyed had, at last, broken Oz. And he couldn't hold himself up, so Ellis had until Ellis broke too, and they supported one another, making sure the other wouldn't sink. But Oz had sunk, in his own way. He had thought that because Ellis was crying, and Oz wasn't, that he had to be the "grown-up." And what had been his "grown-up" decision?

"We kill 'em."

Evil, terrible thing to say. Only what a monster would say. And then what he did the next day...

He had just been so desperate to keep Ellis alive...

Now Ellis is crying again. And it's Oz's turn to be the grown-up once more.

Don't fuck this up. He's not slipping into that trap. He doesn't care what Ellis or what the rest of the world thinks ("Fuck 'em, Oz"). He's not going to die a monster. It matters so, so much how someone dies. If he's to die at all, he needs to die like a person.

Ellis, Oz knows now, is such a broken, pitiful, incomplete person -- though a person still. On the verge of ruination because of some girl's cruel decision to volun-tell him, beaten down over again and again every step of the way...He's fracturing, and who would be heartless enough to blame him. Oz can see it so clearly now -- the real reason why Ellis kept casting him aside. He doesn't know which role to play. That of the brother, who he is, or that of the tribute, what is expected of him. His mind's going off in two separate directions and it's splitting him in half.

Save him, Oz tells himself. Be the brother/son Ellis needs. That's the only way to stop this. And from there, all they have to do is take out the mutts prowling around outside, and then they can move on...

Until the next battle. And if one of them dies, then at least they'll die like a person. Sometimes, with the choices we're given, that's the most we can ask for.

animation

A wet, choking laugh gurgles from inside Oz's throat, flecking the air with specks of blood. It hurts -- he grasps at the wound in his chest as it burns with the slightest motion. Laughter, breathing...so hard to breathe...He has to gasp in every inhale, a shrill and wet sound, cut short because then the pain makes him shudder and he has to stop. His blood is warm against his hand.

Ellis did that to you, he remembers. His throat goes dry.

Don't fuck this up.

It's a little easier to breathe, now that he isn't bent over double. He can take in more than before. Makes it easier to talk.

"Ye-eah...," Oz chokes, pointing a weak, shaky finger at Ellis' tears. The wryness of his tone is a cheap imitation of their teasing banter from yesterday, when they thought they were playing around with land-ships. "Cope harder, cry-baby. Yah know yah love me..."

Pause. Running out of breath. To speak is like running a marathon. He wavers as he gasps for air, each pant a shrill, staccato sound.

"Could...lose any'ne...at any time..and you still gotta love 'em...right? Like...what if...your brothers...stopped lovin' you...cause...cause they thought...you're gonna...die..."

He dares to stagger closer. After all the times Ellis pushed him away.

"Ellis...we don't...have to lose each other...we don't have to do this...'member...first time you left...you said...they can't make us fight...that we can re-fooze...'member...? Let's re-fooze...Let...somefin' else...take one of us away..."

Pause. Breathes.

"You...coulda lost me...but you...you saved me...again and again..."

"Ell..."

"These Games...this year...it's...it's about...making a choice...It...it all starts...wif a choice...an'...like...when...I was reaped...I...I had the choice...to kill my fren...send him out here...an' I..."

He's losing the allegory. Train of thought is fizzling out, the deeper each word stabs pain into his abdomen. He pants hard, though even that hurts so much he wants to throw up. Yet it gives him a moment to collect his thoughts -- by sheer willpower alone.

"We don't have to be...what they think we should be..." The smile's gone. The eyes he lifts up to Ellis' tears are tender, loving, patient, kind, open. Never, not once, has he abandoned Ellis. He's not going to start now.

"What if...we jus' be...what we are...instead...?"

He reaches out his hand. It is small and weak. But it is good. He echoes himself:

"I love you, Ellis."

animation

Ellis doesn't attack.

His knife slips out of his grasp. Thuds onto the sand between them.

Oz's hand hangs open in the air, empty. The gesture rendered meaningless. But Ellis doesn't attack. Ellis cringes back into himself, clinging desperately to his own skull as though to keep the two halves from splitting apart. The tears on his face mixing with the misting rain, flattening his hair against his head as he chokes on his own sobs.

"We can't...This isn't in our hands..."

Oz's hand droops back down to his side, the fingers curling weakly. He stares, mortified, at the boy he somehow broke.

No. That's just the old fatalism that tributes fall prey to, to which the entire country has devoted itself. The notion that their lives are not their own.

And there was truth to that. For so long, nothing has belonged to anyone. As a child, you grow up with the understanding that at any moment, at least once a year, you could die. You hate your twelfth birthday, no one celebrates it, its coming is like ash in the mouth and it never gets better as you grow up. The ones that get to grow up go on to be cogs in this industrial complex they can't escape. No choice. And some take pride in having no choice. Commends the districts for their sense of community.

Lots of community, especially in those gangs in Nine.

That's just reality. He knows that now.

It occurs to him that at this moment he is not yielding to any sense of reality -- practically ignoring the truth of the situation altogether. Ellis and Oz are tributes. They must fight, and one of them must die. Perhaps both. It only makes sense that they would be corralled this way, urged to fight. Really, they should have fought sooner. Esther should have torn Oz's throat out the moment she discovered him in the Oasis. But she didn't. And neither did Peter. Nor did Ellis.

Their kindness to Oz has already defied their own reality.

Is that what destroys truth, actually? Hubris and kindness? Two very different things...

Ellis' sobs grow louder. Oz shuffles back, heart stuttering in his chest. "I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't..." he moans to himself.

Oz's heart twists around. He wonders at who he's looking at right now -- Ellis or Mya.

He'd already figured out by now that a part of the reason why he was drawn to Ellis was because he was so much like Mya. Physically tough, confident, capable. Emotionally, they're both explosive wrecking-balls.

He used to watch Mya sink into fits like this. Because of something Kevina had said. Something her dad did. Her own inexplicable fear of Peacekeepers, this sudden sense in her that she has to dart around, run away, that she has to leave them behind and head in another direction. Shaking. Pale. Teary-eyed. And then Oz and Snuff would find her in the Loft, sunk into a corner, hugging a pillow to her chest.

Oz would never know what to do. Only watch. Be there. Totally useless. No wonder Mya thinks he doesn't care about anything. He practically became a wall whenever she got that way. Just -- stared. Like an ass-hole. Best he could do, on occasion, was offer some dumb-fuck joke, and maybe that was what she needed and maybe it wasn't.

That's definitely not what Ellis needs.

And Oz's tongue feels thick in his mouth. He's becoming a wall. Just...watching.

But Mya had had Snuff. Snuff always knew what to do. What to say.

Snuff sees.

"JUST KILL HIM, OZ!"

"Mya--"

"FUCKING KILL HIM, FUCKING KILL HIM, KILL HIM KILL HIM KILL HIM!"

Mya kicks at Snuff as he tries to pull her away from the Loft's window. The one with Oz's drawing of Snuff, as a hawk, raising his wings to the sky.

Through it, they've been watching the Games on the district square's holographic jumbotron, when they don't think they can handle being in the square. They cling to each other. They almost never speak. They've stopped greeting one another with words. They slip their hands into each other's instead.

"STOP IT, JUST KILL HIM, YOU CAN JUST KILL HIM!"

She flails like a wildcat, teeth bared, scratching and clawing at Snuff as he curls his arm around her waist.

"Mya, Mya, look at me--!"

"I WANT THAT SHIT-HEAD TO DIE! HE DESERVES TO DIE!"

She wrenches herself forward and screams wordlessly into the sky.

Snuff roars over her: "LOOK AT ME!"
She's lost all strength of faith. She folds over Snuff's arm, her body shaking as she sobs.

"Look at me," Snuff whispers.

She does, face streaked with tears and frothy spittle.
His hands flutter up from his side in slow, hesitant motions. His fingertips rest across the side of her face, between the ears and the hair-line. The thumbs draw closer, pressing their softness into the softness of her cheeks, stroking upward in a fanning motion beneath the eyes. Caressing the tears away in one slow, careful motion.

"What if we killed him?" her voice is hoarse, and she can't raise it above a whisper.

Snuff doesn't let go of her.

doodles

Once, while perusing that hobby store in the rich side of Nine, Oz came across one comic book in the adult section. It had been set in kind of an older time period, Oz wasn't very sure when (granted, he kinda sucks at history) -- he thinks the artist just sort of made it up. But there had been this creature called a "demon" that could go into people's heads and control them. The main protagonist was this woman, and her daughter was controlled by this evil demon that made her writhe around and twist her head in circles and murder people and drink their blood. Really crazy shit. And the mom, she had to go back in time so she can collect these old relics from the past that this religious sect had made to ward against demons. But somehow time-traveling actually released more demons into the world? Oz still isn't sure about that plot point, it doesn't really make sense.

Still, the comic stood out to him. The idea that someone can lose themselves to something beyond their control was terrifying. Like some shit he'd see in the Games.

And now he knows it's all too real.

a comic: "comfort"

Another sleep-over at the Loft. Mya clings to her pillow, hair and face a mess after another crying jag. But she sleeps soundly as the boys lie beside her, protecting her in a subtle way, both still awake, though equally exhausted after Mya's ordeal. Snuff stares up into the ceiling, hands folded across his chest, face peaceful but watchful as the silver moonlight caresses it. Oz peers at Mya out the corner of his eye. Then at Snuff.

OZ: [whispering as he rises into a seated position] Snuff...?
Snuff glances at him.
OZ: How'd you know that'd work...? That...thing you did...

Pause. Snuff gets up, beckons Oz to follow. They slink away to the other side of the Loft, and crouch down each into an "owl-ing" position: squatting on the balls of their feet, hands set on their knees, elbows folded sort of like wings would be. (Kids their age don't like to squat, they like to "owl.")

SNUFF: [whispering] My mom taught it to me.
OZ: [trying to veil his surprise] Y...yeah?
SNUFF: I'd cry a lot, after what happened to dad. And it just...I mean, I wouldn't always stop right away, but it...helps a lot.
OZ: [eyeing Mya] It looks...it looks really...it looks kinda weird, I don't...
SNUFF: What do you mean?
OZ: [whispering, harsh, quick:] It looks like you're about to kiss, man. It's weird. I don't think you should do it.
SNUFF: [smiling a little now] It works, though.
OZ: It's weird, you shouldn't do it.

Snuff blinks into Oz's eyes. How embarrassment sharpens them, how he can't maintain eye contact.
OZ: Everyone already calls us her boyfriends, you can't just do that shit, what if someone sees...
SNUFF: Can I...can I show you what I mean?
OZ: [turning his face sharply] The fuck you are, man, hell's wrong with you?

Snuff recoils, hands fluttering to his chest, fingers pressing into each other. Shame widening his eyes as he frowns at the floor.

Oz notices. Grimaces.
Sighing, he settles down properly on the floor, legs crossed. Makes a dismissive gesture towards his face.
OZ: Have at it.
SNUFF: No, no, you're fine...
OZ: Just do it.
SNUFF: You don't want me to--
OZ: Just freaking do it already, c'mon.
SNUFF: You won't like it, it makes you uncomfortable.
OZ: Do you wash your hands after you take a shit?
SNUFF:
OZ: ...You do, right...?
SNUFF:
SNUFF:
SNUFF:
OZ: Right?!!!!
SNUFF: yeah.
OZ: Thank fuck.

Oz seizes Snuff by the wrists and plants his hands over his face.
OZ: [muffled] Do it, jerk-wad.

Awkwardly, Snuff's fingers fumble around Oz's face in jerky, uncertain motions, his eyes wide and lips pressed thinly together. Oz snickers underneath Snuff's hands.
SNUFF: You're supposed to be crying, not laughing.
OZ: Then stop making this so funny.

Snuff's hands settle in the proper position. The laughter stops. Oz blinks, eyes suddenly peering into Snuff's. His fingers nudge the shell of his ears and Oz's shoulders tense suddenly. He presses his hands fully into him. Oz's eyes close. He moves his thumb beneath his eyes. Oz's lips part, the eyelids flutter as Snuff makes the motion again, Oz finds Snuff's eyes. Sees how they catch moonlight and splinter it into starlight. Sees how wide they are -- as though Snuff's panicking. Yet he meets Oz's gaze steadily.

Oz pulls away first.
OZ: Alright, you win. It works.

Snuff withdraws his hands. They hold themselves as though they're still curled around Oz's face. Oz turns his eyes back to Mya.
OZ: She never tells us what's going on.
SNUFF: [staring at his hands] You don't, either.

Oz glares at him, totally confused, and yet indignant all the same.

he may never know what it is like to kiss someone he loves

Ellis' knife lies in the sand between himself and Oz.

Carefully, Oz picks his way towards it, eyes trained on Ellis as his body heaves with every childlike sob. Until it lies at Oz's feet. And he covers it with his boot, grinding it into the wet sand, deeper and deeper, until it is buried, a boot-printed flat clump of sand sprawled over it.

Now, maybe, he can make this work.

He doesn't know if this is hubris or kindness or what, he only knows that it has nothing at all to do with reality.

And he's found he's stopped caring.

Because maybe -- maybe, what Oz is about to do is reality. Not whatever the Gamemakers or the Capitol claim. Because they're the ones that can't differentiate the monsters from the people. The ones that pollute the world with delusion.

He comes closer. His own blood covers his hands. He wipes them onto his shorts, though that doesn't help much.

Ellis looms over him.

Carefully, slowly, his hands reach for Ellis' face. It hurts Oz to raise his arms over his chest -- the motion tugs at the stab-wound. He does it anyway. His fingertips brush across Ellis' ears. The heels of Oz's little hands settle across his face. The thumbs brush away the tears.

He stares up into Ellis' eyes. His voice is hoarse and husky.

"I want you to go home too. I want us both to," he adds with a slight laugh. "I mean...I got these friends I want you to meet...And I know...But, look, we gotta go home right. That's in our own hands, isn't it? How we get there?"

He brushes his thumb over Ellis' tears again. As the rain gets into his own face and trails down it.

"This isn't the right way. You know this isn't the right way. Your family wouldn't think so. Mine wouldn't either. And, if one of us goes home the right way...then we gotta die the right way, too, right? Do you...do you want either one of us to die this way?"

His grasp tightens.

"I don't you want to die," an edge creeps into his voice, "and I won't forgive you if you kill me."

"Let's go out there," he murmurs, nodding at the little slits between the containers. "Let's go out and kill every damn mutt we have to. One of us goes home the right way, the other goes out the right way. That's how we do this."

He draws Ellis' face closer.

"We protect each other. That's what we've always done. Even when we were apart."

Oz lowers his hands away from Ellis' face, and looks at them.

Two of his fingers are gone.

It's so strange. He doesn't even feel it. There's no panic, though there should. How am I going to draw now? he wonders, and then remembers he'd thrown aside drawing for good.

Drawing had been stupid. It had been what little kids do when they want to be worthless.

Was Oz worthless? Was that why Ellis wanted him dead?

No.

Fuck 'em, Oz.

Fuck what Ellis does.

Fuck what he thinks.

Ellis is a monster. People don't care about monsters. People live their lives, as best they can. They love, as best they can. They protect each other, as best they can.

They have no time to care about what a monster thinks or does.

"Ellis is a dick," Peter whispers into Oz's ear. (Why does Peter feel so close right now?)

All that matters is Snuff is still alive.

He stares at his hands. At the blood leaking over the palms, mixing with the pooling rain.

He raises his eyes to Ellis.

"I'm sorry."

"Get butt-fucked."