gg :: 90th finale [ talon vs ellis ]

I don't remember when I started breathing again.

I'd been drowning for so long that the weight of water had begun to replace that of air. Every ounce that spilled over my lips burnt a low blaze that never went away. I couldn't even see the surface, hell, I didn't even know there was one. Instead of swimming I was sinking and instead of fighting I was falling. From time to time I could see a life boat come searching for me, but even then I only drifted deeper. I was an anchor with no chain aimlessly adrift.

Then I tried Paradise.

It became my fresh air, something my lunges couldn't work without. It made me forget about the dark bottom below me, but it also faded out the signs of the surface above. It made the salt water surrounding me dry by convincing myself that I was walking along the sand-sewn shore. I was nothing, but that was better than being something I shouldn't. Better than living a lie. The only thing is, I was still breathing in water instead of air. I was still drowning on dry land, right Turner?

It must have happened somewhere in the withdrawal.

No, I know it did.

It wasn't the sand kissed skin caked with dust or the broken nails of pink with a layer of dried blood beneath them. It wasn't the ships that screamed sailing across an empty ocean or the mechanical fusion between body and fighter. It sure as hell wasn't watching friends die under falling flames or canons crashing for kids I'd never even met more than once. It wasn't because of the violence. No, it wasn't because of the violence.

It was because of the hope. It was knowing that even when I was stumbling or when my stomach was spraying across the steel of my mech, that they would be waiting for me. It was hearing that Maze thought there was still a chance for me and hoping to discover what that might be. It was finding that out a couple days later when I finally took off the veil society put on me, that my parents fastened to me like a chain. It was learning that even in this place there were people, friends, who cared about me. It was the hope just like Kiibo said. The hope that I can live a life that's my own and regret doesn't linger as my shadow.

So that's when I started breathing. Here in this place that makes breaths stop.

A drop of sweat drips off of the end of my nose. Confusion crowds my thoughts at the warmth surrounding me softly. Blankets and furs I don't recognize are bundled around me in a make-shift cocoon. Still blinking away the sense of sleep, I don't understand what's going on. What's more disturbing than the blankets is how they got there. How could anyone just tuck me in this tightly without me noticing?

A surging sound swells over the mouth of the hull above my head sitting me upright almost instantly. Was that the sound of a slot machine? I've never been old enough to play, but I know of several places to gamble in District Four. My confusion doesn't last long though as a flood of strobing neon lights languish over the area. Cryptic cheers twisted by technology erupt from the world around me. So we're back here again, huh Parker? My eyes catch a glimpse of the spinning crown above my head.

More awake now, I can see just what they've done for their final fight. Holographic spectators watch with voices ringing and signs swinging. Chants for Talon and chants for Ellis. There are posters pinned for the Championship fight. There's even exactly twenty-two memories animated by automation. It's an entire world warped into a fanatical rave. A party for them, but a final fight to the death for us. From some lost memory, I can hear a single sentence so clearly rippling through the throbbing bass of rampant the music: dance till you're dead. In our case, literally.

I've spent the last few years of my life at parties just like this one. I'd pop pills, drink alcohol, and laugh until I would fall into some kind of catatonic state. It's almost uncanny how full circle I've seem to come. Only this time around I have a headache to match the thundering bass and not a single pill in my pockets. Talon Grey the party King. If only they knew I'd be fighting for that very title just minus the King. I guess the only way to a new life is through the old one.

My hands take hold of the levers Maze taught me to use only a week ago, a century ago, a lifetime ago. Actually, twenty two life times ago to be exact. Right now the Game Makers still have control. This night is going to die into a dawn though and I want a life where no one can tell me how to live again. I have enough hope for one more fight.

"It's a party, you'd think they would at least give us a drink." The static of the intercom flicks as I'm the first to be speak with a hollow voice. I remember him, the one they called Ellis. I killed his friend while he tried to kill mine. We're all that's left. The last two on the dance floor. What a twisted comparison, right?

"Let's end this party together." The levers thrust forward and the legs of my mech begin to send neon droplets dancing through the air. "It's been a shitty one anyway, right?"

Closing in, my Mech's dagger dives and so the final dance begins.

A curtain of crimson cascades over my eyes leaking in red rivers to the edges of my mouth. That same metallic tang that's been biting at the back of my bile-stained throat is again all there is to taste aside from the bitterness of the truth. As though attuned to our shared suffering, the music surges as the chants crescendo and I'm under a new mask this time: one made of blood and crafted out of loss. My whole life I've been phasing through different masks, different realities.

In the beginning, I was an unknown entity affixed to an errored identity. I know these words sound big, but I'm not a poet. I can just see the stains of my past bleeding through the pain of my present. Back then, I played the parts of my parents. I played the picture of a puppet tied to strings I couldn't see but always felt. I lost myself behind a mask that made a mirror my own worst enemy.

Then I was nothing, a faceless mask meant to do nothing more than disappear among the masses. To this moment, I still don't know how he plucked me from the crowd that day. He asked me what I could sell as he sold my strings to a new set of Marionettists. Well, has he gotten the answer he was looking for? I can sell a story of what parents tell their kids not to become. I can sell a picturesque example of what substance abuse can do. I can apparently even sell a guide on how to kill friends with a machine. Could he see all that behind the blank mask I made with those pills? Or is the real story that he just saved himself by letting some addict take his place?

His face is the one I see along the edges of Ellis' blade.

"If you've been to one, you've been to them all." My words answer the boy's from Twelve as my eyes follow along the lines of the LEDs. Bodies dancing discreetly, smoke spilling out of mouths, drinks dripping into others, and all to keep away the dreams. Under the influence of the lights and the tendrils of temptation, there's no room for anything else. A party is a placeholder, a pocket of paused existence. It's a great escape, but dawn always catches you. It's funny how this time around it's me who's chasing the dawn and not the sun searching for my shadow.

"How many kids like Esther did you have to kill to get that?"

Ellis Gallagher.

My head thunders with a fresh bass drop.

"How many? How many have you killed Grey?"

Rafael Salazar

My eyes find the animated shell of his mech.

My words, his words, are only loud enough for my ears alone.

"Doesn't matter."

One was to protect. One was to save. One was for hope. One was for loss. Trust me, I know how to count gravestones. That number doesn't change anything. There's still paint drenching the sand and lights strobing through the darkness. I'm still an addict and Ellis is probably a better person than I am, but at the end of the day we're still here with the same name: murderer. One of us will just get a crown to put over it.

Blinking away some of the blood from my head, my eyes rise again to the glitching graphic in question. I know why it's there, but I call it by Parker's name instead. Maybe that's me running from the truth again or maybe it's what I have to do to keep hoping for myself. I don't like to linger long on death, even though I've been dancing with it for years.

"How many kids did you have to kill to ask?"

The gears of my Mech whir and the dagger drives me forward, closer.

Too many, right?

A pair of misses; two parallel mirrors dancing back and forth. A racing heartbeat pulses from the bass as the steps to our dance entangle within the chaotic crescendo of the electric music. There's so much to see, so much to hear, so much to feel. It's an infinite overstimulation wreathed in strobing spotlights of neon color. One second there's sound, one second there's light, one second there's shadow, one second there's silence, one second there's two of us, one second there's one. We're just like the sea of sound and lights which surround us: destined to end after chaos.

Which of our lights is still on when the party's over is what is unknown.

"It all won't matter tomorrow right?" My eyes find the dull gleam of the stars still shining between the broken building of the scrapyard. That's right, isn't it Kiibo? By the time dawn comes, the dawn arrives, it will be over. Glitching halos in the form of crowns and broken mechs won't matter anymore. We'll both be gone, elsewhere when the music stops. One below and one above. One light on and one light off. One mirror still standing one mirror shattered.

He speaks of weakness and of strength as my eyes fall back to him. The words don't sound right to me. Peter's heart was stronger than mine. Parker's power was stronger than mine. Maze's mind was stronger than mine. Rafael's ambition was stronger than mine. The list is endless, but the conclusion is the same. "Strength and weakness have nothing to do with it." My hands wipe away some of blood still running in rivets down my face. "One of us will just happen to be the one who survives."

I know there's more to it than that. It's why my hands, although still trembling from non-existent chills, turn the levers so tightly. It's why I didn't give up at the very beginning of it all like I thought I would. There's hope and the will power to want to make that hope a reality. Just like Ellis said it won't matter tomorrow, but I want to be the one to see it. I know it's selfish, but it's the truth. I want to find out what my life can be and I'm willing to fight for it, to-

The crown above me glitches.

Yeah, to do that just one more time.

"No hard feelings, though," Of course not, "I just want to go home." A breath leaves my lips softly as I catch the sound of my name on the mouth of some holographic fan. I get it, so do I. I didn't always know that or feel that way, but I do now. I want to go make a real home back there with a real life and a real me. I want to go back in the water again without feeling like I'm an imposter. I want a lot of things I never really realized that I do, but I want tomorrow most. I need it. The words of a true addict, huh?

"None, we don't owe each other anything other than this moment." Weaving the spider legs of my mech inbetween his own, I position myself tightly as I've done for the past four days. Here, even amid the flashing chaos, I can see him within his steel shell. I'm staring at him: Ellis Gallagher, not the metal machine these Games have wrapped around him. I'm staring at the other human with me here in this dance. I'm taking all of him in. "To fully see each other and to know that we were both here."

My hands on the levers thrust and the blade responds.

"I see you Ellis."

A question, one I've been asking my whole life meets me here, but it's not from my lips. How do you see me? A million different labels to choose from and almost all of them wrong. The world is a system of boxes and shapes that I've never fit into. How do you see me? Not as me, not until now at least. Does the question still haunt me as it falls from his lips and a small scrape of sparks spur across my steel shell?

I think it's less of a phantom now and more of a determination. I can finally find my own answer by surviving, by winning. A future where I'm who I want to be doesn't seem so far away anymore. I'm so close to the shore, but I have to swim a little further. I have to dig a little bit deeper into the part of me that lost Parker, that killed Ellis' ally, that ended Rafael's flourish, that killed Kiibo in the end. Just because I can taste the air doesn't mean I can breathe yet.

He speaks of commonality, the bitterness that tinges our thoughts as we dance beneath the black lights. Hearing his voice and seeing him through the shifting shades of neon, I think he's probably right. Of course I'm not proud or happy that I still have factions of dried blood beneath my nails, but I'm trying something new. I don't regret it as I'm standing here right now. There's guilt yes, there's a lot of guilt, but I'm burying the regrets. Parker would tell me to fight for it. Turner would tell me to stop drowning. I'm telling myself to fucking live.

"Home is only one body away, are you able to finish the job?"

The legs to my mech tighten down against the sodden paint soaked sands as the blade repositions with the movement of my hands. A body, a job, I disagree with his words but not the truth behind them. Dawn is only a canon's cry away. If I want to see it, I need to start acting like it. Cut away the pain, the loss, and the anchor. Cut away at something more than air. Cut away at something else still alive.

"I see you as more than a body." My words are hollow, but deep as the intercom's light flickers in the darkness. "I would hope we at least have that in common."

Body or not, fingers shift and I focus my aim forward, onward. The only way is through, not air. Steel must screech against steel until there is another addition to the Scrapyard.

"I want to live, so yes. I know what that means."

I let the world burn away until it was something more of a smokey aftertaste biting at the back of my throat. I couldn't see anything through the embers. There were faces, but they were shadowed. Rooms, but they were slanted and shafted with vibrant light just like this one. Voices, but some language I couldn't speak. It's easy to lose yourself staring into the flames once they're there.

So I can't help the short scuff of laughter when he speaks.

"I wish I was that strong," I think of all the fallen faces which probably were, "but the truth is I lost sight of myself out there. I was blind." How people did it, moved so easily, I never could understand. Turner was always so confident and whole in himself. He embraced the chill that hung to him like a veil. Jesse, fuck, well Jesse has to be the realest person I've ever met. He went into the same night as I did and somehow he was a flashlight even then.

Oh my god, Jesse.

The last way he saw me was naked, covered in vomit on his bathroom floor. His hands were holding my folded clothes while I barked at him with bile still on my breath. Then, he apologized to me. He always does that, apologizes when I've been the mess. He deserves so much more than that, than what I let myself become.

My eyes close tightly for a second as my head shakes. That's right, I have to do this. I have to win, to live. I've gotta make things right with Jesse. I have to see my parents again and face whatever's there. I have to face myself and decide what I want. I can't regret anymore, not when I'm this close. Maze said it herself, right? I'm worth saving, worth a second chance. So I'm going to take it.

"This place, the people, my friends made me open my eyes. I won't close them again." Is that a threat? It doesn't leave my mouth with the tone of one as my eyes are opening again to focus on the boy before me, but maybe it is. Isn't our mutual existence a threat to one another? I don't know, I don't really feel like I know anything. I don't feel hate or aggression. I just feel the overwhelming want to survive, to be. Whatever comes with that I can make peace with, I've done it before after all.

There's that word again from him as I start to move my mech into a new position: fate. I fucking hate that word because to me it feels like control. I don't want anyone to have any control over me ever again. We aren't just hounds obeying commands or puppets tied to strings. I'm me, he's him, and we are both real. All twenty four of us are, were, whatever.

"If that's the case, I want to kill fate." My eyes flash as I focus forward, the levers listening to the movement of my hands. "It's a fucking asshole."

"Damnit Talon, breathe." His cold blue eyes watch me through the furling face of the wave. My feet are where my head should be and my head is in the sand. Salt burns at my eyes and all I want is to be back on the shore in the sun. I think I'm going to be swept up in the sea's current before Turner's hands heave me upright. I'm sputtering, spitting, as air and water wrack against my lunges. "The hardest part is the end, right when you can see the beach. The waves won't wait, you have to be ready for the shore pound."

Turner was a lot of things: an asshole, an emotionless tool, a fuckboy without even trying, and a whole long list of other less than brilliant character qualities, but despite all that he was also right a lot of the time. The end is the hardest part, even now. All I want is to fall onto my knees and sink into the shore's sand, but I'm not on the beach yet. The bottom is tickling at my toes, but the waves are at their fiercest. I'm so close to my life, to my future, but I have to push through the present.

Another scorn of screeching steel strikes up against my ears as Ellis' blade scratches across the exterior of my mech's hull. I wince as I feel some sparks slice across my stomach in response to the attack. Even my head rumbles with its continuous withdrawal headache, anguishing at all the noise. These are just the waves I have to weather. No, the waves I have to force myself through.

Ellis speaks of death and fate's immortality. I don't believe that though, I think fate has a heart and it's right in front of me. Neither of us chose this, I know that, but just like he thinks he has to kill me because of fate I think I kill fate if I kill him. I can break free from it all, every last order and expectation. I'm just going to live and I'm not going to let a single damn person or thing like fate have any control over it.

I will be free.

The sweat from my chills has begun to seep into my clothes attaching itself to the blood stained patterns of all my fights, yet still I move. I listen to the whirring gears of my mech as my eyes watch the shape of Ellis standing before me. "Who knows," my hands crank the levers forward, "Maybe one us would still have had to kill the other."

My eyes stay trained on his as the mechanic arm extends, dagger at the ready.

To the shore, Talon.

"At least then it would have been more of a choice."

There it is, on this last night in the final minutes. Ripped bare and eloquently exposed between gnarled metal, the humanity is here. We aren't just two tributes, two machines, tearing away at one another until nothing remains other than ruin and rust. We are two humans, two children, cutting away at each other playing soldiers on a painted sea of sand. We can see each other bleed, we can hear each other cry, and we are watching each other die. We are more than they ever wanted us to be, even if they kill us.

It's the most I've heard him speak, words wrought with morality. How could there be another time, another universe, where we would meet with each other's blood as our gloves? That's the point though: we don't know. There's no way of knowing what the lives of Ellis Gallagher and Talon Grey would have been outside of these Games, away from this arena. Maybe I would have lost myself in the mists of my mind and become something more akin to a monster than a person. I don't know, I was already falling down that hole. But I'm not anymore, I can choose to be my own person right now. That's the truth of this universe, this moment.

"You're not boring Ellis, you're alive." A fact that I have to change, to end. There's no forward without pushing through the now. Parker was alive, Lottie was alive, Maze was alive, Kiibo was alive, Rafael was alive, twenty two other tributes were alive, these are facts. It's also fact that they aren't anymore, there's no going back.

There are more facts than just these though. Jesse is back in Four waiting, a fact. My parents are back in Four and I want to see them again, a fact. My name is Talon Grey and I want to live a life unapologetically as myself, a fucking fact. I just need to make one more fact true: that Ellis Gallagher died fighting in the Finale of the 90th Hunger Games.

Call it selfish that an addict wants to live, I call it hope.

"I don't know what our lives would have been if we got to make every choice for ourselves." I take a slow breath in through my nose as my hands start to maneuver my mech closer to his. "I don't know if there would have been a moment that I would have had to kill you, but I can agree." My eyes lock onto Ellis' metal frame outlined by the frantic illumination of the strobing lights.

"No matter what place or time or universe," my hands thrust the levers forward plunging the dagger towards the last wave in front of me, "I would never forget you."