break me more (just break me) // storm v december v carly

He's not sure what he did, exactly, to deserve Willem Vanas's kindness. Genuine it might have been, or simply a masquerade for pity, he's not quite sure, but when he wakes up the next morning feeling better than he has in nearly a week, he decides that it doesn't really matter, in the end.

Willem had shown him kindness in a shithole devoid of any such notions, and to a fourteen year old boy trapped endlessly in a nightmare all by his lonesome self, well, it didn't matter how fake or how genuine the gesture was. Willem could have been playing it up for the cameras for brownie points for all Storm cared. The point was he still woke up the next day, head wound treated and bandaged, with his heart and spirit feeling as light as they ever had since the reality of the situation had sunk in.

It didn't even really matter that the boy from Four was nowhere to be found after that. For all Storm knew, that was for the better - the knowledge that only one could ever survive from the arena weighed ever heavy on his mind, and if Storm was finally forced to bloody his blade on something other than mindless muttations, well, he'd much rather the face be that of a stranger than that of a friend.

(And it wasn't a matter of if, at this point. The fact that every victor had been forced to kill at least a couple of times before winning notwithstanding, the singular face in the sky courtesy of one of Seven's boys put the overall count of dead at nine. Nine deaths across five days, with fifteen still living, Storm included - he was no Gamemaker, but he'd watched enough Games to be able to tell the difference between those where the tributes died quickly and those where they didn't.)

Those where they didn't had a reckoning, without fail, each and every time. And Storm would not let himself be caught off guard. Five days in, two fights and a shitload of trauma later, and the will to live still burned brightly inside of him.

(And if the flame within only maintained its heat due to the kindness of Willem Vanas from Four, well, that would remain between his head and his heart for now.)

So he straps on his newfound armor from a generous sponsor (he'd only wondered if it was from some random Capitolite or Avriel himself a total of seven times so far, thank you very much) onto his arms and hands, cleans off the dried mutt blood from Nowles' sword to ensure its peak condition, and, most importantly, situates the crown of thorns perfectly on his head.

(It's a little difficult, with one of his ears being fucked up beyond repair and all, but he manages.)

The sun is rising high in the sky by the time he breaks through the foliage of the forest and back into the space between biomes, yet the vow remaining unspoken on his lips remains but one and the same.

The next person he meets, Ripred be damned, will fall to his blade, one way or another. Not out of any great desire, but because Storm is a simple boy with simple wants and needs. He wants to go home and see his family again. He needs to survive, because the picture of death painted on the inside of his eyelids is far, far too great a terror for any fourteen year old boy to face head on.

(He only hopes that when the inevitable comes to pass, when he's forced into mortal combat that will either see him become a murderer or a corpse, that the face on the other side of the blade is one of a stranger.)

---

It isn't long before Storm realizes that, however unintended, his prediction came true. There was, in fact, a reckoning for the arena as a whole to face.

But he'd only ever seen a reckoning similar to this twice before.

The Sixty Sixth, famous for housing Nine's only victor for a generation until Avriel came into the crown, and its equally famous, if short-lived, megamutt. That very same muttation's reincarnation seven years later as a gigantic, mechanical beast. Flemeth, they'd called it. A recreation of a literal dragon of legend, a giant lizard with wings and the capability to breathe fire. Not so different from Buddy, even if the beast itself was many hundreds of times bigger and he'd never actually seen the Word spit out anything other than a HONK.

And yet there one was, flying so high in the sky it's a wonder it didn't crash into the spherical force field that Storm knew was a staple of virtually every arena known to man. For a moment, all he can do is watch, jaw agape, as the giant lizard lets out an earthshaking roar.

"If I have to fight that thing, let it be known I'm hauling ass out of there as soon as someone gets eaten," he mutters to the word, currently clinging onto his shoulder.

He has just enough time to register Buddy's HONK of acknowledgement when the dragon dives. And he has just enough time after that to raise his sword and brace himself when it opens its mouth and breathes out-

-and suddenly the landscape around him is awash in purple. Purple flames, yes, but purple rot and ruin and decay as well as if this dragon didn't simply run on fuel but on death itself, and, fatally, Storm can only watch in a mixture of awe and horror.

"Someone needs to remind that lizard to brush its teeth or something," he mutters, before, for the second time in as many days, he breaks into a full sprint.

(When he'd made the realization yesterday that, for all of his running, he'd never actually had something to run from, he really should have known better than to tempt fate like this when fate itself was fully capable of responding.)

Dimly, through squinting eyes and burning muscles, he sees a protrusion in the ground, some sort of opening. Were the situation any different, he'd have enough time and energy to ponder such a thing, realize that they were called caves by the Capitol and the more nature-attuned districts, yet the only thing on his mind at the moment was the fact that it was the closest thing to shelter, literally and figuratively, that he had, and that the wall of purple creeping behind him was coming at him far too fast for comfort-

-and yet he barely has time to brace himself for a final scream of defiance before the purple washes over him in an eerie glow. And instead of burning to death, Storm felt...

Nothing?

No, that wasn't right, because even as he slowed to a stop at the cave's entrance, there's something...weird with regards to his pulse. His heart is pounding, sure, just like it had so many times before, yet there's something off, like a spear of something like adrenaline had just pierced the beating organ and was injecting it full of something that felt off.

Yet minutes pass, and the weakening and dizzying effects of poison that he'd heard about so often don't come to pass. If anything, he almost finds himself more....refreshed? Not quite stronger so much as if he'd just exited a thirty minute bath consisting solely of his parents' coffee. Buzzed. Electrified. Raring to go and do something.

Buddy HONKs in his ear, and a spike of frustration lances its way through him.

"Yeah, yeah, I get it," he snaps back. "We should keep moving. Now shut it."

The word, wisely, does not respond. Yet Storm, for some reason, can't find it within himself to care.

---

It takes less time than one would think for him to realize he's not alone.

It takes even less time for him to recognize one of the two faces he encounters in the dim glow of the cave. Something something enhanced senses and whatnot.

"Funny to see you here, Carly." It's impossible to describe the way he spat his words as anything but with a sneer, and were the situation different, he'd wonder why he felt so strongly about seeing his district partner in the flesh in such a negative light. It wasn't as if, after all, she owed him anything; she had made it quite clear that she'd wanted little to do with Storm in the pre-Games, instead opting to throw her lot in with a boy from Eleven and a girl from Twelve instead, but while it had hurt in the moment, he'd understood.

Or so he thought. Now, face to face with Carly Volkov for the first time since the Games began, Storm felt only one thing.

RAGE

"Didn't you have a couple of friends traveling alongside you when this all began?" he asked, lazily flourishing his sword. God, why did he feel so angry? "Or did they ditch you when they realized that buddying up with a Capitol bootlicker isn't as fun as it sounds?"

Then something in him shifts, the shattered pieces that Willem had so delicately put back together the previous day crumbling like a house of cards all over again without his support. "I don't know what it was about me that you found so...so repulsive that you couldn't bear talking to me was," he spat moreso than inquired, and his hatred at the wetness coating his words sends another flash of hate through his system. "But whatever it was - some strategy, some petty anger over me saving that boy but not you - it fucking hurt." He sniffed, angrily wiping away the tears from his eyes - and was that a flash of purple on his arm? Right now, he couldn't care less - before resetting his facial features into a mask of anger.

"But I guess I shouldn't have expected so much from a girl who already sees herself as a Capitolite starlet, huh?"

It's then that he remembers the boy, and though Storm doesn't know hide nor hair about him, he's already on a roll, so when he whirls on him, it's with the same heat of anger egging him on. "And you," he spits, voice cracking on the addressing word. "I don't know who the fuck you are, but...but this is a Nine matter." Something burns behind his eyes, something new and foreign compared to the now-familiar waves of righteous anger, and he grimaces, before refocusing. "So stay the fuck...stay the fuck..."

Carly. The unfamiliar boy. Both are making him so fucking mad he can't even focus.

"Stay the fuck away from me!"