darkness at the heart of it | crass knuckles, day two

Axyl's words cut through the darkness, sharp and pointed. I can sense his frustration, his discomfort, as he grapples with the cold and the uncertainty of our surroundings.

"We ain't lost," he asserts, though the bite in his tone hints at a deeper unease. I nod, more to myself than to him, trying to shake off the chill that seems to seep into my bones.

I would follow him nearly anywhere. It's a shitty realization, hitting me with the force of a blow to the liver repeatedly (which hurts like a bitch, by the way. You're pissing blood for days.) But with Butch and Mors lacking any sort of skill in speaking, he's the closest thing I have to a wolfpack and he's clearly the alpha. I've taken the role as beta as willingly as putting my head in the mouth of a lion and hoping that it wouldn't bite my face clean off.

His gesture towards the wall, pointing out the spray-painted lines, brings a flicker of hope. They're a guide, a sign that others have passed this way before us.

But the chittering sounds in the distance remind us that we're not alone. We've never been alone. Surely the Gamemakers are watching through darkened eyes in the dark, the grid of stone a camera with sensors buried deep picking up each change in step and tenor of breathing, our biometrics telling a tale of stupidity.

When Axyl suggests retracing our steps, I can sense his weariness, his longing for some semblance of control, like breaking a glass between your fingers just to feel something, even if it's the warmth of blood running down your hands. I nod, offering a reassuring smile, though I'm not sure if he can see it in the darkness.

"Let's take a moment," I say, my voice soft, echoing loudly. "We'll figure this out together."

Fucking hopefully asshole. You're an idiot, Hugo Basterd.

Axyl carefully sets down the tarp-wrapped creature beside him and slumps back against the wall with a heavy sigh. I lean against the wall, certain that if I sit down, I won't be roused back up, the cold seeping through my clothes, the only sound the distant echoes of our breathing. The weight of our situation presses down on us, the uncertainty of our next move hanging in the air like a thick fog. Like gas across a battlefield and we're the idiots without masks.

"We'll figure it out," I repeat, more for my reassurance than for Axyl's benefit.

This is fucking madness, chaos even. Two days in and we're lost like two idiots trying to dig to the center of the earth, our blades blunted and breaking.

But try as I might, I could never be chaos, my bones were not tectonic plates igniting the earth with every shift and every step. Fault lines did not run beneath my skin.

I'm fragile, not seismic. Blood and fire and fury pumped incandescently through my veins back in Two, our lives forever forged on the run and traded to the highest bigger, a pack to be reckoned with, but now, in the face of the magnitude of these Games, my faults and failings, angels, and demons lay out bare before me, and all I am is just a boy struggling to survive.

Axyl looks up at me, his eyes reflecting pain and determination.

"You chose some shit company, eh?" he says with a wry smile, attempting to lighten the mood. I chuckle softly, the sound echoing off the walls around us.

"Could say the same about you," I reply, a hint of warmth in my voice. "Everyone else turn you down before you found me?"

Crazy how quickly trust builds here. How the walls of the Mine can feel like comfort and the breath of a stranger can feel like the most welcome sound.

Axyl's grip on the bat tightens and then falls slack, and I can sense the pain in his hands and the weakness I know he must feel in his busted up knee. The cold definitely isn't helping.

"Could say the same about you," he says, his voice filled with a mix of mirth and malice. I know he's trying to lighten the mood, to deflect from the weight of our situation, but I can't help but feel a pang of guilt. Guilt for burdening him with my presence, guilt for needing him to be the alpha when I'm the one who should be leading.

"You ain't even bottom of the barrel. I had to dig under that shit to find you."

My bark of laughter and the nod that follows has no home here, but the humor helps to forget.

"Fuck, man. Should I just- I guess I'll go fuck myself then. See ya."I gesture behind me, as if to leave, but we both know that ain't going anywhere. That choice was made for me the moment I threw his arm around my neck and we hobbled to safety.

As Axyl pulls out the walkie-talkies, a glimmer of hope flickers within me. It's a small gesture, but in this darkness, it's a beacon of light. My body feels empty. Almost as if I wasn't really there; my mind's somewhere else. Right now, my mind flies away to Six as Axyl talks about his brother, eyes on his cracked and bruised hands, cradling a pair of walkie-talkies like a symbol of a life foregone.

"My brother used to have a set back in Six," he says, his voice tinged with nostalgia and pain. I can see the longing in his eyes, the ache for a connection severed.

"I'm sorry," I say, my voice barely above a whisper. I can't imagine it, can't even think what it would be like to lose Pops and the others. Sure, we had spent enough time in the district jails to know that they were cleaned on Tuesday so you sure as shit didn't wanna be there on a Monday night when the toilets were backed up and overflowing. But we had never really lost anyone. They came back - broken and bleeding and beat up, but the wolfpack only grew. It never got smaller.

Axyl's offer of the walkie-talkies, his attempt to bridge the gap between us, touches me in a way I can't explain. It's a gesture of trust, of camaraderie, of two lost souls trying to find their way in the darkness. I take the offered one from him, sure not to touch my hand to his, and I nearly drop the fucking thing.

Idiot.

As he asks me about Two, I feel a pang of homesickness, a howl and a hole in my chest wrapped in wire and set ablaze. Good thing I'm bent over fumbling around for the gift that I just dropped. 

"Two is... complicated," I begin, struggling to put my feelings into words. "Everyone's tryin' to survive the only way we know how or die trying." I'm conscious of the cameras watching our every move. How bad I could make it for Pops and the pack. I lick my lips, tracing the comms button on the walkie-talkie.

"That's one story. The other is that it's fuckin' paradise on Earth, brother." The lie rings in my ears but I hope my grin sells it, faux bravado and flourishing. I nearly gag at the thought of it and Mors just levels me with a look. Stupid half-sentient familiar.