Cutting The Ties (Day 6; M vs. A vs. S)

and these stitches cling like bitches to my arms
for all my charms.
it's gonna be a crooked little winter

Alexander Hood —

The previous day had been spent brooding over the loss of her little finger more than in celebration of her not one but two kills. She had finally matched Mace — she thought, at least; it could've been anyone that had killed Denver — and yet, still Alexander felt unsatisfied. Was there a point to her success? Of course not. She was going to die anyhow. But it was already day six in the Arena, right? And there couldn't be too many tributes left. The exact number eluded her, but three had died in front of her the day before — two by her own blade — and tributes had been dropping like flies since the bloodbath. For whatever reason, the Gamemakers had let her live this long, and the longer her death was put off, the more preventable it seemed. But how many were left? Who was dead?

After the frozen river had splintered underneath them, she and her last brother and their lackey had made it to a delicately thin sheet of ice. They'd made camp here awhile ago, and though dark clouds collected overhead directly overhead, Alexander could see the horizon in all four cardinal directions; the light of molten gold to what she surmised to be the west indicated imminent sunset. A curiosity as to who was left still burning in her mind, she stood up with great care and, sword in hand, wandered twenty or so paces from their belongings.

When she found a patch of ice that she liked — a little thicker, smooth as glass on top — she stopped. For a brief moment, she surveyed not her frozen canvas, but the water that rushed beneath it, trying to gauge how gentle she'd need to be, lest it carry her away. It would be so easy to fall through, to drown or freeze, to die with no wounds but the gash on her chest and the stump on her little finger, with nothing stabbing her but pins and needles and daggers of the cold, cold water. But she had not wandered away to die; she'd come over here to see how difficult it would be to stay alive.

Carefully, with the tip of her falchion, Alexander started her work. Carving into the ice required more force than she thought it would, but it only took her two minutes to etch the name Sapphire Ross into the ice before her. Beneath it, she added the girl's district partner — or, her best guess at his name — and, recalling lying between the two side-by-side corpses, Alexander promptly crossed both of them out. She continued this way to the best of her ability, though her naming skills were off, until she had a list of all twenty-four names (well, approximations of them) staring up at her from the ice:

Sapphire Ross
Matthew Smith
Alli Dowling
Midas Farley
Leg Girl
Sawyer
Crazy Girl
Sparrow Cape
Sundra Wie
Arm Guy
Series Teflon
Aesop
Disys Admea
Alexander Hood
Ember Hillbook
Berkly axe-guy
Zinnia Hondall
Shade Trueheart
Dame Benson
Mace
Ellis Wheat
Denver
Charas Harp
Jay Mocking

Six left, then. Sawyer, Sundra, Aesop, the axe guy from eight, Mace, and herself. She sat down and stared at the list for a long while, ignoring the cold beneath her, ignoring the fact that with her bloodstained jacket she was nothing but a little red beacon on top of the flat plane of ice. A little red beacon to beckon the other tributes to fight — but where were they? All Alexander could see was their camp, with Mace and Sawyer standing as if to leave. Were they about to start hunting the remaining three tributes? She was certainly up for that, certainly eager to cross another two names out on her list.

She approached them, about halfway back to camp when Sawyer's lips move, though it was impossible for her to make out what he'd said over the distance and the storm's wind and the hail that started. The drawing of a knife, however, was impossible for Alexander to misread. With a flash of sliver, the knife whizzed by her calf, slicing the pants and leaving a small incision. The cold bites more than the blade. Angry at herself for trusting Sawyer and angrier at Sawyer for betraying them after the kindness she and Mace had shown her, she drew her blade and charged toward him, trying to close the distance before he could pull another knife. "Fine," she hissed, malice rising in her voice "kill me, then, traitor."

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Alexander Hood —

There was something distinctly different about this fight; it was as if nobody was really trying. Alexander's blows severed limbs on a regular basis, but here she'd barely even scratched Sawyer, and while she couldn't speak for the District Three boy, she knew Mace had deadly accuracy with his throwing knives. Yet both boys had missed. Were they really not meant to be fighting each other? It certainly felt that way to Alexander.

More laboriously than usual, she raised her falchion to swing at Sawyer, though she felt worn out — mentally worn out, not physically — about the whole ordeal, as if every swing, every blow drained her spirit and not her physical energy. She couldn't help but wonder: why? It was obvious, of course: Sawyer was a filthy, treacherous rat and if they didn't kill him, he would surely kill them. And even if he didn't, he deserved death.

[Attacks Sawyer]
[dice=200+1000]
[shallow cut right shoulder — 3.5

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Alexander Hood —

As her mind returned to her injury from the previous day, Alexander was struck by a twinge of phantom pain in her chest — no, not a twinge, a sharp stab. She looked down to see that this was no biting memory; a new bit of steel was lodged in her torso. Was she some sort of pin cushion all of a sudden? Had there been a grey spot left on the front of her jacket, the two new knife wounds would've stained it the rest of the way scarlet by now. As had been the case for the entirety of the Games, however, Alexander was not concerned with her appearance or with the state of her clothes. Her jacket had been gashed open several times and hastily patched with leftover medical supplies.

She gritted her teeth against the pain — somehow this was easier when it was not one but two knives sticking out of her torso — and pulled back her falchion to slash at Sawyer again, a renewed vigor in her attack. Something about being so gravely wounded upped the importance of her next blow, made it all the more imperative that she do some real damage to the District Three.

[Attacks Sawyer]
[dice=200+1000]
[Severed Right Forearm at Elbow -- 9.5]