after us, the riptides { nc. vs tbd. } day 5

In the silence of the fourth night, only three members of the Ninth Circle make their camp. Euley feels Aeson's absence like skin ripped from bone, a bullet straight through her temple — and she shivers from the bareness that remains. She speaks his name and begs him to return to her; for his rot to fester in all that's been exposed and to leave her coughing up black. Because this isn't love. She tries to distract herself by cleaning a Mercy's blood from her crampons, braiding her hair with red hands when that fails to ease her anxiety. Her fingers shake with each plait. After mending her legs with quick bandaging and filling her stomach with hurried bites, she looks to the horizon. Twin moons battle a sinking sun, but she searches for something else.

Once Isaac and Violet are settled, kisses placed against flushed cheeks and sweet nothings whispered in their ears, Euley prepares her alliance's sleigh for a solo adventure. "Don't wait up for me," she orders gently, pulling her coat tighter around her form and tilting her head to glance at the bee perched on her shoulder. Nose to its antennae, an eclipse across her face — no one sees her worry. "I'm going to find Aeson." The reins are pulled and the muttations begin their forward charge. Twilight bathes her chariot with molten gold, cleansing the surrounding scenery of its terrors. Fresh snow hides scarlet streaks, a body is swallowed by the sky and carried home. To somewhere kinder than here. And the trees have stories to tell, but Euley doesn't stop to listen.

Aphelion; the point in which a celestial body is furthest from the sun. She's there. And it's frightening, to allow her heart to bleed so recklessly and to care so genuinely about a face that's vacant from her reflection. It's not the she fears for his safety, that she expects to find his corpse mangled and rising above her. Aeson can handle himself, and so can she, but not all drugs are destructive. The same can't be said for their withdrawals. She craves his company, a needle through her throat and a hand that won't cover the wound. She's not afraid of drowning, of being alone and unwanted, but she can't stand false truths. She has so much inside of herself, ice and fire and rain and earth, and she calls herself 'Mother.' Euley raised herself to be both iron and satin.

She won't plead for Aeson to feel anything for her, won't will herself to thaw just for his sake — but she knows that there's more between them than simply lust. This is no longer a partnership without strings. They're entangled and they're suffocating, veins constricted and mouths spilling crimson. She won't die for him, and he won't bury her body, but their deaths belong to the other. That's what they agreed on. And it's sad to see a stone weep, to watch it break and shriek and hit the ground, but it's the birthright of a mountain to collapse. Euley carries so much, is equally as vulnerable as she is emotionless, and the contradiction comforts her more than it should. She wants to be everything, to play more than a single role. She's the knight and the witch and the dragon, too. The prologue and the epilogue.

A trail of bloodied footprints appears in her path, their owner either a beast on its last leg or a king with hearts crushed within his grasp — and she knows a man who has been both. She exits her sleigh, raises a hand to her travelling companions and shrugging off her coat. "I'll be back," she tells the bee, removing it from its perch and bundling it beneath the warm fur. The chill can't reach through her armor; flesh and metal combined. She follows in the footsteps, gathering her thoughts and preparing for the confrontation. She plays the fool, but she knows that she had been the catalyst for her ally's departure. And it's true that she plunged a knife through his back, but she had been waiting to kiss the scar. Who's to blame? The wolf or the rabbit that got too close?

When she finds him, standing across from her with his back turned and his movements unreadable, she resists the urge to embrace him. Their romance doesn't end with happiness. She has to remind herself. This is just a chapter, a memoir charred to ash and no acknowledgements at the end. Blink once and all that they have fades away. She is not his genesis — but he won't be her revelation, either. "Aeson?" She speaks with caution, voice steady and features concerned. She holds a blade to her chest, looks at the gash running down his spine and tilts her head. She doesn't accept the blame for his undoing, but she doesn't give it away. "What's going on?" And it's funny, knowing the answer but wanting to understand why. They're both such hypocrites.

He stares at her with empty eyes, apathy clouding his expression and his spear stretched between them. Like he actually thinks she's a threat — like she knows she is. "I'm leaving," he almost spits, though there's no anger in the words. It's all flat and barren and she nearly trips on the surface of it. She has to pick herself up this time. He laughs when she asks for his reasoning, as if it's obvious and as if she didn't push him to the edge. She reminds herself that who she's dealing with isn't the Aeson that she's come to know most intimately. He's a scared kid in this moment, left to starve on the streets and freezing his own heart. Because he doesn't want to be burnt. Ice is safe, she doesn't blame his decision, but it's a lonely element. "Surprisingly, I get bored of being used very easily."

That hits her like a flash of lightening, rips through her gaze and leaves her lips hanging open in offense. She doesn't deny applying pressure to a raw bruise, hitting him in the gut after he kicked her, but using him? She approaches like a storm, braid falling over her shoulder and a finger at his collarbone. "When have I used you?" she asks, almost furious at the assumption. She tries to keep her tone low and calculated. "Why would I use you?" She matches his laugh, crossing her arms and smiling without affection. "This is rich, Aeson. You take every opportunity to spit at me like I'm nothing, and the one minute I fight back is all it takes for you to throw in the towel? Did you expect me to keep taking it?"

More to come. Please disregard any errors in the above post; it hasn't been reviewed!

---

( WIP! Will continue writing this as the night goes on, but I have a lot more to write & I'd rather have this up now instead of keeping this fight stalled for a few more hours. I apologize for the wait! I've been sick and tired today — but I'll do better next round! Why do introduction-posts take so damn long? Questions for the void. )

---

( euley attacks maisie; spiked blunt )
aVvIPa1sspiked blunt
( STABBED IN STOMACH -- 9.5 damage )

[dars]

At the end of this scarlet trail, you reach perihelion.

It comes when exhaustion sets in, you kick off your skis and your fingers close around the first thing you spot that resembles anything close to food.

You look up; in clarity you spot the golden flare that comes with perhelion. You're shaken from your slumber by the rumble of cannon fire, the sight of tributes fleeing before you and the once brilliant flames on your spears die in the snow.

You ignore the wearing and tearing of your muscles for nothing beats the war cry of wounds that could never seem to scab over after twelve years. They weep scarlet, more than the scars of a dead man you carry on the surface of your skin. You were numb to open wounds, once, until Euley twisted the hilt of a knife buried deep within your chest you forgot was even there. You'd bloomed hatred from suffering, apathy from agony and with time came distance from their scripture. They never understood, how you just shut yourself down because anyone else should've been fragmented.

"I'm not a fucking cunt, that's how."

People are stupid, Shadow never let you forget how impressed he was that you'd never let your tired feet let themselves be chained to your broken self.

You look up to the sight of Isaac hitting the snow, Violet crashing against the table and her, the one with a knife buried in your chest. She twisted, you felt it -- she struck a chord deeper than hollow. Somehow.

Fatigue bites at your skin and you let out a humourless chuckle, you should've expected no less from a girl raised by wolves, a soulless queen who isn't so empty when stripped of her finery. She had been watching you, listening to you, comforting you with her arms around your torso and a hum in your ear because you wouldn't resist while you were asleep. She'd been waiting for the moment, just so she could tear you apart and make a game of it because where's the fun in simply cutting you down?

You knew the game, there was no point in killing a man if he didn't break first.

Tired and trembling fingers involuntarily reach out. You want nothing more than to skin the wolf and wear her pelt as you kiss her dead lips.

Yet you drag yourself towards the other direction, your flames have long since sputtered and died, she's too far away for you to do anything, besides Isaac and Violet would surey turn their blades against your skin. You won't surrender yourself to mortality for the pleasure of another name beneath your belt; even if that name is Euley Sarasin. You may carry his scars but you're not Ingran Ansgot, you carry your own banner of brutality. The time will come where you'll melt Euley Sarasin's dead heart in your hands and you pull her ice kingdom down block by block as she watches -- maybe the world would stop turning just for the honour of mourning her.

You can hear them sniggering behind your back; Isaac, Violet and Euley because they think they've tamed you. That they've seen your weaknesses because they saw a glimpse of your past from beneath your skin. She's probably fucked Isaac and Violet too, had them promise their blades to your skin and now they're bound by the promise of your cannon. You'd gut Euley before you allowed the planned base case to come into play, wouldn't hesitate to pull her tongue from her throat and silence her broken screams. Your fingers tighten around your ski pole, you feel it buried in Violet's chest and Isaac's stomach. You'll fill this space with bloody trails; you'll shatter their lifelines with bullet holes and exit wounds, you'll smile at their funerals and silence their eulogies.

"Fuck this," you sneer to yourself, popping your muscles and clicking your bones, your ski pole leaving a trail behind you in the snow in addition to your footprint. You don't know where you go, but you're guided by apathy and the desire to be alone. Somewhere. Anywhere. Just away.

You leave Violet and her royal cowardice, you leave Isaac and his career brutality and you leave Euley with her knife in your chest; had you not always worked better alone anyway? You against the world because that's how it's always meant to be. Broken souls beneath your boot and nothing to guide you but the seven sins you carry from scars left by gospel.

You spit in the snow, pull your bag and spears over your shoulder and continue onward.

You're vagabond in a crevasse of solitude and broken things until you're stopped by fatigue and held by hunger. Your muscles scream for reprieve and you give it to them, you let your bag fall from your shoulder and collapse onto one knee. This is the closest thing to humanity you get, the desire to eat and sleep -- gluttony and slothfulness. You smile and hope your mother rolls in her grave.

Loneliness follows your moment of clarity; this is your perihelion.

Head tipped back by fatigue, you lean back against your arms and look to the angry winter sky like your sins. You listen for the song of cannon fire; anything to drown out the hum of her familiar tune reverberating against every corner within your mind. You want to sleep to a harmonic detailing dead hearts, not a false comfort. You shut your eyes and listen, you could drift.

"Aeson?"

Your eyes flicker open, an eerie calm displaces the fatigue clouding your body but not your mind. You pick yourself up to the sound of Euley's voice. You think to ask her how she found you so fast, except you notice your footsteps, the line of dried blood forming a scarlet trail in the snow. You glance right through her, peering past her figure for the sight of Violet's weapons and Isaac's steel. Except there are no figures, no flashes of steel to mar your skin with numb wounds, it's just the two of you on this deathless plane. How stupid of her.

You face down the huntress, glimpse into the eyes of the rabid wolf and dare its teeth to gnash your skin. You wield death's tools in one hand and toxic gifts in the other -- apathy becomes your skin. "What's going on?"

Your ski pole dangles loosely at your side, you wonder if you'd be able to even lift it it if she was to bare her teeth and charge you right now. "I'm leaving." You speak flatly, stating simple fact, there is no pain in your voice, no agony over the bonds broken. You unchain your tired feet from the ground and you'll meet your ascension with open arms.

You let out a humourless chuckle when she asks you why this is true. "Surprisingly, I get bored of being used very easily." Of course it's boring, it's been that case for the past eighteen years. Your mother and father used you to satisfy their fading god, your new family used you to make them money, collect debts and dispose of enemies. Of course, the opposing case came into play; you fail to see the value of people past their utility to you. It's what your twisted friendship with Shadow was based from, mutual benefit. The opposing case came into play with Euley Sarasin. You used her in the training centre for a nights of empty pleasure and whispers, you used her in the arena because you could survive better together in this alliance.

Yet you desire to pull her knife from your chest because you're tired of this. You're tired of being used to satisfy blood lust people couldn't quench themselves, you're tired of Euley trying to use you as her plaything while you're guided by your apathy and greed -- you're so fucking tired.

She storms towards you, arms crossed and eyes narrow. No killing intent.

"When have I used you? Why would I use you? This is rich, Aeson. You take every opportunity to spit at me like I'm nothing, and the one minute I fight back is all it takes for you to throw in the towel? Did you expect me to keep taking it?" There's a calculation before her words, each syllable measured and weighed before being allowed to feel the touch of day. You shouldn't have expected any less, but you sense the tinge -- something throwing off the precision by a fraction. You can't put your finger on it and yet the underlying current of her tone sings something close to the boundary of fury.

This isn't a surrender, and you're certainly not throwing in the towel. But to reside in a den with a snake coiled around your ankles, a career at your back and a wolf at your front is paramount to a suicide pact.

Her first two questions are lost behind your eye roll and her last by a slight shake of your head. "Why does what I say matter to you anyway?" With the way she held herself, as if the stars themselves would weep in her absence, you didn't see the harm in cutting her down at times. Venom's been dripping from your chin since you were seven. A humourless laugh escapes your lips and your fingers coil tighter around your weapon. The question doesn't matter to you anymore. "Nevermind."

There's a moment of clarity beneath golden rays of sunlight; you reach perihelion.

"You know, I thought you were an idiot for seeing that and not killing me in the night," you pause, speaking matter-of-factly and slight hints of disgust dripping into your tone. "Then I realized I was wrong." Your fingers hold your ski pole tighter, you see it now. You see it all and you're so fucking tired. You won't be made a fool of, not in here, not when a legion of broken lives wait for you below. "You were listening to me, watching me in my sleep. Even comforting me. I've seen your kind, trying to get me to trust you just so you could break me down to my bare bones because killing me wouldn't be enough for you. I suppose I should be impressed, not even I could've used that in the way you did."

You concerned yourself more with breaking bones and splitting skin. Shadow was the one who could twist someone's mind and make them his before breaking them. Perhaps that's why he clung to you and you to him, you could learn from each other. You never saw the need to hide who you truly were behind the guise of a thousand faces, you wanted the world to see you fester.

"That's what this is about?" Her laughter matches yours, the huntress and the reaper meet but your body is in no state to even entertain the thought of such a clash. "Not all of us are out to get you. I understand that you had a rough childhood -and no, I can't relate to your experience- but that doesn't mean it's shameful. You were a kid, Aeson. The only person who's ashamed of hat you went through is yourself. The world chewed you up and spat you out, but that's on the world. Not you. Not me."

A scoff of contempt escapes your lips, a dismissal because how dare she speak like she understands you, as she steps towards you and you raise your pole and she grips the shaft. "Oh fuck you, Euley." But there's too much ache, too much fatigue weighing down your bones to drift yourself forwards and impale her right then. She tears it from your tired fingers, but instead of turning the point to you, she discards it. Tossing it to the side and there's an instinct to reach for one of your spares. Yet when you see her, there is nothing there, nothing indicating the urge to bring your fantasies to play. You've wanted nothing more than to fight her and this could be it.

"If I wanted you dead, I actually felt that I need you out of my way, then you know damn well that I wouldn't hesitate. I wouldn't make a game out of it. I'd use nothing but my hands and choke the life out of you. Not because you're weak, not because I'm afraid of you, but because that's how this works. I don't need tricks to get the job done."

So you challenge her, you leave yourself open and exposed. Let her think she can pin you down, let her think your life is in her hands. Is that not how you've always wanted to go? Staring your killer in their eyes as you drift from one hell to the next. You wait and you watch. "Well then, why don't you?"

She's already come to a stop as she walks away, turning to watch you. Her gaze burns but you don't flinch at the fire. You're surprised at how raw she sounds, how enraged she is at the truth, she runs her hand through her hair but silver streaks do nothing to hide her eyes. "I do care, whether or not you want to believe it. Say what you want, but that's not a weakness. Will I watch you die when it's time? Yeah. I want to survive this, just like you do. You don't love me, and I don't know if I love you, but we do feel something for each other. You can't deny that. I comforted you because I felt you deserved that much; we all do.

Burn with the storm, rage with the fire. You stand there, hand aching for the touch of a weapon, and scoff. Yeah, right. Perhaps that's where you've always differed. You don't care for Euley, you never have and you never will. You cared for the surface level things, the base lust in the training centre and the utility she brought you in the arena. Keeping warm, mending your wounds and keeping her weapons away from your stone skin. But that's it, for you're ready to dispose of Euley when the time is right. That's what you tell yourself, it's what you've always told yourself and fuck her for trying to tell you otherwise. You don't want her comforting you in your sleep, you've never needed her to.

"Everyone deserves someone they can rely on. You were deprived of that for so many years, all you've ever had is yourself, and what did you expect me to do? Just leave you to cry? I didn't have a reason for being there for you. I just was."

If you weren't so exhausted, if you weren't so on edge and itching for a fight, you would laugh. Your mind flashes back to the boys from Seven and Ten; Caine and Raven. How can anyone care for someone like that? She's either lying or she's not the soulless queen she painted herself to be. Perhaps you were wrong, maybe everyone but you and Shadow Svenin have bleeding hearts while you sport emotions that can only be described as frozen.

You're not amused, you're just confused. You're an empty man with no desire to be filled with anything of substance.

"I took my skin off yesterday. I let you see me raw and it wasn't an act. You held me close and you comforted me too. In your own way. The difference is that I'm at least consistent. I'm always by your side, always there for you, but the minute we're in public you treat me like I'm nothing."

Feet rooted to the snow beneath you, you shake your head and don't let your scowl drop. "Did I say I fucking wanted that?" You spit acid and bite venom. You treat her like nothing because that's what she is to you, nothing. That's all anyone's been to you, that's why you've gutted friends when they've proven to stop being useful, that's why none of your adopted cousins would dare fuck with you or get close to you. You can't be used, you can't be bound. You tore open your chest and let her see it for herself, empty space, you're not an emotional cunt. You're not fucking stupid to let something so fragile be your compass in a world that only knows how to break the people who inhabit it.

"And I am something, Aeson. You and I both know that. I don't want you to love me, I don't want you to need me -- all I ask is for you to respect me. Why don't you? Why do you say such horrible things and tear me down? Even before you thought I was there for you just to mess with your head? Because I'm not. I've respected you since the day we met and I thought you did the same. Why'd you accept the alliance invitation? Why'd you fuck me if you didn't think I was worth your time? Because I'm not a dumb bitch."

She burns with the storm, striding over to you with anger but no aggression. You don't fucking understand. You told yourself it's because she'd be useful, you fucked her because you wanted to, hell, you fucked Isaac and the career girl who's name you've already forgotten. You've done everything you can to take what you want, to be cruel, and immerse yourself in empty pleasures. At least, that's what you thought because that's all you do.

She shoves you and you take a step back.

"I'm Euley Sarasin."

You take another step back, her hands shoving hard against your chest.

"I was scored an eleven."

Another shove and it's just getting repetitive.

"I've killed two people."

You're shoved again and you feel seven years old again. Another playground fight, except you're not guides by anger, you're not a firestorm to rage against. You just stop and stare, this is a situation beyond the confines of your obviously flawed comprehension. You pull apathy tighter against your skin yet your weaponless hands remain limp at your sides.

"And I stood by you."

Her hands rest themselves against your chest, touching metal external to your self but feeling armour internal to your own body. She meets you with a hollow shell at your core, as if her hands search for a heartbeat beneath your armour, flesh and bones. It feels like the third day, her hands around your torso in your sleep and you woke up warm. You let your fingers wrap themselves around her wrists and you're brought back to the training center, for a moment. When you felt her lips against yours and you were wrapped in black flames of passion, when she realized just how empty you were and you realized just how lost you were.

"I'm not your enemy. Not until it's just me and you left and one of us has to go. You'll know when this is over. But I don't want to keep lowering myself for someone who won't return my respect. I won't."

You push her away, shaking your head and you step back anyway, for it's easier to be shoved than whatever this is. "No." There is no pulse to be found in this hollow vessel of yours. Fuck her. "I came here to do two things, Euley. I came here to kill people and I came here to fucking die if it was my time because people like me don't live long." Rage against the storm, it drips into your tone and into your features. You lose your composure for a second.

Just a split second.

When you speak, apathy is your new skin again. "I didn't come here to be comforted, and I certainly didn't come here to be loved or told how to feel. I didn't ask you to do those things, I didn't ask you to be by my side. I didn't ask you to be vulnerable or tell me the things you told me. I didn't even ask you to bring me into your alliance or let me fuck you. I didn't ask you to act like you care." It's strange how she doesn't understand, these things are just what make humans weak. You would never admit it, but yes, you do feel a respect for her. But any more of this and you might cut yourself open just so you don't have to listen to anymore. And despite her claims, despite the rawness in her voice and the sound of a fortress crumbling piece by piece, you won't reciprocate whatever it is she feels for you. You didn't come here for that. You don't need that and you never have.

Unless it's Aeryn, it's always fucking Aeryn.

It's strange, how you surrounded yourself with fractured things in this broken chasm and they assume you can fix them. You'd never understood the desire that made people human. You'll never understand this desire Euley feels to crush her heart into scarlet stardust and then scatter it into the wind in the hopes that you'll catch it. You'd never lost yourself to Euley Sarasin, even if you wanted to, you'll never know how. You turned yourself off a long time ago, just so you could be numb to twelve year old wounds that could never seem to scab over and make yourself truly invulnerable. You're not emotional; compassion and true love are strong enough to topple giants and you want no part in the double-edged swords everyone is so eager to hold.

You hate it, how Euley's wearing her vulnerabilities on her sleeve, how she tears herself open and somehow she still seems like the strong one. What a fucking joke.

"What the hell do you think this is?" You ask her before sighing. Looking her up and down. You swear, something unfamiliar flickers and your mind drifts. To Euley, to Aeryn, to Ava. "You don't care about me Euley. You're not fucking supposed to." You don't care to hear each other's stories, she doesn't care to kiss the wounds that run deeper than your own skin and you don't want her to.

Your body moves out of instinct, shoving your way right past her and collecting your discarded spear sticking from the snow as you walk. You don't fucking understand so you let her words drift into background noise. Static flood you can't comprehend. You're tired of hearing about respect, even though she earned it a long time ago. Until she's calling out to you now, maybe it's because you're far away, but you hear your name from the mouth of a broken heart. It doesn't sound or feel as good as you thought it would, but isn't this all you've wanted? To hear her hurt?

"Aeson, there are some things you shouldn't have to be asked. No, you didn't ask me to comfort you. No, I didn't ask you to care about me. But we still did. My throat would be slit at this point if you didn't care, and you'd be in the tent crying if I didn't. The difference is that I'm willing to accept this. I'm not afraid of it. We got sucked into this, we've let something fester between us. I didn't ask for it and neither did you."

Your slow and tired footsteps come to a halt; you sigh. There it is again, a flicker in that empty space within your chest and the sight of her heart scattering before you in the wind. Yet you can't bring yourself to reach out and grab it, you don't know how. You lost everything worth giving somewhere between mastering arithmetic by gospel filled pages and the segments of a protruding rib cage. You shattered everything worth giving somewhere between the first man who's blood peeled from your hands like scarlet iron and Vesper Daisy's cannon sounding in her hollow honor. You swore allegiance to two things; violence and yourself. You won't lose yourself to a third, even if that third thing is Euley.

You hear her footsteps draw themselves closer. Except it doesn't follow the usual rhythm, no aggression or aura of bad intentions. She doesn't carry herself like aristocracy and the centre of the Earth. You turn in a manner that matches her, slow and gentle.

You don't see an enemy, you don't see a moment of clarity and the sunlight that comes with perihelion. You just see a girl with hair in her face and well something in her eyes. You see a girl broken at your words but not your calloused hands. While she buried a knife up to the hilt in your chest, you left a thousand scars with every hateful syllable you spoke. Every moment you stepped on her because she's supposed to mean nothing. Once, you might've laughed. For a broken girl's always been a most entertaining sight, yet you can't even bring yourself to smile. It doesn't make any fucking sense to you, all you've wanted to do is to see her crumble. And now you that you see cracks you don't feel the pride or elation you're meant to feel.

"But it's here. It's what we have. And if you want to let it go, then I won't stop you. Maybe it'll be easier on us. We can stop it from consuming us anymore. I'm tired of pretending like this is a one-sided thing." You never scattered your heart into the wind in hopes that she'd catch it, you have nothing left to scatter anyway, and your pulse has only ever throbbed strong for yourself.

Another flicker, you spear remains limp at your side.

"I'm not afraid, though. It can eat me raw. As long as you're there with me. Only if you're there with me."

You press a finger to the back of your head, you don't fucking understand. Your scowl softens into something less harsh, you just look and stare. "Why?" It just falls from the tip of your tongue, confusion illogical but seen. You've never understood the desire for people to be devoured by an emotion internal to themselves but understood by no one who views them from an external plane. You never understood the desire for everyone to be weak, the natural repulsion people had at the concept of surrounding your heart with a wall of ice and stone. You never desired to burn; that was your perihelion a long time ago.

"Does everything have to have a reason?"

You bloom from a soil of senseless violence and torture; you know the answer to that question. "You're supposed to hate me." Spear numb, hand in your hair -- it comes out more as a mutter than anything. But she hears you, she always hears you. You're used to the hatred that hammers through the heart of a common man. They always spat hatred before you crushed their lives beneath your boot. Some of them screamed about a special place in hell waiting for you, but you always pressed steel to their skin and spoke notations for cruelty no louder than empty whispers.

Some of them didn't, some of them looked surprised when you plunged a knife into their heart. Their eyes wide and tearful, yet it was all the same to you.

"Well, I don't. You'll just have to trust that."

This doesn't seem the same to you.

"You have too much heart."

You see a thousand opportunities to be cruel, to take one of the knives buried in her skin and twist your wrist to fulfil the simple pleasure of suffering. But you don't, you stop being cruel, just for a second. You run your hand through your hair let your gaze flicker between her eyes and winter's tears. "I won't leave." You decide, sudden and sure of yourself. You let out a sigh, you're so fucking tired. "And for what it's worth, I do respect you. I don't hate you."

It comes like pulling broken teeth from your bleeding mouth.

Her features soften, she shakes her head and chuckles -her voice still so raw- and there's something there. Something beyond the confines of your comprehension but still real. She holds out her hand, you see a thousand opportunities to be cruel. "C'mon. Let's get back to camp. I brought the sleigh."

"Fine."

You smile and follow her touch.

---

You set yourself beside Violet without so much as a question, exhaustion a weight tugging at your bones. However, it's hunger that gnaws at your flesh; you feel like you're five years old again. Begging for the chance to break bread because your body was breaking beneath the pressure of a fading god. You eye the packet of marshmallows in Violet's hands, you just want to be fed food.

"Got enough for two?" It's a sincere question wrapped in a silk of indifference. Of course, you know the answer to the question already because Violet wouldn't dare deny you anything for fear you might shove your blade through her stomach. She's right to be afraid, the only reason you didn't try to split her skull in the bloodbath was thanks to Euley's saving grace. You were right, she's always had too much heart.

"Yes, there’s more than I thought." She hands over the bag and your hand's already grabbing for a handful. "They’re almost frozen though." You almost smirk at that, you were never picky with food because at least you fucking had it. Whatever was served at Ava's dinner table was eagerly devoured because you'd learned to appreciate the basic things in the broken chasm you had been rescued from.

"Better than eating snow, I suppose." You reply simply, pulling out a handful and leaving the bag between the two of you.

You're ready to head back into the tent before she speaks up again. "I feel lucky," a sigh before confession, ”having gotten the wealth with all of you.”

Well, at least she knows where she stands.

You don't realize you're stripping her down to her bare bones with your eyes. Every inferiority, every hint of weakness taken in and you lose count of the infinitesimal imperfections in her form. "You were." You answer bluntly. You're not here to sugar coat anything, if she was looking for comfort or reassurance then she came to the wrong ally. Euley's saving grace let her latch onto the legs of this alliance, you would've ran her through a long time ago if not.

However, there's no flicker of fear in her eyes. Her expression remains the same, perhaps she knew what to expect from you. It's almost impressive, you never would've thought she could be so calm at the prospect of her own impending death. No one ever is. "You think I’m going to die?"

There's no hesitation, no moment of silence or measured reflection of what you'll say next. "Well yeah," you're not here to sugar coat shit. "Stronger people than you haven't even come close to surviving this."

You'd seen it, and he's come to drag your soul down to hell with him. But you're not dead man, you haven't surrendered yourself to a personification of human mortality yet. You don't expect Violet to surrender herself, not really, because she's just like anyone else. She'll kick and scream as she's dragged from this life to the next, but you've always been one for kicking someone while they're down, whether it leads to a broken body or a broken mind is insignificant to you. You learned more from Shadow Svenin than you'd like to admit.

”Are all victors strong then? They can't be lucky?” Your mind flashes to your own mentor. The man with the missing leg but still had his brow pricked by a golden crown. You don't know whether to peg him as strong, he sure as hell didn't seem it.

You shrug, coming to a conclusion in an instant. "Fuck if I know, maybe they're a bit of both." It's easier to conclude middle ground than throw yourself on one side of the fence. You let your gaze drift to her, if not for her torso armour you would've plunged steel between her ribs a long time ago, and you watch for something. Something that gives away anything. "Is your sister one of the strong ones? Or does luck just run in the family?"

You'd watched last years games in sporadic moments, the lives and deaths of the Capitol's annual entertainment rarely interested you.

She replies, sounding more certain of her sister than she ever has of herself, "I think she's strong. She won against a career, and I don't think people expected it.” People like Isaac and Euley were supposed to win, weren't they?

But they didn't not in recent years at least -- eighteen years tangling with the reaper has taught you he deals in shades of grey, never the simple concepts of black and white.

"Can't say I did, but I suppose it doesn't matter. Either way she isn't dead for one reason for another.” You watch her again, you see none of Jacinta's synthetic glory in her. You narrow your eyes as you swallow another marshmallow. "But luck can only get you so far."

Violetta Salazar won't leave this winter wasteland alive if you have any say in it.

Defiance of the inevitable falls from her lips, perhaps there's more resilience to her than you had initially thought. I guess I’ll be the one to challenge that.”

You almost smirk. "Good luck with that."

You pick yourself up, dusting your backside of snow and letting exhaustion guide your body to your nightly sanctuary.

You sleep alone that night; they don't find you.

---

Together, the four of you climb a bitter peak.

You remain at your usual position, eyeing the three of your allies from behind because vulnerability won't become your new skin. Not that you don't trust Euley, you still feel her scattered pulse in the wind like her heartbeat against your chest, but it's become habitual behavior. You step over a corpse, strands of blonde stick out in the snow and you think you recognize a face and attach it to a name. Eckhart? One of like twenty or whatever.

Doesn't matter, dead is dead.

The four of you lose yourselves in a sea of corpses and white flood, before you know it you've lost sight of the path ahead of you for your focusing on the corpses that litter the ground beneath you. "They look familiar," you whisper to yourself. They're definitely past tributes, shades of the Capitol's past brutality; a legion of people who have seen that special place in hell before you. How --

"Aeson!"

You instinctively step back to the panicked rhythm of Euley's call, a flash of silver cuts through any words of gratitude formed at the tip of your tongue and draws a sliver of scarlet from your bicep and you curse between gritted teeth. "Fuck--" it's not the pain, it's the frustration. The frustration of a near death caused by --

"Revan? Rave? Raven, right." All you know is he's from Seven and likes playing with wooden toys, very breakable wooden toys. You attach a name to a shared moment, that means and the vague distinction of his head in Caine's shoulder makes a resurgence; you see shades -- pink, red, scarlet. "Loverboy." You name him, you decide it's an insult.

A split second of tranquility is wasted on naming, Isaac strikes at his ally and opens a bitter sneer across her forearm and splashes the snow with red flecks. Flood drips from the head of his axe and down her fingers, scarlet iron peels from her skin.

You scoff, Violet's wild yet lazily predictable swing failing to make any kind of lasting impression on the second Loverboy. He mocks her and you roll your eyes. "You know, you're supposed to hit him with those right?" Yeah, she'll be the one to challenge your presumed notion of luck, alright.

Your eyes are drawn to the sight of Euley's crampons in the nameless girl's midsection, drawing your mind to a similar situation Isaac found himself in on the second day, and you smirk despite the sting. Despite the splay of scarlet in the air, you touch her pulse in the wind. Fuck, she's so --

"Aeson, heard that ya are a dangerous fellow. I reckon, ya were just hiding the real truth behind that tough exterior."

You're in the process of turning when his words leave a smear across the back of your mind, a a signature for lover's judgement mars your skin. "Maybe it's because you're jealous that you'll never find love, partner."

You were never searching.

You never understood, why people gave portions of their minds and pieces of their time for the privilege of wielding such a sharp double-edged sword. How Euley, who you once thought would stop the world turning on its axis when her heartbeat came to a stop, saw betrayal in your step and gave a piece of herself to you rather than steel to the gut to speak for your sins. You breathe cold air but feel a warm pulse that doesn't belong against your skin -- Shadow called it weakness and so did you.

Oh, how your mother and father loved you, and oh how you suffered.

"Or ya just enjoy violence too much that everyone around ya just hates ya." You're in the process of turning when his spear leaves a smear across the back of your torso armour, a signature from a lover's judgement mars the fabrics clinging to your body. 

He's wrong though, not everyone hates you. For some fucking reason; Euley's eyes meet yours again.

That's what made you strong, the way your parent's poisoned love seeped into your skin and the divinity you could not see tore you from the inside out. You bloomed hatred from the festering seeds beneath your skin; you wear apathy and contempt like second skin. Let them hate you, let them come for you -- you'll smash their heads into the fucking ground and kiss their skull fragments. You'll leave your own notion for twisted love entwined in their eulogies.

Let the world compare its hatred to yours.

"I've fucked girls that can leave deeper scratches on me than that," you would smirk, if the sting upon your skin wasn't driving you movements to leave a notation for hatred upon his skin. You count a thousand ways to say 'I love you' and each one's always evaded your comprehension, no one can care about someone else like that. No one should care for someone else like that because it lies so far outside the confines of shallow rationale. "And considering how every romance here ends, I think love is something I'd prefer to stay well away from."

Broken hearts and cannon fire; you'd read this tale a thousand times.

(Euley, Ava, Aeryn--)

A streak of silver, a flash of crimson -- you feel Euley's foreign pulse against your skin and tell it to die. You traverse this scarlet trail and tell hatred to be your new skin; you find perihelion. "I'm going to stomp your head into the fucking ground, Loverboy."

You fight something beyond the realms of your comprehension.

[dars]

Death on ice - and I wonder, if you die in the cold, are you warm or do you freeze?

Such a question might not have been the first to cross my mind as bloodstained steel adds a new coat of crimson to its form, and it might have eluded me entirely had I not noticed, for the first time, that the lumps in the snow were not, in fact, lumps.

What can I say. Once I've condemned myself to the endless expanse that is the interior of my head, then I'll miss such things such as spears aimed towards my allies and bodies half-buried in the snow.

There's one off to my left, and I resist, trying to withstand one of humanity's basic urges to give a sight to what you know is real, confirm with my own two eyes what I already am aware will stick with me for the rest of my days.

But I am weak, and so I look. And just like I predicted, I wish immediately that I hadn't, for even though the face is not one I'd know in my dreams like that of Cynthia Rose Delgado, the long, dark hair, the face that in life was surely pretty scream that of a human being, frozen forever on top of this large peak.

Some of us are doomed to that fate too, I realize. The second this conflict started, I knew. Fights of this caliber only end when death has filled the air, and any death that might have happened here has long gone stale.

No, this conflict won't stop until the snow runs red with blood, when the air is ripe with the fleeing life force of an unfortunate soul.

And I do not think I want it to be me, not this time.

I don't notice the footsteps until the kick has already connected with the girl's chest, don't notice until Euley has already stepped back to my side that this fight has turned from a one on one to a two on two as the sole remaining boy launches a clumsy strike at my leg. He's out of his element here, and I get the feeling he knows it, and yet he still tries.

Had this been two, even one week ago, I would have scoffed at the notion of heart, at the idea that letting anything other than your head do the decision making was a fool's notion, one punishable by death.

But now...

Now, I am no better. Just another fool who let the beating of his panicked heart take the reins of the body as a brain once set so firmly on an end goal devolves into civil war as what I think I want rages against the most basic of human instincts. Where I had once wanted to be struck down in battle, given a quick end that would be described as anything but cowardly, I now cling to life in the eleventh hour, as if by some fool's bargain I'll have any hope of escaping here with my heart and soul intact.

My target strikes back, and the force of the blow surprises me as weapon hits metal with enough force to send a resounding CRACK through the air. In a world of pale skies and the eerie silence of snow, the noise is deafening.

And I know that had I not been wearing the armor that some pitying soul had bestowed upon me that it would have been my chest that would have cracked instead. Perhaps that was a killing blow in another life; in another universe, that would have spelled my end and I would have had the wish that I had wanted for so long granted by this girl that I did not know.

I stumble, I catch my breath, and I decide.

Let this girl come at me with all she has. Let her ally help her to the best of her ability. I'll take them both on. And if I die today, then that will be the fate that I could never have escaped in the first place.

And if I strike them down in turn, then well, I never was going to end up as an angel anyway.

[dars]

The damned have reached their aphelia,
comets fleeing from the sun;
but Euley Sarasin is a daughter of the moon.

She rises on red clouds — crampons slick with blood and she has to wonder why she bothers to clean them each night. Maybe she likes the distraction, the static across her skin and the ringing in her ears. Maybe the dying deserve a clean death. It doesn't matter. Bodies rot and wounds get infected and hearts break. She's a stupid girl with too much hope, a woman with wisdom beyond her years; a hypocrite. She'll spit on your grave and plant roses where it lands.

And she doesn't listen to the war that rages around her, though she turns to Aeson and his attackers. Love is questioned and dismissed, tossed to the wind and swallowed by the snow. The thread between herself and Aeson tightens, starts to fray and constrict around her throat — but she can still breathe. "I do respect you." An echo, a memory of his lips and teeth against her throat. That's all she needs. Romance is pointless, she agrees with him there.

Hypocrisy;
the rose and its thorns share a body.

The boy from Seven taunts her partner, tries to burrow under his flesh and plant a poisonous seed. It's pointless. The soil is dead and rocky and nothing grows there. She doesn't tell him how she's worked her fingers raw trying to do the same. "I have to disagree," she snickers, running a hand through her hair and smirking at Raven. "His pillow-talk is fine. Trust me." She nods to the girl in front of her, at the crimson dripping from her stomach. "And he's right. I leave deep scars."

There's no reason for secrecy. Not now. She doesn't care who knows. And Aeson will not deny her. She stalks closer to her target, working in unison with Isaac and looking over her shoulder to check on Violet. She knows that she'll lose them, has prepared their pyres and has a match burning in her hands, but they won't leave her today. "Does it hurt?" she asks Three, tilting her head to the side and speaking with sincerity. She has a habit of eating her prey raw, but she doesn't play with her food.

"What hurts worse? Living or dying?" It's a question with many answers, but she's not sure which one she's seeking. "I guess I'll find out for myself one day. I'm not ready to know." She lowers herself to the ground, digging her feet into the earth and preparing to launch another kick. "Are you? I hope so." And she charges, a flash of silver and a spray of scarlet. This isn't beautiful. This is murder. "I don't want to kill a screaming lamb. Be a wolf."

---

( euley attacks maisie; spiked blunt )
|m1OKQmYspiked blunt
( miss )

accuracy — day five

( euley attacks maisie; spiked blunt )
spiked blunt
( BROKEN LEFT FOOT -- 6.5 damage )

[dars]