(this means forgetting) | finale

Does the wolf apologize
When it stands on top?
Should the lion say his grace
When he takes his mark?

The boy was lucky to not wear his regrets on his outer skin; he may have burned within from the lie of it or stood rigid with the brutal honesty. The fact was that he wasn't letting it beat him. Mackenzie envied him in a way. At the very least, the boy from Three was good at keeping his feelings locked deeply within himself where no one could see him.

That was something Mackenzie wouldn't have ever been able to do, no matter the circumstance. It was always his honest eyes that Mackenzie's mother looked into when she asked a question, not Max's. She could make a lie feel like the truth. Better, even.

"I regret taking life," Mackenzie admitted, groaning as his rival took a chunk out of his leg. It was blinding, white-hot and searing and enough to make him curse under his breath. It broke his focus, as if it hadn't already been broken enough. Teeth gritting together and eyes narrowing with fury for a moment, he forced himself to keep calm. He couldn't give himself over to the boy when he was on the edge of freedom; he couldn't lose himself when he was so close to winning.

He rebalanced himself, taking in a deep breath and clearing his thoughts. The pain in his leg still wasn't tolerable; it fucking hurt. He could feel the warmth of his blood dripping down his leg in some sick version of an unwanted embrace and he hated that even more than the gaping wound.

"But I don't—" he waited for the pain to peak, keeping his eyes on the other boy and hoping he didn't make a move. He would've been stupid not to and Mackenzie knew that; he tried to appear as unshaken as he could, despite the break that had occurred in his voice, until the pain began to subside into something slightly less potent.

"But I don't regret fighting for mine."

Two sides of the same coin. In the end, all that mattered was if any of it would prove worth while. If he died, it was in vain to everything he'd fought for. He recognized that and it terrified him enough to attack.

I do what I need to
What I have to, to survive
Well, I can try
But I'm going to stay alive

song: stay alive

Does the wolf apologize
When it stands on top?
Should the lion say his grace
When he takes his mark?

Mackenzie's sword cut into his foe's arm, slicing through cloth and skin alike and leaving a bloody trail in its wake. Razor sharp: this was designed to kill. It was not a blade built to decorate walls or for a rich man to brag about. It was angry and sharp, and it didn't mind taking life.

It belonged to someone stronger than he.

Three countered by pulling him in close and Mackenzie saw the attack before it landed. A glint of deadly silver amid the beautiful green of the forest and the stagnant air of what was once Stitch Gabel. There was no time to avoid it completely, so all Mackenzie could do was turn away as a blade ripped into his back. He felt it plummet deep into his flesh, right by his right shoulder blade, and it sliced him all the way down to his left hip.

He hissed in anguish: a broken body for a broken boy.

There was so much he wanted to say and so very little time to say them. He couldn't expect Three to stand idle while Mackenzie spoke; he certainly wouldn't have if the tables were turned. He wanted to ask the boy's name, remembering back to when it was all Dove wanted in her last moments.

("I don't want to die killed by unknown tributes or surrounded by strangers.")

There was beauty in her simplicity, he thought. In the bare exposure of her wants and of the purest form of innocence. Mackenzie didn't want to die to a stranger, either, and this boy wasn't done fighting him. He thought, perhaps, there was still time for that to come, but not yet.

He waited, side stepping attacks and sighing when his own were parried with disregard. Was he going to die?

He hoped his family thought to look away if that ever happened. He didn't want their last memory of him to be something so dark; he didn't want them to hate a boy for doing his best to survive. If he lived, he'd be forced to look them in the eye soon enough, and that would already be hard enough. Mackenzie imagined with a sickness in him, seeing Neela's mother, weeping, Bella's friends with their clenched jaws trying to remain strong for the cameras, Dove's siblings looking at him like he haunted their dreams.

There was, perhaps, no greater terror than facing a murder, and he dreaded it. But it still seemed better than dying, and Mackenzie did not want to give up hope.

Do what it takes, he heard Faline say.

Fight or die, Bella agreed.

He growled like something feral, and he attacked with intent to kill.

I do what I need to
What I have to, to survive
Well, I can try
But I'm going to stay alive

song: stay alive

Does the wolf apologize
When it stands on top?
Should the lion say his grace
When he takes his mark?

"What's your name?"

He dared to ask the question Mackenzie was too afraid to ask. So close to the end, maybe it was best to look back. He'd always heard not to: always look forward, never backward. Maybe a name was just one less demon to haunt him in the grand scheme of things. Maybe he was asking for himself, just as Mackenzie meant to ask before for his own peace of mind.

"I want to know, regardless-" There was more to that sentence, but he wasn't going to say it. Regardless of who dies, Mackenzie thought. Tears stung his eyes. The dead and the living; no right, no wrong.

"I want to know."

Why did names hold so much fucking power? Fearing a name, loving one, it was just a word, and it should've been left at that but Mackenzie knew it was so much more. That one word: Wynter, Ike, Faline— it was everything that had ever mattered. A story of a childhood, of scars and trials and tribulations and every decision that had led to them standing in front of you, telling you who they were, who they wanted to become.

Mackenzie understood now why Dove wanted to know who he was even when he was poised to kill her.

"I'm Akira."

Akira, from District Three, who wanted to survive.

"Mackenzie."

He felt lighter on his feet, happy to know the nameless face that might've taken his life. Happy to see him as a person, as Akira. Not as the monster who wanted him dead, who burned Stitch right in front of him and planted his axe in an oblivious foe's head. He'd easily killed more than those around him to get here, just as Mackenie had. But that was different, now.

He was just Akira, Mackenzie was just afraid.

Mackenzie just wanted to end it, one way or the other, though the lightness in his feet could have had more than one explanation. He was close to death, and he recognized it. Now is the time, he thought.

He looked up at the sky, unaware of the tears falling down his cheeks.

"Mom, Max, please look away now."

I do what I need to
What I have to, to survive
Well, I can try
But I'm going to stay alive

song: stay alive

Does the wolf apologize
When it stands on top?
Should the lion say his grace
When he takes his mark?

For a moment, he accepted his death. Just like that, a snap of the finger, and he would have been gone and it would have been so easy. Like sleeping; peace, at last.

"Don't look—" he whispered, and Akira surged toward him.

"Mom!"

It was so bright at first. Then, born from the light, a plain field of barley, golden in the late autumn. Crisp air, dry enough to make him lick his lips. He blinked, confused by what his eyes were seeing. Wasn't he supposed to be—

A child ran past him, long legged and dark haired; spindly. He recognized the striped pattern of the shirt well enough to know it was him, or a younger version of himself. Even without seeing his face, there was no denying that slightly clumsy yet athletically inclined sprint. Just behind him, a girl who wore no shoes followed his every footstep.

Maxine always hated shoes when she was younger.

Across the field, a woman stood in wait for the children. She looked tired and worn, but happy. Warm in the kind of way only mothers could be.

Is this a memory? he thought. He looked down at himself, at the sudden cleanness of his clothes, the absence of pain in his limbs. To be sure, he looked at his palm, fully expecting to see those terrifying words that had haunted him ever since they'd first appeared: Thank you, Friend.

His hands were bare, free of scar and dirt and every sin he'd managed to bring down upon himself.

He was instilled with a sort of fear, an urgency that he couldn't explain, nor identify. There was something about time, something in the back of his mind that he couldn't quite reach. It felt vaguely familiar, this amnesia of things he should have known. Almost like the fog, how it had taken his thoughts and vanished them. Some of them still hadn't returned no matter how hard he tried, and maybe that was a good thing.

The more he forgot, the better, right?

The children reached their mother and she grabbed each of them with an open arm. They both giggled with joy, and it was such an inviting sight that when the younger version of himself turned and looked Mackenzie dead in the eye, he only smiled. When the boy reached his hand out, an invitation to something better, it was Mackenzie's instinct to run over and take it. Walk on to some place where he could be happy again.

He took a single step, then another, and another, and eventually he was running. He laughed, excitement on his lips as he grew closer and closer to them.

And then, all at once, the sky turned gray.

"I don't regret doing this to survive. I don't regret doing a damn thing at all." He knew that voice.

It was the voice of Akira, from Three, who wanted to survive.

He looked up at the sky, at the rolling clouds as they appeared and stretched to take over the entire horizon in a matter of seconds. When he looked back down, his mother stood directly in front of him.

"Not yet."

In what must have been less than a second, he saw Akira's weapon soaring directly for his face, and he moved. Instinctive, a swat of slick silver away from him, he stood with pride.

"And if you make it out of here, I don't want you to regret it, either."

Regret was a sourness on the soul, weighing a person down, making each footstep feel somehow heavier. It was waking up in the morning already pissed off, looking down at your hands only to find them clenched into fists. Regret was heartbreaking, and cruel, and evil. And the worst part of it was that there wasn't anything anyone could do about it unless they were forgiven for whatever it was they had regrets about doing. And even then, it usually wasn't enough.

Mackenzie didn't want to walk around for the rest of his life with Akira's death on his shoulders. He didn't want to do that with anyone he'd killed. He just wanted to fucking live and it wasn't fair that he was suddenly okay with giving up. Wasn't that what they wanted? To see them crumble, to use them as plot points? To romanticize their deaths and glorify their murders? It was so stupid and Mackenzie had made one promise to himself going into this, one:

Don't let them take who you are, Mackenzie.

Looking at a sky could be seen under two perspectives: on one hand, there were once no stars, and now there were many. Perhaps the light was winning. But, on the other hand, the darkness was still so much greater, so much deeper than the light. It was so easy to choose what was easiest, even when it went against everything Mackenzie stood for.

He braved the shadows as they swept over him.

"I won't, Akira."

I do what I need to
What I have to, to survive
Well, I can try
But I'm going to stay alive

song: stay alive

Does the wolf apologize
When it stands on top?
Should the lion say his grace
When he takes his mark?

Had he ever seen someone break? Not just die; he'd seen enough of that in the last week to last him the rest of his life and then some. But to die was not to be broken; to be broken was so, so much worse.

"Mac....kenzie," The word was agony on his lips, each syllable drawn out and full of a sort of defeat that was unwarranted. Akira, from District Three, who just wanted to survive was on his knees and it was more frightening than when he stood. To kill was one thing— to destroy?

He sputtered up blood, thick and hot with the broken promises he must've made himself; Mackenzie did not envy Akira of District Three; He was only horrified by the other boy's anguish. And he opened his mouth to say something clever or witty, something like I won, or You're too late, but he couldn't force the words out of himself.

He had seen someone break, and it was the most powerful, most precious, and most horrifying moment of his existence. He was petrified and frozen, unable to move as the boy began to slowly unravel.

"I—"

At first, he forced away the obvious thought: help him. He was supposed to be glad it was happening this way, right? He was supposed to raise his fist into the air and wait for them to come and take him home. But, much like with his fight with Bella, his feet remained glued to the tiny, minuscule piece of earth on which he was standing. The only difference between now and then, in fact, was that Mackenzie was afraid of moving on his own merit, not because the Capitol wasn't allowing him to.

"Make it.....fast."

The tears that answered Akira's request were of unknown origin. Fear? Disgust? Mourning? Relief? It was all just a big cluster of misery rolled into a big, unsightly ball and shoved down his throat. He was practically gagging when the sob came out.

He copied the other boy's movement, falling to his knees so that they were eye to sobbing eye. Fading and fast, and so full of fear. Days like these were the ones people talked about, and Mackenzie was present for it. He would go on to see it in his dreams, these last moments, when he had fought against death and death had lost. When he'd been so ready to go, and so ready for an end, and then so quickly changed his mind.

There was a word for dreams as cruel and unforgiving as those; he thought it rather unfair that this boy, in his fleeting moments of clung-to life could've possibly just been reduced to a nightmare in someone else's head.

He deserved more than that, Akira, from District Three, who wanted to live.

"Please...."

"I can't!"

I can't, I can't, I can't!

His whimper was pathetic and he resented it. He had to be strong; for his mother, for Maxine, for everyone else and especially for Akira. He knew this; He panicked anyway.

His chest rose and fell and the heart within it beat at a never-before felt speed. The tips of his fingers went numb and he couldn't meet Akira's gaze.

Fight, he pleaded, Just fight. He wanted Akira to fight, too, but he was so tired. He had fought so much; they both had. And Mackenzie couldn't give this to Akira as much as his heart bled for the boy, as much as his saliva turned to vinegar and his jaw to glass and his skin to paper. Had he ever seen someone break?

He wondered which of them would fade away first if he chose to do nothing for a moment. Just a moment, come and gone, and he saw himself lying there, succumbing to his wounds as Akira was. It would've been a race for time: whomever kept their blood within them the longest, he supposed. A sick ending to a sick game, it would've made the Capitol happy, at least.

"Mac-"

He knew what would've happened; the other boy couldn't muster the energy to finish Mackenzie's name. He would die first if Mackenzie were to wait, and he would at least take away his suffering. Quicken the game a bit, end it before Akira hurt any more than he had to.

"You would've been great, you know," Mackenzie said, standing at last when his breathing had returned to normal. Well, not normal. As normal as it would get, at least. "They would've loved you."

He blinked away the last of his tears and hoped that the disdainful way he said they made it clear enough he was referring to the Capitol.

"You deserve better, though."

He raised his sword into the air, and he struck.

"So much better."

A cannon called him home and somewhere within its thunderous roar, was the scream that escaped from Mackenzie's lips.

I do what I need to
What I have to, to survive
Well, I can try
But I'm going to stay alive

song: stay alive