the woodpile // { lex & denali }

take my hand
we'll commit treason

Still flustered from the unexpected pleading of a dying birdboy clinging to her in last ditch desperation, Denali grunts absently as she fiddles with a loose feather she found floating on the surface of a tide pool. It's impossibly light. "Yeah," she mumbles, her grip on the feather tightening, "I feel amazing." Dropping it back into the water, she finally looks up at Lex, only to discover her attempting to stitch up the wound on her arm by herself. Doing a double-take, Denali sighs with exasperation and gets to her feet. "Ripred. Don't be stupid; let me help with that. You'll just hurt yourself more." Taking a seat next to Lex, she plucks the needle right out of her fingers and rolls her eyes at the blonde's astonished what are you talking about I totally had this situation under control expression.

Shooting a pointed glare at Denali's chest — where the Lyons girl stubbornly refused Lex's own offer for assistance and stitched up her own stab wound after the bloodbath — the hypocrisy isn't lost on either of them, but Denali unceremoniously pushes the needle into Lex's flesh before the complaint can be vocalized. "Two other cannons were fired," she mutters as Lex curses the sudden pain, angling to distract her, "that means we're in the top eight." There's a pause as she gently blows on the wound as if it were little more than a scraped knee. It's no substitute for pain killers, but it's the only thing she has to offer. "That means family interviews."

this war's so overrated
All I need is a piece of the night

"Well," — son-of-a-whore gamemaker shitting on the body of Ripred — "my interview sounded a lot like you just now. There wasn't much in the way of uhhh... usable footage." Denali chuckles to herself before catching a solid grip on Lex's arm to hold her in place so the last few stitches can be finished up and tied off. "Keep still, we're not done yet."

Self-aware enough to know that her craftsmanship at its best isn't much better than her craftsmanship at its worst, Denali glances down at the knotted mess of botched stitches on her own chest before leaning in to study her progress with Lex's arm. "Turns out, they don't like airing curses — no matter how creative — or unflattering limericks about our president or his son-of-a-whore gamemakers." The stitches aren't nearly as straight as the ones Lex has helped her with over the past few days. Maybe it would have been better to leave Lex to her own devices after all, but she can't admit that now. "At some point I just started screaming and throwing things. Unsurprising, I know. I think I even broke one of their cameras. Those cowards were all ducking for cover, so nobody even tried to stop me."

Ghosting a thumb down the row of slightly crooked sutures, she wishes she knew how to be anything other than messy for once. "I think they got a quick shot of me crying at the end, when my dad came over and hugged me before I tried to set the place on fire or something." Tying the knot a few more times than is probably necessary, Denali leans in to bite the thread off, trying not to rest her cheek against Lex's arm more than she needs to in case the skin around the wound is tender. "They threatened to cut my tongue out over it — pretty sure my parents had to pay somebody off." What she doesn't say is that she's also pretty sure Seville's name being drawn for the Reaping wasn't a coincidence. Some things can only be paid for in blood. "What do you think your dad will say?"