feed the crows — nico & jayne. [ day 7 ]

Ash to ash, dust to dust
Everything in God above
Shed a tear, shed your blood

If he’s being honest, Nico knows the cut on his neck needs looking after. If he’s being honest, he knows that if Francis were still here, Nico would have shoved him down towards the ground and tended to his wounds the second they were free of the fight. If he's being honest, Nico knows better, knows that there's a shallow cut on his bad arm that needs a bandage and another on his right thigh that he should throw a stitch in. If he's being honest, he knows that he should drink the water in his canteen and search the lands around him for something to eat.

He’s not being honest.

Nico's grief had always been a many headed thing.

    Reckless.

    Restless.

    Relentless.

He had grieved time and time again for a father that he never knew and for a mother who he watched die a little bit more every day. He had grieved for the fact that he never knew the love of either, for the fact that he had never known what it felt like to have a parent who put his needs above their own. His life had always been about the loss of his father, had been about the life that was taken from him, and it had turned his grief jagged edged and sharp as shattered glass, wound thick like iron around his ribcage.

He doesn't know how to grieve any differently.

Breath in, hold, and then breath out.

In, hold, out.

Repeat.

Nico has to remind himself to steady his breathing with every passing moment, close his eyes and just feel the sticky warmth of humidity collecting on his skin. His breathing is slow, cautious, as though each of them threatened to shake his bones into pieces and if he filled his lungs just so he’d crumble. Tightening his jaw, he flicked his eyes open, looked up at the sky again.

The air smells of earth and smoke, but the arena is absent the glow of stars.

The world wasn’t kind to him, but there was something about it that taught him kindness, something about it that taught him, even while her were corrupting it, that the world could be full of light. There was something about the world that taught him love, and his name was Francisco Bloom. But now that light is gone, and Nico doesn't know any form of grief that isn't colored in anger and rage, in a need for vengeance and fire so blinding that it might just burn down the whole world—Nico still inside of it.

Francis had told him to look to the light and be reminded of him, but there is only darkness and an expanse of clouds as far as his eyes can see, and all the sunflowers all around him do is make him feel suffocated. He feels like he is surrounded on all sides, like a war is closing in on him from every direction and he is drowning in his own grief, drowning in his own anger with no idea how he's supposed to hold it at bay when he has never had to try so hard to before, not on his own.

He had survived the loss of Myrcella and Jessica because Francis had been there to keep him afloat, to keep his heart free of anger and a thirst for violence, to keep him from turning back into the feral wolf that he had been stepping into this arena. Francis had brushed his slender fingers across Nico's forehead and reminded him over and over what they were fighting for, that they were in this place together. Nico looks away from the sky and down at his hand, where Francis's blood still clings, and has to remind himself to breathe again. In, hold, out. Repeat. He remembers that morning his mother told him the story of finding his father's body, remembers how she recounted the noise of a woman screaming, remembers her telling him about the blood that stained her hands as she cradled her dead husbands body against her, remembers the hollow feeling he got in his chest when she spoke of scrubbing the blood off her hands later.

Nico finally understands.

He hadn't before, not really.

He had understood that she'd been in pain, but hadn't been able to understand why washing off his blood had hurt her, why it hadn't been a relief to be free of all that red. His hand starts to shake, and he remembers his mother's own voice and how it quivered when remembering having to dig the dried blood out from under her nails. His breathing quickens remembering how she talked about it felt like a betrayal when she was finally clean again, like that blood had been the last part of her husband that he had left and she had wanted to just keep him there forever.

Nico is coated in Francis's blood still, and doesn't know if he will be able to wash it off.

It's the same way he doesn't know if he'll ever be able to convince himself to leave these flowers, doesn't know how he's going to get himself to leave them behind and find some other part of this arena to survive in. This is where Francis lived and died, where Nico loved and lost him, and for all that there is pain here, there is also the memory that he was loved, and he doesn't know how he's going to survive his grief without that.

He wanders through the flowers aimlessly for most of the night, unable to stop moving but unable to leave, needing to be here and anywhere but here at the same time. He gets to the edge of the field at one point, and finds himself looking out over the edge of a dry lake bed before turning Honey back around and walking in the other direction. He reaches into his pack time and time again, remembering his promise to Francis that he would take care of himself, but there's something warm and welcoming about the sharp pangs of hunger starting to itch through his bones, something like family.

He has been hungry all his life.

He had vowed that when he stepped foot in here, that he would use his hunger as his weapon, that he would use his thirst for life and legacy to make sure that he was the last one standing, and then he had made the same vow that he would use it to make sure Francis was crowned victor. He has lost his love, but he has not lost his hunger, and when the sun crests over the horizon, his throat is dry and his stomach is empty and Nico has never felt more grateful to District 12. The hollowness in his stomach helps to distract his from the pain where his heart is, helps to distract him from the fact that the space in his chest that he'd thought would always be empty was now full of so much agony.

Seeing Jayne feels like destiny.

He remembers that first day with her on the train all too clearly, remembers his exact thought. A girl made of roses with none of the thorns. He remembers stalling, not wanting to talk to her, wandering around the sickly display of food that had been laid out for them, drawing out his first words to her—not because he had been afraid that she'd turn out kind, but because he'd been afraid of making an enemy on his first day and had known that he could show her no kindness, that the minute he opened his mouth she would hate him.

And he had been right.

You hoping we’re going to be friends, then?

Hold hands and have each others back until death do we part?

That is what he had first asked her, and as he rides towards her, drawing his pitchfork higher and preparing himself from the moment that they both have known was coming, he finds not for the first time that he regrets what he has said to her. He adjusts his helmet of bones atop his head, and as he gets closer and closer to her, he remembers Francis and all of the lessons that he taught him—about living for more than just survival, about earning the right to live, about being worthy of it all. "Jayne," he says when he is near enough that she might hear him. There are a million cruelties right there on the tip of his tongue, his nature and nurture battling with the lessons that he is still trying to teach himself, the cruel boy of his past fighting to strike down that one that he has become.

He slows when he come near her, takes her in just as carefully as she does him.

They do no regard each other with kindness.

"Looks like we're a little too late for that hand-holding," he says, and knows that there are better things for him to have said, but it hurts, fighting who he used to be. His grief is easier to bear when he feels nothing, easier to bear when it is just a hollow ache at the center of his spine. He remembers telling this girl that he didn't care if she lived or died, remembers telling her that it was easier to kill someone that you don't know.

With a grimace, he goes on.

"I guess that makes us strangers."

You cannot give enough
Finally become second to none
In a kingdom of one