The Bloodbath

"If you think this is mercy - it's not. Didn't your friend back there tell you to be better than this?"

Ambrose wants to shrug, but his muscles are too weak to complete the action. "I don't know what mercy is at this point," he responds, taking in the sight of the boy chastising him. He's almost as small as her, pointing a knife in his direction like a compass. Guilt this way.

There are significantly fewer people standing on the turf now, maybe less than ten. He looks at his hands, coated in red, a color he never really liked anyway, but now even more repulsive. "I didn't expect to make it this far, truthfully. I don't know what's gonna happen when it's just a few kids left to fight each other."

He looks to Uxue, to the girl who cried, to the girl who killed, and to the boy. "I imagined things a lot differently from the way they are now." What did he think? Before he got here, he thought that he'd just be fighting people his age or older, and that they wouldn't actually drag children out here. But they did, and here he is. He envisioned himself going down cursing the Capitol, but now, here he was, craving mercy.

"I don't think I can be better than this," Ambrose finishes with defeat. "No matter what Yejide believed."

Her knife cuts through flesh, and bone, and soul.

Wind cuts across the field from the north and she trembles like a leaf.

At home, when someone died, they covered the whole house in black. Mirrors covered in black cotton cloth, pictures, the whole world made to reflect the void they were supposed to feel. She thinks about how winter had taken her grandfather, the bitter cold and years getting the best of his body. They cursed time, and the heavy snows that had brought a bout of sickness to him. But now, someone would be taking this girl’s photo and covering it with cloth at the thought of Uxue, of what she’d gone and done. They’d curse her name, and ask for justice from an unnamed god.

Somehow, she hoped that she could give it to them.

‘Um. I’m Jack.’ The little one speaks his name and she feels more guilt, still. Jack, a secret gifted to her heart. She nods to him and finds all the strength she can to whisper out, “Uxue.” Their moment is one of trust and hope, that among all the death and bloodshed, they were still good to one another. If they were not, then what was all of this for?

He leaves her empty, undone. So numb is she that the knife that finds root in her back feels welcomed. At last, perhaps there would be payment for what she’d done. She deserved the blood that trickled down from the wound. She wrapped a set of fingers across the handle and pulled, crying out as she tried to unwedge the blade. She is not as strong as the girl who has fallen, scared of each little tug until at last there’s a burst of red from her back and the curdling wetness down her shirt.

She watches the boy cradle his love in his arms. She can’t hear the words that they whisper to one another, but she hopes they’re the smallest shred of comfort. What had she done?
Would Taylor have been fighting, killing all the kids as though they were standing in his way? And would she have welcomed him home with open arms knowing the blood that had been on his hands? She doesn’t have an answer.

Grief finds her chest then, the solid sort that comes in waves, showering her body with sobs. She put two hands to her face and tried to breathe, sticky red hands across her face, to hold back all the pain that came out of her. Her heart was glass then, easy to be broken, fallible, see-through. Stop. She tries to tell herself, hands at her side. You did this, She knows, numb as she feels.

But grief still hands like a weight. Each time she’s swung a fist or a blade has put another block atop her back, until at last she feels as though she can’t carry them. She doesn’t know who she is or if going home would ever cure this. If seeing Taylor and marrying him in a white dress at the top of the old oak tree hill would wipe away any of the blood on her hands.

She sees the other boy then, staring at the one cradling his love. The same one that threatened them earlier, one that took no pains to kill the girl that had been playing dead. Perhaps she had nothing that could cure her, or forgive what she’d chosen.

But that didn’t remove her ache to protect. He deserved this moment to say goodbye, without another coming in to slice him to pieces.

She rushes the boy then, voice crackling, “Don’t!” She yelps out, pressing her body into a run, both hands in front of her, eyes closed, shoving him.

[Uxue Izar attacks Anapos Jinx with unarmed, and shoves him hard as she can]

gAVrW7QYgGunarmed

5156 -- Miss -- 0.0 damage (Unarmed)

She falls down to her knees, and holds her head low, her body shaking with cold. She puts her hands in her lap, and keeps kneeling.

"Please —" it's pathetic, the begging, but not all survival instincts are honed the way that yours has been "— I don't want to die."

Your knife clips her stomach, a warning. She kicks at you in response, feeble, scrambling. The way she bleeds, it would be a mercy to run your knife over her throat, the way you did for Vanguard. You don't owe her this and she does not ask for it, and you are not the type to do favors for free.

You blink, pulling back. "No one does," you mutter.

A knife grazes your back. You turn in time to see a boot hurled for your head, batting it away.

The boy who fancied himself a hero asks you to join him in death. "If we charge together at them —" You have seen first hand: the wall of peacekeepers is as impenetrable as it is unending. "— we might stand a chance!" You made up your mind minutes ago. One peacekeeper, two, three bleeding out under your knives are not enough to make any sort of difference. You have died a hundred times and you will not give them the satisfaction of your bones breaking beneath their batons, no matter how unflinching.

The boy whose knife clipped your back gestures at you, trying to talk into someone else. "— acting just as bad as her?" It feels unfair, the way that you are immediately marked beyond redemption when anyone else with a dripping knife is not. The way you are designated the worst thing in an arena ringed with whitecoats, littered with corpses made out of malice. The way that he indicates you like spitting a curse with his knife.

"You aren't better than me," you seethe. "You don't get to value-rank people's lives and still pretend to be a hero."

You pull Vanguard's knife from your other boot and hurl it back at the boy.

[attacks Jack, throwing knives 1/3]
kWzKq97KxJthrowing knife
[miss]