lost a friend {i never had} // woodsmen v wsli ; day 6

Sophie Fray had a secret.

"We'll need water soon."

And it was more than just hiding resources from her friend. She kept her full canteen tucked away in her bag, by slices of dry pineapple that made her stomach roll just imagining the smell — in a sea of bandages and needles that she had grown far too familiar with using. She wouldn't be a person if they weren't still holding her together.

Every step was a silent scream, a tear in the stitching — but she kept her features flat, pulled back and withdrawn like the messy bun atop her head. Something about her seemed different that morning; she seemed ready to run. And in a horrible way, the worst of ways, that is exactly why she had been trying to do.

And she told herself it wasn't cruel. That she loved Beck, that he was perhaps her first and only friend, that leaving him was the easiest way to survive this. Not the arena, not the beasts, not the tributes. This thing in her chest, beating with every stretch of her legs and pump of her arms. All she had wanted was to disappear.

She wanted him to be free.

Even worse,
she wanted someone else to kill him.

Because she couldn't bear the thought — and with every face in the sky, she felt her skin start to itch. Her lungs were tighter, her vision blurrier, she was drowning in the realization that both of them wouldn't be able to survive this. The spoiled girl, never knowing what it means to truly want, simply wishing to exist with her friend.

She listened to what he had to say. She cared enough to show him something, a small smile or a twinkle in her eyes — Beck gave her so much, in his words and his actions, and she gave him her shoulder to lean on. Shaky as it was, cold and scarred and harsh. Sophie was an arrogant, listless girl. A rose wilting in the sun.

She had everything,

and she was never meant to amount to anything.

She didn't have an identity. She still wasn't sure she did. All she could think of was the self-interested brat, always lazily moving through her life and her relationships — never trying, never caring, never giving an effort at all. And she wasn't lonely, but she wasn't happy, and she had no right to say she was either of those things.

Pretty rich girls didn't deserve sob stories.

So Sophie didn't dare cry — but she yelped when she crashed into another tribute, ruining her escape plan as she fell to the ground with a thud. Her mind whirred in panic, terrified and selfish at the idea of fighting someone all on her own, but then the feeling when Beck appeared was even worse. She thought she might choke on it.

"Beck, no—" she should stop him, she should diffuse the situation, she should admit to her trick. But all she could do was sit there, watching a war unfurl around her — because she was prideful, and afraid, and all she could think to do was leave him. And all he could do was stay, even as the blades bit into his skin. He would die protecting her. She had said this was what she wanted from the start.

But, no — this is what she wanted to avoid.

Because she knew what it meant to be her ally. She knew the sacrifice.

This one was never meant to die for her. He couldn't. She was willing to be alone for him, to face the arena and all of its terrors, with no one else to comfort her like he did — but she was trapped, and so was he, and it took everything in her to stand up and stop her lips from trembling. She took her sword out of her belt, played along with the story.

She got lost, she took a misstep, she didn't betray him.

"I've got you, Beck." And I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

Last year, Beck Hailsham thought himself a survivor. Holed up in his room where the walls could spin in peace and his mind was blissfully blank and totally numb. Unfocused eyes fell upon grainy faces through a television screen and he craved the apathy that once brought him. He couldn't focus on the red lines marring their skin, he couldn't remember a damn thing Bell or Cole had said when they'd been in his shoes. And that was better than feeling their loss. That was the smart thing to do.

Today, Beck Hailsham thinks himself a coward. He resents the boy who locked himself away, stopped his own heartbeat because he couldn't bear the way it burned. He was never who he pretended to be, he was never strong. He tried his best to recognize their opponents, to search for names he should have felt lucky for forgetting. They were grainy faces through a television screen, their sword grazed his shoulder and the blunt end of his spear pushed him off kilter. William, maybe? Eloise?

He owed it to himself to view them as more than monsters.

I've got you Beck. He didn't want to doubt her. Because he's a coward who's desperate for something to believe in and today that is Sophie Fray. It has been Sophie Fray since Silas died and Juliet left them alone.

That's why he hasn't been able to look her in the eye since they left.

Instead he smiles like he's not looking at the blades trained on him, like he doesn't taste death within the humid air. "I know you do." He wants to speak, to say something that will burn into their opponents like Phi's words had him. He can't bring himself to be so cruel. "We're all just trying to survive, after all."

Was that close enough to I'm sorry?.

Probably not.

It was like looking through a mirror — two blonde tributes, dry blood on their skin, desperately trying to save their allies from death. Because their allies were desperate to save them. Sophie Fray was an omen, and perhaps this stranger was, too. The ravens were circling overhead.

But the sky was quiet, and the air was cold, and she hated the silence. She hated that Beck was the first to fill it, speaking with such calm that she felt her grip loosen on her sword. "We're all just trying to survive, after all." Her stomach rolled again. It wasn't that simple.

This was the point where Sophie had to look at murder and justify it — make it pretty, make it better. But all she could see when she closed her eyes were dead boys, bleeding out in the grass and staring up at her — through her. She was terrified of the day when one of those faces would belong to Beck.

It should frighten her that the next face could belong to this boy, too.

Her knuckles still tightened around the hilt of her blade. She still took a step forward and clenched her jaw. But she didn't dare say sorry, she couldn't bring herself to say anything at all. Her legs were burning, but all of her scars had closed over. The blood was just a memory. She was itching to run.

But she wanted Beck to survive, just one more day. She wanted to save him from one torture and give him another — a sword through the heart she never wanted to break. It couldn't end like this for them. She couldn't lose him, not this way, she couldn't hold him as he died and keep herself together. He couldn't watch her fall apart.

She was so selfish, and so afraid.

He deserved better in his last moments.

But the fact still stood that she knew, eventually, his time would be over and done — so she shook her head and tossed a strand of hair out of her face, moving closer to her target. She didn't know him. She didn't know either of them. But she would now. She would carry these strangers for the rest of her life.

And she would lie to herself and say she wouldn't let them go.

There was no hero or villain in the story of Sophie Fray.

Only a coward.

Anger was so much like fear. Beck couldn't tell which surged through him as their blade ate into his shoulder, carving a new path down an old wound. That was all that was left to do: cut deeper, hurt again. The one he was not attacking, Eloise he thinks, is definitely angry. He averts his gaze at their display, clutching the hilt of his axe all that much tighter.

This wasn't his fault. He had no choice. He repeats the words in his head, deaf to everything else, especially to lurch his chest gives when he sees them act like friends. There were bracelets around their wrists but he didn't look at those either. His eyes remained on the blades they pointed at him. Because this wasn't his fault. He had no choice. Beck knows himself a fool for thinking he was the only with a bleeding heart in this damned arena but now was not the time to feel anything but anger. Or fear. He still couldn't tell.

For the first time since she'd run, his eyes fall to Sophie. It's little more than a glance, really, just to make sure that she's still there. Beck is beginning to think he's never had a friend in his life because the relief of finding her at his side is sweeter than anything he's felt before. "Soph." His voice is strained as he tries to keep it steady, "It'll be okay."

He's lost count of how many times he's told her the very same thing, but these words mean more than they ever have.

He ducks beneath the next strike, wincing as the action deepens the wounds they've already given him. I've got nothing to lose, he says and Beck curls his lip. Once upon a time he's sure he would have said the very same thing. He lets his gaze linger on Sophie longer this time. He thinks of all the ones like her - and the ones like him too - back on the Hailsham island.

Why was it that he had to sentence himself to death to feel like he'd truly begun to live? He's beginning to think they all deserve a lot better than this. "That's funny, because I have everything to lose."

He lunges.

She skipped her dance lessons growing up.

And now her movements were graceless, and harsh — a girl learning how to kill only as it happened. She knew what it was like to pull her sword from a falling body, to watch an arrow pierce a throat and stay frozen there. She had caused birds to fall from the sky, and spiders to curl in on themselves.

Sophie Fray was a murderer.

When Beck told her it was going to be okay, it took everything in her to just look at him. Those hopeful eyes, that pained smile. There was a war in his mind, but he still chose to fight her battles. She was a proven killer, and he still jumped to her defense. This was the image she made for herself.

She expected him to die for her.

And now it was happening — slowly, and terribly, and she was scrambling to stop the inevitable. If she were thinking, she would have left. Right then and there, in the middle of the chaos, leaving him to suffer and wonder and disappear. He wouldn't get to look at her as he bled out, he wouldn't get the chance to realize the truth.

He was dying because of her.

But her presence didn't change his fate; he would die today, or tomorrow, or by her hands in the finale. He would still die, and he would still think of her, and where she would be in his line of vision didn't change that she was his curse. Even if she was brushing hair from his eyes, or standing in the distance, or removing her sword from his chest.

This was a story of curses, and blessings.

And she stepped closer to him now, placing a hand on his arm as she moved between him and their target. "We've already lost everything." It was a vicious truth, but it had to be said. In a casket or wearing a crown, no one left the arena as whole as they were when they first entered. Something sacred would be carved out.

"But you're not taking him, too."

Beck had never wanted to die. Not when he realized that there was no home waiting for him off of the Hailsham island. Not when he'd been told he was little more than a glorified sack meat and bone. Not even when he'd volunteered for the games and saved some kid he'd never know.

It was better me than him.

It was better Beck than Sophie. He grit his teeth, breathing through the pain best he could. The world was going white around the edges, bright light which was making it hard to keep himself grounded. "I've not lost everything." He insists, struggling to keep his smile in place as he stared at the man he was trying to kill. It was weak and shaking like he didn't quite remember how.

The games had given him the best shot he'd ever had at really living; it had given him a person he was willing to die for. This was all new and terrifying both unbearable and awfully sweet. It scared him how desperate he was to keep this.

He was going to tell Sophie, he decided. If they made it out of this he was going to tell her everything. Perhaps then these wounds he'd carried as long as he could remember could finally start to heal. He was a fool to think he could bear the weight of them alone. "And I'm not going to leave you here, not if I can help it."

Not yet.