coward king ; lion's throne || beck infirmary

"No one here is going to hurt you." A voice that doesn't belong to Death emerges through the ringing in his ears and he feels rather than sees the string that pulls him toward it. He's choking on sobs, still struggling to breathe and holding the sheet across his chest like it's all that holds him together but-

he realizes he's not alone. And that's so, so good.

He's blinking through tears still welling in the corners of his eyes, the kind that he would have been too proud to let fall before- well, before. The newcomer is familiar, made up of striking edges and handsome features but it's his gaze that Beck cannot shake. It's dark and heavy and full of things he doesn't want to think about right now.

Beck jumps again when something moves beside him. It's bad, but not as bad. His knuckles go whiter and his breaths come a bit shorter but he doesn't lose himself again. The world stays, steady, beneath him. You're alive. The thing beside him says and he manages a feeble nod.

Yeah, he can feel his heart beating. He believes him. "Good." He mumbles into the back of his hand, looking at the thing beside him and seeing for the first time. White walls, soft bed, sad eyes - like lock and key the world comes into focus and somehow ends that very moment.

Mackenzie Pryce. A face he's only seen on the television. Composed and collected in every way that Beck was not. Heat floods his cheeks as he searches for the one who had pulled him from the depths of his own panic, with the eyes that were more familiar than they should have been. Nico Thorne. Of course he knows their names, they'd called him a career after all.

Beck doesn't feel very starstruck, just hopeful. Terribly hopeful.

It's hard to catch the threads of reality as adrenaline still courses through his veins, hot and molten like metal warmed past its boiling point as it tears him apart. He's alive, Mackenzie had said so and Beck believed him. He's alive and that must mean-

"I won?" It's a pathetic question, the answer is obvious and apparent but he asks it nonetheless. His hands fly to his face, searching for the dirt and the blood or at the very least for scars that should have remained beneath them. He finds nothing. It's a hollow kind of discovery.

His hands travel to his chest, his thighs, his legs.

His legs.

There's something there, on his right side. That's wrong. That's very, very wrong.

He'd carved himself into perfection. Beck had spent years becoming everything they didn't want him to be, that was the apex of his beauty. That is what made him Beck. The yellow teeth and the gaunt eyes, the cigarettes that he smuggled beneath the waist of jeans that had gone slack from too many skipped meals. The games had cemented his ruin, carved out chunks of everything they'd intended to take from him.

For nine days he'd fought for himself and in the blink of an eye, the Capitol erased it. There was no trace of what he'd been so proud to be.

He doesn't panic this time, staring at his upturned palms and flexing the fingers on his right hand. It's stiffer, the skin there feels colder than it should. It's not human but it looks similar.

Mackenzie tells him he's going home and stings like he'd been struck. Home. Hailsham.

He worries his bottom lip between his teeth, left hand inching toward Mackenzie's in subtle increments. He needs something, craves the same warmth that Sophie's grasp had offered when he found himself on the precipice of madness. He tries not to think about how he'll never have that again.

And he grabs the Victor's hand and mumbles a quick apology he doesn't mean.

"Do I have to?" His gaze dances between them, pleading, "Do I have to go home?"