ghosts in bloom ; bb v. ffg ; day six

At first, it's silent.

JJ curls into himself and I decide it's better to let him. I don't know how to comfort him, not really, not even sure where I could begin guessing if I'm honest with myself. I don't even know how to coach myself through it, don't know what to feel, what I'm supposed to do in response to my ally leaving and what I'm not. A part of me wants to scream, wants to pound my fist into a tree truck until it is broken and bloody and ruined. Another part of me wants to track Will's steps through the storm and find wherever he makes camp for the night and cut his throat just for making me feel this way all over again, abandoned and forgotten and not good enough.

Never fucking good enough.

I tell myself over and over that I'm strong, that I'm a feral thing with an off-kilter smile and a pension for cruelty. But maybe I just like to lash out, like to take every emotion that I have ever felt and channel it into the end of my blade until everything, even happiness, is some terrible form of violence.

But Perdita shows up, and JJ cowers into himself even more, and it's all that I can do not to try and cut her throat just for the sheer fact that JJ zips his tent shut and I know he won't be speaking for the rest of the night. Just for the sheer fact that I know she got JJ's hopes up that Will had changed his mind, that he'd followed his own footsteps back to us to try and reverse his own selfish decisions.

I don't say anything at first, just look at Perdita with a dead look that only a girl who knows Death a little bit too well would be able to give. I—I don't want her here. That much I am sure of. But at the same time, I don't not want her here. She asks me if I missed her, but all I can give her is that same dead stare that I gave to Will what feels like only moments ago. That same dead look that says I am never going to let anyone in ever again. That same dead look that, I hope, says anyone who ever fucking looks at JJ wrong ever again is going to fucking eat my knife.

The same look that says, if Death is ready for me, let them come when I am protecting the boy I never expected to care about.

I take the kitten without a word, cuddle him between my arms and my chest, hold him close and watch as JJ pokes his head out, hopeful, only to crawl back away from the both of us scowling. I don't think twice when I go to the entrance of his tent, cross my ankles and fall to a seat, kitten still in my arms. It quieted almost immediately, like the neglected creature understood without having to ever be told that it was among kin.

You could finish it, she says, cleaning her own wounds. I don't offer to help, and she doesn't ask, so I keep running my pointer finger between the kittens' eyes to try and comfort it instead. You gonna leave me lonely, Terra? You don't seem the type.

"I'm not going to let you out of my sight," I respond simply, voice flat. Will leaving has left me emptier than I thought possible.

I spend the night listening to JJ's breathing through the zipper, learning what Perdita looks like when she is pretending not to mourn whoever she's helped end up dead. I don't sleep a wink, just run my hand down the kitten's spine over and over and over again.

---

I don't even try to protest when Perdita just decides that she's coming along, don't protest when she snatches the kitten out of my hands. It doesn't matter to her that I'm the one that calmed it down, that I'm the one that made it feel better, that I'm the one holding us together with sticks and glue. She calls the thing that kept me company all night a demon and half of me wonders if she thinks the exact same thing about me—girl she flirted with in the Training Center, maybe girl she dreamed about for a night or two before realizing that she was here for herself.

A career through and through, just like Will had been.

"Do what you want," I say to her trying to take charge. "But even so much as think about notching a bow JJ's direction and you're going to be trying to see around the knife in your eye."

I'm not going to let myself love her the same way that I think maybe, just maybe I loved Will. That doesn't stop me being grateful for a flash of a moment when, without much warning, there stand three tributes ahead of us. Lysander, looking somehow not worse for wear and yet, worse than she ever had before. Like stopping drinking is tearing her apart, but in its own strange way, the pain is making her stronger.

Kenji, with his morning star pointed right towards me once again.

"You first," I respond when he speaks, but before I think he even hear what I've said he's running right towards me, changing course at the last possible moment and—crack.

Once again, I fail to protect JJ.

But then there's her.

The girl I have dreamed about killing the past few nights. The girl I vowed to haunt. The one who's life I want to end more than I think I have ever wanted to end a life before.

The one who killed Helle.

And as much as I want to direct all of my anger at Kenji now, want to shout at him that I'd never planned to betray him, that I didn't want to fight him, that maybe in another life I respected him and wanted to be his friend—the girl with dark hair is right there and she killed Helle and Lys is telling me that Meredith is dead and I am all rage and confusion and I don't know what to do except want to scream because Lys's fucking morning star swung into my leg and I only just got it all nice and healed and—"If she's gone, she deserves to be!" I spit through sharp teeth, voice filled with heat. "I didn't fucking touch her, but I wish I had."

I twist away from Lys's weapon, ignore every impulse in me that screams I should attack Kenji for touching JJ, and attacking the source of my pain instead.

"You," I spit at the one whose name I don't know, still. Despite everything, despite what she's done, I don't even know her name. "You killed Helle. You need to answer for that."

The end felt inevitable.

It was fucking inevitable.

Despite his protests, Will had gone, the only evidence he'd ever been there in the first place a gap in the swarming silver-painted petals, and JJ's habit of immediately climbing to the furthest side of the tent. Because the other side was too cold. And now it didn't matter, because he wouldn't sleep regardless. He did what JJ did best and turned inward on himself. Introspection would be the death of him, he was sure. But when he tried to get out of his head, he just replaced whatever fearful thoughts that were plaguing him with incessant begging on his own behalf. Get out of your head, get out of your head, get out of your head. Stop thinking. Get out of your head. Stop thinking. You're endangering yourself and everyone around you. Get out of your head. Stop thinking.

The distraction was never ending, and maybe that's why he'd relied so much on the others. They made it seem so easy: "Six o'clock, Jay!" "Aim for the middle." "Duck!" When they said it, it made sense. Nothing else ever did.

He curled in on himself, eyes staring at the flames despite knowing Terra's eyes were on him. Despite knowing that she was worried. Despite realizing that she was the only one he had left.

The only time that night, in fact, that he'd perked up at all, is when he first noticed the figure emerging from the darkness. His eyes went wide and he picked his chin up from their resting place on his knees.

"Will!"

Only to find moments later that it was the girl from Four.

He thought about killing her; saw the opportunity to send a knife to be lodged into her forehead, but he didn't take it. Because if she wanted to kill him, she would. That was the truth about everyone there. If any single one of them set their sights on finishing him off, they would succeed, because despite everything he had ever believed about himself, the sickening truth was that he was weak.

"Oh," he'd whispered, disappointed. No one else seemed interested in a fight either, so he slowly stood and doused the flames. He returned to his tent and zipped it as a way of saying he just didn't give a fuck, and he waited for sleep to take him.

---

The next morning, things were better. Not good, but better. His jaw didn't hurt as much from chewing, so he felt more inclined to talk. His arm, though sore, still worked. His heart, though sore, still beat.

Plus, it felt nice to hear Terra be so clearly still in his corner, even if she was only saying it to make him feel better and even if she would probably, eventually, either be taken from him or be tasked with killing him in order to get home. Every day of the arena was a new layer of hell. Always full of fire and screams and pain, but somehow still always worse than before.

On this day, it was a few familiar faces, some of whom he'd already seen before. Lysander and the girl from 11. Mer wasn't there, because why would she be? Anyone who bothered to get close to JJ was as good as dead. He was a bad luck charm, it seemed, death itself wrapped up in 72 inches, a pair of soft brown eyes, an easy smile, and a head with far too many thoughts.

"Oh so I see you picked up a new girlfriend JJ. She's cute."

He didn't bother dignifying it with a response, instead choosing to train his eyes on the boy who hadn't been with them before.

"Your new toy isn't so bad, either."

The new boy didn't like this, it would seem. And the result was a swing, a loud cracking noise somewhere near JJ's shoulder, and instant pain. Add it to the list. He breathed out, heavy sighs as Perdita fired an arrow into the boy and Terra went for the girl from 11. He'd lost too many already. If this boy wanted to kill him, he could accept that. If he had to die, he wanted it to be before Terra, so rather than engaging, he sidestepped and raced forward. His eyes stung with tears, panic racing through him. Don't hurt her, Don't hurt her. Don't die for me, Terra. Don't do it. He kept his glare square on 11.

"She was -" A district partner? An ally?

"a friend!"

The truth of it stung.

He didn't have too many left those days.

I'm sorry, the girl echoes, but the word sound hollow, like maybe she wants to mean them but still doesn't quite. Like she knows that apologies don't mean shit in here, like no matter what it doesn't change the truth of the fact that Helle is dead and it's because she put a knife in her eye and it doesn't change the truth of the fact that she would do it all over again.

A part of me doesn't even really blame her, understands that remorse is fickle and pointless. But that same voice knows there are consequences for the cruelties we enact upon others.

And I am prepared to show her what consequence looks like.

"You think I want your apology?" I spit at her, trying to dart out of the way of her knife. It catches against my shin though, shallow and sharp and stinging, but nothing I don't know how to handle. "Your apology is worthless, Eleven."

I want to say more, think that there's something else on the tip of my tongue, but then JJ hurdles towards her and I want to shout at him to back the fuck off and just leave me with the three of them, tell him to get out and use his throwing knives from a distance and just let them try to kill me. I'll take at least one of them down in the process, I'm sure of it. Something cracks in her chest and I can hear it from here and I almost want to grin at JJ but then—snap.

And I break.

A low scream of pain rips out of my chest at the shock, and I realize that I've underestimated Lysander because I can hardly feel my knee which I'm pretty sure means that it's in so much pain that my brain is trying to block it out and—"Yes," I say through the debilitating pain in my left leg, a late reply to Lys. "Some of us deserve this."

I can't think, can only feel pain and anger, so I go for the throat.

It had started as sadness, the feeling in his stomach. Melancholy heartbreak and loneliness. He felt separate from the rest of the world: irrelevant but also hidden somehow, and he supposed he couldn't lie and say he hadn't found some comfort in that. And then, when they raised their weapons at Terra, the sadness had mutated into worry. Heart racing panic and split second decisions. He wasn't thinking of himself, he wasn't thinking of the foe. He wasn't thinking of home. He was thinking, Terra can't die. I can't die. None of us can.

"Perdita! Can you please get him off of me?"

The toy wasn't much fun to play with.

But now, broken as ever, full of every kind of pain- the swells of which reached highs he couldn't imagine possible- it had changed again. And it was something that he recognized with scary accuracy, something that had been a dormant part of every decision he had ever made. A piece of his soul that he hadn't ever realized was taking up more than its fair share of his heart.

Anger.

He walked so close to the flames within his mind that he could almost smell the singed hair and feel the blisters rising against his skin. His was the fury; he gave nothing in that moment, only took. His dignity, for starters. He wouldn't die a fractured skeleton, and though there was not a bone within him that had not been snapped or crushed or popped out of place in the last several days, he took. And he took. And he took. Power and rage were one, his eyes wide with the red of it.

"Don't. Fucking. Touch her."

He said the words directly to the girl from Eleven, harbinger of death who'd reaped one soul he never wished to see gone from him already. Maybe it made him selfish. He didn't care. He could be selfish. He could be the bad guy. He could be hateful and cold and scary if that's what it took.

Every word was a plea: Fight me instead. He couldn't explain it, but for the first time, he knew he could handle it. When dying was such a regular possibility, it began to lose its luster. If he died, fine. He was done waiting for the end. He was done expecting it. And he was done allowing people the chance of letting it happen to him.

Together, he and Terra were two people so broken that maybe, just maybe, together they could be one whole.

He hated the idea of becoming the person who killed the boy from Three again. But then he remembered something: he already was that person. So, he aimed for the chest, wanting nothing more than to see it caved in so badly that the girl could no longer breathe.