your silence is my favorite sound // lys vs dom. day nine

A dull ache lingered in his arms when he was done.

Something about rereading his own adrenaline-fueled declaration triggered an unknown emotion within Dominic - he smiled as if it were pride, but seismic waves still rippled through his body without ceasing. He did not feel relief at not dying, for he'd progressed beyond that stage a long time ago. But something lurked beneath his newly adopted defiance, and he could not quite identify what it was. Nightfall did not bring any further revelations even as the fog began to clear, allowing moonlight to drool through the clouds.

Dominic found himself shuffling through the pile of postcards again, the edges swishing and crinkling as they rubbed against each other. He needed to talk to somebody. Anybody. But he was alone for now, and he would stay that way for the foreseeable future, so he'd have to come up with something else. A honk sounded above him, and Dominic glanced up to see a familiar gray-speckled bird circling overhead. It had been the same type of bird that had dropped a bomb on them days earlier, and that he'd seen streaking through the sky with some mysterious cargo in tow. He could reach his friends that way, couldn't he?

The thought turned up the corners of his mouth, but as soon as it came he tossed it away, watching the bird glide away into the night. He couldn't just start sending messenger pigeons to Jade and Pisces, not now. They didn't need him to distract them or entertain the idea of a reunion that didn't end in death. The three of them could never be strangers but they would never be friends again, and Dominic clutched the blank postcards to his chest as the reality sank in. There was no writing a happy ending here.

By the time he started writing again, the sky was clear, a dark blanket overhead. Dominic had finished his note to Zenia when the anthem finally began to blare, the faces of the fallen much brighter now that they were no longer overlaid with swirling fog. The Gamemakers must really want to remind them of their sins, he reckoned.

The boy from Three was first, and Dominic remembered catching the back of his head as he left tiny pies at their doorstep. The warmth of the pies recreated itself in Dominic's hands just as a somber feeling entered his heart, wondering if the boy's killer had at least been merciful to him.

The one Dominic killed was next. Kenji. He tended not to remember the names he learned in the anthem, especially if he'd never crossed paths with the person before, but eventually he had to come to terms with the fact that he actively suppressed the memory of those he had murdered. The boy from Eleven, Xander's father, his name was Cyro, but Dominic would never tell anyone he knew that. Once he had learned, it had been too late anyway - Cyro Krane's face was already embroidered in sky.

Dominic had not known Kenji, who had goaded him into a fight despite his own vulnerability. He had been a stranger. By Dominic's own logic, the boy's death should not have mattered to him. But even strangers had come to mean something to Dominic, and he supposed it was because he'd lost everyone around him anyway.

Callum's face was last. Dominic's head dropped and he began to write again. Each time he started on another blank slate, he resisted the urge to apologize to those he had killed. Eventually, he caved and began to address a postcard to the boy from Eleven.

Cyro.

Callum.

Kenji.

He drew haphazard strokes over each of the names, his motions only becoming harsher until the head of the pencil had burrowed through the paper into the ground. Dominic let out a frustrated grunt and crumpled up the postcard, tossing it to the side. He tried again, and threw it away again.

No big deal, he told himself, resting his head against the cool ground to sleep. Callum didn't want my apology. The others probably don't either.

What Dominic didn't admit to himself was that Callum's refusal was probably because his words were insufficient.

When he awoke, the pain in his jaw had reignited, every small movement sending sparks up his nerves. Dominic sat up, grasping at his cheeks. They were less swollen today, but still warm to the touch. His tongue rolled around in the dead space for a while before he attempted to open his mouth, jaw locking once it had reached its limit.

Dominic's lips slowly shaped themselves around syllables as if he was pronouncing them for the first time. "I... am alive." It hurt to say, but he could at least say it. "I... did... not... die."

Heading back to the forest of flowers felt almost natural at this point. Dominic put up a hand to protect against any stray thorns and was greeted by a gust of petals, the trees waving their arms wildly in the wind. It wasn't long before he spotted another figure on the horizon, and he unconsciously began to repeat his mantra to himself.

I did not die. I did not die.

The figure came closer, and Dominic's chest tightened when he realized who it was. It was the girl from Five.

I did not die. I did not-

"You're still alive," she said coolly. "I'm impressed."

He opened his mouth despite the searing pain that shot through his face. "Same to you."

Her blade then ghosted across his stomach, and he was surprised that he did not flinch. "Did you even know his name when you killed him? Did you even bother to care?"

Cyro. Kenji. Cyro. Kenji. He knew their names now, but it did not matter.

"No," Dominic said, the words metallic on his tongue. "I didn't know his name. But I don't know yours either."

Dominic wasn't sure whether he wanted to know, but girl who broke Pisces' leg was a bit verbose while Cyro's ally and Kenji's district partner were too much to bear. So, he figured he'd like to know her, not as an extension of someone else, but as her own person. It would hurt more if she died, but he would hate her less if she killed him.

"So tell me." His voice inflected upwards as if he were begging. He wasn't convinced that he wasn't.

He took a chunk out of her cheek and earned a similar wound on his arm in return. This time, he barely felt how his skin separated, how the muscle and fatty tissue ripped to reveal a nearly empty shell underneath. Even as his brain continued to send signals - to his eyelids to flutter, his limbs to move, the oxygen to continue dancing through his bloodstream - he was running out of signs that any of the fighting was worth it.

"Well, I’m half alive, if you want to call it that."

She was wearing white. Every time Dominic encountered someone new all the color had drained from their bodies, leaving them a blank canvas for someone else to paint their destiny. He would have once argued that they were painting their own, but brushstrokes made in blood were far from expressive at this point. They were painful, and common, and forced.

Was he one of the only ones who hadn’t seen what was six feet under?

He could picture his own body, shielded in black, a sign of strength to others. It did not matter that his shield was cracking, that bandages peeked out beneath the wooden braces on his arms, that he was wearing cotton bunny ears around his head or that he couldn’t even talk. They only saw darkness and assumed he had the bravery to stare endlessly into it. To be in pain, you had to see it plain as day in crimson hues on a white background. There was no place for Dominic in that.

"He had a son, too, you know." Her voice echoed in Dominic's mind from the moment she had said it, another reminder that every time he preserved his own life he destroyed someone else's.

His breath whistled through his nostrils as he stared at the girl - Lysander. Cyro, Lysander, Meredith, and a fourth. An alliance he had torn apart, with three already disappeared into the sky. Dominic didn’t know anything about Lysander’s relationship with Kenji - it was likely that they could have been as aloof as he and Perdita had been, but he would still crumble if she died. The girl was alone.

He answered her and you with Dominic, or Dom, whatever you’d like.

"Kenji had a son?" he asked softly, turning his mace over in his hands before raising it to strike.

"You killed Kenji too?"

The shift in Lysander’s tone was like a bucket of ice emptied down his shirt. Dominic straightened up as the realization slowly trickled through his bones, guided by the girl's bright glare. He opened his mouth to ask, was that not who you were talking about? but of course it wasn’t. It was Cyro, always the salt in the wound.

"He was supposed to be the one to make it home, not me," she said before scraping at his chest with her dagger. Blood spilled from the cut, and with it came questions.

"Why not you?" Dominic asked. He's dead and you’re not. I’m alive and he isn’t. Why not him? Why me?

A petal grazed his nose, and it twitched in response. Would whoever got out of here alive take the ghosts with them, or would they drift away like petals in the breeze? Lysander thought Dominic had forgotten what he had done, but he remembered everything. Kenji would never really be gone, not as long as either of them lived.

"You made it this far, Lysander," he said. Why me? "Why not you?"

She echoed the same question he had been asking himself for days, and he merely nodded in response. "Why me," he mused aloud. "I don’t entirely know anymore."

He’d said it in writing, he’d talked around the subject when he’d decided Pisces would live before he did, he’d thought it almost every night. Dominic would like to live, sure, but he was also fully prepared to die.

"There’s people waiting for me back home," he said. His parents. Madelyn. Paisley, where she rested in Four. Perhaps someone who saw themself in him, meek and trusting but somehow able to make it to the next day in one piece anyway. He had agonized over never being a model trainee, but maybe that wasn’t who he needed to be. The person he wanted his mother to see and the mold his father had created for him were mismatched, a square peg in a round hole, edges scraping against the sides. His desire to go home scraped against the knowledge that the people that had waited for him here would never get to go home again.

"But I’m not entirely prepared to lose who I’ve found here," Dominic admitted, arm swinging loosely at his side. "It's been so hard to not lose myself in all this. But I already have, and I guess you have too."

A cannon thundered in the distance, and even as the ground shook with the waves his heart did not stir. His cheeks felt heavy from all the talking.

As Dominic raised his weapon, he let a final thought touch the air. "Do you think any of this will make sense when it’s all over, Lysander?"

Once he had gone down to the beach to collect sea glass, little teal and cerulean chips sparkling under the sun just as the emeralds of the arena did. He hunched over on top scraggy rocks, toes cold against the slate, straightening his spine when a familiar voice called his name.

"Dom! Look what I found!"

He turned, greeted by dark bouncing curls and a glass bottle held triumphantly over the owner’s head. Paisley had a toothy grin on her face, one that Dominic matched with just as much fervor.

"Whoa, Pais, where’d you get that?"

She brought the bottle down to her chest, hugging it tightly to her. "I’m not telling," she squeaked. "You’ll probably try to one-up me."

"Are ya scared I will?" She shook her head, and Dominic stuck his arms out. "Well, lemme see it! Don’t be a treasure-hogger."

Paisley held the bottle out, the frayed outline of yellow paper shaking against the glass. He took it in both hands, the cork squeaking as he pulled it out. He turned the neck over and shook the paper downwards, watching it fall out onto the sand.

"Is it a treasure map?"

"No," he said, unrolling it in his hands. "It’s... a letter."

"From who?"

They had sat on the ground for hours, ruminating on who the sender and recipient were and what kind of lives they had. After a while, Paisley found it all very boring, but Dominic was still intrigued by the idea of sending a letter away into the vast blue nothingness of the ocean and hoping someone would find it.

Even now, as a seventeen-year-old flirting with his own mortality, Dominic still thought of his mother’s letter languishing in its glass prison in his backpack. He figured that he’d eventually drop it in the ocean of blood, but he’d crossed that beach days earlier and hadn’t been able to do it. He considered asking someone to take it from him, as a final favor, but that was out of the question too. No matter if his own thoughts were out in the open, his mother’s words belonged to him and him only, even if he loathed her for it.

He’d been angry at Cyro for sending a message with his death, but it was becoming clear that all of them were writing the same song. There was not, and never would be, any nobility in sacrifice, even Dominic’s own.

Lysander remarked that she had found herself, and a slight smile graced his face. At least someone had. Somehow, he still expected her next words, as contradictory as they were.

"No. Not even in death."

He took a deep breath and wrapped both hands around the mace. "I think you’re right."

[dom attacks lys with geode morning star]
uf8OjsuIbxspiked blunt
14152 - gash on right foot - 3