XXXV: Arena, Evening, Day Seven.
Ilaria Landucci, 18
District Six Female
And so she waits.
And waits, and waits, and waits.
Ilaria waits until she's certain she'll be driven insane by it.
All she can do is sit there, sword laid neatly across her lap so that occasionally her elbows dig into the edge of the blade, a sharp but firm reminder that she has to remain alert. Ilaria feels tired for no real reason at all—she's been up longer than this, before. There were days back in Six where she would be up at all hours of the night with the Halflings, roaming the streets and laughing until her sides ached from it. Back then it was easy to do so.
Back then Ilaria had no idea how the world worked; she's certainly learned since then.
To ward back the sudden fatigue that overcomes her Ilaria makes herself repeat the numbers—one two five eight. One two five eight. One two five eight.
One two five eight six.
Which of them could be about to arrive here, she has no idea. She knows what her mind wants, and it's the easier targets—the waifish-looking boy from Eight or perhaps the short girl from Five and her scowling mouth even in the picture the Capitol had of her on the screen. Micah and Inara, she reminds herself. She has their names memorized now; it would be cruel to try and forget them. Monsters don't care about the names of their prey. Only the killing. Ilaria will not allow herself to fall into that mentality.
She wonders how the boy from One is doing. Ambrose. It's wrong to wonder when she's the reason behind his suffering, but the pain she had inflicted on him is a heavy memory that lingers in her mind. On the other hand she tries her best not to think of the boy from Two, Milo, and what him and his lonely score of twelve have been up to. With what hands the universe has been dropping on her, Ilaria already knows what one she's going to be dealt this time.
For now, she won't think about it.
Instead she watches the mannequins, who watch her back with blank, dead eyes, so colorless that she can't help but wonder if she's been transported into a world made of black and white, like those ancient commercials that sometimes play in antique stores in the nicer part of town. If the sky wasn't a vivid carmine, almost like the ocean in Four when the sunset bled over it, she would believe it. Everything else is washed out—even herself.
Despite the look in their eyes they are undoubtedly ready for the final fight. They can't look away from her anymore than she can look away from them. They clamor about the stage as if it was a ring, occasionally brushing up against it beneath her dangling feet, knuckles knocking unceremoniously against it in an uneven pattern. Though they're quite far down there, they do wonders to make her uneasy. If there were ropes down there the mannequins would be shaking them, like this is some sort of basement fight in a strange part of Six's inner-city.
In the very least, she knows that Cal and Licia both would appreciate her thinking of it in such a way. Though she can't find it in herself to admire it in the same way, it brings her some comfort.
All she has left is that—repose in the form of people who were by her side, once, who she doesn't even have a right to remember. It was only a few days. She let them die.
Despite their absence, it still feels like their presences linger close-by.
The slight rumble from somewhere far away drags her attention further out, down the avenue and past the stands. Loudest of all is the blare of a horn, too much like the ones that fill the train-yards back in Six at all hours of the night. Ilaria rises to her feet, squinting through the smoke, but nothing appears. There were never any trains out there—not that she saw, anyway.
But it did sound like one. She isn't willing to cast the idea aside just yet.
The figure comes not long after, moving through the smoke like an apparition, their outline wavering as if they're simply a mirage. Ilaria clutches the sword tighter, but holds her ground. Here she stands, the silhouette of a near-warrior on the stage's edge. For the first time possibly ever Ilaria feels as if it could almost be the truth. She's been battered and pushed to the ground, but she hasn't yet broke. Knowing that there's still more to come makes her roll her shoulders back just like she has been to test out their sturdiness despite her many injuries.
A warrior is one thing, but Ilaria has to be a champion. That's her only option.
She sees him in small increments—dark hair, white outfit stained with ash and blood like hers is, a cautious shamble to his steps that suggest a hint of nervousness so unlike himself. Who is Ilaria to say though, really? She doesn't know him anymore than she knew the rest of him.
A part of her knew it would be him all along, the only reminder she has left of what she did to Varrik and him both, the blood-stained bandages around his throat evidence enough. Perhaps the train wasn't her imagination at all; perhaps it brought him to her after all this time.
It hasn't been that much time at all, she reminds herself.
Ceto's training tells her to start off with a bang, to attack him while he's still cautious. If he runs, she'll catch him. This is her last wind—she knows she could.
But she doesn't.
Ilaria takes a deep breath, for she's beginning to believe he can't. "What's your name?" she questions. It doesn't matter that she already knows. Doesn't she owe him that, at least? He doesn't need to die without dignity, supposed anonymity his only friend.
Up here she feels like a giant watching an ant below her, for his figure is so small on the ground below that she wonders if she could step off the edge and crush him beneath her shoe. All that blood and white and skin smashed into the pavement like it was never there. It's not even a nice fantasy, and even despite the distance she can make out his eyes, dark as the night and hesitant. Unsure.
He wasn't like that before, she doesn't think. Not many of them were.
So she watches him, letting the sword go limp by her side, watching the rapier in his own. He still has it even after that brutal fight; he's not weak or helpless, not like some of them. As long as she remembers that there's nothing at all wrong with asking. Worse, though, is the obvious struggle in him, the pain in his raspy, barely-there voice as he says, "Ambrose."
Guilt eats away at her skin like acid. He squeezes his eyes shut as his fingers press at the edge of the bandages, snapping them open just as quick when he remembers where he is, what's about to happen. Ilaria shuffles to the side, in front of the stairs, and begins to make her way down. She stops three from the bottom, noting his hesitant back-tracking the closer she gets. "District One, right?" she asks. You're soft, her brain tells her. You shouldn't feel bad and yet you do.
Was she supposed to feel anything else, though?
His answering nod is more than Ilaria believed she was going to get as she finally steps down onto the ground. "I'm Ilaria," she offers, still keeping a fair distance between them. "Six."
"I know," he croaks. She tries to keep her eyes from lingering too long on his throat, but it's impossible. He shouldn't be alive, not after that, and it's clear that Ambrose knows it too. His eyes dart from her down to his fingers, still probing curiously right where the wounds must begin. She did that to him. She made that decision. Now they both have to live with it.
Around them the mannequins have stilled, their desperate clawing at the stage's edge having faded off. They're only watching, now, something curiously unique about their glassy eyes. No doubt they're wondering what's going to happen here just as much as Ilaria is—they're supposed to be fighting, right? Anyone else would, she thinks. She's watched enough of the past tapes to know.
"Should we wait until the last person shows up?" she wonders. Ambrose blinks—she can't tell if his watering eyes are a by-product of the smoke or genuine tears. For some reason, she doesn't take him as much of a crier. "We could—"
"Why?"
It's that same struggle resulting from a single word. Ilaria can't help but wince, almost in sympathy, as he forces it out. It's only one word, but it carries the weight of a thousand. And Ambrose may wonder, but she doesn't.
Ilaria knows why.
"We don't know who it is," she explains, allowing nothing but the facts to escape her mouth. "I've been… I've been keeping track. Two boy. Five girl. Eight boy. If it's Two, well… I may need some help."
It feels like failure to admit it, but the truth has always stung. She can wish all she likes that it's not him, but that's not going to do shit at the end of the day if he so happens to show up. Ilaria doesn't think someone like him will think twice about killing her, either, about initiating something that could even end them both. Not the way she is right now. It would be so easy to take a few steps forward and run him through like Ambrose was nothing, like he was hardly there.
Instead she watches his guarded posture and slowly raises the sword until she can slip it back into its sheath. Ambrose lets out a shuddery, slow breath, though he doesn't release the rapier. She didn't expect him to.
"Truce?" she tries, praising herself for remaining resolute in this moment. "At least until we know who it is."
"Truce," he rasps, voice hardly a whisper. She wishes she could tell him not to talk, not to bother, but that feels too personal. She has no right to tell him what to do, and trying doesn't sit well in her stomach. Ilaria starts backing up, instead, watching him carefully until her heels nudge the steps once more. Only then does she turn around to begin her trek back up, exhaustion pulling down at her bones just like before. Offering her back like this feels far too much like deep, unwarranted trust, but she forces her eyes forward all the way up the stairs, holding her breath as Ambrose's feet scrape across the pavement, starting after her.
Only when she reaches the stage once again does Ilaria allow herself to release that breath, a tremble to her arms and legs that hadn't been there previously. As she makes her way back to her previous spot, dead-center, she begins to see Ambrose from the corner of her eye, much slower in his journey up. Still, he ends up there next to her—ten feet away, mind you, but there nonetheless. She considers their truce solidified.
It's as if he knows, though, that Ilaria had something to do with his untimely fall, the injury that has rendered him almost speechless. In the very least she thinks Ceto would be proud of her for trying. She wonders if her family is watching, if they even care. They probably don't.
But Ilaria does.
"Not long now," she murmurs, just loud enough for Ambrose to hear. He doesn't speak or even nod, this time, but his eyes are alert. He's looking into the crowd just as she is, watching for the elusive third member of their party. Whoever it is, they're close.
It's only a matter of time.
Something else arrives first, though, and Ilaria isn't even the first to hear it. It's Ambrose that whirls around, grasping at his throat as his whole body jerks. She expects to see the shadow of a person behind them, a weapon extended, but it's not that.
What's actually there is far worse.
It's hardly visible as it scales the back of the stage and then further, up and up and up all the way to the crown of the building, far into the sky above them. There it lingers, it's dozens of eyes and dozens of limbs spread about haphazardly as it practically dangles over them, heads cocked, watching on just like the mannequins are down below. Any second now it could leap down here and end them both in seconds.
Her attention is torn from that back to Ambrose; so much fear has permeated his eyes that it's possible every other emotion has fled his body. "Hey," she tries carefully, voice gentle. "It's okay."
But it's not, is it? This was never going to be okay. He has every right to be fearful of the gigantic mutt that watches over them from above now, the exact opposite of an angel. It nearly killed him, once. For all they know it's back to finish the job. Ilaria needs him though—most of all, she doesn't want that. Cruel as it may be, she'd rather him die a quick death on the end of a blade rather than be torn to shreds like Varrik was.
Not like that. Not again.
"It's okay," she repeats. "It won't come after us—it wants the three of us to fight, alright? It's just watching like the rest of them."
So she hopes, anyway. If Ilaria was bolder, if she was braver, she'd reach over and grab his arm.
But she can't.
"Ambrose," she tries.
"Hey!" a voice shouts from behind them, and Ilaria's body snaps back to attention quicker than her mind does. "Did you mail my invitation to the wrong place?"
He's not close, in the very least, but it is him, predictably so. Milo Poliadas lingers on the ground below them amidst a crowd of mannequins, hands over his eyes as if the sun is blinding him despite it's complete absence. Ambrose is torn between what to look at—she almost wants to tell him to keep an eye on the mutt while she watches Milo. Who's to say what's more dangerous right now?
"I think you were just slow," she fires back. She should have been paying attention from the get-go; if Milo had a ranged weapon on him, both of them could have died in an instant.
She can be soft no longer. Even Ambrose has to go eventually. She tugs the sword back out, though it's unimpressive in the light. Almost dull. There isn't even enough blood staining it's edges to make it appear threatening, not like the axe Milo passes from hand to hand, so caked in blood that it might as well be made of it. At least they have the high-ground, though she's not sure it really matters anymore.
She allows Milo the time to take in the scene, the mutt dangling above them as pieces of the building rain down on them, bits of concrete and roof tiles. Between Ilaria, Ambrose, and the mutt, it appears he doesn't know what to focus on.
They're in the same boat, there.
Quickly enough he's only glancing between the two of them, though, an eyebrow raised. "Teaming up against me, are you?" he asks. "Now that's not very fair, is it?"
Just like Ambrose, she's able to see in his eyes. No fear. Even the perplexity is fading off. A part of him is gone, washed away in the blood that's coated the axe, leaving only a shade of psychosis in its place. She doesn't know whether to be scared of that or not—she thinks she might be, regardless. It's not fair, she knows. None of this has ever been fair. Ilaria can't fight that way, though. Not anymore.
The sword feels like an extension of her arm as she gives it an experimental swing, the last one of its kind. Beside her, Ambrose inhales as he forces his eyes away from the mutt and to Milo.
Down below them, he grins. She would have expected nothing less.
It's time to do this.
Ambrose Clarion, 16
District One Male
Ambrose expects more.
A sudden rush, a bout of shouting. He expects someone to move.
And no one does.
Still, he knows it's happening. He knows even more-so that he's not ready, not realistically. What choice does he have, though, but to step up and try to be? None at all.
Milo doesn't look like he's about to move anytime this century; why would he, when the two of them could so easily force him back down the stairs? No, he only backs up until the mannequins are brushing against his shoulders, practically ready to whisper into his ear, to push him back into the ring. "Are you coming down, or not?" he shouts up at them. "I haven't got all day!"
None of them do, he doesn't think. Ambrose can hardly breathe anymore without wanting to cry out.
Beside him Ilaria takes a few carefully measured steps back towards the stairs, pausing to look back. She's waiting for him, he realizes. He may feel like a broken toy, like a Capitol child's plaything, but Ambrose is still breathing. He has to get up and do this like he always has. You won't get anything if you don't stand up and fight for it, his father always said. He was talking about the business, of course, about making deals, but Ambrose never forgot those words.
They're the only things that resonate deeply in his mind at this time.
He steps up to her side, giving her a small nod. They walk down the stairs together, as one unit, it seems, though Ambrose doesn't know this girl. He never will. A part of him feels almost bad for that—Ambrose of the past wouldn't, but he has no idea who that kid was anymore.
He's been shattered. Torn apart. He's bled too much to continue existing.
The second both of their feet hit the ground Milo shifts two paces to the left, getting no closer. He's fucking predatory, each move calculated and somehow terrifying despite nothing resulting of it. Ambrose knows he himself is full of grace, or so he used to be—Jasper's training kept him that way, built on what he already was through months of hard work. Ilaria has her own cautious way of moving, something elegant to it, but neither of them have anything on that.
Ambrose doesn't like being scared. It doesn't fit naturally with who he is.
While Ilaria's still by his side he glances over his shoulder, finding the mutt once again. It's as if it's here only to taunt him, to remind him how quickly he could be laid out once again, reduced to nothing on the pavement.
Ilaria's right, he knows. She's speaking where his irrationality has taken over.
That does nothing for his fear.
"Scared, One?" Milo asks when he turns back around. It does enough for the little bit of Ambrose's remaining anger that it spikes, makes him think of driving the rapier forward and actually succeeding. He does not give in. He doesn't just let himself fall, not ever, and he isn't about to start now. Ambrose doesn't give him a single thing, not an ounce of satisfaction. Instead he watches him, how he favors his right side despite that clearly being his dominant, noting the blood-stained bandages pasted over his side. They've all gone through it, so it seems. It makes them all a tad more even.
Ilaria moves too, putting a few feet of space between them so that they're spread out into a loose triangle. He feels like Ilaria looks more ready than he is; no matter how much he squares his shoulders, getting into a stance that should scream ready, he feels grossly unprepared for this moment.
All it takes is one split second for Milo's hand to flash to his side—Ambrose can't even begin to make sense of what he's doing before a knife is flying towards his head, nothing more than a silver blur spinning through the air. He thinks better of diving to the side, too risky on his throat, so he ducks instead, throwing himself halfway to the ground as he watches it whizz past him, right through the spot his chest had been.
The thump of footsteps only just manages to overcome the roaring in his ears, and then a tremendous force crashes into him, pressing hard into his ribs. Panic overcomes his brain as he thinks of a mutt, but he gets a brief glimpse of it still towering over them as Milo crashes to the ground on top of him.
He never should have been watching the knife.
It doesn't end there, either. With the rapier wedged between them Ambrose abandons his hold on it quickly, choosing instead to hold his throat together as Milo rolls them, so sharp and so violent that they crash directly into Ilaria's legs. Together they topple like a tower of dominos, nothing to hold onto them. From faraway he's sure it looks so lackluster, so tragic, but to Ambrose it feels like everything.
It feels like failure, stinging and all-encompassing. But worse it feels like pain as he's squashed beneath the weight of them both, crushing his already damaged ribs and putting pressure on his chest Ambrose can't afford to have there. Milo won't let go of either of them, a hand wrapped around each of them to keep them immobile—it means the fight isn't going anywhere, but it's stopping them from moving too.
The arm pinned overtop his shoulders is strong, too strong. He can't break free from it.
Ambrose does the only thing he can think of, forcing his head forward until his teeth close around skin and dig in. He feels like some sort of wild animal as skin gives way to blood, blood that rapidly fills his mouth as he wrenches his head to the side, ripping at Milo's forearm until his jaw begins to ache. Milo yanks his forearm free soon enough, splattering blood hot all over Ambrose's face, and no sooner is his head wrenched back up, this time by Milo's searching fingers, and slammed back into the ground.
Stars burst across his vision like fireworks and he tries desperately to fight them off, to see something other than the myriad of colors that have otherwise taken over. Some of the weight is lifted off of him as Ilaria finally succeeds in pushing him off, somehow—he's never prayed before, but he almost wants to pray for her existence right about now. If she wasn't on his side here, he might already be dead.
As soon as some of Milo's weight shifts he rolls free, scrambling for the rapier as it clatters onto the ground, all the while ignoring the increasing pressure in his throat. He won't make it much longer. He pushes himself to his knees as Milo loops an arm around Ilaria's knees and brings her crashing back to the ground. There is no elegance in the way he stabs forward, watching the rapier's blade sink into Milo's arm where his shirt is already stained through, tearing open old wounds as well as a new one.
He avoids the axe that comes swinging his way, blindly, just in time for Milo to pull himself away from Ilaria's grip with a great heave, slamming her into the ground. Blood streams fresh from his arm as he turns back to Ambrose.
Every time he faces something he feels the threat of a great miscalculation. He thought with someone to help him he wouldn't experience that again—with Ilaria at his side, it should have gone just how it did with Lex.
This should have been easy.
Milo lunges at him, a blur of blood and ash and white, hardly any white left at all, really. The axe is no longer in his hands—where has it gone?
Ambrose spends too long trying to search for it, eyes roaming around for the new place on the cement that the weapon has called home. Isn't that what the issue has always been? Too much time spent on the details, on one particular note or line of a song… it wasn't good enough unless it was perfect. In an ideal world, this would have been. What did his father always say? Too impractical, too quixotic… your head is in the damn clouds, kid.
But in that moment he was right there watching it happen, as if in slow-motion. Milo doesn't try to pin him this time.
His hands go right for Ambrose's throat.
He can't see it but he feels it, Milo's fingers tugging at his bandages, the precious ones holding his throat together—panic overtakes everything else as Milo's weight falls down on him regardless. His fingers continue to press in, digging, searching until it's all Ambrose can feel, those pinpricks of pain turning into something so much stronger.
The exact moment the bandages are ripped away is a stark one, crystal clear, as if everything around them has frozen. But it ends oh so abruptly, unkindly, because Milo's fingers keep going. Blood seeps from his throat as the barrier between it and the cruel outside world are cast to the side—not just the bandages, but everything. Blood gushes hot down his throat and up into his mouth as his fingers drive further into Ambrose's neck, through the few layers of skin and muscle that remain intact, gripping at him from the outside, from the inside, jagged nails tearing and raking and it fucking hurts but he can't even scream, there's too much blood in his mouth—
He thinks he hears Ilaria scream, and then the hand is abruptly gone. Everything is. Above him are too pale figures, nearly becoming one as they whirl away
And he… he can't breathe. Blood spurts up from his re-opened throat and soaks his chest, his twitching hands, his jaw and his face and it's everywhere, there's so much of it.
Who was he before? Ambrose already can't remember. It's a distant memory, the boy that lived in One. Did he ever even really exist?
If he did, he's all but disappeared now.
His backpack digs into his spine, but Ambrose can't move as blood continues to flood into his mouth like a wave, erupting from each side of his mouth, bubbling over onto the concrete. Like someone filled a pot too full. Like he's boiling, and everything is so warm he might as well be. Warm and oppressive and sliding away down a long, slippery slope.
Could he save himself? He did once before. The bigger question seems to be if he wants to, because two of them are going to die and Ambrose… Ambrose thinks he wants to be one of them. He screwed up irreparably. He's done. He should die. What good is he like this, voiceless and immobile—he's nothing, now. Always has been, really. He wasn't ever going to amount to anything. His father was right on that front. Ambrose feels like he should be angry, somehow, but he feels nothing.
He even thinks he can hear music, a voice singing some beautiful, unreleased song—that's how he knows it's real. That it's ending. His voice was stolen; the singing isn't coming from him, nor from the two blurry figures spinning about over him. It's all in his head. A moment of that song is stolen from him as one of the figures returns, nothing more than a phantom from the smoke.
Ilaria's voice is muffled. It mingles with the song, mere background noise. Her mouths forms around the words—I'm sorry, he sees, but he can't tell why until the blade enters his chest
And then she's gone.
But Ambrose is, too.
Milo Poliadas, 18
District Two Male
He knows he should feel bad when a cannon shakes the earth beneath him, but why would he?
Inside him is nothing much at all as Ilaria wrenches him away from One, still on the ground, twitching haphazardly despite the noise that has blasted throughout the sky. Human bodies are weird, he decides—so reliable, so strong until one little thing just tears them apart.
One has yet to even still properly before Ilaria lunges at him once again, the end of her sword wet with his blood. Funny how a mercy killing seemed so easy to her, how she had darted away from him so quickly to make sure that One died faster. Faster than Milo would have let him, anyway. She wastes no time in returning to him, drops of blood slick down the side of the blade.
Their weapons clash once again, metal against metal. He forces her back. She swipes forward again.
It's a vicious, never-ending cycle. Milo has to break it.
The next time her sword arcs towards him he goes low, instead, ducking under it. She smashes it down, the edge of the hilt crashing into his jaw as blood erupts in his mouth, but that doesn't stop him even for a second as the axe swings around. When it sinks into her leg he relishes in the immediate spurt of blood, the shriek she lets out as her knees give away, sending her crashing to the ground. He dives on top of her before she can wiggle free, leaving the axe stuck where it is. Before he can stab down towards her face with one of his knives her arm flails up, the blade slicing along it and just missing the bridge of her nose. She's fighting, fighting so damn hard but she's not getting anywhere. So stuck that it must hurt.
He can see the reflection of himself in the glassiness of her eyes; his smile is red, blood thick in the cracks of his dried lips. It looks carved there, a crooked gash in his face.
Milo finds he doesn't quite hate it as much as he knows he should.
But the image is shattered so quickly, like he took his fist to a mirror and sent shards flying all over the bathroom sink. If his knuckles were bloody, he may just believe it. Ilaria's arm digs into his side as she drags it back up, as if she's going to try and force him off again. Instead of that she reaches up, towards his face, and suddenly there's searing pain as something digs into the meat of his cheek, stabbing in deeper and deeper.
He can't even make out what it is. There's only a flash of dull silver in his vision as whatever she's got in her grip pushes in, digging through the many layers of his cheek until it bursts inward, slicing into his tongue. All he can taste is blood, the copper tang sharp and unavoidable.
Milo almost screams. He forces himself not to, driving a knee into her gut as he rears away, tearing her hand off. Milo fumbles for whatever's stuck in his cheek, whatever's torn his face open, clawing at it so desperately only to come away with a fork of all things, bits of his skin and tongue and so much stuck on the ends that he almost laughs, laughs until he can't breathe.
He already can't.
Below him Ilaria still lies on the ground, gasping as she tries to regain her own breath, clutching at her stomach. He tears the axe free from her leg and splatters blood across his shoes, watching the slip-slide of her blood and the convulsion of her muscles from an outside perspective before he brings it down again, only slightly higher. Blood gushes from her thigh, scraping against bone as he forces it down. She's nothing more than a bloody sack of meat, a prop dummy on the Training Center floor and she's going to die like one too, useless and not fighting back and so limp, so lifeless…
What comes out of her mouth when he buries the axe in her arm is not quite a scream, the grating of the bone beneath the blade the only thing that stops him from severing it clean off. Milo feels like a butcher cutting off the best pieces for sale, sliding them away across a table with bloodied gloves, a hacksaw in his hand, no axe to be seen. Her fingers twitch towards the sword discarded beside her and he doesn't think, just slams the blade down until he's cut clean through, sending appendages flying across the pavement, revealing the white of bone in the nubs, what's left of her fingers. What little remains.
It all feels necessary—every swing, every gush of blood, every time he pushes his body further, past the brink of exhaustion and into something he can hardly feel. It doesn't matter at all who will hate him for this or what the universe thinks. Their opinions are nothing but trivial.
He is going to be like his parents soon enough, anyway—hadn't he thought that when Micah was still around? One way or another, he was dead eventually. He was meant to be ashes, meant to be stuffed into an urn and left in a mantle-less house to collect dust. This world was not right for him. That meant he didn't have to care about it either. Wasn't that what it had always meant?
Ilaria gasps. He tears his gaze away from the mangled remains of her hand and to her face once again, noting the faint light to her eyes. Still much too bright for him.
It's just the motions. Just like everyone else.
She mattered no more than the rest of them ever had.
She moves even less than Hale did when he puts all of his weight behind it, two hands on the axe's handle to swing the blade down into her stomach. Something crunches, blood and fluid squelching thick as one, her eyes wide as can be. Only when he pulls it back down does she gasp and heave, hands pressed feebly against the blood spilling from her torso.
And then she looks up at him again, eyes still glassy, but he thinks it might be tears. "Please," she manages and… and what is he supposed to say to that?
"Please," she says again, voice so deathly quiet he strains to hear and if Milo listens hard enough, if he focuses, it sounds like his mother's voice. Like the calmness and the quiet that comes from a parent sitting by your bedside, smoothing your hair back after a nightmare. Worse, still, he can feel it, the phantom presence of her hand across his damp forehead and her gentle voice, so close: you're going to be okay, sweetheart, I promise.
Except that wasn't possible, was it? Not this time. He was done for no matter the ending.
Is this what she looked like in the moments before the fire claimed her? Was she laid out on the ground, flames blazing ever closer, pleading for something else. A quicker end, for the fire to be vanquished. Was she pleading for Dad, for him to be spared? Was she trying to negotiate a better life for her kids, bartering with some unknown force, even in her last moments? Was it that or was she dead already, the smoke having overtaken her lungs, sending her into a silent sleep?
Milo looks down and all he can see is his mother, surrounded by smoke.
Something smashes into his leg, a single flare of pain against his shin as something connects with it—as Ilaria's foot makes contact with it, ankle hooking around the back of his leg. And Milo topples, brought suddenly off-balance, crashing down towards her as her mostly-good arm flashes out, stretching for the sword. She's going to break his fall, or so he thinks.
Instead, it's the sword she suddenly raises towards him that catches him, straight through his stomach.
Her scream is muffled as his weight slams into her, as the sword pushes in and in and in until the tip bursts free from his back in one single starburst of pain; a wild kaleidoscope appears behind his eyelids, all in black and white. Milo doesn't know if he rolls off of her or if she manages to free herself from his weight but suddenly he's all alone, nothing but the too-warm ground beneath his back.
The sword is left there, buried inside him. Milo thinks he hears a sob, sees an ocean of red beneath Ilaria's prone body, growing larger with every passing second.
She's dying. She's going to die.
And so is he.
All that matters is who succumbs to it first.
The comforting presence of his mother is long gone, now—she's been carried away by the smoke once again, lost to the fire. The mannequins press closer as one unit, a hive-mind carrying them forward until they can see nothing but the two tributes that they've encircled, so close together that they're blood is spreading, pooling together.
If Milo could move, he would finish this. He feels paralyzed, frozen in place; his body curls around the blade of its own volition, powerless. All he can do is survive and it seems so far, seems impossible even though she's there too, dying beside him.
Dying is such an odd thing to experience at this age.
Milo wants to laugh, almost, at how death hangs over them now, waiting for one string to be abruptly cut. If laughing was worth choking on the blood in his mouth, he would do so. Milo was going to win, wasn't he? It was practically written out in the stars. It was all he wanted, all he needed, and he couldn't help but think he was going to get it. No matter how much the universe hated him, it was right for once. The stars had aligned and no one would ever hear the end of it. The smoke too was dissipating, like ink spreading in a cloud on a vast, clear ocean. The sun was coming back, so bright overhead that he could barely stand to look at it.
It was all his, and he felt like he should be laughing, should be smiling. He should feel some sort of exhilaration, the glory washing over him. Anything, really, that added up with winning.
Instead, all Milo feels before the darkness crashes over him is a single tear slipping down the side of his face.
3rd. Ambrose Clarion, District One Male.
2nd. ?-?-?
1st. ?-?-?
Yes, I know... hate me all you want, but that doesn't change the fact that you won't know the victor until later this week.
And I promise there is one.
Until next time.