With thanks to Katrace and AbbyCoraby123 for your reviews of the last chapter.
Y 184-09-01 T 04:32:17
Day 2
His outfit for the games had been a grey shirt, a grey jacket; mottled grey cloth, providing little else than meagre warmth and necessary clothing.
Now, it was ripped, stuck stiff with blood's staining; a new dye to colour the bland canvas. He had removed his jacket, and with difficulty his shirt, but they were already irrevocably stained with the liquid, drying from deep black-crimson to a faded red, deepest in colour where a clean cut tore the shirt's fabric in two.
Theon sat bare-chested on the floor, using his fingers to rip more fabric from a plush chair- he discarded the old bloody rags he had torn from it, and began to fashion the new cloth into a neater bandage.
The incision Anna had given him with a single casual swipe of her sword was torn, his skin flapping away from the ragged edges- and there had been blood. So much blood. He had left, he was certain, a painful evidence of his run from the Cornucopia to- wherever this was. He wasn't sure. He had found a building in the Inner City, he had traversed deeper and deeper into its labryinthine corridors until he could go no further, and he had holed himself up, desperation fuelling his strength as he tried to stem the bleeding. But eventually, inbetween the panic of losing so much blood and his desperate attempts to stem the bloodflow, his adrenaline ebbed, and Theon had collapsed. He was sure that if he had not collapsed forward, his chest compressed against the floor and the cloth, he would have bled out and died. But by chance more than design, he had woken up this morning- in pain, and with a light head, and a laceration running from his breastbone deeper into his pectoral muscle on his left, but he was alive.
So this morning, with the ragged wound finally clotted to a point of stability, Theon could endeavour to fix it. The small room he was in was more an office than a home, with little more than a chair and a mahogany desk to provide him with tools- but it was enough. The chair he ripped apart with his bare hands, pulling rough black fabric from its structure in thin strips, laying them on the desk in preparation. He removed some of the stitching from the chair's fabric covering; he unwound thread, also black, also rough. It wasn't and couldn't be sterilised, but if he had any water he wouldn't be using it to clean anything.
A search of the desk uncovered little but blank papers, tied together with paperclips. Theon, upon this discovery of so little equipment, gasped and sat back in the dawn, trying to recover his strength and his breath. He had lost so much blood- it was on his hands, in his mouth, staining his ragged chest. Anna had injured him, and while it didn't seem infected from a few hours of being open he had no chance of survival if he tried to let the wound recover naturally, in the open, with every chance of infection and no food or water. He supposed the partially sterile nature of the arena was the only thing keeping him alive so far, but he didn't count on that to keep him alive for much longer. He needed to close the wound before he opened it up again, or worse.
He mused on how outraged his fake father would be to see his fake son win without the Careers to help him.
This mental image gave him the strength from spite. Head spinning, he hefted himself up with every piece of willpower he had, standing at the desk again, regarding the materials to hand. Bandages, thread, papers and paperclips. He had to think. He had to survive, without the Career pack. He fiddled with a large, thick paperclip under his weak fingertips, bending it out slightly. His skin caught on the edge of the metal clip and drew blood.
And Theon had his solution.
The paperclip was easy to pull, snap, to make straight, and to scrape against the wooden desk until sharp enough for use. Making a hole on the other end was harder, but Theon got hold of the other sharp edge of the snapped paperclip and bored it through the other metal with sheer determination, the rising sun pulling him on. He thread his makeshift needle- he sat in the golden rising sunlight let in by the small windows. Shaking minutely, he took a breath and held it.
And he pushed the needle through.
Sewing up flesh, he had been instructed at the Training Center, was not the same as sewing up fabric- although he had little experience of either. It was not a constant flow of thread- every tack had to be tied off separately, and making the knots again and again become harder and harder as the pain increased. Theon did not know if he was alone in the building, and he did not want to find out, but muting his own screams of pain was hard enough to be rendered impossible- eventually, he had grabbed a rubber stamp on the desk and bit down on it hard to mute his own pain. Sewing up his own chest was slow and agonising, and the partial muscle damage made lateral movement in his left arm nigh-impossible. He was in agony, but he had to sew up the wound- he had to be able to carry on. Eventually, enough of the wound was sewed up, and with shaking fingers Theon tied on the makeshift bandages, whimpering slightly as he pulled them tight against the sore, lightly bleeding skin. His wound was a litany of agony he could not put words to- he had never experienced anything like it, never.
But it was over, if not relinquished of pain, and Theon pulled on with difficulty his shirt and jacket again, trying to ignore the stiff feeling of dried blood in fabric. He had nothing to wash it with- for that matter, he had nothing to drink, or to eat. He stood up. He had to go out, find weapons, find food, find out where he was, at the very least. Reflexively, he stretched his arms upwards, as he always did.
Torn and resewn skin stretched and ripped slightly around the sewn edges and sent frayed nerve endings alight with pain. Theon screamed, loud and sudden. He bit down hard on his tongue to stop the cry, but it was too late- the city was silent, and anyone who was even vaguely in his vicinity would have heard that. He had no weapon, nothing- he was injured and alone.
And outside the unbarricaded door to his small office room, only a few metres away, Theon heard footsteps. He didn't even have time to defend himself before the doorway burst open and a figure whirled through with a blade pressed to his throat.
"Wait-wait-wait-" Theon gasped. He was not ready to die, not after what he just went through to live. The person with the blade was slim, feminine, with choppy short hair. Anna, he thought, and he was sent into a paroxysm of fear. Not her. Please not her.
"Where's the rest?!" The girl growled, pressing the blade in harder. It was an axe, he realised blandly- Anna did not use axes. Anna would not ask where the rest of the Career group was.
He noticed the short hair was chestnut red, the colour of burnished flame. The rebel. He gasped again and tried to talk.
"There isn't- they aren't- there's no Careers, please, just listen-" He gasped. Elizabeth frowned. The blade loosened just slightly on his skin, and he leapt at the chance to survive. "She attacked me, Anna, the girl that stabbed your district partner. She disbanded the Careers, she's as much my enemy as yours, please-"
Elizabeth considered him for a second, eyes squinted, blade glinting in the golden sun.
Then she stepped back and released him, the blade still hovering dangerously close to his neck.
"The Careers are disbanded?" She asked suspiciously. Theon made to move away from the position Elizabeth had pushed him into against the desk, but she levelled the axe again. "Ah-ah-ah- talk, don't move."
"Okay, okay, fine." Theon said. "Look, Sheen Astara- the One guy- he's dead. Glace tried to kill me, or at least tried to lead Sheen and I into killing each other. I'm not sure where she is. Anna- I don't think she even wanted the Careers at all. The second Glace started attacking, she targeted me. Emma and Ronan- I have no idea. They were gone, I didn't see them. But they attacked me, and I don't- I want them dead as much as you."
Elizabeth tilted the axe slightly in her grip. "You're guessing I want them dead."
"Anna attacked your guy, didn't he? Where is he?"
Elizabeth faltered slightly. "He's dead," she said with well-hidden emotion.
"Well, I'm sorry," Theon said, a concept latching onto his mind- his moment of honour coming back for once in a good way. "I saved him once- sorry I couldn't do it again."
"He tried to kill me," Elizabeth said, as if the words had leapt from her tongue unbidden. She bit her lip slightly. "I'm not sorry he's dead."
"You are." Theon said, for once able to respond to someone with honesty, not in the way a Career and future Victor was expected to. "I am. I saved his life, and it is- wrong- to know that it was for nothing."
"He thought he was following me for a reason." Elizabeth said, her eyes flicking around as if searching for cameras. "He was wrong. He died for something that didn't exist."
Theon was surprised at this. It didn't take a lot of brainpower to suppose her meaning to be rebellion- but he had always taken her to be more committed to it than Chal, from her burning her dress, from him betraying her. She was understating her own beliefs.
"No, he didn't." Theon said, taking a stab in the dark as to what she wanted, what he could offer. "Because you believe it too. You're still around, right?"
Elizabeth squinted at him suspiciously. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying that we don't have to do this." He took a chance and moved, gesturing lightly between her and him. "Fight, kill, all of that." She wanted rebellion? Theon was without the Careers already. He was an outcast already. He would give her what she wanted if it meant he could survive the next minute. "You and I- we believe in honour. You saw me save Chal. You know that's true. And what you want- you can't do that alone."
What he was suggesting, if anyone understood what he said but her, could be treason. He had to trust that he could kill her before she enacted any rebellion, before he was as much a rebel as her. He had to make sure this didn't make him a target of the Gamemakers. He took a deep breath and said the next words with as much meaning as he could, hoping only she picked it up.
"I want what you want, so let's do it together."
Elizabeth held her axe in the air a moment longer- the honed edge shone by his pulse as she deliberated.
And then it lowered, replaced by a hand, only flesh and blood.
"You are honourable." She admitted, suspicion still there but tempered with a reluctant respect.
Theon shook her hand. He hoped he would feel the same way about his honour when he recovered enough to kill her.
A migraine today almost took this chapter out of commission. It's a miracle I finished this. In any case, as ever, thank you for reading this far.