John walked through the woods, infuriated that all he could do was walk through the woods. Every day ran into the next, just one long progression of trying to rest and running and never seeming to find the end of the arena. It all just stretched in front of him into infinity, one long walk that would soon end.
He was numb and enraged and had never believed those two emotions could somehow exist at the same time, but they could. And exhaustion could exist with them. He wanted to scream or cry and at the same time, just wanted to curl up on the ground and never move again. No wonder Irene had turned to such a questionable lifestyle when she'd come back.
It was hours since he'd stopped caring where he was. It was all the arena, so what did it really matter? He's just walked and walked. He'd tried to sleep a little the night before, which failed miserably. So as soon as there was enough light to safely move through the woods, he'd started walking again.
The whole time, he kept the gun at the ready in his hand, but with an apathetic looseness to his grip.
He stopped at a narrow mountain river for water before heading up into the hills. The woods were rockier here, fewer hollows and trees and more craggy cliffs and boulders. It looked like good enough shelter. It was only midday, but the fatigue was finally setting in, forcing him to stop aimlessly trekking through the forest.
John sat down by some brush in front of a cliff, fiddling with his gun while he rested. His muscles would never relax, no matter how long he sat there. Everything was still tension, still arena paranoia. He wondered if tributes had ever had nervous breakdowns during the Games from the stress. It was a wonder that suicide, like the woman who stepped off her platform, wasn't more common.
"John."
He jumped up, whirling around at the sound of the voice. He stared at the rock face of the cliff, his brow furrowing in confusion. Residual hallucinations? No, the drug should have been long gone from his system. Was this it, then? Had the arena simply broken him?
The voice said his name again, coming from in front of him. But he saw nothing.
The brush seemed to give him an exasperated sigh, and then it moved. John backed up a couple of paces, raising his gun, thinking it was stupid even as he did. You couldn't shoot a hallucination.
But someone rose from the brush, and John could see the edge of a hole in the rock. A false face.
Sherlock stood with his hand out, as if John was an animal who would be startled if he came closer. John lowered the gun, wondering why his brain would create this of all images, but as Sherlock walked toward him, he realized he was real. This was no corpse in a gray coat. It was Sherlock, in arena black, worn out and beaten just as he was.
John closed the distance in seconds, wrapping him in a hug. Sherlock stiffened in surprise, but finally laid a hand on John's back.
"John?" John could hear the confusion, but he didn't care.
He stepped back, meeting Sherlock's eyes. He was looking down at him like he was insane. And maybe he was.
John's eyes flitted to the side of Sherlock's face, and finally registered the blood. There was a lot of blood, mostly dried, covering one side of his head, staining his hands.
"Why are you covered in blood, Sherlock? Tell me, because I have had just about enough of that."
... ... ...
Once Sherlock got him to calm down some, he showed him the small, well-hidden entrance to his hiding place. John followed obediently behind him.
The hole in the rock led to a sort of cave, and John instantly began to worry that he wouldn't be able to see, but he soon saw the hole in the rock far above at the top of the cliff. It cast a good beam of light down into the cave. It wasn't as small as he'd anticipated either. There was more than enough room to stand, and while it wasn't very large across, the two of them had a fair amount of space. It was definitely large enough for the Capitol to still be watching it.
Sherlock sat down with his back against the wall, and it suddenly dawned on John how tired he was.
John knelt down beside him, trying to get a good look at the original injury.
"What happened?"
"The woman from District 1, Kitty." He said her name like it left a bad taste in his mouth. "Repellant creature." He winced when John's fingers neared the wound.
"And where is she?"
"At the bottom of a river, as I understand it."
John could barely see the wound for all the dried blood. "I wish this was a clean injury."
"River."
"No, I'm not risking introducing something worse into this wound. We don't know what's in that water." He knew Sherlock didn't really care about the logic behind it. He probably didn't care about the injury at all, but for once John hoped the cameras were on him and that Irene was paying attention. Maybe she'd find a way to get him clean water again. "How long have you been in here?"
"Since yesterday."
John grabbed Sherlock's arm, examining it carefully to make sure the blood all over it was from the head wound and not some second injury. When he was satisfied, he let go. He sighed, sitting back cross-legged by Sherlock, staring at the stone floor of the cave. He could feel Sherlock's eyes on him.
"How have you been managing?" His voice was so much smaller out here than it was in the Capitol, back when his biggest concerns had been antagonizing Mycroft and entertaining the masses.
John looked up at him. He almost spoke, almost tried to come up with some sort of answer, but nothing would come. Finally, he just shook his head.
"Are you all right?"
"Fine," John answered, his voice even smaller than Sherlock's.
"Wrong."
"What?"
"Not fine. You have dark circles under your eyes, so no sleep of any kind last night, not even bad sleep. You were gripping your gun so tightly when you saw me that your knuckles were white. You have that scar on your shoulder where your jacket's torn. And there is blood on you, and it isn't yours or mine –"
He held a hand up for him to stop, and he did, but he continued to watch him carefully, trying to read more. "The woman from District 8 is dead."
"I know. I saw her in the sky last night. But it isn't as if she is the first person to die here, John."
He shook his head. "No, you don't understand. She saved my life. I couldn't save hers. I saw her get killed, and all I could do was kill her killer."
"That isn't all."
"What?"
"You've seen plenty of bad things. That alone wouldn't be enough to wear you down like this. There's more."
John glared at him, but continued. "I shot a child, Sherlock."
"Explain."
"Someone had ripped her stomach open and left her to bleed to death, however long that would have taken. She was scared and she was in pain."
"Mercy killing, then."
"A child, Sherlock."
"John, you can let yourself get caught up in guilty consciences all you want, but there are many worse things you could have done in this arena than put a suffering child out of her misery."
John was silent, but his clenched jaw slowly relaxed. He took a deep breath, his voice calmer when he spoke.
"Have you had to kill anyone yet?"
"No. Kitty's death was an accident, out of my hands. But I feel it's inevitable, don't you? I could have easily killed you, you know. You trusted me without hesitation."
"I still trust you."
Sherlock regarded him carefully, and they sat in silence for a while. Sherlock was the one to break it.
"You really should leave while there's still daylight."
"No."
"John, your chances don't improve by staying here. Eventually there won't be enough people –"
"Shut up, Sherlock."
"But –"
"No!" John stood up, listening to the dying reverberation of his own voice. He looked down at Sherlock and said, "I'm not leaving while you're sitting here wounded and covered in blood! I don't want to go! I'm sick of running and sick of fighting and sick of this whole goddamn nightmare! Don't you dare tell me I should go!"
"It's okay," Sherlock said quietly, seemingly unfazed by his outburst.
"No, it's not! It's not okay!" Sherlock got to his feet and stood in front of him. "None of this is okay, Sherlock!"
Sherlock grabbed him by his shoulders, holding him still. But he said nothing. John was waiting for the retort, some sarcastic remark, but Sherlock remained silent, holding eye contact. In the ensuing silence, it was harder to keep up the anger, and John felt something in him fade. His breathing was still far too fast, but it was beginning to slow some. Sherlock's face stayed mostly blank, but John could see the smallest crinkle of worry around his eyes, which smoothed the more John calmed down. He was nearly himself again, Sherlock's grip on his shoulders loosening, when they heard the beeping.
Both of their heads turned to the hole above them, their eyes tracking the sound as it got closer to the ground outside. Sherlock's hands fell to his sides. They looked back at one another, and Sherlock opened his mouth to speak.
"No," John said, cutting him off. Sherlock frowned a little and moved to take a step, and John laid a hand on his chest and said, "Sit down, Sherlock."
For a second, he thought he would try again, but after glancing down at John's hand, he quietly resumed his seat against the wall.
John emerged from the hiding place, looking around for the parachute, finally seeing it hanging from a low tree limb nearby. When he retrieved and opened it, he saw the familiar canister of water and a cloth.
"Thank god," he said under his breath.
He picked up the slip of paper. "Keep it up. They love you two. IA."
When John knelt down beside Sherlock and started cleaning away the blood, Sherlock didn't protest. But after a few minutes, he picked up the slip of paper and read it, and then scoffed and rolled his eyes. The smallest smile twitched at the edge of John's lips. Even out here, Sherlock could manage to be disdainful.
Once the blood was cleared away, John could properly see the wound. It was a nasty gash, but probably looked worse than it was, given how heads wounds were. Still, it annoyed him that he couldn't at least put some stitches on it for good measure.
They passed a while in silence after that, the afternoon light fading into the sick grays of twilight.
"I'm going outside for a minute. I need some air." John pushed himself to his feet, picking the gun up off the ground before leaving the cave. He sat down on a fallen tree nearby, looking up at the early fake stars and waiting for the nightly fanfare.
It wasn't even a full minute before Sherlock noiselessly appeared, sitting beside him. He offered no comment, but followed the line of John's gaze. John was sure Sherlock had known why he'd come out here, but he had never pegged Sherlock for someone to watch the skies for the list of the dead.
When the last of the light had gone, the music played, and the sky was overtaken. One face graced the sky, and John could only be grateful that Molly's picture was shown the night before. He could never have looked at it.
He winced. So many dead, and so few left.
Sherlock watched him, but said nothing while John watched the picture flash against the sky. John almost spoke, but he didn't. He just let Sherlock observe him in silence. It was just as well. Because whatever he would have said, Sherlock surely already knew, as he always seemed to know.
When the sky was returned to stars, John looked to Sherlock, and it was only then that Sherlock stood and walked away.
... ... ...
They sat against the cave wall, a few feet away from each other. Night fell so early that it felt later than it really was, and neither of them could manage to fall asleep. But it was the safest John had felt since entering the arena. He could almost believe the lie of safety here.
Sherlock had been quiet, saying nothing as John checked his wound in the faint light filtering in from the hole in the rock above them. But his silence was more comfortable than it had been in the past.
Now and then, John would glance over at him, and would see him staring into space, his eyes glazed over. Sometimes his fingers would tap out patterns on his leg, and he would squint a little like he was trying to read in the dark.
"What are you doing?"
"Thinking."
"About what?"
"Multiple topics at once. I have many things filed away. Passes the time."
John laughed a little under his breath, still watching Sherlock, who continued to stare out in front of him.
"You know, I hardly know anything about you. I don't think anyone really knows about you." Sherlock finally looked at him, his face unreadable. "You hardly ever talk about yourself."
"You never say anything to me about yourself, either."
"I don't have to. You already know it." Sherlock gave a small raise of his eyebrows, conceding.
"As I said in the Capitol, there's little sense in getting to know people who are going to die."
"Yeah. But since we're not planning on killing each other, it couldn't hurt. What else do you have to do?"
"I can't imagine what you would want to know."
John shrugged. "It's just nice to be able to talk to someone and actually know who you're talking to, Sherlock. Sometimes I wonder. I remember the way people talked about you back home. They never had anything nice to say about you, but I'm wondering why. You haven't given me any indication you're a bad person. A lot to put up with, maybe, but not bad."
"Good and bad are relative terms. And you said so yourself. They don't know me."
"Would you even want them to?"
"What good would it do? They've never interested me. Dull, run of the mill. What would I say to them?"
"You manage to talk to me."
"You are not dull."
John paused for a moment before trying to brush the comment off like it was nothing. "You know, you're probably not going to win any friends back home if they play the 'dull' remark."
He scoffed. "Friends? I don't have friends. I find it highly unlikely that that would change if I were to return home." He fell silent, frowning as he fiddled with a loose string on his jacket. "Perhaps I have one."
"What?"
"One friend. But it's all irrelevant anyway," he said with a dismissive flick of his hand.
There was no way to know if there were cameras on them. Probably were, knowing the Capitol. But John couldn't shake the feeling of how private this place felt despite that. Even being monitored, the sense of privacy was overwhelming. If he tried hard enough, he could almost pretend that this was a place in the woods outside of District 12, and that there weren't monsters and horrors outside.
He'd never been one to watch the Games much when he was home. But he knew many people who watched religiously, even though the death and bloodshed always made them cringe and cry, always made them feel sick. If they were on screen now, piped into everyone's homes, were the people watching touched with a sense of safety and privacy too, just as they were touched by fear when they watched people die?
... ... ...
A few hours later, they were sitting a few feet closer. Sherlock still hadn't said much, always redirecting the conversation to John. John knew what he was doing, avoiding sharing any details, but he didn't mind. He answered Sherlock's questions, and was always happy when he could get a few words out of him in response.
Even better were the rare occasions that he could draw a smile out of him.
The kiss was never supposed to happen. There had been so many long glances, so many times eyes had flitted to mouths and hands. There had been the steadily lessening space between them. There had been more than one instance of breath catching, but still, it wasn't supposed to have happened. But it had, and so easily.
It was adrenaline. That was all. Just adrenaline and timing. Or, that's what John told himself. But when Sherlock looked back at him, trying to slow his breathing back to normal, he found that excuse harder and harder to believe.
... ... ...
Sherlock insisted John sleep the first shift later that night. While it was true that he was more used to sleep deprivation than John, that had little to do with his offer. It took some convincing, but finally John agreed to at least try to sleep for a few hours. He gave Sherlock the gun after making sure he knew how to shoot it.
As soon as John drifted off, Sherlock went outside.
He sat where they had sat earlier, hating the fabricated forest sounds. Nothing was real. That had bothered him since day one, that the whole arena, while realistic feeling enough, was all just something created by someone with far too much time on their hands.
Nothing was real.
... ... ...
When John woke up a couple hours later, he came outside and sat down with Sherlock. He said something, probably telling him he needed to sleep, but Sherlock didn't hear a word he said.
Why now, of all times? Such inconvenience. Why did human beings have to be so messy? Why couldn't they all be as carefully planned and timed as the arenas and the parades?
John didn't say anything else. They were always okay with comfortable silence. He was the only person who had never seemed to feel the need to fill every waking second with words. Right then, Sherlock was incredibly grateful for that.
"Only the Capitol could make woods in the middle of winter so noisy at night. I wish they'd turn down the damn volume," John said, more to himself than to Sherlock. Sherlock quirked a smile. John said Sherlock had the observational skills, that he knew everything with a glance, but John knew the insides of people's heads just as well, even if he didn't intend to know them.
The second kiss shouldn't have happened either, yet it came even easier than the first.
Sherlock could see the instant John began to consider the implications, the slightest change in his eyes, only inches from Sherlock's. His hand was still on Sherlock's face as he ran through the realizations that Sherlock had thought of hours ago.
John brought his face close to Sherlock's, almost cheek to cheek, and said in a voice so quiet that even the Capitol would have difficulty picking it up:
"Playing the game?"
Sherlock looked out into the woods, nodding. It was an excuse, and both of them knew it. But allowing it to be anything else, anything except the game, it would have made it all too real. And given their fates in the arena, the awful truth of missed opportunities and canceled futures, it was easier to pretend they believed the act than to admit anything more.
Anything but the game would just put them at a dangerous disadvantage.
... ... ...
John went out for drinking water the next morning, carrying the canister Irene had sent. He nearly tripped four times walking down to the river. He mentally chastised himself. This was why this was all a bad idea. He couldn't afford to have his mind split. The only focus should be survival. Not...whatever this was.
He shook his head, bending down and letting the cold water flood into the canister. The river didn't look dangerous. He was still having trouble imaging how Kitty had drowned in it. But Sherlock was rarely wrong about these sorts of things, so he still made sure to pay closer attention to the wet rock around the river than he had previously.
He was halfway back when he heard a crashing in the woods. Seconds later, a man burst through the trees, stopping when he saw John's gun pointed at him. The man hadn't come quietly, blundering and nervous. He was wearing glasses, one lens cracked. Mike.
"It's okay," he said, raising his hands in surrender. "Go ahead." He spoke breathlessly. "Kill me. I'm going to die. It might as well be you."
John swallowed hard, lowering his gun. All he could see when he looked at him was Molly. This was the man she'd spoken so fondly of. This was the person she'd practically considered family.
"I'm not going to kill you, Mike." The man frowned, too confused to be relieved. "Go."
"Why? Why are you letting me leave?"
"Molly. She saved my life."
His face crumpled some, and his eyes were glazed with tears. "We were together, at the beginning of it. We got separated. I couldn't protect her."
"I couldn't protect her either." Mike nodded, understanding. "Now, please, go."
"Thank you."
John stared at the ground. He couldn't bring himself to say "you're welcome." Not under these circumstances.
He watched as Mike set off through the woods at a slower pace. Not being chased actively, then. But that didn't mean he wasn't running from something.
... ... ...
When John told Sherlock who he had seen, he did so in a perfunctory manner, in few words. He set the canister and his gun down wordlessly.
But Sherlock saw through these carefully carried out actions as he saw through everything and everyone. He laid his hand on John's shoulder, drawing his eyes up from the ground.
John took a strained breath and finally just leaned into him, hugging him tightly for just a few seconds. It was enough to take Sherlock by surprise, and when John stepped away, he looked back to the ground, staring at the gun.
Sherlock heard the beeping of a parachute before John did, and before he could protest, went to retrieve it himself.
Inside was a canister similar to the one Irene had sent the water in, but this one was filled with a cream. The note read: "Wouldn't want to scar up that pretty face, would we? IA." Sherlock gave a halfhearted smirk as he went back inside.
John looked at him expectantly, and when Sherlock held out the canister to show him, John immediately took it from his hands and sat Sherlock down, kneeling in front of him to apply the medication, welcoming the distraction.
When he was satisfied, his fingers still lingered at Sherlock's temple.
... ... ...
That night, John and Sherlock sat in their now usual place, watching the sky in silence.
When Mike's face appeared in the sky, John cringed. Sherlock saw it. John clenched his jaw so tightly it hurt. He could feel Sherlock's hand flat on his back, the closest he could manage to a soothing gesture for someone as restrained as him. But when John looked at him, Sherlock was staring at the ground, and for the first time in the arena, he looked truly sad. But was it for Mike's sake, or Molly's? Or was it for John's?
... ... ...
When John tried to sleep that night, Sherlock didn't leave, didn't go outside to keep watch. He stayed, leaning against the cave wall beside John. After a while of trying to get comfortable on the rock, John sat up, rolling his shoulders to work out the kinks, and sat back against the wall as well.
"How can anyone ever recover from this?" John asked, shaking his head. "How do victors live with themselves?"
"No one lives. And no one recovers."
John leaned his head on Sherlock's shoulder, grabbing his hand and winding their fingers together.
"It's a sick game."
"It is a game to them, John. I can't say the same for the tributes. For tributes, it's all too real. All of it is too real."
"At least the hallucinations weren't."
"Hmm. It's a poor consolation. But yes. At least they weren't. They were unpleasant."
"Wait," John said, sitting up straighter. "Were you there? When I shot that mine?"
"Yes. Don't you remember?"
"I thought you weren't real. I saw so many things, I just thought...well, I saw you twice. So I didn't think I'd seen you at all. Thought they were both hallucinations."
"I told you to run."
John nodded. "I thought I imagined it."
"You said you saw me twice?"
"Yeah. The second time, though, I saw you dead."
"Thank goodness it was only a hallucination, then."
John put his head back down. "I wish it was all a hallucination. One big bad dream. Or a real show, like a scripted one where the people don't actually die, their characters just don't come back."
"Unfortunately, John, following a script has never been an option. It's all too real."
Even John could hear what he wasn't saying.