Title: Punishment
Characters: Cuan, Syarnark, Sche
Word Count: 2,416
Warnings: Public beatings
Disclaimer: I do not own the Hunger Games and the inspiration for these characters comes from another series entirely.
Notes: lol what is plot hopefully that massive full-length fic I'm planning will actually happen one day (but I'll only post it when it's complete so...) I'd really like a beta for it but...like...I don't want to subject anyone to that massive commitment (it's over 17,000 words and that's the rough draft that is so incomplete I hardly even know what's going on)
"But what if-"
"Nothing bad is going to happen, Syar."
"Just suck it up and go."
"But stealing is-"
"I swear, if you say 'bad', I am going to-"
"Don't worry. Have more confidence in your abilities."
Cuan gave Syarnark a shove on the shoulder, unbalancing the younger boy and sending him careening out of the tight alleyway and into the busy streets in the marketplace. Syarnark was tiny in the middle of that crowd, so short that he quickly faded from view.
Cuan looked up at Sche, who turned to look away with her arms crossed over her small chest.
"You do it," she said gruffly.
With a nod, Cuan slipped into the crowd, head down and hands shoved into his pockets. He spotted Syarnark after just a few moments of searching. He kept his distance, ducking out of sight behind much taller men than himself when he thought Syarnark was going to turn in his direction.
This was a test. Like any good test, Syarnark had to pass it without guidance of any sort.
That didn't mean they were going to throw him to the proverbial wolves if something went wrong, though. Cuan was there for a reason - Sche was more likely to chew someone's head off than try to weasel her way out of a punishment for getting caught.
That wouldn't do. Cuan knew Syarnark fairly well after spending two years teaching the boy everything from pit pocketing to mathematics to color theory.
Syarnark had been rather fond of everything except color theory, actually. And he wasn't just interested in those topics - he listened and he learned.
The eight-year-old slipped through the crowd of mostly adults with ease. There were other kids around, of course, so one more boy in tattered clothes and a few well-placed bruises did not raise any alarms.
Cuan watched and waited. He bumped into a well-dressed man, who spun around, eyes blazing and an expletive on his tongue.
"I'm so sorry, sir!" Cuan blurted, turning around and drawing his hands in front of him to show that he hadn't stolen a thing.
The advantage to having a small stature, result of a few too many years of starvation, was that hardly anyone could look at the scene and say the man was justified for getting so angry. The man was tall, broad-shouldered, and intimidating compared to Cuan's thin, fourteen-year-old frame.
"Look, picking on kids again…"
"Aren't you ashamed of yourself?"
The wonderful thing about crowds of people was it made people less afraid to speak their minds. The wealthier guy spun around, eyes bitterly searching the marketplace in vain.
Cuan didn't run off. That would spell his guilt out for all to see. He stayed until he was dismissed.
"Run along, boy," the man spat. "Watch where you're going."
He didn't need to be told twice. Cuan darted into the mass of moving people, reaching his hands into his empty pockets.
He really hadn't stolen a thing. No good thief would, after attracting so much attention. Stealing was not Cuan's aim at the moment, though.
Now, where was Syarnark?
Cuan found him just as he was about to snatch a wallet from a man's pocket. Men were easier targets, in a sense, because it took more skill to reach into a purse than a pocket.
But Cuan knew that Syarnark was too slow. He would get caught.
The fourteen-year-old rushed over, not caring that he had to shove past a few pedestrians. He closed the distance between them in seconds, reached out, and snatched the wallet out of Syarnark's hand. At the same time his other arm shot out and shoved Syarnark into the crowd. Sche would fetch him.
"What the-"
He had let his elbow brush the man's back. Cuan spun around just in time to avoid the hand flying in his direction, but his momentum dragged him to the ground a second later.
All eyes were on him, on the wallet in his hand, and on the man who had realized a kid almost pit pocketed him.
Cuan gazed defiantly. It wasn't the look of a scared kid and it infuriated the man, who reached out to grab him by his upper arm.
"You little rat," the man sneered. "Let's say what the peacekeepers have to say about this, hm?"
Cuan resisted the urge to spit in the man's face. Syarnark was probably far away by now.
No, he took that back. He saw the head of auburn hair in the crowd and mentally groaned. What was Sche doing?
"Guh!"
Cuan tasted blood. He had bit his tongue despite his best efforts to keep it out of the way, but he could hardly feel the pain compared to the lacerations across his back and shoulders.
His skin burned and tingled as his head flopped down, chin touching his chest. His shoulders ached and felt like they were going to pop out of their sockets, though he logically knew that the peacekeepers weren't applying enough pressure to do so.
He knew that his back, while cut open, was certainly not on fire. Most of skin was still intact. But it was hard to tell his own body to stop feeling the pain, even though his mind screamed that it wasn't such a big deal.
"Ah!"
He could hear laughter, but nothing except for annoyance at his own display of weakness stirred in Cuan's chest. He gazed at the adults through hazy, pain-filled eyes, but he didn't feel any real resentment towards them.
One of the men growled and slapped him across the face. They were yelling at him to stop putting on a brave act, maybe for their own sake more than his.
He'd seen the looks on their faces earlier, when they asked him to get on his hands and knees and apologize for his crime.
One of them lifted his chin and spat into his eyes, making Cuan flinch. And the man asked, again, if he wanted to apologize instead of riding out the beating.
"No thank you," he said with a small smile on his face.
Cuan had asked for this punishment. He had taken the blame for Syarnark's mistake, so he wasn't about to complain about the consequences. He knew, logically, that they only beat people in public to fuel the sense of downtrodden humiliation they used to keep the populace in line. None of these men really cared that he had stolen from someone. None of the people in the crowd cared, either.
So then, whether or not this was really a punishment - whether it served its purpose of being humiliating - was all up to Cuan.
He would have smiled if another lash didn't slice open his back at that very moment.
It hurt. He couldn't really deny that. But he took the pain, slightly annoyed at his body for reacting like a cowed puppy at the mercy of a wolf twice its size.
When they dropped his arms, he fell to the pavement and couldn't stop himself from hitting it face-first. With a weak cough, he shifted his burning muscles until he could shuffle himself to his knees.
He hung his head so no one could see the indifference that clouded his eyes, still glossed over in pain but lacking the utter resentment he should have felt towards his assailants. He heard the men shuffle uncertainly around him for a few moments.
Then one of the men tossed a cloth at his head - his shirt. He grabbed it before the fabric touched the blood trickling out of his wounds. It was a new shirt. There was no use in dirtying it.
Licking his chapped lips, he still tasted blood. He was thirsty, as beaten men often were, and he had little strength left to lift himself to his feet. There were still eyes on him, looking at his back, tracking him predatorily, but he ignored him as he limped away from the town square.
"What a poor, stupid boy," he heard from somewhere in the crowd. He ignored them, too.
Cuan would make it back on his own, no matter how much he wanted to collapse and let one of the others drag him back. He had to, even if he ended up bringing himself back to the orphanage on his hands and knees.
His hands trembled as he slipped into an alleyway, sinking into the dark and the shadows. It was comfortable here, even if it was hard to see, for a kid like him. He ran his hands along the rough concrete walls, concentrating on the texture beneath his fingers.
He saw figures appear at the other end of the alley and tensed. The motion pulled at his wounds, but he didn't let a hiss of pain escape his lips. The most important time to conceal your weakness was when you were injured.
They moved and he moved, until a familiar voice called out, "Cuan, it's us!"
The weight of that voice sank into his brain. His body relaxed before his mind registered the owner that voice. It was abrasive, grating, and even more familiar to Cuan than his own.
"Hakon?" Cuan called out. He sounded like he was speaking through a wall of sandpaper and speaking rather felt like it, too. He was just lucky that puberty had barely set in for him yet, or else his voice would sound even worse.
A short figure - Syarnark, his mind registered sluggishly - broke away from the group and came running down the alleyway at him. If he hadn't already realized who it was, Cuan might have stepped back and growled warily, but he simply stood still and let the boy wrap thin arms around his waist tenatively.
"C-Cuan, I'm…" Cuan gazed wearily at the head of auburn hair pressed against his chest and smiled. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
" 's okay," Cuan murmured, reaching out to pat the boy on the head. "I'm okay."
The others came trotting down the alleyway. Cuan would have slumped against the wall in relief if his back wasn't figuratively burning.
"That was such a stupid thing to do," Sche snipped.
"Need help getting back?" Hakon offered, though not genuinely. Cuan heard the slightly too cheery lilt in his tone.
He shook his head and pushed Syarnark over to Amaya.
He frowned. They shouldn't have all come at once. But, there was no one looking - he couldn't feel any eyes on them, at least. With a sigh that rattled in his throat, Cuan followed them out of the streets.
Syarnark didn't stop crying until he fell asleep at Cuan's side, tiny fists curled in his shirt. A swath of semi-clean bandages was wrapped around his torso, beneath one of Hakon's old t-shirts, but his skin still burned. It felt like acid was eating his flesh, but he knew it was only the antiseptic. Sche had taken it from - somewhere, he wasn't sure where.
Sche sat across from him, arms crossed as they watched their youngest member doze.
"Why'd you do that?" she asked.
Cuan blinked. "Take the blame?"
"What else."
It had been a split second decision. Reasonably, Cuan should have left Syarnark to deal with the consequences on his own. There would be times when no one was around to bail him out, times when he wouldn't be able to rely on the others. Sche and Hakon, maybe even Amaya, would have left him to get caught.
Cuan had been planning on doing that, too, at first. He saw no reason to walk on glass around the boy. He was already eight-years-old.
It seemed like an impulse decision, no matter how one went about it. Sche would probably give him a short bark of laughter if he chalked it up to that.
"I wanted to cement his loyalty to us," Cuan breathed, lifting his eyes to match Sche's gaze. She blinked once and stifled a laugh, rocking back on the cot with one hand waving at him in dismissal.
"No way!"
"I'm being completely serious, Sche."
"Really? Completely serious?"
Cuan sighed. "Yes."
"You didn't need to do that," Sche said immediately. She motioned loosely to the sleeping boy curled against Cuan's chest. "You've had that kid's loyalty since the day you met 'im."
"No way," Cuan breathed with a soft laugh and no inflection to the words. "Well, it's better to be certain."
Sche began to shove her medical supplies into a nondescript trash bag.
Completely sanitary. Cuan didn't dare bring it up while she was bandaging his wounds.
"By getting yourself hurt, though? You're crazy," Sche scoffed. She picked up a needle - the same one she used to stitch the largest gashe back up. "You could die."
"I know," Cuan said. Not missing a beat, he added, "and it'd be all your fault."
"What! You little-"
"Hey, hey, hey, I'm injured, remember?" Cuan lifted his free hand up in a gesture of mock surrender. "You sewed me up with that rusty old needle and tossed these used bandages on me, so if I die of an infection it'll all be on you. Maybe I should write a will."
"It'd be an awfully short will," Sche snapped, reaching a hand up to drag her fingers through strands of light brown hair. Cuan's own hair was still wet from the awkward bath he had been forced to take with Hakon, who wasn't exactly the most reliable caregiver.
Tomorrow, he'd probably have two new bruises to add onto the collection started by the peacekeepers.
His back still ached. The stitches pulled and itched, but he couldn't move without waking Syarnark, who had just fallen asleep after crying his eyes out.
"Why'd you do that though? Syar isn't about to betray us, y'know."
Cuan lifted a strand of soft, auburn hair between his fingers. "Just making sure. It wasn't a big deal, anyways."
"You're so weird."
"So are you, by association."
"Cuan!"
He pressed his nose against Syarnark's soft hair and grinned.
It isn't really explained too well (oops my mistake, but this is just a quick thing I wrote up on a car ride so I'm not editing it too heavily), but Cuan's wounds aren't actually that bad. He repeatedly says that it feels worse than it is, and the peacekeepers keep trying to offer him another way out - by begging for them to stop - and this is probably because they feel bad about beating up a 14-year-old kid.
lol will the day ever come when the others get to troll Cuan instead of the other way around?