LIV: The Games - Day Eleven, Evening.

Vadric Gaerwyn, 17
Tribute of District Six

If they don't move soon, Vadric is going to fuse to the wall.

It wouldn't be the worst fate to stumble into—definitely not the most painful. It would be befitting of her, at least. For so long they've wished they could just be in one place and never move again. It's almost a dream.

But they don't have those anymore.

He stretches out his arms, wincing as his joints pop, exposing his bloody fingers to the dying light. Just as quickly they stuff each arm back into hiding, pulling themselves a few inches away from the wall to work out the fierce ache that lingers alongside her spine. What parts of them aren't numb are coming back to life in burning pins and needles, and Vadric can only squeeze her eyes shut as the worst of them come and go, accepting it for what it is.

Penance. A weak one, but a start. They ought to be feeling some amount of pain for what occurred. She knew it wasn't right, told Ravi as much.

Wherever Ravi is now.

Vadric knows he hasn't left—at least, not the way he came. Once they became aware of his presence it was impossible not to watch for it, even as they drifted through various stages of consciousness.

The floor shakes beneath them and Vadric flattens themselves back against the wall, pulling their knees up to their chest as the entire ceiling seems to shift, the stones cracking. A shower of dust and gravel rains down over them, but it quiets. A moment later the only thing Vadric can hear is his own heart thudding in his ears, breath held so tightly their chest aches.

Any person with a smidgen of rationale left would get the hell out of here, but Vadric isn't sure that's possible. They inch closer to the main walkaway, legs scraping against the uneven grooves in the floor as they peer up and down into the darkness. There's no sign of anything wandering about, and no indication any true damage was done.

The least they can do is get up.

So they do, with painstaking slowness, fingers clawing for purchase at the edge of the coffin that looms next to them until their feet are beneath them, shaky though they may be. Sitting there forever isn't an option anymore than thinking about it is. The cannon was clear as day. The knife in their hands wasn't imaginary.

Vadric is a terrible person. She always suspected something was up, something so wrong deeply inside them that it was beyond repair, but now they have concrete proof. They don't even have any right to be standing.

But here they are. Evidently by their trying and failing, laying down to die in the dark isn't an option.

As they stand, another dusting of debris from the ceiling falls over their head, catching in her hair. It's quiet, though. Almost unusually quiet. A mercy would be enough of the ceiling collapsing downward that it took Vadric out within seconds, but there's not enough noise to warrant it.

The only thing left to hear is breathing, soft and distant. It's not that thing, not what was upstairs, because if it is then that means Vadric really was wrong, and if Vadric was wrong…

Levi will still be dead because of her no matter what.

Their fingers grip desperately at the edges of the next pedestal as they stare resolutely into the dark, willing their eyes to focus. There, shoved into a small alcove hardly big enough to hold him, Ravi lies curled up on his side, slumped over in a position entirely suggestive of the fact that he had no intention of falling asleep. Having spent so long trying to avoid it themselves, Vadric knows the feeling all too well.

By the looks of him, he'll be as sore as Vadric is when he wakes, neck awkwardly crooked, legs curled tight to fit himself into the meager space. He's in much the same position Vadric imagines they were yesterday, their situations reversed. Just like Vadric doesn't have it within themselves to end his life, he doesn't appear armed either. They're at an impasse.

Unless you could take walking around aimlessly as progress. Vadric backs away, feet falling softly so as not to wake him up. For most people, sleep is a good thing. He could probably use it. Who is Vadric to think interrupting it is an option?

They return to the walkway, shaking hands reaching for one of the dying torches. As much as they have been trying to hide from the light, there is no ignoring the permanent stickiness clinging to their hands, the lines of blood dried under their nails. In the firelight it glows orange, flakes of it beginning to peel away.

They keep having to remind themself that it was always this way. They've been a killer for a year now, and he has no right to mourn Levi, not even the friendship they wish could have existed. In reality he could just be another corpse down here, locked away beneath the stone to rot. If Vadric wants to continue on, that's what they'll have to pretend.

But do they want to continue on? Rather, do they have a choice otherwise? They're still moving. Something in them wants to live, or at least find proof that this entire existence isn't a long-standing nightmare.

Where they are right now seems to only further that idea. Vadric examines each tomb, none larger than the one that now lies empty. Some are almost woefully small in comparison. Still, no matter how hard she searches, they all seem to hold the same thing: royalty. Monarchs. Only the people of utmost importance to a world like this one.

Why the hell is Vadric down here? They have no place among people like these—their mom is the only person in the world that truly cares about him, and everyone else is better off pretending Vadric simply doesn't exist. Pharix doesn't care. Weston never did care. Levi's gone and it's their fault.

They have no right to any of it. It would be better if they didn't exist.

It would have been so much easier for everyone.

Ilan Azar, 17
Tribute of District Seven

"You planning on getting up any time soon, sleeping beauty?"

"Not yet," Ilan mumbles, burying his face further in the crook of his elbow. It's cold, the threadbare blanket he's laid over the stone doing nothing to create a barrier between it and his body. He wants nothing more than to curl up here forever, try and find some warmth.

He misses the sun.

"Ilan?" Amani asks, voice calm and careful. It's so different than the words he heard just before—the teasing, casual lilt is gone, replaced by the tone Amani has adopted for him since Sanne.

It was so different.

Ilan blinks, lifting his head a mere few inches from the floor. The feeling of another body lying by his side dissipates, the weight of a carefully placed arm draped over his abdomen and curled over his ribs. It almost felt like a dream.

The entire world shifts as he comes out of it, the stark emptiness returning all at once. The floor shudders beneath him, his body crawling with the feeling of a thousand phantom hands prodding at him, poking, trying to drag him down.

And then the entire world really does shift.

Ilan is moving without making the decision to do so. Sliding, clawing at the ground. He thuds into the wall, spine alighting with pain. A hand locks around his wrist, warm and very real. He blinks again. Amani is there, pulling him, dragging him up. He mouths something, but Ilan can't hear it through the sudden roar of crashing rock plummeting to the earth below.

All he's able to recognize is that his feet are beneath him now, holding steady despite the fog clouding Ilan's brain. Amani has released him only to head for the door—the entire room is at an angle, making each step forward nearly impossible, his legs burning with the effort. But the door opens. He's almost there. They can get out of this before—

Ilan stops. A familiar shadow blocks the door, one Ilan thinks he almost forgot but no. He could never forget him.

There's no forgetting the most beautiful thing you've ever seen in your entire life.

"Vitali?" he asks, voice a pathetic croak. His voice must be hardly audible, but Vitali smiles at him, the easy curve of his lips, so familiar and warm.

He smiles—

Beckons.

Ilan blinks and he's gone.

"Vitali!" he shouts, urgency suddenly pouring from his voice. He's out the door before he recognizes making the decision to do so, Amani's fingers brushing against his sleeve. At the top of the stairs to the left, the shadow flickers, there for a second and gone the next. He's getting away.

Ilan's brain races with the idea that he's here, here when he shouldn't be, but the urgency to see him again outweighs all. He practically trips over the steps as he begins his ascent, and distantly he hears Amani's voice shouting after him, pleading, but it hardly matters. Besides, it's getting further away.

No matter how quickly he runs Ilan can only manage to see a sliver of him, not close enough to bear witness to or touch. It doesn't matter, because Ilan would follow him to the ends of the earth if given the chance to. No matter how much his body begins to ache as he continues climbing, no matter how much of the walls are literally peeling away around him. Stones continue to crumble apart and fall; more than once he stumbles into the side of the twisting staircase, but nothing can stop him. Nothing.

Something hits him square in the shoulder, heavy and sharp. Pain shoots all the way down to his elbow, and Ilan hardly feels it. Nothing. He claws at the wall, pulling himself further on as part of the stairs seem to slip away beneath his feet.

The stairs end so abruptly Ilan nearly runs into the wall that faces him instead. Only a lone door remains, hanging off its broken hinges, and a set of narrow smaller stairs leading to an open hatch in the ceiling. Exposed is the glorious orange and red of the sky as the sun dies, but Ilan can hardly find it in himself to look at it as his feet finally touch the roof.

It's beautiful. Of course it is. But there's nothing more beautiful than the figure silhouetted against it, looking out into the now-empty gardens and beyond. It's as if he's surveying the damage, watching the castle fall from above.

Vitali raises a foot and braces it against the parapet, leaning forward as if he's about to spread wings and fly. Ilan's feet stutter, hands reaching out even though he's still not yet close enough to touch him. "Vitali?" he asks. He sounds afraid, too young. "What—what are you—"

And he turns, finally, to face Ilan. His smile is so brilliant he could well and truly die with only that as his last sight and find no complaints. "Admiring the view."

They always did watch the sunset together. The western window in the treehouse always allowed them the perfect angle.

Ilan moves closer. Just as he reaches out again Vitali moves away, following the roof's edge until the battlement ends. On the other side of it lies a narrow edge and an even more narrow walkway. The thought of watching Vitali navigate them makes his stomach turn.

"Please don't," he begs. "Just—just stay here. Please."

Vitali steps up onto a crumbling gap in the wall, looking over the edge to where he could so easily take a step down and move even further away. He turns instead, seeming to sway in the wind. Or maybe it's the tower shifting. Ilan can no longer tell.

"You got no faith in me?" Vitali asks, his voice a teasing lilt. "'C'mere."

He doesn't touch him. Doesn't think he should. If Vitali wanted him to, he would have reached out himself. Ilan inches closer, breath held tight in his chest.

"Look," Vitali urges. "We're fine."

He can't make himself look. The only thing Ilan has eyes for is the boy hovering above him, gazing downwards without a care in the world. He's so real, every minute detail just as he remembered it.

"Where did you go?" he whispers. Vitali turns to face him, slowly, coming to a crouch on the roof's edge so that they're eye-to-eye, so close that Ilan can feel his warmth, see the glimmer in his eyes.

"Nowhere," Vitali says. Still that smile, never fading.

"But you—"

Vitali reaches out, and Ilan snaps his mouth shut, forcing his eyes to stay resolutely open, watching Vitali's fingers descend towards his face. He won't ruin it, won't chase him away again. The pads of his fingers brush gently against Ilan's skin as he tucks away some of the curls that lay over his forehead.

"I was always here," Vitali murmurs, finger tapping gently at Ilan's temple. "Right here."

He shakes his head. Vitali's hand slips away, and he nearly cries out. Ilan is forced to watch as he stands once again.

"Please don't," he chokes out once again. "Vitali."

The moment he lowers himself down from the tower's edge and onto the walkway that winds into the distance, he feels a part of himself fall with the rest of the building. Somehow, that doesn't stop him. Ilan scrabbles for the same gap that Vitali stepped through, ignoring the still-burning ache in his arm as he begins to pull himself through. As long as he can see him, there's still hope. He'll catch up, fix this, neither of them will fall. That's all he needs.

A hand grabs at him, so suddenly that Ilan feels his arm is nearly yanked from his socket. If he hadn't had such a grip at the wall, he would have surely been pulled to the ground. Ilan struggles for a firmer hold, turning despite what he already knows. Amani has caught up. Amani has a hold of him, and he's not letting go.

"Let me go—"

"Ilan, whatever you're seeing, it's not real. I know you probably don't want to believe me, but it's not. You need to come with me now, you'll die up here."

"I have to go after him," he insists. "What else am I supposed to do?"

"Come with me. Live."

"It doesn't matter! I need him, that's all, I don't need anything else—"

"I'm not letting go."

"You have to," he says. "You will."

"You think I'm going to let you do this?" Amani asks.

No one is letting him do anything. Ilan's mind is made up. He glances backward, at Vitali's form, growing smaller and smaller by the second. He'll lose him if he doesn't get over this edge soon, and then what? He never sees him again?

That's not a life. Not one Ilan wants to live, at least.

"Let me do what?" he asks weakly. "Make my own choice? Why not? You did."

Amani's face falls like he's been shot, and his fingers flinch and tighten around Ilan's arm. Ilan can see him crumbling the same way everything is around them, his resolve fading. How can he rob Ilan of a choice? He knows what it's like to have one, to wake up and realize it wasn't good enough, that it had been ripped away.

He knows what it's like to live even when you don't know if you should.

"Let me go," he murmurs. "Please."

Amani is shaking. That, while excusable with their surroundings, is so evident to him he can't ignore it. Ilan should do something. Hug him. Thank him. Anything.

He doesn't have the energy anymore—he just wants Amani to let him go.

And let him go Amani does. His fingers falter. Slip away. His hand falls empty to his side, swinging in the air, and Ilan feels a flood of relief wash over him. This is what freedom feels like. He can be okay again. He will be okay.

He's going where he's meant to.

Amani Layne, 18
Tribute of District Four

The moment he lets Ilan go, he feels nothing but regret.

The other boy lowers himself through the gap and disappears for a half-second in which Amani's heart nearly stops. Ilan reappears just as quickly on the next segment of the battlement, balancing carefully on the narrow edge.

Amani can still reach him. He reaches his hand out, expecting to brush against the fabric of Ilan's shirt, haul him back to safety.

The roof rips apart from beneath Ilan before Amani can feel anything.

There's not even time for Ilan to react, nothing he can do to save himself, no place to grab a hold of or jump to. One moment the roof is there, and the next it's gone in a cacophony of dust and rock, seeming to explode from within. Still, Amani throws himself against the parapet's edge, reaching like there's still a chance. Distantly, he knows he's screaming. He can feel it in his throat. But he doesn't hear it.

Amani's fingers grasp at nothing but empty air. The entire tower shifts beneath him, groaning as it rips free from the earth, throwing him to the ground. Amani is forced into a corner, wrapped around himself, arms curled around his head as the entire world seems to come apart.

But he's not falling. He knows without having to see that the surrounding walls have been ripped away, sending the tower itself askew, but it is not entirely gone. There is still something solid beneath him. The rumbling seems to radiate further out now, and he knows without looking that this area is not the only thing being taken down so violently. Amani uncurls slowly, aware of vague spots of pain where rubble has made contact with him, but nothing that hurts too badly to move. Only then does he grab part of the stone that is still left intact and haul himself up, body draped over the tower's edge and looking down, down, so far down.

He can see nothing. The cloud of debris is too thick, stinging at his eyes and clogging his throat. The rubble has been dispersed into numerous mountains, each one seeming greater than the last.

He needs to get down there, but there's no quick way to do it. If he goes back for the stairs, there's no telling if he finds an exit into the grounds. Being careful has never sounded so wrong.

There are enough handholds for him to slip over the edge without meeting an immediate demise, however, and his feet find enough solid chunks of rock to reassure him that he won't immediately tumble several dozen feet down into the wreckage. Amani can't tell how far he still has to go even after quite a few minutes of moving, but he has to be getting closer. His palms are bleeding, the skin alight with gash after tiny gash, the jagged stone serving no purpose beyond making him hurt.

He can't be sure how long it takes, but when Amani finally steps down yet again he finds he has nowhere else to go. The debris field that has covered the gardens is thick, practically impenetrable, but he's reached the bottom.

Amani practically chokes on the air as he opens his mouth, the particles stinging deep in his throat. "Ilan!"

He doesn't know why he's bothering, but he doesn't know what else to do. There's not a single part of him that thinks Ilan is going to answer.

"Ilan!" he yells again, beginning to pick his way through the ruins. He was supposed to protect him; why did Amani let him go?

He's forced to look back at the sky, trying to pinpoint where they were standing, where he would have fallen. It feels like an endless search. The bloodiness begins to leech from the sky, plunging Amani's surroundings first into gray and then an inky black. Even that doesn't stop him from seeing it as the dust begins to clear, the light failing to illuminate it—a hand poking free from the rubble, fingers as bloodied as his own but infinitely more broken.

The name dies on his lips. Amani crouches down, reaching not for the hand but for the broken rock that obscures the rest of him, heaving away each piece. His hands protest the action, raining droplets of blood down around him, but he pays them no mind.

Ilan's eyes are closed. His face is bloody, gashed open—Amani imagines the rest of him, where he cannot see, is even worse. And yet despite the brutality of all there's only one thing he can fixate on. There's an almost-smile on his face, a tranquility to his resting expression that Amani has never seen before.

It only took death for it to be possible.

It makes sense that he wouldn't have heard the cannon, but Amani finds himself reaching forward regardless, fingers closing around Ilan's wrist. He wonders if someone did this once upon a time, if they found him and searched for a pulse they weren't sure would ultimately be there.

He doesn't know who found him. He never asked, and no one ever told him. It was the easiest way to continue on.

So how does he continue on from this?

Amani settles more firmly down, knees aching with the effort of remaining there, but he can't move otherwise. Or maybe he doesn't want to. All of the things Amani thought he could escape were true. He's not good for anything. He's worthless. Trying to protect anyone is pointless because he's not capable of it, and in the end he can hardly save himself, intentional or otherwise.

"I'm sorry," he says, but he can't be saying it to Ilan. There's no one around to hear it otherwise. That must mean Amani is saying it to himself, an apology long overdue.

He is sorry, for all of it. For Sanne and Ilan and everyone else in their own tragedies.

They wouldn't want him to die, but Amani knows the chances are slim. If he's going to get up and fight, he's running out of time. But he might just have to. Not now, when the dark has come and the moon is mere a sliver in the sky. Not yet.

But soon.

Sloane Laurier, 17
Tribute of District Three

The fog is almost comforting.

Key word being almost.

If it didn't hurt so fucking bad, Sloane thinks it would be. Not unlike the warm, heavy sleepiness that comes with being high. Thing is, though, she's on fire. Burning from the inside out. Her entire leg throbs even as she just lays here.

She told Casia she didn't think she was going to die, but that was… some time ago. Truthfully, she has no idea. It could have been hours, could have been days. All Sloane truly knows is that it's much worse now, and there's no turning back time. Here she is, taken down by some wretched, dilapidated motherfucker who more than likely doesn't even have a heartbeat. That's karma, she thinks—for what, she most certainly does not know, but it's karma nonetheless.

She's been tuning out Casia for much too long now. Sloane turns to her, still squashed up against the door, ear pressed to the wooden slats. Listening for something. Her lips move, but Sloane still doesn't hear it. That can't be the best thing in the world.

Without further interaction, Casia turns to her, a sudden dose of urgency injected across her face. She fits both of her arms beneath Sloane and begins to stand, teeth gnashing together as she struggles with the weight.

"What?" she asks blearily. Her leg turns to fire when she puts weight on it, but there's not much of a choice otherwise unless she wants to drag Casia back to the ground with her.

"Did you not hear me?"

"No?"

"It's coming, I think. We have to go."

Sloane pulls herself from Casia's grasp, leaning back heavily against the wall. Of course it is. It got a taste of blood—why would it quit so easily now?

She starts to laugh, almost hysterically. Casia's eyes laser in on her, but Sloane can't make herself stop. "Sloane—"

"Just go," she insists, waving a hand. "It's fine."

"What?"

"Go."

"But—"

"But nothing, kid," Sloane says. "You really think I'm incapable of outpacing it in this state? You're not strong enough to drag me, and even if you were it's going to catch up eventually. You want to die to that thing?"

"Do you?"

"No. But better to die doing something, right?"

She's never done anything for a true purpose. All those people dying around her in the first Games, their blood on her hands, Talos… there was never any reason for it, because Sloane didn't need one. She was simply floating through life, waiting for the next high. That was all she had, and all she was. Nothing more.

"It's going to rip you apart," Casia says quietly. "You know that, right?"

"Now, don't threaten me with a good time." Sloane huffs, pushing herself off from the wall. Casia is still blocking the door, but she doesn't suspect it's for very long. "I'm giving you options. Listen to me. Take off now, and let me deal with it. Or, if you're so worried about it ripping me apart just do it yourself. I know you're capable of it. Once that's done you can move on. Win, if you want."

Casia is silent, which isn't a surprising state to find her in, but it's the look in her eyes that has Sloane really watching. She looks torn, teeth gnawing at a newly-bloodied lip. Her eyes flicker from Sloane to the door and back again.

What Casia doesn't know is that Sloane never really had a chance. She could win, sure, but what then? What sort of future does she have?

At least Casia could have one.

Talos would be proud of her, too. Him and his family both. Let them watch as Sloane actually does something worthwhile for once in her pathetic life, for someone that actually means something. She doesn't know when Casia became that, but it's as real as the threat outside the door.

Sloane pushes her aside, reaching for the exit. Casia grabs ahold of her arm, but there's no force behind it. Her eyes are fixed firmly on the ground, and Sloane can guess why. Isn't it funny how things change, people change?

"You're sure?" Casia asks. She's still just a thirteen year old girl.

"Never been more sure," she agrees. "Let's go."

She pushes the door open, leaving neither of them room to hesitate any longer. The moment she has nothing left to hold onto Sloane stumbles, nearly careening back to the floor, but she manages her way to the middle of the hall, the fever pounding at her temples, sweat dripping down her brow.

Casia lingers behind her. Down the hall, at the next junction, that damned ugly thing lingers, unmoving. It knew they were there. It was waiting.

Has she mentioned that she fucking hates the Gamemakers?

"Go," she tells Casia, though she doesn't turn around to face her. No goodbyes. No emotions. It's better that way.

For at least one of them.

Even as she says it, she knows Casia hasn't left. Her presence is minimal, more akin to a shadow than a human, but Sloane has become accustomed to it. Appreciative of it, even.

Slowly, the figure down the hall turns to her, and seconds later it begins its lumbering pace down the hall. The tip of its sword drags along the stone, chills running up and down her spine. Casia knife remains buried deep in the socket of its non-existent eye, the blade dulled with a black ichor.

"You really are one ugly bastard, you know that," she shouts. The castle rumbles in response; Sloane would like to think it's approval. "Why you going so slow? You scared?"

Sloane finds she's not scared—not really. She should have been dead a long time ago, and the world would have been better off for it. But at least if she's going to die now, she can die with the knowledge that something comes out of it.

"Come on," she snaps. "Let's get this—"

Pain erupts in her neck. Something seeps over her shoulder and down her chest, running in rivulets, soaking her shirt. It feels distant compared to everything else.

And Sloane smiles.

She can't speak. Can't utter a thanks through the blood filling her throat. Small hands lower her to the ground, cradling her head as she's laid on the stone. Sloane knew she would do it—she always knew. Casia would not let her be torn apart. Once upon a time she wouldn't have blinked to watch it, but oh how they've changed.

She knew the tears in Casia's eyes were real even if she couldn't see them.

The rest of the blade pulls free from her throat. Sloane stops trying to breathe, letting it wash over her. Above her Casia remains, nothing more than a blurry shadow. There's a flicker, and she's gone. Running, hopefully. Trying to live.

One of them should, and Sloane always knew which one it was going to be.

And yet, she's happy.

8th. Ilan Azar, District Seven.
7th. Sloane Laurier, District Three.

So. This one hurt a lot? I mean I knew it was going to, but still. Yikes. I don't imagine it's probably much better for anyone else but regardless I still hope you can manage to find some sort of enjoyment in it and in the fact that we only have two more Games chaps to go.

Until next time.