LVI: The Games - Day Twelve, Evening.
A storm is coming.
So you best start running.
No you can't control, feel it in my bones.
I'm coming for the, coming for the—
I'm coming for the throne.
Casia Braddock, 13
Tribute of District Nine
Casia has no idea, not even the faintest clue, of who could be left.
People didn't used to matter to her. They were inconsequential, a bunch of faces and names that would pass by as quickly as they appeared.
It's been a long time since Casia was truly able to think like that; who's left does matter. Back when this all started, she was the last person anyone would have expected to be here. No doubt everyone else still standing had marginally better odds. They're older. More experienced. They almost always win.
She can't forget that. She has to be the exception.
Even though her body cries out for her to stop, Casia knows that's not an option. She's practically running again, and this time the halls are collapsing directly behind her. There's just enough room to escape it, to show Casia that they don't want her dead this way. They're herding her somewhere, to someone.
To the end. She actually feels ready for it.
For a few minutes after leaving that wretched mutt behind on the ground, Casia had felt only the opposite, losing count of how many times she glanced backwards out of sheer paranoia. No matter how many times she looked, it didn't move. That hadn't stopped her from thinking it would. Headless or not, it wasn't meant to exist to begin with. If the Gamemakers wanted it to come after her, it would.
Casia had stared and stared, all the way until the ceiling had started collapsing and finally buried the damn thing in a pile of rubble so deep it had no hope of clawing its way back out.
Good riddance.
After that, it was only moving on, trying to find her purpose—where and who it may be. She's running out of options. Doors remain closed. Hallways are dead ends.
The last thing she expects to find is an inconsequential room.
Of course, Casia immediately recognizes what's past it. Even more so she recognizes the sound of voices, dim and through at least a set of walls or two. Loud enough to be obvious, and enough that she believes whoever it is is preoccupied with something that isn't her. Most people usually aren't.
That doesn't stop her from turning the place upside down. She investigates every nook and cranny at a hurried pace, yanks the sword out of the suit of armor's gloved hands and shoves it in a trunk. It's too heavy for her to wield, which means no one else is going to get a hand on it. She can't risk that.
Only when she's investigated every possibility, looked at everything to be seen, does she open the door to the room beyond. The voices get louder—if she had to guess they're in the opposite room, but Casia doesn't plan on finding that out. She needs to make herself scarce, and fast.
There's not much in the room besides the obvious. Casia flees all the way down the center of it, sheathing her weapons only long enough to wedge herself in a narrow gap between a wide stone pillar and the even colder wall. Tapestries quiver around her, fighting to hold on, and they create just enough shadow that any quick glance would pass her over.
So she hopes, at least.
Even though relaxation is at a minimum now, the pause finally allows Casia to look over the barren room. A long runner in intricate red and gold weaves from the doors all the way to the dais, concealing the polished floor beneath it. This may just be the only room left in the entire castle where the candelabras, higher than she is tall, still burn bright. For the first time in a long time, Casia can feel warmth.
Casia has only ever been able to appreciate beauty in the wild. But this, she has to admit, has something magnificent to it. The dying rays of the sun illuminate the throne placed perfectly in the center of the raised platform, each bit of gold seeming to glitter and any comfort rendered black in the shadow.
There's a point to her being here—frankly, there's been a point to everything. But this is more.
She's made it. She can make it through the rest of it, too.
Casia ducks further into her spot of concealment when the voices in the next room over seem to rise. In her deep-seated focus, she nearly misses the door once again opening on the opposite side of the room, the same one she had just crept through moments before. Casia presses herself as tightly against the pillar as she can manage, shoulders and back aching as the room shakes, her very bones rattling against the stone. She can hardly turn her head to look less she give herself away, but she has just enough vision to see them.
They move with just the same amount of caution, frozen in the doorway for a few heartbeats as their eyes skim the room, surveying. Even when they eventually come up empty they still refuse to move, and Casia doesn't find that she can harbor any blame for it.
Caution, to some degree, might have kept him alive. She can't say she expected to see him here based on what little information she has stored in her brain, but how many people would have expected her to be here? There's no point in underestimating anyone; she has to be better than that.
She has to be a lot of things. She has to go out there and finish what she can before it's too late.
The first time around, Casis knows she never hesitated, not even for a second. It was like second-nature, a disturbing fact for any girl her age, but something she had chosen to embrace. If she was capable of it, why chase the ability away? She was still alive for it, wasn't she? Casia had known that if she could make it out the first time, she had a chance of doing the same the second time.
If she made it out of this, though, that was it. There was only back to Nine, an almost lackluster ending for everything she had been through. But it wasn't so bad, was it? It was home. Everyone else, dead or alive, would kill for it.
For the first time in a long time, Casia allows herself to truly think about it. Envision it. That cramped house she was so determined to hate and the siblings she spent so much time avoiding. Her mom, shaking when she hugged her goodbye, her dad's last kiss on her forehead.
She wants it back.
Casia takes a deep breath, tightening her grip around the knife. She can do this. She has to. Mom, Dad, everyone else. If I still mean something, if you still think of me. You may have forgotten, and I wouldn't blame you.
It's been a long time, but I'm coming home.
Vadric Gaerwyn, 17
Tribute of District Six
They've never felt such terror before.
That must say something, right? A person they've spent the better part of an entire year with and the mere sight of him is enough to inspire such fear in Vadric that they're cowering back into the wall.
The feeling only intensifies as he begins to turn around, finally clued into their presence, but there's reason for it. His eyes look black, somehow, so intently fixated on them that Vadric can't possibly look away, even though they want nothing more than to do so.
If Weston were truly possessed, they wouldn't be surprised in the slightest.
"What are you hiding for, gremlin?" he asks slowly. "Try to enact deja vu on us both?
It's all back to the beginning. Cowering under that desk. Weston in the doorway. That time he had left them alone, though, for a reason Vadric fears they still don't truly understand. This time there will be no such escape.
He gestures, and Vadric feels as if she has no choice but to move. He can't piss Weston off, can't make things worse by cowering the way they are now. Slowly they ease out from behind the shelves they had dared to call a safe space, taking a few careful steps away from the wall. There's still plenty of room between them; Weston was about to open that door. A few more seconds and he would have. They might not be here right now, staring each other in the face. Vadric can hardly keep their eyes fixated in the proper place, her hands trembling so badly it must be visible even across the room.
Once upon a time, they were something like friends. Almost, anyway. Vadric has learned she's not meant for friends or anyone that means something—it's all ruined in the end no matter what they do.
"You look scared," he observes. "Of me?"
"Should I not be?"
"Thought you got over that." He's much too casual for Vadric's liking, fiddling with the axe that rests between his hands, resting on one leg. Like this isn't happening.
"You," they start, willing their voice not to crack. "You could kill me. You've killed plenty of people, Jordyn and—"
Their voice falters, finally, because Weston's face turns. He smiles, almost, just a crooked quirk of the lips, but there's something dark about it. Sinister. If she thought running was an option, they would already be long gone.
"And you killed Levi," he says plainly. "So aren't we even?"
It feels like they've been slapped. Their blood burns in their veins. "I—how—"
Weston reaches into the back of his belt, but Vadric can hardly see through the panic building. "I was walking away, y'know. Maybe I should have kept going. But I thought hey, maybe I might need this. So I went back and grabbed it."
He lobs something towards them. Vadric flinches backward, but the object merely clatters to the ground and skids nearly to their feet, stopping half a foot away from their boots. They startle further at the sight of the knife lying on the ground, her knife.
The same one that was buried in Levi's throat.
"Now, I know you're not much of a talker, but I already know what you'll try to say," Weston offers. "I killed Jordyn. Sure. But we all knew she was going to do the same thing to me if I didn't get her first. So I ask you why Levi? He's not like that. He learned his lesson about stabbing people in the back, right?"
"Don't act like you cared," she manages. "You hardly knew him."
"And you did?
"I wish I had!" they shout, shocked by the intensity to their own voice. "But that's not how this works, you know it isn't. What do you want me to say? I'm sorry? I am fucking sorry, which at least makes me better than you!"
He's bringing out the monster again with every word, the thing that always existed inside Weston but was never truly exposed to them. They saw it in flickers last year, again when he left Jordyn dead on the floor, but this is by far the worst. Nothing even comes close.
For as long as they could remember, their nightmares were just that—nightmares. Things stuck in the deepest recesses of their brains. Bits and pieces of them had tried to crawl out over time, but Vadric had always managed to run long and far enough to lose them. But this is a horror standing directly before her, the unseen shadow that always trailed after them down that uneven road, waiting for their broken body to give up. To stop fighting.
The nightmare is real and he's standing right in front of them.
Vadric has no choice; they lunge down for the knife. Of course they expect Weston to move at the same moment they do. What they don't see coming is just how fast he does it, lunging forward as if he saw them doing it before they even decided to. Their fingers just barely manage to touch the knife's hilt before Weston crashes into them and they go flying back, their back meeting the stone with a resounding thud.
It's hard to move without any breath to be found in your lungs, but Vadric tries, feeble as it may be. Hands reaching out for the knife that they just know is long gone.
They forgot how much bigger Weston is, how much stronger. Maybe they should have insisted on staying with Ravi. But for what purpose? To see him destroyed in much the same way?
With Weston's weight overtop of them they feel practically crushed. "All this time and this is how it ends, huh?" he asks. He doesn't sound satisfied. Definitely not thrilled. Vadric wiggles, squirming beneath him, to no avail. It's only serving to irritate him, banishing that last bit of familiarity from his eyes.
"You're just making this harder," he growls. "You're making this—"
He lurches to his feet, and for a moment Vadric allows herself to feel relief. It vanishes in the face of the sword he pulls from his belt, the axe long gone, they can't help the wild shriek that tears from their throat.
"Please, don't!"
They squeeze their eyes shut at the last second, as if that will somehow serve to stop it. They don't see it happen. Pain explodes in their abdomen, tearing through their insides. Any chance at moving ceases as the blade cuts through them, seeming to stick into the floor below. When their eyes open, blurred with tears, they're confronted with the sight of Weston hovering over them, his weight still pushing down on the sword. There's nowhere else for it to go.
"Please," they manage again.
"Please what?" he throws back. "Tell me. Tell me what you want."
There's nothing they can beg for. They don't even know why they speak the words. With a sudden rip the sword tears free from their abdomen and Vadric can only whimper as Weston descends once again, hovering mere inches above them.
"You think I wanted this?" he hisses, and it's all she can see. The baring of his teeth, the glint in his eyes.
Maybe he didn't, once upon a time. He let Vadric live all those months ago; there was something human in him then, something Vadric isn't seeing now.
You can't plead to someone who isn't truly listening.
His hand closes over their throat, the weight of it so immense Vadric is surprised their trachea doesn't immediately give way, flattening beneath his palm. Somehow panic still rises in them, fighting for purchase amidst the pain. Their hands flail out, reaching for the only thing they can see—it's his face, trying to rear away as their nails tear at his skin. One catches on the scratches Jordyn left over his jaw, blood flecking over their fingers.
Maybe they deserve this. They were never good. It goes all the way back, even before Avanti. They were never meant for a life that was worth anything.
"It's okay," Weston insists, even though there is no air remaining in their throat to gasp on. "All you gotta do is close your eyes—you know that, right?"
They don't want to. They've never wanted to. All the worst things happen when they close their eyes.
The darkness is encroaching on the edge of their vision, however, and Vadric realizes they may not have a choice. It's coming whether they want it to or not. Their hands feel so weak, so useless. They're doing nothing more than thrashing about, and any second now they're going to fall.
But there's something there. Vadric can't see what their fingers finally find a grip on in their continued assault towards his face, what their nails are clawing at, but wetness cascades over their fingers as they dig them in, hooking into whatever they've damaged and holding on. A noise erupts from Weston's mouth—not quite a scream. A howl, purely an animal noise as he thrashes, trying to shake them off.
Their vision is gone, a slew of gray and black, but Vadric refuses to let go. They'll hold on until the bitter end. They'll leave a fucking mark. Let that be it for the two of them, what should have happened a year ago. They never should have made it this far.
Vadric won't escape this, but Weston might. And if he does, he'll be haunted for the rest of his life. Vadric knows it.
He'll remember this. He'll remember Vadric.
Let them be the nightmare instead.
Ravi Fusain, 17
Tribute of District Twelve
The destruction seems to have reached its apex.
It reaches its crescendo as Ravi enters the supposed throne room, the walls shaking around him, the stained glass windows shattering in one magnificent, sparkling cloud. His hands cover his face even if it seems to refuse to touch him. He doesn't imagine getting killed by a window is high on the priority list of any person in the Capitol, even if they want this to be done just as much as Ravi does. It's been too long.
Live or die, what he's supposed to do, whatever it is… just let it happen soon. There's only so much longer he can go on like this.
Even the noise is becoming too much. He has an overwhelming desire to cover his ears, but he knows there's no use in it—the sound is overwhelming, invading every other one of his senses. If there was a way out, surely he would have found out. There's only up those few steps, towards the throne, and is that possible for him?
Is that where he's meant to be?
Ravi jolts as part of the wall around the nearest window splinters, chunks of rock littering the floor. More noise. More impossible things to be rid of.
It doesn't help that it's the exact reason he doesn't hear her coming.
Frankly, Ravi is unsure if he would have no matter the state of the arena around him. One moment he's upright, the throne mere feet away, and the next he's crashing to the ground. Each edge of the stairs slams into him, and from the corner of his eye he spots the silver glint of a blade, jerking his head away, and—
And it misses.
He only sees a glimpse of her as she strikes out again, enough to tell that she had been aiming for his throat. The knife glances off the top of his shoulder, slicing through skin but not deep enough to truly impair him. Ravi rolls, uncaring for how uncomfortably the stairs press into his front and side. He doesn't know what else to do. He doesn't have a weapon, doesn't have anything.
How was he not prepared for this?
The moment his back hits the ground, his eyes able to look up, he freezes. She stands above him, knife at the ready, eyes gleaming with the ferocity of someone twice her size. The blood dried to the blade can only tell him that there's a good reason for the look.
But she's so small. So young.
And she has every intention of killing him.
Her arm shoots towards him, and Ravi only just manages to grab a hold around her elbow, stopping the knife mere inches from his face. "You don't have to," he insists, tripping over his words. "I won't—"
She kicks out at his arm. Pain shoots through to his elbow, and he releases her without meaning to. He only has a split second to move out of the way, and he hears the blade as it shrieks across the floor where he had once been.
I won't kill you, he had meant to say. You shouldn't be here in the first place.
Neither should he.
His mother wouldn't bat an eye at killing her. Gideon's sister was all of six, and she wasn't the only child that fell to his mother's cruel selections. She would be in Ravi's ear right now, telling him to step the hell up and do it.
But he got his mother killed. She wouldn't come to save him even if Ravi wanted her to.
The thing is, he can't remember her name. He's scrabbling away from her, this mere scrap of a little girl, and he can't remember. All he knows is that she's not Eira. Not Rosemary. None of the girls he would have so gladly saved had he just been given more chances, more time. She's a killer just like he is, more than willing to do what's necessary to return home.
I won't kill you can so easily turn into I don't want to kill you when you're the one at risk. Ravi doesn't want to kill her.
Except what sort of choice is she giving him?
Ravi manages to catch her arm again, holding her away. "Please just listen to me," he tries. "It doesn't have to go like this, I swear it doesn't."
This time, she wrenches her arm away. Ravi swears he hears something crack as she yanks at it, but she doesn't seem to care. She's throwing the knife down just as quick, and this time he's not nearly quick enough to grab her. It cuts into the meat of his hand below the thumb, skimming along it with only its true destination in mind. Ravi sees it descending with a dreadful slowness, the blade filling his entire vision.
For some time, he had known only the noise. The inescapable cacophony.
The noise vanishes. It turns into pain.
His entire world tunes into that single focal-point, pain tearing through his cheek and ripping and Ravi wrenches his head away. It keeps cutting. Not deep enough to kill or plunge all the way through to his skull, but deep enough. And she's still going, slicing along the side of his face. struggling to remove it now and it's pulling and yanking and there's blood in his mouth, in his nose, coating his eyelids.
There's a moment of resistance where the pain almost seems to dissipate. Ravi dares to think that might be the end of it.
The knife sinks in. To what, he doesn't know. But it feels like something explodes inside him, the pain ricocheting through his skull like a bullet. He knows he screams, he knows it, but he can't hear it. There's only a shrill, shrieking noise filling his ear, echoing inside him
The ground heaves beneath him. The knife tears free from his cheek. He doesn't know if she finally gets it free or if the earth pulls them apart in two different directions. Ravi can feel the cracks forming on the stairs, feeling the shaking against his shoulder-blades, but his vision has been reduced to stars.
The ringing in his ear is so sharp it physically hurts, like he's being stabbed a thousand times over. The air stings against the open wound in his cheek—she's cut overtop the marks Zoya left on his face, turning them into something worse.
Stone heaves against his back, forcing Ravi onto his side. He feels the stairs beneath him again. For a moment he seems to feel nothing, but then he realizes he's rolling. Hitting each one of them. The shaking tosses him the rest of the way down, and even though there were only a handful of stairs each one seemed to him like a mountain.
Ravi doesn't remember reaching the bottom, landing, lying there. A sliver of his vision clears. Dust is raining down from the ceiling.
He has no idea where she is.
His hand reaches out, finding the edge of the first stair quickly enough. Glass scrapes against his bloodied palm.
"Why do you keep fucking doing this?" a voice says. "Just let it finish!"
It's her, he realizes. Somewhere. The moment Ravi turns his head, he feels like he's going to be sick. With her voice comes her name, crashing so violently into his already aching skull. Casia.
"Casia," he says aloud, already knowing it won't make a difference. She wants him dead, and Ravi can't say he blames her. She wants to go home, and he—
What does he want?
He thinks of Kai, of their last true conversation. Kai said he should win. Kai believed he was good.
Can he still be good if he goes through with something awful?
His warped vision spots her. "Casia," he says again, but still Ravi can't hear the sound of his own voice through the ringing. Regardless of whether he's spoken or not, Casia is undeterred.
She's not Eira. Not Rosemary. He can't save her—he never could.
Maybe he can't save anyone except for himself.
"I'm sorry," he whispers. His fingers fumble around a chunk of glass, slotting neatly between them. Once again Casia hangs over him, the smallest specter, something his struggling vision can hardly comprehend. It would be easier to pretend she's not real, to not think of himself doing something so evil. It doesn't seem real, like this is all some sort of broken fever dream.
The pain is too intense for him to be asleep, though, and she's readying the knife again. Ravi would like to believe a dream wouldn't be so cruel to him.
Casia prepares to kill him, almost expecting it. Ravi meets her halfway there, forcing himself into something resembling a sitting position. The entire room around him sways, and he doesn't have the ability to tell whether his own head is making everything shift or if it's coming apart around them. The glass in his grip cuts into his fingers, bloodying his palm even further.
She lurches towards him. He doesn't think it's intentional, really, her feet slipping on the floor as it gives way. The knife is still heading right towards him, and Ravi takes it. The blade catches him in the shoulder, lodging deep into his muscle.
He didn't know where he had been aiming. What he had truly been attempting to do. Kill her outright, so violently, without preamble?
Casia all but collapses over him, and Ravi doesn't realize why until his addled brain registers blood spurting over his fingers. She continues to fall, landing practically overtop him. Ravi only just manages to catch her, holding her tight in some kind of macabre embrace. Even as he holds on her hands push feebly at his chest, bringing a few inches between them.
She can go no further. Ravi still has a hold on the glass and the glass is caught in the junction between her shoulder and throat, stripes of blood emerging around the broken edges.
Her eyes find him, slowly, trailing all the way from the wound to his face.
He regrets it the moment he sees the shock in her eyes.
Casia did not expect to die.
"I'm sorry," he says again, panic clawing at his throat. She shoves at him, trying to create more distance, and his grip is much too slippery to hold on any longer. Casia rears back and immediately crashes to the beginning of the steps as the glass rips its way out, blood fountaining over her shirt. Ravi scrambles after her, watching her hands claw at the hole in her throat, the fear in her eyes. She shouldn't be dying.
Ravi attempts to grab a hold of her once again, and one hand reaches out, her nails catching at his forearm. Holding on almost desperately, like the person who just brought her to her demise is going to make it all better.
She's not just scared. She's terrified.
"I'm sorry." He's a broken record, unable to find words that actually mean anything. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry—"
He only manages to get an arm around her when she finally stills, and there's no point to it then. Her eyes gaze sightlessly beyond him; anyone else might be able to pretend that her horror existed only for the arena collapsing around them. If her blood wasn't soaking his hands, Ravi could pretend that too.
He's not asleep anymore, not even halfway. He's awake, and he's just as scared as her.
Ravi releases her only when the strength in his arms, what little seems to be left, fails him. He can only back away a few inches before he too flops back against the cruel harshness of the stairs. He feels like he's holding onto them for dear life, unable to do anything more. His face pulsates with pain. There's an ache in his chest that does not exist solely from being thrown about. The burn in his eyes is not something he can chase away.
He's not good. Kai was wrong. Ravi wishes he could have proved him wrong, but—
He hears something, almost out of nowhere. It's all dim, like he's trapped underwater, but Ravi thinks he would have to be properly deaf to miss it. The crashing of a door against a wall, uneven footsteps, and a voice.
"Don't you fucking dare."
Weston Katsouris, 18
Tribute of District Six
The words drip like venom from his mouth.
That could have something to do with an equal amount of blood dripping down his cheek, and God only knows what else. He can still feel Vadric's fingers hooked into the bottom of his eye socket, curling against all the hidden nerves and holding on for dear life. The vision in his left eye is reduced to a thick, red film—the only reason Weston still knows it's there is because he can feel it, off-center and thumping with its own sort of heartbeat.
"Don't," he growls, watching as Twelve lifts his dazed head from the ground. "If you move a fucking muscle—"
He'll kill him. He's going to do that anyway, but if he so much as twitches any further up those steps, towards what's rightfully Weston's, he'll make it ten times worse.
For a moment Twelve's eyes flicker past him, towards the room he's left behind. Vadric's body remains visible sprawled out on the floor.
Twelve swallows, wincing. Tear tracks cut through the blood on his face, no better than Weston's own. He shoves a hand beneath himself, hovering above the ground that runs wet with the Nine girl's blood. There's a knife wedged into the meat of his shoulder, but he doesn't seem concerned with it. Or maybe he's forgotten it's there entirely.
"Of all the fucking people," Weston hisses. "You shouldn't be here. Do you even want to be here, Twelve? You certainly don't fucking look it."
He doesn't respond, but Weston didn't truly expect him to. Twelve is nothing, a walking miracle, and he's not about to be here for much longer. There can only be one of them—there should have only been one of them from the very beginning.
No matter how many kids die, no matter what Panem does or how many people it needs to bury, the fact doesn't change: one of them gets through this.
One undertaker lives.
Twelve lurches to his feet with a surprising amount of speed, stumbling, feet colliding against one another. He doesn't so much steady himself as he uses the momentum to continue backward, hands outstretched as he grabs for the still-open door on the far side of the room. As Weston watches, he disappears through it and into the room beyond.
He knows, instantly, that Twelve has no intention of coming back.
"You're really going to play it like this?" Weston shouts after him, uncaring of whether or not his words are actually heard. "You can't run forever."
Weston doesn't even need to chase after him. He's leaving a goddamn blood trail, and even with one good eye and a haphazard, weaving pattern, it's pathetically easy to follow. Twelve is only making this harder on himself. Weston is forced to follow its path exactly, dodging chunks of rock as the walls give way around him, exposing the bloodied sunset of the outside world. Slabs have the ceiling have already gotten, and the floor is loosening beneath his feet.
Why draw this out? Why even fucking bother when Twelve already knows how this ends? He wouldn't be running if he didn't.
The trail stops, and a laugh fights its way free of its throat. He knows it's hysterical, practically manic, but he can't make himself stop. Only steps away the nearly-black staircase still descends into the earth, possibly the only thing properly left standing even if it looks as if the walls even there are ready to cave in.
"You think I don't know my way around down there, Twelve?" he shouts, listening to the satisfying echo of his voice all the way down into the catacombs. "I was fucking meant to be down there!"
The stairs are familiar. The hard-packed dirt floor leading to rough stone at the very bottom even more so. This place is practically his fucking home and no matter how much darkness has overtaken it, no matter how much of it gives way, that will never change.
Twelve is gone. Cowering away in some corner, no doubt. Weston lets the tip of his sword, still wet with Vadric's blood, drag along the stone base of the first closed coffin, the grating screech hardly audible.
"Makes sense you're willing to fight a little girl, but not me," he taunts. "You know what will happen if you try."
Weston wonders, dimly, if the Capitol can even see what's going on down here in the lack of light. If his parents have dared to watch. If his sisters track him with bated breath, wondering what will happen next. Of anyone, his father alone deserves to see this, to know that in the end his own son will always be worth more than he is.
A stumbling shadow cuts through the darkness ahead of him, and Wes rushes after it. Might as well finish the damn thing if he gets the opportunity.
It's been a long fucking year—sue him for finally daring to ask for some type of rest.
He'll have it in the Capitol. They'll take good care of him, fawn over him, put him back together all neatly wrapped.
And then the fun can begin.
The next glimpse he gets of Twelve, closer than before, he's rounding the next row of coffins, seemingly circling back to the entrance. Weston can only hurry to cut him off. A part of the wall to his left collapses in, and he's forced to scrabble over the pile that tumbles before him, nearly cutting off his path.
He can see the stairs again after a moment, but no blood trail. Twelve is still down here, still fucking with him.
The ground shakes so terribly Weston is thrown into the wall, and the force of his body alone colliding with it has the stones giving way. He nearly tumbles to the ground with nothing left to hold onto, fumbling at the next archway over to hold himself up. A chunk of the ceiling longer than he is tall comes crashing down like roaring thunder, cracking the tomb beneath it into a dozen messy pieces.
Weston sees him again almost without meaning to—he's stopped, now, and Weston can't see what he's doing. He nearly trips over the damn sword as he fights to right himself, stumbling down the center walkway towards him. He feels like he's on another planet, transported somewhere where gravity doesn't work and nothing is truly right.
Just a few more minutes. Seconds, even. You're almost out of here. It all goes back to the way it's meant to be.
The way he's meant to be.
Twelve has nearly concealed himself in the grandiose space that Weston had first stumbled upon all those days ago, though the grandeur of it has been broken, riches scattered across the floor. Twelve's hands are pushing desperately at the coffin lid, halfway displaced.
Weston knows exactly what he's doing, and doesn't give him the chance to finish.
He grabs him before he finishes wedging open a big enough space to fight his way through, slamming him against the side of the coffin. Twelve goes worrying limp in his hands almost immediately, dazed, like one shove was almost enough to kill him.
That just makes it easier for Weston.
Rocks come tumbling into his legs. They're of little concern. He has enough of a hold on Twelve to keep him from escaping, though he's trying to move again now, holding onto the coffin's edge with all the strength he has. It's not very much, if Weston's being honest. Apparently that little girl did all the damage necessary to make his job easier.
Vadric would fucking hate this, he knows. They hated being down here. Hated when he did this.
It's a good thing they're not here to see it.
Rubble strikes him so deeply in the shoulder that one of Weston's hands spasms. Twelve nearly wiggles away, would if Weston didn't grab a hold of his legs even as he's forced to the ground, fighting just as much against the arena as he is a living, breathing person. Now that they're so close together he can hear Twelve's rasping breath, his frantic struggle.
Weston wonders if he sounds the same.
A burst of light washes over him, and the sight in Weston's good eye is rendered entirely white as he squints, struggling to make sense of it. It's coming from above them. There's a crack in the ceiling splitting open, the chasm in the earth above it growing wider and wider. He can see all the way up, up, up. What's left of the castle walls, hardly nothing. The fucking sky.
Which means it's all coming down.
Something hits him in the chest. There's a deep-seated crack, an agonizing burst of pain. Not enough to kill him, even though Weston doesn't see just what part of the tombs have come down on him now. All he's aware of in that precise moment is that he loses his grip on Twelve, and even though he gains his vision back a half second later, that's all it takes. He has no idea if the action is intentional or not, but Twelve's boot catches him so fiercely in the chest that Weston is thrown back to the floor, head thudding against the unforgiving stone.
He blinks, the pain dissipating as soon as it appears. Twelve is scrabbling away, and then Twelve has disappeared.
Vanished. Weston doesn't know where. He's gone and Weston's still here and he looks up again—
The world collapses. Encases him. Everything vanishes.
The light's gone.
From: the Office of Elide Ozkann, Head Gamemaker
CC: Kosta Rosalia, Secretarial Office of President Catriona Rey
Subject: URGENT, Finalizations on Tribute Status
Madam President,
I hope this message finds you well.
Data pulled from the trackers of tributes Vadric Gaerwyn and Casia Braddock confirmed times of death and respective cannons fired, despite reports from audience viewings. Andraste assured me that the sound was merely lost in the confusion, and no normal citizen could be blamed for missing it, especially given the occasional static burst provided by the failing cameras. Both audio and enhanced video files has been attached for your convenience if you wish to view them further.
Signals were lost to the trackers of tributes Weston Katsouris and Ravi Fusain following the last arena segment collapse at exactly 19:37:03. Despite valiant efforts by the Gamemaking Office we have yet to recover information regarding either tribute's status as of 20:01. We will continue to work throughout the night to solidify this information.
We are presented with the possibility that Weston Katsouris and Ravi Fusain are both either dead or alive; we are requesting official approval to send in a retrieval team to determine this. Should either opportunity present itself we are asking for advisement regarding the outcome.
Please advise,
Elide Ozkann, Head Gamemaker
4th. Vadric Gaerwyn, District Six.
3rd. Casia Braddock, District Nine.
2nd. Undetermined.
1st. Undetermined.
Call that shit a whoopsies.
Until next time.