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Entry tags:
don't be afraid
Who| Nill and Karkat
What| A couple different things. Mostly meeting up and then dying, oops.
Where| Throughout the station.
When| End of week 2.
Warnings/Notes| Character death, gore, crying, and obligatory Karkat Warning™. There'll probably be another prompt for that stuff, or it'll just be one huge long thread.
To say that the Arena had been unkind up to this point would be an understatement. The first day hadn't been all that bad, generally speaking. For a few minutes she thought she might even survive long enough to make sure that someone she loved made it out of the Arena alive, to never enter one again. It was a goal. It was something to keep her going in an experience that she would rather have never lived again, even if it was better than sitting back with cigarettes and the Giant Wall of Child Death. She had found people she cared about. She kept them alive.
Even now, nearing the end of week 2, Nill would still maintain that being in the Arena was better than watching it. While close to a comforting thought, it could only do so much in the wake of all the deaths that occurred during Week 0, or the ones that followed it. It did little to help with the images in her own mind.
Being in Beth's head as she died, managing her pain so it was just a little bit less awful as she faded away. Watching Kurloz be cut in half in an instant. Seeing the face of a dark-haired boy in the stars. Kankri, Clementine, Davesprite, Gary; those were just the faces she'd seen when she had the willpower to look for them.
Despite all of that, Nill was holding her own well enough for a little while. She ate almost nothing, stuck to mostly water when she could find it. Once or twice she'd tried the dehydrated food, but she hadn't trusted it to do more than have it when she really needed it. She began to look gaunt and dehydrated, but it could have been worse. It remained that way until she found the Orb with the Initiate's voice, and it was all downhill after that. She'd cried out most of the moisture left in her system, couldn't bring herself to eat much of anything after it, didn't make a point of looking for water so much as just taking advantage of it if she came across it. Before the Mirth Core Nill still moved with purpose. She still looked like she might accomplish something if she tried. Now she mostly just looks miserable.
But hey, having to deal with an outbreak of Xenomorphs can do a lot to keep a person on their toes. They're not too hard to avoid right now, but it's tricky when they notice you, and Nill has had a few too many close calls this week. She leans her back against a wall, ignoring her wings entirely, so that she can actually catch her breath while keeping an eye on the halls around her, knife held tightly in her hand. The place was going to hell so much sooner than she expected from what she'd seen of other Arenas. How was it already this difficult? How had any of the kids she knew survived in other Arenas?
There was no way this could keep going for much longer.
What| A couple different things. Mostly meeting up and then dying, oops.
Where| Throughout the station.
When| End of week 2.
Warnings/Notes| Character death, gore, crying, and obligatory Karkat Warning™. There'll probably be another prompt for that stuff, or it'll just be one huge long thread.
To say that the Arena had been unkind up to this point would be an understatement. The first day hadn't been all that bad, generally speaking. For a few minutes she thought she might even survive long enough to make sure that someone she loved made it out of the Arena alive, to never enter one again. It was a goal. It was something to keep her going in an experience that she would rather have never lived again, even if it was better than sitting back with cigarettes and the Giant Wall of Child Death. She had found people she cared about. She kept them alive.
Even now, nearing the end of week 2, Nill would still maintain that being in the Arena was better than watching it. While close to a comforting thought, it could only do so much in the wake of all the deaths that occurred during Week 0, or the ones that followed it. It did little to help with the images in her own mind.
Being in Beth's head as she died, managing her pain so it was just a little bit less awful as she faded away. Watching Kurloz be cut in half in an instant. Seeing the face of a dark-haired boy in the stars. Kankri, Clementine, Davesprite, Gary; those were just the faces she'd seen when she had the willpower to look for them.
Despite all of that, Nill was holding her own well enough for a little while. She ate almost nothing, stuck to mostly water when she could find it. Once or twice she'd tried the dehydrated food, but she hadn't trusted it to do more than have it when she really needed it. She began to look gaunt and dehydrated, but it could have been worse. It remained that way until she found the Orb with the Initiate's voice, and it was all downhill after that. She'd cried out most of the moisture left in her system, couldn't bring herself to eat much of anything after it, didn't make a point of looking for water so much as just taking advantage of it if she came across it. Before the Mirth Core Nill still moved with purpose. She still looked like she might accomplish something if she tried. Now she mostly just looks miserable.
But hey, having to deal with an outbreak of Xenomorphs can do a lot to keep a person on their toes. They're not too hard to avoid right now, but it's tricky when they notice you, and Nill has had a few too many close calls this week. She leans her back against a wall, ignoring her wings entirely, so that she can actually catch her breath while keeping an eye on the halls around her, knife held tightly in her hand. The place was going to hell so much sooner than she expected from what she'd seen of other Arenas. How was it already this difficult? How had any of the kids she knew survived in other Arenas?
There was no way this could keep going for much longer.
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He's still managing, but it's harder by the day.
It's not like Sgrub. Sgrub had tools for survival, had quests for their growth, had a whole host of guides and allies and tips and paths to follow all to get to a neat goal. He had plans then. Now he has nothing but his own momentum, a momentum he questions even as he lets it push him forward. Fights here are harder without means to heal up, without a proper weapon beyond the pocketknife and dying taser he carries. He misses real food. He misses being clean, and not worrying about infection, and just plain not hurting all the time.
He looks a goddamn mess, really. His pink suit is damaged in many places, spots showing tears thanks to everything from his own formerly broken leg at the start of the arena to the creatures that have attacked him to the magical flames of whoever it was who attacked him earlier this week. His skin shows cuts, scrapes, bites, bruises, and burns. Nothing extreme on its own - nothing like what the Cornucopia gave him - but enough that he feels its toll on him.
He hasn't seen Feferi since she saved him from dying, but even if he did, he wouldn't dare ask her to help him again. She did good enough just to stop him from bleeding out, or from drowning on it in the punctured lung he'd been given. To have the worst of it healed gave him the chance he needed to make it this far--
Well, not even. And that's the trouble.
This week has shown him his own shortcomings, and put it on others to cover for him. He failed to pay attention and so ran into a mage without thinking, only to be saved by a woman he never knew who nonetheless knew him. He ran into Terezi, but they stuck in the same spot too long or didn't move quick enough or he moved wrong or let her save him when he should have shoved her first when the systems failed, or...
If he'd just done something different, they wouldn't be dead. He wouldn't have needed to be saved. He wouldn't have made it worse.
It leaves him questioning why he's still going. He doesn't believe he's going to make it to the end, even if it's been almost three weeks now since the start. Even if things dwindle down to just a few tributes, what would give him the right to kill them? Why does he deserve to survive any more than they do?
And yet, who is he to disregard the lives of the two who died for him? It would be ingratitude unspeakable to just turn up his nose and give up and die, but he doesn't feel like he deserves it when if not for him they might still be living.
He alternates between jumpy and disoriented as he drifts through, opting more and more to hide than fight when he has the option. There's big black monsters roaming about now, ones he doesn't know the source of beyond the gamemakers giving them something new again, doubtlessly to make things "more interesting". It doesn't matter, in the long run. He'd feel sick even without the godawful dehydrated food he's been subsisting on.
But when he glimpses a shape sat down against a wall, he hesitates and holds back. Alive? Asleep? A corpse not yet retrieved? Retreating would be the safest option regardless, but then he glimpses a shape of something between wall and shoulder and it all clicks into place: that disheveled, hollowed form is Nill.
And at first... he hangs back.
It's not that he isn't glad to see she's made it this far. He is! But after two deaths weighing heavy on his shoulders, he can't help but fear, however irrationally, that he might bring a third down on her. He can't know it; he doesn't know what would happen, what would cause it; but it fucking hurts to contemplate that he could even bring the risk when he's feeling this down on his game.
But then, who the hell would he be to just ignore her? He can't even tell from here what state she's in, beyond one malnourished and not looking good. He bites his lip, chewing a long moment before that thought propels him forward to approach her.
"Nill? Are you alright?" He hopes she is. He hopes if not that he can at least do something to help her.
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It's probably difficult to tell if she's actually conscious or not. Even when the footsteps come within a range that most people would hear, Nill doesn't move; her fingers don't tighten around the knife in her hand, not a single feather shifts. He might even be right about it being a corpse. If she had died recently it would certainly be a plausible theory. He was too close for them to pick it up.
But something in the person's thoughts shift, and Nill almost frowns. The person recognizes her, enough so that he's almost worried. She figures out who it is right around when Karkat says her name, and Nill lifts her head very slowly, looking not quite shocked but very surprised regardless. She hasn't seen him the entire Arena, and she'd been so preoccupied with keeping track of other people that she never got to actually find him.
For one very small moment she actually looks almost glad.
"You're alive," A quiet little voice echoes in his head, more emotion than sound, words instead of voice. Something like relief.
There are some cuts on her arms, places where it ripped through the fabric, but the crusted blood is minor and most of the wounds seem superficial. Using the hand with the knife to press against her side, Nill slowly uses the other to push herself back into a standing position. Under her hand the fabric of her suit is ripped, and though there's no blood there's a very obvious ugly bruise there. Ribs. It's about the worst visible injury she has, courtesy of a mutant sheep that tried to maul her. It also looks like she hasn't slept in a week, but most people still around tend to look like that.
It seems to occur to her after a moment that the voice might upset him, having come from nowhere, so she's quick to add, "This is Nill. I can talk like this. I'm fine. Are you?"
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But it's hard to worry about it. It's not the first someone's spoken into his mind, and Nill's quiet non-voice is neither obtrusive nor offensive compared to the many-layered fear veil of the Initiate's chucklevoodoos. And that he withstood willingly, at his own choice.
So she has telepathy, whatever. She's already got wings.
Instead it's her slow rise to stand that has him worried. Even if she looks like she's made it better than him, she still looks sore and exhausted, and that bruise at her ribs (once he can see it) doesn't look too good. It makes him think of the injury to his own at the Cornucopia, and brings gladness again for Feferi's healing. At least she's not coughing up blood from one poking where it shouldn't.
"Yeah, I'm--I'm fine," he answers back, barely thinking about it in spite of the collection of hurts he's accrued or the bits of blood (most red, some bluish) stuck to his suit. He heads over closer now, arms with their weapons held down at his sides. "Are you sure you're alright? You don't look too hurt, but you still don't look great. I didn't recognize you at first."
Then again, he's never seen her in these conditions. Even fretting after Brainy's execution, she wasn't in this bad a state.
WOW I NEVER HIT SEND GOOD JOB SELF
"Long week," echoes the voice, trying at a more reassuring feeling to the words. She looks like shit and she knows it, but she doesn't exactly want to worry him. "They're just bruised. I'll be okay. You look worse than I do."
The smile that she offers him is slight and hard to notice, just a little upward movement of the corners of her lips, but it's the second smile she's managed since the Arena began.
"If you're in pain I can try to help."
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Still, he catches her smile, however small, when he looks back up. It means something in a situation like this.
"I'm--" He wants to think of it as more mental than physical, but they're both bad in their own ways. "It's not life-threatening. I'm sore and the burns suck, but I'm not going to keel over. I had worse before," he insists.
He doesn't want to take whatever energy she might waste expending on him. He's managed this long, for one, but it feels too selfish to ask. After what people have given already, he doesn't feel like he deserves it.
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"I'd still like to help if I can. Will you let me know if it gets worse?"
Not that she wouldn't be able to tell, but other than one or two comments, Nill usually tries not to make it seem like she's listening constantly. She doesn't mean to. It's just harder not to listen with emotional people around. It's a lot like having someone muttering angrily and constantly in your ear.
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He doesn't even know she can read his emotions, not when she hasn't said so. Trolls have mental powers with such variation that it's hard to know who will have which set of abilities in what combination.
"If something else comes along and hurts me, then you can help, but I'm fine."
His gaze turns to her again. Stubborn though he might be about himself, it's hard not to worry for a friend. "What about you?" he asks. "So long as I'm here I might as well help you out."
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(That, and she's pretty sure there are at least three or four different tributes in Panem with magical fire powers.)
"Alright."
As if she hasn't put much thought into it, Nill frowns a little, and glances down at her arms. She gives them a look over, and then glances at the bruise over her ribs. Experimentally, she flexes her wings a little. There's a patch on one where the feathers are matted with dried blood, but the movement doesn't seem to be restricted.
"I'm fine. I've had worse, too."
Once she's concluded that there's nothing to really be done for her though, Nill lifts her head to give him another look over, but she's not really checking out the injuries this time. Instead she looks at the bags under his eyes, the way he holds himself, all the small physical manifestations of the guilt and self-loathing she can feel coming off him in waves. She extends her free hand slightly towards his regardless of the weapons he still holds, but she doesn't try to touch him.
"What happened?"
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He looks over her as she turns her gaze to herself, again taking in her collection of hurts and wounds. He missed the blood on her wing at first, but she doesn't look impaired by it, nor does it look too fresh.
His lips quirk uncertainly at her answer. It really isn't the worst she could have, and he knows it, but it leaves him uncertain of what he should be doing. Just sticking around doing nothing isn't viable here with death around every corner. They don't have time to chill and hang out like life is normal when it most clearly isn't.
Before he can speak, she's reaching for his hand, and he almost jolts until he realizes she's not going to touch him. It's probably for the better, considering some of his burns are on that same hand.
"Someone attacked me, obviously," he says. "I didn't know him and I don't think he knew me either. I just--wasn't paying enough attention, and I looked up and there was a dude, and he pulled this magic fiery bullshit before I could barely say anything. Then this woman came in--I guess she must have seen the fire?--and she started fighting him and told me to run."
It's short, and leaves out the part about her dying, but to say it would feel too much like begging for sympathy.
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"I'm glad you're alive."
She really is. She's so sorry that it means he has to keep going through this, but at least no one had killed him. At least he hadn't died horribly. It's about the only upside to finding friends in this place.
"We should go. It won't be quiet here for much longer."
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He's still not sure he deserves to be, but he's resigned himself that it's not really his place to complain. That woman isn't the only one who died helping him, but he's not looking to bring Terezi up if he doesn't need to.
Instead, he nods to her, and turns to head forward. "I don't like sticking in one place long, anyway. Keep your eyes peeled." His own gaze turns back to their surroundings, watching, listening. His pace is slow - part in case her own is, part because of his aching body, and part again because it's safer. Running is for escape, to be reserved for when it's really needed. Slowness allows more attention to what's near and conserves energy.
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When Nill wasn't looking Terezi had died. She couldn't say she knew Terezi well at all - she'd spoken with her more in the Arena than out of it, but it still hurt. Kurloz loved her a lot. She should have been able to keep her safe. She should have done something.
Nill selfishly longs for a lighter and cigarette, even if she wasn't the one to smoke them. Her fingers twitch. The ruin continues.
She bends down a little to grab her helmet, which she's been using to carry her cornucopia spoils, the length of rope that had still been on her now abandoned suit, and anything else she's found and deemed useful. There's not much. But going slow seems to be equally kind to her, so she doesn't try to pick up the pace. They're both exhausted. Using up their energy would get them killed.
"When we find a better place to stop you should rest. I can make sure they don't find us for a little."
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It wasn't fair that it had to happen like that. But then, none of this place is fair.
Unlike Nill, he's long since lost any part of his white outer suit. Feferi had to pull it off him when she found him, and he was in pain enough that trying to go back and find it wouldn't have done him any good. Instead he carried junk in the case itself, which lasted until the encounter with the mage. He doesn't mourn the loss; the flashlight isn't too necessary for him, and he never did figure out what to do with the blue gel he got. His taser will probably go before long, too. Though he hasn't used it often, there's only so much charge left in the batteries. The knife has served him best of anything.
"If by rest you mean sit down a while," he says. "I don't want to sleep. I barely have this whole time, and I've made it fine. Besides, with the dreams I'd have it would barely count as restful even if I did try." His head keeps turning as they walk, watching, not daring to still. He let his guard down once; he's not going to do it again when she's with him. "Even if you can ward off tributes, there's still monsters and shit lurking around."
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Fighting didn't go much better. For all Karkat had fought things larger than himself and of decidedly deadly persuasion before, Sgrub always had him better prepared than he was now. Burned, sore, exhausted and underfed, his reactions were slower, and he had to work around the limits of unusual weapons. In the end he managed to stun it with the last of his taser's battery life, but not without Nill suffering a stab in the process. Though he earned a few scratches and scrapes himself, none were as bad as hers, and the safer route was clearly to escape.
It's after fleeing a fair space and finding some alcove to stow away in that Karkat finally turns his attention back to Nill. Though breathing heavy for the adrenaline of fighting and running, it's her he's more concerned with.
"How's your wound?" he asks, looking down to where the tail is stuck in her side, either broken or sliced off in the scuffle.
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It's hurts more than she thought it would. Still not as bad as the first few times Nill died, but worse than the time she had broken ribs, worse than when she had a knife in her wing.
She lost her helmet full of things somewhere along the way, but Nill still has the knife clutched tightly in one hand, the length of rope wrapped around her forearm, just in case anything tried to take a bite out of her. It was a good idea. It helped a lot.
Once they're at a spot where they can stop Nill leans the shoulder of the side the tail isn't lodged in against the wall almost immediately, letting out a slow exhale. She pulls her hand away from the blood seeping out around the tail, and it almost looks black.
"I need to take it out."
For all she knew the things could be tracking them with the piece, or it could be poisoned. Or, somehow, it could be so much worse. The best course was to just get rid of it completely if they could, though... she's not sure how that will go with the bleeding.
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But as long as he's known he's a mutant, blood has been his concern. Taking the tail out makes sense - she can't heal with the weapon still stuck inside her - but he knows she'll bleed more without it there to stop the wound. So how to deal with it? He has no bandages at hand nor any semblance of a first aid kit, and their suits aren't the right material for tearing strips from. For the first time ever he finds himself missing the stupid costume he got stuck in for the mini-arena; it would have had something he could work with. Really, the closest they have is the rope looped over Nill's arm.
He looks to it, then he looks to her face. "We should tie this around you." He touches his hand to the length, not yet taking it from her. "It's not perfect, but if we're going to stay the bleeding we'll need to cover it somehow."
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Nill glances at the rope, considering it, before nodding her head in agreement. It does in fact look like something may have bitten at it at some point, and her arm is probably bruised underneath, but it's proved sturdy so far, and could probably be relied on for this.
"It should work. We won't find anything better."
If nothing else, the xenomorph was polite enough to aim for the side that was already not looking brilliant. So at least she doesn't have two bum sides. Though the movement looks stiff she lifts her hand to try and undo the knot in the rope, but her fingers slip, still slick with blood, and it only seems to frustrate her.
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The point is, Nill doesn't give him any reason to think the tail's pierced anything vital. Not like that.
As she fiddles with the rope, he crouches into a half-kneel, the better to put himself at the right level for helping her. But it's clear she's not handling the knot well, something that makes him frown in sympathy and a frustration of his own that they have to be in this mess at all. It's not at her, though; none of this is her fault.
"Here, let me..."
He tries first with one hand, but it predictably doesn't work well, and he has to add the other to the job. It makes him hiss a little as the texture irritates his burns, but really, it's not important compared to this. It's just a matter of patience and perseverance before the knot should come undone, making the rope workable again.
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Him getting hurt just to help her is the last thing in the world that Nill wants, and without thinking about the blood on her fingers she puts her hand on his arm. It's not exactly to stop him, almost more contact for the sake of contact than anything.
"I've had worse than this. Don't hurt yourself."
And as far as she can tell, she has had worse. This hurts, but the scars on her back were worse, had her on the ground and nearly bleeding out after just a few minutes. She can still move right now. She still has the energy to get up, and that means she's had worse, for now. But the knot was tied with one hand, and though it was well done enough, it doesn't take too much to come apart. It's a pretty decent length all things considered, certainly enough to tie around Nill for how tiny she is.
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It's not the concern that bugs him. A hurt hand just isn't as important as dealing with a stab wound, even if he doesn't know the extent he should be worried. Once he gets the knot undone, he slips the rope off her arm, and looks between it and her injured side.
"Do you think you can pull the tail yourself? If I loop the rope around you I can tie it as soon as it's out."
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She not sure if she can do it on her own though, and after a moment to steel herself she taps the tail sticking out of her a few times, trying to gauge the level of pain she'd been to deal with if she did it herself. It makes her shudder and her wings fold in against her back out of instinct, but she nods regardless.
"I've had worse," the voice repeats, same tone as before, same meaning. She could do it if she needed to. She's not sure she'd want to make him do it anyway, honestly.
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He leans in, tucking his head to the side of her, so that he can loop the rope around behind her. Then he raises it up to hold just so at her waist, ends gathered toward one side. "Hmm..." He loops one around the other for the loose beginnings of a knot, then takes the end between his teeth, blood or whatever else be damned, so that his hand might go to the other side to help adjust the rope's position once the tail is out of her.
Obviously he can't speak, but he hopes the 'go ahead' intent comes through when he looks up and makes a noise through his teeth.
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She lets him get as close as he needs, not even bothering to hold her breath for once, and she tries her damnedest to relax, because it's probably the last few moments where she's going to have this low a level of pain for a decent chunk of time.
Nill manages a very small smile before she wraps both hands around the tail, already cringing, and then uses the extent of her strength to pull the thing out.
It's not pretty. It's not as fast as it could be, and he can probably hear the tail scraping against bone. But she manages it.
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As soon as she has it out, he sets to work. First he hikes up the side of the rope near her wound to cover it better, avoiding the area itself with his hands to avoid hurting her unnecessarily. Then he tugs the end his hand holds. His teeth serve as a stable point to help tighten it, and he works quickly to tie additional knots for security. It won't make it any easier to untie later, but he figures that's the least of their concerns in a place like this.
When finally he has it done, he lets go with his teeth and lifts his hands away. "There," he says, and he doesn't sound as confident as he wishes he were. If they had a better bandage it would be different.
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That part only lasts about as long as it takes him to finish. She hadn't thought she'd feel so much shittier with the tail out but she does, and she really hopes that's just a product of needing to pull a xenomorph tail out of her side and not because it was poisoned and the poison wasn't spreading until after the tail was out.
She offers him a very shaky smile, and then using her hand to make sure it's not too abrupt, slides to actually sit down, leaning her shoulder heavily against the wall in an effort to put as little strain on the wound as she can. She lifts a hand to it, and the bleeding does seem like it's lessened a lot, though the color isn't much better now than it was before. Maybe that's a good thing.
"Can we stay here for a little?"
While she does a good job of keeping it off her face, it shows in the way her shoulders hunch, and her wings twitch every so often. It hurts, and though she knows they can't stay here for an extended period, she'd like to put off needing to move around with it for a few minutes.
I'm thinking we can timeskip from here maybe?
sounds good to me! let me know if this doesn't work
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