thearena | (no subject)

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Who| CLOSED - Sherlock, Cuthbert, Karkat, John and Joan, in that order!
What| Sherlock and Cuthbert face off, one of them dies, then the other one is killed by another guest.
Where| Near the cornucopia.
When| Backdated to Week 4
Warnings/Notes| Death, murder, insults of a sexual nature, probably torture? basically just. this whole thing is going to be dark. And probably more than a little homoerotic.

He was scouting, again.

He'd kept careful watch of the electric fences - had memorized their timing when it made sense, had frustrated himself when it didn't. John was healed, they'd moved camp, but he still preferred to go scouting on his own. There were questions he still had.

And strange flickering visions he was trying to ignore.

When the electric fence went down around the cornucopia, he'd noticed immediately. Half way through his scouting mission and he felt he'd hit paydirt, immediately redirecting himself. But when he found it, it had been picked bare. Nothing was left. He cursed lowly, kicking at the dirt before heading back towards the grass. Pointless.

It was then that he noticed he wasn't alone.

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This opportunity was too good to be true. Sherlock, his long time rival, out on his own and in perfect shape to be pounced on.

Which is exactly what Cuthbert does, knife out and as fierce as a boy who has been living off of rations in a jungle for weeks. He's feeling pretty good at the moment, he got the drop on someone he didn't think would be so careless.

"Well well, look who isn't as smart as he thinks he is."

Sherlock paused as Cuthbert revealed himself, then carefully and openly drew his knife. Twice. Twice Cuthbert had seen him to his death. He would not allow a third time.

"Yes, so very stupid to walk alone, unarmed," He drawled, the blade glinting in the light.

"I've no interest in dying today, Cuthbert, so you had best move on."

"And lose out on some easy money? Not a chance..."

He lunged forward, trying to make Sherlock flinch. If he was going to do this, he was going to have some fun with it. Especially after the unfortunate emotional confrontation they had of late.

"I will be sure to make the proper apologies to your lover when this is over. He thinks the feud between us is finished."

Sherlock ducked backwards, as fluidly as he could (which was a good deal less fluidly than he thought he could), his knife still held out at the ready.

"Oh, yes, and I'll be sure to tell your lover--" He paused, comically, sneering. "Oh. Wait."

Cuthbert held off for a moment at that. There was an insinuation there that he didn't particularly like.

"And just what does that mean?"

Sherlock smiled, sharply.

"Oh, nothing at all," He said, the words all edges. "Which, I estimate, is precisely what you have."

He waved the knife in front of him in three even strokes as he spoke, the smile flickering around his teeth.

"Jealousy is a very ugly trait, Cuthbert, I suggest you quell it."

Cuthbert takes that more personally than he should. He points his knife right at Sherlock's throat as he responds.

"What would you know of my personal life? You aren't even smart enough to avoid an ambush. Or your own failings."

He takes a step forward, definitely threatening Sherlock now that he's hit a nerve. Jealousy really is a bad trait of his.

"I can read it on you as if you were wearing it in neon," Sherlock snaps, a vein in his forehead twitching. It shouldn't bother him, but it always has - the implication that he was anything less than brilliant. The outright statement that he was stupid. Even a hint of it bothered him, even from the best of his friends, but here? Here, he would prove it.

"This isn't an ambush, Cuthbert. This isn't one of your traps. You're all alone out here. You haven't been stalking me, you happened upon me. This is luck. This is chance."

He stands his ground, eyes unblinking, knife at the ready.

"It will not be in your favour."

"Are you going to tell me luck doesn't favor me? I have died and been reborn more than once, not many men can say that." He says it with the conviction of a man who doesn't believe in fate, but he's going to run with this insanity anyway.

"And I believe I was lucky enough last time we found ourselves in this position to give you what you deserved. You couldn't talk your way out of a knife to the throat, and everyone in the Capitol watched. Even your pathetic excuse for a boyfriend. I'm certain he was embarrassed to see how you died."

Cuthbert lashes out with the knife, hoping to make Sherlock flinch. He isn't attacking to kill yet. He wants to spar with the other man verbally first.

"Who's the lucky one if we've all cheated death?" Sherlock hissed at him, almost irritated by the arrogance of it.

"Last time I let you," Sherlock said, his voice incredibly low, the sharp light of his knife reflected in his eyes, his grip hard, his muscles taut and waiting. "I was ready to die and even then you needed your friend to help you do the deed." It didn't matter now if the capitol knew he had sought out his death. The Arenas never mattered more than the moment.

Cuthbert lashed out but Sherlock's keen eye calculated the swing in a fraction of a second, so he didn't even move as the blade swung right by his chest, only a few inches away from slicing him open.

"But you're alone now, Cuthbert. No one to show of your prowess to in vain."

"Far be it from me to poke holes in the lies a man tells himself to sleep at night. Of course you allowed me to kill you. And does it not sting worse to know that someone else got to have his fun with thee too?"

He flips the knife in his hand, from a slicing grip to one more suited for stabbing, then back again. Fidgeting with his hands.

"You truly are a fool. We're being watched right now, nothing here goes unseen. I have the biggest audience of all! And I would wager all the money I have left that the smart money is on me killing thee."

This time he steps forward to make an honest strike at Sherlock.

"Not the audience you want," Sherlock hissed but there was no time or breath to say anything else.

The calculations happened so quickly in his mind that he barely had time to register them. Cuthbert thrust his knife (125 miles an hour, intended landing zone: throat -just above the clavicle?-, common carotid artery. ) and Sherlock moved, faster than he had perhaps in his life, but he didn't just duck out of the way.

It was instinct, perhaps, or the biting anger at the back of his mind, but his mind zeroed in and he lashed out, the knife flashing in a counter attack rather than in defense, or retreat.

It wasn't what Cuthbert had expected. All of his encounters with Sherlock left him thinking that the other man was all brain and little to no spine. But he would have to rethink that now, for what little time he had left to think.

He didn't feel the knife go in, but he could feel it pull out, perfectly situated between his ribs. The eerie feeling of breathing in and not being able to fill his lungs followed and he used the hand not busy with a knife to press against the wound. It was too long to plug up with a finger, and he was already feeling the tingle of fluid in his lungs that meant it was too late. He was going to drown in his own blood.

Cuthbert could only slash out at Sherlock before the shock set in, one or two more dangerous attempts before he fell to his knees.

For some reason, he hadn't quite expected it to go in. He'd expected Cuthbert to move, expected the dance to continue. He didn't expect the blade to sink in to the hilt, didn't expect the sudden rush of blood over his fingers. He pulled the blade out and staggered backwards, barely registering Cuthbert's flailing jabs in his direction. He didn't even notice when one of them actually landed, the tip of the blade slicing through his shirt and leaving a nice long angry line against his chest.

He was nearly frozen, watching Cuthbert fall like some grotesque film - a doll, not a man. A corpse. An experiment. He'd never stabbed a living man before. Not a real one. He'd stabbed corpses, sure, hundreds of them, but there was something unfathomably different about this.

It took him almost half a minute to remember how to breathe.

"Come... here..." It was already difficult to talk but he had to try. Cuthbert didn't want to die being totally useless, he still wanted to get his knife into Sherlock and see them both off together, the way they had their first time in the arena.

But it was all he could do to concentrate on the blurry, not all there vision of Sherlock right then, so much that he didn't even realize he'd lost hold of his knife when he hit the ground. Even if Sherlock were to get closer, there was no more damage he could do.

There's a scream off in the distance. "Bert," someone shrieks. "You killed him, you shitbag."

It sounds like Karkat.

And then that blurry, wavering version of Sherlock is knocked out of the way and there's Karkat, just as blurry and wavering, bent down over him, weeping... tears of blood? No, that's just that weird troll thing where all their fluids are tinted, it's just normal tears, normal for Karkat anyway.

Blurry Karkat presses what feels like a kiss against Cuthbert's brow. "I'll get him back," he says.

Sherlock hits the ground and he can taste dirt on his tongue, his mind returning violently to the present. He's lost his knife, somehow. He doesn't know how, or where - he must have dropped it - must have thrown it, when Karkat slammed into him.

This is not going how he meant it to.

It's almost like a strange repetitive dream, and an extremely cold, rational part of his brain takes note of the fact that there is very high likelihood (87.5%) that he is about to die. Again. And that same voice says that the statistics scew wildly towards his death whenever Cuthbert is involved.

He sucks in the air that he forgot and tries to scramble upright, his fingers digging through the the dirt and fallen and rotting leaves, searching for his knife in vain.

He recognizes Karkat's voice more than anything else and he reaches for him with what little strength he has. He can't talk anymore, but he can touch Karkat's face and smile.

Cuthbert takes one more shaking breath and coughs out a little bit of blood before finally passing out. He won't be waking up again, if the cannon is anything to judge by. And it is.

When the canon booms, Karkat lets out a howl of anger and spins around, his crossed hands reaching for the pair of knives at his belt.

He then launches himself at the rising Sherlock, a knife in both hands, and starts flailing wildly--ignoring all the combat forms he's spent sweeps learning in favor of attempting to repeatedly stab at Sherlock wherever he can find purchase.

He's snarling profanity at him as he stabs, too, frenzied and incoherent, although the words 'fuck,' 'shit,' 'bucket,' and 'pail' seem to reoccur most often in the obscene tirade.

(On the other hand, at least Sherlock isn't going to die after a terrible hair cut this arena.)

He tries to fight him off. He tries, but more in his mind than in reality - his meager flailing changed into an epic struggle in his perception. The truth was he limply reached out - once, maybe twice - as Karkat's knives dove deep into his flesh, as they tore at everything they came across.

(That cold, impartial voice at the back of his mild quietly cataloging each blow, each muscle. If it registered any emotion at all, it may have registered surprise that none of the blows cut an artery. He was denied a quick death, but death was inevitable now.)

He collapses, utterly, no breath left, punctured and cut to ribbons as his blood seeps into the dirt and is swallowed by the ground.

He tries to say something. He hadn't mean to kill Cuthbert, he wanted to say, but he was having a great difficulty forming words.

He hadn't meant to kill him. Except that he had. His lizard brain had, the one he thought he had defeated long, long ago. The one the Capitol was slowly drilling back into him.

He deserved this death.

Edited (tenses... and then i forget words, awesome. i am so so sorry.) 2013-11-27 05:14 (UTC)

It was probably paranoia, he tried to tell himself- but the cannon going off, shouting, Sherlock not being back with him yet after going off on a scouting mission...

The twist in his gut was back, the one that wouldn't give him any rest until he saw that Sherlock was alive, the one that made him sick to his stomach. Abandoning the camp, he snatched up his knife and ran- hoping against hope that all he'd find would be an irritable Sherlock, eyebrow raised at his flushed face and obvious panic.

He was dying.

It was almost a completely disconnected sensation. The pain had long since overwhelmed him - he could barely feel it, now, floating in a dull gray haze of nothing. He had no idea how much blood he'd lost, but he could take a guess, the entirety of the ground around him soaked in the stuff. He could see the sky, vaguely, if it didn't keep disappearing under black splotches in his vision.

He was dying, it was just taking too long.

He tried to gurgle something but it came out strangled and weak. A forlorn attempt to convince Karkat to come back, to finish him off, to end it. To egg him into the final death.

He wondered if they were waiting to come for Cuthbert's body until he was dead.

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for cuthbert and karkat

for john

for joan and john post death

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warning for organ puncturing

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too late with a pizza and the room is on fire

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