thearena | (no subject)

Captivity has not been kind to Howard. It's smudged him out, smeared him like a dirty eraser mark across his waking hours. Even having nothing in his stomach except the bits of the supplies Aunamee feeds him (generously feeds him), he vomits up spit and stomach acid every ten hours or so. His legs go out from under him at random, and despite several nights having passed, he hasn't slept more than twenty minutes at a time. Nervous tics have worked their way into his hands and face, and his pulse flutters just under his skin across his body, like moths trapped inside his arteries.

I wish I didn't have to go so far to protect you.

Howard no longer doubts that the danger Aunamee's protecting him from must be an awful one indeed. He finds his mind heading into ditches, filling with an inexplicable dread that the world is ending, that reality is fading away, that Aunamee ties him to a tree at night not to prevent him escaping but to prevent him sliding through the dimensions of this world to another. Object permanence starts to fade, and he finds himself looking at the same trees that he's been looking at for six hours as if someone just planted them there between blinks. When he's not looking straight at it, he's sure the moon disappears.

Keep it together, he says to himself.

Who cares? the fear says back. And eventually he has to agree.

Aunamee ties him at night with his own rope and strips of his tent. The first night he struggled - his wrists are still swollen and purple from the attempt. But he hasn't tried the rest of the time. He knows he won't get far, deep down. He knows he's only being protected from having to be dragged back kicking and screaming and thrashing.

So he lays in the dirt, bound at his wrists and feet, and waits. Just like he did yesterday, and the day before that, with exhaustion buzzing inside his skull and fear heady in his lungs.

Aunamee loves routine -- needs it like medicine, especially these days -- and so when he returns to Howard's camp, the sun is in the same place in the sky as it always is. Seven AM. Maybe eight. He approaches with quiet steps, anticipating sticks and rocks and uneven patches of ground as he goes because he always (always) approaches in the same way. When he greets Howard, he always says the same thing.

"How are you, my dear friend?"

His words are soft and fatherly. The boy is sick, and he is here to cure his sickness. That lie thrums in his body like a heartbeat, and he believes its inherent truth like his own heartbeat as well. Aunamee once fed on confidence, but now he feeds on delusion. They both taste so sickly sweet.

He kneels down and begins to untie the knots, precise and methodical, his fingers occasionally brushing against Howard's arms in comforting little strokes.

He's grateful when Aunamee arrives. Not grateful to be untied, but actually grateful for Aunamee's presence.

He's grateful that the fear of the unknown is getting replaced by the more concrete fear of the creature who calls himself a helping, saving, merciful man. Somehow he knows Aunamee will protect him from the cries and rustles in the woods. Aunamee's saving him all for himself.

It doesn't stop him cringing whenever Aunamee strokes his arm a little too long, but it also doesn't stop him wanting the comforting gestures again. And again. He sits up and the world seems to drag itself into alignment, rather than snapping into place automatically.

"Hungry. Sore. I threw up again." He holds his hands out once they're unbound. Some of the bruises on his wrists are fading from purple to brown, and the flesh on one is so swollen that it could almost hide the malnutrition. His feet are in a slightly better state, but not enough that standing is easy, so he stays seated.

He's so tired he's vibrating. "Where do you go during the day?"

Aunamee unlatches one of their first aid kits from his belt and sets it in his lap. He removes the lid, then swirls his finger around the small tub filled with ointment.

"I look for food," he says easily, truthfully. He wipes sweat from his brow with the hand that holds the lid, and for a moment, the tin catches in the sun, bright and brilliant. Like a camera flash. "Water." He applies the ointment to Howard's wrists with the same amount of precision, making sure the application is even on both sides, that every bruise is covered. "Supplies."

Aunamee is not as sickly as he was when he first encountered Howard, but he certainly isn't well. The skin around his eyes is dark like eggplants. He has new scabs on the palms his hands. He has lacerations in his scalp that bleed on and off. Patches of his hair are missing.

He moves down to the bruises around Howard's ankles.

"Can you eat?"

"Yeah." He doesn't nod, because even slightest motions around his neck feel like punishment to his brain. He winces as the flash from the tin makes his eyes constrict in their sockets. "Been getting enough water. I'm okay there."

It rains every few hours still, and Howard lets his clothes soak and then sucks the water out of them. He makes little whimpering noises as Aunamee rubs the ointment in, wondering if it's real or just a paranoid delusion that Aunamee's pressing a little harder than necessary.

Somehow, in spite of him registering somewhere in his head that Aunamee looks like hell, the bruises and sallowness and pocked scalp seem to flake away in his vision. Aunamee's untouchable, and Aunamee always comes back for him. He's the only one who does, Aunamee reminds him, sometimes without words.

Yet when Howard sleeps he wakes up mumbling for Wyatt and John and Sigma, and their absence hits him like a gust of cold air.

"What're you going to do when it's just us left?"

What're you going to do when it's just us left?

Some people in the arena might not even think about this. Every dusk and dawn is a victory because every dusk and dawn is an uncertainty. These people move as though their future is blurred, but Aunamee, oh, Aunamee always plans. Aunamee always sees.

(-- and yet there's still a wink of a hesitation, a wink of doubt, but no, he doesn't -- he wouldn't --)

He finishes applying the ointment to Howard's legs and straightens his back. No. He knows what his future holds. (How can he doubt that?) Howard will die, but he won't let it happen at the end, and he won't do it himself. Someone will find Howard and kill him, and when they do, Aunamee will be there to hold Howard's dying form until the lights go out.

Just like Wyatt did.

"We are certainly getting water," he says, letting Howard's question slip into the ether. "I never thought I'd be so happy for rain. Then again, when I was a boy, I liked what it did to the crowds. You could always--" He frames his hands in the sky, then shrinks that frame bit by bit. "You could always find the families because of the way they huddled."

Were this another person, Howard might press the question, but he doesn't dare to question Aunamee. He tries to stand, although he doesn't know why or where he'd go, and he sinks back down to his hip. His legs are shaking.

But he doesn't forget that he asked, and he doesn't forget that Aunamee didn't answer.

"There wasn't no rain back in the FAYZ." He suspects Aunamee tells him stories about families just to underscore the absence of his.

He tilts his eyes up, but the skies are clear right now. His clothes are as damp from sweat as they are from the rest of the rain. He tries to get up again, topples back down again. He knows he should move, should keep the blood moving around, but he's too weak. "What you got, foodwise?"

The only things Aunamee regularly carries on him are the knife, a small stash of crackers, and the first aid kits. He keeps most of his supplies elsewhere, hidden from both Howard and Eponine, and only carries them when absolutely necessary. Today he has measured a small amount of black beans into one of the older cans. He produces it from his pocket like the end of a magic trick, resting it in front of Howard's feet.

"I'm sure you huddled together in your own ways," he says.

Like now goes unspoken. Like you and me right now.

Howard and Aunamee

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Aunamee and Eponine

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Everyone else

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