thearena | Come face the day and fear not the grave.

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Come face the day and fear not the grave.

WHO| Wyatt and Ellie
WHAT| End of the line for Wyatt
WHERE| The Labs
WHEN| Early in the final week
Notes/Warnings| Death. Dinosaurs. Death by dinosaur.

Wyatt hadn't forgotten. It had taken him some time to get there, what with his injuries slowing him down and his run-in with Aunamee, but he'd made it. Or, at least, he hoped he had.

The woman had told him she'd left something important in The Labs, something she'd written down, and while he'd certainly found lots of scribbling.... he couldn't say as it what any of it meant.

Hip on the rotted edge of a wobbling desk, Wyatt's eyes roved over the wall, mumbling the words quietly to himself, trying to make sense of them. He recognized some of them, by the flow, as poetry, but couldn't see what made them so special.

Think of it as a lullaby, she'd said, one of her last bloody whispers. He hadn't mistaken, he was sure.

He just didn't get it.

Pushing up to his feet - the desk clattering back to the floor on it's mismatched legs - he reached out to run his fingers over words cut into the walls, as if the tactile sensation of them beneath his fingertips would reveal their meaning.

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"This is what we came for?" Ellie asked, a little skeptically. She'd made a torch with the last of their fire building supplies - had killed one of the dinosaurs with the bow Wyatt had given her just to smear the torch in its fat and keep it burning. She held up the torched behind him, her head tilted to the side.

"She wrote all this, huh. What the fuck is it even supposed to mean?"

"Damned if I know," he murmured, dragging his hand over the rough, harried scratches. "All she said was that it was important...."

He traced a letter - the slanted edge of a "T," and sighed, hand falling away from the wall.

"But then she was dyin' at the time. Folks say all sorts of things when the end comes." Things that made all the sense in the world to them, that those left behind could only guess at.

"Well it's not like she was dying when she wrote it," Ellie pointed out as she leaned in beside him, frowning at the wall.

"There's gotta be a way to decipher it. I mean, why go to all the trouble of writing it, then telling you to read it after she tries to fucking stab you unless she wants it read?"

She pulled back, glancing around her. "Unless, you know, this place is booby-trapped. That would be awesome," She adds, voice dripping with endless teenage sarcasm.

"I'd think we'd have run into 'em by now if that was her plan."

Still, he turned away from the wall, eyes narrowing against the bright, flickering light of Ellie's torch.

"More likely she expected it to be easier to be understand than it is."

Or, even more likely, she expected him to be smarter than he was.

It wasn't often that he regretted the time and world he'd come from, but there moments - such as this one - when he felt that simple education in the back of his Pa's wagon, his mother reading to him and his brothers from her books, sharply.

Ellie had gone to 'school', such as it was, but education in a post apocalyptic world wasn't exactly thorough, and it wasn't exactly her primary concern. She let out a breath from her nose (a copycat move to tease Wyatt, as she'd seen him do it so many times).

"Alright then, Indiana Jones, what's the plan? Camp here until we figure out whatever the fuck this says?" She asked with a vague wave at the wall. "Or do we make camp outside?"

He didn't know who Indiana Jones was, but coupled with the pointed sigh, he recognized that she was teasing him and let it roll off him like water on a duck's back.

"Outside," he said, without even having to think. Picking up his pack again (so much lighter now, nearly empty after so long in the arena), he moved toward the door. "I don't wanna be boxed in here, in the dark, when the Capitol comes to call."

And they would. He'd seen enough of by now to know there was no way they were going to let the arena come to an end without some grand finale. One last hooray to build up their next victor.

She nodded, grabbing her pack too, shifting the bow strung over her shoulder so that they wouldn't collide.

"Yeah, one hundred percent agreed." She raised the torch again as she stepped over to the door and carefully checked outside before nodding back to Wyatt. "All clear."

"So what do you think they're going to throw at us? I mean, I watched some of the videos and whatever, but that doesn't mean I have a single clue about what's coming."

He let her check, holding the torch as she was, but he still left the room first, putting his body in-between the unknown and her's.

"Hard to say." He looked one way, then the other - like a man checking for traffic on a busy street before crossing - and then turned to walk down the length of the building. "Every time I think I've seen it all, they go an' come up with somethin' new."

Something worse.

"All ya can really expect is for it to be big an' nasty an' meant to kill ya."

She waited until he was done with his manly check before following along behind him, torch held high enough to light his way.

"Yeah, I kind of got that much. The dinosaurs were a hint." She fell silent for a second, frowning. "How many of these have you been in, anyway? I know you said it was a few, but I, uh... I didn't really believe you, at first, you know? Sorry."

He snorted, low and amused.

"Don't trouble yerself over it, sis. Yer hardly the first."

He paused the corner of the building, lingering in the deep shadow it cast as he scanned across the open space between it and the one across from it. The field between them and the relative cover of the jungle beyond.

Funny, how he'd come to see that as the safe place to be.

"An' it's seven. Seven now, with this one."

She paused just behind him, stopping to toss the torch onto the ground and stomp out the fire before picking it back up again.

"Seven. Seven times doing this shit." She made a face as she shook her head.

"It's just- It's sick, you know? It's sick. That's probably why none of her message made any sense. This place probably just makes people crazy."

He couldn't reply. He agreed, but he also couldn't help but wonder what that meant for him. For the handful of others like him who had been here so long.

How much longer did he have before he was scratching out farewell riddles into the walls?

Frowning, trying to push the thought away, he took a step out from the cover of the building -- and froze again, just as quickly. Going as straight and stiff as a ramrod as he watched a shadow move. Racing across the front of the building across the way.

"Mind you, I mean, basically everyone I ever met was crazy, so it's not like I'd be a good j--" She froze when she realised that Wyatt had, and immediately looked to where he was looking.

"Shit." She whispered, immediately pulling off her pack and going for her bow. "Raptors?"

He waited. Silent, eyes pinned where the shadow had disappeared, watching as it returned and was joined by another. And another.

His arm came up, hand out, gripping at Ellie's elbow.

"Forget it," he hissed. "Too many - go!"

He threw himself back, pulling her along with him.

She was already half way drawing out an arrow when he grabbed her, and she barely had half a second to grab her pack again before she was dragged into running.

She was completely unwieldy but she had to admit that he was right. She could see them now, screaming as they caught sight of them, their trill voices echoing around them.

"Fucking surrounded" She hissed.

Their cries rose up, melted into one shriek of hunger and rage, the hair on the back of Wyatt's neck jumping to attention as it crested. As something crashed behind them and began to gave chase, thudded along the ground.

He didn't dare look back.

Could only think of his last encounter with the reptilian beasts of the arena - and of how he didn't have a river to save them this time.

She struggled with her bow, notching an arrow as she ran, but unlike Wyatt she did look back. Looked back just for a second, just to draw back her arm - just to let an arrow fly--

And then she screamed as the arrow narrowly missed the raptor right behind her, grazing its cheek as it lept through the air and gripped into her backpack, sending them both sprawling to the ground.

"Wyatt!"

He skidded, slamming his heels in the earth as Ellie's scream ripped through the air - sharp and kneeing against the low, guttural growls of the beast tearing at her.

He twisted back. There wasn't time to think, no time to plan. He simply acted, instinct and need.

Determined to keep Ellie alive. To succeed where he'd failed so many times before.

He hit the animal square, almost draping himself across it's pebbled back. He wound an arm under it's chin, wrenched hard, and reached up his hand, digging at the large, wet eye.

It bucked like a wild bronco, dropping Ellie as it twisted and thrashed, trying to throw him off.

She slammed into the ground, her pack thrown open, the flap of it still in the creature's jaws as it snapped and thrashed, trying wildly to get Wyatt off it's back. Her bow was broken - smashed - but she didn't waste a thought for it, instead grabbing her knife from her pocket and jumping forward with a gutteral yell - grappling the dinosaur just as Wyatt did and stabbing it, over and over, as she kept yelling at it. She couldn't tell how much damage she had done but finally it had released both of them and she grabbed Wyatt's hand as the others started coming for them.

"Wyatt! Wyatt, let's go"

Dying, the creature had toppled, and taken Wyatt with it, one of his legs pinned from the knee down beneath it. He struggled to pull himself free, but even with Ellie tugging on him, he was firmly stuck.

There was nothing to do. Nothing... but to make sure Ellie got out.

He pushed at her, pulled his hand away.

"Go! Go on, leave me!"

"I'm not fucking leaving you!" She yelled at him even as he pushed her, immediately going back to try to shove the dinosaur off of him even though it was well twice her size.

Right then another one screamed right behind her, jumping up onto the carcass of the first and doubling the weight on Wyatt's leg.

There was a wrench in his leg, a twisting in his knee, and a snap he felt more than he heard. He jerked, shouting in pain.

Still, he grabbed at her, yanking hard, refusing to take no for an answer.

"Damnit, girl, go!"

The second animal squealed excitedly and snapped at him, catching at his arm, ripping at him. Wyatt pushed at Ellie one last time.

"Please!"

For a long minute it looked like she was going to simply refuse to move, the war on her face more than apparent. She wanted to stand and fight. If he was going to go down, she was going down too, and she'd make sure the Raptors paid the price, this time, after Hawkeye, now Wyatt--

But a third snapping Raptor leapt out with the others, and finally Ellie's survival instinct kicked in, the tears stinging at her eyes.

"Fuck," She said as she scrambled upright, "I'm sorry--" She sobbed before she ran for the trees.

He fought for as long as he could, until his last breath. Not to get away, he knew that was impossible, but to keep them busy. To give Ellie has much as he could to put distance between herself and them.

He struggled until he could see nothing but red - his own blood running into his eyes. Until he could feel nothing, not even the teeth in his flesh.

Ellie would be a few yards into the treeline when the cannon finally went off.

She didn't stop. She knew there was no point. Those creatures had Wyatt, they had her supplies, they had her broken bow and she was alone.

Again.

She was tired of crying but that didn't mean she could stop it. By the time she finally could run no longer there was no water left in her - collapsing in dry, wracking sobs as she curled up on the jungle floor.

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Come face the day and fear not the grave.

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