thearena | and we will have no mercy no more [closed]

Entry tags:

and we will have no mercy no more [closed]

Who | Signless, Karkat and (eventually) Shep, Signless and Marius
What | The new state of the arena and all those bugs he's been eating finally get to Signless.
Where | In the streets.
When | During Hell time.
Warning/Notes | Blood, violence. Will add if more pop up.

For Karkat and Shep:

It's hot. It's hot and it's night, which means the temperature is probably as cool as it's going to get until this sudden change to the town passes. If it passes. The Signless hopes it will, because ever since the town changed he's felt on-edge. He and Karkat are trying to find a place to stay for the night, but with so many of the houses in much worse condition than before it's proving harder than usual. He turns his knife nervously over and over in his hand and tries to stay calm, but every little sound makes him jump and it's harder than it should be to stay focused.

"Do you see any that aren't collapsed?"

For Marius:

There's still blood on Signless's face hours later; he never bothered to wipe it off, even though the split in his lip has finally stopped bleeding. Between that and the other marks of his scuffle with Shepherd, he looks like hell as he roves through the streets. He still hasn't found somewhere to hide and ride this out, and with how restless he feels he isn't sure he'd be able to stay still if he did.

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"I told you already," Karkat says peevishly. "They're all fucking ruined. We're fucked. We're fucked and I'm hot and I hate this fucking jacket and this fucking sweater, I'm fucking roasting in them, but if I ditch them I'll be fucked again if it gets cold and I'll look like a fucking sitting quackbeast if I just carry them around."

"Are you two, just tie them around your waist and stop being a wriggler about it."

Normally he wouldn't be so snappy. Normally he'd just gently suggest that Karkat tie the jacket around his waist, really, it might look silly but it would be workable. He doesn't have any room for patience in this heat, though, all he has is restless frustration.

Karkat rolls his eyes at Signless, before pealing jacket and sweater off to do just that. "Wow, who urinated in your early evening caffeinated beverage?"

"Look around, Karkat, it's just you and me out here," he says, making a somewhat mocking expansive gesture with the hand holding his knife. "So I'd say it's pretty obvious who's the caffeinated beverage ruiner. You've been like this for perigees. That's perigees of ruined beverage. I hope you're happy."

"No," Karkat says, giving Signless an exasperated look. "I'm not. What's with you? You're acting like Kankri."

"You're what's with me. Specifically, your insistence on whining about issues you could easily fix while making absolutely no effort to do so. I'm not here to fondle your horns and enable your issues, Karkat. I keep telling you potential ways to fix your problems and you never listen, you just expect me to be sympathetic and coddle you while you purposefully make the same mistakes. It's getting exhausting trying to help you when it's getting clear that you don't want my help, you just want me to pap your ass."

The Signless swings the knife at his side, carefully not looking exactly at Karkat as he speaks. He didn't entirely mean for all of that to spill out at once; somewhere deep down he's a little alarmed about it, actually. But it's out now, and it feels strangely good to have said it.

The words are like a punch to his throat. Karkat is left staggered, voiceless. His mouth moves, but the words refuse to come, he's standing stock-still in the ruins of the hives.

"Are you-- dumping me?" he manages to croak out and then his face falls into a sneer. "Fine. Whatever. I don't care. What good have you ever fucking done me anyway? All you did was get me tortured by a psychopath wearing my best friend's face and then I nearly lost Terezi completely because I chose your sorry ass over hers and you know what? I regret it, I regret it more every fucking day because they're never not going to bring your sorry ass back, because nobody, fucking nobody, is a better fucking sufferer than you."

Red tears are leaking from his eyes and he knows that was pretty much the absolute worst thing he could say and he wishes he could take it back, almost, except there's a part of him, the proper troll, who wants to hurt him just as much as he's just been hurt and it's so easy, right now, to listen to it.

"I'm not dumping you," he says, with a lot more annoyance in his voice than reassurance.

"I'm just finally bringing up something I've ignored for far too long, because it's clear that the only way to ever get you to listen is to shout at you. I am still trying to help you, you ungrateful little shit, even though you constantly throw all my attempts back in my face and tell me I don't really care about you. You do and say things that you know hurt me and then expect me not to say anything. And I have kept quiet, because I thought helping you was more important than being upset over you continuously parroting doctrine that says I deserve to be painfully culled, but I can't do it anymore. I'm sick of keeping quiet while you act like you care about me and then turn around and tell me that the way the Alternian government treats trolls like us is justified, when you tell me in so many words that our moiraillegiance means nothing at all to you. You're the one who's been quietly dumping me for perigees and hoping I wouldn't notice."

The more he talks, the more agitated his tone gets, until he's near shouting and waving the hand holding his knife around for emphasis. He's so, so angry. All these things that have bothered him for months and months are finally all bubbling to the surface in one big mess and it feels so fiercely good to say all of it.

"Shut up," Karkat hisses. "Shut the fuck up, Kankri Vantas. How would you like to have every limb of YOUR fucking meatsack broken? How would YOU like to have someone tear their claws down your grubscars? HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO HAVE YOUR HEAD INCOMPETENTLY BEATEN IN BY A MORON AS YOU BEGGED THEM NOT TO KILL YOU?" Great red sobs are rolling down his cheeks, he's shaking and shuddering, he feels like he's got an electric rod jammed straight up his spinal crevice. "And then I didn't even get a break, nobody was all 'shit, Karkat, you failed to save your best friend and you just got tortured as part of someone's stupid revenge plot, maybe you need some time alone' because I was on fucking suicide watch for the next perigee, but oh no, I've hurt your feelings, well fuck that, I've died for you, more than once, and every single fucking time you've wasted it." He can barely see Signless now in the red clouding his eyes. "Why don't you kill me again, Long-Suffferer, and maybe for once you won't waste it?"

"Don't call me that," Signless snarls, and then he launches himself at Karkat. He's not practiced at all in fighting other trolls; he doesn't even think to use his knife, instead slamming his other fist into Karkat's face and trying to use his momentum to knock the smaller troll down. It says a lot about his mental state that he doesn't hesitate at all.

Karkat's built solidly, it's almost not enough force. Almost. The Signless is as much of a walking brick as he is, if not more, seeing as he had his adult moults.

Karkat goes down on his ass and he doesn't bother drawing the knives in their make-shift sheathes at his waist. "Do it," he screams at the Signless, kicking at his shins. "Do it and for fuck's sake don't waste it."

He raises the knife. It would be easy like it wasn't last time, now that he has a real weapon. It would be like killing any other bug, just a quick strike through the eye and into the brain.

Funnily enough, it's Karkat telling him to do it that makes him pause. He's not quite far enough gone yet, even with the heat and the poison working its way into his mind, to really kill anyone. Is he? He wanted to hurt Karkat, yes, to shut him up, to beat sense into him because nothing else has worked, and even that deep down under the heat and the rage frightens him.

That pause is a perfect opening to catch him off-guard.

There are three things about Commander Shepard that stood as absolutes. The very first, it would surprise many people to learn, was her faith. She had faith in people, in their capabilities, in their resolve, in their loyalties, every bit as much as she had in her own. The second was that she lived for other people, much as she hated to admit it; to solve their problems, fight their battles.

The third, was that once she considered someone 'hers', she would move galaxies to protect them, no matter the personal cost. What was about to happen to Signless, however, was nothing like a cost. She considered it a favor, true, but if Karkat was doing her solid to allow her the chance, she would be repaying it by saving his life.

After all, it isn't as if they'd been stealthy. And Shepard, still isolated from half her team, is looking for people and trouble in equal measures. So when she glanced again around the corner and saw the kid on the ground with a knife poised to kill, she reacted decisively. It was an easy mnemonic, just an upraised fist, the punching motion of a shadow-boxer-- jab!

The air glowed blue as supercharged dark matter briefly sublimated into real matter, condensed, and dispersed in an arching wave that neatly picked Signless up with it, lifting him off Karkat and throwing him bodily away. A giant's ragdoll, tossed aside; Shepard crossed the clear distance to stand over Karkat, corona sparking blue clouds around her hands and shoulders. The amp burned in her skull, and it felt so damn good to be back.

"Get up, Vantas," she could be talking to either of them. But if she wants Signless to get up, it's only so she can put him down again. Shepard glanced down at Karkat, "I don't have time for you to take a nap, here. Move."

Karkat glares at her. "What the fuck are you talking about? Are... oh my fuck, are you trying to save me? From him?" No. No, this can't be. This can't fucking be, she went and told everyone he was a sitting quackbeast, why would she try to save his insectal grey ass? "You hate me!"

"Don't make this weird, kid. You're way too young for me," Shepard drawled, watching carefully where Signless had fallen, "Shut up and run, Karkat, or are you really gonna sit there and make me kill your boyfriend?"

The throw knocked the Signless back a good was into the porch of one of the nearby houses, where the decaying wood dented around him as he it. It took him a long few seconds to collect himself and get his breath back enough to stand. A hit like that might have knocked all the fight out of him if he were more in his right mind, but with the heat and the anger it just made him more determined to fight something. He pushed himself shakily to his feet, knife still clutched in one fist, and started back toward the two of them with what started out as a walk and morphed into a run.

THIS IS STUPID repeated over and over in the back of his mind, but he ignored it. Today was not a day for good sane decisions.

"Don't you dare," Karkat hisses, pushing himself up to his feet. "I'm supposed to die for him, not him for me, that's how it always fucking goes, the only time he died for me he didn't even know what he was fucking doing."

Signless was moving even as Karkat spoke. He came up angry, bruised, perhaps a little slowed. Trolls took hits like Vorcha, wiry and tough and as brutish as Krogan-- only not so big. Shepard was only listening with the half-minded attention of someone about to do something really stupid.

"Well, kid, since you feel that way..." Her fist arced beautifully with the full augmented weight of her shoulder behind it, two billion credits' worth of cybernetics. She'd killed Husks this way, and it would have been more than enough to snap Signless' skinny neck if she'd cared to back it up with biotics.

You hear that God? I coulda killed him, and I didn't.

Her hand came away bloody, damned trolls and their pointy-boned bullshit, but it wasn't all her blood. Her target struck the ground with that boneless lax that left Shepard well-satisfied. And then he took a breath: knock-out.

"...Let's move before he comes to."

Edited 2014-06-19 22:52 (UTC)

"You don't even like me," Karkat says, completely confused by this turn of events. "What the fuck is this even about?" But if Shephard moves, he'll follow, giving Signless one last, worried glance back.

"True. So far as I'm concerned, you're about as smart as a brick and you mouth off like you don't think I'll break you for it," and Shepard is moving, at first just a long stride, trying to put something structural between themselves and the embarrassment occasionally known as Signless. But when Karkat catches up, the Commander lifts her heels into a jog. Either Karkat will keep up or he won't, she's his saviour not his mother.

"'Course I don't like you," A glance. Good, for all his bitching, he's not falling too far behind, "I don't even know you."

He manages to keep up somehow. "Yeah, well, last time we talked you were trying to make me into everyone's fucking target. And the time before that you gave me a fucking gut wound and I died like two hours later and it fucking hurt. And you can just fucking deal with my mouth, you aren't my fucking commander."

"Karkat, you just nearly got a new hole to breath out of, so I'll let that slide, but did anyone actually listen to what I said in that broadcast? I was offering to train and protect you. Publicly," Behind the dumpter around the bushes, a quick glance and then follow the left-hand street around behind the curve of the derelict that had once been a sky-car.

Or...just a regular car. Fucking antiques.

"I tend to inspire a certain respect for boundaries around here. Doing it that way, there's no way to back out of it later, and I take care of my people. If you'd actually shown up to work, you'd might've known that."

"Well, it sure didn't sound like it," Karkat grouses. "Maybe you should actually say that shit instead of try to be a fucking spy or whatever. And why me, anyway? I'm a failure at this stupid death game. Why not someone who's actually good at shit?"

Edited 2014-07-07 21:56 (UTC)

"People who are 'good' at this don't actually need my help," and this, right here, this eyeroll? It's for you, young Vantas, "It's in everyone's best interest to improve you. Betting gets more interesting, the bleeding hearts get to see you not die so quickly, maybe you even win an arena and get out of this, unless you actually enjoy it?"

There was a pause, and she turned back to give him a look that somehow managed to neatly straddle the line between sympathetic and sneering.

"But I could give you another gut wound, if you'd prefer that teaching method."

Edited 2014-07-08 05:40 (UTC)

"No," Karkat says hurriedly. "You really don't have to do that. Just, fuck, I don't know, don't be so fucking cryptic about shit."

He's quiet for about half a minute of scrambling after her before he asks, "So is it true you're hatedating the Initiate?"

"That was kids are calling it these days?" Her first instinct is to just plain shut him down, but...well, she just put herself on the mission to save this kid.

Wringing his scrawny neck for bringing up romantic entanglements in the arena, with all the cameras, is probably counterproductive. Only an idiot deliberately exposed their underbelly to the enemy.

"No, I'm not," The lie is abrupt, immediate, and a damn shame; she's still curious, "What's the deal with that anyways?"

"Kismesis? It's only one of the most important relationships a troll might have," Karkat says. "It's when you hate someone so very fucking much that half the time all you can think about is wiping their stupid smirk off their face, either with your fist or your mouth or both. It's how every time you see them you burn with fury at how stupid and annoying and obtuse they are, with how much you want to show them how much better you are than them. A good kismesis challenges the fuck out of you, you know. They force you to make yourself better so you can rub their faces in it. You hate them and you cherish that hatred and although you'll hurt them, you'd never break them all the way or kill them because then they'd be gone and you'd miss them, loathsome as they are, and who would you measure yourself against without them?"

He sighs. "I tried to do that with Bert, but it didn't work out. I... I don't think he could hate me properly. Not the kind of romantic hatred you're supposed to have. And I ended up not able to hate him properly either, at least not all the time, and when I did hate him it probably wasn't for the right reasons. We ended up scuffling and then making out a lot, mostly."

Marius might be quickly receding into a state of delirium.

He is aware, vaguely, that he is sweating a river, the heat scorching at his skin and he briefly wonders how Joly would react if he returns red and half-burnt and covered in boils and for some strange reason finds it both curious and amusing. And then he pushes the thought away because he shouldn't be finding anyone's distress amusing, and he really should return to the others because he's wounded and they are worried and he had sworn to Enjolras to be useful.

So what is he doing here? He rests one hand on his collarbone—he had intended to only gingerly touch it, but the movement might have been too heavy, or abrupt, because a sharp sting shoots up from the collar to his spine and he winces and bites at his chapped lips and suddenly everything tastes metallic.

That's when he spots Signless. Or perhaps it is one of the other trolls, but he would much rather it be Signless. He stops, head tilting almost imperceptibly to one side. It's too stifling to do much else, or think of much else, really.

Perhaps Signless knows where his other friends are.

Unfortunately Signless doesn't know where they are (except for Joly, dead somewhere, poisoned and tossed out like trash), and if he did he'd be in no state to have a civil conversation about it.

He doesn't see Marius until he's almost on top of him, he's so preoccupied with his own thoughts. He could have said more to Karkat, he could have made his point better, he could have fought better against Shepherd, it's so hot -- but that's someone he knows.

"Marius. You're still alive."

He doesn't sound exactly excited -- kind of the opposite, actually. He's had enough of young men that need extensive coddling for one day. All he wants is to find somewhere dark and cool to lick his wounds and adjust his plans for solo survival.

"Ah, monsieur...!"

Marius staggered back, more of a delayed reaction to the sudden closeness than anything else, almost stumbling but managing to correct himself just in time. It took him several more seconds to realize that Signless did not appear to be well himself.

He winced again. Despite the pain and the heat and the dizziness however, concern over his friend's well-being surfaced. It was unlike him to be so unwelcome. He risked a wobbly step towards him. "A-Are you all right?"

"Fine," he said, with every indication that he was not fine at all. The hand that gripped the handle of his knife tightened somewhat. He couldn't quite explain what about this was putting him so on-edge; it wasn't like Marius was acting all that threatening, or even that much of a threat to begin with, but there was something about his earnest worry that was just massively aggravating.

He hadn't stopped walking, either. He still needed to find somewhere to hide and a single concerned Frenchman was not going to get in his way.

He blinked, then stepped aside to allow Signless to pass, looking terribly apologetic. Signless must be having a terrible day, not that he could blame him, or anyone, really, what with the deathly heat. And that was the least of their problems. He cast his eyes to the ground and kicked at it with a foot. "If... If you say you are."

He then raised his head, abruptly. "Oh! But please, do be careful out there."

Afterward, he'd say that if it had been anything, it had been the sudden movements: the kicking of the feet, the sudden snap of the head. He was already so on edge that they had read like the movements of monsters, of someone readying to attack, and in his pan-addled state that had been enough.

He lunged back toward Marius with a warning hiss, fully intending to bite whatever part of him is closest if he doesn't move.

The lunge was so entirely unexpected that the idea of evading the sudden attack did not even occur to him until the very last second.

When it did, all he could do was leap backwards. But it was all too little too late, and Signless's teeth sank into the bridge of Marius's nose, drawing out bright, red blood and a cry of pain and shock. He staggered backwards, an elbow jutting out in an attempt to force Signless away. His free hand went to his nose, fingers pressing against it to limit the flow of blood.

Signless let himself be elbowed backward. Hopefully he'd got his point across, so there was no need to maintain close quarters.

"You're the one who ought to be careful," he said, not bothering to wipe his mouth. There was already blood on his face, a little more wasn't going to make much of a difference. "It's dangerous here for people like you."

Marius stared at the blood dripping from Signless's face and mouth and for a moment it was not Signless but the face of a man from the barricades: Combeferre and then Courfeyrac then Joly then Bahorel then Bossuet—and he squeezed his eyes shut to chase away the images and pull himself back to the present.

When he opened them and glanced back and saw Signless again, his expression was one of relief quickly succeeded with a look of utmost confusion and hurt. "I do not understand..."

Signless rolled his eyes, gesturing aggressively with his hands as he spoke.

"I mean that the longer you spent around people, the more likely they are to realize that you're a useless fucking overgrown wiggler who couldn't survive his way out of a dried wood pulp disposable container."

Paper bag. He means paper bag. The Alternian lowblood dialect is some shit.

Marius's forehead creased. Through vision slightly blurred with tears he tried to follow Signless's gestures, then surrendered mid-way. "I... What..."

And then he understood. He may not have comprehended what every word meant, but he gathered enough. His face fell and he cast his eyes to the ground, hurt because of the cruel delivery and guilty because what he said was the truth. "Oh."

Perhaps that was what everyone thought of him and were too polite to say aloud.

"Yes, oh." He clapped a hand on Marius's shoulder, maybe a little too hard, and shoved him backward.

"So go find somewhere to hide before someone who doesn't inexplicably want to keep your stupid ass safe decides to take advantage of that. Or before you annoy me enough that I don't care anymore."

Marius winced, although he was not certain if it was because of the jolt of pain that shot up from his broken collarbone when he was shoved back or because of Signless's harsh but truthful words.

His gaze remained on the ground as he stumbled backwards. "I-I am sorry." He shifted on his feet, then took another step back, turning as if readying himself to run even if he knew his injuries would not allow him to go far. "I shall take my leave, then."

"Just fucking go."

And he was going to stand there, glaring, with his arms crossed, until Marius was out of sight.

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and we will have no mercy no more [closed]

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oops i switched tenses i'm gomen

it okay tenses are for losers

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