thearena | ( open ) Down on my luck

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( open ) Down on my luck

Who| Fíli and Nasir; Fíli and Kíli
What| Fíli gets seriously injured during a fight, dies from the wounds.
Where| The orchards; later on a hideout
When| Week 4
Warnings/Notes| Well, death. And it's Nasir so I expect some good amount of blood. Lovely things.

FOR NASIR;

The place was scarce in food and water, and Fíli knew that the longer it went on, the lesser were his chances of finding anything, and greater the ones that he would run into foe rather than friend. Still, he had to try. Both he and Kíli had reached the very last of their supplies, and he saw it as his own obligation that he would be the one to find them just enough food to at least last them a little longer.

Neither of them slept much, but in their hiding, he was relieved to see Kíli doze into sleep, perhaps out of sheer exhaustion, and though he did not want to leave him alone, they also could not remain here and expect food to come to them. So carving symbols onto the ground in khuzdul - went for food, stay here - he grabbed as many weapons as he had at hand - no more than a good number of daggers and a heavy pipe - and made his way out.

Every place was as empty of food and water as the next one, yet Fíli tried. The orchard seemed to him what once used to be a place with some edible things, so he made for it, pipe in hand as he made his way through the thick air surrounding him, always alert for any creature or even person to come at him.

FOR KÍLI;

The fight had rendered him almost entirely useless, and more than anything Fíli resented that one thing. He had gone to find them food and not even that much he had managed, returning with only a gash across his middle, bruises and cuts everywhere else, and though wrapping up the wound at first seemed to help, in a few hours the fabric was damp in his blood again. And all of it to no avail, as he had achieved nothing of what he had hoped for. His brother curled near him and worried incessantly, but he was starving, he was exhausted and Fíli could hear it in every word, could see it in every line in his face, even when he tried to hide it.

Each breath was a struggle; it had been for a while, but all the more so now. Pain ran sharply through him whenever he moved, each time he shifted, but he kept going even with that, out of sheer stubbornness or entirely driven by the fear that had settled in his gut.

It was not until that pain started to disappear, and he was left with no more than the struggle of breathing or even thinking, his sight falling out of focus as he glanced around him, that he realized.

He was dying. This was it.

"Kíli," his breath ragged, dissolved into a cough that had more blood oozing from the wound, staining his clothes now. He put one hand to his stomach, and the other searched for his brother. Weak, even though he was gripping at the arm as tightly as he could. "Kíli."

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In the hours since Kili woke up alone, since he called and screamed for his brother to find him limping back with a gash in his belly, the measurable dread in his gut had only grown. He had not protected his brother, not kept as close a watch as he should have. Irrationally, he told himself that if he had not gone to sleep, Fili would not be bleeding out and dying right now beside him (for while Kili was foolish regarding a number of things, he could not lie to himself that Fili would survive long with such a grievous wound). Not even the hunger pains of his growling stomach could distract him from the terrible certainty that his brother would die painfully and soon. Every harsh breath Fili took echoed in Kili's ears and though the younger pretended to sleep, he knew he could never truly close his eyes for long with such a dreadful sound in the air around them.

So he tried to think of home during the long hours curled beside his brother, afraid to so much as touch him and cause more pain. This was his fault, for wishing in the last arena for his brother's smile, for not telling him about the Games sooner, for getting lost for nearly two weeks, for attacking him once they did find each other.

When Fili spoke, Kili sat up quickly from the rotted, hardwood floor where he had been laying, concern wild in his gaze. His hand met Fili's before it had to search far and he looked up and down at his brother as he attempted to assess Fili's needs before he could speak them. Something dark in his stomach told him there was but one thing he could give his suffering brother now.

"What is it?" Kili asked, his voice high and fast with his fear. "What d'you need?"

The worry in his brother could be felt in the very air between them, as was the knowledge that Fíli's death was to come soon. But he could not gather enough focus to speak of it, or to speak of anything else to stray from those thoughts, so in that silence they sat, the darkness lingering at the edges, waiting for the moment that his body would reach its limit, and breathing would be too straining, and his heart would tire of working and stop.

And he could feel it slow down, almost, or rather - he could feel it speed up, sprinting for those last few meters before it would collapse entirely, and Fíli had to take that chance. It would be the last, this time at least, and the last he would speak to his brother before both being returned to the Capitol.

After this, Kíli would be alone. He would be on his own and Fíli knew, of course, his brother was familiarized with the games, even more so that he himself was, yet he feared how he would react to his death in this arena. He feared it because he knew how he himself would be feeling or thinking right now should their roles be reversed.

"The daggers," he breathed out weakly, his head resting on the wall just behind him. Each blinking of his eyes was an immense effort, and every time he opened them again a little more of his sight disappeared, burning to black at the edges. Still, he could find his brother's face in the dark, even if his gaze searched wildly for a moment before settling on the familiar traits.

"Take the daggers. The pipe. There is..."

A pause, a cough, and a soft wheeze.

"N-not much food, but... take... t-take all you can carry..." His fingers curled into fabric as tightly as they could, in a feeble attempt to pull him a little closer. His words barely above a whisper, but he clung to them, to the last remnants of consciousness as tight as he could. "And... keep going, find... 'nother place..."

While Fili's heart sped up to speak, Kili's felt as if it had stopped at the words that his brother struggled to say, at the finality that weighed every one of them down. Kili's eyes stretched wider as the realization that not too long had become now without his knowledge, without any preparation on his part for the inevitable. Each wheeze rang in Kili's ears like a bell and when his brother's fingers curled tighter in the fabric of his jacket, he could do nothing but close his own hands around them. Still, the only lingered there for a moment as the first words of frank denial spilled from his mouth, "You're not dying. Not now. You can't."

But that did not change the reality he saw so apparently before his face, the pit in his stomach, the way Fili's voice seemed to fade with every breath. Even as Kili shook his head further, he bent down closer, moved his hands from the warm circle they made around his brother's cool ones to Fili's face, to cheeks lined with a blonde beard. He pressed his forehead against Fili's as he labored against his own struggle to keep his composure, but he was not nearly as well-trained and well-practiced as his brother in the art of hidden emotions.

"You can't... you can't leave me here," he nearly sobbed against his brother, fingers tangling in the blonde braids bracketing the familiar and now too pale face. "Fee."

Stop it, he wanted to say. He wanted to tell Kíli to stop arguing and do what he said for once, but it all fell apart around him when his brother spoke. The words hurt more than any blade ever could, and Fíli closed his eyes, a grimace taking over his features.

Suddenly the feeling was all too overwhelming, and it made his heart ache in his chest, beat faster and closer towards the end, towards that pit of darkness fast approaching. The taste he recognized it in his tongue, and knew it immediately, it was guilt and it was too great for him to swallow. He blamed himself for his foolishness, for going alone to that orchard, for not running away before the situation got worse, and now he blamed himself because his actions were the sole reason why Kíli would be alone now.

Kíli was going to have to watch his brother die, and right now there was no one to blame but himself.

"Kee..." Any other words fell, died, and turned to a panicked sob, barely there, not enough strength for it or anything other than his shallow breathing. Yet tears fell from his eyes, quickly staining his cheeks. "I'm sorry..."

"No," The word slipped from Kili's lips before he could stop it. "No, Fee, please..."

Kili could not bear to hear his brother's rocky breathing, to feel the hot tears sliding underneath his thumbs, to endure the guilt slamming down against his shoulders. Instead the intense need to help his brother in some way overtook him. If Fili struggled with breathing, perhaps all he needed was to be upright, Kili's mind suggested. He leaned away enough to tuck an arm around his brother's back and attempt to scoop him up toward his own chest, so Fili's head would be cradled up against him. The movements his task required were fervent and once Fili was properly supported against his chest, Kili reached down to stroke sweat and tear darkened strands of hair out of his face with shaking fingers. Kili's own expression warped his countenance into something truly miserable and the weight of his furrowed eyebrows had already begun to produce a headache.

Something about pulling his brother up from the cold earth struck a new revelation behind brown eyes, that this was his fault, that Fili's painful death was only being made more so by his selfish desire for his brother to hang on.

" 's my fault," he murmured quietly as he continued to stroke his brother's face though all hair had been cleared moments ago. "This is all my fault."

His own tears pattered down from his cheeks onto his brother's.

Edited 2014-06-16 23:21 (UTC)

It was a string of self-reproach and guilt going from one to the other, and Fíli wanted to stop it but he could not. He did not have the strength to speak so much, or to think too clear, and though the notion was there he could not arrange it into coherent strings of words, into proper sentences. He wanted to tell Kíli he was not to blame, that he could not wallow in this sorrow. That he should go on through the rest of the arena and that at the end of it they would be reunited. But no words came, and just trying to make them happen had him feeling even dizzier.

But that was the one thing he tried to cling to in the end. That once this arena was over he and Kíli would be together again, even if they were to be tossed back into the next one, only to suffer again.

As Kíli pulled him closer, more blood spilled from the wound, his sight turning to sporadic flashes of white from that loss. But pain there was none, so he made no noise of complaint. His arms slackened to his sides, and he simply let his head fall like a pointless weight against his brother's chest.

"F-find... you..." it was but a weak mumbling noise, perhaps only heard because of how close they were to one another at the moment, but Fíli no longer had the strength to speak louder. With breaths that came choked to him, he tried again regardless, feeling the cold hand of Death mere seconds away from touching him. "...will f-- ind..."

Kili could not think ahead, could not think to a return to the Capitol, no matter the small number of words that Fili struggled to speak. The only thing that filled his mind were the pained gasps that may well be his brother's final breaths. Once more, Kili tried to get his brother more upright, to make breathing and speaking earlier, to deny the inevitable as long as he could. He reaffirmed his grip along his brother's shoulders, adjusted Fili, but nothing seemed to help smooth Fili's breathing.

"Fee, Fee," He pleaded with his brother, not even thinking of sentiments such as save your strength.

Instead, his mind filled with the buzz of my fault as he slowly began to rock with his brother's body and the tears rolled down his face without a thought to his appearance. He had gotten his brother killed, Fili's death had been so slow and painful because of him, because he could not stay up through the night, because he could still not fully fend for himself, because Fili had been cursed when he had been born.

His brother's voice was at the same time distant and echoing loudly in his mind, wavering between a near deafening cacophony of sounds, and nothing more than white noise. Words on his end had died now, and whenever he tried to speak, it was no more than choking noises, breathless gasps as he struggled for air harder and harder each time, until, at some point, he no longer could.

The last inhale was a long and painfully slow one, plagued to him with thoughts of leaving Kíli alone, and with sounds of his little brother's cries, and he knew there were tears even without seeing them, without feeling them. His sight was entirely consumed by now, nothing but darkness, or light - at the time he could not tell the difference. And the strained beating of his heart was plagued with the ache of guilt and uselessness more than it was with fear, that he had not protected Kíli. He had not kept him safe and that he had failed in something even as simple as getting them some food.

Then silence fell around them, and Fíli became very still. In one last ounce of effort, he slid his eyes close and let out his last breath, slower even than he had drawn it in, and he let his brother's pained sounds fill his mind until it stopped altogether, and his heart stilled in his chest.

More horrible than his brother's pained gasps was the silence that followed. Kili waited for Fili to take another breath, as long and agonized as they might be. He waited. And waited. And waited. After a handful of painfully silent moments, horror opened a terrible pit in his stomach, his eyes widened, and he shook his brother.

"Fili? Fili!" Kili shouted down at his brother's closed eyes. "You can't..."

Tears spilled freely down Kili's cheeks as he leaned down to press his ear to his brother's chest and found it as horribly quiet as everything else.

"No." He leaned up to shake his brother again by the shoulders. "Fili!"

Fili's head lolled limply, so Kili tried again and again, his attempts more panicked by the second, his mouth forming nothing but his brother's name in an effort to somehow breathe life back into the limp body in his arms. Kili found the yawning chasm in his gut grow, swallow him down into a pain he had never felt before and he scooped Fili up close to him again, cradling the blonde head against his chest as he began to rock back and forth. Fili's dead, his mind told him but Kili could not believe it, could not grasp the concept of a world without his brother in it. For decades, Fili's had been the first face to greet him every morning, his voice the first sounds to grace every day.

And now there would be none of it, because of him, because Kili could not protect Fili. He had silenced his brother's voice, erased the last smile from his face.

The rocking motion picked up both in speed and intensity as Kili's eyes grew wider at the facts his mind were slowly processing. Fili would never assure him it's alright ever again, would never drag his lazy butt from bed, would never speak, would never smile ever again.

Kili screamed. He screamed until his throat felt it would tear from his neck, a guttural, animalistic cry that shook through to his foundation, carrying with it the terrible weight of Fili's death. It cracked the solid stone he had built his life on, built his ideals and dreams, and shattered any last hope he had brought with him to the arena. He barely noticed or cared at the wretched sobbing that followed, how it attracted the attention of the ambling creatures around him. Nothing mattered anymore.

He cried until he fell asleep from sheer exhaustion and when he woke up, the body was gone.

As it happened, Fíli was not the only one looking for food. Nasir had generous sponsors at the start of the arena but that had stopped after the first week. Since then, trips to the orchard had been a regular part of his schedule.

Only he wasn't alone. He saw a figure between the trees-- short but too broad for any child.

Nasir made sure he had a solid grip on his crowbar as he quietly approached for a closer look. He did not think he could kill a child but then, as he came closer, he saw the beard. That made everything different.

At first no noises reached his ears. He was tired and distracted, having been in the orchard for a while and thinking he had dodged running into anyone or anything. He crouched next to a tree, trying to find any fallen fruit, when a light shuffle got his attention, and Fíli jumped to his feet and turned around quickly.

He saw the figure there, not too far, but he could not see who or what it was. Were it one of those monsters he would kill it without second thought, but the other Tributes? He had not yet met a single one who had attacked him, and he had no intention of doing so either, unless he was attacked first.

So with a small step backwards, he waited.

Nasir didn't speak as he approached but he could tell from the sudden stillness of the man that he'd been seen. He came out of the fog and Fíli's features came into focus.

He could make a taunt about height but he'd been on the receiving end of that too often.

"Apologies," Nasir said. But if Fíli thought that was for surprising him he would shortly be corrected. It was for what followed.

Nasir raised his crowbar and charged at him, ready to swing once he came within reach.

Unsurprisingly it would not have been the first time he would be mocked for his height. Even amongst his kin he was rather short.

He watched with some puzzlement at the offered apology, but his mistake was to let his guard down after that, so that when the man came charging at him with the crowbar, he did not have time to lift his own pipe to stop the blow. He raised his arm instead to take the hit instead, strong and inflicting some pain but hardly something a dwarf couldn't take.

He had only half a second to realize what was happening, and not giving the man time to try to hit him once again, he aimed his boot at one of his knees, trying to bring him down with a kick.

((ooc: sorry, I completely forgot to mention - I wrote Fíli getting a gash across his middle, does that work? Not sure if Nasir has any weapons that could do that, but I can have Fíli throwing a dagger to try and get him and he could use it afterwards. ))

Nasir normally would have been able to dodge the kick, but he was sluggish. His reflexes were slow. He was just starting to move back when Fíli's foot connected with his knee. He almost crumpled but shifted his weight to his other leg and staggered back. He let out a sharp hiss.

He wasn't yet ready to make another attack. His knee still felt unsteady so he stood and braced himself for when Fíli would come at him.

"I never considered self a giant before. We will see if you can topple one."

[[OOC: I was thinking he could use the hook of his crowbar but that'd be hard to pull off. A dagger works better. Is it the mortal wound, a bad one, or just shallow?]]

The pain in his own arm was no small one, but adrenaline rushed through him and it was easy to ignore in favour of arming himself with a dagger on his other hand. He pulled it from somewhere in his clothes in a way that would have just about anyone wondering how he was even hiding it there, then held it up along with the pipe.

"I've toppled things larger than you," he growled, though obviously this was different. He was hungry, he felt weaker and moved slower than usual, even his eyes did not work as well with how the fog seemed to crawl right beneath his eyelids.

Still finishing the last word and he was already running towards Nasir, twisting his arm to the side to swing the pipe at his knees again.

((ooc: then I will have him throw a dagger in a bit, no problem. And yes, that would be the mortal wound, after which he'll make to run away rather than keep fighting, but really feel free to inflict others before. I'm cool with it.))

Fíli's words were a first, directed as they were at someone whose nickname was Little Man. If only his friends were there to hear it. But then, most of them were dead even before he had come here.

Nasir was expecting the blow this time and, slow or not, he jumped out of reach of the weapon. That put Fíli's body beyond reach of his crowbar as well but not his hand. As the lead pipe arced toward him, Nasir swung his weapon down to strike Fíli's hand. Hopefully the blow would land and break a bone or else knock the pipe to the ground. That would be one less weapon to worry about.

His slow motions frustrated him, and Nasir was much too quick in retaliating, so that Fíli could not move away and avoid the blow that came next.

For a man he was impressively strong, and though it was far from the kind of force needed to actually break any bone in a dwarf's body, it was still painful, all the more so on a hand that already sported a cut from the past week. With a surprised yell his hand lost its grip and he let the pipe fall to the floor, rolling away from him as it did.

Nasir pressed his advantage. He went after Fíli and swung his crowbar again-- at his head this time. He hoped that, even if Fíli dodged, the hook would catch on his face and rip his flesh.

Though it was harder to look down at this man, far smaller than any legionnaire, and view him as Roman. He instead had to rely on his other means of fighting without guilt. His promise. He would live. He would escape this. If he had to kill, then that was the price. It wouldn't be the first life he'd taken here.

He could not avoid the blow, it came much too quick for Fíli's senses and delayed reflexes. By the time he realized the hit was coming, the metal was striking hard against the side of his face, and with a loud cry he staggered backwards, hand moving up to his cheek only briefly when he felt pain blooming where a cut was made.

But he did not wait long, he would not give the man time to try and hurt him again. The pipe was too far from him, so he used the dagger on his hand instead, his aim not as sharp as usual but at least his throw strong and quick, even when he could not put even half of his strength to it.

Nasir was fortunate that Fíli's aim was off. Instead of hitting his heart or chest, instead it hit his arm, just below his shoulder. Nasir cried out and put distance between him and the dwarf, knowing that he was at his most vulnerable now. Letting his crowbar fall to the ground, he reached up and yanked the dagger from his flesh.

Nasir grit his teeth to keep from making any more sounds. He glared up at Fíli, waiting for his next move before he could make his own.

It would seem Fíli was unarmed now, at least for the following seconds as he watched the man yank the blade from his side. He had not ever wanted to hurt or fight anyone, and for a moment he could not help but feel bad when he saw the blood dripping from the wound. And yet - the man was trying to kill him, and he would keep trying, he was sure of it. Fíli had to defend himself.

Not waiting for another attack, he pulled two daggers, one from each of his sleeves where he had hid them, one he held close to himself, and the other he aimed and threw at Nasir like the first, hoping this time for a better aimed hit.

Nasir saw the second dagger coming and this time he rolled onto the ground, hissing as he had to move his arm. Then he came up at Fíli's feet and made a slashing motion to rip open whatever skin his dagger came into contact with. While the execution of the roll had been smooth, the swing of the weapon had been clumsy. The pain grew harder to ignore, as did the constant flow of blood down his arm.

Any other situation, and Fíli would have been able to avoid the attack, yet his motions were too slow now, and he felt as but a spectator as Nasir rolled up and closer to him, watching only as he lifted his arm to strike. The sharp blade pierced through his skin, despite it being thicker than an ordinary man's, and with that it was much easier for Nasir to inflict the damage he hoped to.

The pained noise he let out was barely above a choked gasp, as the dagger was yanked across his stomach, slicing through skin and flesh and immediately, as he put a hand to his middle and stumbled backwards, blood spilled from the gash, staining his hand and clothes.

Nasir rose onto his feet, staggering a little but quickly regaining his balance. He quickly assessed the wound he'd inflicted. It should kill him in time. He would see to it that he got a fast death. He came at Fíli again, dagger raised to cut his throat.

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( open ) Down on my luck

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