thearena | The End of The Road For Someone. The Start of One For Someone Else.

This is just a kid before him. A scared, out of place kid. He recognizes the face even. Can't recall the name. But he remembers the announcement back a few nights ago. The new tribute from nowhere.

Poor thing has absolutely no idea what he's landed himself in.

"Look. I don't want to hurt you, if I don't have to," Tony insists. He's only got a water bottle in his hand. But there's a knife in his pocket and he's sure enough in himself right now that he can get to it if he has to, before the kid even gets close enough.

What has he even become here, that he's considering it at all. Just some kid. Scared and missing home. And Tony stands there on the bank of the stream and seriously considers taking him out.

It would be doing him a favour, really.

"You're the new one, aren't you? The one from a few nights ago."

"Yeah." His lower lip's trembling. Between words he tries to pin it into stillness with his front teeth. "I got here after everyone took all the supplies."

Howard's been trying to convince himself that that's what it comes down to - who got the weapons, who got the ropes to make traps, who started this game with a foot up instead of scrabbling around for leftovers off of warm corpses. That kind of illusion is one that lets him believe he would have had a fighting chance in the first place.

His hand is going numb around the rock. He can throw it. If he hits Tony in the face, would that give him time to grab a second rock, close the distance between them and beat a bigger man to death? How far can the element of surprise take him? He feels the lead sensation in his legs and a surge of nausea, and knows that he can only run away if Tony lets him.

He looks at Tony's face and searches for a cue. Is Tony telling the truth or is he just lulling him into a false sense of security?

He's too sick to think straight. He looks at his hand, his unarmed, cut hand, and holds it out to Tony. It's swollen and red, and the skin around the wound is water-logged and the color of pus. "I think I got an infection."

A silver parachute had come to him not long after his escape from what once had been Donatello. A yellowish jelly substance that had healed the scrapes on his hands and arms and sealed up the cut on his leg. He doesn't know who sent it to him, but he's sure the cost was not cheap. Open wounds here were just an invitation for an early death.

For a moment, Tony thinks about getting into his pack. Offering it to the scared kid. Maybe make his last few moments, hours, maybe even days somewhat easier.

"How'd you hurt yourself?" he wonders, looking at the hand he's been presented with. Red and angry and swollen. Maybe if he'd gotten it out here the effects wouldn't be as severe. Maybe he can help him.... Or maybe he's just stalling. He hasn't decided yet.

"On the cliffs. I was trying to get a bird." And he had managed to eat Wyatt's dead gull, but that was a few days ago, and since then he hasn't managed to keep even berries and reeds down. He can't remember if he's ever been so sick before.

Let Tony get close and then hit him with the rock. Use the shock of the water to his advantage and then finish the job. Take anything on Tony's person and then scout the area for anything nearby.

It's a stupid, desperate plan, but it's all he has. He pulls the hand back and cradles it to his skinny chest. "What do I do?"

"Depends," Tony shrugs. "This place is made to kill. Even the rocks and the trees and the birds that you eat. How long have you had it? It may already be too late."

Clearly he would have been a terrible medical doctor. Absolutely no bedside manner at all. He wasn't even good at pillow talk, really. If he wanted to get down to it.

Still though, it was hard not to feel bad for the kid. To not want to try and do something for him. Maybe that was a good thing. That he wanted that and wasn't immediately going for the kill. He knows he could do it. Knows he would win. Knows that almost all of Panem is watching him right now, hoping he will do just that.

He takes a step forward, hands raised in a sign of peace and decides that he isn't ready to be that person just yet.

Howard's silent for a moment as he tries to think. The last few days have blurred together in a smudge of pain and checking bare traps and naps that were less sleeping that partially-conscious shivering. He remembers at least two sunrises, though.

"Three days." The end of his sentence is punctuated by a sob as he realizes what that means. As much as he wants to believe there's hope as long as there's life, he knows that isn't right. There's a point of no return that you hit while still breathing.

It doesn't really matter if Tony means him harm after all. He doesn't need to pretend, doesn't need to try. He's never trusted in the kindness of strangers because he always feared a threat, but this is beyond fear. It's anarchy in his world view.

He lets go of the rock. He puts his hands up to his face and starts crying with tearless, jerky sobs. "I'm not ready to die." He tries to stand up to get out of the water and sinks on the riverbank to his knees.

Edited 2012-11-28 05:19 (UTC)

And now it's a crying kid. Goddamn it. He really can't do this now. Wants to roll his eyes or scream at the universe for being such a jackass. "Ah... wait. Shit. Don't cry." he groans.

Hands still raised in a gesture of kindness, Tony starts to approach. "Come on. How about... uh. Let me have a look."

He isn't really sure what he's doing. What he's supposed to be looking for. Or if the medicine in his bag is going to even work for what's wrong with the kid. Isn't even sure it worked all that well on himself if the fever and nausea he still has is any indication.

But he isn't ready to die knowing that his last thought was that he was willing to just kill a scared and crying kid to get him further along in a game he didn't even want to play in the first place.

Howard gets to his feet and stumbles a little closer before semi-collapsing again. He's not sure if he's numb from the cold water or if he's just that weak. He nods at Tony and hiccups, trying to keep from crying more. "Sorry."

He turned fifteen less than a month ago.

He holds his hand out again. It isn't even a big cut, just a scrape, really. It probably wouldn't even need stitches outside here, just a big band-aid and some Neosporin. But in the arena it's a mark of death, hot to the touch and burning painful.

Slouching in front of Tony, he's surrendered to the possibility that Tony will strike him dead. He looks at him with a dizzy expression, trying to keep from sobbing again as if he's trying to impress Tony by quickly recovering to a stiff upper lip.

"It's fine. Just... don't." he bats the idea away with a fluttering hand. He doesn't intend to be rude - he usually doesn't - but he's not exactly experienced in dealing with crying kids. And that is the last he says about the matter.

Gingerly, he examines the kid's outstretched hand; inflamed and angry and showing all the signs he knows for radiation poisoning. He's got days left, if he's lucky. And... Tony isn't certain that's the adjective he would use to describe the poor kid.

He winces and hesitates. "Let's... see if we can't clean this up a bit better. Come on." he gestures to the stream.

[I am so sorry for the delay on this, my internet has sucked so much lately! D)]

"Right." He struggles back to his feet. It's clearly a difficult task, and he has to pause and breathe deep once he's done so to keep from retching up the handfuls of water he's managed to keep down today.

It's strange, he thinks. Two weeks in a deathmatch and no ones tried to kill him. Wyatt let him get away, and here this new stranger is playing the part of the reluctant nurse. It wasn't other people but the elements that did him in.

He takes uncoordinated steps back to the water, vision swimming with fever. Strange thoughts roll and lick through his head, overheated misfires about whether he could get a childproof cap open in this state, whether he remembered to lock the door back home, whether Tony's spent half as much time damning the reasons he's here as Howard has.

"What's your name?" It seems like the right question to ask.

Tony helps him back to the stream as best he can, without getting too close - hard not to be always on guard during a game where everyone is supposed to be trying to kill you - and then, down near the water. Then he lowers himself and takes off the bag he has strapped to his back. "Uh... Tony," he says, his head a thousand miles away from this place, running a thousand different scenarios in his head. Harder to do the math with the fever burning through him. "Stark," he clarifies, as though that would mean anything to the kid at all. Even though it probably wouldn't. For all Tony knew, the kid could be from Mars in another dimension.

Why was he life full of situations were even considering that to be an actual possibility...?

"You must be new here," he says, deadpan. Its a terrible, terrible joke. "Howard, right? Heard your announcement the other day. Not a great way to be welcomed to Panem, is it? Welcome: kill people or die. Things just keep getting better. At least they used to give a guy a bit of a warning."

"Tony Stark. Sounds like you'd own a steakhouse."

Howard catches maybe half of what Tony's saying, but something about it's comforting. Maybe because it's a break from that oppressive silence, listening with keen ears for any possible danger. Maybe it's just being able to talk to another human being and really not caring if he's about to be stabbed in the back - the benefit of knowing you're screwed is that it takes a bit of the pressure to be vigilant off.

God, he doesn't want to think about that, and he doesn't want to cry again, because it's such a paltry gesture compared to the enormity of dying. So he laughs at Tony's bad jokes instead. It's a dry, brittle sound. "Yeah. Or even kill people, die anyway. And they don't even give us gift baskets when we leave the party..."

He runs his hand under the water, shuddering. He gets back to his knees and supports himself on his other hand. "Sorry, I just need to..."

And then he collapses with a shudder and a small splash, unconscious, face half-submerged in the water.

"Something like that," Tony laughs as he digs through his bag in search of a few supplies; what was left of the medicine, and his sharp folding knife.

"No, it's more like -" and then Howard collapses and Tony isn't near enough to even try and catch him. "Shit."

He can't afford to lose either of them, so he sets them back down before he scrambles to pull Howard from the stream.

He's both freezing and burning up. Not good signs at all.

Howard's dimly aware that he's being lifted from a cold place to a slightly less cold place. He coughs a bit on the water as Tony pulls him to relative safety. The cold shock has done nothing to clear his mind, instead scrambling it further.

His mind melts into a pool of dreams. He's chasing a brightly-colored bird but when he catches it, it's not a bird at all, but live, writhing worms sewn together, and they wrap around his arms like sleeves. Then they disintegrate into spots of light that dance in the space between his eyeballs and his lids.

He gropes around blindly and finds Tony's wrist. He latches onto it - he's never believed in angels, but he believes he has a protector, at the moment, and that's something he wants to hold onto.

"Sorry, Dad. I know you had work today..." he murmurs. "I'll get my history test rescheduled for when I'm not sick."

It's not quite horror that washes across Tony's face, but shock is certainly there. There is an an initial reaction to try and wiggle away but this kid is scared and alone and dying and he's trying hang onto the fact that he can still be a good person, in the end. Because he has to believe that. Especially here.

"It's alright... uh... buddy," Tony hesitates and settles the kid as far from the stream as he could without dragging him across the rocks, "Why don't you get some rest and I will fix you up."

He shifts, reaching back for his bag of supplies, and slides them back in his direction.

Howard stays where Tony sets him, shoulders hunched but head laying in the dirt as if all the muscles in his neck had been cut. He shivers a little but other than than that and the slight jerk in his wrist when he lets go of Tony, doesn't move. He keeps his cut palm tilted up to the sun, as if on some instinctual level trying to keep the dirt away.

And then he remembers that none of that matters, because there will be no ER and no school nurse and no one to save him. That's some guy named Tony, not his father - his father left a year and a half ago, along with his mother. Tony, some guy who might have killed him if he hadn't been letting nature take its course, but some guy lending him vital, futile medicine all the same.

What's the point, out here? Why is Tony bothering? Howard thinks it would be easier to just walk away, if the positions were reversed, but then again he's been called heartless a few times, cold a few more. Maybe he'll never really understand it; it's not as if he has much time to learn now.

He can feel it moving like roots up through him. He wants to ignore it and deny that it's the feeling of shutting down. He wants to pretend that it's not the dreadful sense of irreparable things happening inside him. He exhales and his breath feels cold. He realizes a trail of froth is dripping from the corner of his mouth but he lacks the ability to remember how to lick it away.

"Thanks," he says, although he doesn't know if Tony hears him. His eyes are closed and the world around him is fragile, like wet tissue paper, so he can't tell how close.

Its an oddly difficult thing to resist; reaching over and just giving him the medicine.

But it was too late, and Tony knew it. It hadn't seemed so at first, but Tony's earlier estimation of a few days for the kid turned out to be vastly overestimated. To give this kid medicine would be just as equal to throwing it out altogether. It wouldn't save him. Wouldn't even help him. He was too far gone and the only things Tony could do for him now were either to sit here and not let this scared kid die completely alone, or just put him out of his misery.

And his folding knife was so close...

"Yeah, sure, whatever. Hey..." he moves as if to grab something. "Its gonna be ok, you know. It doesn't seem like it now. But it is."

"Forgot my latchkey..." He can't keep track of what's happening or where he is, nor can he keep from whimpering at the pain racking his body. At least pain and delirium is something better than fear - some part of him deep down knows to be terrified. He doesn't want to think about the fact that soon, it might all be over. All the hopes and dreams he had, all the ones he gave up in the last year, now gone for certain.

"That ok," Tony isn't even sure what the kid is talking about, really, but he's still debating on what he wants to do, and so he stays near by. Close enough to pat the kid on the shoulder. "It's not important right now. Just... try and relax."

He jerks his head a bit, as if he's trying to nod and isn't quite using the right muscles. His eyes open and he stares dully at the ground before closing them again. A groan of pain ekes out of his chest, but other than that he's mostly quiet. He register that Tony's patting him on the shoulder, and that that hurts too, but he doesn't resist it.

Try and relax. Try not to panic about how helpless he is right now, how anything could happen and he could be dead in a second, about how it doesn't actually matter because he'll be dead soon anyway. And he has no idea what comes after that. He doesn't have religion to cling to.

Maybe death is just being buried alive and helpless to stop it, like the zombie girl they kept in their basement. Maybe he'll wake up in the pitch black under feet of dirt and have to worm and claw his way to the surface. The image of her flashes in his mind, of the dirt stuck in her teeth and the blood around her cuticles.

The convulsions begin as if a physical response to thinking of that nightmarish memory. His eyes go wide and his body spasms, completely beyond his control. He makes a choking sound as the saliva on his cheek is joined by more froth.

"Ah... shit" Tony mumbles and scrambles away as the kid starts to twitch. He's pretty sure being near him is only going to make it worse.

And then the hacking comes and Tony knows it's only blinding pain for the kid from here on out.

Its pity that moves him; drives him back towards the dying young boy.

"Look. Um..." he scrambles around on the cold wet ground to get back a little closer. "You'll thank me for this later, I hope. But this is about to get real bad."

The knife is near and sharp and Tony is stronger and faster than most people give him credit for. And perhaps most importantly: Tony knows quite a good deal about the human heart. Where it is and it's vitality and just how very fragile it can be.

He wants it to be quick for him. Its the least he can do. For the kid. And for himself. They are the most interesting thing on television right now, and anyone keeping score back home knows as well as he does, this will be his first kill in this arena or any other before now.

This will be good for them both.

That's what he has to tell himself as he feels the hot red blood on his hands. "Hope to catch you on the flipside, kid," he says to the boy almost hopefully, and even almost smiles. "It's better there."

Had Tony not intervened, Howard may have lasted a little while longer. Not much longer, given the condition he's in, but maybe an hour, maybe a little less. Whatever time he may have gotten would have been agony, filled with seizures and choking. The human body will fight against death even when the mind prays for release.

But Tony knew what he was doing with the knife, so the death is fast instead. It takes ten seconds. Howard doesn't even truly understand what happened or how the sudden lancing pain in his chest relates to the sudden cessation in everything. It's as if the lights have been switched off. He spasms a few more times; his vision goes from red to black; he's beyond hearing words but suddenly, he's beyond even hearing syllables. The awareness of dying is replaced not by a poignant last thought, but by a scribble of unrelated images, like dregs of tea caught in a drain that's sucked in anything of value.

He doesn't even bleed that much. Without his heart pushing it around anymore, blood just leaks out from the force of gravity, onto Tony's hands and the rocks in the stream and down with the water.

The End of The Road For Someone. The Start of One For Someone Else.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

It happens! And your Tony is worth the wait

saligbosfiobsfiusou <3 !

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject