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

[nightlightheart]

WHO | Howard and Tony
WHAT | How To Make Friends... Or Not
WHEN | After the earthquake.
WHERE | Somewhere in the woods
WARNING/NOTES| Death and possible sads.


He's stopped counting days, but Tony is fairly certain this is the longest he's lasted inside an arena. He'd feel better about that if he wasn't half-way certain he was dying. And not because he was afraid someone was about to bash in his brain with a radioactive brick, either. No, there was a sickness eating it's way through him. He knew what that felt like. It was a hauntingly uncomfortable familiar feeling, but this was it.

Sometimes, he hated being right about everything.

Still though, Tony's never been one to just lay down and take much of anything. So he sits by the stream and lets his water bottle fill. And waits. Tries to decide on his next move.

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[iselldrugstothecommunity]

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.

[nightlightheart]

"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."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

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.