thearena | If this arena were set in November we could have had a Black Friday Tom Sale

Who| Sandy, Tom, Thor, Carlos, Clara
What| Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion to The Mall Arena.
Where| Main floor the ruins of the food court.
When| The final day of the final week
Warnings/Notes| Lots of killing, probably some cursing, child death...really it's everything you watch the Hunger Games for. The viewers at home will be thrilled.

The arenas always seemed so much bigger when the number of tributes had been reduced into the final ten or so.

In Sandy's memory she cannot think of the last time she was so close to victory, and all it had cost her was all her allies once again. She hoped desperately they were back at home cheering her on.

Exhausted from lack of sleep Sandy had finally given up and drank the water despite knowing it to be poisoned. Not much mind you but just enough that she didn't feel like she was going to die of thirst.

Instead she felt like she was going to go insane. The chemicals were reacting wonderfully to her already amped up anxiety. Play that off of her lack of sleep and increasing paranoia and you had a jittery girl armed with a pair of ice skate blades mounted on a broom handle.

She was particularly pleased with this creation that she had cobbled together during one of the nights she'd found herself unable to sleep for more then a couple hours at a time. While she hadn't used it to kill anyone the length of it gave her some confidence she would be able to hurt them long before they could hurt her.

And so rattled, hallucinating and armed Sandy returned to the food court in vein hopes that perhaps there would be some secret stash of bottled water she had missed. She doubted it very much but she had a master key and wasn't afraid to unlock every shop in the food court to look for anything to drink that had enough fluid in it to keep her moving.

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"We find somewhere to sit down," he says, eyes hard and jaw set. "And then decide where to go from there."

They can't go far, but they need to be out of sight of the food court, and out of sight of anyone coming to investigate. It's Glamor Nail Carlos ducks into, heading back behind a partition and sitting down in one of the many, many chairs.

He's running figures in his head. He saw no newcomers in this Arena, and newcomers tended to arrive in clusters. That means that the total number of Tributes in the Arena is predictable. If there was one song for every Tribute...

It's somewhat surreal for Clara to be back in the nail salon, considering the last time she had popped in was weeks ago when Molotov was still alive and using it as her base of operation. The thought that she somehow managed to outlive the eyepatch wearing Russian is enough to make her laugh. (Though, she's pretty sure she laughs a little bit because if she doesn't, she's pretty sure she's going to break down and cry and she can't do that. Not right now. She can do that when she's back in the Capitol and doesn't have Panem's eyes on her.)

It's obvious Carlos is thinking about something, though she doesn't know what that is. Though, from the grim look on his face, she's almost afraid to ask. "How bad is it?"

He makes sure to help her down as she sits.

"It's not good," he admits. "Even with the tourniquet, you don't have much longer."

One hundred and eleven Tributes at the start of the Arena. Three dead bodies in the food court, two living bodies here -- that left 104. If the average length of a song was three and a half minutes...

According to those calculations, and also according to the fact that the mall was eerily silent and no one was coming to investigate the disturbance in the food court, Carlos was growing more and more certain that he and Clara were the last ones left alive in the whole mall.

"Not without medical attention, really soon," Carlos adds, and the tone of his voice has shifted. It sounds like he's just come to understand something.

No matter what, I can't win.

He stands and backs away from Clara, step by slow step.

Her stomach twists at the shift in his voice, as if she's starting to understand something. If they're the last ones left, it's better to end this now instead of trying to drag it out. Carlos can be picked up by the Capitol and she can wake up tomorrow or the day after looking exactly like she did when they first brought her to the Capitol.

"So we better get this over with, then."

Clara's terrified. She's never thought about committing suicide before she was brought to this place. She's been faced with her own mortality before, obviously. There had been conversations with Alex about what would happen to David if the unthinkable were to ever happen and a lot of reevaluating her life after the bombing. But this is different. In almost all of those situations, death was a hazy concept that was somewhere in her future. This is her trying to prepare to face it head on.

"Do you want me to do it, or do you want to?"

"I'll do it."

Even if, by some miscalculation, they aren't the last ones in the Arena, Carlos doesn't want to leave this to chance. The best case scenario would be to let a third party win and leave Clara and Carlos as Tributes, but if that isn't possible anymore, Carlos has to be sure that he does not win.

He pulls the gun -- the real gun -- from his belt, and looks at it.

"Susannah gave me this," he said. "She said something about it, before she died. How does it go, again? I do not aim with my hand; he who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I aim with my eye. I do not shoot with my hand; he who shoots with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I shoot with my mind. I do not kill with my gun..."

...what came next? He hesitates as he tries to remember.

"Alright," she says, giving him a small though nervous smile.

A smile which falters a little bit at the sight of his...Susannah's gun. She doesn't know why, a gun would be more effective for this. Kinder to both of them, even. It means things will be over for her quickly and he won't have to deal with feeling her die by his hand.

Clara turns around and sinks down onto her knees, screwing her eyes shut. Carlos shouldn't have to see her face when she dies. "Just make it quick, okay?"

He sees her turn around. That's just as well: it's better that she didn't see this.

But really, what was the rest of that?

"I -- I don't remember how the rest of it went," admits Carlos. "I do not kill with my gun. Guns don't kill people; we are all immortal souls living temporarily in shelters of earth and meat."

No, that doesn't sound quite right, either, but against all the odds, Carlos finds it a little comforting. Carlos had thought it was regular old Night Vale weirdness when he had first heard it, but isn't it true, here?

He takes a deep breath, and knows that he will pull the trigger. He looks at Clara, and knows that if he points it at her, he could win: he could escape the Arenas. The Arenas...but not the Capitol.

No. When he pulls the trigger, the gun will be pointed at him.

"It's okay, Clara," he says, and she will hear the small, small smile in his voice. "Dying isn't so bad. There are so many things that are worse than dying."

He takes a deep breath and puts the gun against his temple, on the side opposite the Capitol brand.

"Please don't be mad. This is what I want. I -- I'm sorry."

This is it. One command, sent from brain to nerves to muscle, and it will be over. He's ready.

"Goodbye."

A bang, a splatter, a thud partly muffled by a lab coat, and silence.

He'll explain back in the Capitol.

Edited 2014-10-09 15:54 (UTC)

Throughout all of Carlos's talking, Clara just wants to tell him to get on with it. Not out of anger or frustration, but because she's tired and hurting and would love nothing more than to wake up in her bedroom in the Capitol and go apologize to Rose for not being able to rescue her from the debris during the explosion or explain to Alex that what he saw between her and Rose was (mostly) an act (while hoping that he's back to being her Alex).

She remembers hearing once that you will never hear the bullet that kills you. Obviously, that isn't true since you can die from so much more than a headshot, but this should be a headshot. She hears the shot and then the sound of Carlos falling and turns around.

God, she wishes she hadn't. He's covered in blood and his skull is in pieces and she's pretty sure she might throw up if she doesn't turn around and run.

So she does.

She only stops because she's lightheaded from the blood loss and the adrenaline that's ebbing out of her system.

God, she's tired.

Clara sinks down to the floor, vaguely aware of the announcement being made that she's Panem's new victor. She can't even bring herself to care, to yell at the fact that this is wrong and she shouldn't be the winner. That there has to be someone else, anyone else.

But she's too spent to do that and instead falls asleep.

If this arena were set in November we could have had a Black Friday Tom Sale

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