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[ka_sera_sera]

Who| Felicity and Roland, maybe a bit with Roland and Signless later. You, if you want your character to be killed. Message me, we can work a thing out, I'll add a prompt.
What| violence, murder, another day in the neighborhood
Where| abandoned zones
When| the very end of the arena
Warnings/Notes| nothing more than the usual for this game

Killing in these places, these arenas, it's a show. One the tributes are maneuvered into. The gamemakers manipulate and steer them into it, surely as Roland is trying to steer the approaching tribute into this small wreck of a room that, if things go as he hopes, will be her death. He takes no joy in it, moves with solemn efficiency until the wreck and rubble completely blocks the original path.

To use his hard-earned skill for so little reason, simply to give the monsters lounging on their thrones back in Panem some sport to cheer at, it takes Roland as close to believing in the concept of blasphemy as maybe he will ever get. He's tried to avoid purposeful killing, done a fair job of it, but he'd been under no illusions. He was never going to avoid this forever. Someone he loves might have a chance at surviving this, if no other tribute comes and takes that chance for themselves, and that is reason enough. It's a very simple lever, and a very effective one.

Said loved one would be troubled by this too, though just maybe for slightly different reasons. Which is why, even when Roland had started hearing that other tribute's first, distant noises, he hadn't even thought of telling Signless why he was asking his help blocking the hallway off. The barrier needs to seem solid but get done very quickly, and that'll go better without the reaction most people have to things like this. That need they have to soothe their conscience by arguing, pretending they don't know very well what it is that has to happen. There's no time for that.

The hallway is blocked. A room sits next to the apparent cave-in, its door open, and the door at its other end is open, too. It's a clear way through, quicker than going back, and as extra insurance Roland's taken a bottle out of Signless' medkit, smeared dust and dirt over it, and set it within easy view of that first door. He doesn't know the name on its label but it claims to kill pain, and so is the only part of that medkit that might still be thought valuable now time is so short.

Signless is outside of this little room, safely hidden. Roland is hidden inside it, standing next to a large sheet of metal leaning next to the open doorway. The station makes one of its announcements, five more minutes gone before whatever it is it's counting down to, and once that fades he listens again for that sound of approaching footsteps. Listens, and waits.

Comments

[ka_sera_sera]

Good as it is that Signless decides to be honest, Roland gives him no credit for it. From someone he calls friend, Roland expects no less.

He shakes his head, slowing a little as he nears a T in the corridor. "Much as I'd like to see you feel better, I'd like to see you live more." His expression when he looks at Signless is made only a little of regret. Mostly what Roland feels is trapped. It was his choice, using Signless' trust in something he knew the man would never agree to, but choosing it means the Gamemakers have - well, not won exactly, but gained a little ground. He's playing their game now, a little more than he was, and he knows it. "If there's a chance for that, I've got to- I'm going to take it."

"It can't happen again, anyway," he says, after a pause. "If we have to trap someone else, you're going to have to choose to help me."

[69problems]

"I know." He feels trapped too -- trapped because he knows Roland is right, and because he can't ask this man not to try to keep him safe in the way he best knows how.

"I'll deal with my reservations if it comes to that. I want to see you live more than I want to keep my hands clean." Not that they're completely clean even now, but that's not the point.

[ka_sera_sera]

The honesty may not impress Roland, but the speed of the response, perhaps visibly, does. How quickly Signless puts his pride and his ethical ideals aside to prepare to do whatever may need to be done - that particular quality is rare, and Roland takes note of it.

This part of the station he knows less about, so he chooses a direction based on little more than an impulse. It is, though Roland will not live long enough to find out, the correct one. "Wish we'd had time to talk this over before," Roland says, which is not an apology but is as close as Signless is going to get for a situation in which Roland is so certain his actions were, if not right, then justified. "Can we, now? Can I tell you when I'm about to -" To kill, but in this situation, with this man, he nearly stumbles over an attempt to say it aloud, "- do the same again, and not risk you slowing things up?"

[69problems]

He'll never really be able to put aside his ideals but he knows very well that the rest of the world doesn't turn according to them, particularly in the arena. There are times when survival outweighs keeping the moral highground.

"If I can trust you to only do harm to the extent that it is absolutely necessary, then you can trust me not to stand in your way."

aaaand last one?

[ka_sera_sera]

"You can." He breathes out, heavy, thinking on the slow, clunky thing the girl's ambush had been. On the fear on her face that hadn't needed to be there. He could, he thinks, have done it before she'd even had time for more than a moment of fear. "I take no more joy in this than you do."

He puts a hand high on Signless' back as he makes the next turn down the tunnels, briefly searching his face to check how he takes the contact. Looking for anger. "But I'll see you out of this, if I can. No matter the cost."

YEP I think we can call this done

[69problems]

Signless chooses not to address how ominous 'no matter the cost' sounds. He knows that in this situation it's not dramatics so much as a simple statement of fact, even if this implications are ones he doesn't like.

"That's settled, then," he says, and there's no anger in him -- just quiet resignation to the fact that this is the best they're both going to get. He loops an arm around Roland's waist.