closed.

[downbeat]

Who| Grey, Katurian, Sherlock, and Wesker
What| Alliances take a turn.
Where| Not far from Grey's and Katurian's camp.
When| The second night.
Warnings| Death, cannibalism, mentions of abuse.

At night, the whipping wind sounded like snakes and whispers and tangled tongues.

(once upon a time there was a little boy upon whom his mother and father showered nothing but love, kindness, warmth, all that stuff once upon a time there was a little boy upon whom his mother and father showered nothing but love, kindness, warmth, all that stuff once upon a time there was a little boy upon whom his mother and father showered nothing but love, kindness, warmth, all that stuff once upon a time there was a little boy upon whom his mother and father showered nothing but love, kindness, warmth, all that stuff)

Katurian did not sleep. He couldn't. His eyes were dark rings under his glasses and his hands twitched if he didn't hold them against his legs. The blood from his broken nose had already dried -- or more accurately froze -- and although the cold mercifully numbed that pain, it chewed up the rest of his body like a shark with thousands of teeth.

At night, the whipping wind sounded like sharks and whimpers and muffled screams behind a power drill.

(oh little kat, that's just your wonderful but overactive imagination playing tricks on you)

The sleeping bag was too constraining. Suffocating. He preferred pacing at night with his knife held tight between his fingers, whispering his short stories into the wind. He had an audience, now, in the millions of people waiting for his demise. Why not use it? It was only when the cold grew too overwhelming that he would crawl back into his sleeping bag to warm up and cry where Grey couldn't see his tears.

He paced now, his arms hugging his body, his mouth curling around silent words. He was not far from the camp he had made with Grey. The alliance brought a sickness to his stomach, but if he ever wanted to see his brother again, if ever wanted to see Michal--

At night, the whipping wind sounded like every nightmare Katurian had ever had.

Comments

[alldeduction]

It had been a decent enough plan, at first. Go to the birds as the cold sun finally set, approach while they were groggy and their response times slowed, grab a couple and drag them back to the shelter. A good plan, had the wind not picked up as soon as darkness fell, shifting the great banks of snow and making it impossible for Sherlock to retrace his steps.

Even landmarks in this dreary place shifted and moved, the arena almost a living, breathing entity as the wind howled and whistled around him.

And for nothing more than a pair of abandoned eggs.

Eggs safely in his pocket, he trudged through the snow, head down with his hood up to brace against the cold. His eyelashes were frosting where the moisture of his eyes hit the wind and he grumbled darkly, shoving his chin further into his coat.

He could practically hear John's voice in his head. Oh brilliant plan, Sherlock, just go and bloody well freeze to death! Absolutely brilliant plan. Spot on. But thinking of John was worse when it brought up memories of a warm flat and a hot cup of tea in his hands.

Sherlock growled to himself, turned his eyes up -
And realised he was not alone.

[greymatter]

Grey had had his own problems with the freezing temperatures. His left arm, if left still too long, would begin to freeze until he could barely move it. He'd had to warm the metal limb against himself several times already.

He'd seen the sea birds more than once, the only animal on the glacier thus far, and where there were birds... there were eggs. That's what they would be doing come morning, when the weather had settled, he'd decided. Egg hunting. Perhaps Katurian would make himself useful after all.

Unlike Katurian, the scientist made full use of the sleeping bag he'd purchased, staying wrapped up in it during the worst of the glacier's weather, the harpoon never far from grasp.

And that's exactly where he was when Sherlock found himself unlucky enough to stumble upon their little camp.

[downbeat]

In that horrible weather, in that ever-changing landscape, it wasn't easy to judge distance or notice obstructions in the snow. When Sherlock first saw Katurian, Katurian first saw Sherlock, and the recognition was less of a dawning realization and more like a burst of electricity, an explosion of ink on an otherwise white page. His immediate reaction was panic -- he gave a small yell, he unfolded his knife -- but then he recognized this man. The way he stood. His nose. His mouth.

Get out of here.

Katurian turned his knife downwards, his heart pumping in his ears. He folded in the blade.

Get out of here before I change my mind and kill you after all.

"Go," Katurian mouthed, sweeping his hands in the air. The wind kicked around his feet. "Go."

[alldeduction]

Sherlock was too cold, his movements too sluggish. When he heard the yell and saw the knife, his hand immediately went for his own - but even in his gloves his fingers were stiff and unwieldy, and he fumbled the blade open, bracing himself. He was quite convinced, now, that this was the most moronic plan he had ever acted upon.

It took a moment to recognize his opponent through the blowing snow, but when he did he gripped his blade tighter, expecting a sudden launched attack. He didn't want to kill anyone, but perhaps if he gave a sufficient cut he could j--

Go.

Sherlock blinked as Katurian waved at him, mouthing silently. He tensed completely, immediately scanning the area. Expecting a fight and receiving - well, he wasn't entirely sure. A warning? A Panic attack?

Sherlock held the knife out in front of him and took one step back, then two.

[greymatter]

It almost seemed orchestrated, the way Katurian's yell seemed to fall just as one of those rare gaps in those brutal wind gusts occurred. The way his voice could suddenly carry and be heard so easily, if only for that very moment, before the wind would drown out all sound again.

Grey sits up sharply within his sleeping bag, looking towards the source of the yell, towards Katurian, who is gesturing towards- he turns his head.

Another tribute.

"You sniveling little coward." He snarls, kicking the sleeping bag off of himself and snatching up the harpoon. Between Sherlock and Katurian, Katurian was closer. And Katurian had just rendered their already shaky alliance null and void.

[downbeat]

Katurian heard the rustling sleeping bag, the growling anger. He saw Grey's form emerge from the ground like a solid puff of smoke, the unmistakable shape of the harpoon clutched in his hand. He did not see his face and he did not hear his words, but it was enough. It was enough.

"Run," Katurian finally said, his panic pitching out his reason. He would kill others to ensure his own survival, to ensure his brother's survival, but he would not let someone who helped him die. He gestured with his entire body, a last frantic attempt, before turning around to face Grey.

He raised his arms in surrender, the folding knife tucked between his thumb and forefinger. Closed. Safe.

"Wait," he said. "Please. This-- This isn't what you think."

[alldeduction]

Sherlock's eyes immediately snapped up to the third person on the scene. He didn't recognize him, of course, but then there had been many more tributes than those he had met.

Sherlock gripped the knife, his mind quickly working to determine trajectories... But even an Olympic javelin thrower would not be able to bridge the gap between Grey and himself, if one could throw the unwieldy harpoon at all. Katurian, though... Katurian was right in his war path.

"Idiot," He muttered to himself. It wasn't hard to piece together what was happening. Sherlock assumed that most people must have allies by now - it was nearly impossible to survive the cold alone, at this point. And he assumed that they wouldn't have the upstanding morals of his fellow District 2 partner.

The Capitol must have correctly pulled in at least a few cold blooded killers.

He hesitated, unwilling to leave Katurian alone, but having a difficult time calculating the odds of a folding knife versus a harpoon. He continued to back up into the blowing snow, but did not run.

[greymatter]

Advancing on Katurian with fury that rivals that of the wind's, the man's words are so ridiculous that they actually give him pause. Only a couple of feet from the terrified writer, he starts to laugh. 'This isn't what you think.' 'This isn't what you think.' When the situation was so completely and obviously clear.

"You must take me for a fool." He snarls suddenly, advancing more slowly now. His eyes find the folding knife in the other man's hand and he smiles unpleasantly. "Seems you've acquired more than just a sleeping bag, haven't you? And what plans might you have had with that then?"

[downbeat]

When the small parachute had cut through the crisp, snowy sky, Katurian had scrambled to scoop it up, to hold it close to his chest and hide it from the man who now stood only feet away from him with a harpoon. The knife was his and his alone, a beacon of protection and independence. It was a whisper that hissed survival when everything else around him promised death. In his late night night pacing, the feel of the knife became so natural that in his fear, he forgot it was there. Seeing it now, the panic welled up in his stomach like a living being.

He did not know if Sherlock had run away. He felt so far away, so distant, as though the world had been severed in half and now there were only two planes of existence: him and Grey and everything else.

"I don't know," he said. He wanted better words than this. He wanted to stand proud and defiant, but he could only stammer. He stepped backwards. Did he have time to lower his hands, to shift his posture for defense? "I d-don't know."

[greymatter]

The answer was no.

Now within range, the harpoon was suddenly thrust forward, Grey's other hand joining the first upon it mid-movement. It enters just beneath Katurian's sternum.

[downbeat]

Katurian was, in many ways, a coward. He could croon subservience as easily as breathing, and when he decided to give in, he could bend back like a tree in a rainstorm. Yet he also knew when he lost. He knew when pleading was useless, and he knew when he had to choose between going out fighting and curling up into a small ball. And when Grey jabbed the harpoon forward, so close that he didn't even have a hope of dodging, he made his choice.

He clicked open his knife and swung it downwards, wildly aiming for Grey's neck once, twice, again before his legs buckled underneath him. He grabbed at the harpoon for support.

[greymatter]

Grey barely manages to tilt himself away enough to avoid serious injury, the first slash slicing shallow across the left side of his neck. The second catches the collar of his parka. The third, nothing.

Teeth bared, he slams Katurian down into the snow with the harpoon as the other man collapses, giving the weapon a cruel twist. "Retire me when I'm not." He repeats with an unpleasant smile.

[alldeduction]

Damn it.

He'd watched, almost frozen in place, but a sudden, renewed vigor coursed through his veins and he stumbled backward.

He'd seen enough death to know Katurian was done for. Maybe not immediately, but by the time the hour was up? There was nothing he could do for him.

And waiting around made him a target.

He cursed, again, stepping backwards in the snow, before turning his back.

He didn't run. He didn't need to. The white vicious wind swallowed him up happily.

[downbeat]

The pain didn't become real until the twist.

Oh, he felt it, all right. He felt the unnatural sensation of the harpoon entering his guts. He felt the bizarre push as Grey used the weapon to shove him backwards into the snow. He felt pain, too, like electrical bursts and jagged wires, but everything seemed so distant and sanitized, like it was happening to someone else and not to him.

The pain didn't become real until the twist, and then it was the only thing he knew.

He screamed, the sound half-swallowed and incomplete. Every muscle in his body tensed and fought and curled and arched.

[greymatter]

His lips pull up into a sadistic grin as Katurian screams, as his body writhes around the foreign object lodged deep within his guts. Planting a boot on Katurian's body, he rips the harpoon free, blood flying from it's end to spatter across the untouched snow around them. It's hot enough to melt it.

[downbeat]

The rip tears out another scream from between Katurian's teeth, although this one is weaker, quieter, muted by gasps and groans. In the interrogation chamber, the electricity had hurt, had scrambled his brain and wrecked his muscles, but when it was over he could catch his breath and find his balance.

Now he can't.

He curls an arm around his body and feels all that warm, sticky blood, soaking into his shirt and parka like sweat. He uses his other hand to grasp desperately for the knife that fell beside him.

[greymatter]

But the scientist's boot falls across that next, pulling it away from Katurian and towards himself. "Much appreciated." He says with a smirk, leaning down to snatch it up. He folds it and places in the pocket of his parka before reaching up to where Katurian caught him with it. Most of the bleeding has stopped, staining the collar and part of the hood. He can barely feel it in these freezing temperatures.

Bringing a bloodied glove away, he gazes coldly down at the other man for a few moments before turning back towards their makeshift camp.

[downbeat]

He's leaving him.

His stomach twists. A lump wells up in his throat, so immense that it won't go away no matter how hard he swallows. His breathing falls from labored, to frightened, to hyperventilating because Katurian had decided that he shouldn't fear death, that he wouldn't fear death, but this is unexpected territory, this is horrifying territory, and he finds himself hating everything and everyone that put him here. He hates Grey. He hates Sherlock. He hates himself.

"Fuck you!" he calls. It's more of a rattling, rasping gasp than a yell, and he punctuates it with a grimace. His voice cracks. "Show some fucking mercy!"

[greymatter]

He laughs softly as he walks away, but it's lost on the wind and he pays Katurian no further mind as he makes his way back to their camp. He rolls up the sleeping back and re-attaches it to the backpack, places the cramp-ons back on his boots, and disappears into the white as if he were never there.

[downbeat]

His head is already so heavy. His fingers are already so numb.

"I owed him a favor," he chokes out, trying for volume and failing. "I owed him a favor."

He can't see Grey anymore. Is he even there? The snow hides everything, thick and white and all-consuming. But it doesn't matter -- the words aren't for Grey or even the cameras he's certain are catching his every breath, praying each will be his last. The words are for himself. The words are for his own story. Dying alone in the snow, there's little he can do other than dream up a narrative without self-loathing, a narrative where he can be a hero like he's always wanted. This is a good thing. This is all right.

But with all the blood loss, the lucidity is short-lived. It doesn't take him longer than five minutes to forget why he's on the ground.

When he crawls forward, he does not know where he's going.

after grey

[downbeat]

In this hellish, wintry landscape, small wounds soon became large wounds and non-fatal cuts became infections.

What Katurian had was not a small wound.

After Grey left him bleeding in the snow with a deep hole in his gut, he had tried to crawl forward but didn't get far. His endurance was a wall he crashed up against again and again. He would make it one foot, then two feet, then three feet, but then his vision would brown out and his limbs would go numb and his ears would scream like sirens and he would fall face first into the snow. Sometimes he would lose consciousness for seconds at a time and then he would wake up, dazed, not knowing where he was or what he was doing.

(The detectives beat him too much. He needed to go now. Fast. Why couldn't he move his legs?)

Katurian tried to file this event into the greater picture of his life, but this whole thing was a narrative nightmare. Was he at the beginning? Was he at the end?

He settled into the ground, the white snow forming a pillow around his head.

Duuuh-naahh... duuuuuh-naaah...

[president_evil]

For all that he was when awake, Wesker was even more the animal in sleep. All restless energy, his eyes rolled beneath their lids, muscles twitched and tensed, his fingers jerked. The body rested, but the mind was forever alert, searching and seeking the slightest sounds (the crunch and crack of snow beneath a broken body), the faintest of scents (the burning copper of blood, the wet rawness muscle and intestine).

In the dark, as the stilted movement dragged on above him, he stirred, the red-gold eyes snapping open, his nostrils flaring.

A deep breath, a flash of red,... and he shrugged out from under his sleeping bag and started to climb.

[downbeat]

Consciousness refused to leave him. He had wanted it to be easy after he lay down. He had wanted his mind to give up at the same time as body, but his mind didn't give up, refused to give up, grasping onto the faintest sliver of lucidity despite everything. He knew that the explosive pain in his stomach meant something. He knew that his brother would die without his protection, and that right now, he couldn't protect him. He knew that he was cold and alone and that everything he ever worked for or dreamed about was about to be meaningless.

He knew someone was coming.

With his head half buried in the snow, Katurian opened his eyes.

[president_evil]

The ice and snow popped and hissed beneath Wesker's boots. Boots that approached - and paused, just out of sight.

The moment stretched, broken only by the wind, braying like a hungry hound, and the pounding of two heartbeats. Wesker's, slow and even and strong, and Katurian's, laboriously drumming, struggling futilely to keep him alive.

Then, one boot shifted and slipped beneath Katurian's shoulder. Pushed. Flopped him unceremoniously onto his back like a landed fish.

[downbeat]

When Wesker turned him over, his world turned over, too, the ground twisting up and away from him like an unbalanced ferris wheel. He coughed and choked and gasped. His nose was bruised and crooked, flecks of dried blood caking his upper lip. His entire front was wet with fresher blood, blood that seeped from the jagged hole the harpoon tore into his jacket.

He didn't recognize this man. Did he? Was he someone he worked with? Was he with the police? He strained and stared as he tried to catch his breath.

[president_evil]

Wesker watched him, his gaze sliding up and down the length of him. This piece of meat that didn't yet have the sense to know it was dead.

He was silent, unmoved by the airy gasps, the pleading eyes. Unreachable behind his dark glasses, still present even here, in the dead of the night. Two black fathomless holes in the pale face.

He could have ended it easily. A well aimed kick would have sent Katurian swiftly into the arms of Death.

He could have walked away. Left him to his slow and tortureous end, his last mewling cries a strange lullabye....

But he lingered. The scent of blood, rich and warm and alive, a siren's call, awakening his hunger. The itch in the back of his throat, the burning in his veins.

He crouched, a graceful bending of limbs, at Katurian's side and leaned closer, breathing deeply as he began to remove his gloves. One finger at a time.

[downbeat]

"Please," he said finally, but the pleading was not for him. He fumbled for Wesker's hand, his movements trembling and half-blind. "I need you to find Michal."

Michal, who cried at night while Katurian held him close, who was still just a child, who didn't know how to follow bedtimes and would never remember to eat his vegetables without him. Michal, who would sprinkle paper snowflakes in his hair while he was sleeping and hide stickers in his lunch tin before he went to work.

"Kamenice 4443." The address rolled off his tongue even though his voice was frail and breaking. "We have a wishing well."

[president_evil]

The sleek, blond head tipped, the full mouth twitching.

How adorable.

First that sweet little urchin with all her pleases and thank yous, and now this.

"There, there, now," he purred, his voice low, as smooth as silk, and darkly amused. A joke only he understood.

His lips curved as he shifted, just enough to remain out of the reach of Katurian's bloody hands. "Don't strain yourself." He tucked his gloves into his pocket. "I'll take care of it."

[downbeat]

Katurian could hear the darkness in his voice. The disconnect between his words and his tone was like a bed filled with knives, a glass of milk spiked with arsenic, an apple obscuring razor blades. This man with the tall frame and the gloveless hands, he was mixing predator with paternal.

"Please," he said, and he didn't know for whom he was pleading anymore. His eyelashes caught the tears he didn't even realize he was crying. "He's not well."

[president_evil]

"And yet still better off, one would assume-" the head didn't turn, but behind the lenses, the eyes flicked to the side, traveled again for Katurian, lingered on the oozing wound, "-than you."

A muscle jerked in his throat, then up in his jaw, a strange, rolling movement beneath the skin.

"But take comfort, if you can," The eyes flicked back and there, in the darkness where his eyes should be, light bloomed. A bloody redness, backlighting slitted, serpentine eyes, "in the knowledge that your death, at least, unlike so many of the others, will have purpose."

And a hand shot out, a striking snake, and closed over Katurian's face, palm warm and wide and hard as it covered his mouth, fingers long and strong as they pinched at his nose. The blunt nails digging at Katurian's skin, scraped at the black and crusty blood.

[downbeat]

That sickeningly contorted throat. Those glowing red eyes. Delirious and disoriented, Katurian didn't understand what he was seeing (a demon, a nightmare, a dream, a hallucination?) but it kicked up more than fear or dread: it kicked up terror. He inhaled for a scream, but then Wesker was clamping his hand over his nose and mouth and all of the sound in his throat died down to muted gasps.

This was how Katurian had killed his parents.

He had been too weak to do it with his hands, but with a pillow and the full weight of his fourteen-year-old body, he was unstoppable. It took both longer and shorter than he expected, and when Michal had asked him what it was like, he came up with the only word he could think of: clean. Now that it was happening to him, his mind was a well of panic and half-finished thoughts. He kicked up his legs, his fear opening flood gates of energy he didn't know he had. He batted at Wesker's hand with clumsy, gloved fists. He smashed his head backwards into the snow.

[president_evil]

The more he struggled, the more Wesker tightened. The harder he pushed Katurian back into the snow.

His lips curled, strong, white teeth bared in a terrible sneer and his eyes, those strange inhuman eyes burned, dark and red and unblinking.

Then his head tipped, the teeth parted, and - something - moved in the back of his throat. It twisted and writhed and emerged from between his lips: a great ball of wet, sinewy muscles. They parted, waving and curling as if tasting the air, sniffing at Katurian's fear, before spreading wide to display curved teeth and a deep, purple-black gullet.

[downbeat]

Katurian's surge of energy was just that -- a surge -- and within seconds he was crashing against the very same wall that had kept him from dragging his body through the snow. His vision browned out and his limbs went numb and for just one second, he winked out of consciousness.

When he woke up, he saw the tendrils.

(and the last words that our man ever says is 'will I go to hell?')

He squeezed his eyes shut, a child hiding from the dark.

[president_evil]

The wind howled a crescendo. Wesker's heart drummed, fast and eager. Katurain's pulse echoed in his ears, stuttering... fading.

The teeth swung down as the roar ripped through him. An inhuman cry of hunger. The man retreated, the animal unleashed.

Flesh tore, a wet, sloppy sound. Bones snapped, ground beneath the teeth of the mandiable. Blood sprayed, warm and black in the night, flecking across Wesker's face, turning the snow to human slurry.