thearena | You Want to Meet in Misery [Closed]

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You Want to Meet in Misery [Closed]

WHO| Black Tom and Éowyn; Black Tom and Arya and Wednesday
WHAT| THE ARENA FINALE
WHERE| The village.
WHEN| The final day of the Arena.
WARNINGS| Children murder and children murdered.

Eventually, he and Arya have to emerge from the forest as the Gamemakers drive them out of their safe and uneventful abode. The once peaceful, predictable forest is now burning, with cannons ripping through the trees and racking Tom with pain. Each tree that splinters and falls causes him agony, and the forests themselves seem to scream as the grass and timber hiccup out his displeasure.

He's spent the last few days 'putting himself together', detaching himself from the woodland he'd been married to and entwined with for the last few weeks, and the attack on the forest has only hastened his efforts to untangle himself from the roots and trees that serve as his nervous system. The process has been unpleasant, to say the least. While it protects him from pain, it also means he and Arya are cut off from the major source of Tom's power, and more problematically, from his ability to provide fruits and vegetables. Hunger sets in, and while it's not as sudden or shocking as the cannon blasts, it's not necessarily more pleasant.

As for his body, Tom looks more humanoid than he did before, although there's something uncanny about his visage. His beard still appears mossy, his skin stiff and unyielding, the wrinkles in his face less folded than carved. His fingers still end in claws, although they're no longer the foot-long spikes they were before, and twigs and knots roil out of his back and shoulders like tumors. His movements are rigid and brittle and his figure skinnier than it ever was back in the Capitol, no longer the peak of fitness but now slim and even sickly. The lightning strike that hit him when he was fighting Dorian and Maxwell hasn't disappeared, instead appearing as a gaping, if cauterized, wound from his neck down his back.

That damn horse - which they both know better than to touch - keeps galloping through the area, and banshees flit through the woods (Tom finds this both fitting and aggravating). It's time for them to leave.

"We'd best be getting towards the village, lass." He glances over to make sure Arya's with him and, hoisting the morning star over his shoulder, begins walking. "There's nothing left for us here. The Gamemakers have made certain of that."

He takes her hand in his. They get to the village as the sun begins to rise, and from there, Tom goes to investigate a small shack, leaving Arya to reconnoiter around a barn. Unbeknownst to them, both are already occupied - one by Éowyn, the other by Wednesday Addams.

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Edited 2015-07-09 06:02 (UTC)

Wednesday's already up, since before the sun, sitting atop some hay bales and letting her legs dangle. Her wings are long gone, discarded after they were torn up, but she still has some supplies, a small amount of food and water left. Letting her heels bump against the hay, she eats dried fruit from a little silver packet that had come in one of the supply drops from JC4. She has a bottle of water too, and she's watching the village slowly light up with the sun, her pitchfork at her side next to her.

Éowyn is struggling. Even she can't deny it, though she does her best to plough through it. It isn't just her hunger (had she butchered her horse when it fell dead, she might have had meat enough for the last week, but her every sensibility balked at the thought when it came to it), and it isn't just her injuries, growing infected and sore. It isn't the losses she's suffered, or the infections festering in her wounds, or even the knowledge that soon she will be forced back to the Capitol to smile and make courtesy and bide her time. All that is bad, of course, but she is of the blood of Éorl, the Lady of the Shield-Arm, and she will not let herself be destroyed by it. Especially when, by her count, Arya yet lives and may be saved (though she tries not to think too hard about what will happen if they are the last two left).

No, what cripples her is nothing so simple. Nothing she can give as an excuse.

It's the wraith. The huge, dark wraith she saw as she fled from the fires, shrouded in shadow and dark clouds. Did she see a tarnished silver crown upon its brow, or was it only the reflection of the fire and her tired mind? Did it speak to her in that hissing tongue that still haunts her nightmares? Is it he, the Witch-King, somehow come again? Her heart pounds with anger and sick fear when she thinks of it, and her left arm seems to hurt more than it has in months. Perhaps it's only that hunger and stress are taking their toll on her body, pulling at the weak points, but it seems like a sign, and she is more frightened than she ever could be of death alone.

With all of that, Tom's arrival is almost a relief. He's something real and tangible she can fight - someone she's been longing to fight for weeks, no less. She's on her feet as soon as the door opens, swaying only a little, sword drawn. She looks far less elegant and dignified than she does in the Capitol - she's lost weight, her tunic and tabard ragged, teartracks clear in the mud and blood smearing her face - but she steadies her hand as best she can, and she moves with the same grace as ever.

"Good," she says under her breath, when she sees him, and her eyes narrow, tears notwithstanding. "I was coming to fear that you might die ere I had the chance to kill you." Swinging her sword loosely, with deceptive casualness, she drops back into a fighting stance. "Aught to say, ere I cut you down?"

Tom, too, is relieved to find Éowyn. It's not that he doesn't have a healthy respect for her abilities, but having made it this far he's allowed his ego to expand like invasive algae in a pond, blooming and toxic. Even weakened, even wracked with pain from the cannonfire assault on his expanded sensory system, even tired and injured with an open wound splayed across his chest like that Peacekeeper sash he so flaunts, he feels nigh invincible, and there is no trace of the healthy, self-preserving fear he should hold at finding an enemy.

More importantly, another foe, means he can buy more time between the critical question invariably poses itself: will he try to win at Arya's expense? The hypothetical that had seemed so easy to answer weeks ago has become a Gamemaker trap of its own accord now that it's a distinct possibility, now that Arya hasn't died earlier in the Arena as Tom honestly expected. Now the question has moved from theoretical to moral, has begun to pluck at the warring impulses of fatherliness and brutality, that nexus of tension that normally he can disregard in an Arena.

Éowyn, it turns out, is a blessed distraction from Tom learning his true mettle. The reprieve from uncertainty is enough to draw his attention away from his wounds and infirmities.

"And I was coming to fear that I might actually have some opposition worth fearing." He holds one hand up, rolling his fingers with their two-inch claws as if politely waving, and grins at her."I'm flattered that you've set your heart on me, lass. Maybe I ought to rip it out."

He doesn't give her much time to respond, instead lunging forward even with his bad leg to grab a walking stick beside the shack table. It's a perfect weapon for him, his preferred one, a wooden cudgel - he only hopes that it won't split under Éowyn's blade.

Éowyn moves as soon as she sees his weight shift, her full weight behind the blow as she slashes for his outstretched arm. She feels her body strain at the movement; feels the bone-deep ache of her bruises and the sharp pain of a cut reopening; feels the shake of her leg under the weight and prays this fight won't come to a feat of endurance. But for now, she can drive that pain and weakness aside and fight, though her jaw is clenched tight.

"You have wronged many here," she snarls at him, wheeling away again and casting around for something she can use as a shield. If he strikes her shield-arm, it will be agony, but it will be a lot better than if he strikes her skull. "Including some I care for dearly. You may find me more deadly a foe than you think." I have killed the unkillable before, cut him down and yet lived. I am Éowyn Éomund's daughter, who faced the Shadow and won. I do not fear you, who can do no more than kill me. But it is not enough simply not to fear him. Her body is breaking down around her, betraying her iron will, and she fears too much of what she says is empty bravado.

Snatching up a loose plank to use as a makeshift shield, she presses the attack, hoping to drive him back at least. She wields her sword with skill, but even more, with a desperate kind of strength that won't last her more than a few minutes. It's a foolish mistake, born of her fear of failure, but if she can end this fight quickly...

"You must hate this fire," she says, through gritted teeth, looking out through the open door at the flickering light of it. "Tell me, coward, do wooden men burn?"

"I've only done the prudent thing in this country. It's not my fault your precious Thorongil was a traitor to the people best able to pay me."

Tom grits his teeth as her sword glances his arm, but he gets the cudgel and brings it up in time to parry her next move. He sidesteps and shoves the wooden table in the shack at her (one of the legs bends inwards and snaps and the whole thing goes sideways). Like her, he's exhausted, and doesn't trust himself to be able to outlast her in terms of stamina. One way or another, this fight will be short and bloody.

He blocks, put on the defensive by her aggression, keeping the broken table between them even though her reach surpasses his. She would have to lose her balance to lunge for him over it, and all it would take would be a quick dodge to take advantage there, but he also can't hit her unless he uses his powers, and in a tinderbox like this that seems an unwise idea. She has a point: he'll burn faster than she'll die of smoke inhalation.

His eyes cut in the direction of her gesture, looking at the fire. "You want to find out, do you?"

He doesn't intend to let her, and that's when he switches from defense to offense, pressing for her with heavy but aimed swings and jabs at her stomach and face.

Rage flares anew in her eyes, and she parries as best she can, with both her sword and her makeshift shield. The first blow to strike her shield makes her bite back a cry of pain, and she stumbles a little before regaining her balance with a great effort of will. She dives forwards again, raising her sword, but the moment has been lost. One of his blows strikes her in the face, making her head snap to one side, blood rushing from a split lip and a worrying dent in one high cheekbone.

"You speak of a man a thousand times your better!" she snarls, her voice tight with pain and effort, and spits blood and a couple of teeth. "You will show him respect, if I must carve it into your flesh!" Aragorn - Thorongil, if that is what he is to be called here - is her liege, her people's salvation, and just as importantly, her friend. She will not bite her tongue in telling this snake of his value, not even with the cameras watching. There is caution, and then there is dishonourable silence.

Her head is spinning, darkness threatening at the corners of her vision. Yet she forces herself to push through it, slashing out with all her strength at Tom's forearm. If she can disable him, if only for a moment, regain the advantage...

Arya can feel in her bones that it's getting down to the last few Tributes now. With three kills under her belt recently, she's feeling more confident about her chances, and has left the safe confines of the forest to seek out the competition. Her mace swings heavily at her side, and she has one dagger in her belt and the other tucked into her boot, clinging to walls and seeking out shadows to give her what little advantage was possible.

She stops dead in her tracks when she sees Wednesday. She's never killed another girl before - or another female at all for that matter, and she feels a little ambivalent about the possibility of doing so. It rankles with her that that's her automatic reaction, given how hard she tried to break away from the gender roles associated with her own upbringing, and she tries to shrug it off, knowing that there's no room in the Arena for those sort of conflicted feelings.

"You're still here," she nods in acknowledgement, her eyes travelling down the length of the pitchfork.

"So are you."

Her heels bump against the hay bale again, one right after the other. Wednesday really doesn't look much worse for the wear, for having been in the Arena for weeks. She's a little grungy looking, maybe, and there are some splatters of dried blood on her skin. But she seems fairly rested and even decently fed, so it's safe to assume she's at the peak of whatever fighting capability she has.

Wednesday finishes her fruit and sets the package aside, then takes hold of her pitchfork. She slides off her perch, then holds up one finger, as if she's forgotten something.

There's a soft noise, and then she's holding up a match, one of the last remnants of her fire-starting kit.

She throws it into the hay and the blaze starts behind her.

When he strikes her the first time, it sets something off inside him, that bloodthirsty ruthless sadism that drove him to become more than a petty thief or arms dealer, that pulled him straight into the melee, that made him a gun-for-hire and a kidnapper and a terrorist. He loves that feeling of power in causing pain to others, of being the winner in something; it substitutes very well for the shame and guilt that a life of bad deeds has burned and eroded into him.

He presses his attack harder, appetite for pain and victory both whetted. He yelps when her sword cuts through his fingers, taking two of them off at the furthest knuckle and sending like bloody, ersatz raindrops to the corner of the room somewhere. He's human enough to bleed, still, and the cudgel becomes slick in his palm, under his fingers.

"You won't if you're dead!" he cries. "And I'll kill you for that!"

He kicks the table at her and then all but leaps over it, trying to bring the staff down on her shoulder and bring her to her knees.

Éowyn dives back out of the way without a second thought, rolling and coming back to her feet, pain bursting in the edges of her vision. She landed hard on her bad shoulder there, and the force of it has reopened the deep wound in her breast. "Better men than you have tried," she snarls, bringing her sword up to catch his cudgel, the force of it jarring all up her arm. She won't let herself feel it. Later, if there is a later, the adrenaline and stubbornness will be gone and she'll be nothing but a mass of blood and bruises. But just now, if she lets it get the better of her even for a moment, she'll be dead. And, worse, he'll have won.

He fights like a wild thing, she thinks, as she stumbles back, trying to gain a little breathing room and get her balance back. There must be a way to use that. To get under his guard.

But for now, it's all she can do to stay on her feet and fight off his attacks, sweat and blood trickling down her face. She aims a few blows at him - at his arms and chest, mostly - but the moment has been lost, and she's thoroughly on the defensive now.

Arya pales a little as the fire takes hold - even weeks later, she still has something of a dry cough from the smoke she inhaled when the Cornucopia was set ablaze, and itching burns on her upper arms that the first aid kits she'd been sent by sponsors had only done so much to help with. She remembers how terrified the Hound was of fire, how she'd only really understood it herself when trapped in the flames of the Cornucopia, and she doesn't want to risk burning to death herself, desperate for a clean death at the hand of another than being slowly devoured by the chaos of the fire. She backs up quickly, stumbling a little but staying on her feet, her mace out in front of her ready to strike.

Tom fights wildly, but also with a certain brutal mercenary efficiency; it isn't flailing so much as just aggressive, vicious attacks that need not be focused when they have so much energy and hatred behind them. And what is, perhaps, the final feather on the scale that tips the fight towards Tom is that he has an ace up his sleeve.

He lets Éowyn parry an attack and then puts an extra foot of space between them, pointing his cudgel at her and using his mutant powers to focus a laser blast of fire and heat through the very molecules of the wood, shooting a beam in her direction with a sound like a gun going off and a smell like distilled incense. He aims it straight at her chest. He doesn't say anything or even acknowledge that he's cheated his way to victory except for the way his eyes light, a ruthless, fierce, sadistic smile bunching up the muscles around the socket.

She doesn't see it coming until it's too late; tries to twist out of the way of this new, incomprehensible assault, but has no time. The heat hits her barely an inch below the deep cut left by Bucky's knife. She would cry out, but the force of it knocks the wind out of her, sending her bowling head over heels with a smoking hole in her tunic and the flesh underneath seared deeply.

Crashing against the battered remnants of furniture, Éowyn struggles with all her might to get back to her feet, and fails even to get to her knees. The fire has caught all too well on her clothes, already dried thoroughly by the flames and smoke she fled through to get here. The burning hurts like nothing she's felt before, but what's worse is the growing numbness that follows it as the nerves die off, a feeling she's only ever had when she fell to the Witch-King.

With a herculean effort, she manages to roll onto her hands and knees, her clothes still burning, the fire climbing up into her hair with an acrid stink. She's already dead, and she knows it - she can't feel the pain in her chest any more, never a good sign - but if she's falling to this... this creature, then she'll do it with her sword in her hand. She can smell herself burning, a horribly sweet smell like roasted pork, and thinks for a moment, sickly, that maybe she'll be glad when she can't smell that any more.

Long after any sane person would have given up and died, or at least turned their full attention to extinguishing the flames, Éowyn is still moving, her hand finally closing on the hilt of her sword. Her lips are parted, her breath coming in hideous little whimpers of pain and effort, but even with her heart thudding in irregular, shallow flutters, she summons up the sheer bloody-minded stubbornness to start dragging herself to her feet, her full weight on the sword. If she can get closer to him... she could take him down with her... could turn him into a torch... could...

She knows that's never going to happen. It's already a battle to keep herself conscious; the tears on her face are burning away into steam, her long hair blackening and the fire eating away at her skin. "Arya wins," she croaks, her voice barely more than a whisper. She can't see. The pain is too much, the heat corroding her senses as it corrodes her body. "Arya wins. You make... you best be sure. She's earned it. You..." She stumbles, whatever she was going to say lost in a guttural cry. "She wins. Not you. Hear me?"

Every time, Tom takes a deep satisfaction out of killing another adult, especially one who's greeted him with such arrogance, with the ego of righteousness raising their nose to look down on him. It feels like justice. It feels like Tom setting the record straight, adjusting the scales, opening a room, straightening the belongings and then leaving it looking untouched but perfectly-arranged.

He relishes the smell of her burning flesh and hair, the guttural sounds burbling up out of her, the way pain racks her body into the contortions of a worm on a hook. It's fascinating, like a dance performance and a firework show just for him.

"Of course," Tom says, pacing around her as she falls to the ground, calm now that he's won the fight and has nothing to fear from her. "But not because of anything you say."

And with that, he raises the cudgel again and, disregarding the fire or the fact that she's already moments from death, bludgeons her brains out.

Wednesday is comfortable with fire, almost a contradiction to how little she enjoys anything else bright and warm, but arson is a great hobby of hers. She walks toward Arya with a cocky sort of focus, holding her pitchfork as the flames rise behind her like hellfire.

"Scared?" she asks, eyebrow arching. "There's still time for you to run."

"I'm not scared!" she snaps. And she's not going to run, even though she feels doing so would probably be to her benefit. If it was earlier in the Arena she would do so gladly, and hope for someone else to take out Wednesday. But they were down to the final few now, and Arya had enough kills under her belt to try her luck for one more.

She lunges, swinging her mace high over her head.

"You look scared!" Wednesday calls, dodging to the side, mace missing her by inches. She retaliates by attempting to stab Arya's arm with her pitchfork, sure that taking her down starts there. If she can't swing the mace, she can't fight. The flames roar as the building itself starts to catch fire, adding another threat to the battle.

"You wouldn't even know what scared looks like!" She's sure that for all her talk, Wednesday is far more sheltered from the sort of horrors Arya has had to endure. Now it would be time to find out first hand.

She jumps out of the way of the pitchfork, but then feels the smoke enter her lungs and begins to cough and sputter. Panic rises inside her, remembering her close escape at the Cornucopia, but she throws her free hand over her mouth to try to breathe easier and steps in close again, swiping for Wednesday's legs and hoping to bring her to the ground.

Far from panicked, Wednesday seems to actually have no reaction to the smoke, a sort of natural Addams immunity to fire and explosions and other random things that are usually dangerous. She's just out of reach of the mace, and as it swings past her legs, she leaps forward with the pitchfork, her hand held close to the sharp tines, controlling it more like a dagger than a gardening implement.

She's aiming for Arya's gut, her vital organs, and hoping to knock her over at the same time.

"Scared looks like you."

She feels the prongs stab into her and grits her teeth, breathing in sharply, refusing to scream, refusing to show any sign that she might be scared. She's seen far worse than death to fear it now; she was a deliverer of it, not a victim.

She grips onto the handle of the pitchfork, pulling it further into her body, dragging herself up the tines to get closer to Wednesday, determined to grab her and throttle her, to drag her down with her, even as she feels the life begin to ebb out of her.

Wednesday gurgles and grimaces and claws at Arya's hands when they close around her neck, and when that fails, she resorts to simply throwing punches at Arya's face, wild and unfocused, but hard all the same. The handle is between them, enough room for Wednesday to push herself backward, hoping that Arya will be forced to let go and fall down, to bleed out.

"Die already," Wednesday hisses, her face mottled red.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

You Want to Meet in Misery [Closed]

I. Éowyn

II. Arya and Wednesday

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sorry for the tl;dr, it ran away with me

never apologize for teal deer

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let me know if this works!

Works fine! Sorry for the overdramatic death but. Tolkien. Seemed to fit.

this tag is lovely!

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