Houses Melting Down, A Vision Turned Green [Closed]

[yoknapatawpha]

WHO| Bayard and Tabris
WHAT| Bayard dies
WHEN| Last day of the Arena
WHERE| The fields
WARNINGS| Child death.

Bayard says he considers it lucky that they managed to get the meager spoils (in some cases literal spoils) of the feast before the entire castle collapsed - when they made their trek to the great dining hall, pieces were falling from the ceiling, cracks yawning up from the great stone floor, tapestries smoldering from the cannonfire. They took all they could carry and left delicately and quickly, heading towards the edge of the Arena in an effort to avoid the treacherous woods and the assaulted structures of the village. It's led them past the fields, holing up in the tall grass, wondering how much longer they'll have to wait for the Arena to end, and each knowing in their heart what they'll do when it comes to it, neither discussing it.

Because Bayard won't let Tabris die on his behalf. He isn't her duty; they are mutual in their obligations. It's not suicide he's planning, but a sort of honorable laying down of arms before it's just him and her. Perhaps he'll walk into the forest, having left her a note carved into a tree. Perhaps he'll go pick a fight with the few surviving people whom he knows ought to be killed. While she's working on building a fire, he goes off to get wood, considering his options.

It's because of the tall dried grass that Bayard doesn't see the mist until he's in it, breathing it deep, wondering if the stink he's suddenly inhaling is a corpse left to rot. He takes a few steps forward, then stops when he sees that the reeds around him are becoming hazy. And then he runs.

Grief hits him like a train, an inexplicable dilating pool into which his mind falls even as he moves, and suddenly he's hit with mourning as deep as the moment he realized his father was leaving and may not come back, that he was growing from a boy to a man, that Southern honor was loving a country more than one's life and the people in it. It's enough that he stops and pants, having not even gone ten yards, his breath coming in the hot and heavy lurches that he wouldn't have shown in front of anyone else, even when he was nine, ten years old. He closes his eyes, swallowing and straightening up, and then runs back towards Tabris again.

"Aunt Tabris! We ought to move, I reckon, there's mist to the west and it can't be nothing good," he calls, crashing towards the fire pit with that limp he's had since the incident with the bats.

Comments

[allyorfoe]

Tabris is just as assured of her own death before Bayard's as he is of his own. She failed him last time. She didn't get there quick enough, she couldn't protect him. She's going to not let it happen again. She's going first--Unless it's down to the two of them. And that thought keeps her from trying to do anything remarkably stupid. Because, if she's honest with herself, she's not sure she wants Bayard to win this thing. She wants him out, but she doesn't want him to be one of those hollow-eyed mentors that are constantly the source of gossip and intrigue.

That the Capitol treats even more like a pet than they do the Tributes.

It's not a responsibility for a boy.

But she stops worrying about that for now. Got to think of the immediate threats. When Bayard comes crashing in like he's seen a ghost and it's hot on his tail, she looks up, hand immediately going for her hammer. When he tells her that it's mist, she hesitates, but nods. She's never known mist before to be dangerous, but this is the arena. And even if it's ordinary mist, Bayard doesn't like it. Which means they're leaving.

Packing up is short work for the two of them. There isn't much in terms of food left. Mostly just bedrolls, the supplies that they'd gotten from sponsors. It's all easy enough to roll into one of the bed rolls and tie up. One for each of them. "If it's from the west, I figure we ought to go east. Maybe northeast, try to get out of the path. High ground'd help, too, but I don't reckon much of that is safe these days." She handed one of the bedrolls to Bayard. "Anything else?"

[yoknapatawpha]

"It smelled queer." He hasn't yet drawn the connection between his sudden strike of grief, and, it seems, has already forgotten that or successfully suppressed it to the bottom of his priorities. "Like a rotting body and mint both."

Bayard takes the bedroll and slings it over his shoulder, laden with half their belongings, looking expectantly at Tabris because as much as he has the tendency to run off or forget to check in, she is his leader, the star in the Arena around which he orbits, swinging wide and then returning in an undeniable elliptical ring. When she starts walking, he does too- for a moment until the next wave of poison strikes him again, the grief like a blow to the stomach and shooting pains throughout his body.

The first time he knocked out a tooth, falling from a tree, blood in his mouth and a cut all the way across his jaw. His skinned knees from running over rocky terrain. The confused grief of learning that he had had two sisters, both dead of fever before he was born, buried next to his mother in the cemetery.

He feels the pain across his knees and face as if death itself has left a handprint on him. He gives a cry and lurches forward, trying not to lose his footing.

[allyorfoe]

"I think I smell better than that," Tabris replied airily, already walking off to the west. She pauses a moment, then laughs at her own dumb joke. "I'll explain that when you're older."

Still chuckling at her clever and witty wordplay, she continued along, constantly glancing at Bayard--Until he stops, and cries out in pain. In only moments, she's by his side, holding on to him. She's scowling in concern, and even as she grips his arms, she's trying to examine him for injuries, while looking around for a perpetrator. The first thing she assumes is an attack--One of those gun things, perhaps? Or something more sinister.

But no one else is around, and he's not bleeding.

"Bayard, what's wrong? What's going on?" She'd made a promise to protect him, but how was she supposed to protect him from being the victim of something she can't even see? Of something not even human?

[yoknapatawpha]

"I'm alright," Bayard says, although it's through gritted teeth and it's clearly not honest. The only times Bayard lies are when he's trying to put on that stiff upper lip and outgrow his twelve years into his idealized and untouchable version of adult manhood, like now. He straightens his back as if he could hide the way he's trembling, and his nose is starting to run, and his back is trying to stoop as if crouching down and curling up would make the pain easier to bear.

Tabris' presence makes it both easier, because of the comforting, motherly role she's started to occupy in his universe, as if she were the sun he were orbiting around, and a thousandfold worse, because rather than being able to coil into himself and cry knowing his honor will be intact he must do what he can to be strong. A man doesn't abandon his comrades, much less his women. He gives her a firm nod and tries to start walking again, and then another wave hits and he can't help but fall to his knees, teeth grinding together and eyes filling with tears.

[allyorfoe]

"Wait--" She tries to tell him that it's okay to take a moment, but he's already standing and trying to walk. And she's there when he falls again, arms around him. Whatever is happening, it's getting worse. So Tabris hitches the axe to her back, and shoves her bedroll into Bayard's arms. Then, she kneels down and scoops him up. She's not sure what's going on, but whatever it is, she's sure that moving is the best option. So, holding onto him tightly, she begins hurrying away.

But what can she do? Where can she go? She can only run for so long, there are only so many places they can go. She stops before they reach close enough to the water to risk canon fire, and gently sets him down.

"Bayard, you have to tell me where it hurts. What's wrong? Did--Did you get stabbed, or something?" But there's no blood, and she feels desperately angry about this, that something is harming him, the one that she is taking care of. It's a deep, old feeling in her soul, the wretchedness of a mother with an ailing child, incurable and rendering her powerless. It's worse than seeing his corpse on the ground with that hole in his head, because she'd only had a brief moment to mourn before rage took over, and a target acquired.

There's no targets here, there's nothing she can hit to make it better.

[yoknapatawpha]

"No, no, I didn't get hurt none, I just-" He grips the bedroll, curling around it like he's trying to squeeze the life out of it. He feels another stab of pain that seems to hit all his nerves at once. He breathes shallowly and over his teeth as he tries to get a grip on himself and put words together, but he feels like his mind's getting dragged down a hundred different tunnels, passages blocked by memories of his father leaving for war, of when Granny had a sickness so bad they thought she might die, of the first time Bayard was thrown from a horse, every bad memory blocking him from escaping the dark hole he keeps getting further and further into.

The guilt that she has to carry him barely even registers. It's all too much, blinding, blinding every single sense and nothing new can enter for the impenetrable mass of thought.

"It all does, Aunt Tabris. Lord, everything smells like that mist." He grabs at her shoulder, swallowing so as not to cry, failing to suppress the whimpers and cries that seem to leap out of his lungs like fish on a boat.

[allyorfoe]

"That mist--" The mist they were currently trying to outrun, the mist that smelled like rotting corpses. Tabris has no idea how the hell mist could cause this, but she's spent the last couple months in Panem having no idea how things worked the way they did. And the awful part was that they never needed her to understand. This mist could kill just as surely with or without her knowing how, or why.

"Andraste's fucking--Sorry."

A jagged, rocky hill rose up--High enough to avoid the mist, maybe? Tabris takes the chance, because she's realizing that running isn't going to solve this. Instead, she holds Bayard closer, and makes her way up the hill, until she can gently lay him down at the top. She looks over him again, hoping beyond hope that she can see something, do something. But Bayard is untouched, and he's still suffering. Opening up one of the bedrolls, she offers him one of their bottles of water.

"Drink this. We'll just--You can rest here, until it's over, okay...?" Because it had to end, at some point. At some point, it'd go away, and Bayard would be alive, if worse the wear for it. Any other possibilities she would refuse to acknowledge, at least for the moment.

[yoknapatawpha]

For a moment, he thinks that his reserves of strength have given out and that he's weeping, not from his eyes but from his nose like a petulant child, but then the smell of copper fills his senses and he realizes it's that his nose has started bleeding. It's in his mouth, too, in the back of his throat, that metallic taste.

"Alright." He spits the blood that's pooling in his saliva and takes a swig of the water. It dribbles a bit down his chin, with his hands and lower lip trembling so. He sucks in deep breaths, trying to lean into the pain, as his father once told him that time he fell off a horse, but it seems to be coming from every angle at once.

"Are we safe? I don't want- you have to avoid that mist, I think that's- ahh!" He lies on his back, stiff as a board, trying to keep from curling up like a pillbug when the first convulsion hits, a small and short one, like his spine's been yanked by some invisible godly hand. He groans.

[allyorfoe]

She doesn't know what to do. She doesn't know how to fix this, and the mist is encroaching. She can see it in the distance, curling at the foot of the woods she had dared to emerge from. There was no telling how much time they had.

How much time she had.

It's not fair, she wants to scream. It's not fair, poison was the coward's way to fight. Give her something to fight, give her something that she can kill. That she can hit and make things better. There are two ways Tabris knows how to fix things--Talk them out, or fight them out, and these aren't options and the mist is getting closer, and she knows that Bayard couldn't handle being run around. The arena is crumbling around them, the gamemakers trying to drive them to act.

She doubts there's a cure, not like with the other sicknesses that you could barter your life for. Not in the end stretch. They're just trying to pick off the weak ones, the people who've been hiding in the shadows, and make everyone come out and fight.

The distant part of her mind that is surprisingly calculating and distant makes these decisions, and tells her what must be done. But Tabris is far more a creature of emotion than calculations, and she isn't ready. So she embraces Bayard tightly, holding him to her chest. She knows what she has to do if she wants to fix him. If she doesn't want to suffer the same fate, but without a loving hand to guide her away from the pain. She chokes back tears growing hot and stinging, pressing a kiss to the top of his head.

"Close your eyes, Bayard." She tells him quietly. "Try to sleep it off, okay? It'll be better when you wake up, I promise."

[yoknapatawpha]

Something in him comes to a realization, or rather, the realization comes to him as a comet does through the black expanse of sky, cutting through the haze of pain. Bayard knows, somehow, that he won't sleep it off. That this time, death has come for him and he, rather than fighting it, will only put up a gentleman's struggle before allowing himself to be taken, compliantly and quietly, into the dark depths of eternity, if they choose not to rouse him.

But he can't tell Tabris that, can't tell her that her comforts are pointless and that he has resigned himself to a fate he hopes she hasn't invited him to, hasn't accepted because it's in her to fight where it's in him to process. He holds her back by some instinct to comfort her when he is beyond comfort.

"Alright."

He closes his eyes. He doesn't know if she has resigned herself to killing him, but he has already succumbed to death, even as his heart continues to beat and his lungs continue to breathe copper-tinted air.

[allyorfoe]

Tabris isn't the sneaky one. That was Zevran, with shining daggers, leaping around and moving so fast that you could hardly see his hands. People facing him were dead before they knew he was there. She's not like that, but she knows some things. And it's not too hard, when your opponent isn't an opponent, it's a little boy laying prone in your arms.

She has the knife from Alistair, and she thinks that he'd approve, that he's in the Capitol, watching and nodding. Give the boy a bit of mercy. So Tabris holds strokes Bayard's hair, and brings up the knife. With the strength of a woman who's been swinging around a war hammer in this arena, she brings the knife to Bayard's throat and cuts, deep and quick. Her other hand stays around him for the entire time.

Slowly, once she's sure he's gone, she pulls away, and presses a kiss to his forehead, wiping away the tears she's dripped on him. Then she lays him down, placing his hands over his chest. She wishes that she could do a proper pyre, but the Capitol will be here soon, to retrieve the body. And she doesn't have time. So after quickly wiping the blood on the grass, the elf stands, pocketing the knife. Then the tears are wiped from her face. No time for tears. She has a job to do. And the mist is almost here.

She sucks in a deep breath, and turns, running as fast as her legs can carry her away from the mist, and away from her first kill in the arena.

[yoknapatawpha]

It doesn't happen so quickly that Bayard doesn't understand what's happening, but somehow with his last will Bayard tries to keep it peaceful not for himself, but for Tabris. With each gasp he suppresses he imagines he's trying to lift that impossible burden that Tabris now has to shoulder.

His body wants to live. It always will, being made of animal instinct and a brain stem that longs for oxygen and sustenance even in the face of the overwhelming pain he's in. His throat convulses, spits blood up from the wound and down his chest. His eyes half-open and roll up. His fingers clench into the grass.

But when Bayard dies, his mind is at peace. He won't have to make that terrible decision anymore. He's given it to Tabris.