thearena | if you could only see the beast you've made of me [OPEN]

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if you could only see the beast you've made of me [OPEN]

Who| Sansa and OPEN, with a closed prompt for Luna and Arya
What| Catch-all for Arena 4 so far ~~because my activity sucks~~
Where| Throughout the Arena (desert/city in week 1, Winterfell/medieval fantasy in weeks 2-3, forest in week 4)
When| ALL THE TIMES week 1-4, backdated like whoa
Warnings/Notes| TBC

i: desert, week 1
Sansa is woefully underequipped for the desert. She's a Northerner, more used to cold and damp than to the heat and dryness that the desert offers. By the second day, she's clearly struggling, as much from heat as from thirst. Besides that, she's not used to walking long distances, or sleeping outside, and her whole body aches.

You can find her hunting for water, stumbling and struggling over the dunes, looking desperately for anything that isn't dry, featureless sand. At night, innocent of the dangers, she lights a fire and sits close; in the wide unoccupied landscape, her fire is visible from some distance.

ii: city, week 1
She sticks less close to Luna in the city, leaving her friend to go and hunt for supplies in the houses. She can be found anywhere in the city, a slight, weary figure clutching a broken piece of timber without much hope of actually being able to fight with it. Whenever she sees someone else, she freezes, caught in a horrible indecision between fleeing a potential enemy and making a new ally. In most cases, though, she goes towards them, figuring that it's better to die in an entertaining way than be forgettable and have the Capitol decide she wasn't worth the effort.

About halfway through the week, she finds the pizza place, and when the lights go out and the animatronics have shifted, she screams loud enough to be heard for at least a block.

iii: fantasy area, week 2
Once she's found Winterfell, Sansa is a little more comfortable with roaming, confident that she can find her way home again and that there are allies nearby. Still, she's cautious, and although she ventures out every so often to look for food and water, she's far more circumspect than she was in the city. You may see a flutter of auburn hair in the sunlight, or a shadow shifting: when it comes to making herself unnoticeable, Sansa is better than she lets on. And now that she's found Arya, and something that looks like home, she's a lot less willing to die.

iv: the bombing of Winterfell
When the explosions start, Sansa freezes in terror for a good few minutes, struggling not to hyperventilate. Last time she heard anything like it was at the Blackwater, and then she was relatively safe under the keep; now it's close, and deafening, and light explodes in the corners of her vision, and then she's running. She seeks about for Luna or Arya, but can't find them through the smoke, the falling masonry, the haze of wild panic. I am a wolf, she tells herself, I fear nothing, but she is afraid, horribly afraid.

So she runs. Ash lightening her hair, masonry dust making her cough, she runs, and prays that she's running in the right direction, prays to the old gods and the new that Arya and Luna make it out alive. And as she runs, she cries, unable to stop the tears that mix the ash into mud on her face. This is the cruellest thing they could have devised, she thinks: to give her Winterfell and Arya, and to make her watch it all destroyed again. No matter how much she tells herself it's only a game, she can't convince herself, and her panicked, broken sobs are drowned out by the crash of the bombs.

v: the forest, week 4
Exhaustion stops her running, only a few minutes after the bombing ends. She thinks of seeking out Arya and Luna, but she's just too tired, worn out emotionally and physically. In the end, she crumples down and curls up under a tree, and cries herself to sleep. She can be found there well into the next day, thin and bruised and filthy, a far cry from the noble lady she tries to be.

After that, she'll wander, although not without purpose. She doesn't know how to track, but tries to remember what little she's read or heard or studied in the Training Center. If she were really a wolf, she thinks more than once, she could sniff the other girls out, and be reunited in the blink of an eye. If she were a wolf, she would revel in this place, with a thick fur to warm her and sharp teeth and claws to hold her own. If she were a wolf, and not a frightened girl.

But she isn't a wolf. She only has herself, thin and pale and ill-prepared for this place. To start with, she's careful in her search, trying not to draw attention to herself. But as time wears on, and weariness and desperation eat away at her, she starts to be bolder, calling their names and carving arrows into trees to show which way she went. To be alone, right now, seems worse than being dead.

CLOSED: Winterfell, week 2
Sansa is struggling, the week and a half they've spent travelling taking its toll. Her feet feel like they're nothing but blisters, and she's never been so exhausted in her life, not even in those long, horrible nights after her father's death. She feels like nothing can lift her spirits.

She's wrong.

She sees Winterfell and all her exhaustion, fear, and wariness falls away. The smile comes to her face like a dawn breaking, and she grabs for Luna's hand, pointing and breaking into a run she didn't think she still had in her. She doesn't pause for explanation, buoyed up by a hope and lightness she hasn't felt since the Arena first threatened.

If she were a gambler, she'd lay money on Arya being inside Winterfell. But that isn't what spurs her on, makes her forget her blistered feet and aching joints. It's something much more visceral, much less considered: the same thing that made her draw the North over and over again in the Youth Programme, that in another world would make her build castles in the snow. It's home, something she never thought she'd see again, and even knowing that it's only a pretty trick doesn't quell the sudden leaping of her heart.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Luna doesn't expect it when Sansa grabs her hand and runs, and despite Sansa's pointing she doesn't quite understand what they're running towards. Not this fervently, anyway, because she knows that both of them are tired from over a week of traveling and hiding and for Sansa to get excited now means that there's something important up ahead. That's easy enough to understand.

But the mountains and castles mean nothing to Luna aside from vague recognition of what they are (and the fact that she's never seen these things for real, much like so many other things in the Arena). If there's some special significance to whatever they're running toward, she doesn't know it and Sansa doesn't seem to be explaining on her own. So it falls to Luna to try and get an answer herself as they run along. "Sansa, wait! Where are we going?" She nearly trips a second later, caught between eyeing both the castle ahead and the sudden, focused elation on Sansa's face as they run. If she doesn't answer, maybe it would be better to wait until they reach their destination...assuming it's safe there, of course.

Edited 2015-10-20 07:22 (UTC)

It takes a moment for Sansa to register Luna's confusion, and then, of course, she feels bad. Of course Luna doesn't understand why they're running, or why she's suddenly buoyed up by the sheer lightness of her heart, why she barely feels like her feet are touching the floor. Panting and smiling, Sansa slows, looking at her friend.

"Home," she says, and points to Winterfell again. "We're going home."

"Home?" For a moment Luna finds that confusing in a different way: from the things Sansa had said about her home world and the Capitol, Luna had gotten the impression that her home was nothing to be so pleased about. But if the castle is where Sansa grew up then maybe it holds a special significance to her anyway, especially in something as motley as the Arena. Maybe Luna would feel this way too, if she saw the botanical garden or the library in the Rhizome.

Given that, it makes sense that Sansa is so excited. Luna nods and squeezes her hand as a signal, picking up her pace to keep going. "Okay, then. Lead the way."

So Sansa does, no longer running but still hurrying. There are no lights in Winterfell, and she guesses it must be empty - she certainly doesn't expect to find it as she left it, even if some childish part of her half-hopes to walk in there and be scolded by Septa Mordane for her filthy face and ragged clothes. But it's still Winterfell, and not the burned and blackened remains she's heard whispers of, either.

"It used to be so beautiful," she tells Luna, "when the sun came out and lit up the godswood. And that tower, there - my brother Bran was forever climbing it, usually when he was meant to be called for dinner! In the spring, we'd sit out in the courtyard behind that wall, and take our sewing out into the sunshine, and listen to the men-at-arms argue. Oh, Luna, it was beautiful. I never knew how beautiful, not until it was too late."

Luna can't help but to look around at Winterfell in wonder as Sansa's description makes the place come alive in her mind. Although she can't imagine the people in Sansa's life she pictures the little family that formed in Rhizome 9 and imagines Kyle climbing instead, Sigma and Akane sitting in the sunlight discussing research and occasionally calling out to Kyle. She's not a part of that family, but she's been watching them for four years and it's easy to envision them at this point.

Thoughts of that time only feel happy in comparison to the present, but they still impress on Luna's imagination. The reference to something "too late" worries her though, and as she takes care to keep up with Sansa she eyes their surroundings again with a little bit of apprehension. "What do you mean, too late? Did something happen to this place?"

Sansa's smile fades, although she tries to hide her dismay. That's the last thing she wants to think about. "I told you, didn't I, that there was a war? That's what happened." She hasn't seen Winterfell since the Boltons took it over, and even though she longs for home with every fibre of her being, she isn't sure she wants to see what they did to it. She heard it was burned. She heard they hung her brothers above the gate to rot. Those aren't the memories she wants of her childhood home.

She looks away, so Luna can't see just how much her face has fallen, and tries to force those thoughts back. That isn't the Winterfell they're faced with here. This Winterfell is whole and strong and just as she remembers it. "Come on," she says, and lengthens her stride, falling silent as they head towards the great gates.

Oh. "I'm sorry." With the way Sansa reacts Luna regrets asking in the first place, and it's discouragement enough that she refrains from saying anything more herself. There's enough in and around Winterfell to occupy her attention anyway, so she busies herself with looking around and appreciating the scenery. They've been in the Arena for a while already, but Luna hasn't yet gotten tired of sights like this. The Rhizome's never seen any real nature outside of the garden, and while all of this must be artificial in its own way it's certainly the closest to the real thing Luna has ever gotten.

"It is beautiful here," she ventures once they're near the gates. "It's so different from the place I come from...I could only ever see these things in archives." Luna can't show Sansa anything about her own home, but it's really just as well. It's nothing so nice to see.

Edited (added a thing) 2015-11-02 03:54 (UTC)

Sansa nods, looking up at the thick grey walls and the wide arc of the portcullis overhead. "This isn't all of it," she says after a moment. "They've trimmed out a section to build here. But it's still marvellous, don't you think, that they should be able to make so close a copy in so little time..." She's talking more to the audience than to Luna, and more to herself than to either. It's impossible not to be awestruck by the sheer scale of the accomplishment. It's all just exactly as she remembers it.

She lets go of Luna's hand as they enter the courtyard, and spins on the spot, looking around. It makes her so homesick that it's like a physical pain in her chest, as if a hand's reached in and twisted, but at the same time, it's wonderful. She can never go home again, so something this close is a kind of miracle.

"I'll bet Arya's here somewhere," she says after a moment, her voice firmer and more down-to-earth. "Come on. Let's look for her."

"Arya?" Sansa's sister, right. Luna hasn't met her yet but it makes sense to imagine that she would be drawn here like her sister was, and maybe deeper inside Arya's twirling in joy at the sight of home again. And with how Sansa's been looking for her sister since the Arena began, of course Arya's the first thing on her mind. Luna would be looking for Phi too, if they were in a replica of the Rhizome. Or maybe Kyle would be a better example if he were here (thank goodness he's not) since Rhizome 9 was his home, not Phi's. Either way home has a certain draw regardless of how she feels about it, and she doubts it's much different for Sansa and Arya.

There isn't much question about that, then. "Right. Do you know where we might be able to find her here?" Luna does trust Sansa to know her sister, but it is a big place and two people can only cover so much ground. It's times like these that she misses the added perspective of hidden cameras.

"I don't know," Sansa admits, and seems to deflate a little. "Erm, I suppose we could start with her room, and move down from there. Come on, it's this way." And, throwing her shoulders back and her chin up, she starts towards the doorway that leads into the main keep, moving in long strides.

"Arya!" she calls, as she opens the door. It's strange to see the castle cold and empty, without the constant bustle of life going on. Her voice, she thinks, echoes louder than it ever used to. "Arya, are you here? It's me!"

Hearing Sansa's voice here should be the most natural thing in the world, but it only goes to remind Arya of all the places this game-made Winterfell isn't. She'd have done anything to be back home and hear her sister calling her, but here it only serves as a grim reminder that Sansa too has been dragged here to fight to the death.

She pokes her head out of the window of the room in which she's holed up, looking down into the courtyard at them, frowning warily as she sees that Sansa isn't alone. Of all the allies she could have made, she's a little irritated that her sister has befriended a girl her own age to stick to rather than someone who looked as though they'd ward off attackers at first glance. But she couldn't complain too much, now that her own protectors were both out of the Arenas anyway.

"Are you all right? Did anyone follow you here?"

Sansa looks up, her face lighting up with relief (and a little bitter-backed nostalgia, to see Arya's head sticking out of the window and her shouting down that way; she half-expects Septa Mordane to materialise and scold her sister for bellowing like a stuck pig).

"Just Luna!" she calls back, feeling rather foolish and unladylike herself. "She's in my District, so I thought it would be best if we stuck together!" As she says it, her hand quests out for Luna's again, as if she's afraid to be parted after that thought. "We're safe, Arya! Is anyone else with you?"

Arya isn't quite what Luna expected of Sansa's sister so Luna is surprised to see her for a second, but gets over it quickly - it doesn't matter so much what she looks like so much as the fact that Sansa's been looking for her since the Arena started. Luna takes her hand again and holds it tight. They seem to be safe right now, but she still wants to keep the other girl safe if she can. If Sansa wants comfort she can do that too - although her sister's probably better for that at the moment.

She calls out to Arya next, smiling in hopes of making a better first impression than she feels like she must give after the traveling they've done today. "It's very nice to meet you, Arya! Sansa's been searching for you for a while, so I'm glad you two have found each other. Both of us are tired, but...we're okay."

Arya's eyes narrow suspiciously, and she feels a little hurt to see Sansa hand in hand with another girl, even though it would have mortified her to hold hands with her sister. She ducks back in through the window and disappears for a moment, then reappears in the doorway across the courtyard from them, slightly out of breath, holding out some of her food rations for both of them.

"You're not hurt or anything?"

"No," Sansa assures her, squeezing Luna's hand reassuringly, and shakes her head. "No, I'm all right." Exhausted, hungry, and thirsty, but all right. The only injuries she has are minor bruises, scrapes, and cuts. She can deal with those. She got worse injuries from Joffrey when he was alive. "Are you? Is everything all right? I looked for you at the Cornucopia, but I couldn't see you."

Arya's reaction worries her a bit, but when she appears and offers food Luna hopes to write it off as just concern for her sister. She takes some of the rations and holds them out to Sansa first, since she's younger and Luna feels like she herself doesn't need it as much (holdover from not needing to eat previously, mostly). "Thank you so much for the food," she tells Arya gratefully. "Please, go on."

"You should have run as far away as you could from the Cornucopia, not stay around and look for me." Arya went pale at the thought of Sansa getting caught up in the chaos there, telling herself that it was all right, that she'd got away unhurt. "...Did you get anything from it, at least? It's the best chance to get weapons if you haven't a sponsor."

"No." Sansa looks down, ashamed. "I didn't even try. I hung back for a few moments, that's all." She squeezes Luna's hand, biting her lip. "I... It was like a dogfight. Like the Blackwater sounded. I don't know how you can bear it." Then, with a hint of aggravation as what Arya said sinks in, "And I do have a sponsor! More than one."

Arya looks a little disappointed that Sansa should have sponsors - not because she wishes for her sister to suffer out here, but more that she sees it as a slight against herself and her own abilities and Arena experience. She feels rather pettily as though it's just proven, as it is always proven, that everyone prefers Sansa to Arya, that she's instantly the Capitol's darling and doesn't have to work for sponsors at all, not like Arya had with her own blood and guts more than once now.

"What did they send you?"

"A knife. And water, and some food." Sansa, to her credit, isn't nearly as smug as she might once have been. She put a lot of time and effort into making herself known in the Capitol, and actually (although she'd never admit it to Arya) she's disappointed by how little it's paid off. Mentally, she's been working on the assumption that it's her job to get them sponsors and deals, and Arya's to fight. If she can't get more sponsors, then she doesn't know how it'll work. She hates the thought of having to rely on her little sister for that, too.

"I received some of the same, except I was sent a medical kit instead of a weapon." Luna lifts it up to show Arya. The kit isn't especially large, but it's equipped to handle at least some common injuries that might come out of the Arena and Luna's thankful to have even that. "I was brought here only a few weeks ago, but I am trained as a medical caretaker. Arya, if you ever need any help..." Arya looks fine but Luna feels she ought to say it anyway, for anything she's missed now or in case something should happen in the future.

It's been about a week now that Karkat's been in the forest. Alternia burned, brought low by meteors, a call to the Reckoning that laid the real thing to waste years in his past. Maglev is dead. Karkat killed the boy that killed her.

It's been a long week.

For the whole of it he's avoided people, ears pricked for sound, eyes watching for sign, sleep forbidden without the bright Alternian day to discourage travel. It's how he notices the arrows: they weren't there before. He would have seen, sooner or later, if they were.

It doesn't really matter who put them there. As a waymarker it's foolish, but the foolish too may be led to trap or Tribute if they dared to follow. For a long, quiet, stretch, Karkat thinks of what might meet him if he went. He decides not to.

It's her voice that draws him in the end.

Stupid--completely stupid--hollering like a panrotted idiot out in the forest, here where there are animals and monsters ready to take someone down, where other Tributes might lurk, and calling attention is like asking for death. It tugs a spot sore and guilty in him, but so long as he's still going, he can't let her alone.

"Shut your howling squawkblister before it gets you killed!" he hisses once he's crept close enough through the trees. He's got a bag hung from one shoulder, scavenged or put together from something in the city pre-apocalypse, though soft things dull any clink and shuffle of its contents. He has a hunting knife in hand, and his eyes look very tired. His empty hand motions her over. "Did no one teach you basic sense for this arena?"

Edited 2015-10-22 11:02 (UTC)

Sansa doesn't even hesitate. Karkat is a familiar face (how strange, to think that of someone who was utterly alien only a few weeks ago!), and she's desperately tired of loneliness; she runs towards him, almost tripping in her hurry to get to him.

"You're alive!" She does, to her credit, lower her voice, although she's sharp enough to realise the damage has already been done. "Gods be thanked, you're all right! I feared for you," she adds unnecessarily, and gives him an unsteady little smile. She looks a far cry from the fine Capitolite lady she's been moulding herself into; her hair is a wild mess, and her face still black with mud and soot. She's limping, and there are cuts and scrapes and bruises all over her.

Karkat is worse for wear, and it shows better at a closer distance. Bloodstains mark his suit in a number of places, some around cuts in the fabric that wink to show bandages beneath when he moves, but not all are his. The outfit is cleaner than it could be, all considered, but getting out the stains is more trouble than he can bother with in here. But indeed he is alive, and if he's hurting, it must not be enough to hinder him badly.

He looks her over, frowning still, taking in the state of her. "Gods have nothing to do with it," he says, tone even now but hard. She's a mess all over in ways literal and not. "Come on. I've got some of a first aid kit left; I can spare it for the worst stuff. What happened to your leg?"

He turns, looking to head straight into the trees. He knows his way around about as well as he can under the circumstances, and she'll need water to get that mud cleared away and her wounds clean. Luckily, he's got things for making that safer, too. He looks at her little as he goes, eyes instead to the area around them, ears listening for sign of danger beyond what she might answer with.

"I tore it." She looks down at the bloody gash on her thigh, where the flesh hangs as ragged as the jumpsuit, and bites her lip as she limps after him. Blood always made her feel sick. "When Winterfell burned, and I was running, and..."

Tears are threatening. Tears, and a wild outflow of words she isn't sure she can afford. She clamps down on both of them, pressing her lips together, and wipes her eyes on her sleeve. "I caught it on a spar," she says at last, when she's sure she has herself under control. "It isn't deep. I checked. But I don't have anything to sew with any more, so I couldn't sew it up."

Karkat follows her gaze and spots what he missed the first time. He saw the blood before, but the tear... The sight makes him wince.

"Shit," he utters, more to himself. For a moment he considers trying to treat it here, but with the way she was shouting...

His hand rubs over his face before he says, "I can help, but it's dangerous right here. If you can put up with the pain a little longer, we'll get somewhere safer. I'm pretty sure I have a needle and thread in the kit I got, and I have a little water saved. We'll need to find more if you want to wash your face and everything, but it's enough for that."

He thanks Phil mentally for sending him the water rations in earlier weeks; even if they ran out, the containers they came in helped for saving more.

"I can put up with it," she assures him, and smiles just a little, thinly and unsteadily. "And I can stitch it, I think, only my hands might shake..." And she might faint. She's never been good with blood, or with pain. Honestly, she hopes he'll see how stupid that offer is; she's making it more for the people watching at home, to try and convince them that she's tougher than she is.

Karkat frowns back at her. "And what? Jab the needle into your muscle? I'll do it." It's not really an area he has experience with, stitching wounds and all, but he knows the basics. It was worth learning in case it ever came up.

From there he leads off through the trees, heading off the way water lies, but not anywhere specific so much as 'away'. He keeps slow for her sake, but he keeps his eyes and ears open for danger as they go. Fortunately, none yet finds them.

Once he feels they've moved far enough and they've found a good space to rest, he motions her over to a fallen log. "Sit there. Move the fabric out of the way, and I'll get stuff ready."

Karkat sets to unpacking his things. His makeshift pack reveals a collection of useful things as he does: a boiling pot, a desalination kit, the first-aid kit he mentioned, a couple bottles of water, and a red, jagged sickle. This last one is clean, but he barely touches it, only lifting it to set it out of the way before he starts checking his first aid supplies.

Thank you, Sansa thinks privately, turning her eyes heavenwards in an instinctive prayer of thanksgiving to any gods who might be listening. She settles down on the log, fussily smoothing out her jumpsuit even though it's well beyond saving, and starts to roll up the leg of it. It sticks, caught in a thick scab of clotted blood, and she feels woozily sick as she tries to work it loose. Wolves don't faint at blood, she tells herself, but it rings hollow. She isn't a wolf, really, she never has been.

But she doesn't faint, which is something - not even when she tugs the fabric free and her leg starts bleeding all over again. She tastes bile in her mouth, and has to bite down on her tongue to keep herself present, but she manages to roll her jumpsuit up out of the way, wiping her bloody hands on her thighs.

"So... erm. What's happened to you, so far?" she asks. It isn't exactly a calculated plan, so much as a desperate attempt to take her mind off the blood. "Since you got here, I mean."

Supplies checked, Karkat brings the kit and water over to where Sansa is sitting. She's gotten things out of the way well enough. It's not an ideal situation by far, not with such risk of infection, but it's the best he can offer her under the circumstances. It wouldn't be him doing it if they had better options.

Crouching at her side, he sets to work. It's not that he missed her question; he paused when he heard it. But he takes gauze and water, wetting the former, to wipe away what he can of the blood around the wound. He pours a little water directly to try to flush out anything she might have picked up in the gouge. Last, he dabs around the perimeter with antiseptic, not poking the damaged flesh itself. Then he sets the flap as straight as he can.

"I ran from the Cornucopia," he starts once he goes for the needle and thread. The needle gets its own wipe with the antiseptic. "I didn't want to risk dying there again or getting injured."

How does he judge the length of thread for this kind of thing? He holds it up above the wound, pulling it, guessing, unraveling more. Once he's snipped and threaded it, he lines them up by the edge of her wound. "Stare at a tree if it's easier."

Then he starts. His work is slow, careful, compensating for his uncertainty and mixed with a desire to do no unnecessary harm. As he works he speaks slowly.

"I saw what looked like my planet, Alternia, and I went for that. If nothing else it would be more familiar than the rest. The trouble was that there was water between me and it, so I had to turn around, and through that I ran into this guy, Nitou. He had my sickle." The red one, still laying away from them. "I saw it at the Cornucopia earlier, but you already know I didn't risk it. Luckily I was able to convince him to hand it over, with the agreement that I'd help him out if we met up later. Which we did." It went fine enough.

"From there, I went along toward the desert, because I had zero patience for hauling myself across the water in a boat. There... I ran into Luna and--and Maglev. The District 6 girl that got reaped. Maglev had found this big... You know what cars are by now, right? This big stupid thing on wheels, covered in death spikes and looking like the most dangerous vehicle I'd ever laid ganderbulbs on. Somehow I gave up enough sanity to climb in, and we rode across the desert, into the Alternian desert, ran over a daywalker or two, and made it to the city.

"We explored some while we were there. I met other people and helped them, too, now and then. There was also this time I got completely waylaid--we had run into a Mother Grub, and then I heard an imperial drone... They're these giant bipedal things covered in a spiky carapace, and even one would have culled us on the spot if we stopped long enough to be found. So we ran, I got separated, and long story short I had one completely bugnuts crazypants adventure through the Carnival, the desert, a fucking cave, and through the desert again, with way too many dead things and a terrible headache to show for it."

He pauses here, frowning some, looking over what he's done so far. It's gone fine enough, not too hard once he got the rhythm of it.

"The second week... It went fine for a while, until the Gamemakers decided to royally screw me over. They started their mockup of the Reckoning, basically this rain of meteors that pulverized everything in the Alternian section to dust. The city, the forest, probably the desert section too. I ran, I helped some other girl escape, and by some lucky fluke and my sheer determination to not die to what I already escaped once, we survived.

"At... At one point, though..."

How does he even say it? His lips press tight.

"Maglev got separated from me again. I found her, but--" Quick blinks, a deep breath, a shake of his head. For a space he says no more, instead setting to finishing Sansa's stitches and trying them off. Snip the extra thread, rinse his hands, clean the needle again, put it away, and... "Maglev died. The--the guy who killed her is dead, too."

He snaps the first aid kit shut and rises.

"I spent last week in the forest. Not much happened then."

Sansa is quiet for a moment after he falls silent - partly because she's semi-unconscious, and partly because she's trying, through that haze of dizziness and pain, to work through what he's said.

"She stopped for me," she says at last, her voice thick, and frowns a little, as though she's trying to make sense of something. "At the Cornucopia. I never saw her when they came to the Center, but she must have seen my commercials, because she knew who I was and she stopped for me. I thought..." She's crying, she realises distantly, but she's not sure whether it's from the pain or from grief. Her arm feels strangely heavy as she raises it to wipe her eyes on her sleeve. "I thought if I went with her it would only slow her down. I didn't have a weapon and I knew I couldn't fight well. And I promised Luna, you see... I promised I would stick by her, I couldn't..." She swallows, and some alertness comes back into her face as she looks at Karkat. "At least you did something. Everything you could. All I did was pray for her."

He doesn't press her to speak, but once she does it's hard to listen. Maglev was the one he knew longest, District 6's numbers having shrunk and grown with mostly those too old for the youth program among it. Still, Luna and Sansa both have met her, if only by this now. They could have been friends, could have... have done something, if Maglev made it out, if she helped when someday the rebellion makes its move on the Capitol. It's potential cut short, something stopped before it could properly start, unfair to them.

He sees her crying and can't look at her anymore, but she follows it up with praise and talk of prayer.

"Don't." It comes out sharper than he meant, but he can't take it back now that it's out. "Just don't, Sansa. I panicked and got separated from her as soon as we all ran into--no, as soon as we heard something that happened to intimidate me. I got gifted a hunting knife and I failed to give it to her when I already had a perfectly deadly sickle in my hands. I heard her scream, and what fucking good did I do but show up in time for her to be dead?"

His head turns, finding her again, eyes wide and hurt and burning. "The only thing I did," he grits out, "was get so furious I completely snapped. I snapped, and I lost my pan with it, and I only realized what I had done once the tribute from District 1 was dead at my feet with his gut torn open. He won't come back, either, Sansa! So good job to me! I did it! I fucking did everything a mistake like me could, and all it turned out was a couple of dead kids!"

He pushed it off before, but now he's crying, thick pink streaks rolling down from his eyes even as he glares at her. There's no sympathy in it anymore. All he has in challenge, daring her to try to turn things around and tell him he's wrong.

Edited (better wording) 2015-11-29 06:28 (UTC)

Sansa flinches away from that look, eyes wide and tearful, her hand going to her mouth. She's shaking like a leaf... but there's a core of steel in her, the Stark blood that runs cold as ice and saw her through everything she's suffered through, kept her alive, kept her sane.

She doesn't raise her voice, and the tears still flow down her face, carving tracks through the dirt. But she sounds sure, if not steady. "People die," she says, and her fingers tighten on the legs of her jumpsuit. "They suffer, and they die, and it isn't fair. And... and sometimes it's your fault. Sometimes it's your fault people die, even when they're the last people in the world you want to see hurt." Her tongue darts out, wetting her lips, and she sniffs back her tears. "But when they're gone, they're gone. Blaming yourself doesn't bring them back. Nor does revenge, nor does looking back and thinking what you should have done differently. If you trusted the wrong people, if you said the wrong thing, if you didn't act when you should have... You just have to swallow it down. You have to. The people who died for you, or because of you, the people who you killed, the people you might have saved... they're gone, Karkat. All you can do for them is pray for the Mother's mercy, and keep going, and let it go. You go mad, otherwise. And then you're lost, too." With a herculean effort, she pushes herself to her feet, and stands there, swaying unsteadily. "You can't tell me that's what she would have wanted."

"I don't pray," he snaps, a petulant child, because it's easier than the rest. He's too used to blaming himself. He doesn't want to be told that there's nothing else but to take it and move on. He knows it already, knows she wouldn't want it, but what it means is that he can't change anything. That no matter how sad he is, how much he regrets, how many different ways he can imagine it going, the clock won't turn back and nothing will change.

It's not even the first time he's dealt with it Half his team is dead in Paradox Space, and more probably to come with the state things were in when he last died. But with those there were the dream bubbles, and there wasn't all this weight, this responsibility.

(He felt responsible then, anyway. Probably part of him always will.)

Part of him wants to leave her now just to keep from dealing with it all. But she's hurt, and she's weak, and where would it put him to leave a girl who needs help again? He wipes his cheeks with the back of his hand, then steps in to offer her support.

"Come on." He's not looking at her this time. "I'll take you to water so you can wash up, and I'll hunt something so you don't starve."

She accepts the support gratefully, putting most of her weight on him. There isn't much of it; she was slim already, and she's lost weight in the Arena, in those first few weeks of struggling and starving, which she hasn't put back on in the week or two of relative comfort she had.

"Thank you," she says quietly. Then, because it doesn't feel like enough, "...I'm sorry."

It's not that much to shoulder, and that fact is all the more reason to take it. His goal is less to get her on her feet than to get her to a position where they won't give out under her. Water and food will help. He'll do what he can to give her something to travel with.

"Don't worry about it," he answers as they set off. He doesn't have to feel happy about the rest to help keep her alive.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

if you could only see the beast you've made of me [OPEN]

Winterfell, week 2

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I'm going to ping Hannah now, mmkay?

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week 4

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wandwaves over how the heck stitches work, idek

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Karkat Vantas: secretly a whiny baby who doesn't want to hear the obvious truth

" "" "secretly" "" " :p

shhh his personality is an enigmatic mystery. no one knows his true heart