jackiewashere (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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thearena2015-10-23 11:09 pm
jackiewashere) wrote in thearena2015-10-23 11:09 pm
Maybe when I die, I get to be a car, driving in the night, lighting up the dak
Who| Maglev & YOU, Maglev & Sheen & Karkat
What| Maglev's on her own... for now.
Where| The desert
When| Week two
Warnings/Notes| limb loss mention, death
A - Sun Running
"Luna? Karkat!?"
She calls their names without thinking. Her aching arm is held close to her chest by the remaining hand. The beautiful night sky is being chased away by an encroaching dawn and she walks toward it without pondering. There's a cave up ahead, something for one of the weirder, older trolls probably, though none of them were really around anymore after Signless won and the other... after what he did.
The sunlight peaks over the surface, and she's stunned by how much brighter it is than what she'd been used to for the past night.
No... it's brighter than she's ever seen! Quickly, she rips her eyes away from the scene, but her eyes are blotted with color and darkness. Oh no. Oh no, no...
It takes far too long, but her vision starts to clear. The sun has risen only higher by then. And as she beholds her own form with her returned vision, she sees her skin going pinker. She gasps, and then echoes it a moment later for who she sees before her.
"Quick! Close your eyes! And run to shade!"
B - Joyriding
With her own sleeve torn off on the one side, (she'd had to take the jumpsuit off and all she could think of was everyone watching her, thus making the only plus side of her burns was that no one could see the flush of her cheeks,) she'd managed to make a fairly decent wrap for going around her head. From there, after still being unable to find Karkat and Luna, the only thing she could think to do was retrace her steps.
And then maybe retrace her tracks a little. The war machine of a car glides so beautifully over the sand, even when driven by a one handed Tribute. She thinks she may be in love.
The only problem is that braking for other sends up a cloud of dust.
C - Star gazing
She stays with the car that night. She managed, amazingly, not to die in the incredible dust storm that swept over the desert, mostly thanks to pulling up to the center of the arena. She'd wanted to see the ruins of thirteen again, maybe see if she could find anything to use. Of course not. The Cornucopia was picked clean over. Thankfully, she had no one to hide her disappointment from excluding the cameras.
The stars are out again. It's not as colorful or wondrous but it's still beautiful in the dark. It's familiarity only makes it more so, really.
She sits sideways in the drivers seat, the door open and he knees pulled up close. She stares at the stars through the open door. It's cold out here, as deserts are at night, but she doesn't feel like closing the door just yet.
She remembers the last time she watched the stars before the arena, with Cable at her side. She remembers hoping at first that he'd finally say something, do something. But then they just sat there, together and in silence. After a while, she didn't need anything more.
She leans into the seat, resting her head against it like she had on his shoulder then. She remembers his look at her and a tear leaks. She doesn't stop it.
"Cable... I'm sorry..." Would they let him see this? Hear it? She doesn't know. They let him see her when she was reaped.
He remembers the way he kissed her. She doesn't dare say she loves him now, with the way her heart breaks in her chest.
D - Jackie Was Here (For Sheen)
She abandons the car at last. It's a sorrowful parting but she feels it's right. She's getting horribly hungry and she's not going to find food in a car. Let alone water. She can see the towering city building from far off. They must have water somewhere, some kind of food. Anything.
She was desperate enough to break off a piece of metal from the ruins of the arena's center. Just desperate enough that it didn't feel like a lie to say she was gonna use it.
In the under-brush ahead, she heard noise, rustling, and she raises the shard high. She readied to kill.
The hare darted out and she froze there, staying frozen even after its absence. The shard dropped from her hand. She felt as though, clearer than ever, she understood the situation she was in. Incredibly, no tears came this time.
What| Maglev's on her own... for now.
Where| The desert
When| Week two
Warnings/Notes| limb loss mention, death
A - Sun Running
"Luna? Karkat!?"
She calls their names without thinking. Her aching arm is held close to her chest by the remaining hand. The beautiful night sky is being chased away by an encroaching dawn and she walks toward it without pondering. There's a cave up ahead, something for one of the weirder, older trolls probably, though none of them were really around anymore after Signless won and the other... after what he did.
The sunlight peaks over the surface, and she's stunned by how much brighter it is than what she'd been used to for the past night.
No... it's brighter than she's ever seen! Quickly, she rips her eyes away from the scene, but her eyes are blotted with color and darkness. Oh no. Oh no, no...
It takes far too long, but her vision starts to clear. The sun has risen only higher by then. And as she beholds her own form with her returned vision, she sees her skin going pinker. She gasps, and then echoes it a moment later for who she sees before her.
"Quick! Close your eyes! And run to shade!"
B - Joyriding
With her own sleeve torn off on the one side, (she'd had to take the jumpsuit off and all she could think of was everyone watching her, thus making the only plus side of her burns was that no one could see the flush of her cheeks,) she'd managed to make a fairly decent wrap for going around her head. From there, after still being unable to find Karkat and Luna, the only thing she could think to do was retrace her steps.
And then maybe retrace her tracks a little. The war machine of a car glides so beautifully over the sand, even when driven by a one handed Tribute. She thinks she may be in love.
The only problem is that braking for other sends up a cloud of dust.
C - Star gazing
She stays with the car that night. She managed, amazingly, not to die in the incredible dust storm that swept over the desert, mostly thanks to pulling up to the center of the arena. She'd wanted to see the ruins of thirteen again, maybe see if she could find anything to use. Of course not. The Cornucopia was picked clean over. Thankfully, she had no one to hide her disappointment from excluding the cameras.
The stars are out again. It's not as colorful or wondrous but it's still beautiful in the dark. It's familiarity only makes it more so, really.
She sits sideways in the drivers seat, the door open and he knees pulled up close. She stares at the stars through the open door. It's cold out here, as deserts are at night, but she doesn't feel like closing the door just yet.
She remembers the last time she watched the stars before the arena, with Cable at her side. She remembers hoping at first that he'd finally say something, do something. But then they just sat there, together and in silence. After a while, she didn't need anything more.
She leans into the seat, resting her head against it like she had on his shoulder then. She remembers his look at her and a tear leaks. She doesn't stop it.
"Cable... I'm sorry..." Would they let him see this? Hear it? She doesn't know. They let him see her when she was reaped.
He remembers the way he kissed her. She doesn't dare say she loves him now, with the way her heart breaks in her chest.
D - Jackie Was Here (For Sheen)
She abandons the car at last. It's a sorrowful parting but she feels it's right. She's getting horribly hungry and she's not going to find food in a car. Let alone water. She can see the towering city building from far off. They must have water somewhere, some kind of food. Anything.
She was desperate enough to break off a piece of metal from the ruins of the arena's center. Just desperate enough that it didn't feel like a lie to say she was gonna use it.
In the under-brush ahead, she heard noise, rustling, and she raises the shard high. She readied to kill.
The hare darted out and she froze there, staying frozen even after its absence. The shard dropped from her hand. She felt as though, clearer than ever, she understood the situation she was in. Incredibly, no tears came this time.
NO NEED TO MATCH LENGTH, WOW, SORRY
He's the only one here actually from District One. He feels no solidarity with the others, little desire to seek them out. (He considered it-- thought maybe he could find Feferi, find the one to whom he'd given his token. He's not sure now, weeks in, what he'd do if he found her.)
He has been running alone since he bolted the opposite direction from the Cornucopia and into the wastes, and since then he's found half of his food wild and half of it he's taken in hit-and-run missions, menace someone unsuspecting with surprise and sudden height and a swinging knife, snatch at whatever he could and dart back into the brush. He has not had an impressive run. He knows this. It's been pricking at his temper and winding itself up with his exhausted fear, until he barely knows what's anger and what's terror anymore.
Some of the blood on his hands is his own. None of it is heart's blood, the kind that flows only out of people dying. (All his training, and they couldn't teach him what that feels like. To kill. With animals, maybe; not with people. It's not the same. Something gut-deep in him knows that.)
He hears the same rustling as Maglev, and he moves quicker when he hears it. Food or person, he's aimlessly seeking both or either. When he catches sight of her, his fingers tighten on the knife in his (left) hand. And he hesitates, and his feet scuff on the ground, too loud--
--That's a Districter.
--but this is the Games and this is what he was ready for-- there should be no distinctions here between Districters and off-worlders, there should be no levels between them-- every person he lets live is an enemy, and who cares who they are, who cares--
And Sheen thinks of home a half-second, and then he digs his feet into the earth and kicks up dust with his first forward step. He will raise the knife only when he is closer. He will yell, and the sound that comes from his throat will be hoarse and high. Something in him will hope, as the knife comes down, that she runs-- that something he does before the end of this is good enough to end up on TV.
IT'S ALL GOOD
she turns slow, braced for everything and nothing. Her eyes are round, even before the shout starts. The boy doesn't stalk like a coyote. He comes streaming out like a hawk, voice high. He comes out with claws-- a knife raised high. He's a district boy, just as desperate as her.
She's not so brave that she doesn't try to run. She turns fast, her golden hair, sticky with mud and blood and grease, goes flying out. Her arms and legs pump in time, her one remaining hand clenched as she takes off, a bullet from a smoking gun. The wind in her ears almost drowns out the pace of her breath. The lucky hare's foot bounces off her collar bone in time with her heart, but it's not enough luck for her.
The knife comes down, an icy fire, and she can't stop the cry that parts from her lips, still half-terror with the pain not yet sunk in. It tears further with her forward momentum. She twists and falls, the stars spinning high above her head as she hits her knees and then her side. She gasps. The hare's foot beats one more time against her collar.
They found the hare weeks after she'd first seen it and taken its name. It had been torn open by claws and dragged the slightest on the ground, its tiny limp paws splayed. The fur, though mostly matted with blood, still shone through gold in some parts, particularly upon its head and ears. The eyes were still wide, though glassy and dirty from the dust. Walking up from just the right angle, it seemed to simply be sleeping.
Cable stood by as she knelt before the creature and wept. They'd both been small, but he didn't seem so shaken as she, for whatever reason. Maybe it was she who'd been strange to cry over the animal. He picked up its torn off paw before helping her to move the animal. She doesn't know how he made the necklace, but he had. And she'd believed him when he said it would be lucky.
She tries to crawl.
no subject
The Capitol does not demand fair fights. The Capitol only rarely cares who dies at whose hands, or whether or not they played by the rules. The Capitol doesn't care that he's bigger, that he's a Career, that someone loved him enough to teach him how to turn off the most human part of him and kill.
Knives don't kill quickly. He's strong, he has broad shoulders and thick arms and adrenaline singing in every nerve, but burying a knife up to the hilt in a human being, driving it through bone and muscle and tendon until it stops, that is difficult-- and he does not manage it, though he strikes down and down and down. (He slices through the chain around her neck and the foot falls to the earth; he does not notice.)
He is making soft, hoarse sounds, and he cannot help them. His teeth are gritted so hard it makes the tendons stand out in his neck, and he can feel the way his face is twisted, wonders in a distant way whether he is recognizable on the cameras. Whether his District will watch this and see that he triumphed.
Sheen will tackle Maglev, if he can-- try to hold her still, to raise the knife and bring it down once, harder, decisive-- the way he stabbed the block they put in front of him, never up to the hilt, never so far, but if you strike enough-- if they bleed enough-- if enough gives way beneath you--
(--the gold of her hair is blinding, and he sees it when he blinks, leaving an imprint like the sun on his eyelids. He could stab her with his eyes closed, because even with his eyes closed he can see just where she is.)