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WHO| Aunamee and Howard
WHAT| A new tribute arrives.
WHEN| Third Week
WHERE| Ice fields.
WARNINGS/NOTES| None yet.

The strong will survive, and Aunamee is strong.

Ahead of him, the landscape is a perfect white (his favorite color, a blank slate) sprinkled with bursts of red and brown. Blood, but no bodies. Blood, but no bodies. He's noticed the trend and he prefers it, in a way. It makes the perfect white snow (the perfect blank slate) into an artist's palette with colors to be mixed and merged, except the paint belongs to someone's last moments and the palette is a killer by its own right, cold claws ready to snap up at any moment.

The strong will survive, and Aunamee is strong. He does not let himself fear.

Except he does. His heartbeat rolls up from his chest and into his throat, an all-together unfamiliar sensation that makes him feel like a prey animal. It's disgusting. Nauseating. Maddening.

It's almost enough to make him paint.

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"Read perhaps," he says, a smile flickering across his lips. "But understand?"

He waves a hand at Howard's foot.

"I'd like to see you move it, if you don't mind." An outwards bend, if he remembers correctly, is one of the worst kinds; the ligament tears near so many important bones. It's enough to make Howard a liability. "You didn't hear any pops or cracks, did you?"

"You want me to get up? You already seen me walk." And while he can walk, it's not exactly comfortable. Howard rolls his ankle as much as he can without putting it in too much pain. "No cracks, but a little bit of popping. What's wrong with it?"

He doesn't know it's a bad sprain, and he's honestly worried it's a break.

It's lovely when the questions on the outside match the questions on the inside, like a full chorus chiming in all at once. Now that the future (and Howard's mind) is rolled out before him, his muscles are relaxed. His voice is calmer. He is soft and paternal. He is gentle and urging.

"It's a sprain," he says. "And quite a bad one at that."

He leaves the words unspoken, how he could easily overtake Howard in this position but doesn't. Aunamee is fond of him, how his pain rings and sings in his ears, how his brow furrows with suspicion and how he struggles to take command of every situation. There is no need to discard him so early. When his ankle fails him, he'll be easy to eliminate -- in mercy or otherwise.

He gestures at the bandages.

"What other supplies did you nab, twisting that ankle of yours? More of these?"

Howard doesn't know how to interpret the way Aunamee speaks to him now, but he wonders if it's a doctor thing. Bedside manner, acting warm and encouraging when telling your patient bad news. And it works, it is encouraging, at least when Howard isn't thinking about the unspoken implication.

"Will it get worse? From walking on it, I mean? I feel like it's been about the same level of hurt for the last few days."

Howard's suddenly glad he didn't have his sleeping bag on his back when he ran into Aunamee. Between his hideouts with Sigma and Alpha, he has two cans of food left, two sleeping bags (although one was stabbed and ripped nearly to shreds when he killed Draco), his knife, clampons, some fishing line, a fifty-foot rope, and three people's worth of clothing. Not a bad haul. Plus Sigma and Alpha both have firestarting kits of their own, which have come in handy.

"Not too much. I have a knife and a sleeping bag back where I'm hiding." It's a lie - he has more than that, and the knife is in his pocket.

"No," he says. "But it won't get better."

He hears the lie, the chorus diverging. Oh, distrustful Howard. Liar who lets people freeze to death and fills other bodies with holes. He runs his tongue over his teeth and sits back on the heels of his feet.

"There are ways, of course, to recover your mobility. Exercises. Physical therapy. And there are ways to reduce the swelling."

"I been packing ice into my boot, trying to stop the swelling, but that just gets my foot wet and cold." He really has no idea how to handle himself in the snow - Aunamee should see that, see that Howard only ever saw it on TV until now.

"But the rest of that doesn't sound like anything that'll help me right now. It'll only help if I win, and that's probably not going to happen either." In a way, Howard prefers the arena. It's stressful and brutal, but it's easier to play desperate in front of the cameras than to pretend to be charming and happy in the Capitol. He's not interested in winning so much as postponing both death and the return to luxury.

He's going to tell Howard that he needs a barrier between his foot and the ice and that every inch of increased mobility could spare his life for another minute, but something else catches his mind, something he missed in the initial flurry of thoughts. Aunamee sees the deep black voice of death and then he sees -- more, he sees rebirth and crowds and more deaths and more rebirths, a cycle like a perennial flower. It startles him so much that his composure fails and he blinks furiously in attempt to regain himself, doubt gripping his shoulders like a great beast.

Is this boy delusional? Psychotic? Are his abilities failing him, flickering on and off like a fading light bulb, spewing false information like a dying machine?

"You okay?" Howard edges away from Aunamee, wondering if he's watching someone decide whether or not to kill him or watching someone have an aneurysm. He starts getting his foot back into his boot.

This is how the others died.

The chosen men and women before Aunamee, their abilities ebbed and flowed near the end. Their visions grew unreliable. They made mistakes not through carelessness, but by following information that was fundamentally false. It was as though the power they held started to reject them, to taunt them and draw them towards their deaths.

"I might have heard something," he says. He looks up without moving his head, wide eyes staring at the sky above. His breath is halved. "Up there."

Howard glances up and quickly finishes getting his boot back on. He gets to his feet and backs against the ice wall, looking upwards, although he keeps Aunamee in his range of vision. "There's no animals here but birds. And other people."

Which means that if they hear something, it's probably a threat.

"We should book it."

There is nowhere else to take the lie.

Aunamee gives a tight nod and unfolds his legs. He uses the wall of ice to guide him as he stands, his feet suddenly unsteady, his muscles suddenly heavy. He is a man who is unused to uncertainty and now he is drowning in it. It fills his sinuses even now, even when he's supposed to know everything.

"You promised to find me shelter."

"Shelter's no good if someone's going to use it to trap you." He glances up again at the top of the crevice. "We need to get up where we can make sure we're not being followed, then I'll find you shelter. If you show me some exercises or whatever to keep me on my feet."

Why yes, he is ratcheting up Aunamee's end of the bargain right now. In his mind, it's justified because if they've been followed, they'll need to walk further. He navigates the crevice at a bit of a trot, favoring one leg but biting down the pain to avoid showing weakness.

"You told me you didn't understand what I meant," he says, "when I said you behave beyond your years."

He follows. He focuses on Howard's pain instead of the greater picture, the mysteries and impossibilities spiraling from this boy's mind.

"You've been through these sorts of things before." His voice maintains that same tender quality, the air of paternal protection. "Horrors."

"And what?" Howard looks irate, but the truth is that he feels ashamed. He can't hide that he's damaged goods, refurbished rather than repaired. He isn't capable of hiding the fear and trauma, not even to strangers, and to him that feels like broadcasting his vulnerabilities.

But that isn't Aunamee's fault, he thinks. And if he's going to be coming back to Aunamee later for that ankle, he needs to not only make nice, but start figuring out how Aunamee ticks. So far all he knows is that Aunamee's new, afraid of heights and has something of a warm schoolteacher vibe.

"You got kids?"

"No children," he says. "No family."

He can still see them when he closes his eyes. His mother blowing her nose into a tissue as she cries, cries, cries. His father standing tall, rigid, his skin so white that it matches the wall behind him.

"You can say I've been through my own horrors."

"Yeah?" Howard slips a little bit on the ice and catches himself with a wince. He tucks the dead bird down the front of his jacket. "Like what?"

Turning the conversation from Howard's fears to Aunamee's is a defense mechanism. If he can remind Aunamee how unpleasant it is to discuss one's past, maybe Aunamee won't ask him anything more about his.

"What did you do, before all this?"

This is easier than the unmarked future. This is easier than death that isn't death.

"Help people," he says. He walks without shuffling, his feet taking precise, decisive steps on the cold ground. He no longer uses the wall for support. "I chose to dedicate my life to helping people who suffered not unlike I did."

You add water to a bucket, and all the dirt and grime float up to the surface. Aunamee dreams of kicking up Howard's past with his own. He gives him a significant look, his lips tugged into a sad smile.

"My parents passed away when I wasn't much older than you. I've been on my own ever since."

The vagueness unsettles Howard. 'Help people' could mean anything; the man knew first aid but that doesn't mean he's a doctor. "How?"

There's no wince on his face, but he does flinch inside when Aunamee says that. "At least yours had the decency to die. Mine abandoned me."

"Conversation," he says easily. "Hospital visits. Temporary shelter from an abusive spouse -- or a leaking roof."

He helps them with poisonous pills. Burning buildings. He offers them his warm hand to hold while the other twists a knife into their backs. The newspapers call him a spiritual leader and his followers call him by his first name, his only name. The people on the other end of his blade call him their savior.

"You should know there's no decency in dying."

"So you're a minister or something? Or a social worker?" Howard hasn't had a ton of experience with either - his family never needed the latter, and wasn't much invested in the former.

Howard laughs, and it's an ugly, dry, mean sound. "That's bullshit. Dying's the best excuse ever. 'Sorry I couldn't be there for you, I was dead'. See?"

He cherishes the dark laugh, the inner suffering escaping out of Howard's voice like little bubbles. This is his comfort food. His sunshine. This conversation is a gift in an otherwise bleak situation, a reminder to Aunamee of who he is, his purpose, his point. He drags his finger along the ice wall as he walks.

"Something like that," he says, his interest already shifted to his true element. "But are you sure about that, Howard? If your parents were alive somewhere -- right now, this instant -- would you rather they were dead?"

Howard shoots Aunamee a look with narrowed eyes, but doesn't answer. He doesn't know the answer. There's a big part of him that gets off on his anger, because it's self-righteous, because if he believes that his parents are scum for leaving he doesn't have to wonder if he did something to deserve it. And there's a part of him that believes some people deserve to die, if they're evil or stupid or just unlucky.

And there's another part of him that believes that it's fundamentally wrong for him to wish death on his parents, that he can't really hate the man and woman who took him to Disneyland and stayed home from work when he had the stomach flu and yelled at him to do his homework and watched the Pokemon movies at least thirty times for him. A part of him that believes if you want people dead, you're not allowed to miss them so deeply that you cry for them more nights than you don't.

"You didn't answer my question. What was your job title?"

Sometimes the questions are too much.

Aunamee remembers Caroline, her sharp dark eyes, the way she saw through his facade and dug into him with accusations and ultimatums. The game was fun for a while, how she pushed him and he pushed back, how each and every battle sparked the passion that he adores and keeps him alive, but in the end, her fiery temper made her a loose cannon. A risk. Howard kicks up that same energy, that same furious rebellion and pain, and while Aunamee treasures it, his new doubt takes it on as a second burden.

He must not look away from this one. He must not go too easy.

"A minister," he says, his face ever-patient while his mind curls and seethes, "for a church that does not believe in God. You could call me spiritual, except I don't believe in souls. Religious, but I detest ritual. What it comes down to, ultimately, is what I said before: helping people." He lowers his tone. "Society has done little for me, and so I do not follow its labels."

Edited 2013-02-10 14:33 (UTC)

Howard nods, satisfied with this answer more than the ones before it. It's still not totally adequate, but he suspects he'll get no clearer from Aunamee. "Good. I don't believe in God either."

Of the two types of people Howard knew in the FAYZ - those who found faith and those who rejected it entirely - he fell firmly into the latter camp. Belief in higher powers just makes him angry. He'd rather surrender to the facts that are and work within their confines than supplicate himself to whatever made the bizarre, ugly situation he's living in.

They come across a low section of the ice crevice, and Howard gestures to Aunamee. "Can you poke your head up and see if anyone's there?"

He doesn't know it'll take Aunamee out of the zone of powers, but he is thinking that if there's danger above the crack he'd rather Aunamee stick his head out than himself. Besides, if Aunamee asks for a reason Howard can blame both his small stature and his injury.

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