Deep in the meadow, under the willow...

[etcircenses]

Who| All those on the liberation mission and all those being made to fight against them.
What| The liberation of District 12.
Where| District 12.
When| This week.
Warnings/Notes| War, violence, death. Please warn for more in headers.

It doesn't take long to get to District 12, the closest district to the rebel district. It's one of the smallest districts, and you only know you reach it when rolling hills grow and grow until they become large, fertile green mountains. The environment looks green and lush, beautiful, really--That is, until you reach the part of the District where people actually live. The weather is chillier than the Capitol, though the wind bares the worst of it. Anyone planning on spending any time outside should definitely get a coat.

The town is smaller than any of the others, and more worn down. Everything seems to have a thin layer of cole settled over it, no matter how much cleaning is done. The center of the town isn't too shabby, and there are a few things that stand new and shining--A metal whipping post and stocks. The latter occasionally has an unfortunate person in it, though most people have learned to buckle down and accept the new rules.

In the merchant part of town, there's some signs of wildlife, knobby trees and green enough yards. The merchants used to ply their trades here, though for now, everything's locked down. As you get farther, it gets shabbier, poorer. Into the Seam, where the poorest of the poor live. Here, the houses are barely more than shacks. Trees grow wild, and what animal life exists is quick to run from any humans, no doubt having survived at least one attempt by the people of the Seam to capture them for the supper pot.

One thing in common with all the sections of the District is a feeling of hopelessness. The mood is dour, as heavy and permanent as the cole dust that seeps into everything. The only sign of anything even resembling any rebellion is a few chalk scratchings on the sides of abandoned buildings, a few zodiac symbols--Anyone who knows the trolls can recognize the symbols of Karkat, Terezi, Psiioniic, and even the Initiate. That, and the grand pictures of Sam Wilson and Joan Watson, and the bold words stating NOT ALONE and WE ALL DESERVE BETTER.

The war continues, and in the back of everyone's mind is a familiar phrase; may the odds be ever in your favor.

Comments

[carnagecarnival]

Clint could be considered a wise man for that fear. Real unfortunate he didn't have enough to get gone and stay gone the first moment he got being seen. The Initiate, made all up of fear, has had his realised and for that, he feels invincible. No harm come could truly destroy him. He sees the arrows Clint readies and he dares for them.

He is greeted with one, coming to meet him when he don't have the full proper expectancy of it. Following the launch of stone, all open was he, and he's lead to curl around wound in its wake growling and hissing with what little sound he can make and only through breath. But he don't wait. Not in his opening.

He rushes in anyway, arrow protruding from his chest and all, ignoring all pain with the movement and then some. Brother scrambles like a squeakbeast. His claws is going to catch that traitorous tail.

He reaches just as so and digs said claws deep into the flesh of the leg. He yanks up, going high so that Clint is forced into falling forward, leaving no chance for an arrow's loosing. He swings his club, aiming absolute to injure this time and take out that arm. Let it crack magnificent within his hear cartilage.

And if a brother don't howl, he'll lean in close, teeth bared, so his snarl might caught instead.

[cognitived]

He should have, he knew that near immediately. But Clint can't do shit about that now, and he can't waste time dithering as he thinks about regrets. Fuck that, Clint's got better things to do -- like try stubbornly to keep on living.

His arrow rings true, but Clint doesn't waste time watching, can't hear the way Initiate growls and hisses. But he can hear the way he runs after, and Clint most certainly can feel the claws digging deep into his leg. He wasn't out of breath, but it whooshes out of him as soon as Initiate yanks. Clint goes down hard, losing grip on his bow, slamming into the uneven ground even as he tries to twist and cushion his fall. Futile, he knows, but Clint never was one to give up. Instead, he has one arm braced, and one hand scrambling for the spilled contents of his quiver.

Just in time for Initiate's club to land, shattering the bones in his arm with one fell swoop.

Clint screams -- primal, aching, a note he can't stop. But there's metal in his hand, and desperately, he swipes up, arrow primed to gore. Initiate bares his teeth, and Clint bares his right on back, wide eyed and snarling.

[carnagecarnival]

It all goes so well, from fall to scream. It's a beautiful symphony. It turns what noise is in his own pan to motherfucking cheer as the wanting audience. The cries of battle. The songs of the fray. Noises of the dying doomed.

But the teeth he bares are soon slashed across, tearing through his face from chin, through his pulled back lips, and up over his cheek. Oh so close to his eye does his face split in new motherfucking grin, the indigo already quick to spill on over. He snatches at Clints hand, grasping it tight so there's the barest moment in which it's known what's coming. He crushes clint's hand and the arrow held within it.

He's dropped then, only for a quick swing to follow, striking at the head hard enough to disorientate. That broken arrow is snatched up and stabbed into a leg. But he ain't done, oh no.

He reaches over for that bow and snaps it right about the middle. A quick movement takes the string around his throat and he can pull tight from either end. Oh he does love death by one's own weapons. There's a poetry, something made perfect within laws of the universe. His grin pulls up only on the one side as ain't shredded so damn much.

[cognitived]

Blood splatters across his face, some tiny satisfied spark, even though it's not the blow he hoped for. No, definitely not what he hoped for. Initiate's clawed hand snatches his, and Clint knows, even though there's no way to brace for it. He's half gone with pain, broken bones and gored leg, and Clint's lived through more out of sheer stubborn willpower.

But his hands.

He bites his lip, vicious, trying to keep the whimper from falling from his mouth. Succeeds, but only just. The bones in his hand feel, feel -- nonexistent. Crushed into powder, dust. Flesh and blood and bone wrapped around the warped ruin of his arrow. He's unprepared for that hit, head slamming back against the rubble with the force of it all.

Dazed, yeah. But the strike hit home, and his 'aid shrieks, a ringing filling his wrecked ears. Clint's not sure if it's the vertigo or the ruined machinery, but it doesn't matter. In the next second the arrow is plucked from his mangled fingers, stabbed clean through his leg. He's pinned, arrowhead biting into earth, as if he wasn't already doomed.

A distant thought, but he hopes to god Sam's won't see this.

The snap of his bow echoes, just loud enough, just enough for him to have a moment of notice. One hand's crushed, useless, and the other arm is broken. But he still tries, stubbornly, scrabbling at the string wrapped round his throat. His vision fills, blinking away indigo blood, the shredded visage of Initiate's grin filling what's left behind. He fights, he thrashes, gasping for air, dizzier with each beat of his heart.

Eventually, eventually he can't fight it off.

[carnagecarnival]

It's amazing, really, how easily bodies come to break. It's a motherfucking miracle, all the feeling, sound, and color what can be pulled of a corpse. The world around them both is red, red, red with tiny spots of indigo. It's crunching, cracking. It's sticky and wet, the blood hotter than any troll he's ever taken apart.

He observes the shine of that tiny little string, marvelling at how something can be caught in a trap so small, and still so deadly. Little things like, I pity you and I'll come back and It'll be okay. Sweet simple lies. He would bet there were some this one got told.

But suffocating as like this, the flail what calls all of drowning, there ain't hardly no time to think on such things. He knows this. Small mercies among the cruel.

He holds each end of the bow steady. He can pin when the struggle for breath finally makes cease. He can know when the mind is shutting down slow, still on the edge of deciding how deep in the fall will go. The body starts all going limp. He drops the bow before it's over, both pieces falling to either side.

His body slumps, shoulders hanging forward. At last he reaches and rips out the arrow caught in his chest. More indigo spills, his breath rasps all the more, but he ain't focused on neither. Unconsciousness ain't mean he's dead. It don't mean things is over. Give a moment and this homie could wake all readied. He knows these things.

The arrow is stabbed into the heart. He kneels over clint, red eyes watching and waiting, looking to see if them eyes open and fade. He touches a bloodied hand to feel the heart and see if it's stopped. Quiet. So, so, so quiet.

But it ain't never over until the head's come off.

[cognitived]

There is nothing but pain, the agony of broken bones and mangled flesh. The Initiate pulls the string tighter, and Clint's last bit of breath gasps out of him, mind reaching for a million unrealized ways he might escape. But he can't, and yeah, he's got that there in the back of his mind. The flail of his broken limbs quiets, pain muted, fading in and out in a way he knows but can't fight. He doesn't want to, he doesn't remember why he did in the first place. A whisper of mercy, perhaps.

But the black of unconsciousness ebbs over him, and its a relief.

Clint does not wake up. Not before the arrow pierces his heart, and certainly not after.