Wear a necklace of rope, Side by side with me.

[etcircenses]

Who| All those on the breakout mission and all those being made to fight against them.
What| The liberation of District 4.
Where| District 4.
When| This week.
Warnings/Notes| War, violence, death. Please warn for more in headers.

The ocean is a calm clear beauty only for a short while. Storm clouds loom on the horizon, dark and massive beasts prowl quickly forward and growing size. The waves grow higher and higher over time, crashing violent upon rock, dock, and shore alike. One wrong slip, and the ocean may very will claim you for its own, war be damned.

The once bright and friendly tourist city and pier is on total lockdown. The businesses (curios shops, restaurants, and even games and rides) have closed their doors and barred them with wood. One of the hotels has been turned into the Capitol-soldier boarding and war room, a refuge for Peacekeepers in the new uprising.

Said Peacekeepers are struggling here, quicker to react due to the nature of the District's people. There is an overwhelming amount of rebels here, perhaps even the entirety of the District. Many of them, as comes from being a former career District, know how to fight, make traps, and generally outlast their opponents. Capitol soldiers will be stretched thin trying to help the Peacekeepers settle this District's ire. The people of District four want vengeance.

Everywhere beyond the tourist's city is rebel territory. Propoganda is rampant here. It's greatest control is the weather washing it away. Yet still words can be seen such as in the face of adversity; stand together! and TO BRAVERY! and Time's up, Capitol.

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

Comments

[furgood]

Kurloz runs. He pulls at his helmet, he touches those words he wrote in his own blood, and then he runs. From her. The world seems cold. She watches him go, feet concrete and body lead. He ran from her. He left her. Her eyes still burn and sting with tears but beneath is numb. She stays there, silent, because what good would running after him do? After she asked and begged for him to stay. After she said all she could say.

Her gaze follows him, along the sand, up the path. Suddenly--things slow. His foot lands. A blur launches at him. The world explodes. She screams. The lead falls away from her, her feet drag forward. Things move all too fast now, everything except for her. Her legs don't seem to take her as fast as she wants, as far as she wants.

"Kurloz!" Not fast enough, not fast enough, none of this was fast enough, she's too late. He's dead, they're both dead, him and his savior and she's too late. She can't be too late.

[quiethumerus]

The explosion goes off, nothing grand on the scale of the Capitol or even the rebels but for one single figure it's huge. It happens fast, not time to process it, not the sound, not the heat, not the flight that comes over sure as his body is sent back.

In some other world, this is it. The moment he goes from one to two. The moment he ends and begins. But he's got no care for that. He just wants the end. The threads, mercifully, will keep him from screaming.

He's dead. He's dead, he's finally dead, the game is finally fucking over. He hears ringing, but that will fade. He feels pain, but it will go. He'll be numb and empty. Only, with no god to greet him this time, having given all up for Panem.

He thinks he hears a scream. He thinks he hears his name. He thinks he feels someone wrapped around his corpse and a whispering voice in his ear, a laugh all amused, not thith time, KZ. Not your time.

His Helmet's been blown off. He can feel some of the armor on him has melted right onto his skin. It's burned, burning still. He should've died before he felt a thing. Is this what hell was meant to be? Why then was Derek here? And Meulin, he can see her, his eyes opening to the uncertain scene, the fire, her. No goodnights to sweet princes.

A burned hand reaches up to touch his imprisoner.

[sociopathicwolf]

There's pain seared everywhere, but that's okay. Derek can take it. He always could, even back in his arena, and they'd made sure he kept that. It's only ever been useful, his ability to take his and keep going.

He thinks Kurloz is moving under him, but it's hard to tell with the heat of the fire pressing in all around them. So he just keeps holding Kurloz close as he rolls them both again, and again. The press of sand to burned and lacerated skin isn't a great feeling, but at least it puts out the fire.

When they're far enough away that the only heat he feels is the lingering warmth of melted armor, he pulls away, forcing himself to his feet. He stands there unsteadily for a moment, and briefly he thinks his legs actually might not be able to hold his own weight, but the moment passes.

Then he reaches down to haul Kurloz upright, looking over him to see how bad the damage is as he growls at him.

"Stupid."

[furgood]

Meulin stops short. Her wide eyes blink in the smoke, in the fire. They rolled and rolled and there finally they stop. Up goes Derek--Derek, why was Derek here? Had he known, had he just been there or... She waits a breath, waits for Derek to rise and reach for Kurloz.

"I thought..."

Her voice catches, a sob welling up somewhere beneath it all. She stands there, watching her love burned and her best friend just the same. It doesn't seem real. The smoke and soot around them, layered over those two, the fire still catching in the building beside them. She's afraid to reach out and touch him, afraid to feel the damage, afraid his open eyes are just her imagining and it's all over. It's not. It can't be. He moves. It seems unreal, her vision blurs with tears. This could have gone so much worse. It could have been the worst thing that happened to her and her fear of it catches in her throat, makes her voice come out soft and hoarse when it finally escapes her.

"Kurloz?"

[quiethumerus]

Suddenly they're rolling and the sand is in the burns and Derek's weight is around him. He can't arch away from the pain, he can only offer a muffled cry. Somewhere in his blood, in the code of soul, he's got it all in him to keep on and on just as well but he doesn't want it, he doesn't want it up at all, even as the fire stops.

He feels himself shivering despite the heat all over his skin, an impossible heats in certain spots. The weight goes away but then all too soon, he's being hauled up. If he were smaller, he might dangle, but his frame has always been so much greater than he is even as he withered over years of slow starving, drugs, hoping...

Dead eyes lift slow, proving them not to be dead at all. His eyes meet Derek's. His hands cover in dried up blood, his neck, some singing of his hair... the melted arms goes over his heart and his forearms and some being upon his legs. Somehow, it's the marks of his face that stand out, hollowing his cheeks and eyes like he ought to be dead.

Where's his knife? Where's his mother fuckin knife, he had it and... and Meulin calls him. He turns his head her way, eyes round. His stitches have snapped loose and the smile is gone.

He moves sudden, clawing at Derek like he might be able to get away. "No," He says in that rasp that only cracks when it goes higher than a whisper, "No, NO! Let me go! Let me die!"

cw: suicidal ideation

[sociopathicwolf]

Derek doesn't both taking stock of his own injuries, not at the moment. The pulls of muscle and skin as he moves tells him that he'd been hit by some shrapnel from the explosion, and he knows his back and legs must be a mess, but that doesn't matter.

What matters is that Kurloz is alive, if not unscathed - he'd shielded him from the worst but not everything, and he tries not to let that be a failure. What matters is Meulin running up to them, the sound of fear in her voice.

He turns towards Meulin, to start to reassure her that they're both... well, not okay, but at least not in immediate danger anymore. But then Kurloz starts struggling against him, begging to be allowed to die, and Derek's gaze snaps back towards him, fangs bared and eyes wide.

"No," he snarls before he even thinks about it, a instinctive reaction just as much as tackling Kurloz had been.

It's a selfish response, maybe - he remembers Chuck trying to get him to promise that he'd keep going without him, and that he hadn't been able to. He remembers walking through the arena after that knowing that he was going to die, wanting it. Fuck he remembers that feeling, clear and momentarily untainted by anything the Capitol had done to him, and that shakes him even more. How could he have wanted to stop existing so bad if the Capitol was so great?

But even knowing - thinking he knows - some of how Kurloz might feel, he refuses to let him go, and his grip on Kurloz tightens, claws tangling in melted armor.

"You're ours. You can't go. We won't let you."

[furgood]

Her eyes dart between them. Their lips move but it's all at the wrong angle, all too hard, no one is turning to her to let her see. Kurloz's lips move and what is he saying? He's speaking. She feels--she doesn't know how to feel. Quickly, she steps in closer, puts hands on both their arms. She looks between them in panicked glances, catching the words 'won't let you'.

It's chilling. It's sad. It's sad how she doesn't need to know the exact words that Kurloz was saying because she can imagine it too clearly. The curves of his lips forming the syllables. She wonders what his voice sounds like. She takes in a breath and clings tighter. Her nails catch in the cloth of Derek's clothing, in the cracks in Kurloz's armor.

"Please don't..." Don't what? Don't die? Don't want to die? It seems so selfish to beg for that. It seems so selfish to want him to stay with her. She wants it anyways. "You're with us. It will be okay."

[quiethumerus]

Derek snarls at him. Derek fuckin tells him no. Derek digs claws into him. His panic grows. It grows and grows with each word. Their's. Can't go. Not allowed.

The more his panic grows, the more it swallows his anger at the betrayal of it all. He's not allowed to die and now the fear is coming up to kill him only not, it won't give mercy. He can't breathe.

Dimly he's aware that Meulin is there now. She's clinging on to him too. Please don't...

And as his panic builds and gives way, everything within him cracks and crumbles. He can't, he can't, he can't go any more than this, he can't be any more than pieces, all the stitching he did to keep himself together has come apart. His head shakes and he mouths, I can't, I can't do this. He gets weaker, strung out between the two of them, only trembling with the earthquakes internal.

[sociopathicwolf]

There's something reassuring about Meulin's touch to his arm, reminding him that he's not alone, that he doesn't have to try to fight his mind and Kurloz's all by himself. He's not good at fighting his own mind, not really - it'd taken Chuck to push him to it, and Derek holds onto that right now.

He shakes his head when Kurloz mouths that he can't, because that's not a good enough excuse. It never has been. Chuck hadn't let it be one for him, and Derek won't let it be an excuse for Kurloz.

"Too bad. Have to."

He's already got a good grip on Kurloz, it's easy to pull him even closer, to wrap one arm around him tight. They're both burned and Derek's injuries are screaming at him, but he doesn't care. He lets his other arm slide from under Meulin's touch, to wrap around her and pull them both in - so he and Meulin can pull Kurloz in. If his stitches can't keep him together anymore, then they'll have to do it for him.

"Hold it together," he orders, but after a moment he softens it with, "Help you hold it together. We're all we've got." He looks at Meulin as he says it, so she can read his lips and know what he's promising of them.

But also so he can add, "Chuck says I have to go with him. Won't leave Kurloz behind."

[furgood]

It's not hard to see the panic in his face, his eyes, the trembling of his limbs under her fingertips. Hold him together. They can hold him together. For a moment, she wonders who will hold her together. Them. All of them? Him and him and him and Terezi back in 13 and maybe others, but the family she chose most of all.

"You just need to breath Kurloz. Just breath in and out. Concentrate on it. Slow in and out. That's all you have to do right now." She says it soft, remembering how she had to say this to herself, to Terezi. His panic seems so familiar to her, who had gone through such things in the months between. The panic of putting Kurloz below or above the Capitol-- how had she not realized it might be the same for him. How had she not known? Carefully, she wraps her arm around his waist, hoping the grip is reassuring and not smothering.

"That's all."

Her gaze flickers up to meet Derek's, to watch his lips. Won't leave him behind. Good. She doesn't want to leave either of them behind. Her decision, the one she'd spoke of before, of never going back to 13, is made for her. She can't let them all go back alone.

"I know the way. You--you both need medical attention."

[quiethumerus]

He wishes they'd hurt him. He wishes they'd do something other than this. It's torturous, carrying on. He flinches sharp under Derek's command, ducking his head like he'll be hit, even though he should be and he wants it.

Help, Derek offers, but he doesn't know how he or anyone could. He hasn't been able to help himself. Maybe he just means to walk, though to where he ain't sure.

It's Meulin what brings the best advice. Focus on breathing. If he must exist, then just that one simple thing. He doesn't get it right the first time or the next, but he keeps trying, just focusing on breath instead of life. He feels her wrap around him, so gentle even though he ain't deserve. He hangs on tight back to her. That's all. Just breathing.

His eyes close to block out the world. Where they're going he ain't know. He can't quite think so far ahead as to that. When he tries it brings trouble and he goes back to Meulin's words. She throws down the more and they confuse. He can't think where and how they'd get any sort of attention? The idea both appeals and appals.