Thunder rumbling. Castles crumbling.

[doc_holi]

Who| Doc Holiday and Aunamee [Closed]
What| Holiday's intro and first death all in one. Hoozah.
When| The start of Week Four
Where| Near-ish the Cornucopia
Warnings| Death and bad things.

A battle to the death.

She did try to fight back against... whoever it was that had brought her here so that she could be honored to participate in... this. How could- Who would- At first, she thought this was somehow Black Knight's doing, but that certainly wasn't right. Especially when they put the tracker in her.

But that was then. This was now. Holiday kneeled on the pedestal she had just risen from after trying to beat her way back into the small chamber. Once out in the arena, though, she stilled. It was freezing. There was ice as far as the eye could see. All she could really do was sit here and wait to be executed.

Holiday started shaking. Either from fear, cold, or anger.

Thankfully, Rex was guaranteed to not be here, but what about Six or Knight? They could kill her if they had a mind to, but she knew they wouldn't. What if someone else found them? No. They could handle themselves. She couldn't fear for them right now.

Spotting no one as she looked around, Holiday took in a few gulps of air and began to run from the Cornucopia.

Comments

[marcato]

Aunamee had a jagged wound on the side of his face.

Red, red, red. No, red was not his color. The beautiful orchestra that he kept between his ears was marred with flat notes, sharp notes, uneven staccato, snapped bows. He bled into his parka. He tasted copper on his teeth.

"Help," he said into the wind, into the snow. "Help."

But the snow was not empty. The Cornucorpia was not far -- he could see it on the horizon, even, curling away from the sky like a dying flower.

And there was a woman running towards him.

[doc_holi]

Of course, Holiday stopped immediately at the low sound she could hardly hear in this terrain. A cry for help.

Without a second thought, she ran faster to the source in front of her, already trying to figure how she could help someone in this situation. She had little clothing on her to make any sort of tourniquet or bandage but... there was nothing else and something would have to do... unless this was someone freezing to death.

Holiday ran up to the man obviously standing out in this weather. Despite his figure in this landscape, the falling snow still made it hard to see. She slowed once she was closer. "I'm here. I'm a doctor. What's wrong?" The injury on his face was painfully obvious, though.

Can you tell she's new yet?

[marcato]

He saw her approach as though she were filmed in stop-motion. One step. Flash. Another step. Flash.

His entire brain sang in discordant rhythm.

"A doctor." He exhaled the word with a smile that could be mistaken for relief. He brought a hand to the brutal cut that stretched from his cheek to his forehead, feeling the slick blood, the traitorous daggers of pain. "Someone hurt me."

Short, clipped sentences were all he could manage through the noise. His hands shivered. His legs shook. But not in fear, no.

In rage.

"You're so kind to help," he said in one breath, and in the next, he was swinging his fist at her face.

[doc_holi]

No, she did not expect that. The punch knocks her back and into the snow and ice before she looked up to him in shock.

Right. A battle to the death. One survivor. How could she be so stupid?

She began scrambling to run after the brief second of surprise, fear spreading through her like it only had a few times before.

[marcato]

His smile didn't fade. It was as though his face were stuck in the moment before the punch, his eyes wide and gracious, his lips tugged up in wonder.

"Oh no," he said, and he slammed his foot down onto her ankle. "You won't. You people aren't making this shithole my grave."

And then he lashed out again, this time with a kick to her stomach.

[doc_holi]

She screamed in pain from his move on her ankle, fairly sure that he just broke something. Holiday tried to free herself even though she kept slipping on the ice, but it was hopeless. The kick to her stomach stopped those attempts.

She tried to get in some cold and painful air, deciding that pleading with him was the best option she had in this moment. "I just got here... I want to help... I want to live. Not... play their damned games." Rebecca hissed at him with furrowed eyes. "I want to go home."

[marcato]

Somewhere between the start and the end of his last kick, Aunamee's smile had twisted into a hideous sneer. Blood from his face trickled down his neck and he felt it, that burning sting of failure, that maddening misery of being human. But the orchestra in his head surged, grew, built into a crescendo. Suffering. Yes. That was right. This was how it was supposed to go.

He circled her fallen form.

"But that's the funny thing," he said. "You've always been playing their games."

He aimed a kick up and under her shoulder, an attempt to flip her onto her back. He breathed a laugh, soaked with bitterness, absent of humor.

"You just didn't realize it."

[doc_holi]

She flipped over, but mostly of her own will. It was easier to do more from this position right now... unless something else happened.

Holiday kept her eyes on him, trying very slowly to push herself up with her arms.

"How? That doesn't even make sense... They just threw me in here. I don't know what this is."

What she needed to do was run, but she couldn't with that ankle and this ice. If he wasn't going to cooperate, she had to find an opening to incapacitate him.

[marcato]

"So literal," he said, slipping his foot under her chin and up against her neck. He pressed down, more of a gentle urge to keep her head close to the ground (he saw her arms, he saw how she thought she could escape) than an all-out attack.

"If you had me in the position I have you in now, you'd do the very same thing."

[doc_holi]

She shook as her body sunk lower down. It was obvious he was in control of the situation and she was becoming more aware that talking to him was useless. It didn't look good.

"Don't put me in that same category. I'm not going to play along with this shit. I wouldn't even have done this much. I wanted to help you. You're the one that's playing the pawn, not me.

"You think I value my own life so much that I would kill others that's been put in the same position that I'm in?"

[marcato]

Aunamee didn't hear a single thing after that word. Pawn.

Like a fire in his brain. Like knives under his fingernails. His stomach twisted and his heart rate surged, a river of anger flowing up his neck and into his ears, his cheeks, his eyes. Immediately he began applying pressure to her neck -- soft at first, but then harder, harder, harder as he added more and more of his full weight.

[doc_holi]

Dammit. She thought she would have more time to find an opening. She thought he would listen and relent. Dammit. Dammit.

Her hands clawed at his ankle, trying to get him off. Eventually, she swung her arm back to slam her fist into the back of his knee as hard as she could. It would likely do nothing, but she's trying at least.

[marcato]

He raised his voice.

"Viewers at home," he said. He could feel her blows against his leg, but with the deep wound in his face and the adrenaline coursing through his veins, it meant nothing. He knee gave under her punch. His foot held steady. "How many of these games have you seen? Ten? Twenty? Fifty? The number of years in your life?"

He was a public speaker. A performer. Even in a murderous rage, his voice was clear, his syllables pronounced.

"You know that she would do the same to me because in the bitter end, no one chooses a stranger's life over their own. The most we can do is be kind -- " He slid the words between his teeth. " -- and keep things quick."

He stomped down. Again. Again.

[doc_holi]

Who the hell was he talking to!?

The thought didn't stay in her mind long. Rebecca only had time to give a short scream once before the first hit. She tried to scream again, but the second broke her neck.

At least it was quick enough.

[marcato]

The cannon sounded. Aunamee raised his foot.

He didn't even know her name. Without his telepathy, she was faceless, void of hopes and dreams and feelings, and that wasn't right, that wasn't fair, because Aunamee deserved to know his victims like a father would. He deserved a chance to cradle them, to squeeze their life stories out of their heads like water from a sponge. Instead, the only thoughts he had were his own, simmering in misery, drenched in doubt.

(If he had asked her, would she have told him her story willingly? Would she have helped him?)

He knelt beside her and closed her eyes. He brushed her hair from her forehead. "I am sorry," he said. "For very many things."

But not sorry enough.