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[nightlightheart]

Who| Danny, Tony, Aunamee
What| Tony does not win Arena 05, quite obviously.
When| Backdated - Week 4
Where| Ice fields of doom.
Warnings| Murder and sads.

It's seemed like weeks that he's been stuck down in that crevice, and maybe it had. The days tended to blur together in this place, and he'd long stopped caring enough to count. It was nice to be under the sun again, even if he suspected it wasn't a real sun at all. Wasn't there something about global warming in this worlds history? They didn't have a real glacier to spare for this arena, even if they'd wanted one.

"Well? Where to next?" Tony huffs aloud. Pulls in a deep breath of cold air and heads off in the direction that seems to lead furthest away from where he'd just been. He isn't talking to Danny any more than he's talking to himself, and he doesn't even wait for a response.

He wants to go that way.

Comments

[danno_williams]

Danny snorts, having long gotten used to Tony's particular way of pretending to ask an opinion, then just doing what he wanted anyway...reminded him a bit of Steve actually. He just groaned and followed.

"We should try and find one of the nesting areas. The food that magically fell from the sky isn't going to last much longer."

He played with the note in his pocket, he's read it so many times, trying to figure out exactly what it implied. Was Sherlock actually alive on the other side? Or was it part of the game? He couldn't be sure. In any case, "Danny. [redacted redacted], try not to die. -SH" was both a comfort and an annoyance.

[marcato]

Aunamee had been deep down in the crevices since he killed the woman. The blood on his face, his foot, was finally drying, but it mattered very little to him -- not down here where his abilities shielded him from suffering. His wounds felt like nothing. He could wiggle every toe on his stabbed foot.

They took more of mental toll instead. He would stay up at night, sweating despite the cold. He would snap icicles in two.

And then, one afternoon, he heard sounds above him. Footsteps.

Men.

He knew without seeing them. He heard their thoughts in his head like quiet buzzes. He saw their futures, and he saw that one future was going to be ending very, very soon.

He climbed, slowly making his way up the crevice towards the surface.

[nightlightheart]

"Yeah, I could do with a roasted seagull or two," Tony muses in agreement, and scans the bleak horizon, layers upon layers of grey-white on grey-white, in search of where the nearest and hopefully accessible nesting area around might be.

It isn't that he isn't paying attention. It's that he literally just does not see the crevice he is quickly approaching. The angle he's standing and the play of the shadows and cracks in the ice...

He has no idea what is coming.

[danno_williams]

Neither does Danny, in retrospect, he'll analyze the next few minutes obsessivly. He'll try and figure out exactly what went wrong, and when. For now, he just answers Tony with a quip, "I'd take seagull tartare at this point."

[marcato]

Higher and higher he climbs. One step. Then another.

Yes. There.

That's right.

There is a ledge wide enough to rest his feet on and so he does. He's close to the surface, so close, like a whale just shy of the air that he craves. He doesn't even need to use his arms to hold on. They are free. They can do anything.

(They can do anything to anyone.)

When the footsteps get close enough, Aunamee doesn't even need to aim. He swings his arm out of the crevice and curls it around an ankle as it passes by. Tony's ankle.

And then he tugs, dragging him down, down, down.

[nightlightheart]

He's down before he even has time to react; the cold and borderline starvation was definitely taking a toll on his reflexes. Most of what comes out of him mouth is a jumble of vowels and almost-curses as he falls. Graceless and helpless to do anything about it but let gravity do its work.

[danno_williams]

"Motherfuck," is what came out of his mouth upon witnessing Tony's disappearing act. Not the best swear, but it's probably one of the classics and in that respect it was respectable.

Without even thinking he jumped into the crevasse, sliding down the side. You don't leave a partner behind damn it. He controled his fall, barely, and landed on the ground only a little worse for wear.

[marcato]

Aunamee is not cold. He is not starving. His reflexes are better than ever, humming with life and visions of the future and the tangled thoughts of the other two men. As Tony falls and Danny jumps, he remains on the elevated ice shelf a good five feet above the ground.

And then he kicks out his leg, swinging a heavy boot towards Danny's head.

He only wants one of you now. Shh.

[nightlightheart]

Well fuck.

"Uh... excuse you?!" Tony snaps. Even angry, and at a terrible strategic disadvantage he can't turn down the snark. Though, it does take a moment for Tony to even find the appropriate person to snap at.

On his ass covered in snow was going to do him zero good if this guy moves in to attack him. Which... yeah, that seems likely. Tony does what he can to gain some leverage. Scrambles to his knees. Tries to stand, even though the ice and his adrenaline-rushed momentum is making that difficult.