thearena | (no subject)

WHO| Katurian and OPEN.
WHAT| Katurian is tiptoeing around the arena late at night. With a garrote.
WHEN| Second week.
WHERE| South-East (Parts of Fantasyland, Tomorrowland, and Main Street)
WARNINGS/NOTES| Attempted murder.

Katurian is a night owl. In his old world (in his old life), Katurian would sleep-walk through his days at the slaughterhouse and only revive once he left for home and the sun went down. He'd write until his body collapsed in exhaustion underneath him, and even when it did, words would still tickle the roof of his mouth and the tips of his fingertips like tiny beings clamoring for attention.

It's no different in the arena. Sleep is a near impossibility, and while he knows he has a relatively secure camp with Draco, it isn't enough. His mind twists and thrives and writhes, the words less like gentle beings and more like angry spirits living underneath his skin. Maggots. In the last arena, he solved this by pacing back and forth on the ice, a folding knife clutched tightly in his hand.

This time, he wanders the darkened arena with a thin patch of fabric tucked in his pocket. This time, he listens to the words.

This time, he fights.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It was nice, admittedly, that Draco no longer treated him with the same derision. Katurian cherished every sentence spoken in a neutral tone, every conversation with give and take, every question that was honest rather than prying. It wasn’t because he wanted to be friends with Draco — in truth, he had already made the decision not to grow too close — but because it made the whole thing easier, calmer, less defensive. Even now with the topic of murder on his breath, Katurian did not crawl into a small ball. He could feel confident. He could feel like a parent.

“How do you think?”

He ran his hands through his own hair. He hadn’t killed anyone, not yet, but he could already feel the sticky blood matted in his hair.

Not being friends was considerably better than being friends, so far as Draco could tell; or at the very least, if they were to be friends, then they'd better not stick together. There would come a time, all too soon, when they'd be pitted against one another. Luck just worked that way: against them.

The changes in Katurian's general demeanour hadn't gone unnoticed, but Draco couldn't really place what exactly it was. Something was different, but whether it was just him tolerating the other man's presence more or not was up in the air.

"Killing people in their sleep? I haven't heard any cannon fire lately."

"I'm not much of a killer," Katurian said, taking the long, black cloth out of his pocket. In his hand, it felt almost benign. It was small like doll clothing, like a blanket for a teddy bear. He lay it out in front of him. "I always lose my grip at the last minute. When I can feel them slow."

The words were painful like razor blades. He spread out the fabric so that he didn't need to think about them. He made everything nice and smooth and easy.

"So you go out, try to kill people in their sleep, and then come back, is that it?" He asked, still more curious than judgemental, though the lifting arch of his eyebrow suggested it was almost starting to lean that way. Not that he was one to talk; he had but one kill to his name so far.

"I suppose there are worse things to do with your free time."

If he were more awake, he might have snapped. Cracked. He might have started yelling about how killing isn't easy and how he wasn't made for this, how he was a writer and there was nothing he had ever done to suggest he deserved this life of murder and torture.

"That's it," he said instead, his voice dull and low.

He wanted this conversation to go away, but it was difficult thinking about anything else in this mess of a place. He cleared his throat, the sound halfway between a choke and a cough.

"I figure you're safe enough, you know, where we are, but if you'd rather I stay here and watch you when I'm not sleeping, I could do that too, but I don't need a lot of sleep and I need something other than waiting around here to die."

In his mind, Katurian heard Draco all those weeks ago, locked in the emptiness of the abandoned parade area.

Draco merely nodded at that, eyes studying Katurian as best they could through the darkness of night. In a way, he did feel more safe because of it. Like the chances of him getting knifed to death in his sleeping bag this time around were that much lower. It didn't matter if Katurian was actually around or not, he thought; it was the idea of being sort of watched over.

"That seems counter-productive, you just staying here." He reached up, scratching at his brow before rubbing sleep from his eyes. "If you want to go out wandering, by all means. Maybe you'll scrounge us up some sympathy from the Sponsors."

"Maybe," he said, but his attention was on Draco's sleepy eyes, the way he brushed and rubbed at them. Katurian had grown more comfortable in the boy's presence, yes, but he had also grown more sympathetic, more worrying, more watchful despite his private vows to maintain a distance. Draco wasn't very much like himself as a boy, and he wasn't very much like Michal either. He was closer to the people Katurian had grown up to hate and distrust, the people that cackled behind his back and spit in his food and made fun of his stutter.

But exhaustion is humanizing. Fear is humanizing.

"How are you?"

He sat up a bit more properly then, stretching his back out; unused to sleeping on the ground, even after all this time in the Arena, Draco's body still protested the maltreatment. He really did hate it in there, and it was cruel of the Capitol to let him think he had a shot at getting out, when he clearly didn't.

If he were alone, he might have made a noise of frustration about it already. But he wasn't, and he was grateful for that.

"Me? Fine, I suppose. I'm alive still."