thearena | Flames Are Never Doused Completely [Closed]

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Flames Are Never Doused Completely [Closed]

Who| Howard, Diana, Neffa and Jay
What| Neffa and Jay get murdered.
Where| Lisa Frank Hell
When| Week 3
Warnings/Notes| Violent death, fire.

Once upon a time, Howard said he wasn't a killer. Even when he had blood on his hands, he wasn't a murderer; he was careless, he was merciful, he had accidents and acted in self-defense, but he never really went out with intent to kill. That was a line he didn't want to cross, back in the day, that was what differentiated him from people like Caine and Drake, what kept him in the same familiar category as Orc.

But the Sponsor gifts have been coming less and less, and even Diana's good looks can't seem to net them anything. The jokes about getting scurvy have stopped being just jokes but legitimate fears. They've gone through the food from the Cornucopia, despite rationing it as long as they could. Howard's headache hasn't abated and has been joined by the sick, rotting sensation of having eaten nothing but sugar and meat. He knows they have to stay hydrated, but that means drinking from the milkshake water, and that makes them sick as often as not.

They have to start playing to win, and that means drama.

Howard has a bag made from the hood of his sweatshirt and it's filled with powdered sugar. He shakes it out around a chocolate shed, nestled in a little grove of mint bushes. There are a few more houses down the way, similarly staked out. He wishes he had his rabbit's foot now, something to hold in his hand. He wonders what Wyatt will say, on the other side.

He promised to win, didn't he?

He paces back to where Diana's hiding in the bushes and eats a mint leaf. It's a risk - some of the candy here seems poisonous - but the mint hasn't killed them so far and it helps with the nausea. He sits down, tucks his heels to his hips, wraps his arms around his legs and his teeth over his lip, and waits, his non-patched eye roving over the surroundings. After about an hour of this, he sees two approaching forms and looks to Diana.

He can't tell if she's hesitant or if he's just projecting that onto her. "Come on. Don't shatter my illusion of you as a cold-blooded bitch."

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Things are better, and things are worse. Better: Neffa found Jay (and the supplies) again-- a relief he could have wept over, would weeping not have made his ribs scream. Night fell, once. Their food is not gone. He isn't dead.

Worse: The food is not gone, but it is less. The fear is starting to wear on him. There is blood on the end of his ugly pink club. Every breath feels like it's cutting him in two.

The little houses, peeking out from between the trees, are a dubious blessing. Knowing how many of the Tributes are already dead, Neffa can almost make himself believe, cautiously, that they might not be occupied. But the part of him that made Beck's bones crack in a paranoid panic whispers No, you idiot-- it slows his steps as they approach, reaches out to catch Jay's attention with a touch to his elbow.

"Look." He nods in the direction of the houses - another few steps and they'll undoubtedly be in earshot of anyone who might be in them. "What do you think?"

Truth be told, he wants to sit with his back against something. He wants to lie down. He wants three hours where he isn't carrying anything. But he also doesn't want to die, and so he waits for a second opinion, and hopes Jay will think they should move closer-- hopes that Jay will let Neffa tell himself that consensus makes it a good idea.

Jay is just as exhausted as Neffa -- he has not gotten into any extra fights, but he's tired of walking, tired of carrying supplies, tired of dodging dokidokis. His feet hurt and he's nauseous. He leans on Neffa and mutters, "I think we should sleep, darling."

Five seconds later, he realises where Neffa meant him to look and, feeling sheepish, adds, "inside one of those houses. Yes. Ah."

He colours. He realises that it's exhaustion making him silly and inattentive, but he feels awful for the show of weakness.

Neffa pulls in his breath in a long, sharp hiss at the added weight of Jay, and his vision goes white at the edges for the second it takes to squirm out from under him. There's no knowing how many of his ribs Cuthbert and Karkat broke, not without peforming a more thorough examination than he has the spine for right now, but he never considered before this what a large part they seem to play in literally every movement - nothing short of full immobilization is going to ease this pain.

For that reason, he's grateful for Jay's moment of weakness. It's an excuse, a reason both to stop and to let the burden of weakness rest on both of them, not just him.

"We're in no condition to travel," he says, with a wan half-smile. "That's clear. But we're also in no condition to conquer any territory." He squints through the shade at the quiet houses; they look undisturbed, no pieces missing, but he's not stupid enough to assume that quiet means safety. "Can we be sure they're unoccupied?"

Jay eyes the houses with the weariness of a long-distance runner who took the long way around by accident. He says, as much to himself as to Neffa, "does it matter, darling? If someone there kills us, we'll get to rest in the Capitol. Come on."

He sets off towards the houses, at a brisker pace than he, strictly speaking, has energy reserves for. He's rather beyond caring about anything, right now. He's sure he'll look back at this in the morning with horror and amusement, but that will be then. Now he just wants rest.

"What-- no! Jay! Jay!" Neffa snatches at Jay's arm, but his ribs find that a terrible idea, and he recoils before he's gotten a proper purchase. He's too slow to stop him pulling ahead, too late to keep him from striding right up to the house, in full view of every damned window - he freezes, and waits for Jay to die.

A munute passes; no one appears out of the shadows. Neffa dares, after turning fearfully once completely around, to follow.

He catches up to Jay at the doorway - despite the pain, he knows he moved faster at the first sign that there might not be an assassin waiting inside for them. Stupid - like a horse with its head turned toward home - but it's hard to curse himself (or Jay) too stringently when they're not dead, and the house appears to be empty.

"Call a vote next time," is all he bothers to grumble. "I'd rather die unawares, if it's all the same to you." He glances past Jay into the little house. Empty (praise be to whatever god hadn't got bored and abandoned them). "We're lucky this time. That's all."

When Howard's asked about this later - and he will be asked about it later - he'll pretend that he's waiting out of mercy. He's letting them get some rest, hoping they fall asleep and die without ever knowing the fear of seeing it coming. He's being as kind as a killer can be, and they'll wake up healthy and comfortable in Capitol beds, or they won't wake up at all. They won't open their eyes to see the ceiling melt in on them, like hot oil tossed from the parapets of ancient castles.

The truth is, of course, that the reason Howard's waiting is because he's stalling. Because the hand that closes around his lighter is shaking so hard he can't take it out of his pocket without letting Diana see the trembles. Because his breath is sticky on the back of his teeth and tastes like bile, because thinking of it as castles and knights and ancient medieval scenarios that have no real-life bearing on him doesn't make it any easier to imagine what Neffa and Jay's boiled, scalded bodies will look like under the chocolate. Maybe the chocolate will harden. Maybe it'll burn.

Chocolate-dipped Tributes. They'll probably be sold in Lunchables.

So he gives them an hour, hoping to God they're stupid enough to both go to sleep at the same time, and then looks over to Diana. "You know, you could do this too."

He knows she won't take the burden. It doesn't mean he can't ask. Asking isn't the same as hoping, and Howard rarely allows himself to hope. Asking just communicates that if she declines, he'll feel like she owes him a favor, down the line. The economy of debt is one of the few systems that transfer well from FAYZ to Games, even if they're both cheats and con artists inside it.

Diana had been lost in thought about those two kids and the wounds they'd left under her clothing when Howards comments snapped her back to the moment.

She rolls her eyes and looks him over. "Look, right now you are the gayest looking pirate I've ever seen and it's really distracting, okay?"

She's trying not to think about the people down there. That she met one of them just a couple of days ago. Or that Howard knows the guy and yet he's already set on doing this. He's different from what he was like in the FAYZ. But just how different had become clear as they clung to life in this area like stubborn cats. Hissing and putting on a big front to anyone who tried it on.

"Yar, I think not, matey." She doesn't know if it's the anticipation of what they're about to do of or the constant stream of sugar going into her system each day or both but it's making her giddy and she's smirking. "I don't want half my arm burnt off like you."

A wink. "Get out there and show me your brilliant plan."

"Oh, shut up, Power Girl. You look like an amateur stripper." It's almost comfortable, the ugly bickering between them. It's the kind of things he'd say to some girl he didn't like between classes, or about one of the girls Orc liked if his big buddy was paying too much attention to the fairer sex. It's from a softer time, a time when the stakes were getting suspended from school or having the wifi cut out.

He runs his tongue over his teeth and the corner of his mouth, psyching himself up. Picturing Neffa as the man with the bat, not as the scared, hapless trader he met in Disneyland. Picturing Jay as just another face on his communicator and not a human being.

"You guard the front, in case anyone runs out. It's the least you can do."

The lighter is slick with sweat in his hands as he approaches. He pauses, listens for movement inside the house, and for a moment honestly hopes that Jay or Neffa will come out and the plan will be aborted. That someone can tilt the calculus that's already led to the conclusion that he has to do this, he has to do this to ensure he'll win and find Orc.

But nothing comes, so he dips the flame to the trail of powdered sugar and potassium chlorate. He jerks his hand back as the fire goes off like a sparkler, making popping sounds, and races around the ring of white powder surrounding the house. Flames start to creep over the ground, lighting the very floor on fire - it must be made of taffy or lollipops or something with oil in it - and build higher and higher. The house begins to melt and smoke.

Diana gives an exaggerated bow, honestly impressed with herself when she manages to keep her chest from popping out of its confines. "Aye, captain."

She watches him go, the pit of her stomach beginning to tighten uncomfortably as the weight of what they're doing presses down upon her outright denial, creating cracks that suddenly make her throat dry and her forearms weak. She occupies her fingers by running them up and down the length of the crossbow.

Then it's done. He's started it. No going back now.

The sweet, teasing smell of melted sugar doesn't take long to shift into an overpowered wave of burnt glucose. Diana coughs a little and covers her mouth with her palm as her eyes take in the flames. Watching the candy change the colours and trying not to think too much about the night she and the remaining Coates kids ran through an ablaze Perdido Beach.

Jay smells the smoke first and then feels the heat radiating off the floor and realises that the floor is melting, sticking to the soles of his boots. Bewildered, he looks around for the source of the heat. Maybe the sun has risen? Did the Gamemakers turn the temperature up? He stumbles to the window, the smell of burning sugar filling his nose and almost overwhelming all rational thought. The liquefying floor sucks at his boots.

He turns around to ask Neffa his opinion on all of this and comes eye to eye with the wall opposite, which is engulfed in flames. Unthinkingly, Jay backs to the window and lays his hand upon the windowsill for support, then jerks his hand back with a shriek of pain. White-hot syrup clings to his palm.

"Neffa," he says. "Neffa, darling, pass me the water."

It's an idiotic thing to say, but he can't think clearly, all he can think about is getting the syrup off his hand, before it burns worse than it has.

Edited 2013-07-27 17:13 (UTC)

Neffa is farther back in the little house than Jay is when the heat hits him, but it's the roar of the fire that gets his attention - not a noise he's ever been intimately familiar with, but unmistakeable, somehow. There is nothing else that sounds like a fire starting very quickly.

The immediate sense he has is of something wrong. Something out of order. That sound doesn't belong here. This is not a place that should burn. He turns on his heel, frowning-- and his foot sticks. Not in the familiar way of this place, either, but like it's sunk into the chocolate-taffy tile of the floor. And then he notices the heat. Oppressive, suddenly - not sun-heat, but something drier, something that eats up the air around him in great gulps and makes his lungs feel hard to fill, a heat that grows and swells around him - and the crackle of the starting fire suddenly makes a terrible kind of sense.

He's still trying to wrench his foot out of the melted taffy into which it's sunk when the first dollop of melted chocolate falls from the ceiling onto his forearm. He recoils from it, as though that will help - but it sticks-- so hot--! molten, it feels like, and he fails to shake it off. This is about when the terror begins.

He hauls at his feet with all his strength and manages a squelching step further toward the open door, but he sticks again, and the heat through the suddenly too-thin soles of his shoes is cruel. The sweat is already beginning to trickle down his forehead, and he brushes it away with his chocolate-burned hand and gasps with pain.

"Jay," he says hoarsely, over the growing crackle of the fire, deep and angry and everywhere. He extends a hand, like a man drowning. "Jay-- help me--"

Run is what he should have said. Get out. Save yourself. The kinder thing to say. The nobler thing. But there is nothing noble about the refrain beginning to sound in his head (and it is familiar, he knows it, he remembers it from the time before this, he remembers the knife in his neck) - the high, horrified shriek that is his whole being crying oh god, oh gods, I don't want to die--!

Howard remembers fire being loud. He remembers when he and Edilio and Orc and Jack and Dekka were going through the streets of Perdido evacuating, he remembers it being a pain in the ass, trying to yell over the sound of combustion. Now, he's never been more thankful for the white noise of heat in his life.

At least there's no screaming lancing through the roar and pop yet.

The smoke smears the doorway from view, protecting him from having to see if anyone's writhing around, burning yet. Part of the roof caves in, just drips like hot marshmallow. Howard's eyes burn and sting, and at first he thinks it's from the smoke, but when he reaches up to rub his eyes he realizes it's actual tears. He wipes them away with his sticky palm before Diana can see.

He knows what this means. This means that the Gamemakers have won, that they've defeated him in a battle for his soul that he was never really fighting, not with conviction, at least. Howard was never under any delusions that he was too strong to play their game. Maybe that makes it easier, now, that he can mourn the third person dying in those flames because the Howard before was not so far removed from the one standing there now in the glow of his crime.

Diana's had to turn away, she still can't face this, not yet. She's trying to breathe but she can taste it. She can taste the sugar and fire and sweeteners and smoke and death swirling in the back of her throat. She wants to be sick. Then she wants to run, far away.

She just wants to forget about it. But she never forgets. Not the things she wants too.

She catches Howard out of the corner of her eye. Standing. Watching.

It creeps her out. Makes her think of...

"Hey, lets go." Diana steps forward, not touching him but making the gesture to, deliberately looking at Howards face to avoid the eyecatching fire. He looks changed. She doesn't like it.

Jay hesitates for just a second, knowing he should run if he wants to live, but then runs to Neffa and grasps his hand and pulls with all his might. He can't leave him behind, not without at least trying to save him. He's not a barbarian, he's a civilised man, after all. And civilised men help other civilised men.

He can smell burning hair and he knows that's his dreadlocks. The heat is making him sweat and he's dimly aware that the hand that touched the windowsill is burned.

He pulls on Neffa's arm, trying to pull him out of the melting floor. He tries to take a step back, to get into a better stance and realises his feet are stuck to the floor, too. Trying to save Neffa doomed them both.

"Fuck," he says, helplessly, and begins to cry.

Neffa grasps Jay's arm with both hands, a drowning man's vicegrip-- but even strength born of panic can't get more than one foot free at a time. We look like fools, he thinks, the first of a crashing train of lost and giddy thoughts that sticks in his mind. Like they're dancing, maybe, the way they're clutching each other and wrenching their legs into the air-- a gawky, ugly dance. A gawky, ugly death.

There's a change in the roar of heat as the flames find the roof. Neffa registers it, and glances up (stupid!) just in time to catch a faceful of molten chocolate.

He doesn't hear the mangled shout that falls out of him as he drops to his knees, tearing his hands away from Jay to cover his face-- he'd shut his eyes just in time, but he can smell singed hair and singed clothes and-- is that singed skin, is that what that smells like, oh gods-- And now he's in the sticky muck up to his knees, and that burns-- that's where the smell of singed cloth is coming from, isn't it. His throat burns, and it's probably the smoke, but it might also be the hoarse wail that's taken over his breath-- he doesn't know.

He actually does have a thought for Jay at this point, the only thought that makes it through the cloud of it hurts-- did the roof get him, too? I should have told him to run.

Having been held down before with needless agony inflicted for no reason but cruelty, Howard knows exactly the gravity of the little voice in his head that finds standing here and waiting for someone to run out of the house to be equivalent to torture. His throat tightens up, and that makes it even harder to cough when the wafts of smoke that smell like candy and sugar and yes, undeniably like human hair, blow his way.

He walks upwind of it, as if that'll help. He can't face away because he needs to see if someone comes running out. The roof caves in, and it's tempting to just tell himself it's over, that Diana will take care of it, but his eyes stay fixed on the door.

He doesn't answer. It unsettles her even more.

"Howard..." She mutters, as if afraid to speak too loudly. As if anyone can hear them over the blaze. He probably can't even hear her. But she doesn't want to speak louder. She doesn't want to speak again at all.

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Flames Are Never Doused Completely [Closed]

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sorry guys!!

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