thearena | (no subject)

Just when the Capitol couldn't stomp on his childhood anymore, they send Donald fucking Duck after him. A Donald Duck by way of Guillermo Del Toro, but Donald nonetheless. The monstrous creature has a good foot and a half and maybe two hundred pounds on Howard, sharp, bear-like claws, and teeth that would look more at home on a dinosaur than a beak.

Thankfully for Howard, it's also hella bowlegged, which means Howard's managing to not get caught by it despite his nasty leg injury from Grey. He isn't able to completely outrun it, but it hasn't caught him yet.

On the other hand, it doesn't appear to be tiring, and Howard is. His pulse is pounding in his head, his breath feels like a serrated blade pulling through the inside of his throat, and his legs are shaking whenever he pauses to see if it's still following him. He stands no chance at making it back to Frontierland at this pace. He heads for the train track around Disneyland, hoping he can lock himself in a car long enough to keep the monster at bay and recuperate.

Donald moves after him with a quick, insane waddle that seems borne from nightmares alone. Howard trips and lands on his hands, shrieking in pain as weight goes onto his bad hand. He doesn't know what sort of damage impaling it did, but below the elbow his arm is alternately numb and in stabbing pain, and his fingertips are swollen, grey and purple. Howard rolls to his side, blinded by agony for the instant, hand curled up to his chest, before managing to rise to his feet again. His intake of breath smells like blood, and he realizes it's because some of the gashes in his face are bleeding again, probably from the exertion and raised blood pressure of running.

There. The train car, but - shit, he forgot the panoramas! He's running through fake dinosaurs, casting glances around to make sure they aren't alive too. It's this mistake that costs him, because he steps in a pool of water that the animatronic dinosaurs are gathered around only to realize it's not water but tar. Figures. Gamemakers.

He screams, but the more he struggles the more his feet and good hand seem to get stuck. He falls to his hip, squirming in the sticky goo, yelling for help, calling for Wyatt or Sigma or his mother or anyone to come rescue him.

Aunamee can recognize Howard's scream. He was so close to it once, after all, and it fills his dreams and fills his nightmares and fills the spaces between his thoughts. (Like all of their screams do, each one so precious.) He knows that the cameras can catch it in his eyes, the recognition, and that if he doesn't intervene they will know he chose the cowardly route instead of the one marked by justice. Honor.

And besides. He wants to save him.

(He always saves him.)

He takes his spear and approaches, clicking the wood against the ground as he goes in deliberate, distracting thud thud thuds. He kicks his legs through the overgrown brush.

Donald Duck lumbers out of the brush. Drool slides down his teeth. He makes a raspy, huffing sound as he approaches, with a trace of salival quack that would be comically reminiscent of the cartoon voice if it wasn't horrifying. He approaches Howard, but pauses at the sound of Aunamee's approach.

Howard cranes his neck as much as he can to see what stroke of fate is coming to determine this moment. It's difficult - he's on his side, up to his shoulder in tar. He stays still for a moment-

-and then starts to thrash again when he sees who his savior is.

"No, no, no! Not you, no! Not you! Anyone but you!" The rest of his words devolve into terrified hiccups.

It stings. The ungratefulness. In fact, he's surprised by how much it stings, how his temples harden and his pulse charges through his neck. Sweet, gentle Aunamee (the savior) is breaking down, and he needs to blink and breathe to regain his composure. Every breath pinches his chest.

"Me," he says, fighting the rage with his soft voice.

When he raises his spear, that pinches his chest, too, but this is a necessary action. He finds the muttation terrifying because it isn't human, because he can't hear it, because it looks like it was made to kill and Aunamee should be made to kill, but isn't. Not right now. His hands tremble, and so the blade trembles, too, but that doesn't keep him from stepping forward. Let Howard watch him die. Let the guilt tear him apart, let it kill him, let it show him how to be thankful in the face of his help.

He charges Donald Duck with his spear, feints to the left, then stabs to the right.

"No, no, no no no no..." But Howard can hear Aunamee's 'me' echoing, like the knell of the witching hour.

Donald doesn't expect to be attacked. He's used to Tributes running, but very few have ever turned and fought - certainly not injured ones like this, when there is other prey already trapped. He hesitates, and that moment's pause is just enough for the spear to go through the tender flesh just beneath his wishbone.

The squeal he gives is inhuman, spittle-filled, keening. His wing smacks Aunamee away, and Donald staggers and waddles a few yards backwards before collapsing. Guttural wheezes escape his beak. He seems to be deflating, almost, like a punctured balloon.

Howard, for his part, squeezes his eyes shut and continues to struggle an sink. The tar reaches the side of his face, getting in the cuts, getting in his mouth. He chokes and gags and struggles, popping something in his neck as he wrenches his head up.

It doesn't take much to knock Aunamee over. He collapses under the weight of the wing and catches himself on one knee, sharp pain ripping up his ankle and into his whole torso. He suppresses a scream between clenched teeth. He digs his fist into the harsh concrete. He gasps.

But there's no time.

It takes effort -- genuine effort -- to get his body to move again after a fall like that, to fight the shock to his broken bones and the weeks of malnutrition. Once he's up, he approaches Howard with a crouched, limping run and then slides down to his level.

He digs down into the tar, looking for Howard's hands.

Howard freezes. He's entirely still except for the way he shakes, all the way from the base of his spine down his arms and legs. And ironically, it's that he's so still in his terror that Aunamee's able to get him out of the tar; by not thrashing, he isn't digging himself in further.

Each frightened breath ripping in and out of his throat sounds like someone chipping at ice with a knife. Tears well up in his eyes but don't fall. He doesn't know what to make of this, but he yells in pain when Aunamee finds one of his hands, the injured one, the one that's so sensitive to touch now that even moving it sends waves of agony up Howard's nerves.

"Please, please don't hurt me, Aunamee, you said you were sorry, please don't hurt me..."

He doesn't care if he's pathetic. Surely his sponsors are dropping like flies now, disgusted at the mewling, quivering, prideless teenager that they bet money on. He just doesn't want what happened on the ice, what happens over and over and over again in his nightmares, to repeat itself here.

"Shhh," he says, and he redoubles his grip on Howard's hand because yes, he can feel the pain inside of it, all those little trembles of nervous energy and squirming muscles, and for a split second, it's almost like he's himself again. Perfect. Whole.

He digs his other hand under the tar and tries to grip Howard's shoulder. Pain flashes up his ribs and he grimaces, gasps. Something deep inside of him (something that he can't listen to right now) tells him to hurt Howard to make it up for it.

"I will not hurt you," he breathes, digging. Bracing himself. "I will never hurt you again."

And then he pulls.

Edited 2013-04-24 20:22 (UTC)

Howard doesn't scream when Aunamee squeezes his hand, but he does make a strange whining noise that sounds horribly out of place coming from a human mouth. The pain is blinding; little spots explode behind his eyes.

He wants to believe Aunamee not because he likes Aunamee, but because he needs to believe that pain is temporary. That the agony he's in now won't intensify. The tar makes a squelching sound as it comes away from Howard, ripping at his skin and the hairs on his body and his clothing. He closes his eyes and waits for whatever may come to just happen, already.

And then he's on the ground. One shoe has been lost to the tar. His front and Aunamee's arms are covered in brown, oily stains. His body is twitching and jerking without his consent, his injured neck and his horribly mutilated hand. He looks up at Aunamee with the petrified bafflement he's shown so many times in the past to his unlikely, unsavory hero.

"You're..." He notices the way Aunamee holds himself, the way he treats his ankle. "You're fucked up."

He means physically. Really.

Edited 2013-04-24 20:49 (UTC)

Alone in the arena (without a friend, without a savior), Aunamee had spent hours feeling his own ribs and pulling at the circles under his eyes. He traced his fingers along his snapped ankle. He felt the dry roof of his mouth with his swollen tongue.

"Yes," he says. His shoulders relax with that word, that quiet admission. He tells himself that he's lying to Howard. Showing his humanity. "But so are you."

He doesn't move from his place on the ground, doesn't come closer even though he wants to. He just watches Howard twitch and writhe and recover, his brow knotted, his eyes soft. There are stories behind those wounds, emotions and harsh words and white hot fear. Aunamee knows some of those stories. But not all of them.

"Someone tried to bite my face off," Howard whispers. "I'm allowed to be a little fucked up afterwards."

He dribbles a little spit on himself. It tastes like tar. It's slightly bloody, because the hole in his cheek is still oozing pus and other fluids intermittently. He finally stops writhing long enough to get himself up on his knees and one arm, but he's far too exhausted to run.

In the background, Donald gives a death rattle.

Howard's maimed hand continues to shake and twitch. He wonders what the nerve damage there would be like in the long term. He doubts he has a long term to worry about it.

"Why did you give me the medicine, earlier?" He can't help but ask it. Something about Aunamee pulls questions from him like poison being sucked from a wound.

When he closes his eyes, he thinks he can picture the series of events that led to all this. He thinks he can hear the screams, the shouts, the murmured threats. Torn flesh sounds like wet fabric, and legs kicking into the dirt sound like marching soldiers. Aunamee likes to believe that he's responsible in a way, that bringing Howard to Fantasyland was the necessary catalyst.

"Because you needed it," he says.

He shifts his weight from his bad ankle, wincing as it transfers the pain to his ribs. He lets his eyes flutter between Howard and the horizon. Vigilance is becoming a familiar concept to Aunamee. Never before had it mattered.

"And because the man who attacked you aims to destroy everything in my life."

Howard's voice keeps moving out of his throat like water from a faucet. He can't help it. Little purrs and mewls of agony. A string of spit drips down from his sliced lower lip and pools in between his hands as he looks at Aunamee, at the man standing like a house after a hurricane.

"Am I something in your life?"

The answer is going to chill him, he knows it. And yet he has to ask.

"I'm fond of you," he says. He offers a weak smile that soon fades. "That's enough."

But maybe fond isn't the right word. Maybe it's understating Howard's value. In this horrible world filled with faceless cameras and grinning maniacs, Aunamee is alone for the first time in his life. When he runs his hands down his broken bones, he thinks who cares? Who will mourn him if he dies? People cheer his name like a race horse, a prop, a distraction. His existence fills no one's thoughts. No one but Grey's.

And Howard's.

Howard's voice is sickly and uneven, a string of saliva, a splatter of an insect on a windshield. "I can't sleep because of you. I used to have nightmares because of other things and now I can't sleep because you're there with a knife!"

He doesn't know that he's feeding Aunamee's ego. He pulls away, slightly, tries to rise to his feet and sinks back down.

He fights the instinct to catch him as he falls. This inner turmoil manifests as a quick jerk forward and then a sudden stop, his hands tensing, relaxing. He moves them to the ground instead and runs his fingers through the small amount of grass that peaks out from between the concrete.

He could reiterate all of his old arguments. He could tell Howard that he thought he was helping him when he stuck that knife in his stomach. He could tell Howard that things are different now, better, and remind him of his promise to never hurt him again.

Instead he nods, his eyes downcast. Aunamee is magnificent at feigning guilt. Regret.

"I don't have any more medicine," he says, tentative, quiet. "But I could guide you to shelter."

Edited 2013-05-05 21:19 (UTC)

Howard can't help but cringe from Aunamee's touch. He withers from it. It eats at him and the tiny space that he takes up.

"I have shelter. I just need..." He doesn't know what he needs. He doesn't want to die the way he did last time, straggling to the end, taken in only to be turned on, and as such he doesn't want to follow Aunamee. "I need a minute. A minute without getting stabbed and without getting attacked and just..."

His voice chokes. He spits, runs his tongue through the slit down his face. "Protect me."

Protect me. Have more beautiful words ever been spoken?

He nods without smiling, even though his synapses are dancing and his heart is pounding. In this world, the bad deserve to suffer and the good deserve to suffer, but Aunamee deserves to protect the good. He's glad Howard knows which side he falls on.

"Yes," he says, long after the nod. He lets his eyes scan the surroundings because he knows if he focuses on Howard, they'd hold on him like magnets. So much of his life is fear these days. He wants to cherish the victories.

"I will protect you. Like you protected me, on the ice."

"I didn'..." But Howard doesn't finish that sentence. He doesn't know if Aunamee's misremembering or lying, but if it's the former he doesn't want to clear up the misconception.

He didn't protect him. He led him to safety. There's a difference, in that one involves a sort of sacrifice.

With what feels like superheroic effort, Howard gets to his feet. Gets his feet under him, wincing as pain jabs through the hole Grey stabbed through his thigh. A whine leaves his throat even as he tries to hold it back.

"And protecting mean no..." He makes another sound, "no stabbing. No killing me. And no more getting in my dreams, okay?"

"I swear on my life."

He lets his eyes travel upward now, up to the roofs of the buildings, the mangled trees, the sky that probably isn't even real. He looks for the cameras. His darling audience.

"Let all the witnesses know."

Howard takes a weak, small step backwards. Not as far as he wants, but then again, he wants to run and run and escape and never stop running and never come back.

But he can't do that. He's never been able to do that.

"So this is about the show for you."

Maximus wanders through the park like a lone wolf.

He's careful to avoid Fantasyland these days. He knows that is where Wesker lurks, and his pickaxe had proven to be too little to the challenge of his death. It bothers him, slightly, that the Monster is given power by the same place that Morrigan was. Wesker's slick blood still coats the pickaxe in his grip, his ear no longer bandaged but open to the air. At least it isn't festering, but it hasn't healed well, pink and puffy.

He considers going back to Thunder Mountain, to see whether Wyatt is still there. He's still considering it when he hears a noise and stops, immediately, pricking his good ear and standing completely still.

He could have sworn he heard another tribute.

He took a breath, gripping the pickaxe, and slowly scanned around him.

Aunamee stays close to Fantasyland. He remains outside the border, but just barely, just enough that he can retreat if necessary and inhale the godliness and immortality he knows he deserves. Every time he dips back into that wonderful, magical part of the park, something tells him to turn back. The Gamemakers are testing him. Teasing him.

He does not see Maximus. Here on the outskirts of Main Street, his mind does not cradle him or carry him towards safety. He searches for supplies in the boarded up shops, lifting rotten wood with trembling hands, nudging refrigerators open with his foot.

He feels raw. Exposed.

He bites his lip until it bleeds.

There. He can see him now, picking through debris. He considers his options - considers simply turning around before the other Tribute realises that he's there.

But he's had enough of this place. Enough of this game, where no one really dies, and he's tired and he wants it over. The thing that settles it, however, is the spear resting next to the man, still crusted with blood. Not an innocent, then. A gladiator.

Maximus steeled himself, and began the slow, deliberate walk towards him.

And then he hears it, that soft padding of feet. Those calculated steps.

He looks up.

"Maximus Meridius," he says, and the name leaves his lips like a vine. His tongue curls around the syllables. His mouth tugs into a smile. He shifts the spear's position, pulling it from the ground where it served as a crutch and up into the air for an entirely different kind of defense. But he doesn't move forward. He just watches, letting the fear rush down his shoulders and into his fingertips. Fear can feel so much like excitement, sometimes. Beautiful.

"I've been looking forward to meeting you."

This man who moves with an impossible grace. This man who strikes with an impossible strength. This man who killed Wesker.

Maximus blinked slowly, once, turning the pickaxe over in his grip to assure himself of its weight. The insult is ingrained and automatic. Even here, even now, where he had less right to three names that he had at home, where they had been stripped from him as a slave - even here, it hurt.

"Maximus. Decimus. Meridius." He corrected, each word clear and precise. He raised his chin, tightened his grip. "And I cannot claim to have done the same. Or indeed have any knowledge of who you might be."

His brow furrows. His lips slip into a faint frown.

"I'm sorry," he says easily enough, genuinely enough, and even though he doesn't let go of his spear, he loosens his grip just slightly. "I meant no offense. On the contrary, I admire you."

In a different tone, the words would sound mocking, harsh, but Aunamee's voice is a lullaby, smooth and soft. He never once lowers his gaze. His eyes tear into the other man even while his words act as a cushion.

"But I will fight back."

This, at least, was something Maximus understood. He bowed his head, just once, and settled the grip on his pickaxe.

There was honour, in death. There was honour, in a fight willingly taken. In a match well met.

The arena was full of death, of the dying, of the unwilling and the innocent. Maximus had no qualms about a fight between men willing to meet their death. And here, they must be.

He raised the pickaxe.

"Then fight."

It's inescapable, now, the shade of red all over his clothes, his skin. Hyperion doesn't bother to wash it off, either. Not the blood of the alien, not the blood of the madman, not the blood of those teenagers, not the blood of the little girl. They're all trophies on a figure that now stands tall and and murderous, appearance completely rigged by the violence he indulged in again and again. Hyperion could call this ordeal a prison, a parody, an insult to his entire existence, but the more he dwells into its rules, the more he finds himself enjoying it. Killing has come without consequence so far, save for the injuries committed against him in self-defense. Isn't that ideal? Isn't it grand?

He is hungry, he is exhausted, but he is strong, he is unstoppable. He is mad and sadistic, and the virus is relishing.

It reminds him of his brother. How he must have felt all those years, how he was viewed by Hyperion before the virus took a hold of his sanity. Killing Helios must have been the first step to shedding any guilt off his skin and bones. Taking a life is simply what drives him, now, as it is meant to be.

"Thank you, brother," He murmurs, teeth showing through his lips, smile tugging at the corner of his eyes. What a thought. What a gift. He understands, now.

Aunamee hears the murmur. Faintly. This far away, it reminds him more of a rolling ocean or a groaning mountain than any language. He cannot be safe in Fantasyland, not yet, and so he's tucked away in the darkness of the old Pirates of the Caribbean ride, perched behind a fake building that's so small, it makes him feel like a giant.

He doesn't recognize the voice, the cadence. Not yet. With his back against the plastic bricks, Aunamee keeps his eyes open and listens like an ever-ready soldier. A hunter.

(Not the prey. Never the prey.)

Edited 2013-04-20 18:53 (UTC)

Hyperion's little pause is accompanied by a look around, trying to see through corners, trying to make his cybernetic implants work, finding that he's too far from the right place to get what he wants. No matter. He carries two weapons, and both have served him well. The dried splatter of blood on one and the wiped shine on the other are proof.

He walks onwards, unconcerned with what lies ahead.

When Hyperion walks forward, Aunamee sees the spear. The knife.

The man.

Aunamee lived in this man's mind for several precious minutes, for the time it took him to annihilate what was left of the dear Doctor Grey. The inside of this man's head was both heaven and hell, precious and dangerous, and touching it reminded him of touching a flame. There was a deep and powerful madness in this man, a madness tempered by control, and its familiarity whispered gently into Aunamee's ears.

He stands up, emerging from his hiding place behind the mock building. It is not curiosity or strength that drives him, but pride, a feverish unwillingness to bow down to this other man. To fear.

He rests the spear against the house, then raises his palms as a show of peace. Hyperion is soaked in blood like he is soaked in blood. Darling.

Slow and heavy steps come to a gradual stop when the other man's presence is quietly announced, eyes looking back with mild surprise. It's a pleasant one, or so he thinks. He's found that re-encountering familiar strangers has often resulted in their demise by his hand. Perhaps this could be lucky number three.

"I remember you."

He doesn't remember all that blood, however. They've been busy.

He's not happy, but his mouth twitches upwards into a smile anyway.

"I know what kind of man you are."

There's something almost childish about those words, like a playground rhyme, a gentle tease. He leans forward against the house so that he can look a little closer, so that he can see this man's eyes through the shadows. He swallows a cringe. His ribs ache.

Edited 2013-04-25 11:09 (UTC)

Watching the familiar figure move, subtle hints of something unpleasant in them, he tilts his head, brows pinching with enough intrigue.

"Tell me."

Curiosity killed the cat. Hyperion doesn't seem to remember that one.

Tell him.

Murderer. Madman. The kind of person who looks out into a killing field and smiles not because the world is beautiful, but because he can make it ugly.

He lets his smile twist into a sneer as he taps his fingers on the roof, ratta-tata ratta-tata.

"I left you something. A gift in your eyes."

That's not an answer. Hyperion's head shifts slowly, watching him, stretching his neck in the process. Lines are starting to show on his features, lines of a man who has gone too long without rest and supplies. He doesn't seem to mind.

"A gift."

"A man," he clarifies easily. His shoulders are relaxing, little by little. His sneer is fading. The memory of that moment -- of Hyperion killing Grey because Aunamee directed it -- is so sweet and perfect that it leaves him breathless. In the hellish landscape of the arena, this is the thought that keeps him going.

"I don't think he introduced himself," he says, watching Hyperion with his razor sharp eyes. He purses his lips. (The memory is still there, still so sweet. Like a candycane.) "But his name was Grey, and he was a psychotic."

Like you.

"Grey."

All he remembers is thinking how pathetic he was when he fell, eyes staring up with nothing left in him except - what was it? Lunacy? What were humans when all they had left was a beating heart and hollow mind? Vessels made of flesh and bone, little more. Sometimes Hyperion dared to think the virus was a blessing. If he ever disappeared, truly disappeared, it would remain and keep him going. The man could be stopped, but not the machine.

"I killed him."

Was it a question? Aunamee was entirely free to interpret it as one. It was wrapped around a sense of satisfaction, like a child remembering a misdemeanor that no one had been around to witness.

"You killed him," he confirms, his syllables sweet and easy, his eyes still buzzing with the pleasure of the memory. "Yes."

The building around them creaks and sings and settles. It took Aunamee a long time to find a place where he could hide where the floorboards didn't squeak or give. Even now, he needs to support his weight on a dollop of hardened, melted plastic to keep the ground from moaning underneath him.

"I'm not much for killing, myself," he says. A practiced lie. "But I knew you would have fun with it."

There isn't much interest invested in this conversation. The man before Hyperion looks like someone who stands tall but would cower away the moment he found himself hopelessly trapped. Maybe he could try that right now, grab him by his hair, force him to kneel and beg for his life through his teeth. It's a nice image.

"How did you know?"

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howard

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