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[tadalyme]

(very late) day 5 of @gem-pearl-week 2024

so, yeah....

i might be a month late again. don't know how that happened, this fic was like 70% finished by the time the deadline hit. anyways

prompt: death/reincarnation

[tadalyme]

day 2 of @gem-pearl-week 2024

prompt: sail/soar

i am once again very late, but what can you do

this one was among the not-prewritten ones, so i low-key speedran it yesterday (do not repeat my mistakes, do not try this at home)

[tadalyme]

day 1 of @gem-pearl-week 2024

well, well, well, what is this? alex tadalyme crawled out of a writer's block and made some fics? unbelievable

the prompt was duality - i chose human/machine

[tadalyme]

i'm not even really in this fandom anymore, but i've been informed that founder's cut is finally out, so i bring you my two old niki-centric fics (one character study and one tma-au)

[tadalyme]

oh wow, what is this? a second shiny duo fic in two weeks??? that's wild...

guess that means you should check it out... *shameless self-promo pt.2*

[tadalyme]

hi, so i woke up from a few-month-long slumber and wrote a little something... maybe check it out... *shameless self-promo*

[tadalyme]

whumptober 2023, day 6

[CLICK] 

(knock on the door, door creaking)

[NIKI] 

(unsure) Hi. I’m looking for an archivist?

(head banging on the desk)

[ARCHIVIST]

Oh, hello there. Sorry. That would be me. Ranboo, the Head Archivist.

[NIKI]

Oh, right, nice to meet you. I’m Niki, Niki Nihachu. 

Sorry if it’s rude, but… Aren’t you a bit too…

[ARCHIVIST]

Young for a Head Archivist? (nervous chuckle) Uh, yes, I am. But there’s been an unfortunate accident with the previous one and we’re a bit short-staffed at the moment. I promise I’m qualified.

[NIKI]

Oh, alright then.

(awkward silence)

[ARCHIVIST]

Uh, did you want something? To make a statement?

[NIKI]

(hurriedly) Yes, yes. Sorry. Yes, that. A statement. I’ve been told that you deal with the spooky stuff.

[ARCHIVIST]

Okay. Cool, cool, that’s cool. You can sit down, if you want.

(scrape of a chair on the floor)

[ARCHIVIST] 

Okay. Oh, seems like it’s going already. Well, then. Statement of Niki Nihachu, regarding …

[NIKI]

Uhm. My experience working at the Showfall mall, I guess?

[ARCHIVIST]

Recorded direct from subject, 2nd of June, 2023. 

Statement begins.

[NIKI]

Well, firstly, I have to say that I’ve never really believed in the paranormal before… I felt like it was too silly, I guess? Too impossible. I was never superstitious. But then all these things kept happening and now I don’t even know what to think anymore. I’m fairly sure I’m not losing my marbles yet, but then… Then it means that something did happen. I don’t know. I’m not really sure what was real and what wasn’t.

I’ve been looking for a second job for the past few months, alright? I’m not from around here originally, as you might guess. We came here with my friend a couple of years ago and shared an apartment, but he decided to move to Utah a while back. I couldn’t find a roommate quickly enough, so I needed extra money.

I work in a bakery downtown in the mornings and afternoons and they pay quite good for a bakery, so I wanted to keep that job and find something part-time to do for the rest of the day. I asked around, but there was no one willing to let me off for the first half of the day. 

I was getting a bit desperate when I saw the ad near my house. It said that the Showfall Mall nearby was looking for retail workers for the late shift. My neighbour, a sweet elderly woman, said that I shouldn’t accept it, because there were some nasty rumours about weird happenings there, but I didn’t listen to her. Probably should’ve.

I called their number the same day and a lovely woman, who introduced herself as Rae, answered me. I won’t bore you with all the mundane details, I’m sure you know what it’s like to apply for a job, but we agreed to meet for an interview the next day. I went there, almost got lost on my way and then spent a couple of hours getting the training from Rae.

So, yeah, I became a shop assistant at the Warehouse, one of the stores in the mall. It sold clothes and accessories for young people, kind of like a rip-off version of Hot Topic, except with a smaller variety and even worse quality.

It was alright at first. I’ve worked in retail before and it’s the same everywhere, for the most part. Fold clothes, stock shelves, ring up purchases. I worked the closing shift, so there weren’t that many customers. Though, really, I don’t think it’s ever crowded there in general. No one comes to that mall. Of course, it felt a bit eerie there sometimes, what with the empty corridors and barely any employees, but what can you do about that? Rae said I could play my music through the speakers, so I did. It helped to pass the time somewhat. Everything was fine.

Only… Only, sometimes I saw some things out of the corner of my eye that weren’t supposed to be there. Sometimes I would see the bowls with little trinkets full of colourful candy instead. Sometimes white minimalistic walls erupted in garish ornaments. Sometimes Rae and her well-mannered friend Sykkuno looked very rat-like when they came to check up on me.

And I kept seeing this creepy carousel in the indoor playground, spinning around, playing old-timey music right in the middle of the children's area near the food court. But there couldn’t possibly be anything. There wasn’t even enough space for it, I checked. There are exactly three steps between the slide and the monkey bars. No carousel in the world could fit there.

There were these three guys that I usually spent my break with - Ethan from the video game store, and Vinny from the jewellery shop, and Austin from the fancy boutique on the second floor, so I asked them about it. They just looked at me like I was mental and asked if I was feeling alright. Austin said that his wife also saw things sometimes when she was too tired and suggested sleeping more. 

It was all a bit concerning, of course, but I hadn’t really started questioning everything until Charlie showed up. I had been working there for three weeks, I think, when he got hired. He was a nice guy, truly, cheerful and funny and very quick-witted, I gathered that immediately. But he kept appearing everywhere, seemingly being in several places at once, and that seriously worried me. I would go to the food court and Charlie would be there in his lime apron, smiling at the children and scooping ice-cream. I would pass a toy store and Charlie would be entertaining the customers there in a forest-green shirt. I would pop into the pharmacy near the entrance and Charlie, in a soft teal crewneck, would sell me my painkillers. And then I would go through the food court again and he would still be there.

I didn’t know what to think, but kept blaming it on exhaustion.

And then four days later it got even worse.

I clocked in like usual and stayed behind the register while there were no customers, reading up on some new cake recipes I wanted to try. Then, an hour or so into my shift, the lights started flickering. On and off. On and off. On and off. I honestly tried to ignore them, power outages are nothing new to me, but then they turned red. They weren’t supposed to - they couldn’t have possibly done so. I knew there were some red lamps in the tattoo parlor downstairs and a couple of ultraviolet ones in the flower shop, but there weren’t any coloured lights in our wing. Then the whole shop was plunged into darkness.

I thought maybe the fuse had blown, because the lights in the corridors were still working, so I decided to go find the electrical room. I wouldn’t have usually done so, but the mall was always so deserted that I doubted it even had an actual electrician. And I didn’t want to stay in the dark. So I went looking for it.

The problem is, I kept getting lost. I’m usually good with directions and I was sure that I learnt how to navigate the mall in my first week, but that day I just kept circling back to my store. I would turn to the left towards the food court and then right towards the always-empty vinyl store, but I never actually reached there. I would go around the corner and end up back where I started. I was confused, to say the least. Utterly baffled. I think I spent at least fifteen minutes like that, going in circles.

I was going to try again, but then I saw a glimpse of someone, barely a shadow, in the store near the fitting rooms, so I headed there instead. We’re not supposed to leave the shop unattended when there are customers. ‘Cause, you know, someone might try to steal merchandise. I went there and called out to the person, but they didn’t stop, like they didn’t hear me. I started walking faster and that was when I noticed the uniform. The thing is, all the stores in the mall had a very strict uniform policy, or, at least, that’s what Rae told me when she hired me. The Warehouse employees were required to wear blazers in this bright red colour, like arterial blood or ripe strawberries. The woman, and by that point I was quite sure it was a woman, must have been a worker from a different shift, I thought.

Then right in between the stalls she finally stopped, turned around and it was my own face staring back at me. She looked afraid and bewildered, the same as I was, and started looking around in panic. I looked around too and noticed that the reflections in the stalls looked weird. Wrong. There were dozens of me in each one, all afraid and bewildered and wearing an ironed red blazer. I turned my gaze back to the Other-me in front of me, but she wasn’t looking at me anymore. Her eyes were locked onto one of the fitting rooms and then a bullet flashed towards her from there. Blood spread over her white blouse in a horrid scarlet flower. The other me screamed, I saw her mouth open, but it was deathly silent. Well, I screamed as well. Another shot made her body flail for the last time and then all her movements ceased. I kept screaming, I think.

I closed my eyes for a second, scared out of my wits, sure that I would be the next. When I opened them, though, I was the only one in the room. There was no murderer in a stall, no dead body, no blood. There was me and my shaken, wide-eyed reflections in the mirrors. One per mirror.

I didn’t understand anything. I’ll admit it, I actually, truly started thinking myself insane for the first time at that point. 

I felt too unnerved to stay there any longer. I grabbed my bag from behind the counter and bolted. I didn’t want to be there a second more. I didn’t care about the paycheck, about the consequences of leaving your job like that, about anything else. I needed to go, be anywhere else but in that cursed mall.

Of course, it was stupid to believe that it was the end. If I thought that I’d been lost earlier, I was sorely mistaken. Then, though, I was actually completely lost. The corridors turned into a convoluted maze, twisting and turning at random points, leading to everywhere and nowhere. I didn’t recognise anything. There were no familiar stores anywhere, only long spiralling halls. I think I walked around for hours. In the end I just sat down and cried. Nothing felt real. I was so tired of being confused.

And then my phone rang. My neighbour got worried that it was after midnight and I wasn’t home yet, so she called. For some reason that helped. When I stood up after ending the call, the exit was right in front of me. I went home and spent the rest of the night crying to my friend on the phone. I didn’t tell him what happened, of course, but it helped.

I haven’t gone back to the mall ever since.

[ARCHIVIST]

When did you say it happened, again?

[NIKI]

Just last week, 26th of May or so. Sorry, do you mind?

[ARCHIVIST] 

What?

[NIKI] 

Could you not do the eye thing, please? It feels wrong.

[ARCHIVIST]

The eye thing?

[NIKI]

Yes, the eye thing. The one where they glow and I feel compelled to answer you.

[ARCHIVIST]

(bashfully) Oh, sorry. 

[NIKI]

Cool. (unsure) So, do you believe me?

[ARCHIVIST]

Uh, yeah. Sounds quite reasonable. Have you had any problems since then?

[NIKI]

I don’t think so? What sort of problems?

[ARCHIVIST]

Hallucinations, doors in the wrong places, fractals, spirals, stuff like that…

[NIKI]

Hm. Still no. 

[ARCHIVIST]

Well, that’s good. If they do show up, probably best not to get too close.

[NIKI]

Sure. Any other advice?

[ARCHIVIST]

No? No. That’s all. You left your info with Rosie, right?

[NIKI]

Yeah.

[ARCHIVIST]

We’ll let you know if there’s something.

[NIKI]

Well, thanks. At least for listening. And believing. Have a good day.

[CLICK]

[CLICK]

[ARCHIVIST]

Statement ends.

Well, isn’t this a lot. Miss Nihachu’s account further confirms our hypothesis that Showfall Mall and its parent company Showfall Media are embodiments of the Spiral and we have to keep looking in this direction.

I asked Sneeg to do some follow-up on the other people mentioned in the statement. We couldn’t find much information about this Ethan, other than what was previously mentioned in Frank Mortem’s statement about him being in his twenties and having no family. There is no legal trace of anyone called Vinny ever living in the area, so that seems to be some sort of a nickname, but we were unsuccessful at identifying him. There is, though, a missing person report concerning one Austin Show, aged 28, filed by his boyfriend in December of the past year. 

I sincerely hope that Miss Nihachu’s well-being at the current moment is a sign that she will be well after this encounter with the paranormal, but unfortunately it is highly unlikely. Es Mentiras is not the one to let its victims go so easily.

This clears up some things at least. We know what happened to Charlie now. It could have been me. No, that’s not right. It should have been me. I shouldn’t have sent him out to do the investigation of Frank Mortem’s statement on his own. Not when he’s still unaware of the existence of the Fears. We need to urgently come up with a plan and rescue him from the Spiral’s clutches before it’s too late.

The accident during this recording is quite concerning as well. Seems like the Eye’s influence on me continues to grow and I am at a loss about what to do about it. Hetch keeps being cryptic and extremely unhelpful.

Recording ends.

[CLICK]

[tadalyme]

whumptober 2023, day 4

Tommy is a big enough man to admit that the situation he finds himself in is far from ideal. In fact, he would give everything to be as far away from it as possible.

He made a rookie mistake, okay, but he thinks he’s paid enough for it by now. He wasn’t paying enough attention that day on his patrol, got distracted, and some fuckers got a drop on him and dozed him with something strong-smelling. Tommy tried to fight them off, attempted to fly away, or use his powers, or hit them with his fists, or just do something, but it was all for naught, his vision already going spotty at the edges. They were bigger and stronger and overpowered him easily, as aggrieved as he is to admit it. He blacked out soon after that.

So now he’s stuck here, in this ghastly and rank torture basement, tied up to a very uncomfortable chair, his wings sore from being bound for so long, his powers still not working because of that weirdass chemical, and the fuckers won’t leave him alone.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been here, his kidnappers haven’t bothered to tell him something insubstantial like that. Instead it’s all threats and intimidation and dumbass questions. Tommy absolutely fucking despises being tortured.

At first they’d used their fists and, if Tommy had to guess by the dull pain he feels all over, successfully beaten him black and blue, but when that didn’t bring the expected results, they whipped out the big guns. That being the goddamn cattle prods. Who even knows where they got the stuff.

Shock. Shock. Shock. All-consuming blazing agony. Shock. Shock. Shock.

He passed out after that. They came back again and again, ever so often, with their same ugly mugs and fucking cattle prods, asking the same questions, demanding the same answers, not taking no for an answer. Seems like no-one has ever taught them any manners. He kept blacking out and waking up only to black out again.

Tommy can posture and pretend as well as any other self-made vigilante, but he’s actually in quite a lot of pain right now. 

His whole body aches. He can see the electrical burns on his arms and legs even with his left eye swollen shut. They look horrid, red and inflamed as they are. They also hurt as hell.

He accidentally jostles his probably broken ribs and the room starts spinning once more in his eyes. Oh, fuck, there it goes again. He’s been blacking out an awful lot as of late.

And the worst thing about it all, Tommy thinks, when the spots disappear from his vision and he can properly think again, is that he doesn’t even fucking know the information they’re torturing him for. He hasn’t got the faintest idea. But, of course, the bastards can’t get a hint. Of course, they don’t believe him.

His kidnappers seem to be under the impression that the SBI, the infamous villain trio, favours him, that they trust him enough to tell him their identities, that they spill all their secret plans to him. What a fucking joke. As if they would ever do something like that. They don’t care about him.

As a matter of fact, he thinks and it seems almost funny to his pain-addled brain, they barely even tolerate him. Which, really, is already a miracle in and of itself. He’s annoying. He’s loud and brash and crude and doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut. He knows it, he’s been told so countless times before. By the staff at the orphanage, by his foster parents, by the superheros and his fellow vigilantes and even in a couple of memorable instances by the civilians he had just rescued.

Sure, Orpheus seems set on terrorising  and following him around every time they meet in the field, chattering about random stuff, but he’s just a weirdo like that. Sure, Zephyrus fluffs up and shakes out his enormous black wings at the sight of him, but the bird instincts are just weird like that sometimes. Tommy has to physically stop himself from shaking the wings in return, for example. And sure, recently Protesilaus has stopped hitting him quite as hard when Tommy insists on trying to stop him, mostly just scowling and not even cracking his ribs most of the time. But in reality they don’t fucking care about him.

So, no, he doesn’t know their real names. He doesn’t know where their hideouts are. He doesn’t really know anything about them, other than that they are really fucking terrifying when they want to be and mildly crazy the rest of the time.

Tommy is just so tired. So very tired. He just wants to rest, to not be in pain, for this whole mess to end.

He’s been drifting off for quite a while, lost in a haze of pain and half-lucidity, so when the screams come from somewhere far away, he doesn’t notice them at first. Then he doesn’t think they’re real. There weren’t any other kidnapees here, were there? Maybe he’s reached a point of no return and started hallucinating. That’s always a possibility.

Then there are loud steps and someone approaches the basement door. Well, this is concerning. It’s too early for the henchmen to come back, it couldn’t have been a few hours already, could it have?

“You in there, little dude?”

That’s … That’s a familiar voice, actually. That’s Orpheus. What a weird person to hallucinate. 

“I’m not little, you motherfucking bitch!” he shouts as loud as he can, which is, admittedly, not very loud at the moment. His throat is kind of fucked from the screaming. From when he was, you know, tortured just a tiny bit.

It’s quiet for a few very long moments.

Okay. Maybe it wasn’t his brightest idea to mouth off the first supposedly not malicious person he’s been in the presence of in the past couple of days, but he’s exhausted and hurt and it’s hard to have a decent brain-to-mouth filter in these conditions. Also it’s getting kind of hard to stay conscious again, but that’s a separate problem entirely.

Finally, there is a low chuckle behind the door and Tommy hears the sound of keys jingling. The lock clicks and the door opens.

Even in the dim shine of the sole lightbulb Tommy sees that it is, in fact, Orpheus in the doorway. Huh. 

His eyes latch onto Tommy’s figure and his masked face quickly switches between several expressions, settling on something vaguely resembling sympathy in the end. He mostly just looks constipated, Tommy thinks.

“Oh. You look like shit” 

“Your face looks like shit!” retorts Tommy, because he lives to be contrary.

“Yes, yes, whatever.” 

The screams recommence in the background. Tommy flinches.

“It’s okay, it’s just Protesilaus,” the man in front of him reassures him.

Just Protesilaus. Only the scariest motherfucking villain of all times. Cool. Cool. Perfectly cool. Everything is totally cool. Definitely not horrifying at all.

The bastard comes closer and starts cutting the ropes with the knife he pulled out with his deft fingers  from who-knows-where. He actually sounds concerned.

“Can you even stand?”

“Of course I can!” proclaims Tommy confidently.

He can’t.

His legs fail him, numb from the hours on a hard wooden chair. And, you know, all the torment.

Embarrassingly, he falls. He’s preparing to hit the floor when Orpheus’s hands catch him by the underarms. The bitch is surprisingly strong, holding Tommy up with virtually no effort. And isn't that annoying, considering that Tommy is having trouble holding himself up at the moment.

“Well, princess carry it is, then,” says the asshole, smug for some reason, and then Tommy is up in the air. It’s quite comfortable actually, until Orpheus jolts his aching ribs as they go through the door and his body erupts in pain.

“Shit, shit, sorry.”

Despite that mishap, Tommy feels himself relaxing and even starting to nod off, held securely in Orpheus’s arms. He’s still not fully convinced that this isn’t some elaborate hallucination or a fever dream, but at least he can sleep now. Whatever, who cares.

[tadalyme]

whumptober 2023, day 3

September 15th, 1998

… Number Four insists on continuing  to act difficult. He is a nuisance during the training and commits himself to being disobedient and contrary. The boy has zero understanding of his potential and is unwilling to put any effort towards improvement of himself, he is fearful of the dead and of his own power. Therefore I have come to a decision to change my approach to Number Four’s individual training. Maybe a more hands-on training, so to say, will finally stimulate him to act deserving of his place at the Academy. …

Klaus starts doing drugs young, way too fucking young.

Klaus is twelve when he swipes one of Father’s expensive liquor bottles, gets drunk for the first time and finds out that it helps keep spirits at bay, at least temporarily. He’s thirteen when he starts raiding Mom’s medicine chest and stealing little bottles of painkillers.

Klaus is fourteen when he lifts one of the valuable artefacts scattered around the mansion, sneaks out at night and spends hours loitering around some of the less respectable neighbourhoods in search of drug-dealers. It’s not the first time he snuck out, of course, but he has never tried to do something so explicitly illegal during this time before.

He has to quickly slink away a few times when it starts looking too dangerous for his liking. He’s trained but not that trained and his powers are useless in close combat.

It’s almost morning when he finally finds some guy, college-aged or so, who looks extremely shifty and extremely unreliable. Exactly what he’s been looking for. 

The guy looks at him for a long time and offers him exactly two tabs of acid for a hundred bucks. It’s almost as much as he’s managed to get at a pawnshop. He still agrees.  

The thought that he might be getting ripped off goes through his mind for a moment, but in the end is overpowered by happiness that someone is willing to sell him drugs despite looking barely a teenager.

Klaus is fourteen and constantly followed by the ghosts. They never shut up, never leave him alone, never give him even a moment of respite. He’s tired, so goddamn tired and all he wants in his miserable life is to enjoy peace and quiet for a change. It’s always been bad but has only gotten progressively worse ever since that first night in the tomb.

Klaus is still eight and utterly frightened of the ghosts that follow him around when Father orders him to stay back after dinner and follow him to his office. He hasn’t been doing too good in his training, so he’s a bit worried but obediently follows the orders.

It’s rather distressing to be led to an ancient mausoleum in an abandoned graveyard late in the evening. It’s even more distressing to be locked in it.

“You have to conquer your ridiculous fear, Number Four. You cannot possibly hope to achieve anything while you are held back by it,” Father says as they approach the tomb.

It all happens so quickly after that, Father’s heavy hand on his shoulder pushing him forcefully forward and then heavy doors click shut. He’s left standing there with no way out, his only source of light the moonlight shining through the little window. Alone in the dark.

And there’s something even worse - the spirits. There are a lot of them, more than he’s ever seen in one place and they notice him quickly. They immediately burst into horrible ear-shattering screams and try to reach out to him with their rotting gnarled fingers. They circle him, surround from all sides and he can’t even move anywhere without accidentally stumbling into one of them. 

He knows they’re incorporeal, knows it, but his heart is pounding in his ribcage and he feels his arms and legs shake in utter terror.

He scrambles to the doors, banging his fists on it with all his might.

“Let me out! Let me out, please! Please, please, please!”

Nobody answers him. The spirits keep howling.

He sinks to the ground and sits there on the step, shaking, rocking back and forth, trying to cover his ears. It doesn’t drown out the ghosts’ shrieks.

“Make it stop, make it stop, make it stop!” he cries, but, of course, it doesn’t. Nobody comes to open the locked door, nobody comes to rescue him from the ghosts, nobody helps. 

Nobody but Father knows where he even is, and Father isn’t planning on saving him from the nightmares come true.

He sits there, shaking like a leaf, scared half to death, for hours on end. He cries and screams his voice raw and draws blood from how hard he’s clutching at himself. The spirits don’t stop, the spirits don’t care. The spirits with their bloodied clothes and rotting faces and malicious intentions keep trying to grab him with their dead hands. Trying to take him with them to the other side.

The only one of them who doesn’t seem to be set on terrorising him is the young Victorian woman in the farthest corner. She is wailing non-stop, though, so it’s almost worse. Almost.

He just has to hold on, hold on, hold on, he repeats to himself. It will end soon, Father will let him out, he has to believe it. He just has to bear it a bit longer. It sounds less and less believable the longer he remains here, though.

Klaus is eight and wonders whether he’ll be able to survive this night.

(Klaus is twenty-nine and freshly out of rehab when he returns to the godforsaken mansion for Father’s funeral and promptly steals the diary and, more importantly, the valuable encrusted box it’s kept in, pawning it off for some quick money. The wretched journal goes into a dumpster without a second thought. He’s always so high these days that the only ghost that manages to keep bothering him is his own goddamn dead brother.)

[tadalyme]

whumptober, day 2

There are many things Finnick Odair is good at. He's good at swimming, good at fighting, good at making knots. Good at baking decently tasty bread. He's also very good at pretending.

It's a skill he's honed throughout his whole life, ever since he was a little child. Pretending that he likes his mother's vegetable casserole. Pretending that he's completely fine when his father leads him to Mags’s house, his hand held in a forceful, painful grip, and proclaims in his booming voice that it would be the greatest honour for his son to train for the Games, right, boy? Pretending that he isn't scared to die and to kill.

Pretending that all the things that are done to his body on a regular basis aren't happening to him.

It’s somewhere past three at night and Finnick is sore and extremely dizzy and in the backseat of a car, coming back from his client. He’s in a car, because despite being just a District whore, he's an expensive one. President Snow doesn’t want anyone else to harm his investments. At least, not anyone not paying.

He’s just glad that it was the only appointment for today, because the guy, a flamboyant man in his thirties, a grandson or a nephew or a step-son of one of the influential Gamemakers, wanted to spice things up a bit in his sex life and made him swallow some colourful tablets before the act itself.

Well, it certainly spiced things up for Finnick, though probably not in a way the man intended to. He spent the whole time hearing the colours, and tasting the sounds, and seeing the images from his past and present all mixed up together.

The man was pounding into him and moaning and exclaiming something animated and probably over-the-top sexual in his shrill voice, but all Finnick could think about were the glistening in the sun tridents and spears and knives, and faces of the dead children, and his late father and ill mother and disappointed sister, and, for some reason, the Capitol's latest obnoxious vogue of inserting precious gemstones into their skin.

He desperately wanted to cry, so he laughed frantically, and he wanted to push the man away from him, too overstimulated, so he willed his muscles to relax.

The lights of the never-sleeping party area of Capitol fly by dizzyingly behind the window and Finnick has to lean onto it in an attempt not to puke. It's got a bit better in the past half hour, but the thoughts are still floating around his brain like dozens of little brightly-coloured butterflies. It’s hard to properly grasp any of them in a sticky daze of disorientation, though.

The car stops near the entrance to the Tribute Centre and he staggers out, swaying on his feet and almost ending up on the pavement. His limbs finally rearrange themselves in the correct order after a few moments and he musters a lazy salute with only some of his usual flourish to the back of the driving away car.

Still performing, even now. Gods, what a mess.

He doesn't know how exactly he reaches the elevator, but he does and the numbers swirl a bit in his eyes before settling down properly on the buttons.

He remembers well the first time he was here.

The thing is, he wasn’t even supposed to participate in the Hunger Games that year. That questionable honour was supposed to go to Jacob Maren, not yet eighteen, but the oldest among the trainees.

Instead, Dorothea, their escort, gracefully put her powdered hand with baby-blue nails, that matched her enormous wig, and pulled out his, Finnick's, name. There was a bit of a standstill after that - Jacob locking eyes with him across their separate pens. Should he volunteer, should he not. Finnick was too young yet but still a Career. In the end, Jacob stayed silent.

Just as well, thought Finnick, pushing through the crowds to the stage and already putting on a brilliant wide smile, I've trained for this, I can win, it'll be easy.

He knows now what his dumb, arrogant younger self didn’t understand back then - that even if you manage to become a victor, the only one who ever wins the Games is the Capitol.

Jacob did go the following year and died to a back-stabbing One girl. And Finnick has spent three years cursing that day and all that led to it.

Gods above, it has only been three years, hasn’t it? It feels much longer than that, so far away, so long ago. Almost like ancient history.

He did kind of make history with that one, didn’t he? The youngest Victor ever. A fat lot of good that did for him.

Fourth floor. He practically falls out of the elevator, only managing to catch onto the wall at the last moment.

Mags, curled up on the couch, perks up at the sound of sliding doors. In the dim lighting of the lounge her silver hair looks like a halo above her head. Ironic.

It makes him burst out in a fit of hysterical high-pitched laughter. One would have to completely lose their marbles to call the woman an angel. An angel of death, at best. Some forget it, but she also killed in her Games, the same as all of them. And she's led enough kids to their deaths in the following years. He loves Mags with his whole heart, but she's no saint.

Mags always waits for him on appointment nights. He wishes she didn't see him like this, wishes no-one saw him like this and often snaps at her, but she only tuts in disapproval and keeps doing it. Despite his temper tantrums, he's glad she does.

Mags looks him over and frowns and he's sent down the rabbit hole of memories again.

They approach him the next day after he turns sixteen. The two of them look grim and apologetic and he doesn't know what to make of it.

‘I’m sorry, Finnick, I’m so sorry about what's probably going to happen,’ Mags says and lets out a sigh, sorrowful and tired and world-weary, and he, in a rare moment, is reminded of how old Mags really is, ‘Just… Remember that you can always talk to me, no matter what.' She inclines her head a bit, gesturing at her companion, ‘Or to Delia, if you need someone who truly gets it.'

Delia, who is wringing her hands half a step behind Mags, and looks like she’d rather be anywhere else, glances at him and gives him a bleak, perfunctory nod. He doesn’t know why he would need to or want to talk to her, but anyway it’s quite unlikely that he will take her up on this offer.

Finnick knows Delia, of course he does. Delia, a constantly nervous, twitchy Victor in her forties, teaches knife-throwing, and knife-stabbing, and other knife-related skills to the trainees and has never seemed to be a particular fan of long conversations. She's communicated with them mostly with sharp nods and half-aborted, jittery gestures, always looking on edge and shaky.

Her hands have never ever shaken with a blade in them, though.

Then, he gets the summons to the annual post-Victory tour party and President Snow asks to speak with him in his office after. He's told in detail what he's expected to do, now that he's finally sixteen, and what will happen if he doesn't.

Oh.

Oh.

That's what that meant.

His first appointment with a client is the next day and it's the beginning of the end.

His sister screams at him a few months later, when he returns from one of his trips to the Capitol, ‘They don’t care about you, you stupid boy! Why won’t you understand that! Why the Hell do you keep going there?’

But it’s her who doesn’t understand, who could never understand. He can’t tell Carolyn, he can’t, not just because he doesn’t want her to know what he does, but because he’s not allowed to.

President Snow was quite straightforward about what would happen to his ill mother and his sister with her husband and their baby twins, if he were to tell anyone, even them, anything. So he keeps quiet and let them think the worst of him. The same thing that everyone else does.

(Other than his fellow victors, who are all aware of the work he and the ones like him are made to do, the only person who doesn’t look at him with badly concealed disgust, or jealousy, or fake friendliness, or lust in Four is Annie Cresta. Her eyes (also sea-green, though a few tones lighter than his own) only ever look at him with sympathy and pity these days. He would have absolutely hated being looked at like that not long ago, but now it’s just so goddamn refreshing. He used to find her annoying with her righteousness and softness when they trained to be careers together, thought her weak and kind of cowardly, but maybe there is actually nothing wrong with gentleness and timidity, he ponders.

Of course, it’s hopeless, getting used to even such a small thing. Annie Cresta is a Career. She will go into the Games soon. In a couple of years she will likely be dead.)

Mags approaches him slowly, telegraphing all her movements clearly, trying not to spook him. He must look bad, because she checks his temperature with a hand on his forehead. From her pursed lips and scrunched eyebrows he gathers that it’s not very good.

'What, doctor, am i dying yet?' he ironizes.

'Well, you certainly don't look too lively, boy,' she snaps back,'Sit down, I'll be right back.'

She lets him settle on the couch and leaves to fetch her first-aid kit. They’re not allowed to bring any pills to the Tribute centre, so as to not let tributes get anywhere near them, but she has some other basic supplies. Luckily, today they are no flesh wounds to patch up.

She comes back with a thermometer in her hand. And that’s what sends him over the edge and into hysterical tears, the goddamn thermometer. It’s an old-fashioned but trusty mercury thermometer, very common back in Four, but considered obsolete by Capitol standards.

Finnick, having been many times in the local medical over the past year and a half to get patched up after rough encounters with clients, is intimately familiar by now with Capitol’s high-tech, reliably produced in Three.

She waits a bit before his sobs and shaking subside, finally takes his temperature and asks,'You're burning up. What on earth happened to you?'

'He gave me something, I don't know what,' Finnick replies reluctantly and watches her face twist and her arms cross on her chest. She's staring at him pointedly.

'Do we really have to?' he groans,'I'm almost fine by now. You're only wobbling a bit in my eyes.'

'Come on, up you go,' she pulls him up, surprisingly strong for a seventy-year-old, and leads him to his room, to the bathroom. She walks out again and returns with a glass and a closed water bottle.

She fills the glass with tap water and makes him drink it again and again and then throw up, repeating and repeating it until there's nothing left in his stomach at all.

Then she hands him the water bottle, lightly shoves him in the direction of the needlessly overcomplicated shower and exits.

When he finally emerges into his room he's almost feeling like himself again. Mags is still there, leaning on the frame of his bed. He finds some clothes to sleep in and drops next to her. She hums softly and smooths his hair out, running her fingers through his wet curly locks.

She's been much gentler with him since his Games, but she's taken a fancy to him a long time ago.

He was a bit of a troublemaker as a child, like little boys so often are, always sneaking away to the creek to play on the wet rocky shores, or trying to catch fry with his bare hands, or diving from the pier to see how long he could hold his breath, generally making his mother exasperated. He showed up at home in the late afternoon tired but joyful after a day of exploring with a wide toothless grin, seaweed in his hair and damp dirty patches on his knees.

His father didn’t like that much. So at a ripe old age of seven he’s dumped on Mags’s doorstep, who looks at his father weirdly over Finnick’s head and then takes a look at him, slowly lowers down to his eye-level and grasps his tiny hand with her veiny, old-woman one.

‘Well, well, well, what are we going to do with you, little one?’

She's never been cruel to any of the trainees, definitely not, but she wasn't particularly warm-hearted either. She was kind, but also stern and strict, like a proper trainer. He knows that it's because, despite all the preparations, most of them would die in their Games. She didn't really believe that he would win his Games either.

But he survived and she became more willing to show her affection for him after that. And to him, she, the person who practically raised him, instead of his distant mother and constantly angry father, has always felt the most like a real family, even when she acted all grumpy.

He drifts to sleep, relaxing under the silent watch of the only person in the world he fully trusts.

[tadalyme]

whumptober 2023, day 1

The weather in Ketterdam is abnormally good that night, the dark sky without a trace of clouds and the wind barely a breeze, which only makes it more unfortunate and unfair that Inej feels seriously worse for wear on that particular day. 

Among the other countless things she dislikes about this wretched city, this godforsaken country, the awful wet climate is one of the few more harmless but more annoying aspects. Even after all the time she has spent here, she is still not quite used to it.

Ravka is vast and downright freezing in some areas, but summers are usually sunny and hot, borderline scorching, and in the colder months her family’s caravan tended to move onto the more southern routes, where it was at least pleasantly cool, if not always warm. It’s harder to perform well when you are chilled to the bone. There’s no better gold than the sun, her Aunt Mariyam used to say.

Kerch doesn’t have such a thing as seasons - everything is the same all year round. Heavy rains always pour, forceful winds always blow, life goes on. Imagining Kerch without dampness is almost like imagining the Barrel without crime or Kaz without his gloves - for all intents and purposes, impossible. 

By now Inej is used to the slippery slopes of Ketterdam’s roofs and wet and unstable surfaces she has to climb daily, but her body seems to have missed the notice that it shouldn’t pay any attention to the toll this ghastly climate takes on her.

Which is why she’s perched on the roof of one of the canvas storehouses and her head is pounding. She’s sneaking around the Warehouse District today, checking the rumours she’s heard lately about the Razorgulls having some new dealings here, and for now it seems like they were completely right. A few of them have been loitering around here for a while, appearing with the cargo shortly after the stadwatch passed this particular nook on their patrol and hiding it away in some of the warehouses beforehand.

Her head still hurts. It’s getting a bit hard to properly concentrate and listen, rough syllables of Kerch mixing up in her brain, but she manages to follow the flow of the conversation anyway. New shippings. Jurda. Ammunition. Another delivery. Next month.

It’s been less than a year since she joined the Dregs, but she’s good at what she does, despite how much it bothers her. The Wraith is already somewhat renowned around the less savoury parts of the city. She’s the best spider in the Barrel, probably in the whole Kerch. She can’t let herself be taken out by such a simple thing as a cold. Kaz would be very unhappy. 

Razorgulls finally wrap up and disperse, heading towards West or East Staves to gambling dens and pleasure houses, and Inej doesn’t bother following them. None of them are too high-ranking and most likely she’s already learnt all she could tonight. Inej gives herself a moment to regain her composure and swiftly rises.

She thinks she might have made a serious lapse in her judgement when her vision abruptly starts blurring at the edges and her legs feel much weaker than they did just moments ago. Oh no, she thinks in the seconds before her body succumbs to the sudden fatigue and she collapses.

That is to say, Inej falls. Considering that until a moment ago she has been successfully balancing on the edge of the roof, she falls quite a bit.

She falls and there’s no safety net to catch her. Inej Ghafa hasn’t used one since she was a little child and first stepped on the wire, but it would really be rather useful now, she thinks. She, at least, has enough awareness to curl up the way her father taught her to do when falling.

She comes round lying on a hard pavement. Well, now her head hurts even more. Saints. At least she’s lucky that the Warehouse District is fairly tame at night and no-one seems to be around any longer. Or she would’ve found herself in a much worse situation. She lies there a bit longer, slowly unbending her limbs.

Okay. The trick to falling is in getting back up, her father used to repeat. Ghafas don’t give up. Inej gets up. She sways a bit and has to hold onto the wall for stability but it doesn’t seem like she’s going to pass out again. 

Alright. It’s fine, everything is fine. First order of business - report back to Kaz all that she’s found out. Then she can deal with everything else. One step at a time. Everything is fine.

Step by step, she starts off towards the Slat. She keeps to the shadows but mostly stays on the ground in an attempt to not worsen the damage. Surprisingly, it goes fairly well. As hurt as she is, she hasn’t lost the ability to be sneaky and silent. She gets to the Dregs’ quarters with only a couple of neatly avoided close calls.

Her second mistake of the night is thinking that if she’s managed to get to the Slat safely, she can climb up to Kaz’s office as per usual. She feels the strength leave her as she painstakingly reaches the right window.

She pushes herself the last half-metre with sheer willpower and clambers onto the windowsill gracelessly, virtually flopping down on it. She sees Kaz’s dark-haired head swing in her direction and then she doesn’t see anything, because for the second time in a night Inej faints.

She comes to and there are strikingly pale hands hovering practically in her face. She’s lying on something hard once again. At least it doesn’t seem like she’s fallen off of a building this time, thank the Saints.

The pale fingers snap thrice to attract her attention and then rearrange slightly. She hears a familiar raspy voice.

‘Focus, Wraith, focus. Come on. How many fingers am I holding up?’

There’s something wrong with what she’s seeing, definitely something wrong, but thoughts slip away from her like fog and she can’t, can’t, can’t quite grasp what exactly is amiss. Kaz would be very disappointed with such carelessness. 

Right. Kaz. She should probably answer him.

She really tries to do that. She doesn’t quite manage. She’s so tired and hurt and…

The next time Inej wakes up she’s in her room, in her bed. She doesn’t particularly like the fact that someone has moved her while she’s been unconscious, but it’s probably better than lying on Kaz’s floor.

Right. Kaz. Who is standing next to her cot, leaning onto the wall, for some reason looking a bit windswept, almost frazzled. His eyes are locked on her, but he’s messing with his gloves thoughtlessly. His gloves. There was something weird about his gloves, wasn’t there? No matter, no use wondering about it now.

Instead Inej focuses on the only other person in the room. It’s Karina, a quiet girl a few years her senior, who acts as the Dregs’ medic sometimes. From what Inej knows about her, she’s an orphan, Ravkan, always keeps her thick brown hair short and boyish and knows her way around healing salves. Karina smiles at her tightly and proffers a cup of something herbal and bitter-smelling.

Kaz nods to her rigidly and strides hurriedly out of the room.

Inej is back on her feet in a week. She’s always got over illnesses fast and Karina’s concoctions do wonders for her health. 

She ends up having a sprained wrist, an impressive collection of massive blue-black bruises scattered all over her legs and a mild concussion from her fall. She ponders a bit about the weird image of Kaz fretting over her that she thought she saw at some point after she had blacked out in his office, but he acts like it never happened and, anyway, it doesn’t make much sense. It can’t possibly be right, so she quickly discards this nonsense as a dream induced by the fever and a head wound. Yes, that must be it.