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Atsushi never thought that pigs were vicious. At least, not until after he had run from a stream of them on foot, as their mouths frothed and teeth gnashed together as he ran for his life from them side by side with...his 'enemy'.
Atsushi raises his gaze up toward the other man in the canopy with him.
What was Akutagawa Ryuunosuke to him?
A career. His mind says, bringing up the words from their very first meeting, and even though the words are correct, they no longer apply, do they? The wind starts picking up, engineered as the Gamemakers no doubt engineered, but they didn’t engineer Atsushi’s response: Reaching out across the tree branch toward the other, holding on to Akutagawa’s arm. They didn’t engineer Akutagawa’s response either: leaning further into Atsushi, gathering in his body heat.
Atsushi would say that this was all just to keep them both heated, to shove down the heat rising onto his cheeks, but that would be making a mockery of yesterday, when he kissed Akutagawa, marring them both with the taste of blood and the thrill of a fresh kill.
Atsushi refuses to think of the body that they had left on the cold, earthen ground as they ran, blood seeping from the wound in their head that Atsushi had made with a block of cedar that he held with shaking hands and brought down again and again and again—
Akutagawa’s hand presses gently against his cheek and Atsushi leans into his touch, their bodies curved around each other, and he wonders if he would have fallen so deeply if he wasn’t constantly running on enough adrenaline to kill one of the elephants that he had read about in books.
Maybe he wouldn’t have.
Maybe the man whose hand on his cheek, slowly rubbing calming circle into the tanned skin might not ensnared him so deeply that Atsushi puts his hand on his waist and pulls his enemy even closer.
Ha.
Maybe he is losing it.
Don’t tell me that you are losing it at this point, Atsushi-kun! A voice chirps in his head, and Atsushi can envision the small room behind one of the Capitol’s testing facilities so strongly that he is sent right back there, with a man with eyes full of copper and promises.
Tell Akutagawa-kun that you two are on the same side! Last until the end together.
Until you get to talk to him—Dazai had grabbed a polearm out of thin air, whipping it around their body so quickly that Atsushi only heard it whistle through the air before it was back in its original position. Then Atsushi had all the air blown out of his chest as it was stabbed into his chest—we need to make sure that you can at least hold your own.
Put up your fists.
Atsushi refuses to look at his hands.
He had killed two people during these games. He beat one of them to death.
“Don’t think about it.” Akutagawa murmurs, taking Atsushi’s face in his hand and forcing Atsushi to look at him, and within those dark eyes is a mirror that Atsushi can’t bare to face to he turns away. Akutagawa doesn’t stop him, only turns his eyes to the now-no-longer-pig-infested ground and says, “It will only drown you.”
I wish. Atsushi thinks, and then he takes the thought back immediately, because they have come so far together, they won’t fail now.
He won’t let them. Akutagawa won’t let him.
The first cannon goes off.
Then the second.
And then the third and the fourth and the fifth and the sixth, and he and Akutagawa are both staring up at the sky with wide eyes, because it is only three days into the Hunger Games, and there are six people dead.
The first day killed seven people.
The second day six.
The third day six more.
Akutagawa starts counting on his fingers, and the look in his eyes is vicious, but Atsushi can’t blame him for that, surely.
Not when his own smile is vicious as well.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven
Akutagawa starts again.
eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen
Akutagawa starts again.
fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen.
Atsushi lets out a whoop and it is exhilarated.
Nineteen people dead.
Three left.
You and Akutagawa are allies.
The polearm came down on his shoulder and cracked it, sending him to the floor so Atsushi couldn’t see the look in Dazai’s face as he said,
“You two survive.”
The smile on Atsushi’s face nearly splits his face in half and he starts cackling, and Akutagawa starts cackling with him, and it is music.
He dreams of home, in his dreams.
Not that he’ll able to go back home, really.
But it’s better than being a corpse, that’s for sure.
“Lucy!” Atsushi waves to his fellow District Seven contestant, and Lucy visibly grows calmer, only raising her shoulders when she sees that the hatchet in Atsushi’s hands is bloody, but when Atsushi comes out of the forest, she can see the the blood is only on his lower half, not high enough for the blood splatter of a human.
(He did get blood that high, he just switched clothes with Akutagawa. He wonders if she notices that the clothes don’t really fit around his broader, lumberjack-esque shoulders. He wonders if it will even matter in the end.)
“Atsushi.” Lucy says, a single word, and Atsushi knows that her guard is lowered. Not completely, but he doesn’t need her guard all the way down, “Where is the career?”
“Wish I knew.” Atsushi says, and he tries very hard to make his voice wobble like his heart was broken, like the only person who could break his heart wasn’t in the woods behind them both, arrow ready and pointed at Lucy’s heart.
(Not Atsushi’s. Never Atsushi’s.)
Lucy blinks. Once, twice.
And then all charades are out the window and she is twirling the scaling knife in her hand like the expert that she is, and Atsushi has no thoughts about murdering the person that he had grown up with as Lucy twists to the side, and the arrow sails right against her shoulder, tearing out a chunk of skin and some blood, and her eyes are still on Atsushi, wide and shaking as Atsushi raises the axe over her head.
You don’t know how to chop cedar right. Lucy scoffed at him.
You raise your shoulders like this. Atsushi raises his shoulders and Lucy twirls the knife, but that shoulder is the one that got struck and she is already dramatically slowed.
And then, And then.
You put your back into the chop.
And then Atsushi puts his back into the chop.
It is not a quick death. Or a painless one. Atsushi misses Lucy’s head, instead splitting her in half through the chest, and Atsushi has still managed to miss the vital organs in her chest, so for the moments before Atsushi can yank the axe out of her chest and drive it through her head, she screams.
And then she doesn’t.
“That’s it.” Akutagawa mutters, before laughs start spilling out of his lips and Atsushi just takes Akutagawa’s hands with his own bloody ones (not like both their hands aren’t dripping with blood. not like their hands will ever be clean) and pulls him down into a kiss.
It’s soft and sweet, and Atsushi thinks that only an act of god will be able to break them apart.
Akutagawa breaks the kiss with a hiss as Atsushi hears a small thunk noise. Akutagawa rubs his head, “Something just hit me.”
The same thought hits them instantly, and Akutagawa grabs his hand, yanking Atsushi to his feet as they run for the treeline, knowing that if this was one of the Gamemakers’s tricks, then this would be their one warning.
When they are several feet into the trees, and they can no longer see the sun, that’s when they realize that the thing that hit Akutagawa was not a weapon. Instead, it’s a care package.
They both venture out for it, hand in hand, and Akutagawa is the one to pick it up, bow slung over his shoulder as he uses his nails to rip apart the packaging.
It’s a nice package, it just barely fits in Akutagawa’s palm, and when Akutagawa takes out the thing inside, he turns to Atsushi and give him a confused look, because he is holding a piece of jewelry.
Jewelry. In the Hunger Games.
What a useless thing.
(Not like it’s not pretty. Half of a yin-yang necklace, the white side that Atsushi thinks is the yang side. The side made of white jade with a single obsidian gem inside of it.)
The games only get worse from there, with two contestants left that refuse to kill each other. There’s more pigs...less pigs than before technically, as they have grown fat on pig-flesh, there’s fires that try to separate them, smoke that tries to choke Atsushi’s lungs—they survive it all.
They survive it all, then then some, and then some more.
And every night, they fall asleep in each other’s arms, and they wonder: why hasn’t Dazai come for them yet.
At least, Atsushi thinks that Akutagawa is wondering that. Instead, Atsushi is looking at the gem that Dazai must have sent them, and wonders what it means. A single black jade in a sea of white that stands alone, separate from its pair.
Atsushi figures it out on the first night, actually.
He doesn’t tell Akutagawa until there is an arrow pointed right at his skull.
Atsushi thought that the lack of food was what that would make them turn again each other, but when there is an arrow pointing at his skull, everything is completely clear. Even the air is still, and Atsushi can feel every single one of his heartbeats down to his feet and he doesn’t dare shift his head as he asks, “How did you find out.”
“It’s a Yang without the Yin.” So Atsushi was right when he said that it was the yang, “You have silver hair with a single black strand.
“It was not hard to figure out what was meant for me.” Akutagawa pulls his arm back in a flat line, and Atsushi grips the axe in his hand even harder.
Both their hands are dripping with blood, and right now, it’s up to Atsushi’s elbows.
Akutagawa takes the shot, Atsushi lunges forward.
What’s one more person’s blood with all this carnage?