kennewick pike. (kennewicks) wrote in colosseum, @ 2014-01-14 21:00:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! backstory, victor: 25th ondine isaacs, victor: 36th kennewick pike |
Who: Kennewick Pike and Ondine Isaacs
What: pulling it all together
When: Hours after Kennwick wins the 36th Hunger Games
Where: somewhere in the Capitol
Status/Warnings: finished log/references to child murder. PROMPT: HOURS Kennewick & Ondine.
Hours after the arena, even in his sleep, his hands clenched tight. The various medical staff had tried to unclench his fingers but they wouldn’t move, even in his sleep he knew that if he let go for the girl she would kill him and she would win. He had to win, he dreamed of still being in the arena, frozen in time, holding her underwater, feeling himself bleed out. There wasn’t much time, not much time at all, she had to die before he did, he could feel himself going weak and everything started to fade around the edges and he gripped tighter and tighter and tighter as the world got lighter.
He was going to die.
The light started to get brighter and his arms shook and there was a beeping noise, he could hear someone say something to him and then he drifted on again.
Hours later, he finally woke up, blinking against the lights. It was bright in here, he realized. His hands hurt and he immediately reached for his stomach to feel the wound where she had stabbed him but there was nothing.
He had won. He had killed the girl from District 1. Ruby.
She was dead. Kennewick had liked her but he had killed her because there could just be one winner.
He heard a door open and jumped immediately, reaching for something to protect himself with, but there was nothing.
You’re not in the games anymore.
In the end it didn’t matter how quickly she arrived to the hospital or how many people she’d shoved past violently to get there; Kennewick was in surgery, according to the doctors, and that was all they could tell her about Kennewick. This was despite Ondine threatening them, yelling at them, and even offers of bribery in exchange for information. He’d been bleeding out, badly, and there was a part of Ondine that was terrified that he wouldn’t pull through.
All she could do was sit in the waiting room and sip at coffee, and ignore all the others in the room. She kept her eye to the clock and watched as the seconds slowly circled round and round the face, giving way to minutes which laboriously stretched into hours. A nurse once offered to have Ondine called once Kennewick was out of surgery if she wanted to go home instead to wait more comfortably; the glare Ondine gave the man was so severe that he actually squeaked and hurried away.
Finally, finally, the surgeon with aqua swirled tattoos across his jaw emerged and told Ondine that Kennewick was out of surgery, was stable, and was waking up. Forcing a polite smile, Ondine thanked him, and then shoved past him and into Kennewick’s room.
The sight that greeted her wasn’t one she’d been expecting, and she immediately scolded herself for it. Of course Kennewick would think something was wrong. She recognized the look in his eye and the way he automatically reached for a weapon, she’d seen it enough in herself and the other Victors to know it. Immediately Ondine held her hands up to show that they were empty.
“It’s just me. You’re in the hospital. You won. You’re safe now.” If only for now, and if only because that safe was relative. But there was time for that later. Ondine kept her hands up for a few seconds, then lowered them slowly as she approached the bed so she could sit down in the chair beside it. Only when she was settled in did she speak again.
“You look like shit.” No one had ever claimed that Ondine was well known for tact.
Ondine.
When she said safe though, it might as well have been in another language for all it meant to him. He had known 17 years of safety but right now his body was still on high alert, ready to jump, ready to attack, even in a hospital gown. Still, he forced himself to sit down and he looked at Ondine and then licked his lips.
He had no idea how he looked he had only seen his reflection whenever he’d visited the water, but by the end the other tributes had all looked pretty bad, he had to assume he didn’t look much better.
“I’m hungry.”
It wasn’t as though Ondine particularly expected him to believe her when she said he was safe. Weeks and weeks had passed before she had even started to come to grips with the fact that she really was out of the arena, that her games were over. “Even if you weren’t, they’d have to go through me first,” she added, to try and reassure him, if only a little. “And probably Lorcan. I think he’s around here somewhere.” Was he? She couldn’t remember if she’d seen him in the waiting room, but she’d hardly been paying much attention.
“Do you want me to go get you some food, or can I have someone else bring it in?” When Ondine had won, every time she saw an unfamiliar face, she’d automatically gone to grab a weapon or leap out of her bed to attack them. More than one nurse had ended up with an injury because of Ondine’s frayed nerves. She didn’t want to assume anything about how Kennewick was feeling, or what he might be capable of at the moment.
Thoughts were coming to him slowly he didn’t know why, he wasn’t in the arena, he should be happy but he felt like his body and his mind were in two different places and he just simply nodded when she spoke. Ondine was one of his mentors, she was okay, he told himself over and over again as she spoke.
He took a deep breath and realized that he needed to make sure she was really there, he was confused about the timeline of events, he couldn’t have held the girl underwater for days, even if that’s what it felt like. Maybe he had passed out and was dreaming, about to die.
Awkwardly he reached his hand out to her arm to see if she was really there and his hands quickly graze her arm, it was warm. She was real.
“How long did it take to kill her?” he asked, completely ignoring her question. He was still hungry though.
Touch was something that had become uncommon and alien to Ondine over the years, something she willingly indulged in rarely. So when Kennewick reached out to her, she couldn’t help starting a little, even though she had watched his hand move and knew what he was intending. After a moment’s hesitation, she lifted her arm to pat his forearm awkwardly with a calloused hand, and then left it to rest on the blanket at the edge of the bed.
Ondine shrugged with one shoulder and thought back to watching the death just a few hours earlier. She forced herself not to focus on how much it made her remember the feel of another boy’s neck under her own hands. Instead she turned her gaze to Kennewick’s face so she could watch his expression when she said, “A couple minutes. Maybe a little longer. You haven’t answered my question about the food.” An easy out, if he wanted it. Even Ondine wasn’t cold enough to not give him that.
It took Kennewick a second - only a few minutes, that didn’t seem to really add up, it felt like it took much longer than that. Days even but he nodded anyway. Logically that made sense, a few minutes is all it took someone to drown, even shorter than that. He hadn’t grown up near the beach in 4 but close enough, they all knew the dangers of drowning.
He swallowed hard.
“Have someone bring in food.”
The smile that Ondine gave him was small and proud, though it only lasted a few seconds. She leaned over, closer to the bedside table, and pressed the call button. Better to go through a trial run of having someone just check at the door first than to have Ondine request for the food right away, and have it go badly when they came too close to Kennewick.
“It’ll get easier,” she told him while they waited. “Maybe not better, but easier. And you won’t be alone.”
Kennewick nodded his head and moved to the corner of his bed and waited for the person outside to come and bring him food. He started to feel sleepy again, whatever they had put in him was strong and as he felt himself about to drift there was a knock on the door that jerked him awake but he glanced at Ondine. It would be okay.