InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "You'll put your eye out!"

a good space boy from a good space family (pethdorn) wrote in incompletedata,
@ 2017-10-07 11:54:00

Entry tags:

marvel: mcu: rocket, star wars: canon: poe dameron

WHO: Poe Dameron & Rocket
WHAT: Scrabbling over scraps.
WHERE: The Cornucopia
WHEN: Day 14; the feast.
WARNINGS: Hunger Games.

He didn’t know what was inside it; he saw it was large enough to have some heft, he expected it was food, and so Poe ran, his face locked into a grimace as every impact of every footfall reverberated through his shoulder. He hadn’t eaten, not really, in a couple of days. The pain had put him off his appetite, and the fear that had finally turned to grief after a couple days of Senator Organa failing to return to camp hadn’t helped, either. The man wasn't coming back, and, try as he might to remind himself of the patently obvious truths he'd pushed so hard on everyone else at the beginning - nothing here is permanent, don't let them scare you, you'll be fine - it had become almost impossible to ignore what felt very much like the true reality around him. There was no reason to eat under one interpretation of events, and no drive to do so under the other. He had failed in his first attempts here, to bring everyone together, to keep them safe through communal action - and then he’d failed in his secondary goal, to keep Bail as safe as he could. He was no protector, in this place. Certainly not now. He was wounded, he was armed only with an unwieldy blade that he’d been using almost exclusively as a walking stick, and he - like everyone around him - was exhausted.

If all he was capable of was hanging on, for himself … why was he even running?

But he was. There was food, and he was running, and he was just hoping, with visceral, quite literally gut-deep feeling, that it would be all right. The sword beat awkwardly against the side of his leg, slicing through the surface of the water and striking against rocks on his mad dash toward the food where it was clustered. Last time, he’d made it out of here without any trouble, and so he hoped - he ducked, off-balance, to grab the package against his chest - he fumbled - he managed to fall on his good side, and scramble to his knees, and grip the miniature cornucopia with one slipping hand.

(Post a new comment)

pro_asshole
2017-10-07 06:36 pm UTC (link)

Rocket had managed to keep himself together for a long goddamned time, given the circumstances. He'd done fairly well for himself in the beginning, failing the two unfortunate encounters with sharp rocks and other miserable cave-dwellers that left him in an irritating amount of pain, but he had plenty of food, he had good homemade weapons, and he had water. He'd managed to stay dry and safe for a good week or so- the days were impossible to keep track of by now- before his stores ran out and he was forced to head to the one place he new there was water. Eating rats and blind insects on the way had kept him from terrible hunger pangs, but the water was important. That's where his luck had run out- and in the forty-eight hours or so after a shattered leg that left him unable to carry anything besides his canteen and sharpened rock-knife, his mind had finally started really slipping into the darkness of pain and near feral survival.

He hadn't even spoken- not that he had anyone to actually talk to anymore- since the cave-in; all his energy and concentration invested in dragging himself back to the cornucopia in the hope of food. His higher facilities knew it was a goddamn trap, but it wasn't his higher functions that were at the wheel anymore. Rocket smelled food, and in his pained and feverish mind, that was all there was.

That, and the animal between himself and the nearest meal.

The sound he made was full of warning and rage, a growl and a yell tangled together with pain as he lunged at the legs of the taller creature with his sharpened rock, slashing wildly at the nearest tendon in some strategy of getting it to decide that food wasn't worth it.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

pethdorn
2017-10-08 02:37 pm UTC (link)

From the corner of his eye, Poe saw something darting toward him, and over the pounding of his own blood in his ears he heard that strange, ominous cry - and he wasn't sticking around to see what it meant. He pushed himself to his feet, biting back a grunt of pain as his bad arm strained under the weight of his prize.

And then there was a stabbing, sapping pain in his leg - he dropped the package - he fell to one knee, a dreadful weakness running up his leg that he knew meant something had torn - and he shouted, using the momentum of his fall to swing his body against his attacker, whom he saw, now. Rocket. He didn't know him well, not at all, but fierce seemed like a pretty good bet. If nothing else, Poe had some mass on him. Just go away, he thought - or, more likely, screamed aloud, considering how much control he had over his mental or physical powers at the moment. The sword jutted out from his side at an awkward angle and his shoulder burned as his body weight slammed against the wall of the cornucopia. Just go away.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

pro_asshole
2017-10-08 07:26 pm UTC (link)

Rocket didn't hear anything else- or more accurately, he didn't process anything else; his focus was locked and lasered on that package of food that slipped out of the obstacle's grasp. His instincts had taken over long ago, hypersensitive and hardwired (literally) for survival, and currently frayed at the edges because of two days of agony and fever.

Rocket wasn't thinking- he was acting, lunging for that food the instant it was free for grabbing. He didn't anticipate the obstacle's sudden lurch in the wrong direction, or the long piece of metal that inevitably pinned him through the chest, shoving through bone, tissue, and major arteries, against the solid rock.

White and red static exploded in his bloodstream at first; galaxies of pain burst behind his eyes and stopped his breath with a wet, hot, strangled yell. Shock edged it off almost immediately, especially when the sword moved, dropping Rocket to his 'good' leg and arm. The other hand instinctively tried to plug the wound, but the hole was too big, and the damage was done.

Suddenly hunger no longer raged at the front of his mind. Neither did pain. Just the cold, and the dark, and the stream of warm spreading into the water he collapsed in.

(Reply to this) (Parent)