Author Games Compilation [Cycle 1]

Task 8 // The Last Six Minutes (C.STRAY)

THE TRUTH COMES SECOND - FINALS

It came as it began: with a tightening at his abdomen and a gasp of sudden unawareness for where he was.  

Carrick wasn't entirely awake when he awoke, and perhaps that was why he felt the same pinching at his waist that he had with the dress in the start, perhaps that was why he was sucking in air so heavily, but he knew it wasn't the doing of textiles. He felt himself against himself, his hands pinning his own hands, his blade in his own stomach. Blue, he saw blue - not the sea blue he knew when he looked in the mirror, but a blue grown weary and ignited, like an old block of wood that'd rotted out its days and lasted about ten seconds tops when set with flames.

He saw Wilden, too, and it was he that Carrick grappled for as a means to escape himself.

"He's bringing it all back, he's - he's bringing it all back," Carrick wheezed as his hands found purchase on Wilden's shirt. "Don't let him bring it back! Don't let him, don't let him-" Fingers curled into fabric, tugging and grasping and yanking and never calling it quits even when the blue eyes had gone away, even when the chill of an arena made itself known, even when he knew he was going to be absolutely fine. They were tricks, all tricks. He hated the lies. "I stabbed him, and, and he stabbed me, and-" He felt for his own stomach. A scabbed over scar was mistaken for a stab wound, and he sucked in one of those breaths that usually made him go lightheaded. "He's gonna get to me, Wilden, he's gonna get to me and then he's gonna play with me and then he's gonna-"

"Carrick, Carrick-" Wilden held up a finger. "Just shhh, shh, stop talking, look at me, just shut your hell mouth and look at me. There we go. Just look."

The words didn't keep him from repeatedly clenching and unclenching at the balled up shirt in his fist. "But he's right, right there, and I saw me, and he said I didn't do anything, and..." He craned his head back to the spot where he'd laid thirty seconds before, and, once he saw the absence of himself, he caught his own breath.

"Look at me."

He did. Wilden's face was set into something soft, something concerned, and something just a little bit piteous. Or was that amused? No, for the boy didn't believe in pity, and to find amusement in the very literal panic he'd just been in wasn't right.

Carrick loosened his hands and let the fabric (and his hysteria) fall away, instead letting his palms settle right there on his shoulders while he caught his breath; the other boy didn't mind. In between these huffs, the boy of forest green managed to work out something like, "How many died when I was asleep?"

It was then that the smile dangling at the corner of Wilden's lip finally gave up and fell away. "There's four of us left," he said.

A stiffness filled the both of them, as it should've. Carrick only stared at the gradual drop-off between Wilden's shoulder and the air. His mouth felt soaked in salt, and he worked it around, to no real level of success. He tasted his words before sharing them. "It stops tonight, doesn't it?"

Wilden let his head drop. "We need to head back to Corn soon. They'll get us there on their own if we don't."

Carrick wholeheartedly agreed, as he wasn't too keen on the idea of being chased out by carnivorous horses, but still, he didn't remove his hands to let his companion rise. They lingered a bit longer than they should've but he masked it up by letting off a rather tight, rather uncomfortable smile. He didn't like those sorts. "Maybe they'll treat us all to a big steak dinner and the chance to get laid if we're punctual, yeah?"

His ally gave him a smile, but the joy (if it could be called that) ended there, and it was then that Carrick let his palms slide off into his own personal space. He tossed them in his pockets once they'd risen and begun the silent walk to the ballroom they expected to enter sooner or later.