They were washed away by the moonlight as they stepped out on the clipper deck. Britnee's grip on her arm had loosened down to her hand and it was Diana who now held firm on Britnee's hand. At first, anyway, but her grip loosened as Britnee walked further ahead of her.
She did not want to, but eventually, she let go.
Quick footsteps sounded as her friend made her way over to a bag. Through the stinging haze that hanged over her eyes; Diana could see her friend was struggling to survive. She was dousing herself with water, cascading across her head and body.
Despite them being at the deck, Diana could hear the sound of droplets hitting the floor. Everything her friend did, echoed out in her mind at a volume comparable to a concert.
And then, she hit the floor.
She was coughing and sputtering on the ground with water and blood spilling out of her mouth. She said no words where she was, but Diana could hear this rasping breath from her.
She stepped closer to her. Earlier the damage had not looked that bad, but whatever that liquid was... but now?
It was horrible to see. Her body: parts of her were just... gone. Almost as if razors had been dragged across her body and taken the skin with it. A sickly color was making itself apparent, most prominent on her face. Her brown skin color turning pale and grey, almost blue-ish. It was like she was made out of ash.
Diana wanted to help. She wanted to hold her tight and tell her it was all going to be fine, but she couldn't. Whatever it was that she used was messing with her, and she wasn't even close when she used it. And worse, her bag left behind in the room they had just walked out from, could she risk walking back?
What if she died out here? All alone...
--
No. She had to stay. She would just have to use the other bag, and whatever was in it.
"Brit, just...please, don't move." She yelped out to her, but she could see, if barely, that she was moving again. Whatever for, she did not know, nor did she care. She needed to take care of her; now.
She rushed over to the bag and took ahold of it before almost tripping back next to her. She landed on her knees next to her and started toiling away with the zipper of the bag.
She was taking out bottles, all of them. She was trying to douse herself with it. She was trying to drink. Maybe that was the answer. Diana just needed to douse her with enough water to make the Niagara falls jealous.
"Make a sound if this helps. Something that sounds, I don't fucking know, good or something. Just...please..." She sobbed out as she rolled the top of a bottle and let the water out on her.
"Please...Brit. Live! Fucking live! Please!"
She struggled to realize what was going on as she blinked rapidly whilst to the side of Britnee. Diana couldn't tell if the tears running down her cheeks were from seeing her friend hurt this horrible way or from the burning in her eyes.
Britnee's left hand was raised now, palm first. Diana stared, or tried to, stare at it. Her eyes were blinking too much for that. Her chest heaved as her shortness of breath took its toll on her. It was like she was on the verge of hyperventilating.
"You're the one that's supposed to go further!" She managed out in spurts, in-between sobs, and short breaths.
"Not me, never me..."
Her hand was on her face now, wiping at her tears. Diana's right hand reached and carefully held onto Britnee's wrist. For comfort or to help her? She wished she had the answer. Everything was wrong at that moment.
"See? You're doing this for me when I should be helping you! It isn't right..."
When she was supposed to help her, make her comfortable. Why couldn't she do it right? Why couldn't she do anything right? If Britnee had the gun, then the Sofia shitfest might have gone better. Maybe Anthony would have been dead instead, and Britnee wouldn't be...
"I love you Brit. I love you more than anyone else in this stupid place."
"So, please."
"Live."
Out on the Sea, We'd Be Forgiven
CW: Gore, eye injuries. Private, immediately after I Want Blood, Guts, and Chocolate Cake
((Britnee Joyner continues from I Want Blood, Guts, and Chocolate Cake))
Diana's sobs reached Britnee like ice picks to her ear drums. It somehow felt worse than the acid exposing her nerves to the night air. More than anything, she wanted to make her stop, tell her things would be okay, but she didn't have the lung capacity anymore to lie like that.
A few hours ago, after Emmett's ambush, Dee had promised her, prophesied perhaps, 'Until the end.' And, it scared Britnee so fucking much back then because, like, the road to death on SOTF was paved with declarations like that. It was like Mae St. Clair giving Shawn a goodbye kiss, telling him to survive this. Like Lionel Wilson wasting away on the ground while Maria, his beloved, ran from their attacker. Like Mandy Wallace bleeding out in Parker's arms for an hour. And, Britnee loved romances as much as the next person, but she hated tragedies. Was the worst part of watching SOTF really. Some stupid part of her always hoped for a happy ending when rewatching these clips, even knowing that, up until a few years ago, escapees aside, only one person could make it out. It was the same stupid part of her that reread Romeo and Juliet for the nth time, hoping that somehow the words in the pages had transformed so that the two would finally get their happily ever after.
At the time, it'd felt like Dee had condemned them to yet another fucking tragedy. Perhaps she had.
The thing about tragedies was that people kept fucking coming back to them too. Like, Britnee knew for a fact that she wasn't the only one still sobbing over all those people she just mentioned. Years after the fact, people still discussed and mourned and lamented over their deaths, rewinding and replaying the videos of their deaths like scabs they refused to let heal.
But, that was exactly it. Each video captured a horrible, terrible, ugly moment that would be talked about and remembered for years and years to come, long, long after Britnee's burnt flesh decomposed into bones.
All she ever wanted was to be remembered. All she ever wanted was to be loved. It was the reason she looked at every camera she ran by in the jetties. The reason she gave every camera a knowing glance in the midst of all the fights she'd been in.
At the entrance of each boat was a path she could have taken. At the entrance of each boat was a camera that would have chronicled said path. She could have been the best player this show had ever known, had the dice rolled that way. She could have been the best hero this show had ever known. She could have been the most complex two-sided bitch the funniest riot the most love-to-hate villain the cutest girlfriend the biggest tease best team leader the best sleeper hit of a character she could've been fucking everything.
She'd been none of those.
She hadn't known shit about being a hero. Hadn't even saved themselves, much less anyone else. She'd been so proud of herself, had made so many boastful promises, and in the end, she'd been none of those things.
Above them, perched ten feet up the mast of this clipper ship, was the last camera on this last boat. She'd laid herself beneath the camera in a position where no shadows would mask her wounds, where the moonlight could properly shed light on the parts of her arm, shoulder, where the acid stripped the melanin clean from her skin, leaving an exposed subdermal layer splotched with blood. Not too far from pizza, she noted with a nauseous feeling somehow layering itself on top of everything else.
Her face looked like that. The face Diana could somehow gaze so dearly at.
She didn't have a mirror. She didn't have to acknowledge that. She could just. Ignore it.
She held Dee's hand because she loved her. She caressed her face, wiped off her tears because she loved her, because seeing her break apart like this was an entirely new level of hell, because Britnee needed to stay strong up to the last and she couldn't take seeing her like this. She loved her in ways she could not explain, did not have the words or mindpower at the moment to decipher, all she knew was that she loved her.
But.
She also held her like this because everyone loved a tragedy. Because she could still be the saddest tragedy anyone had ever laid eyes on, if nothing else. She laid herself at Dee's knees in front of the camera so that everyone could see all her burns in all their grisly glory, so that everyone could bear witness to each and every breath she struggled and fought for, so that she could catch all their eyes and ask them, with the one eye of hers that worked, This is what you wanted to see, right? She did all this so that if, in some final twist of fate, the one person to survive all this would be Anthony fucking Golden, she wanted to make it so that, when people would catch sight of his disfigured mug on the streets, the only name he'd hear would be Britnee's.
She did all this so that she could live, influence, matter long after this.
Diana's grief-contorted face looked on her from above, framed by the starry night sky. That was the catch in all this. Some part of Britnee wondered if it would've been easier for everyone involved if she simply closed her eyes, stopped trying. If she went away just like that. She wondered if, in doing all this, trying to get her last 15 seconds on-camera, she'd been twisting, pushing a knife into Dee, and the thought felt fucking suffocating.
Mae St. Clair's last words to Shawn Morrison were 'Survive this.' He made it to second place. And, Dee was a strong, strong girl. Always had a plan. So, maybe if Britnee did something similar, Dee could make it just that tiny extra distance. There wouldn't be a happy ending for the both of them, but maybe there could be for Dee. And, she wanted it so that she could be a repudiation of all the ugliness Anthony had shown them. A last fuck-you to everything he'd done to them.
There was this game that Britnee and Diana played, around the year they'd first met, freshman year. Scratch letters on the back of the other, or hand if the positioning was too awkward, try to figure out what was being said. Like some even lower-tech version of passing notes behind the teacher's back.
With her left hand, she squeezed Diana's wrist one last time. And then she scratched this into her palm.
Y - O - U L - I - V - E
D - O G - O - O - D
And then that was it. Nothing more to say, nothing more to do. Just time to lay her head down, settle her gaze onto Diana's gaze, stop fighting to pull in air that wouldn't make it anyways. And then, one more smile for Diana to tell her everything would be okay. To tell her she could do this. One last smile.
She hoped the cameras knew she meant it.
SS11: BRITNEE JOYNER: DECEASED
36 STUDENTS REMAIN
Diana's sobs reached Britnee like ice picks to her ear drums. It somehow felt worse than the acid exposing her nerves to the night air. More than anything, she wanted to make her stop, tell her things would be okay, but she didn't have the lung capacity anymore to lie like that.
A few hours ago, after Emmett's ambush, Dee had promised her, prophesied perhaps, 'Until the end.' And, it scared Britnee so fucking much back then because, like, the road to death on SOTF was paved with declarations like that. It was like Mae St. Clair giving Shawn a goodbye kiss, telling him to survive this. Like Lionel Wilson wasting away on the ground while Maria, his beloved, ran from their attacker. Like Mandy Wallace bleeding out in Parker's arms for an hour. And, Britnee loved romances as much as the next person, but she hated tragedies. Was the worst part of watching SOTF really. Some stupid part of her always hoped for a happy ending when rewatching these clips, even knowing that, up until a few years ago, escapees aside, only one person could make it out. It was the same stupid part of her that reread Romeo and Juliet for the nth time, hoping that somehow the words in the pages had transformed so that the two would finally get their happily ever after.
At the time, it'd felt like Dee had condemned them to yet another fucking tragedy. Perhaps she had.
The thing about tragedies was that people kept fucking coming back to them too. Like, Britnee knew for a fact that she wasn't the only one still sobbing over all those people she just mentioned. Years after the fact, people still discussed and mourned and lamented over their deaths, rewinding and replaying the videos of their deaths like scabs they refused to let heal.
But, that was exactly it. Each video captured a horrible, terrible, ugly moment that would be talked about and remembered for years and years to come, long, long after Britnee's burnt flesh decomposed into bones.
All she ever wanted was to be remembered. All she ever wanted was to be loved. It was the reason she looked at every camera she ran by in the jetties. The reason she gave every camera a knowing glance in the midst of all the fights she'd been in.
At the entrance of each boat was a path she could have taken. At the entrance of each boat was a camera that would have chronicled said path. She could have been the best player this show had ever known, had the dice rolled that way. She could have been the best hero this show had ever known. She could have been the most complex two-sided bitch the funniest riot the most love-to-hate villain the cutest girlfriend the biggest tease best team leader the best sleeper hit of a character she could've been fucking everything.
She'd been none of those.
She hadn't known shit about being a hero. Hadn't even saved themselves, much less anyone else. She'd been so proud of herself, had made so many boastful promises, and in the end, she'd been none of those things.
Above them, perched ten feet up the mast of this clipper ship, was the last camera on this last boat. She'd laid herself beneath the camera in a position where no shadows would mask her wounds, where the moonlight could properly shed light on the parts of her arm, shoulder, where the acid stripped the melanin clean from her skin, leaving an exposed subdermal layer splotched with blood. Not too far from pizza, she noted with a nauseous feeling somehow layering itself on top of everything else.
Her face looked like that. The face Diana could somehow gaze so dearly at.
She didn't have a mirror. She didn't have to acknowledge that. She could just. Ignore it.
She held Dee's hand because she loved her. She caressed her face, wiped off her tears because she loved her, because seeing her break apart like this was an entirely new level of hell, because Britnee needed to stay strong up to the last and she couldn't take seeing her like this. She loved her in ways she could not explain, did not have the words or mindpower at the moment to decipher, all she knew was that she loved her.
But.
She also held her like this because everyone loved a tragedy. Because she could still be the saddest tragedy anyone had ever laid eyes on, if nothing else. She laid herself at Dee's knees in front of the camera so that everyone could see all her burns in all their grisly glory, so that everyone could bear witness to each and every breath she struggled and fought for, so that she could catch all their eyes and ask them, with the one eye of hers that worked, This is what you wanted to see, right? She did all this so that if, in some final twist of fate, the one person to survive all this would be Anthony fucking Golden, she wanted to make it so that, when people would catch sight of his disfigured mug on the streets, the only name he'd hear would be Britnee's.
She did all this so that she could live, influence, matter long after this.
Diana's grief-contorted face looked on her from above, framed by the starry night sky. That was the catch in all this. Some part of Britnee wondered if it would've been easier for everyone involved if she simply closed her eyes, stopped trying. If she went away just like that. She wondered if, in doing all this, trying to get her last 15 seconds on-camera, she'd been twisting, pushing a knife into Dee, and the thought felt fucking suffocating.
Mae St. Clair's last words to Shawn Morrison were 'Survive this.' He made it to second place. And, Dee was a strong, strong girl. Always had a plan. So, maybe if Britnee did something similar, Dee could make it just that tiny extra distance. There wouldn't be a happy ending for the both of them, but maybe there could be for Dee. And, she wanted it so that she could be a repudiation of all the ugliness Anthony had shown them. A last fuck-you to everything he'd done to them.
There was this game that Britnee and Diana played, around the year they'd first met, freshman year. Scratch letters on the back of the other, or hand if the positioning was too awkward, try to figure out what was being said. Like some even lower-tech version of passing notes behind the teacher's back.
With her left hand, she squeezed Diana's wrist one last time. And then she scratched this into her palm.
Y - O - U L - I - V - E
D - O G - O - O - D
And then that was it. Nothing more to say, nothing more to do. Just time to lay her head down, settle her gaze onto Diana's gaze, stop fighting to pull in air that wouldn't make it anyways. And then, one more smile for Diana to tell her everything would be okay. To tell her she could do this. One last smile.
She hoped the cameras knew she meant it.
SS11: BRITNEE JOYNER: DECEASED
36 STUDENTS REMAIN
SC3:
Matias Juarez is fed up. He is currently walking home.
Pregame: now that you are broken by the seas, in the depths of the waters,
Memories: Vamô Detonar essa Porra!
Diego Larrosa is lost. pls give my kids friends tv3 version
Stephanie's Cuckaneers Today at 12:29 AM
maraoone was a mistake - cicada 2021
Matias Juarez is fed up. He is currently walking home.
Pregame: now that you are broken by the seas, in the depths of the waters,
Memories: Vamô Detonar essa Porra!
Diego Larrosa is lost. pls give my kids friends tv3 version
Stephanie's Cuckaneers Today at 12:29 AM
maraoone was a mistake - cicada 2021
And, as a response, Britnee's hand lowered down. Diana let go and it lowered further to her arm and started to scratch at her. At first, Diana thought she was mad, maybe the pain was finally too much, but no. She was scratching out letters. Something kids would do, something innocent that would be far gone from this show.
Several seconds went by as Britnee scratched these letters out, shakily and with a struggle. As the words connected and were processed in her mind, Diana's tears started anew.
Live.
Do good.
Her hand went down now, fully to the floor. Through tearing, straining eyes. Diana could make out a smile on her face. It was rough as parts of her mouth were discolored and disfigured. But she smiled nonetheless.
So Diana smiled back, or she tried. Her lips trembled under the weight of everything happening. Her hands gripped at Britnee's shirt on the side for support as she sobbed.
Soon, her eyes looked past Diana, to a better place far beyond here. Her rasping breath was gone.
Britnee was gone.
All that was left was the smile, a final gift from a friend who deserved better.
Diana let go and fell over onto her back, rolling over to her side. Her hands reached up to her face and held their place over her eyes as she wept in the moonlight.
Several seconds went by as Britnee scratched these letters out, shakily and with a struggle. As the words connected and were processed in her mind, Diana's tears started anew.
Live.
Do good.
Her hand went down now, fully to the floor. Through tearing, straining eyes. Diana could make out a smile on her face. It was rough as parts of her mouth were discolored and disfigured. But she smiled nonetheless.
So Diana smiled back, or she tried. Her lips trembled under the weight of everything happening. Her hands gripped at Britnee's shirt on the side for support as she sobbed.
Soon, her eyes looked past Diana, to a better place far beyond here. Her rasping breath was gone.
Britnee was gone.
All that was left was the smile, a final gift from a friend who deserved better.
Diana let go and fell over onto her back, rolling over to her side. Her hands reached up to her face and held their place over her eyes as she wept in the moonlight.
It was not long in the moonlight one could see a figure- one that had been crumpled on the floor, wailing- slowly get up on her feet. Once they were up and about, taking careful steps around the body that they refused to look at anymore. They reached out for a bag across her, that was swiftly zipped up and slung around their shoulder.
They stood there for a while, fingers tensing against the strap of the bag. Their hands, reaching up towards their face and rubbing against sore eyes. Harsh sobs echoed out before being silenced through effort. Unsteady steps around the elephant in the room. Towards the door out of here before stopping and allowing herself one last look back.
Some mumbled words came out, hard to make out due to her trembling voice. If one were to read the captions, helped with her collar and footage of her lips, they were to read =
"I-I'll make you proud, Brit."
Diana McIntyre was out of there in less than ten minutes, two bags with her and one teammate less.
They stood there for a while, fingers tensing against the strap of the bag. Their hands, reaching up towards their face and rubbing against sore eyes. Harsh sobs echoed out before being silenced through effort. Unsteady steps around the elephant in the room. Towards the door out of here before stopping and allowing herself one last look back.
Some mumbled words came out, hard to make out due to her trembling voice. If one were to read the captions, helped with her collar and footage of her lips, they were to read =
"I-I'll make you proud, Brit."
Diana McIntyre was out of there in less than ten minutes, two bags with her and one teammate less.