SOTF Mini

A voice called out from the room.

"Why're you two running away? All the fucking guns in the world yet you can't take a little heat? Come on, grow some balls for God's sake, come on and face me, it's the least you fuckin' owe me."

No response.

"No one- no- none of us even liked you, you know. Just fuckin' put up with you cause you threw nice parties, that's it. Even if you make it o- make it out of here, no one- no one'll put up with your smug one-eyed excuse for a face. They'll all see you as the bitch you are."

A distant echo in the hallways.

"You think you're a- a star, but you're just a fuckin' parody of one. Come ten years, it'll be like you're dead, no one'll even remember you."

A crackling echo.

"You won't mean SHIT."

More ringing of the ears.

His head fell back to the ground.

He fell silent.

As it turns out, the voice she'd spent numerous hours around was all it took to make her lithe.

When Mandy told Seo-yun everything she needed to in a single sentence through a door, Ashanti had taken enough of the situation in to know that staying and fighting was impossible. The moment she saw Matias dive for that gun, she'd bolted, through the doorway to the balcony she'd left open before she'd found him, and down towards the deck as the gunshots fired.

But when they stopped, and she didn't hear footsteps following after her, she stopped herself.

Turned around.

Made her way back, as silently as she could manage.

Heard everything play out, rescue and screaming and swearing and smugness in all.

And when Ashanti could see what was going on without having to look in, she came back in through the balcony door. What she saw in her mind's eye - Matias, lying on the bed, his leg a little banged up, kind of worse for wear, but otherwise alright.

And when she came back in through the balcony door, she realized her mind's eye was blind, because there was a tomato bologna meat stew explosion seeping from behind the bed. It turned her stomach. It wasn't like she'd not seen death as she'd been here - she'd seen Leslie die in front of her, she'd seen the bodies of Calla and Kamille and Nate and Carol as she'd been back on the ship, and even the image of what she thought was Matias dying back in the Banquet Hall had done something to her head that was going to be a conversation for when she could have a conversation again - but being this close, in a scene this graphic, to someone she was this close to? The thin layer of glass between her and the real thing, tens of times over, was feeling all the more welcome right now.

Her hands knotted their way through the back of her hand, clinging to her scalp, as she got closer and closer to her once healthy and walking friend, and saw just how much worse it looked the less air between their breaths. Her jaw was slack. Her eyes darting. And her chest ballooned in and out.

This wasn't supposed to be how it ended.

She finally came back. All healthy and breathing and woundless, walking around on two legs, not even limping, like she was fuckin' better than him.

It was something, he guessed, that he wouldn't be alone at least, but just. She looked all scared and frightened and shit like she was the one who'd been shot, and it annoyed him. He was the one bleeding on the floor here. He was the only one that had any right to be scared.

He saw her inch forward step by step towards him, and he decided to meet her halfway, for a loose definition of the word 'half.' Slid himself along the floor a few inches.

Didn't meet her gaze this time.

"What are you looking at?" he asked. Followed up with a weak laugh.

A thousand things were flying through Ashanti's head right now, and the fact remained that so many of them were still the desire to yell at Matias. He'd spent so much of his time here being angry with her, yelling at her, berating her, treating her like an idiot, no matter how much useful she was or wasn't, and yet even after all that, even as she felt her stomach hollow out at the sight of his mangled liveliness, even as she couldn't stop but think of just how alone she was going to be now, she still couldn't help but want to be smart. Maybe there was a time for that, but if there was, it had long since passed. There were parts of him on the wall; some people could be jovial about that, some people could treat that like it was nothing - Ashanti, as it turns out after all this time, after all these seasons, wasn't one of them.

She broke her glacial trot and basically tackled down to the ground at Matias's form. She pulled her bag out from under the bed, and began rummaging through it, looking for the first aid kit. She eventually got her hands around it, pulled it out, and slammed it to the ground so hard it snapped open by itself.

"WHAT THE FUCK DO I DO?"

She knew the answer here - there probably wasn't anything she could do. She could only feel herself being taken away by the current of expectations.

He was starting to laugh so hard it hurt, chest shaking, blood pumping out of the hole in his stomach, wound just opening and closing like a fucking maw, fucking excruciating and yet, he was still laughing.

It was just.

Like.

Two split seconds took everything away from him just like that. First second his leg, next second his other leg and his, his, his everything, it was all just so fucking unfair. He lost everything like that, and, like, she didn't have to worry about any of that. She could spend so many fucking seconds just standing in place doing fuck-all and it'd be fine, she'd be fine!

It was just that he looked at her and wondered how life would have been if he'd just run away every time. If he'd left everyone around him to die.

That was kinda funny, right?

But she still wanted an answer from him. Despite everything. So he, somehow, pushed himself up on one arm, looked her in the eye.

"I... I don't, I don't know Ashanti, like, you have the equipment here, dontcha? And- and the first aid kit, the working legs, you have fucking everything! I don't have shit! And, like, it's just— it's kinda bullshit you're asking me for answers cause you h— you have all this life, all this vitality, you still have the fuckin' time to breathe and shake and panic but, like, I don't! I don't have shit!"

Lopsided smile.

"Like, give me a fuckin' break here, I- I'm the one fuckin' dying here, you know?"

And then, he stopped for a moment. Eyes dilated a bit. Chuckled.

"And, like, that's it, isn't it? I- I'm, like—"

His hand slipped on the blood, he slammed the floor with his face. Barked out a noise.

He gripped his hands around Ashanti's wrists, pulled himself up. Tried to keep her gaze.

"I'm- I'm dying here, Ashanti. I'm dying!"

High-pitched laughter.

"Like, all this fucking effort, all this running around this fucking ship, all this pain, all this trying and striving and, in the end, I'm-"

He slammed a fist sideways into her hand, drew himself closer to her, eyes wide.

"I'm gonna—"

Fist into the floor.

"I—"

Voice cracking. Leaned in.

"I'm gonna die here, Ashanti."

Screamed into her face.

"I'M GONNA FUCKING DIE HERE!"

And then, he let go of her. Let himself fall to the floor face-first, shaking.

Tears falling between the floorboards.










"Just kill me."

Ashanti wanted to yell back at Matias, but she knew all too well that he was allowed to go through what he was going through. Not even just as a human being dying, but as someone dying on repeat, in front of everyone, someone who was given a fleeting chance of survival and it was now sitting with the creatures at the bottom of the ocean that Ashanti wasn't sure she herself would make it off of.

Her breathing became more stable, less panicked, as Matias kept speaking. If she had to guess, this was what coming to terms with your closest ally's death meant, but she didn't feel like she was. But when he grabbed her wrists, and screamed, right in her face, she felt even further from the reality her body had made for her. She didn't accept this, at all. Matias was screaming in her face about how he was fucked, absolutely fucked, and not going to exist anymore, and yet her chest felt calm even if her eyes were beginning to water. What the fuck even was this?

And nothing really prepared her for his next request.









But she agreed anyway.

"Okay."

She couldn't even feel her own breathing. She just kept signing.

"Tell me how you want M-"

Her fingers froze up, and she felt them fall backwards to catch her, holding her torso up as her chest felt light.

She answered awfully quick.

Didn't even fight back or nothing. Just 'Yes' and 'Where do I shoot?'

Whatever.

One less body Seo-yun could use to get out of here. Maybe someone else would shoot the fucker down in the time it took her to find another victim. Could only hope.

He continued to look at her hands, not her face. Couldn't really bear seeing anyone look at him.

"Glove gun. It's in the bag."

He'd stowed it away after the encounter with Verity. Needed his hands to support his walk around the hallways.

Briefly, he wondered whether Seo-yun would've reacted fast enough, had he just rushed her with the glove in his hand. And then he didn't.

"You put it- put it on and then just, like, punch me in the face."

Wiped his eyes with the relatively unstained back of his hand. Felt sticky still.

"Should be quick."

He still had the glove. That glove, that they'd gotten on the first night they were there, a glove that Matias now wanted Ashanti to use to end his life.

The same way-

No, not thinking about that now. Ashanti took one, gutteral breath inwards, and got back onto her knees. They wobbled. Maybe if she acted fast enough, she wouldn't have to breathe again.

The carpet was still soft, despite everything. She'd crawled over to where Matias's bag had presumably fallen during the entire scene with Seo-yuns, and immediately unzipped and turned out everything. Supplies, waste, clothing, advertisements, and nothing after nothing fell out, and with it came the glove attatched to a railroad spike. She took a long look at its brownness, and, almost methodically, began placing it onto her hand.

It fit fine. Despite the disparate hand size difference between herself and Matias, something she'd almost never thought about before. She looked at it, encasing her own, in the dim light of the cabin. All she could see was-

Almost immediately, she ripped it off, her breathing losing stability. The feeling returned, and she repeated the process, putting it back on her hand, feeling the flaps and creases invade every curve, and it still felt awful. And when she thought about where it came from, the leather felt more like skin than it already was.

Out of the corner of her eye, on her way across the carpet back towards Matias, she saw something glimmer under the bed. A familiar shine, something she'd become accustomed to since she'd gotten her hands on it. The gun she stole from Mandy, sitting at the furthest spot from reach, no matter where she were to go for it.

Wasn't that the best? The only weapon she'd touched here that didn't give her an immediate negative reaction, and it was completely out of reach.

And yet, for some reason, she diverted her course right before she got back to her dying friend, and jammed her arm under the bed, reaching for her preferred tool of euthanasia. Maybe, just maybe, if she got her hands on it, she could help Matias in the last way he'd need, and not have to remember the fishing boat.

He settled in. Made himself as comfortable as he could, given the circumstances.

Ashanti had already moved on to look for the glove, but he wanted to tell her something.

He reached his hand out, brushed her leg, he thought. Squeezed it.

"Thanks."

Everything sounded quiet to him now, beneath the ringing, but somehow he didn't think she heard him.

She hoped she knew it anyways, that he was thankful. Could've been worse. Could've been alone.

Would've been nice if Leslie had told him that before.






And all there was left to do was wait.

She moved from the bag to some other corner of the room he couldn't see. He needed to tell her that wasn't where the glove was, that he was sure it was in the bag. Like, they were just wasting time here. But, the signs for what he wanted to say escaped him and, like, his arm felt pinned against the floor, though there was nothing on top of it. And, it just took so much effort to speak. Like he'd spent himself out earlier, was just running on fumes now.

All he could really say, groan, was "Hurry."

Even that hurt to say.

He wished she'd be quicker. There were only so many things in his bag. Everything but the pain seemed to be dulling. Vision blurring, ringing subsiding, energy leaving him, yet, up to now, there was that itchy cold warm burning feeling. Wasn't much point in enduring it any longer, now that this was all there'd be.

That kinda sucked, didn't it? That, like, bit by bit, his goals and aspirations had gone from wanting to provide a life for his family, to wanting to just make it out of high school, to wanting to get the ten, to wanting to make it out with a teammate, to just finding a teammate. And, like, now, all he wanted was for someone else to kill him. Cause he didn't have any choice in not being killed, it was happening regardless.

Regardless of what happened here, mom and dad would lose a son. His siblings a brother. Regardless, they'd pay for the funeral. Lose the salary from his job.

Struggle.

After everything, long after he was gone, they'd still be struggling, still be going through the same shit he'd gone through for his entire life.

All he could do was his best, he'd been told. Fucking sucked that this was all it was.

All his best was, right now, was ensuring that someone he disliked didn't get the kill. Being part of someone else's number.

And he wasn't even sure if he'd be granted that.

His vision started to dim.

All he was left with, at the end, was the thought that this was all bullshit. It was all such bullshit.

She'd stretched her shoulder so much she could no longer feel it in its socket, and yet despite her damage, she stopped reaching.

Ashanti wasn't going to run out the clock. She was on a timer, she needed to help Matias now.

She made herself tall again, or at least as tall as she could be on her knees, and made her way back over to her dying companion, still on the ground.

There wasn't much room between Matias and the bed, but she squeezed her way in anyway. The glove hand trembled, as she kept thinking about what she was going to have to do to help Matias and stick it to Seo-yun. Punch him in the face, and he died.

She looked down at Matias's face. There was blood, there was a distinct lack of the Matias she once saw in him in their combined hours of conversation together, more than they'd ever spoken back home, and there was a pair of closed eyes..

And for a moment, she didn't see Matias.

"...Wanna kill me, right now?"

She saw the wrong boy.

"I don't really care. I got a gun if you need it."

But...

But it made sense now.

Just as she was ready to punch, she spoke one last time.

"Matias, I...I get it now. I understand now."

Her fingers clenched, but she continued.

"I'm sorry. I understand Leslie now."

She made a fist, and it began its arc.

Her fist ended its arc on Matias's face, and the glove discharged, and suddenly she hadn't moved for minutes as her fist rested against the broken nose of the body that was once Matias Juarez. She wasn't stuck, nor was she frozen in place. She was just staying still, as everything seeped its way through. Eventually, she could no longer feel the shakes from the kickback, or her chest rising and falling.

She'd done it.

It, being everything she could do. Seo-yun, so close to that ten kill release, was going to have to wait just a little longer, and judging by how fucked up she looked, that may have been enough. Fuck her.

And Ashanti?

Well, Ashanti finally retracted her fist from Matias's face, and leaned backwards, splaying her arms out on the bed beside her. She stared up at the ceiling; moving naught, and saying nothing.

She'd been in this position before - not having had to kill someone she wasn't even sure she considered a friend, but did so anyway, but being by herself. But back then, Matias was still alive, even if he'd rightfully left her. Marion was still out there, somewhere, still existing. Her only two lifelines to the world.

But back then? She'd been by herself - she hadn't been alone.

Now? Now she was alone.

Ashanti had taken the time she needed to think about how Matias was no longer going to be there with her. The moon had changed places in the sky.

When the feeling returned to her chest, she got to her feet, and began retrieving Matias's belongings.

((Ashanti Baker continued elsewhere))