Chapter 20
Chapter twenty
Marco: Autopsy
This is everything I promised myself I wouldn’t do. But Robin’s a compulsion. He has been since that first day. And now I’ve lost control.
The sound of the crowd fades behind me, the blathering of the sponsors still ringing in my ears. My speech was too short, my tone too clipped, my aspect not attractive enough. But I couldn’t think of anything but him.
And now, as I thread my way through these darkening corridors, deep into the belly of the arena, the fear for him comes as thick as the stale air.
That fall he took. The way Elijah landed on him. How much water did he take into his lungs?
We watch men die in the arena, celebrate those who don’t. But little thought is given to what happens to the winners after the match.
They die from their injuries, all too often.
They die slow and horrible, none of the mercy of a well-placed blow from the Deathball.
They die from internal bleeding, screaming as their insides burst with blood.
They die from infection, maybe having a limb taken in the process.
And they die from suicide, every blink of their eyes a flash of the horror they wrought with their own two hands.
Hands made to be gentle. Hands made to tend fields and care for families. Hands that were never meant to touch that godforsaken weapon.
The sound of a pained shout echoes down the hall as I approach, and it propels me to a run. Bursting through the entrance, I find him back in the costume room, alone with Evander.
His fingers dig white into his chair as Evander sutures up his thigh.
Both their heads snap over to me, but Robin is slower than Evander. His eyes are wide, harried, not quite seeing. They take a moment to focus on me, for him to realize I’m here.
It’s not the frosty rebuke I was expecting—that I deserve after everything.
His eyes clear, and they stay on me. But he doesn’t say a fucking word.
“How is he?”
Evander’s face hardens against the question, against my presence. He takes a moment to snip the surgical string. “He’ll survive.”
The relief comes too strong in my chest, like a fall, dizzying in its release.
“Could we have a moment?” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them, crisp across the suffocating space.
The indecision is plain on Evander’s face—to let me do this or not.
He looks pointedly over the ravages of Robin’s body, drawing my eyes as if I hadn’t noticed—as if I’m mad for asking.
And maybe I am. He needs to be patched up.
Fixed. Made whole again. Like every other body on this production line.
But what’s on the outside of him can wait.
“Please,” I ask, the word small and vulnerable. Not the way Evander or anyone else should see me.
Robin’s eyes drift down, and he moves his leg back a little from Evander’s grip.
Evander looks at him long and hard.
“Fine.” He climbs to his feet, letting out a hard breath of air that echoes around the cavernous room. “You have two minutes.”
He leaves his medical case, moves for the door with a warning glare at me.
‘Don’t do this.’
‘You should know better.’
But I don’t. Not anymore. Not after seeing that game.
Robin’s eyes dull as he walks away, his gaze falling to the floor. And I know exactly what he’s seeing in his mind’s eye.
Despite his irritation with me, Evander’s hand falls soft on my shoulder as he passes, then he threads through the door, leaving us alone together.
After I swore to myself I wouldn’t be alone with him again.
He looks so stark in the large room, stone walls dark in contrast with the ridiculous things they make us wear.
An enormous space, all strewn with color and gaiety.
Then, by himself in the center of it all, a broken man bleeding, his costume in shreds, his hair wet and tangled, clinging to his too-lined face.
He’s no longer the sun and warmth of Atrea.
They’ve taken him, drowned him, doused the spark that made my life worth living for the first time in years.
“What the fuck do you want?” His voice breaks on the words, and he cuts off ragged, stifling any emotion.
I move fast and without thought until I’m in front of him, sinking to my knees between his legs.
Without a look at his face, without invitation, I wrap my arms around him and pull him in tight.
He collapses into me. His chest swells with deep breaths, shuddering as he tries to control himself.
His hands press into my back as though I’m the one real thing he can hold on to—a lifeline in this stagnant pool.
And I am. I can see it now—I’m the lifeline, for him, that I always needed in this place. That I never had.
So I thread my fingers into his cold, damp hair, hold him against my shoulder, and tell him all the things I’ve told myself over and over, every time.
“That wasn’t you out there. It was someone else. It was all a game.”
His fingers dig into my back, and a small cry pulls from his chest.
“You have family to return to. You have to protect them.” The heat of his tears bathes my bare shoulder, the shudder in his chest making me hold him closer.
“You did the right thing. This is battle. It’s war. You’ve trained your whole life for this. And you’re going to fight, no matter what, until you get home to your people.”
“I didn’t train for this,” he says, quiet, firm, repulsed. As he should be.
So I break my hold and settle back to look into his eyes. “What you did is no different to what you would have done if he’d tried to kill Esme with his bare hands. You need to get back to her, and you need to protect her. That’s all you were doing.”
His eyes brim, and even if I shouldn’t, I can’t help but wipe away the tears.
“This world we live in… You can’t afford to let it in. Robin, you’ve got to keep on. It’s survival. That’s all it is.”
His hand caresses my cheek, a mirror to the way I’m holding him. And my heart’s beating almost as hard as it was when I watched him deliver those fatal blows to Elijah’s skull.
He whispers, “I need you.”
The words are so soft from his lips, and they tear me all apart. I fight back the tears that come too fast, too painful. I want to swear at him again, say something acid, right now, when he needs me more than ever. Sever this thing between us. Make him hate me like he should.
“Marco…”
There isn’t a word I can say—not a thing I can do. I’m held in this place, crystallized in this moment. One word, one move, and it’s over. And it needs to be.
But when he presses his forehead to mine, when I feel the tears fresh on his cheeks, I can’t say a damn thing.
“I can’t go back there,” he whispers. “I can’t look at them. I can’t face them. That place and all those people, and I’m going to kill them. Marco, I can’t.”
Every still-living thread of my soul is screaming at me, Take him home. Take him in your arms and hold him. Take him home and keep him safe.
But all I can say is, “You have to go.”
Some small whimper breaks from his lips, and it pulls my heart into a thousand irreparable pieces.
“Marco…”
“Birdie…”
Lips soft and tentative, so loving it might kill me, press against mine. A kiss I can’t resist or deny, that my entire being cries out for.
The word ‘don’t’ tries to eke out of me, but all the protest I can make is a small groan that tells him everything I can’t say.
‘Please kiss me.’
‘Please love me.’
‘Please tell me you’re mine.’
He feels it, hears it, slips his arms around my neck too tenderly. So tenderly I want him to squeeze the life out of me with them. I want to die here in his arms. End it all. Have him end it for me and be the last thing I see before I go.
I want to die.
But I have to survive.
My arm flings out, smashes into his, and I fling him off, whirling away.
I can feel his eyes on my back from halfway across the room. I should keep going, walk out, but he moves first. His chair scrapes against the stone floor, and this stupid protective instinct that brought me here takes over. “Sit down and wait for Evander. You can’t go anywhere like that.”
But he only staggers a few steps to the dressing table, the surface covered in makeup, glitter, all the accoutrements of the cruel show, to where a bottle of sparkling wine sits in a bucket of ice next to eight shining glasses.
As though Robin was going to have friends back to celebrate what he’s done.
He rips it out of the bucket, splashing ice water across the table, making pools in the paint that dripped from the brush when he was painted up only an hour ago.
Before he was a killer.
The bottle slips from his grasp, thudding down on the table, and I rush to steady it, to stop it from dropping and breaking on the floor.
He turns his shaking hands over, staring at his palms, gashed and bleeding. They’re a mess. And it’s so exactly like those bastards to have made those rocks so sharp.
“Fuck, Robin. Let me wrap your hands.”
The shake of his head is barely perceptible. He grabs for the bottle, and I have the flash in my mind’s eye of him twisting the top open himself, ripping his wounds apart, tearing all the skin from his palms.
I catch him at the wrist. “I’ll open it.”
Slowly, he lifts his eyes to meet mine. “We’re the same now, aren’t we?” His other hand takes hold of mine, turns it over, and he traces trembling fingers across the scar on my palm. “I’m becoming like you, aren’t I?”
I can’t tell if he meant for that to hurt. Hurt like a thousand razor blades dragging across my heart. But it does. I never want him to be anything like me. I wish there were a single thing I could do to stop it.
I pull my hand away, gently, so I don’t hurt him, and work the cork from the bottle.
“I thought of you,” he says, voice soft and strained.
I take a glass, pour the wine for him, right to the top.
“I understand.”
I don’t know what to say to him. So I only pass him the drink. He takes the glass in hand, downs the lot, then holds it out again. I fill it.