Survival Of The Fittest

Go.

Go.


She froze, for a moment, not long enough to matter, just long enough to catch Myles's eyes over Julien's shoulder. He didn't move. Neither could she.

She could still run away. He'd know which way she'd gone. He'd find her.


The smell of sick hung heavy in the air. Something was wrong with Julien's leg. It didn't matter. Stop thinking.

He couldn't run after them. They could run! They could.


She ran.


She wanted to yell something but she didn't trust her vocal cords to function. Her approaching footsteps were enough to get Julien to turn around, anyway.

The wind was still blowing toward him. She saw the knife in his hands and almost doubled back but she managed to get within five feet before she held her perfume bottle of bleach up and sprayed.


Please work.

"Proud? You think I'm proud of any of this shit?"

It was right about then that Ivy actually showed up and did something, and so Julien turned around to be greeted by a faceful of... whatever it was, he couldn't really say he cared, because it burned like nothing fucking else and he was too busy bursting into a coughing fit, moving out of range and being grateful that he'd managed to shut his eyes in time to prevent the worst.

Had he?
It wasn't easy to tell, since he couldn't see anything either way and all he could feel in his face was searing and pain.

That wasn't the worst of it either. Something caught at a bad angle under his leg, the one that didn't have a chunk torn out of it and which he really needed to stay in one piece and working well, and down he went like a sack of bricks. He managed to catch his fall easily enough, sure, a long time's worth of experience making it something he could do more or less in his sleep, but he was still grounded and unbalanced, the coughing was getting more violent and inducing some kind of nightmarish feedback loop with the burning. He did have worse concerns though.

Namely, the knife that had been in his hands up until a moment ago and now was, well, not. Blinded, floored and disarmed, then.




Hmm. He was still curious to see what she did with it, almost despite himself.

"N- hn," something that could only be blood was welling up in his mouth, and he spat a glob of it out, "not bad."

There wasn't anything else.

There was supposed to be more of a plan here, she'd had plenty of time to come up with one, she just hadn't because his words had shut down every part of her brain that could do more than just move. "Spray Julien in the face," step one, good job, success, whatever, now what? Run? It was wide open, now. Even with as slow as she was, even with the reigniting of the pain in her side from her dash to get to Julien before he noticed her, he was down, should stay down for a little while. He'd closed his eyes though, hadn't he? She wasn't sure if he'd managed in time. He could be up any second. Maybe it wasn't good enough.

Maybe it wasn't good enough for her, anyway.

The knife had gone spinning out of his hands. Myles was coming, she saw out of the corner of her eye, they could be gone so fast, but she looked down at Julien again and suddenly, suddenly, her foot wound up and dug into his ribs.

"Fuck you—"

Thud.

"you fucking—"

Thud.

"psycho—"

Thud.

No snap. She dearly wanted a snap. She remembered the snap under her own skin, under his own boots and his own sneer, she remembered the sound of her scream too well, she'd had strong enough legs but her shoes were flimsy and her body was as starved as it had ever been. Thud, again, she wanted to stand here and keep going until he broke, "not bad," he said, fuck you forever and ever, she didn't say, she was hurting herself nearly as much as she hurt him, her side cried out for rest. She couldn't do it. She wasn't strong enough.

The knife had gone spinning out of his hands.

Ivy—


the knife. She had the knife.

She looked at Julien, wild-eyed, and up at Myles, she could break him all she wanted. She was shaking so hard she could see the knife move. Eyes still blurry with tears, she just had to hate him more, right? He was still coughing. He had nothing. He had nothing. She had all the advantages in the world for this one fucking moment and she did, she hated him so much.

She had to end this now or she'd be terrified forever. She knew that.

But she still stared helplessly at Myles, as though waiting for instruction.

"He… fuck," another glob of blood spat out into the grass. Those kicks hadn't broken anything, but Ivy had made a concerted effort to, he'd give her that, and it did hurt alright. He was just too much for how weakened she was, and he'd been through worse anyway.

"You aren't always going to, ah, have a crutch, y'know?" Julien sat up a little straighter. It was still searing away at him, straining his voice as he tried his best to breathe through a throat that felt like a pinhole and making him burst into coughing fits, but she had to be shown the things she was just short of seeing once more. Besides, if she went through with it, he wouldn't be hurting for much longer. "And if you've still got to look to him after what I did... hate to break it to you, but you just don't have it in you to use that. Not yet."

Shut. Up. Shut up!

He had no right to speak to her that way, or at all. He had no right to speak to anyone. Julien was a monster, and he deserved to-

To-

Myles couldn't move. He wanted to puke. He wanted to cry. Why couldn't he move!? Why was Ivy looking at him like that, like he was supposed to know what to do!? She was supposed to tell him what to do!

He already had a knife. It was right there in his belt. Julien was on the ground. Julien was a monster. Nobody would miss him. Myles had thought about this. Not this, specifically, but this sort of situation. He'd been turning it over and over in his mind ever since he and Adonis had encountered their mystery assailant in the village, and it had been forming vaguely before even then.

Who would everyone be better off without? Who would nobody miss? The answers to those two questions weren't always the same, as frustrating as that was. But there was a sweet spot in there, and wouldn't you know it, Julien was right in the middle of that little overlap. Nobody could justifiably come after them if they went through with it. Not for him.

They could do it. They would be right to do it.

If Ivy could just tell him, Myles thought that he could step forward and do it. He wouldn't even have to look, really. It would be easy. It had been easy for Adonis.

He could have almost begged her.

All she had to do was know what she knew.

That she hated him, yes, that she hated him more than anyone else, now, more than she could imagine ever hating anyone, for what he'd said, for what he'd done, for what he could have done, for what he'd thought about doing, for what he might have done—all of it, sin on top of sin. Who could argue? Who would complain? He was a murderer. She could cry self-defense, if she needed to, and no one would doubt her, and was it even actually a lie? Attacking him at all had certainly felt like a reasonable precaution, escalation was just—

Just.

Something. Just something. Myles stared back at her and she wanted to stamp her foot and yell at him to say something but she didn't actually want to do that, because he hadn't done anything wrong, and she just needed someone to fucking tell her it was okay even though she knew it was, and she shouldn't need anyone's approval, this was hers her moment her knife all she had to do was hate him more and she did she did she did she did but she just saw maggots again when she closed her eyes


She didn't know if she could hate anyone that much.


Ivy wanted to say something clever. At the very least she wanted to spit in his face that her best friend wasn't a fucking crutch but that was far more words than she trusted her trembling lips to form properly and more respect than anything he said deserved, anyway. She'd hurt him, and he was still talking because he wanted to feel like he'd won, and that was all, and she didn't have to listen anymore. She didn't have to, but she kept hearing, and he was right, wasn't he, she couldn't, could she? The knife kept shaking.

She knew she couldn't, but he had to be wrong. They had to go, and he couldn't follow.

The knife trembled.

She held her breath.



Crunch.



His hand twitched under the deluge of blood.

Her foot came down.







She ran, not allowing herself to stop to vomit until they were out of Julien's sight.


>> Ivy Langley continued in Crime and Punishment

Myles squealed when Ivy drove the knife through Julien's hand. He couldn't help it, and he clapped his hands back over his mouth as soon as the noise escaped. His stomach lurched, and he jerked around, turning his face away from the sight before nausea got the better of him.

Despite everything, it was probably the most visceral violence that he'd watched unfold right in front of him. Tonya and the guy back in the village had hit him from behind. Tristan had- Adonis had lost it when Myles wasn't looking.

And now, when he wasn't looking for a few moments, Ivy had disappeared back into the trees.

Still, she wouldn't get far before he caught up. There was a brief, disturbingly satisfying mental image of bringing the heel of his Doc Marten boot down on Julien's crotch. There was another, fainter thought of what else he could do with a couple of minutes. But then the thought itself made his stomach turn again, and Myles instead turned his back on Julien fully and took off in the direction that Ivy had fled without any further parting shot.

It wasn't that he had nothing left to say, but that Julien wasn't worth the words. That was what he'd tell himself.

((Myles Roux continued in Crime and Punishment))

It wasn't really possible for him to measure how much time passed before he left, with the pain and the bleach leaving him light-headed and smearing a dull blur over his thoughts.

Another maiming on the list, and yet all Ivy had really managed was to do the shittiest thing possible. Simply running away would have been a better answer; so would killing him. But putting the knife through his hand of all the places? Petty spite, that was all. Not something that would do her any good when one of the friendly neighborhood psychopaths came looking for another stepping stone on the path to freedom.

For a moment, he debated pulling it out of his hand. But... yeah, it felt more she'd gone to stomp down on it, not kick it. So while it hurt like hell and there was still blood oozing out from the edges of the ragged hole punched through his hand, it wasn't as bad as it could have been. One so very tiny little thing to be happy about at least, because his plate was too fucking full as it was.

So once his hand was free from its place pinned to the earth and he was finally on his shaky legs again, Julien took the branch he'd dropped and stumbled off half-blind in a direction he hoped would take him away from there, the faintly scattering trail of red left behind him marking his path.

[ Julien Leblanc continued in Dress For Success. ]