Survival Of The Fittest

The hug didn’t last long enough to Declyn’s liking but standing there for minutes like this wasn’t a current option.

Everyone else seemed rather tense, or tenser, and of course they would be. His name had been on the announcement before and now there were three more bodies beside Drew. Memories lied underneath happenstance, hope and dread sprawled on top. Declyn suffered from it. The dread and uncertainty, the dread of punishment, the dread of his own conscience. He could jump into explaining details of what had really happened but his energy.... Ooooof. For certain.

“I’m sorry. It’s not the most welcoming sight. It's—it's, well, we tried to make it look nice.” He squeezed his own hand hard, feeling his fingers crack in some places. A proper talk might be exactly what he needed, a little heart-to-heart just between two people. Now add the scenery of the field of wildflowers from prom night and it would be the perfect escape even if it wouldn't last forever.

“Your face looks better,” he said to Ivy and stepped forward to give her a hug as well, a quick but careful one since he remembered all her injuries. “Your uh eye, I mean.” He pointed at his own face where her bruise was and smiled. It was nice to see them together again, her and Myles, since that’s how it usually was.

Giving their pack mule further notice, there was a sparkle of consideration in his eyes which would leave the situation in an awkward position if he thought about it for too long. “Before you do....” So he gave Garren a hug too. His arms were caught around him on the bags but it worked. Declyn didn’t want anyone to feel left out. “The others could help you with that, if you want.” Ideally. He looked back at Jon and Emmett before it was Myles again, his expression asking now?

Now, Myles confirmed with a slight nod. It wasn't like he wanted to stand around and admire the corpses or come up with a way to say that he was happy to see Jonathan and Emmett that didn't sound like a low-effort lie. There had been distractions in the past day, but his morbid curiosity had bubbled up off and on, and he only had more questions now. Myles needed answers.

And anyway, he doubted it would be all that hard to convince Declyn that there was better company to be had than Jonathan and Emmett's sad little pow-wow over there. They all knew that Declyn was the best-armed person here, even if he hadn't already won first place for desirable company by a landslide. Their lake trip didn't have to be a total bust.

Myles turned back to Ivy and Garren. "You guys hang out here for a minute, okay?" His focus zeroed in more on Garren. "Don't let anyone take our stuff." Emmett included, obviously, he really hoped he didn't have to add out loud.

With that taken care of, Myles stepped forward again to take Declyn by the arm without really waiting for anyone else to answer and pulled him away back towards the treeline.

You guys.

He wasn't allowed to be talking about her but he looked at her anyway.

You guys hang out here.

You guys. Ivy and Garren. She had bitter words but they died fighting their way out of her throat as she stared at Myles's suddenly retreating back, not a glance back, not another word, not a sorry or a don't worry or a I'll be back soon. Nothing. She could go after him, of course, she could run, it would hurt but she could, but she was the third wheel again, but his silence spoke volumes. Declyn had killed someone, Declyn had still hugged her and she'd gone stiff and tried to smile, Declyn was still Declyn, Declyn had killed someone, Myles didn't seem to care. Myles was happy to see him. Myles was too smart to wander off with someone he didn't trust completely. Ivy was just supposed to trust Myles and she had her whole life and now that it was life or death that wasn't supposed to change and she dearly wanted to grab the back of his stupid shirt and drag him somewhere, anywhere else.

He needed this. He wouldn't forgive her if she took it from him. She wouldn't forgive him if it got him killed, either, but what use would that be?

Ivy watched the pair of them until they'd disappeared into the trees. Then, without so much as a glance toward the other two, she turned around, hooked an arm around Garren's, and dragged him bodily in the opposite direction.

A couple of weeks ago she'd probably make some exaggerated face at being forced to touch Garren for any reason. She wasn't in the right mood to find that funny at all.

Jonathan could only watch as everyone was splitting up into two pairs and that basically meant that he and Emmett were stick together. Myles and Declyn in one direction, Ivy and Garren were in the other direction. It looked like Garren and Ivy were heading towards the lake and he guessed that he had to wait until those two were done with whatever they were going to do. He was starting to feel a bit restless with just standing there and he could feel Emmett's gaze on him.

He's mad at me for what I have done. I get it. Murderers should never be put together with victims but.... I just want to remember people for who they were before they became different on the island. We're not who we really were before.

"I'm guessing that you have a lot that you would like to say to me, Emmett. I can tell by the look on your face...." He commented honestly as he found himself glancing away from Emmett and he was staring at the four bodies briefly before looking back at the other boy once again. "I think we should go on a little walk as I don't want to stand here awkwardly. Let's get going."

Jonathan then started to walk and he glanced back at the other boy, not able to give him even a reassuring smile. How could he even give Emmett something like that? Emmett had lost a lot of people that he cared about and Jonathan realized that he had felt like he hadn't lost anything. How selfish was he for even being like that?

"Well? Tell me, Emmett...."

Declyn turned the arm grab into a link and hooked his around Myles's, looking back one more time before he focused on his own steps. His eyes were droopy, the kind where it hurt when you forced to open them wider. The two of them just kept walking.

“I’m scared, Myles…,” was the first thing he said. It included a lot, the obvious, or like being this close to him now and what if someone decided to take him away the next second, someone lurking around the next corner? And in addition to that, it was a silly thought, but he missed his jacket. Now it was the shred of a holster around his waist that reminded him of it.

“Are you scared?”

Now, that was an interesting question. Putting aside the fact that Myles was supposed to be the one asking questions here.

Was he scared? Sure, in a primal sort of way. He'd been scared more immediately too, when Tonya tackled him off the pier, when Brandon had a blade to his neck. He absently scratched at his bandages as he was reminded of them. He should probably change those soon.

"I guess," he said. "I don't... know how I wouldn't be, really. But it's not something I can think about constantly, you know?" Myles thought that Declyn might get it. He seemed like the kind of person who understood that feeling so much all the time was just exhausting.

"...Are you scared someone's going to come after you?" He asked as the trees closed in around them, seeming to muffle outside sound.

He could guess. For Drew, maybe. One of their other mutual friends wanting to know why Declyn had done it. Myles wanted to know too.

For one of the others laying out there? Maybe, but Cecil barely had friends, Lorenzo had killed three or four people by now, and Adonis...

Well.

Myles wasn't about to go on a vengeance quest for Adonis any time soon, at least.

Declyn nodded and gave half of a shrug with his free arm.

"That too, I guess...." Sometimes you wanted to ask the obvious questions. He suddenly shook his head a little and looked frustrated, frowning. Not at Myles, just the overall.

"Actually. Not even that much. I was with Cam and Theo. And now... Emmett keeps talking about giving up and, and was ready to shoot himself in the head. I understand him more than ever. I think that’s one of the things that scares me the most.”

Was he ready to give up?

“You want to know what happened, right? Though I wish we could talk about weird ice cream flavors.”

"Yeah," was all Myles could say to that right away. He had several follow-up questions, like which Cam, and what happened to her and Theo, and why didn't Declyn just let Emmett shoot himself if Emmett wanted to that badly, but he kept quiet for a moment, absorbing it all.

He didn't like Declyn's tone. They were still standing with arms linked, and pulling away felt like it would change the dynamic enough to ruin whatever was left of the short-lived pleasant feeling of seeing each other again. Myles frowned at nothing in particular and slipped his free hand into the pocket of his jeans.

He was somewhat surprised when his fingers touched warm metal. The lipstick gun. He'd taken it out of his jacket when he finally gave up the battle to keep wearing it in the heat, and he'd forgotten for a while that he had moved the gun to his pants pocket instead. He curled his fingers around it on reflex to have something to hold.

"Did you kill Adonis?" He asked finally. Then, "What kind of ice cream counts as 'weird', anyway?"

Emmett just looked at the ground as he walked with Jon. In hindsight, Jon and Declyn should have just left him there. The guilt of that would be nothing compared to the guilt they’d soon feel, not like it’d matter.

“Wanna know what I’m thinking about?”

He looked Jon in the eyes.

“You said you wanted me around, because you trust me, and because I can help make sure someone who deserves it should go home. You gave me a purpose, and I thought about it, and well...”

God, everyone he ever knew would hate him for this. Sapphire, Emil, Cecil, Demetri... all those people who died to give him another chance, they’d hate him for what he’s about to say, even more for what he decided to do. But he had to. In the end, he was right.

“Who actually deserves to go home now? The only people left are killers, victims, or bystanders. People are either going to kill, die, or watch, and that’s that. Nobody who’s going to help anyone will make it to the end, this game doesn’t allow it.”

He stopped in place, gripping his rifle tight.

“I’m gonna play. I’m going to play, and then win, and then take myself out. There’s no triumph to this shit, no heroes. There’s only suffering and I’m going to put an end to it. You gave me purpose, you stopped me from taking myself out.”

He stared at Jon. “If you still believe that there’s any chance some good can come from this, then you stop me. If not, then I’m going to walk away, and I’m going to kill everyone I see until I make it to the end, or until someone takes me out.”

“I’m done playing pretend.”

“I did not.” His fingers tapped against Myles’s arm in a fast but steady rhythm. He hoped he didn’t mind. He didn’t want to let go.

“There was a fight between Cecil and Adonis after Adonis took me away from the others, uhm, Camilla and Theo. We had just found Diego too! But I didn’t get to talk to him.” The corners of his mouth sunk. “Adonis was out of his mind. Like— like a different kind of giving up. You see something or someone and snap. And you're just done. I tried to help but there was nothing I could do. Emmett took care of Adonis.”

And boy was there so much red.

“When I shot Drew...” There it was again, the fingernails digging into own hand on the other side, the shaky voice. “... he, too, gave up. It doesn’t sound very fair when I say it that way though. He was dying, literally dying from a wound. He asked me to... just end it for him.”

Because that’s what best friends do, yeah? It was too late.

“...Did you know there’s lobster ice cream?? Lobster. I wouldn’t want any in mine, but I’d still eat it,” he admitted guiltily.

“Hey, be honest...”

“Do you think I’m strong enough?”

"Gross." Myles's expression pinched, twisting into something approaching disgust. Both at the explanation of just what had happened with Adonis and lobster ice cream.

He'd had lobster before. Dinner at Amatore's. Ivy had wanted to go out somewhere, just the two of them, her treat. He didn't remember why. He hadn't liked the taste of lobster, but he'd said that he did. It was expensive enough to make his skin crawl.

His skin was crawling now. He heard what Declyn was saying, but he just kept thinking of Ivy that morning. So different from the Ivy that had taken him out to dinner and thoughtlessly dropped more money than he could keep track of that they might as well be different people.

"Well. I wouldn't have been mad even if you had killed Adonis." An insect buzzed by Myles's ear, and he jerked away, almost knocking his head into Declyn's. He let out a harsh, frustrated breath. Probably gave Declyn a good whiff of how his mouth smelled after a week without toothpaste too, but whatever.

"I'm glad he's dead."

There it was. The kind of thing you couldn't take back. Recorded on camera, too. Was it the truth? Didn't matter.

Myles had decided early on that he'd be sad when Adonis eventually died, but that had been a different person too.

...No. Not really. People never really changed like that. Adonis had always been waiting to snap, and Emmett had always been looking for a reason to get rid of him. That made sense.

He didn't know if Declyn's question made sense. He wasn't sure he wanted it to.

"If I say yes," Myles said slowly, "will you believe me?" He let the question hang for a second and then continued, suddenly frantic to not let it take on too much weight. "You can just ditch Jonathan and Emmett, you know. If they've- given up."

He squeezed Declyn's arm, barely aware that he was doing it. "I ran into Jonathan on the first day, did he tell you? He's a moron. Someone attacked me and tried to take my stuff, and he didn't even believe me. He didn't believe any of this was really happening." He'd brought up the first part so many times now, he had almost forgotten that it was a lie.

"And Emmett never liked you anyway. You shouldn't stick around him. You can come with us instead, and we can forget any of this happened." Forget they even had to have this conversation. It would be fine.

“Gross, like your breath.”

Yes, it had hit him in the face. Declyn added in a mumble and almost chuckled, but Myles’s words shot that chuckle down rather fast.

Even if Adonis had hurt or scared him, had killed Cecil... hmmm, he had ended his life, huh... And not in a pretty way either. Perhaps in the ugliest way. Declyn ran off the track in his mind while his hand slid down Myles’s arm to intertwine with his fingers.

“Look, there are people here that... I don’t like, sure. It’s hard to forgive Adonis but I’m not happy about what happened. At all. Before, he mentioned that he felt bad about not seeing you again.” Keeping his hand in his grasp, he moved forward to face him.

What was with the bandage around Myles’s neck? Who had hurt him? The someone who had tried to take his stuff? His eyes moved back and forth between his face and neck before they locked onto their hands.

“Jonathan can be a weirdo. He hasn’t told me much, not a word about you. We had an accident where we fell down a slope the time when it was raining really hard and I ended up with these.” He twisted his bandaged arms slightly. They still weren’t necessary. “We can also keep an eye on Emmett. Can’t we all stick together? What are we gonna do if we leave them?”

He swallowed hard. His mouth felt dry. Well, was he strong enough?

“If you say yes I will ask again until I can make myself believe it. I think I’m at my limit..."

Declyn was trying, okay? He was trying to be there for all of them because that's what he wanted to do.

"I don't— I just don't know.”

Well. Uh. He sure as hell hadn’t expected that.

“But what does ‘that’ refer to in this context, Garren,” you might ask, well how about fucking everything that had occurred in the past three minutes. He’d thought Myles and Declyn would just… wander off immediately to commiserate together, or celebrate the fact they’d found one another, or whatever it was that friends did when they’d been separated for too long. Declyn hugging Ivy, okay, yeah, sure that made sense, they were friends and shit.

Declyn hugging him? Yeah, he couldn’t have predicted that one, not in a million fucking years.

He really wasn’t sure what to do when Declyn wrapped his arms around him. The last person he’d ever hugged had been his mom, which simultaneously felt pathetic to realise and also sent a dull stabbing sensation right into his heart, cause… cause, fuck, man, he’d barely thought about his parents since he’d first woken up out here, but goddamnit they had to be fucking heartbroken right now because they loved him and supported him, even though he didn’t deserve it for a goddamn second.

So he distracted himself by awkwardly looping his arms around Declyn to return the brief hug.

It felt… good, all things considered. He could have stayed like that for way longer. Even after Declyn had let him go and wandered off into the trees with Myles, it still felt like some part of the stress he’d been carrying since day one had wandered off with them, and he was pretty damn glad to see the back of it.

It couldn’t last, of course, but Ivy taking hold of his arm and practically frogmarching him down towards the lake took him out of the moment way quicker than he would have liked. He didn’t really have a chance to argue against it, though, or to be like “hey weren’t Emmett and Jon supposed to, like, hold some of these fucking bags”. It was taking most of his strength to stay upright and avoid the rocks and roots that were looking to trip him up and send him flying, after all.

A few breathless moments, and some muttered protestations and gravel in his shoes, later, they reached the lake. Ivy let him go, and Garren dug his feet into the soft earth to come to a halt, the momentum almost sending him toppling forwards into the water, which, to be fair, would have been fucking hilarious for everybody involved except for himself.

He took a few deep breaths, exhaled for a couple seconds, then scratched the back of his neck. So, once again…. The fuck did he do here? He highly doubted that Ivy was going to profess that she was madly in love with him and fling off her clothes in a fit of passion (which, look, he wouldn’t complain about, she was attractive and he was, well, Garren Fucking Mortimer). Did she wanna talk about something, away from the eyes of everybody else?

Nah, more likely she just needed some kinda distraction and he just happened to be the closest body at hand. Go him.

Well, whatever. Being a distraction was a step up from being a luggage trolley.

“So, uh…” he started, slowly, turning to look at Ivy and jostling the bags by shrugging his shoulders. “Should I, uh… keep holding these? Or am I good to put ‘em down?”

Declyn didn't get it. Right? That's all it was, wasn't it? He was still holding onto some hope that everyone could just hold hands and sit in a little circle and sing kumbaya and someone would eventually come to save all the good boys and girls. Even Myles, who had an Olympic gold in mental gymnastics, hadn't been able to hold onto that fantasy for more than a few minutes. He'd decided right at the beginning that it would be stupid to try.

"If we leave them, they're not our problem, and we're not gonna worry about it anymore," Myles said flatly. He didn't care about what Declyn was telling him about the others, trying to make them human in his eyes or whatever. He had never cared about them. He was already letting one person whose existence he barely cared about tag along with them, and that should have been enough. Here he was trying to get someone he actually liked to come along, and Declyn just kept coming back around to the idea that he'd already given up.

The thing was. Myles loved Ivy. He didn't, couldn't love anyone else. He and Declyn had a good thing, but they had never pretended to love each other or that there was anything in the future for them besides being friends with occasional benefits. And that had been all fine and good, there had been no problems with that, but.

Myles was already giving so much of himself. Maybe it didn't look like it, maybe people wouldn't believe it, but he was. He had to keep Ivy going until- something. Until something came along. He could only do that for her because he loved her. He couldn't do it for anyone else.

"Just say you believe me," he muttered. "Say it and ditch those guys and come with us, and we don't have to talk about it anymore." Please.

"But I AM gonna worry about it."

Declyn didn't raise his voice but emphasized his words carefully. That was his problem, if you saw it that way. He cared too much. The disadvantage of always understanding people was that you cared more about others and eventually forgot about yourself. You couldn't leave anyone be like an empty bench at a park and throw away all your compassion.

And now he faced a conflict, a dilemma, because he liked Myles a lot.

"I'm tired…."

Declyn put his hand on Myles's other upper arm and leaned his head against his shoulder.

"I don't believe you," he whispered.