Survival Of The Fittest

The gun clattered onto his face, struck his cheekbone before falling by the wayside. His shrapnel wounds ached anew, but it didn’t matter.

He was alive.

He jumped onto Morgan, sending the two of them tumbling onto the ground, Diego on top. Once they landed, he pulled back his fist and punched him repeatedly, slamming Morgan’s head into the ground over and over and over and over and

As the force of Diego's charge lifted him off of the ground, all Morgan could think of was a line from an old movie he'd once seen; speaking of the perks of having a hefty weapon.

Heavy is good, heavy is reliable. If it does not work, you can always hit them with it.

The gun in that movie hadn't worked, neither had his. Whatever bullshit the previous owner had done to the pistol; Claudeson or Tyrell or whomever they'd killed to get it, they'd cursed him with a defective piece of merchandise. He was an idiot, though.

Who throws a pistol at someone?

Morgan didn't have time to think on that particular quandary before his body hit the ground, his injured ribs and wounded leg screaming in protest as Diego thrashed on top of him. He felt the boy's hands grasp the sides of his head and —

"OW, FUCK! Goddamnit," stars exploded into his vision as the back of his head smashed against the ground. Grinding his teeth with the pain, he took both of his hands and clapped at Diego's ears, immediately flailing his fists at his attacker to try and shift their momentum.

A ringing faded in and out of Diego’s hearing, a flickering static filled his vision, but yet he carried on.

He’d almost given his life up just like that, without even a whimper. He’d almost thrown his life away to this fucking wimp.

Diego’s teeth pressed against each other, it felt like they’d break. He stared daggers at Morgan, pressed his hands into Morgan’s skull. Kept on lifting his head up and smashing it into the ground again and again.

The beating continued.

Whatever blows he managed to strike against his assailant didn't stop the jerking of his head, up and down on the ground. The stars clouding his vision were starting to remind him more and more of the kick to the head that had downed him on the very first day. What had he vowed — he wouldn't be a victim anymore; so now he was just letting this little psycho beat him to death?

The emphasis was on little.

As the back of his head crashed down on the ground once more, something clicked in Morgan's mind: he was a lot bigger than his assailant. Reaching up with his left hand, he grasped the strap around Diego's neck — was that a fucking grenade launcher?! — pulled it towards him and with as much force as he could muster from his prone position, hauled off and slugged him right in the mouth.

The flickering static flooded, the earth rammed against him, copper registered on his taste buds. Diego felt something dangling in the side of his mouth, he wasn’t sure what, the world felt so confusing right now.

There was a weight on top of him, suddenly. Morgan stared into him. His fist was raised.

Morgan's ears rang, the repeated smashing of his head on the ground having done wonders for his equilibrium. Were there a doctor anywhere in sight, he was all but certain that he had another concussion diagnosis in his future. On the plus side, his last-ditch effort had worked and he'd turned the tables on his assailant. No longer the victim; never again.

It was something that he kept swearing to himself; it only felt right to let everyone else know it too.

"I won't," his fist cracked against the side of Diego's head; his knuckles hurt.

Shaking his hand out, fire coursed through his veins. Morgan socked him in the jaw. "Be."

"A victim," he punched the small boy again, blood splattered across his shirt.

"Any."

Another punch.

"More!"

His hand throbbed from the unfamiliar feeling so instead of giving Diego another punch, Morgan reared back and slapped him across the face as hard as he could. The things he said about Henry, the mentality that he had - Morgan wanted to make sure that Diego felt every ounce of pain that he had inflicted upon others.

Upon him.

thud

His cheek cracked.

thud

Some teeth came loose.

thud

The daylight stars brightened.

thud

And after it all, a light laughter, gurgled, emanated from Diego's throat. His eyes gleamed at Morgan's through swollen eyelids.

"Victim?" Flecks of blood spat out. "You started this."

Through it all, his hand patted along the ground, grasping.

Diego didn't know what the hell he was talking about. In the classic example of someone who valued their own life above all else, he assumed that Morgan was talking to him. His right fist screamed from all of the abuse he was doling out, the adrenaline likely the only reason that his head hadn't instructed him to take a very necessary — and very fatal — nap. Some of Diego's blood got on his pants; that fact annoyed him and Morgan hauled off and slugged him again.

"Shut up," once more, he shook his hand out. Having never been in a fight, he was unprepared for how much it hurt to strike someone. Certainly there was a proper way to do it, but it was a lesson he'd never learned, he'd never needed to.

It was true of this place, then. It turned people into mere shells of themselves, altering them forever and making them do unspeakable things. As he looked down at the beaten boy before him, Morgan sneered, the anger in his heart fueling a rage that he didn't even know he possessed.

For most of his stay in Survival of the Fittest, Morgan had felt like the pixelated orange cat on his shirt. Right now?

He was the alien.

"You started this when you decided murder was a good idea. I'm just going to fucking finish i—"

Whatever Diego had in his hand, Morgan didn't see it coming; it impacted the side of his head and hard, sending him tumbling off of Diego and to the ground.

Goosebumps raised along Diego's skin as the gun crashed against Morgan's head. He wanted to knock all his teeth out, make his tongue bleed, shut him up forever, but that would take too long, he wanted to finish the goddamn thing now.

He pushed himself up, and the ground felt wavy, the stars refused to blink out. Still, he glanced over Morgan; he was dazed but not out. Diego had a few seconds at most.

He turned around around, pulled the trigger.

click

click

clickclickclick

Fucking jammed.

It was okay. It was okay. He had another gun, it was just nearby. He turned around, head tilted down. His eyes scanned over the ground next to the boulder, looking for the gun Ty's gun where was the gun not on the ground not to the left not to the right where was the fucking gun where did he drop his fucking gun?

Grass shuffled behind him, feet scuffing on bare dirt. Time up.

He ran off, as fast as he could away from Morgan, steps uncertain, momentum carrying him more than anything else. He'd left his bag near a tree, Marceline's gun near a tree, as long as he got to the bag, the gun, he would win this, it'd be fine, as long as he could orient himself—

Son of a bitch; the little shit had hit him with his own gun.

It had taken a few moments to shake the cobwebs from his head after he'd received yet another blow to his head, and by the time he had, Diego had tried and failed to shoot him with the Walther and was limping away in search of something.

He may not have been moving very quickly, but Morgan knew exactly what Diego was looking for and he'd be damned if he let him find it. Picking himself up off of the ground, Morgan unsteadily moved towards Diego, closing the gap rather quickly. Hurling himself at the smaller boy was a risk, but allowing him to find whatever other weapons were at his disposal would be disastrous.

His flying tackle sent the two of them to the ground once more, the jammed Walther tumbling from Diego's grasp. Morgan wasn't about to make the same mistake twice, so he scrambled to his right, grabbed the fallen pistol and delivered his receipt.

The pistol made a fleshy smack as Morgan smashed the butt of the gun into Diego's nose with a sickening crack that turned his stomach. He bit his lip; what came next was liable to be even worse.

His nose erupted in pain, he took in a sharp gasp, it made the pain worse. Everything hurt now.

Blood flowed freely down his nose, his throat, he breathed through his mouth instead.

He couldn't let him win. He refused to let him win. He'd done so much he'd been through so much.

He tried to lift his head up, but energy escaped him. He fell back down with a thud.

The edge awaited him just a few yards away, the waves crashing against the cliffs below. They sounded so close.

What was next, anyhow? Diego had gone down — for the count, it seemed — and Morgan knew that the time was coming at which he would have to take the one action that ran contrary to all of the beliefs that he'd ever had. He wasn't a fighter; this particular scrum had made that painfully clear, relying upon weapons and his own survival instinct to try and stay alive. The rules of engagement didn't matter here, and perhaps only the size disparity between the two boys left Morgan standing when it was all said and done.

That, and a well-placed pistol-whip.

Grunting as he pushed off the ground to try and get himself back to his feet, his shin felt like it was on fire. Looking down at it, he saw that his whole pant-leg was soaked through in red blood, his vital fluid continuing to leak down out of his old shoe. Just looking at the wound brought the pain back to the forefront of his mind. He needed to finish this. Diego would pay for what he had done to Henry; the time was at hand.

The faint crashing of the waves reminded him of a long-ago family trip; seeing the coast while in Florida and hearing the sounds of the ocean. They had been calming and awe-inspiring then. Now, they only reminded him of his own mortality. Yet as he glanced around the area for some sort of functional weapon, it wasn't a particular object that he finally settled on. No, it was a spot.

Morgan then understood what came next.

Reaching down, he grabbed Diego by the grenade launcher strap, still wrapped around his neck. The boy's dead weight wasn't much; lifting him even with a sharp pain shooting up his leg was easy. The grenade launcher was cumbersome and unwieldy; Morgan wrenched the weapon off of Diego and threw it to the ground. Without it, he looked innocent, just like a kid.

They were all just kids, once.

Taking a few steps forward, Morgan headed towards the sheer drop at the edge of the cliff. It was the only way; the only thing that made sense. Limping forward a few steps, he stopped and tossed Diego towards the edge, watching as the boy tumbled just short. It was time for the boy to learn one last hard lesson, the conclusion of his murderous time in Survival of the Fittest.

Morgan was going to teach Diego how to fly.

His left arm hung off the edge. The sea breeze chilled it to the core. That tingling he'd feel in his hands just looking at heights, he felt all over now. A few more inches to the left would send him plunging hundreds of feet towards the ocean.

The waves sounded so loud now. They could've been raucous applause, acclaiming the end of the show Diego had given them. Mocking, barking laughter. Growling, rumbling, a stomach waiting for a meal. It had tried to claim him when he first woke up. After everything he'd done to try to satisfy it, surpass it, it still wanted to take him.

The pain, too, came in waves, emanating from all the new and old wounds opened up in his face. It engulfed him, made it hard to breath. He looked through squinted, swollen eyes at the sky, at all the daylight stars twinkling. The very sight made him nauseous. He was confused. He was scared.

Footsteps came closer next to him.

Stopping only a few feet from the battered boy in front of him, Morgan closed his eyes and took a deep breath. It served a dual purpose; his equilibrium was still off from the numerous shots to the head that he'd taken at Diego's hands and his nerves were racing at the thought of picking the small boy up and chucking him off of the precipice. Outside of the crashing of the waves far below and Diego's haggard breathing, it was quiet. He was about to become the very thing that he condemned, the very person that he'd vowed to hunt down and remove from existence. The words were out there for Aurelien and for Henry, more so that the two boys wouldn't leave him behind; Morgan never actually intended to hurt anyone, let alone kill them.

Circumstances had led them here, where intention didn't matter anymore. Only action did.

Maybe that had been why Henry had left, what he was trying to tell them when he'd died. For hours, Morgan had rolled those final words around in his head, trying to make some sense of what his friend had been saying. It had been important, whatever it was. Important enough that Henry had stopped and had needed to say it via walkie-talkie. It couldn't have waited until he got back.

Listen, there's a moment when everything—

Holy shit. Morgan straightened up, standing before Diego's barely moving body as the realization hit him. That had been it. Henry wasn't coming back. It made perfect sense. The way that he'd reacted when Aurelien had brought up killing Blaise had done something to his friend's mind, to the point that when he had stormed off, it seemed far smarter to just let him go. It hadn't mattered that Henry had already killed someone. That in and of itself had seemed to stay with the boy until the moment of his death, a dark passenger that he couldn't shake.

As he looked down on Diego, bloody and beaten and about to die, Morgan finally understood.

"It was me," he finally broke the silence that had washed over them. "I was on the other end of the walkie-talkie."

Diego barely acknowledged him with anything but a haggard grunt; they were only words to him.

"I know you don't fucking care, but Henry wasn't a threat to you. He was opting out; that was what he was trying to tell us. I get it now."

Morgan took an uneasy step towards Diego.

"Listen, there's a moment when everything," he paused, only continuing once the shiver had finished running down his spine, "comes into focus and you understand what's really important. Survival without integrity is, it's nothing. Surviving just to say that you did isn't really worth shit."

The pieces continued to fall together.

"At the end of the day, if you get out, so what? If you can't look yourself in the mirror, then it wasn't worth it. If the people in your life — people like Henry or Michael, or — or Lizzie — if they would be ashamed of you carrying on their memories and their hopes and staying alive in their name, then what the hell's the point?"

Lizzie would have been okay with what he was about to do. Lizzie, more than anyone else, would have wanted him to persevere. She had been through a lot in her lifetime, the moments that they were able to spend together in her final weeks had been full of joy for both of them. Yet Morgan knew that she had been forced to overcome some things about herself that she had deeply disliked in order to reach that point. Hell, he'd seen that side of her with his own eyes and it hadn't been attractive.

Not like the person she'd blossomed into.

"There isn't one," he answered his own question. Diego wasn't going to offer at anything he was saying; by the look of his face, Morgan wasn't even sure he could anymore. The words weren't even really for him, they were more for Morgan. For his own peace of mind. Besides, it was time. Time to end the boy's suffering and begin to endure a different kind of his own.

Morgan wasn't sure his conscience was up to the task.

The cliff face was mere feet away now, he stopped just in front of Diego. The boy had stopped moving or making sounds; was he already dead? No, he saw the telltale rise and fall of his chest. Fate wouldn't let him off that easily. His head still spun, his leg still bled and every inch of his body screamed in pain. He didn't want to do what came next, but he knew there wasn't a choice.

"Now come on, you have a flight to catch."

Whenever nervous, Morgan was always equipped with the ability to make a bad joke and this? This one was one of his worst. It didn't make him feel good, either; he regretted saying it immediately as he leaned over and reached for one of Diego's arms.

He didn't feel like it.

With the other arm, he reached over and dug his fingers into Morgan's shin wound.