Survival Of The Fittest

…………it was much easier than she had thought.

If she had known, she would have stuck to guns earlier. Her face was blank without emotion to discern other than furrowed eyebrows.

It was almost funny. The instant she squeezed the trigger, the entire world around her became a quiet void. The only noise she could hear was the ringing in her ears and the soft thud as her feet touched the ground. A branch cracked underneath her weight, snapping her out of her stupor.

Her eyes widened once the void vanished, letting her gun fall straight to her side. Like a child crossing the street, she looked to the right and to the left, making sure that the way was clear before rushing toward Daria.

Her feet carried her to the scene, to the girl who was face first in the mud and to the other girl whose mouth was trickling chunks of blood. Willow, at first, didn’t sag anything. She had already wasted so many words for people that were already dead. Her eyes shifted to the other woman on the mud, slumped like a broken doll.

She had killed her. Willow’s face was still blank. Her eyes went back to Daria and her face didn’t change. She swallowed, hard. She moved her foot to bump Daria.

“I told you,” her voice already breaking. She squeezed a new breath through her teeth and tears. “I told you.” She repeated a second time, her facade breaking down once again. She dropped to her knees, her hands going straight to Daria’s still warm body. She tried to flip her over, but despite her sobbing and her heaving and her gagging, Daria stayed solidly stuck to the mud.

“I told you it was a bad idea!” She half-screamed, her voice caught in between two sobs. “Nobody fucking listens and they all die, why are you so stupid? How did you get this far?”

She pushed the body again, this time managing to flip it on its back. It was a body, it didn’t belong to Daria anymore. It was now the island’s, and the island’s only. Even if it was still breathing its air, the miasma had claimed her friend.

“Puh-please don't leave me,” she sneezed, “don’t leave me please, you were supposed to win, don’t leave me.”

No dialogue this time. Only darkness, illuminated by ripping thunderbolts of pain that tore up and down her spine and danced raggedly in her guts. And illuminated by all that burning agony was Chris' face, and the gun in Chris' hand.

She shot me.

After all your fine words on justice, and trust; after all your struggles to catch a monster, and break the game; it's not Blaise, not Erika, not Quinn who guns you down, not Danyuh who pulls the trigger when you call his bluff. It's Chris. Chris, who'd she never thought of as an enemy.

You're not anything else.

Daria shuts her eyes in the dirt. The darkness was a blessed relief from pain: it smothered it down, banked its fire, made everything dim and distant, even Chris' face. Darkness was better this time. She wanted to stay here.

“I told you,” said someone far away. “I told you.”

Hands fumbled on her shoulders, shaking the darkness apart so Chris was vivid in her mind's eye, stoking the fires so they burned in her belly with redoubled force. Daria winced, tried to fight off those hands, found she barely had the strength to move. Everything hurt too much.

“I told you it was a bad idea!” screamed a sobbing, half-familiar voice. “Nobody fucking listens and they all die, why are you so stupid? How did you get this far?”

Beats me. Should have died days ago. Haven't saved anyone.

Kate?

Let her walk away, twice. Didn't fight to bring her with you. Didn't fight to make her see.

Fought for her.

Fought against Erika. It's not the same.

And Will?

Suddenly she was slipped upright again, so the side of her with a knife still buried in her jarred harshly against the ground, and the pain cracked the darkness and Daria could see murky daylight burning harsh against her eyelids, and she wanted to scream.

“Puh-please don't leave me."

Wait. She knew that voice.

"Don’t leave me please, you were supposed to win, don’t leave me.”

Daria cracked open her eyes at last, saw Willow's face blurry above her. She tried to blink away tears, but the face stayed just as blurry as before.

"Fuck," Daria hissed, raising a feeble hand to her stomch, flinching away from the spaghetti-feeling of split flesh, from the wetness of her own blood. The fire burns a little hotter, and Daria's world seems a little dimmer. "This sucks."

She vaguely tried to reach up to Willow's face, but fresh fissures of pain from her wounds cure of that idea, and anyways both her hands have blood on them now. She tries to smile, but only has a vague idea of what her face looks like.

"Touch me...don't touch me...make up your mind you...tease."

The smile feels a little more genuine. What gunshot? What wound? Just Daria giving a friend a hard time.

A friend.

"Chris?" Daria asked, cocking her head a little, then winced back from the bloody, disheveled corpse nearby, shutting her eyes. She nodded, just a little. Willow wouldn't let her killer walk away, and maybe that's the other trap Daria didn't see. How the game swallows up the good intentions along with the bad. Whether a monster kills you or a hero looking for justice, all they leave is a corpse.

Another dead friend. A friend who'd killed her, the way Carrie had killed her friend. Once, days ago, they'd swum naked in the ocean, pretending for a moment this island wasn't their execution ground.

I don't want to die here.

What the fuck does it matter?

It matters. It always mattered. We were only ever choosing how to die.

"Will," Daria breathed, into Willow's chest. "Can you...help me up? I...know where I wanna go."

"No." She said simply. "You're not moving."

Willow ignored Daria's comment, she ignored the fact that her entire body was shaking, she ignored that the body next to them belonged to a girl that she had just taunted. She ignored all of that, and put her hands against Daria's chest.

"You're not moving." She repeated, "you're not moving."

She sniffed again. She'd rather bleed than cry. Willow bit the inside of cheeks. It was in vain though, Willow had simply not noticed she had been crying for the past hour. Maybe she had forgotten about it. She wasn't that good at remembering things anyways. She sniffed and sniveled.

"You're staying," she whispered, "here."

"Please, Will."

She hated the shaking in her voice.

"This isn't where...I want to die."

Her hands grasped at Willow's shoulders.

"And I can't...get there. Without you."

"Where?"

"Where?" Willow asked.

Daria smiled, and Willow helped her to her feet, and Daria told her where she wanted to go. It was okay. It was gonna be okay. She would die on her own terms. That was all she'd ever wanted, right? Whole reason she'd started this stupid plan. Willow was gonna help her out. Like Steph. Like Carrie.

Like Chris, bloody and motionless by your feet.

Fuck.

Snakes of fire writhing in her belly, biting at her with every motion. Pretending the pain wasn't blinding, pretending she couldn't feel a fatal weakness in her, spreading like a tumorous void. Clinging to Willow, burying her head against her, trying not to see, not to feel, trying to forget.

Hugging the friend who'd killed her friend. Hugging the friend who'd killed her killer.

I don't want to die.

"I'm sorry, Will," she whispered. "I'm sorry for leaving. I'm sorry I...I made you do this, I..."

It took a long time before she was ready to move. She wrapped an arm around Willow, who wrapped an arm around her. The sodden bandages around her bleeding belly pressed tight, as she limped along with the help of her bat-turned cane. But she paused a moment over Chris' body.

"I'm sorry, Chris. I'm so..."

Couldn't stop apologizing. So much to apologize for. So many people she'd failed.

"Thanks for...swimming with me."

It hadn't been far, the walk between the Leadership Circle and the Gardens. Even starving, depressed, and face-to-face with her mortality, it hadn't been far. But it was terribly far now, when ever step jarred fresh nails into her side and into her stomach. She didn't want to stop, but she couldn't help but slow a little with each step, leaning more and more on Willow as they walked.

"I've been having this argument for a few days now," Daria murmured. "About...the game. About mattering. Quinn called it...being the one. Like The Matrix. Like it...like it made you special." The corners of her lips twitched up, though her mouth was pressed so tight with effort that was as close as she could get to a smile. "Didn't...didn't think I'd have to argue the opposite with you, Will."

She had to stop after they cleared the worst of the underbrush, with the houses close by again. She wondered vaguely if this was how Tony had felt, with Aliya carrying him around long after he'd been stabbed.

Until he died in his sleep.

"I don't...really get it," Daria said. "Her. You. How you can...see the world...like that. Like...no one matters. Like...you don't matter."

They were moving again--not towards the house she'd stayed with Willow, but the house where she'd lived with Stephanie, when she still thought she might be able to win.

"Not gonna...argue with you, Will." Another twitching attempt at a smile. "Already...wore that one out. Don't wanna...drive you off."

The house is close. The door is still shut.

"No...such thing...as a zero," Daria said. "All ones. Always were. Always will be."

Just outside now. Almost over.

"Hang on."

She turns Will around to face her. She's been leaning so hard on her that she's almost forgotten she's taller than her, taller and bigger, and in spite of the pain and the storming doubt and the dark-rimmed world around her she's filled with a flash of profound gratitude. She wasn't looking for another friend. Not after Steph.

"I don't...want you to stay, okay? I don't want you to have to..."

She looks into Willow's eyes, trying to make her feel what she's feeling, clinging to her only living link to a fading world.

"I'm glad...I found you...Will."

The kiss is clumsy, feeble, fumbling, and tastes faintly of blood. For an instant, the pain recedes.

"Hope you make it."

Daria limps away from Willow, and opens the door.

(Daria Bhatia concluding in All The World's A Stage)

She bit the inside of her lips.

The bugs were swarming, all around her like a cloak of darkness trying to manifest itself through the distortion. Willow wasn't sure if any of this meant anything to anyone, but really, it meant the world to her. An entire question that had been driving her existence as a human being and as a woman had been answered in what seemed to be minutes.

It had been on her mind for, well, ever. It had been a source of guilt and anger and hatred and troubles since the dawn of her existence. It wasn't a realization that took her by surprise either. It had been building up by her interactions, by her motion, by her movement and by her emotions. It had existed within her for longer than she had guessed, probably something that preceded her actual life.

Her fingers dug, and the bugs dug with her, their little mouths clicking together. Symptoms started to appear around her like a halo. She didn't need to name them, but they existed, either within or around her. Symptoms of something bigger than Willow, something that wasn't man or woman, something that was more based on the experience.

The destruction surrounding her was now quiet. It was calm, peaceful. Willow enjoyed it. She had always been a quiet girl for a reason. She could only be relaxed in silence without the existence of others around her. The forest had gone quiet, the world had shut its mouth, and the abyss was full. Alone in this fragment of a broken universe, she spoke to herself in a quiet voice.

She wanted to win.

She nodded at herself.

Yeah.

She wanted to win.

It wasn't something that surprised her, but she wanted to win.

Probably as much as she wanted to lose, really.

She bent down again, staring at Chris' broken body. Her chin bloodied, mimicking Willow's. Another bite would do the trick, another mark against the world, another taboo broken for a goal she wasn't sure she wanted to achieve. She had started to sink in and she hadn't even notice yet.

Probably it was because of the broken soil underneath her. She didn't really care. Chris was still right here. She moved. The distance was short but so far at the same time. She had been just right there, right? She wasn't.

She didn't move. She was still on the ground next to Chris and Daria. Yeah. Daria was right here. If she opened her eyes, she would still be there. But she wouldn't, because Willow didn't follow. She simply stared after the kiss, wanting to take Daria's knife and carve her tongue out.

She hadn't. Not because she couldn't, but because she wouldn't. There was this exhaustion in her body that wasn't describable. It was something that could only be felt, not put through words or sensations. She wondered if other people here had felt it the way she did.

Willow sunk deeper into the mud. She didn't fight it. Again, she knew this wasn't real. She knew none of this wasn't happening. It didn't scare her. Maybe, it did. Just a bit. A tiny bit. Her dreams were the only place that felt real. They were peaceful, calm; nobody cared about her and she cared about nobody.