Survival Of The Fittest

Matthew hadn't noticed her movements or the icepick it seemed.

His face-to-face with Marshall went well too. No violence erupted and he went back to pulling pieces of metal out of his body. California let out a breath she'd been holding and moved slightly closer, placing a hand on the dining table. Matthew gave Marshall the rundown of his actions, this time relegating Ren to merely being one of Katelyn's friends. California pulled a face at that but didn't say anything straight away, instead opting to let Matthew finish his story.

Matthew didn't ask Marshall about the note on the door, or why Marshall looked so bad. California wasn't surprised by that. As she ran her eyes over the new arrival she stopped on his hand. Her eyes went wide as she saw the damage that had been inflicted upon it. Two lonely fingers, lamenting the loss of their brethren. His face was also red like he had been sunburned, although California knew that wouldn't have been the issue. Marshall asked if Matthew needed any more help with first aid and Matthew brushed the offer away before California could herself.

She put more weight on the table as she leaned forward, analyzing Marshall before finally pursing her lips and pushing a chair out with her foot.

"Want to sit?" She asked, "I can take a look at your bandages."

As recently as yesterday, Marshall would have responded to Matthew’s loud, potentially blasé confession with pointing, shouting and a demand for an explanation. But right now, the confession just swamped Marshall with another wave of exhaustion.

“I do need to sit down.”

He half-collapsed into the seat that California had kindly pushed out for him.

“Thank you. The bandages are fresh, but I don’t think I did them very well. There’s also glass in my scalp, I… think.” Marshall put his damaged hand out. “I might not have made it back to town if there hadn’t been a...” His throat stuck at the word ‘body’ and he said, “...bag. Body. It was a body. But it… some of the bandages and the windbreaker were still there… Oh, my supplies are upstairs, though, I can pay you back--”

His mouth was moving on its own until that point, spilling surface-level concerns to California as his brain ticked over ‘killed one of Katelyn’s friends.’ Matthew hadn’t been on the announcements… which friend had--

All of a sudden, the possibilities rammed into his head and Marshall sat up straight, pulling his hand back just an inch as he stared at Matthew.

“Kai. Did you kill Kai?”

While Cali and Marshall did their own thing, the good doctor — or whatever you could call her — deciding to take a look at his wounds, Matthew briefly gave him a once-over now he was sure there wasn't a threat coming from him. Dude was fucked up worse than him, worse than Corbin maybe. Missing fingers, blood all over him, a wind-breaker with disturbingly familiar numbers on it... eh, Matthew would say it's about equal. At least he could walk.

"JESUS DUDE, THE FUCK HAPPENED TO YOU? YOU RUN INTO SOME DUDE WITH A MACHETE OR SOME SHIT?" The numbers were bugging Matthew. He'd seen them before, he mused as he pulled out a little chunk of metal, one of a few remaining pieces of shrapnel in his body. He'd done a pretty good job getting them out, and that thought filled him with just a little pride. And then it hit him like a fucking truck. Jack! The numbers were on Jack's bag! Marshall's story about finding a body that had some of the stuff left behind made it clear exactly who he'd found. Shit. He probably wasn't going to be happy.

Marshall addressed him directly, then, and he nearly jumped out of his goddamn skin in suspense. Glancing hurriedly over to him, dropping the bloody tweezers into his pocket (he could sterilise them later, this place probably had a pot), Matthew replied.

"REN! THEY TRIED TO PULL A GUN ON ME. AND... GUY YOU FOUND TOO. JACK. TRIED TO STEAL MY GUN. HE'D ALREADY MURDERED SOMEONE, I WASN'T GOING TO LET HIM TRY AGAIN."

His hand crept towards the gun, just in case Marshall really didn't take it well.

California nodded as Marshall gave her the rundown of what needed to be looked at. She crouched down to take a closer look at the bandages on his and he wasn't wrong, they were loose, it was probably lucky he hadn't needed to use his hand much. Otherwise, they would have been falling off. They weren't, but they could have been. The glass she could deal with first, that would have been easy enough to tweezer out. Turning California looked for the tweezers but found that Matthew had pocketed them so she was forced to sling her bag off her shoulder and onto the table to dig out her first aid kit.

As she did so she was forced to once hear again Matthew's stories about how he had killed two people. California focused on her breathing as continued to dig around in the bag, pushing bread and water bottles out of the way so she could dredge up the first aid kit from the depths. Once that was done she flipped it open and found the tweezers, then rolled up her sleeves, exposing the slices that had been left on her forearms from her messing around with the scalpel flail. Instinctively her hand moved to bring her sleeve down and cover it up but she stopped herself halfway through the action and instead returned her focus to Marshall.

"I'll get the glass first," She said, moving around to the side of him and scanning his hairline.

She found a piece, slightly thicker than a toothpick but less than a pencil in size sticking out near Marshall's temple and set to work gently removing it.

As she did so she asked him the obvious question.

"Who injured you?"

“Oh,” Marshall breathed out.

He shouldn’t have been relieved. Ren didn’t deserve it, either.

Self-defence. People who were playing back. Marshall was on the edge of accepting that as face value… but DeMarcus’ face flashed in his mind. He’d only thought to question him because he knew Dominiqua. He didn’t know either Jack or Ren well.

He fiddled with the edge of the windbreaker that had belonged to Jack. If Matthew hadn’t killed Jack, Marshall would have possibly bled out or froze to death on the way back. But that wasn’t the intended effect. Marshall couldn’t think about that.

Marshall’s eyes shifted to the side to try and see California work, and he saw the lines of red on her arms.

“Your arms don’t look good. Maybe you should focus on yourself, or let me help you.” He smiled a little at her, though it was far from his usual grin and didn’t reach his eyes at all. “No-one’s doing well, huh?”

There wasn’t a whole lot of glass in there, once California was up close. The area was bloody, and a lot of the pieces were little, but it was mostly localized to a three-inch circle.

“Right, uh… it was DeMarcus. Gun, not a machete. Shot my hand and smacked me with the handle... so it could have gone worse. I saw him yesterday up the mountain, when I was trying to gather people.” He switched his gaze back to Matthew. “He killed a friend of mine. Said he got jumpy trying to simplify the equation, like she was a math problem.”

Marshall had his eyes fixed on Matthew. His spatial awareness was a bit skewed from the blow to the head, but… he was sure the gun was closer to Matthew’s hand than it had been.

“He wasn’t even sorry.”

Marshall let go of the windbreaker and gripped the table instead, his eyes now fixed on the gun. If Matthew raised it… there was a decent chance he could flip the table before any shots were lined up. That felt like a good idea in his slightly addled haze. But all he did was grip the table for now.

“Did you kill them because you had to? Or because it simplified the equation?”

So far, so good.

"DEMARCUS, HUH? ALWAYS FIGURED THAT GUY HAD ENOUGH SCREWS LOOSE TO BUILD A FUCKING CABINET." He'd killed... what was her name, Dominique? Something like that. He had a gun, but Matthew really fucking doubted that dude knew how to really use whatever he was given. "WHAT KINDA GUN DID HE HAVE?" Wasn't a shotgun or anything like that, otherwise Marshall wouldn't have a hand. Same reasoning meant the guy didn't have a rifle, unless it was a dinky .22 plinker.

Reaching into his bag, Matthew pulled out his own medkit and opened it up, rooting around in there for a second before pulling out some antiseptic wipes and starting to wipe down his shrapnel holes with little winces and grunts. He hadn't gotten all of it, and he was sure there was some that would work its way outta his skin for a little while, but he was as good to go as he ever could be, given the fact that he literally couldn't hear shit.

Maybe he was gonna need to take a break from trying to hunt for a day or two. While he could probably hear the announcements, he wasn't gonna be able to hear people sneaking up on him or anything like that. It would probably clear in a day or two, and if it didn't, well, may as well put a bullet in his head because he's fucked either way.

There was one thing he could hear clear as day, though.

At the insinuation that he and a murderer were anything alike, Matthew paused for a few seconds, staring at Marshall. C'mon. Jack had literally killed people, and Ren was working with Katelyn. What more proof did he need?

"I KILLED THEM BECAUSE IF I DIDN'T, THEY WOULD KILL MORE PEOPLE. YOU THINK JACK WOULDA JUST PATTED ME ON THE BACK AND THANKED ME FOR THE GUN HE TRIED TO STEAL? NO, HE'DA PUT A FUCKING BULLET IN ME! SAME WITH REN. THEY HAD EVERY DAMN CHANCE TO HAND OVER THEIR FRIEND — WHO KILLED LIKE SIX PEOPLE, DON'T FORGET — AND INSTEAD THEY PULLED A GUN ON ME." Leaning forwards, Matthew looked him dead in the eyes.

"SO DON'T COMPARE ME TO THE FUCKER WHO KILLED YOUR FRIEND."

California wondered how many times she was going to be forced to hear the story of her friends' death. Matthew seemed to enjoy telling it and retelling it. California occasionally stole a glance over at Matthew as she worked on Marshall, her hands dancing across his scalp easily as she withdrew the glass shards. The movements were quick and smooth and the fragments were removed without any of the pain Matthew had experienced. She had always been good with her hands, anything requiring finger dexterity really. She had channeled it into drawing and playing pool but she found anything where she could apply the same skills soothing. Sewing, knitting, origami, and now field medicine. It felt nice to lose herself in dexterous work again and it gave her hands something to focus on so they would stop shaking, instead, they danced across the boy's hairline until all the pieces were removed.

As Matthew continued to speak California remembered one of the first things he had said to her.

"Not when I can do something about it,"

Part of his declaration of heroism. The reason why he had shot her friend. He was a good person and he had a gun.

With the chair in her grip, California pulled it over to herself, letting it scrape along the floor. Once it was in position she sat down and removed some bandages from her first aid kit.

"Hand." She instructed Marshall.

Marshall stared Matthew down for a moment longer, then stared downwards. Apart from the few flinches at glass being yanked out of his scalp, he went quiet.

Not the same. Not apathetic to the idea that he had killed. ...Not exactly. But still talking like they’d been obstacles. But that was nothing new. Nothing exclusive to Matthew.

When California ordered Marshall to offer his hand, his instinct was to pull it to his chest protectively. He wasn’t sure why he was reluctant to let California peel back the bandages. Embarrassment? Fear? But it wouldn’t get better if he hid it, so after a couple of seconds of hesitation, he slowly put the hand on the table and looked away from it.

“Thank you,” Marshall mumbled. “Sorry. It’s gross under there.”

The ring finger was a little stump with some strings of muscle and skin holding some mangled remains there like a piece of leftover meat out the corner of a dog’s mouth. The little finger was cleaner, only missing down to the top knuckle. Both were purple from Marshall’s attempts to tourniquet the bleeding the prior night, the bases of both fingers rubbed raw in a circle.

Marshall tried not to look at it. Somehow it was hard to tell where the cold ended and the pain started, because both had blended into this horrible achey combination that pulsed like it had its own heartbeat.

“I wanted this place to be safe,” he finally said, staring at the wall. “For everybody. Even Katelyn, if she turned up. Stopping the game... maybe we had a chance right at the start, if we gathered everyone together. A few would have died, but if we could have stopped it before it built steam…”

He finally looked up at Matthew.

“One day of isolation. One announcement… and we all forgot we were classmates.”

The pain in his fingers made it easier to pretend that he was only crying from the physical injury.

“I don’t know why I asked. What answer I was hoping for.” He let go of the table to scrub at his eyes. “It doesn’t matter. Either way, you being here is a hazard.”

Marshall stared him dead in the eyes, and then looked away. Cali was busy fixing him up like she'd done with Matthew, so maybe the dude was just distracted by how crap her shrapnel-removal skills were. Once the wipes had been used, Matthew tossed them into an empty trash can in the kitchen. Didn't fucking matter, but it just felt right to do it. He probably wouldn't need bandages, but just in case, he started to get to work with what he had. Might impede his movement a little, but he had a gun for that.

As Marshall began to talk to him, he glanced at the guy for a second, looked back at the current bandage he was applying, then back at Marshall. Was... was he actually fucking crying over this? Jeez. He was a lot more sensitive than Matthew had thought. Maybe being so blunt was kind of a dick move, but he didn't see any point in mincing his words. Though, maybe he could be a bit more tact.

"LOOK, I... I GET WHERE YOU'RE COMING FROM. YOU DON'T WANT ANYBODY TO FUCKING DIE, AND NEITHER DO I. YOU THINK IF KATELYN WALKED IN TO SEE YOU TWO PLAYING DOCTOR, SHE'D SMILE AND WAVE? THE FIRST DAMN THING," Realising he was starting to get loud, Matthew took a breath and continued in a quieter and calmer voice, "first thing she did when she woke up was kill someone. I know Robin was a dick to her, but he didn't deserve to fucking die." He let that linger in the air for a second.

"You want to keep people safe by making this little base where people can relax, but there's people like Katelyn who don't care about anything other than that. And that's where I come in." An initial doubt clouded his brain as he wondered if killing Ren was the right thing to do, but he pushed that thought down. They had every opportunity to do anything other than pull that gun.

"But if you don't want me here, I'll go." Standing up from the chair and tucking his gun into his waistband, Matthew pulled a duplicate white shirt and jacket from his bag. At the time, he'd thought it was excessive bringing another damn jacket, but now? Now he was happy to have brought it. God bless being worried you might end up wiping out and need to wash it. "Not like I can do much here." He'd find another house, point his gun at the door, fall asleep, wake up to Danya's little fucking announcement and repeat until his hearing fixed itself.

If it ever did.

California grimaced when the extent of Marshall's hand injury was revealed but didn't say right away, instead, she focused on the job she had given herself. She peeled what remained of the bandages off and tossed them to the side. He was down two fingers but in her own opinion, you could make do with a ring finger that had been reduced to gristle and bone. Marshall had no choice but to do that she supposed. The finger had already been blown off. His little finger was in better condition but that was an easy contest, there was actually some of it left.

She listened as Marshall spoke but as he got more emotional she looked away and focused on wrapping his hand in clean bandages and tightening it. Marshall would have to sacrifice a lot of the mobility in his hand she thought but the other option was his fingers starting to bleed again or getting infected. It was probably counterintuitive. After all, if Marshall did get an infection and end up meeting Hades it would have theoretically been to her benefit. It would have been one less person on the island but dying slowly as his body succumbed to an infection seemed like a horrible way to go.

As Matthew spoke California found her grip on the bandages tightening, she pulled them taut over Marshall's hand and then wheeled around to face Matthew. She wanted to unload on him, to scream and shout, but once she was face to face she couldn't do it. Her anger withered away and she was left impotently holding a roll of bandages.

After a beat, she tossed them back into the first aid kit and slammed the lid shut.

"Hope it's like you imagine."

The bandages were so much tighter now, and the ache became worse as California bound the flesh back together. But that must have been the right way to do it. Marshall glanced at the hand for a moment, eyes still glassy with tears, then he focused on the table again.

It was too tight, and he wanted to wiggle his finger. It felt like he should be able to. But whenever he looked, there was that ‘oh’ feeling.

His remaining hand curled inwards nervously when Matthew moved to get up… but it wasn’t to attack Marshall for insinuating that he should go. After DeMarcus, Marshall had been expecting the worse. But he was willing to go. Marshall felt relieved, and then nauseous. He could be chasing Matthew out to his death. It was no different than the exclusionary practice that Chloé had suggested.

But if he didn’t, he’d throw Chloé in danger. What if Chloé had her gun out as a precaution and Matthew took that as an intent to kill? Maybe she’d been right the whole time, but the moment she became right, the plan was destined to fail.

“If Katelyn turns up, then I’ll ask why she did it. If she’s as bad as you say, it’s not as if I could do anything about her arriving. ...But I’d like to think I’d ask even if I had a gun on hand.”

The tightness on his hand grew, and he could see the sharpness in how California moved, how she tossed the bandages back into the kit. Was she bothered for the same reasons? Was it proof that Marshall wasn’t the unnatural one? Marshall watched California for a moment, rolling her few words around his head, before he glanced to Matthew again.

“Even if you’re right, what happens if you succeed at killing anyone you deem worse? Are you going to turn the gun on yourself, or are you going to try and win?”

Marshall missed when all the answers were written down in his textbooks or in the laws of either the school or society. But Matthew acted like he had a plan. Maybe Matthew’s answer would help him sort out his own.

Because in some ways… he understood. If he had to play, it would be most appropriate to fight those who had accepted the game as something that needed to be played. But he couldn’t accept how Matthew talked about it. Like because Robin didn’t deserve to die, that it meant Katelyn did. Because Jack and Ren reacted wrong, that Matthew was absolved of their murders. Like it wasn’t a tragedy in itself that the only law here was who had the biggest gun.

California whirled around to face him, as if she was about to slap him or yell at him or some other stupid shit. It took a degree of restraint not to just reflexively deck her or pull the gun, but then she just stared at him before tossing the bandages back into her medkit. She wasn't a threat, and while Matthew was relieved, a part of him was a little disturbed his first instinct had been to just fucking deck her. Or pull the gun, which was worse.

On the other hand, Marshall was a little more subdued, but he had to be when his fingers had been blown off by a psycho fucker. He was going to ask Katelyn why she'd done what she did if he ever got the chance, which was kinda naive. But, realistically, what the fuck was he gonna do against a grenade launcher and probably Ren's pistol? His best hope was to appeal to humanity, if there was any left in her. Matthew could respect the idealism, at least. It wasn't like Lucio, where he was charging headfirst into danger. This was more, like, a contingency plan for if danger arrives.

At his question, he visibly paused for a second. Winning. He could be seen as playing to win, yeah, but there was a certain implication to saying he was doing that, something akin to what Josh or Katelyn was doing. Killing innocent people.

Despite what some people might think, he wasn't in this for the thrill of it. It had hurt killing Jack, because he was the first damn thing Matthew had seen when he woke up and it would have been nice to not have to shoot your kinda-friend even if you'd abandoned them. He was doing this because it was the right thing to do, or at least it was the best thing he could do. Couldn't shoot Danya, so he could shoot the people enforcing Danya's will. 'Course, you could argue that he was doing Danya's bidding by killing people but hey, look at it that way and everyone was doing something.

"I..." Matthew's breath caught in his throat. He actually wasn't sure. It wasn't likely that this island would run out of murderers, but, uh, if it did, what then? Does he just go around shooting people for minor inconvenieces like some sort of fucked up traffic warden and claim he's the good guy for doing so? Or does he just shrug and swallow a bullet

"... don't know. But I will say this, Marshall. I'm not going to kill anyone who doesn't deserve it, and I'd rather suck-start my fucking gun before I did. So you don't have to worry about me."

Grabbing his bag and slinging it over his shoulder again, Matthew moved out of the kitchen, pausing once he hit the front door to call out behind him.

"Sayonara." There was a mild hint of dry sarcasm in his tone, like he'd realised the futility of saying goodbye to someone you probably won't ever see again.

((Matthew Bell continued in Say No to the World))

California focused on packing her first aid kit away in her bag as Matthew gave his goodbyes and left the house. She didn't look at him for the entire process. As soon as she heard the door open and then close to signal his departure she pushed the pack across the table and away from herself in disgust.

Her hands rested on the back of the chair in front of her and her grip tightened as she tried to control her breathing. Her eyes began to water as she thought of Ren, dying out in the snow.

Then with a scream containing three days' worth of anger and sadness, that came from deep in her gut and tore at her throat, she threw the chair at the wall behind her.

So sure of his actions, and he didn’t even have a plan for where he was going with them? He doesn’t know something as simple as that, but can be so sure in judging who does and doesn’t deserve to die?

Marshall couldn’t find the words before Matthew left to tell him how messed up that was.

Matthew wasn’t like DeMarcus. Not at all. Yet Marshall found himself disgusted anyway. But if he didn’t want people to play like DeMarcus – dismissing anyone they killed as just something that was in the way – and he didn’t want people to play like Matthew – murdering from some warped idea that they weren’t playing the game if they killed the ‘right’ people – then what did he want?

When California screamed and threw the chair, Marshall initially flinched backwards, nearly falling off the chair he was on and holding his hand to his chest as if to protect it from falling furniture. But… no. She wasn’t attacking him, she was just angry and sad.

He wanted to say the right words for once. But not even the wrong words were coming out. He was drawing a complete blank.

He could only think of one thing to do in solidarity. So he inhaled, held the air there for a moment, and then screamed with all the energy that his lungs – made powerful from a lifetime of not understanding what an indoor voice was – had.

The chair skidded into the wall and remained frustratingly unbroken, her formerly broken back meanwhile had begun to ache.

California flinched when Marshall screamed as well, solidarity with her perhaps? She didn’t know. She didn’t think to pry to find out.

But it was louder than hers and more powerful. For a moment California stood there panting with strands of hair covering part of her face. It had felt good to have the release momentarily, much like back at the cabin on the first day. But the immediate aftermath offered no lingering relief. Just the ghostly wisp of a brief moment of anger where she didn’t feel anxiety and dread.

Pushing her hair behind her ear California turned to face Marshall.

“Sorry,” She started. “He killed one of my friends.”