Survival Of The Fittest

“What? Dude! No way…,” Richard breathed in hard and desperate. “You’re my best friend, I’m not…”

It sounded like a curse, the grandest of sins for his still young heart. When faced with this situation, Dickie didn’t know what to say or what to do. Darryl was special, Darryl was smart, Darryl always had a plan and saw things for what they were. Dick was the optimist; Darryl was the realist. Richard was the dreamer; Darryl was the schemer. They were macaroni and cheese, peanut-butter and jelly, meatballs and marinara. Two things that just went together and worked, they didn't need to be explained. I have your back; you have my back. I go to war; we go to war together. Clear eyes, full hearts—couldn’t lose. Welles Crowther rushing into the burning building. Paul Revere on his midnight ride. It wasn’t courageous to leave your friend behind. In a world filled with mystery, he always knew where he and Darryl stood.

That’s how it always had been and that’s how Dickie had always planned it to be.

Richard exhaled hoarsely, he coughed and spat and his fingers tightened on the pistol and wrapped around it’s trigger.

“I’m not fuckin’ leaving you!”

"Yes we fucking are."

And there was June, working arm yanking desperately at Dick's shoulder, teeth gritted together.

She'd been stood by the back door, next to Darryl, when the first shots rang out. On instinct, she dove down, by mistake, she landed on the wrong side, and it felt like she'd broken her arm anew. Wound throbbing, nausea building, but there was no time to partake in any of that, no time to feel.

Dick ran in, back spotted red, wounds blossoming. He ran in, eyes dilated, breath struggling, and yet he still felt there was time for heroics. And there wasn't.

She knew that look, the way he held onto that weapon. It was the second before it happened, the pleading in your head and heart and mind for it not to happen. And she was gonna have to inflict it on Dick, twice over in two days. Iris, Darryl. She hated it, she hated it more than anything.

She wanted it not to happen too. It was deja vu, it was Jezzie raising the knife, it was June too far away to do anything about it. She wanted, more than anything, to stop it from happening. But June had no weapon, and Dick had no weapon, and Darryl did. June was injured, Dick was injured, Darryl was still standing. It was gonna happen, and it was gonna happen to Darryl. It was the only way the numbers added up. Darryl knew it, June knew it, Dick was the only one in the room believing otherwise.

So, fervently, she yanked him by the shoulder, and she glared him in the eyes.

"We're not going out suicide by Kitty Graves. You can't hold a gun, you can't even stand up. I'm sorry but you stay here, you die, and then we die, one, two, just like that."

Her eyes softened, slightly.

"Darryl's the only one here who stands a chance. It's the only way."

Her grip tightened.

"So come on, let's go, now."

There was no other way, but Dickie was being stubborn about it. Pretending like he couldn’t count or see the truth that was staring him in the face. The math wasn’t mathing.

June at least was a realist and awake to what needed to happen. It was a small mercy but if Darryl was being honest June seemed more sensible than would have been expected given the sequence of events that brought them all together. She wanted to go and take the opportunity Darryl was providing and she seemed willing to drag Dickie out of the bar along with her.

Meanwhile Kitty continued to stalk and prowl just outside. Darryl doubted she would have given up after wounding Richard. You didn’t reach nine kills from not finishing the job. So she was out there, which meant that the time on their play clock was ticking down and Dickie was wasting valuable seconds.

Luckily there was June once again. She grabbed Dick and shook him as she explained the situation, maybe an attempt to restart the part of Dick’s brain that refused to do basic addition.

Darryl extended his hand, forcefully, but didn’t grab the gun, he left it with the palm facing up, waiting for the handoff.

“Yeah, and this is what best friends do.” He said.

“I know that! Don’t act like I don’t,” Richard hissed and spasmed, flailed and sobbed. This situation demanded a man and Dick was nothing but a big boy. A big baby. There was no good answer. There was no good hand. There was, and had always only been, nothing but guaranteed death. Dickie had no control when it happened, but he could control how he faced his fate. Sometimes, the reality was that there simply was no shot. No play. No chance.

"You are to me what I am to you."

It didn't sound smart, but it was all he could manage.

“I’m tellin’ you,” he grunted and gasped. “I’m not goin’!”

That wasn't how he was going out.

That wasn't how Darryl was going down.

June was right, Darryl was the only one who stood a chance. But what chance was there against the arsenal of Katelyn Graves? Staying was suicide, leaving was murder. He had already shot Iris, could he kill Darryl? Dick was an only child. Darryl was Richard’s best friend. That meant something when you were young and in their position. It meant you were family. It meant that Darryl was the brother Dick chose. If Darryl was talking about Hail-Marys and last chances, it meant something different than Dickie doing it. Darryl didn’t believe in good-luck and rainbows, horseshoes, or blue moons. Richard constantly sought out pots of gold; Darryl was always quick to remind his friend that he was blinded by glitter. Now it was both their turns to shine.

If it was time to go, they’d go together.

“I’m the captain,” they elected him to be a leader, that meant he had to lead. “If someone’s goin’ down with the ship, it is gonna be me.”

He swallowed.

He handed Darryl the pistol.

“Get the fuck outta here Madison,” it felt weird to say. “It’s on you now.”

"Oh."

Her lip quivered.

It was suicide is what it was. She couldn't bear to inflict that loss on him, and neither could he, apparently.

She felt suffocated, her legs trembled under the weight of those words. 'On you now.' Medea was dead now, she was the sole survivor of their little duo. Dick and Darryl were dying, she was the sole survivor. Four legacies on her shoulders now. She didn't want it, she didn't want any of that weight on her.

But there was no choice. Darryl had to stay, Dick didn't wanna go, so where did that leave her? If she chose to stay for some false idea of nobility, all this death would be nothing, all these legacies would crumble to nothing. She was so, so undeserving, and yet they all chose her regardless. She had to make it mean something.

Her lips trembled, her throat felt clogged. There were a million things people were supposed to say in moments like these, but there was no time to cohere all her feelings into words. All she could muster was a squeeze of the hand on his shoulder, and again, a meeting of eyes.

"Give her hell then," she spoke quietly.

And then, she pushed herself off the floor, gave one last look at the duo.

She forced herself to turn away, picked up the pace, and burst through the door, running to safety.

((June Madison continues in I just can't help myself))

So that was that. Teammates finally as Dick refused to step off the court. Nothing to be done about it Darryl supposed. If Dickie wasn't going to leave he could hardly make him. It didn't seem particularly fair, and also he doubted that June would have been able to drag him out of there. End of the discussion, but the play wasn't being rewritten. They still only had the one gun after all. Dickie had been more flexible on that demand and had passed it to Darryl though, which was good, because he was still the only one who could actually fight Kitty.

June delayed her escape to give them words of encouragement.

"Hell, she'll know," Darryl said with a wry grin. "Ain't nothin' to fuck with."

Then, as June dashed out of the bar, leaving motes of dust floating in the air in her wake, he gripped the pistol hard and stepped to the window.

One hit with the metal of the barrel and the glass fell away. He knocked out the remaining pieces and took up a firing position using the window sill.

He looked out, waiting for the first sign of Kitty poking any part of her body into view.

"Y'know," He said absentmindedly to Dickie as he waited, eyes remaining focused on the streets in front of the bar. "If I get her it'd be like in '04 when the Pistons beat the Lakers."

"Nah, more like 2008, Paul Pierce in the wheelchair," Richard smiled weakly. "Nothing beats Celtic pride."

Kitty had never been one for basketball.

She lurked in her place of hiding, hastily loading another shot into her gun, ignoring the stabbing pains that came with moving her arm so soon after being hurt. She had gotten lucky again, the injury was a mere nuisance as it was, but it very easily could've been crippling.

The latest shell click-clacked into place, and with her gun freshly loaded, she pressed her back into the cold wood of the wall that shielded her from view. The houses nearby the bar were hardly ample cover—bullets could pierce aged wood almost as easily as paper—but it at least kept her out of sight, and allowed her time to plan her moves.

She perked up when she heard the squeal of a door's hinges coming from the bar, and poked her head out to see one of her marks making a getaway. For a few seconds, she watched, dual realizations slowly dawning on her that the boys weren't following behind, and that her head was in full view of the bar's windows.

Like clockwork, there was a rush of POP POP POPs and shattering glass, bullets whizzing by her head and puncturing her cover. She let out a thundering shot of her own towards the bar and ducked back out of view, hitting the ground as continued gunshots went over her head. The blood was in her ears again, and the ringing louder than ever. She started to hyperventilate.

There was a path out of here where nobody had to die; she could simply let go of her childish resentment and sneak away. But to take that path, to let them live despite the fact that she still needed them to die, would be a refutation of every action she had taken up to this point. Backing down now would be akin to admitting that none of it was ever necessary.

Her navel-gazing was interrupted when one final bullet tore through the house above her, and nearly yanked her hat off her head. She pulled it back into place, only to feel a sizable hole that had been torn through one of her hat's cat ears.

Oh, they were fucking dead.

Kitty snarled and rolled onto her side, taking hold of the grenade launcher, and waiting for a lull in the gunshots. When it came, she sprung up, leaned into view, took aim at the windows, and pulled the trigger.

In less than half a second, there was a THUNK, the breaking of glass, and then an ear-shattering KABOOM.

It didn't take long for the head to appear, Kitty unable to back away and just take the win she had. Darryl closed his left eye, focused in with his right and pulled the trigger again and again. The kickback of the gun was unexpected, he'd braced for it but not enough, and it was clear as day as hit nothing but air. But Darryl wasn't stupid and understood rhythm which made his next move obvious. He immediately dropped back down behind cover and counted in his head.

Waiting for Kitty to reply with a shot of her own.

Pull and draw.

He didn't need to wait long as there was the familiar boom he heard back at the beginning of the day as the shotgun went off again. Freshly made wood chips fell around him from the window frame and wall, smelling slightly and pleasingly of smoke from an old wood fire.

"Fuck she's packing," Darryl grumbled, glancing over at Richard, then sliding across the floor to the window on the other side of the door.

"Really got us in some shit here homie." He said, popping up and catching sight of Kitty again.

This time when he fired off his shots he kept his aim lower before pulling the trigger and rewarded with Kitty dropping back behind cover.

It was familiar in a way, similar to the rhythm he'd found multiple times before playing 'ball, finding how the person guarded you reacted and then hitting them with the fake at the right time to get them jumping so you can slide past and hit an easy three. It wasn't exactly the same but the rhythms were similar enough that he could work off it.

"You reckon June's clear yet?" He called over to Dickie as he dropped the magazine out of the pistol, remembering the instructions he'd been given all those days ago. It was almost funny how quickly his ears had become numb to the sounds of the gun blasts.

"Hey throw me another clip," He said as he tossed the empty one aside.

But then instead of the expected shotgun retort, there was a loud, but dull thunk sound and then through the busted-out window, a cylinder dropped onto the wooden floor and lazily rolled to a stop by the side of Richard.

"Ah..." Was all Darryl could manage before the gun was on the floor and he was sprinting toward his best friend.

He got halfway there.

But before he reached Richard the grenade went off, enveloping the pair of them in a storm of metal and fire. Darryl felt his face, arm, side and right leg all get perforated as white-hot shards of metal tore through his clothes and skin. He could smell burning hair as the force of the explosion overtook him and sent him sprawling past Dickie. The shockwave hit his chest like a sledgehammer and collapsed his ribs into his lungs, which were emptied of air, and left as nothing more but empty sacks. The equivalent of a plastic bag on the breeze, which his body had become.

Darryl landed against the base of one of the booths, through his one good ear he could make out a noise, the whining of the Hunting Lodge's support beams trying to keep the structure fully upright.

But just like his and Dickie's house of cards it was going to come crashing down too. As long as June got out they'd achieved something though. At least they had that.

Then across the floor, a magazine slid towards him.

So close, but the shot clock was up and time had expired.

Another loss for the Terriers.

Celtic pride was a myth.

But myths mattered and that’s why, bleeding and dying on the floor, Dickie managed to get those bullets to Darryl.

That didn’t really matter.

Basketball was Richard’s favorite sport, but it wasn’t special. It was all fun and games when all was said and done. The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat. And that was the thing about sport—there was victory and defeat. Eventually folks had to deal with both. It was easier to do in games and that taught us how to deal with it in life. There was sometimes suffering and sometimes success. Life was hard. There was loss after loss after loss. Poverty and abuse. Death and disease. Every Saint had a past, and every sinner had a future. Every winner had to lose, and every loser had to win, someday. Life, and basketball, they were games of runs. If you kept playing, you’d eventually go on one of your own.

But they both had their guarantees.

Eventually the runs stop, the clock flashes zero and the game ends. Everybody has to deal with the results. Losing in life was hard, losing in life was permanent and losing in life was a riddle that nobody, living or dead, had managed to solve. Life always won and we always lost. Games end. We all gotta die.

If that was the case, it only mattered how you went about doing it. Did you go with love in your heart or with bitterness in your soul?

It didn’t matter, win or lose, it only mattered how you played the game.

Big Dick went out with his best friend making way for June to get away. Paul Revere on his midnight ride. Welles Crowther with his red bandana running into the falling towers. Big Dick and Darryl, standing against the biggest and baddest killer on the island only armed with their wits and a single pistol.

Nothing beat Celtic pride.

When the explosion came, Kitty hit the deck, covering her ears as the dust settled, and allowing the ringing to recede as much as it would. Her heart hammered in her chest, and she trembled in place, flashing back to the crash all over again. Only now, other scenes also came to mind. Matthew attacking their little camp. The fight in the tunnels. This wasn't an improvement, it was just more trauma she'd have to work through if she got out of here.

She took a deep breath, in and out, letting her heart slow, and the memories fade.

No, she reminded herself, it was more trauma she'd have to work through when she got out of here. She could manage it, because she'd been through worse.

Kitty sat up, examining the tear going up her sleeve, the fresh blood staining it, and the wound underneath. Richard's bullet had torn her sleeve all the way up to her forearm, and the skin beneath had been sheared off, leaving a long, painful, but thankfully shallow gash from her wrist to her elbow. It looked a lot worse than it actually was, and made moving her arm around just that little bit harder, but she could heal.

Slowly, she made her way back inside the house that had shielded her from view, going to where she had stashed her belongings to get out her medical kit. As gingerly as she could, she went about treating and bandaging the wound, wrapping her forearm all the way up in gauze that was quickly stained red. As she did so, she let all thoughts fade from her mind, focusing on her breathing, in and out, until she had calmed.

Then, she heard a loud CRACK and the groaning of wood from outside, and stood up, watching through one of the house's windows as part of the bar crumbled and collapsed. Walls crumpled like paper as the ceiling caved in, the noise of it all almost as loud as the explosion that had caused it. Kitty finished bandaging her arm as she watched it unfold, and before the dust had settled, she was making her way out of the house and over to the rubble, her bag in tow.

Clouds of dust floated through the air, and the whole scene stank of burnt wood and sulfur. The whole front of the bar had come down, but the back seemed to be holding strong, at least for now. Kitty knew it probably wasn't safe to investigate, but nonetheless, she felt compelled to do so.

The duo of corpses left behind were easy enough to find in the wreckage, though neither were fully visible. Darryl's arm sticking out there, Richard's legs sticking out some distance away. Her eyes were drawn to a bit of shiny metal near Darryl, and she cleared some fallen wood away to find the pistol they had been using. She grinned and began to pick it up, only to immediately frown once she saw the state it was in. The slide was jammed and stuck in the open position, and the barrel seemed to be very slightly bent in one direction. There was no ammo she could seem to find, either.

Kitty tossed the gun aside like the worthless trash it was, and then took another deep breath, before climbing atop the largest pile of rubble and sitting down. She tilted her head back to look at the sky, and kicked her feet into the air.

Back home, she had always been considered weak, fragile, unimportant. She hadn't even been allowed to make her own decisions, her family never trusting her judgement enough to let her forge her own path. Everyone belittled her in their own ways, even her friends, treating her like a pet rather than a person.

Here, though? Everything had changed. She was strong, and powerful. Nobody could control her, and tell her what to do. She was free to take whatever road she wanted, and even though the one she walked was bloody and horrible, it was hers, and nobody could take it away from her. Even if it cost her everything, she was glad that she wasn't holding back anymore. It would've been so terrible to die as timid, cowardly Katelyn. Now, everyone had to acknowledge Kitty, respect Kitty, and fear Kitty.

The thought made her smile. She had always liked scaring people, even if it had never been with ill-intent before. Maybe that was something evil to enjoy, but she had already signed and punched her ticket to Hell anyway, why should she care about enjoying herself on the ride down?

Kitty stood up, and began walking away from the bar, only to stop and take one last look at her handiwork.

Fey might have been a terrible test of her resolve, but this? This had been a fantastic test. Cruelty done simply for the sake of it. It had been similar to the encounter with Taylor, but this time the takeaway was different. Before, she had been confronted by instantaneous guilt and remorse at her actions, the voice of her own self-hatred roaring to the forefront of her mind and overwhelming her. Now? That voice was quiet, easy to shut out and ignore.

There was nothing but the sound of blood in her ears, and she didn't feel a damn thing.

((...))