no such thing as fear when you sleep — m v. a | d12, day 7

The footsteps sound louder down here, echoing off the dark, coal-slicked walls. I hear the company that approaches, my eyes still fixed on the dead bird’s body. It feels like a metaphor. Or a message. Regardless, it feels wrong to abandon the creature, even in death. Maybe it’s the guilt of running from Roe catching up with me. A feeling that extends all the way back to Tigs’ incinerated body I’d left all alone in the ashy remains of District Eight’s suite.

The footsteps sound louder as the space between my body and the newcomer’s diminishes. Finally, I switch on. Sense the corner I’ve backed myself into, and the imminent danger coming for me.

I freeze. It’s dark. Maybe they won’t see me –

“I hate that I've met you here, and I don't want to fight you–”

Ah, fuck.

“–but I have no choice.”

I spin around at the exact moment Marik Shadow swings at me. Seems District Twelve boys just can’t seem to stay away from me. His blade catches the metal on my arm, falling away in one clean motion and taking the top layer of my skin along with it.

I’m too relieved that it’s not Nessa or Vin cornering me to really feel the pain, though.

“Picking a fight with a Career? That’s brave.” Which either meant he a) didn’t know who I was (impossible); b) was too guilt-stricken to care much for his life anymore; or c) thought he actually had a chance of making it home.

Which meant he wasn’t afraid to kill me.

“How many?” I ask; I have to know what I’m up against. Roe’s death count had been three, and meeting him on the banks of Four had brought me closer to death than I’d ever been before, and ever wanted to be again. I’d seen Marik kill Laney and Javi in succession. Knew he was capable of terrible things, despite the hesitation in his voice when he speaks to me now.

I can use that. I cling to his uncertainty – latch on to the quiver at the end of his sentence; zero in on the broken piece of metal on the floor between us – even though I know we’re both in too deep to give up now.

That never stopped a girl from trying.

coats glaive with poisonous plants [1/3]
attacks marik with glaive

M9JIJyTRC1glaive

shallow cut on back -- 4.0 damage [+1 poison, +0.5 vengeance]

Four. I suck in a breath, hear it whistle past my clenched teeth. The doubt creeps in almost immediately. Roe and his three kills had almost left me in a watery grave. Marik and his four kills could very well be the end of me.

“All the lives I’ve taken? It has to mean something.”

I understand. It’s noble, touching. Shows that he’s still human; I don’t know if it’s better or worse that way.

“That’s a heavy burden to bear,” I whisper softly. “You don’t have to shoulder it. I’ll make sure their deaths weren’t for nothing. That’s why you’re still fighting, right? Because you think if you make it out, you can make it up to those families?” But what did he think he could do for them? Historically, the Victor Ceremonies don’t tend to go too well when you’ve killed almost a quarter of the other tributes. It was ostensibly better to keep your hands clean as long as possible. Less guilt; less mess in the aftermath. Of course, he couldn’t know this. He hadn’t been coached through the dos and don’ts of the Games like I had.

I start to reach out to rest a placating hand on his shoulder, but he swings fiercely at it. The pain is immediate this time, and I groan, biting the soft of my cheek to try and distract from the fire searing up my limb.

Fine. I should have learned my lesson from Roe. Twelve has a problem with physical intimacy.

There’s another part to the story that prods at my soft spots. He says the lives he’s taken have to mean something. But what about the lives I’ve lost? The list of people I’d met and talked to and bled for and nursed back to health and held and kissed and cried over?

What happens to their legacies if I die in here?

Marik Shadow didn’t understand human connection like I did. Nobody did. And I owed it to all of their memory’s to be the one to kill him.

attacks marik with glaive [poison 2/3]

hjLYGyM2Vcglaive

shallow cut on forehead -- 4.5 damage [+1 poison]

self defense on attack 930 [1/2]

3-8

The fatigue starts to set in. I know we both feel it. I’m scared and embarrassed of how weak I feel – thought my stamina was better than this, but it’s not just the cuts and bruises littering my body that weigh on me. It’s the expectation of a name. It’s the ghosts watching from the wings. I can sense their presence, even here, burrowed away from the rest of the world in the belly of District Twelve. There’s nobody watching; there’s everybody watching.

Maybe being closer to home makes him feel stronger, and I’m suddenly longing for the plushness of the District One suite. I imagine the bed, still unmade, waiting for me. I remember Justice’s face staring across the room from his mounted position on the wall. I think of every other Lumiere and Fray that has gotten to this point and fallen. I can’t be another family statistic.

“Winning will give them the life they deserve.”

“I can help with that.” I don’t want it to sound privileged or conceited, but I know it’s unavoidable. The nepotism wafts off of me, a shimmering golden armor I’ve held close all my life. “They’d never have to know pain or poverty again, if I make it out. I’d look after them.”

Making promises I don’t even know if I can keep is a risky game, but I genuinely want to uphold them. There’s a hard shell around my heart – there has to be, it’s not up for debate – but it’s never been impenetrable. It disintegrates every single day, when my softness wins out in the constant battle between strength and martyrdom, of pleasing the people around me and making myself proud. And every night, as I sleep, I rebuild the walls needed to keep the balance of all the parts of myself.

“But I have family too. I have a life and people I care about and I’m not ready to give that up.” Maybe it’s the realest thing I’ve said in here. A truth so simple, burning so bright, I can see every tired crease in Marik’s face. Every painful twinge is amplified as I remember how suddenly it could all be gone.

A bird chirps. It sounds like an omen. I wish I knew what it meant.

A kiss of wind across my hand. I feel Roe’s fingers clasp around my own. My grip wavers, for a moment.

The bird is dead. Jack is dead. Tigs is dead. Mateo is dead. Roe is dead.

For as much as I’m terrified of being alone, I will not join them.

arcadia attacks marik with glaive [poison 3/3]

2wMojPvFHGglaive

shallow cut on stomach -- 4.0 damage [+1 poison]

I’ve built my life around succeeding where I shouldn’t. I’ve pushed myself to every limit just so I didn’t have to know failure on a greater scale. Truthfully, I’m probably not supposed to survive this fight. I wasn’t supposed to survive yesterday – might have only been saved by my privilege and a foggy memory of learning to swim before I’d even hit double digits. Maybe something deeper, unseen by the untrained eye.

Fighting Marik feels similar to fighting Roe, and that scares me. I think that’s why I can’t focus properly. They’re both boys from a world far away from my own – a world that has taught them to be resentful of those with more than them. And that upbringing is something that festers. Turns them into angry men ready to lash out, because that’s the only way they’ve survived until now. It’s thickened their skin to an impenetrable point.

(Maybe it doesn’t look like it, but my skin is just as tough.)

But different to Roe, there’s not the same type of hate in Marik’s eyes, and I think that helps me feel more at ease. In my element. Not necessarily with a friend, as so many people were. But with an acquaintance, possibly. I swing anyway.

There’s fresh blood on my weapon now, but it will always be Roe’s. I close my eyes.

Try to ground myself.

Feel myself losing the battle.

Maybe I should try hugging him. At least here there’s no pools of water here to fall into.

“What’s life like in District One?”

I open my eyes and regard him with suspicion. Was this a distraction, or genuine curiosity? And even if I wanted to divulge my childhood to him, I wouldn’t know where to start. Words don’t feel like enough. I would never be able to do justice to waking up in a soft bed in the room next to my older sister who I adored more than anyone or anything else in the world. There’s the sound of my mother’s voice, feeling as warm and reassuring as the steaming cups of tea she would bring in to me on the nights where I had particularly bad nightmares and the only thing that could console me was the tightest of her bear hug embraces. The week-long sleepover marathons of bouncing from house to house – getting sick on candy and retrospectively giving myself too many cavities, making blanket forts out of 1000-thread cotton sheets and falling asleep next to the friends who had been right there beside me squealing with excitement when I’d taken the call to be on Young Love. There’s the collection of ballgowns in the spare room from more galas and soirees than I could possibly ever keep track of kept in pristine condition, just so I could pass them down to my own children someday. It’s the night of my first kiss on a grassy hill under glittering stars, thinking that my life was destined to always be this beautiful. And then, the freshest memories: the line out the door of the Justice Building; the portraits of ten fallen cousins stamped into a history book; the faces of my family staring proudly at me as I’d boarded the train.

My eyes water with unshed tears, but they won’t stay that way for long. I don’t want to cry, but I’m powerless to stop fate as it hurtles towards me.

There’s only one answer I can give him.

“It’s home,” I state simply.

arcadia attacks marik with glaive

8qEMzjwlekglaive


accuracy day 7

glaive

shallow cut on back of head -- 4.5 damage

He presses, with both words and weapon, prying for more. Trying to distract me, but if anything, it just reminds me why I have to make it out alive. I don’t want to tell him any more details of my life. I want to selfishly keep home sacred, private. It’s one of the last parts of myself I have.

I feel the threads pulling as he continues to speak, stitches coming undone as the sadness in them seeps through. No, I didn’t know what it was to starve, or to be cold. And maybe that makes him hate me a little, but things like your name or your home are so wildly out of our control, it seems wrong to hold it against me.

“You’re probably right,” I admit. We’re not cut from the same cloth, nothing could be more obvious. “I probably wouldn’t survive, the way you’ve had to. And I’m sorry,” truly my mother’s daughter: even in the face of death, empathy wins out.

Because I am a good person – have always been this glittering, shining example of a Career with more to offer the world than just her skills with a knife. An expert in humans; a believer in fairytales and happy endings; a cotton-candy spun girl trying to balance a crown on her head that perhaps has never quite fit right, no matter how hard she’s tried to make it.

But right now, she needs to be cruel.

I have to kill them all.

arcadia attacks marik with glaive

i2SgBCddryglaive


self defence on attack 936 [2/2]

3-8

filler for me too x <3

arcadia attacks marik with glaive

uP5H28OMrxglaive