the { b e a s t } you've made of me:: wedra-day 3

now there's no holding back, i'm waiting to attack
my blood is singing with your voice, i want to pour it out
the saints can't help me now, the ropes have been unbound
i hunt for you with bloody feet
across the hallowed ground

“I don’t swim,” Wednesdae deadpans from the shore, and Kiera rolls her eyes indifferently, drifting back into the current and moving along with an effortless backstroke through the gentle waters.

“Fine, just sit there like a bump on a log. You’re no fun,” she sighs through an easy grin, far more amiable than she’s been since entering the Arena. There is something in how the water swirls and caresses her injured limbs that feels like home, and it makes a weight lift from her shoulders that she hadn’t been aware was sitting there. She wonders if homesickness is natural at this point in the Games, but the river carries her speculation downstream along with pretty swirls of crimson washed away from her skin. Wes looks out of his element, and Kiera is struck by the thought that maybe it isn’t so much that he doesn’t swim as it is that he can’t. The concept is an odd one for her to consider, water being such an integral part of her life for so long. She can probably swim better than either of the dead tributes from Four could, a pastime honed for enjoyment as much as necessity to her method of salvation. “There’s a river back in One, but it’s wider than this, slower, bit cleaner too. In the summer you can swim out to the center and see all the way to the bottom. My cousin used to take me and my sisters out there a lot when we were kids. There was this old rope tied to a tree branch and you could swing into the water, and one time I fell off it and damn near broke my leg.”

Kiera isn’t quite sure why she’s bothering to tell him this, these stories of a home that was never his and that in all honesty he probably couldn’t care less about. But there’s a certain comfort in the nostalgia, a harkening to the days back when everything was simpler, when Kaelen still smiled and neither of them had yet been called to cleanse the world of sin. Kiera wouldn’t trade her divine ascension for a whole world of simplicity, but sometimes it’s nice to remember a life she’s all but forgotten. Maybe, she muses, the monologue is more for her own benefit than Wednesdae’s, a reminder that she has something to go home to outside the Arena. Maybe he does too – she never asked, and he never told. They work better with ambiguity because anything else would make things too complicated. She wonders what his existence is like, what life in Nine entails, but the water whispers to her waiting ears that perhaps it would be better not to broach the subject with him when he’s already so agitated. She remembers the derision in his voice and the hatred in his eyes the only time he ever mentioned home, and after all, she did drag him all the way out here so he could cool off from the fight with Peridot.

There’s a sort of brooding handsomeness to his anger, though, an intensity behind his eyes as he stares at the fur of the slain mutt that he’d dragged along with him. She had been panicked in the midst of his argument with Peri, but looking back on it now Kiera can truly appreciate the scintillating malice that had bloomed from his skin, the roughness in his voice and the challenge in his stature. Wednesdae was a celestial being crafted for the purpose of destruction, and he is nothing short of beautiful in the fulfillment of his cause. The two of them hold something that none of the others could ever hope to fathom, an inherent power that flows in their veins and fills them to the brim with all the strength they need to take this mythic landscape by storm and then some. She could see the disappointment etched into the angles of his striking features when she’d chastised him for starting a fight, and although she has never quite been a peacemaker in her truest essence something in Kiera twinges uncomfortably at the thought of him being upset with her. Kicking languidly back over to the river’s edge, she props her elbows on the shore and rests her chin on the heel of her hand, nodding absently at the blood-soaked pelt. “You know, if you want to make a cape out of that thing, washing it might be a good idea...”

There’s something in the air around them that feels like a ticking time bomb, a tremulous tension waiting to snap at any second, and yet the feeling that settles in the back of Kiera’s mind isn’t one of trepidation, but rather one of anticipation. They should be celebrating, rejoicing in the fact that they laid low one of the most fearsome monsters the Gamemakers could possibly throw at them with almost no collateral damage (the hastily-patched sound on his leg still makes her cringe to look at it though, a memory of her own injuries throbbing in response), not sulking by a riverbank with heavy thoughts and silent voices. Still, she can never be quite sure where she stands with Wednesdae. There are times when he nudges her gently out of sleep in the mornings or hen his hands settle strong and steady against her skin as he helps her bandage her wounds that make her think that maybe he cares for her in a way that’s disturbingly human for someone of their heavenly prowess, but then there are those moments of volatile wrath that he has so far unleashed on everyone save her that makes Kiera wonder faintly when her turn is coming. So rather than drag him further into a conversation he might not want, she simply comes to terms with the heady feeling of almost singing a dark harmony in the depths of her soul and paddles backward into the swifter part of the current, letting the water sing her a soothing lullaby she’d all but forgotten.

the fabric of your flesh, pure as a wedding dress
until i wrap myself inside your arms i cannot rest
the saints can't help me now, the ropes have been unbound
i hunt for you with bloody feet
across the hallowed ground, and howl

She watches from a distance as he draws to the water’s edge and submerges the crimson-stained bundle of fur beneath the river’s flowing surface, sending more curlicues of scarlet spinning off into the Netherworld. Wednesdae Drummond is tricky, his motivations and emotions hard to place, and Kiera thinks absently as she carefully scrubs the last of the crusted blood from her arm that maybe that was one of the reasons she was drawn to him in the first place. Her father and Kaelen had both instilled in her a love of puzzles and mind games, and there might not be anything in the world as enigmatic as Wes is, much less anything in the Arena. In the time she has had with him, she has learned that when Wednesdae goes quiet and still, he is one of two things – angry or contemplative. She can’t quite figure out which he is now, huddled silently on the shore, but the question is answered when the water flows over his hands and a ruminating smile blooms across his lips.

He really does have a beautiful smile, despite its rarity. There are two different kinds of curvature that Wes’ lips curl into, Kiera has come to notice. There’s the wild, animalistic grin of victory that he wears in the heat of battle, untamed and unconcerned with the worst case scenario. And then there’s this. It’s something softer, bordering on gentle, a smile that’s a little bit lopsided and really quite endearing. That smile makes her think that in a world where he hadn’t been driven to an elevated state of divinity Wednesdae might have been the boy next door, soft-spoken and sweet, the kind of boy you’d take home to meet your mother and who would politely ask to hold your hand on a first date. But as it is, he’s not that boy, just like she isn’t that girl. The two of them function on a higher, faster, far more intense plane than the rest of the world, and that’s simply the way it is. This is the Hunger Games. There will be no first dates for them, no family dinners or timid reservations, not when everything around them and in them is blood and grit and the heady rush of adrenaline in their veins.

(Still, for the briefest moment she mourns the could-have-beens, the picket-fence universe where she could have spent a lifetime basking in the glow of that smile)

“I’m sorry,” he says softly, not looking up from the task at hand and barely audible over the lapping ripples of the river. Kiera isn’t sure what he’s apologizing for – rushing foolishly up to meet the dog-mutt, getting into it with Peri, or possibly sharing in her mourning for a future they were never meant to have – but in response she draws herself upright in the water, her dripping head quirked curiously to the side as he continues. “I thought you'd understand, I thought you knew my burden...”

And in that moment, he looks so lost, so out-of-sorts with his normal confidence that Kiera feels her heart fracture for him, a spark of the humanity that Kaelen had warned her to lock away flaring back to life beneath her skin in the form of sympathy she’s sure Wes doesn’t want, and so she keeps it quiet, gnawing on the inside of her cheek until the tender flesh there is raw and tastes vaguely metallic. Still, there’s only so much of that brokenness behind his eyes that she can sit through, and in a few quick strokes she swims back to shore, hauling herself back onto dry land with a muffled oof and scrambling to her feet. Water rolls off of her in torrents like she’s some sort of mythical nymph risen up from the depths, and with a grumble of irritation at how the sopping fabric of her toga clings to her legs she stops for a moment to wring out the fabric, doing the same with her hair before finger-combing the damp locks into something resembling order. By this time Wednesdae has finished washing off the beast’s pelt, and with a look of quiet regret she walks in his direction, looping a damp arm around his neck and brushing disheveled strands of hair from in front of his eyes.

“I do understand,” she says consolingly, a brief smile of her own quirking at the corners of her lips. “We're probably the only ones who can understand each other, to be honest. I just... lost it a bit back there. The stress is getting to me, but I shouldn't have taken it you on you. And for that, I'm sorry.”

She had preached earlier to the others about the necessity of sticking together, of taking care of each other, but in this moment Kiera knows herself to be a horrid liar. Were it not for safety in numbers, for the amount of tributes running free that are still too numerous for her liking, she knows that without a second thought she would take Wednesdae’s hand in hers and run off to subjugate the rest of the masses in a glorious storm of conquest. They are all each other truly needs in the grand scheme of this intricate deathtrap because of the simple fact that they function on the same level. A divine being is powerful of their own volition, but a God and Goddess working together in perfect sync are utterly unstoppable. All of this, every last bit of it, will be theirs for the taking, but for her grandiose prophecy to be fulfilled they can’t let the seeds of doubt in each other begin to grow.

In this realm of Gods and monsters, Wednesdae Drummond is her stability and security, and Kiera is almost frightened at the realization of the lengths she would go to in order to keep him by her side.