[INSIDE]::and without (verbal, dreamer, dragonmew)

AKINA ANTHEA HOOPER

Now in Vienna there's ten pretty women
There's a shoulder where Death comes to cry
There's a lobby with nine hundred windows
There's a tree where the doves go to die
There's a piece that was torn from the morning
And it hangs in the Gallery of Frost
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take this waltz with the clamp on it's jaws

Akina does not take well to the Capitol. It's too bright and too vapid and far too loud. It preys on her overstimulated senses like a vulture, waiting until she simply cannot take it any longer, until she snaps and kills everyone in this godforsaken training center.

Just make it through the next few days, and then it will be the bloodbath and no matter the outcome everything will be so blissfully quiet, and all the colours will pale and it will be like peace, if only for a moment.

Akina can see that she is frustrating Prethim and Loribelle, by being surly and reclusive. It's not her trying to be difficult of course, she just can't take their stupidity. It's their fault entirely, or perhaps the fault of the Capitol education system. Wherever the blame lays, the tension explodes at breakfast on the second day of training, almost immediately after her district partner and his stylist have left the room.

Loribelle is chattering inanely about orange juice, orange juice for god sake and Akina has just had too much, the screaming in her mind is becoming manic, with shrieks of her own agony echoing in the space between her ears, and she really can't be tossed about pulp ratio in that moment and she loses it. She slams her hands down onto the table, and the glass of juice falls off the table and shatters spectacularly. Akina can see the light fracturing off of each shard, scattering rainbows against the floor, chaotic and lovely.

"Akina! What is the meaning of this?" Loribelle shouts, her voice thick with the Capitol's accent and heavy with rage. Akina idly wonders if Loribelle has ever been this angry before.

I suspect not, she would have better control of the vibrating in her hands if she had.

"Well I was hoping that since I am about to be sent to my almost certain death, we could talk about something other than citrus beverages." Akina spits, her voice low and steady. Prethim is still sputtering and fussing over the orange juice on his pants, so Akina focuses all her attention on Loribelle.

New hair colour, she doesn't really like it, she keeps tugging at the ends but she needed a change, her ring finger is slightly thinner than her other fingers, but bare and looks like it has some bruising. Hmm, interesting, the bruises are more recent then the hair change but are due to the same issue.

"I know that the pointless chatter is to numb the whole in your chest left behind when your husband slept with your sister and then married her, but really-"

The slap catches Akina completely off-guard, loud and stinging and wonderful, and she stumbles backwards, blinking the reflexive tears out of her eyes just in time to see Loribelle storming out of the room. Prethim watches her go with a disgusted look and then glances at Akina.

"That was childish, both of you."

"I am a child." Akina mutters.

"Not anymore." Prethim shoots back, his eyes flashing. "You're a tribute now, and if you want to last in these games you are going to have to get people to like you, sponsors, allies, stylists. You wont impress anyone by shooting your mouth off and being downright rude." Prethim turns on his extravagantly dressed heel and follows Loribelle out, leaving Akina alone with the shattered juice glass.

---

Fifteen minutes later Akina is downstairs in a fitted black jumpsuit, her hair tied tightly back, and she is watching the other tributes with almost predatory intensity. Prethim was right about one thing, if she is going to survive past the bloodbath, Akina is going to need allies. The other tributes are milling about already, either training or creating alliances on their own. A small bloom of panic sprouts in Akina's hypothalamus and she forces it back down with a grimace.

I am the smartest person in this whole room, and yet no one has approached me. How can they be so blind? Team up with brawn over brilliance?They're all so stupid, idiots like the glass of orange juice. No wait, that's backwards the orange juice was brilliant and Loribelle was dull. She absorbed too much light, there were too many pigments lost in her being, it was like she was screaming a the top of her lungs but I couldn't hear her, so loud that my ears popped and my nose started bleeding but I cannot hear what she's trying to tell me. These tributes are the same, so loud and yet somehow muted, like someone putting a priceless painting underwater. All the colours run together. It's meaningless. Everything's meaningless and that's why this whole ordeal is so wonderful because it doesn't pretend, it knows it's horrid and pointless and shows that right to everyone's face. Because I'm not the only one who appreciates the truth am I? I can't be, there have to be more people who see the underbelly, the rotting. Rotting, like floorboards. This whole planet should be condemned, knocked in with a wrecking ball or lit on fire from within.

Akina gasps and stumbles, the screaming in the base of her thoughts louder than ever. When she get's trapped inside herself like that, it feels like drowning, only she can't die. It's not that she want's to die. she just so badly want the pain to end that the prospect of death seems positively wonderful. Trying to steady her breath, Akina sinks into a crouch on the floor, fingers tangled in her hair and eyes shut tightly, mumbling chemistry under her breath.

Combustion of Benzene liquid C6H6 plus gaseous O2
forms gaseous CO2 and gaseous H2O. Equilibrium is when the rates of formation and the rate of decomposition are equal. Balanced.

It takes several moments for Akina to return to her usual cruel sanity, and when she finally does, she notices a shadow covering her curled body.

"Come to mock me then? That might not work out for you too well." Akina says, her voice shaking ever so slightly, but sharp with defiance.

Oh I want you, I want you, I want you
On a chair with a dead magazine
In the cave at the tip of the lily
In some hallways where love's never been
On a bed where the moon has been sweating
In a cry filled with footsteps and sand
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take it's broken waist in your hand