{Cold}:::and BROKEN (Akina Death)

AKINA ANTHEA HOOPER

I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Akina knew it was over from the moment she left her platform. I thought I was fast. The other tributes had too much training, were too clear headed. As soon as Akina stepped onto the battlefield, blades sliced into her skin, and blood began to ooze onto the springy moss beneath her. Evidently not fast enough.

She tried to throw a punch at Mikhail, but he reacted to quickly and she had to pull back at the last instant to avoid being beheaded. As she lifted her now weapon clad arm, she felt a slice of icy heat just below her elbow and heard a sickening thump beside her.

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Being armless was not as interesting as Akina might have thought. For a moment before the shock wears off, Akina watches with a slack mouth as bright red blood pours from the now stump of her arm. And then the pain registers and nothing else matters anymore.

It's fire and madness and screaming and- Oh god, let this end.- and Akina's knees give out and a scream escapes her mouth that is demented and terrible. This is what the screaming would feel like if I could feel it. Akina collapses onto her back and the foggy sky stares down at her. "TAE!" She screams, hoping that she can somehow get her alliance to save her. It's no use, you're already lost. She tells herself, her breath becoming shallowed.

"GAFF! XAVIER!" She shrieks, "Someone please! Please help me, oh god." Everyone is still fighting, simply stepping over the dying girl from District 8. Who can blame them? I wouldn't help me.

Baby I have been here before
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you.
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

As the pain peaks, Akina's vision cuts out, and flashes of her past trickle back to her like water on a window pane. She remembers her mother and father more clearly than she has in years, can see every feature of their face as plainly as if they were standing in front of her. Let go baby. Her mother mouths, her words like a noiseless pressure on the edge of Akina's mind. Never has Akina mourned for sound more than in this moment, unable to hear or remember her mother's voice.

Akina reaches for her mother's outstretched fingers but just before they touch another shot of agony runs through Akina's body and she's back in the Arena, gasping for air. I'm dying. This is what dying feels like. Akina thinks, watching the other tributes fly by in her periphery. God, it's terrible.

Another flash of memory, this time of her and Anthony together, before they started to drive each other mad. Akina used to have such a need to please him, to show her genius brother how smart she was. They would often sit together in their library, in total silence for hours, just reading and watching each other read. Akina had loved Anthony so damn much, but when their parents died their relationship fractured, they didn't see a flawless intellectual anymore, they saw broken, ugly, shattered human beings.

Anthony, I'm so sorry we grew apart, you've always looked out for me. I'm sorry your such an idiot sometimes, and I'm sorry I'm an idiot too.

Akina isn't sure if she spoke the words out loud but she hopes so, hopes that her brother knows that the one thing he gave a damn about returned the sentiment.

More pain, oh god it hurts so much. It's like my body has a live-wire ending, constantly jolting and crackling, and leaking life out onto the ground beneath me. Akina twitches on the ground where she lies, her heart still hammering, oblivious of it's affect on her blood loss.

There was a time when you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show it to me, do you?
And remember when I moved in you
The holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

Akina's pain somehow manages to plateau, and it makes it slightly easier to think again. Like the days when everything turns white and loses meaning, Akina can think, but it all seems hazy and pointless. She wonders about her alliance, if any of them fell, if any of them watched her fall. Do they care? Did their steps falter for even a second? She wonders bitterly, sobs cracking her dry lungs.

She wonders about Sam Tulis, her district partner, and hopes briefly that he can bring home a victory for District 8. We're just as sick as the Capitol. Except we're worse. We think we're pure and just, but we kill so easily for them.

The world is becoming slow and viscous, and the edges of everything seem to be fraying like cut denim. Akina's eyes flutter shut and her breathing stops. She stays conscious just long enough to hear a familiar voice scream "AKINA!!!!! You asshole you're going to pay for killing her!" Akina's lips tug up slightly in her final smirk as she slips away from the land of the living.

Maybe there’s a God above
But all I've ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
It’s not a cry you can hear at night
It’s not somebody who has seen the light
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah

Akina is in a desert. She doesn't know how she got here or why she's in a desert of all places, but the sand is pale white and the sky is massive and bright with stars. Akina read about places like this in old books, about lands of harsh sun and harsher winds, where the people spoke beautiful soft languages, but fought with hard passion. This place no longer exists. I no longer exist. Akina thinks, and somehow her thoughts trigger movement. As if by a gust of wind the stars change, they whirl upwards and tumble back around, some crashing to the earth around her with impacts that Akina can neither hear nor feel. Is this...No it couldn't be- heaven?

No.

Akina whirls around at the presence of another mind in her wasteland, and sees a figure about thirty feet behind her, dressed in shadow.

You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well, really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light in every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

What do you mean? Akina asks the shadow, taking a cautious step forwards. The figure glides to close the gap and Akina can see that it is a woman, dressed in a long black garment that covers every part but her brilliant brown eyes.

This is not heaven. The woman says, gesturing around them. This is simply, on. Akina looks around themselves, at the stars that have embedded themselves in the sand, and the billions more still burning in the sky and feels a smile tug at her face. On? The woman's eyes crinkle. A smile. She nods slightly and then presses a hand onto Akina's arm that feels like nothing more than air.

Tell me Akina, what do you hear? Akina listens and then lets out a silent laugh of triumph. Nothing. Akina can hear nothing. No screaming inside her head, no parade of facts and observations constantly tearing at her mind, no sounds of life. Akina can't even hear her own heartbeat. It's silent. Perfectly quiet and peaceful. Akina looks up with wonder and gratitude on her lips, to find that the shadowed woman has disappeared.

Akina laughs, but it has no sound. She screams with joy and wriggles with pleasure when she can't hear it. For the first time in her entire life, Akina's world is wonderfully, blissfully, totally silent.

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

For Akina Hooper, being dead is like being normal. And that shouldn't make sense, but Akina is mad as a hatter anyways, so it's perfect. Dead is wonderful, and she wonders briefly why she was so scared of this. Of the worst fate. This isn't the worst fate. Akina thinks, lying down on the sand, and staring up at the stars so bright and white they make everything look like an old film reel. No, worst fate is of those alive, those still in the games, and those living with screaming madness in their skulls.

This is the best fate.

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

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does
thinks
says
hears
lyrics: Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah