Still Sane {Laila vs. Fran, day 8}

The girl said nothing in return as Laila’s sword planted a red kiss against the skin of her back. Opponents were usually eager to return insults or scream honesty into the humid air, always rambling about how they were special and how they had to protect their family and how nobody else deserved anything fair in the world.

That was the problem, though. Everybody thought they were special. Everybody thought that their own friends were the most important thing in the world. We all have the same goals, so we’re not special. We’re all the same. And honestly, it bothered the hell out of her. She wanted to believe that she was fate’s special snowflake, that vengeance for Eye’s death was the center of everybody’s universe. That Willis was somebody that every human being could admire. That Claire was not just some wallflower, but a soldier worth avenging. But only Laila would see it in that light; nobody else cared. Eye was nothing to this girl, same with Willis. She would have her own friends to avenge, her own enemies that she would try to vanquish. She thought she was fate’s favorite little fighter, when it was Laila who wanted it to be herself.

It would all come down to blood, sweat, and determination. Who would kindle the fiercest flame in their heart? Try harder, her own voice echoed. Even in a battle against a trained career – a true killing machine – she would heed her own advice and channel every last drop of her withering strength into her calculated movements. Did it appear hopeless? Yes, yes it did when one considered life experience and injuries sustained. But there was a smidge of hope left, and a smidge was enough to last until her final breath. Was she really prepared to lose to some nobody whose name she couldn’t even remember? The Capitol may know her as a powerful career, but in this place Laila didn’t care who the fuck she was or what the fuck her name was. Skill cast aside, they were equal.

The girl’s weapon was obnoxiously long, and its glint was intimidating enough to tempt Laila further and further away from it. When it swung like a lethal pendulum she ducked her head and listened to the whistle it made in its path above her head. The narrow escape sent her heart into a frenzy, and she nearly dropped to her knees from the mere exhilaration of it. This is scary, why is it scary? It was the name career looming above her head, frightening her like a mouse. She couldn’t let a label scare her, no matter how real it was. If she could evade one swing of that sword, she could evade others as well.

And strike back in return.

Her name was Laila Sycamore, and she was still whole.

Tributes were losing pieces of themselves, and not just figuratively. Anni Dorst’s foot was no longer hers, and now Laila’s katana was licking bone yet again, slicing clean through its thickness to paint the ground with blood and marrow. The girl’s hand thumped against the soil, worthless and sticky. A piece of her now lost, while Laila could still call herself whole. It was a crude thing to cripple somebody, but she never regretted it. It was an unmistakable advantage granted to her under her own orders. One hand meant difficulty gripping such an enormous sword. Did she expect that strategy to work? Perhaps, yet it was still a career she faced. A girl with the wildest experience, a girl capable of damaging her beyond repair. Tread carefully. Because this was death’s balance beam; one side was a pasture, a green hope for victory, and the other side was a navy ocean waiting to drown her in sorrow.

“My name is Francesca Levroux and I’m ready to die.”

Liar.

The strategy fell flat, and its consequences burned straight through old wounds. The mended red ribbon on her right arm – sealed neatly with thread, courtesy of Willis Keeni – split open into an ugly, toothless smile that drooled blood from the sword’s malevolent touch. Her uninhibited cries reached a breaking point, and she lost the energy in her chest to continue as she tried to recognize the grotesque mess of muscle and shredded skin. Her arm looked like a bloody, battered, gory nightmare, and it made her nauseous. ”Oh really?” she grunted through labored breaths. ”Then why don’t you put that thing down and let me kill you?” She tilted her head at the liar. There was no such thing as “being ready to die.” There couldn’t be. It was human nature to crave survival, to fight savagely for just one more day of life. If Francesca was so eager to meet Death, then why continue the battle? There had to be some underlying reason for this drive to survive, unless she was just stupid.

Laila was sick of stupid people and their shit.

”If you’re so ready to die, it would be easier to just let me stick this sword into your chest.”

There were many mysteries in this world that she did not understand. A desire for death was one. Who would want to simply disappear from this world, forgotten as a person and cherished as an intangible memory? She understood anger, fear, pain, real and raw emotions gnawing the edges of her screaming soul – but to feel hollowed out, to feel absolutely nothing for nobody, what was that like? Laila could recall how empty her heart felt when she murdered Thistle and Anni, but there were still emotions kindling within her for other people she missed dearly: Eye, Claire, even the vanished Willis who was roaming here somewhere, perhaps bleeding or straining to save his own troubled life. Was it true, what Francesca said? Was she truly empty? ”I don’t deserve to win,” she said. ”I didn’t even deserve Argo’s and Magenta’s friendship.” she said. Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t; Laila was an unreliable judge because she knew nothing about this girl. Only that something was very wrong with her. There was something wrong with everybody.

She struggled to kindle hatred in her heart. She couldn’t, not after she removed her hat – no, the hat. Hat boy’s hat. They had been allies, both from district one. Argo, the hat boy. The dead hat boy. ”The hat belongs to you.” And then she caught it in midair, uncertain of what to do with a corpse’s property, uncertain of why it should belong to her. She listened to the songs of the dying, the songs dedicated to humans long since passed. There were too many apologies, too many regrets. Magenta, Argo – names of friends she had lost. They are my Eye and my Claire, she realized, but she had not once mustered the bravery to speak to the skies or the stars where their souls might rest (“Hey Laila, did you know that when you die, you become a star?”). Speaking to the dead; was that something sane people did? Would Laila be a fool for trying?

As she placed the fedora upon her crown of tangled hair, she took note of just how much this girl remembered. She knew of Laila’s family, the sheer size of it. She knew of the anger that seeped through every pore of her tiny frame. She would bleed anger each and every day until her last breath. No, even in her final breath her blood would reek of this rage at the capitol for ruining her dwindling chances of a happy life. Francesca knew that this was her motivation. ”They are all we have left in the end,” she said, and she was right. Eye, Claire, Willis? How stupid she was to befriend them, to hope that any of them could live on. It was the broken family awaiting in district five that mattered.

But they were so far away.

”You shouldn’t say that to me. These games are far from over. I could still die, and I’ll never see them again if that happens.” It was too soon to call her victor, too early to assume that she might be granted the opportunity to reconcile. Her deathbed could be three, four, five paces away. Death could be waiting around the corner, ready to smother her anger with his cloak and drag her to the beyond. Whatever that was. Hell, the afterlife, darkness, constellations.

I need my anger.

She recoiled at the sight of the career tasting her own blood and commenting on its appeal. There was no questioning her sanity now – she was gone. Or she was a freak, screwed up and hollowed out until only scrambles were remaining. ”You wonder why I don’t put my blade down Laila.” She raised her sword and prepared for a counter. If she planned to submit that blade she would’ve done it ages ago. It was still clear that this was a battle, not a gift. ”It’s to motivate you to kill me faster.”

Laila considered this. Put your blade down, and I won’t miss. She tried to make sense of this madness, but only for a moment.

Nothing really made sense anymore.

”I’ll try.”

Laila was taking chunks out of this girl’s face, and she wasn’t quite sure why. The ribbon across her forehead mirrored her own bandaged wound, stinging each time she grimaced at the humidity or at Francesca’s wavering sanity. Now there was a hideous gash across her cheek as well, and her face was beyond disfigured. It was nothing the capitol couldn’t mend; this was a mere blemish to them, something to erase with their fancy technology. But Laila didn’t plan to leave Francesca alive for the taking. She had promised that she would try to kill her. She still wanted the crown – no, fuck the crown, she only wanted to live. If the capitol was going to patch this girl up, it would be after they retrieved her corpse from this dirt bed.

It should be sooner rather than later. She adjusted the hat that fell crooked on her small head and blinked at her opponent beneath its visor. Death already had a name – a century old name that struck ice cold fear into the hearts of every mortal. Death was its name for eternity. That’s where it all had started, right? With that name. All children heard it, all adults feared it, and everyone faced it. A dance with death, Francesca wished to call it. Fine, call it a dance, what difference did it make? If death was throwing a ball she wanted no part of it. She would not wear glass slippers or a tattered, black gown to his ceremony.

Actually, who was to say that death was male? Women could be just as cruel as men.

I’m just as cruel as a man.

The monstrosity of a sword came bearing down on her again, and she lunged out of its path with wide eyes and sweaty cheeks. ”I knew you were crazy,” she panted, raising the tip of her katana. Death’s mistress, dancing with death, a fitting sacrifice, Laila’s pain. This maniac was out of her mind. Could she even hold sympathy for somebody so far gone? She lost her friends, lost her meaning. She was an empty shell of a girl swinging a giant sword whilst wishing for her own death and speaking to a silent sky. Yes, the sympathy was still there, she could feel it pushing against the chambers of her heart. But it was so much easier to think of this girl as just another crazy killer. She wants you to feel pain, Laila. She wants to torture you. It sparked her fire, and that was what she always relied on. The rawest emotion of them all; anger. It was here again, it was always here. Hate her, Laila. Try your best to hate her. Don’t think of her as a human being. She is death’s mistress.

She was out for her blood.

”You’re not killing me fast enough.”

She thought of Anni and the knife that punctured her chest and her back. "Try harder"," Laila had demanded. ”You’re trying to kill me, right?”

”TRY HARDER!”

Now the tables had turned, and Laila was the one stalling death. But damn it, she was trying hard enough! She sliced off a hand, shed copious amounts of blood from this girl’s flesh. She would be close to bleeding out, yet she asked for a quicker death and wished for death to sweep her off of her feet while flailing her giant sword like a maniac. She shouldn’t try to make sense out of crazy, but seriously – if she was so willing to leap into death’s arms she would’ve abandoned her blade long ago. There was still something motivating her, whether it was insanity or sadism or something she cared not to admit. Whatever it was, it was making a sudden reappearance – or else Laila was growing too careless or fatigued from the back and forth swordplay, because this time she was not agile enough to evade Francesca’s dive for her leg. Her sword opened another old wound – a damn good strategy that left her gritting her teeth painfully to stifle groans of frustration – in her calf muscle. Bandages ripped and sewn skin split open. She fell to one knee and scrunched her face.

”Well what do you expect?!” She was exasperated, and it was evident in her shouts of anger. ”Your crazy ass keeps moving!” For Ripred’s sake, how could one be ready to submit herself to death yet contradict her own words by trying to chop Laila to pieces? The arguments of mad people were beyond her understanding, obviously. Unless the girl was trying to play mind tricks with her. Was that it? Was this all a deliberate distraction to weaken her guard until she was confused and vulnerable? It didn’t explain that odd, auto cannibalistic display moments ago. Tasting her own blood from her own fresh stump – would anyone go to such lengths to convince an enemy that they were crazy? She had her doubts.

It doesn’t even matter. She climbed to her feet and rushed at the girl with her katana pointing straight out. This time she was aiming for the kill, and if the girl wasn’t stupid enough to move her wish would be granted.

She heard the squelch of steel entering flesh and organs. The blade was embedded inside peach skin, surrounded by blood pouring its way through every open space. Did I do it? Her eyes widened. She hadn’t expected to hit the mark so directly. Is it enough? She quickly withdrew her blade and backed away, watching her abdomen birth blood. ”There,” she said through labored breaths, somewhat spooked by her own deed. ”Happy now?”

What a stupid question.