leto vox; peacekeeper. } fin

they say if you stare an abyss, the abyss will stare back at you.

i believe it.


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on my eighteenth birthday, i took a pair of scissors and cut my hair to my chin in a single blunt line, grabbed my gloves, and joined a fight club.

it was a rowdy place for rowdy people. (perfect.) one of my friends tangled me into it all- she must have seen all five years of dullness settle into the depths of my eyes like dust. i had resulted to punching bags and gyms, but they couldn't play games or challenge me like aris could. he had gone away to peacekeeper training when i was thirteen- he sent letters every month, but he had never come back.

no one bet on bet on me at first, but then i showed them better with steel punches, lion-like lunges, black bruises, and bitter blood. ('cause fuck their money and their preconceptions, too.)

it was never a serious career- my parents warned me of that the day i joined. i was almost wistful as i nodded my head, always knowing in the back of my mind that my life is already engraved before me in stone. "a pass time," they told me, "it can be a pass time. and training."

i have always listened to them, and this time was no different.

by the time i was nineteen, i was ready.
i wore my mother's lessons all the way to district two.


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their eyes are the abyss-
i looked into their inky fathoms for far too long.
they stare back at me with emptiness with eyes like a marbles- glassy voids. their eyes are blades through my chest-
they split my spine.

"found you,"
and i am the bloodhound again, and i am playing hide and seek with aris again. they run and i chase, they run and i bring them back. it's like capture the flag, only it is far from a game. (games do not often end in the loser getting their tongue cut out.) but it's only justice, it's only fair. (is it?) there are consequences for defying the capitol, and they defy it with their existence alone.

we are playing tug of war. (i'm always on the winning side.)
the wanderers and runaways that we chase through the woods for months at a time, they pull, they tug lightly against the rope. so we yank without mercy and send them slamming to the cold ground.

i like to think of it as a game, perhaps because it makes me feel a little less guilty when i force them to their knees with a thrust against their shoulder and pin their arms behind their backs.

they made their own fate, anyway.

when we hunt, we hunt as one- a pack, like wolves. the forest was once theirs, the enemies', the wanderers', the runaways'. but the moment we set foot in the forest, left an imprint in the soft earth, it became a part of the capitol again- it became ours again.

(if it was rightfully ours, why did it feel like stealing?)

we do not often return to the capitol, but i do not mind the forest songs or the atmosphere the birds and the green create. it is like a whole other planet from the capitol. no noisy streets, no city lights to replace the stars cast into exile by light pollution. here, there are stars, and they burn brighter than anything else in this whole wide world.


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i stand like a soldier.

on the days that i am in the capitol, sometimes i visit my family, and i wear nothing but my uniform when i do. sometimes aris is there, too, and we exchange stories of our adventures. he is stationed in the capitol for now, though he was in district three for a while before that.

it suits me, my mother will tell me. white is my color, she will go on, praising everything i have done from breathing to holding a gun. she will speak of how i am different, how my skin becomes more golden, sunkissed, every time i come home, how more freckles stick to me. she compliments how my body becomes more muscular, like i've been fighting a war with one hand. she compliments, endlessly.

she is proud of me- it is a strange idea.

i will wear firearms like jewelry, proudly showing it off by crossing it cover my chest. it is never unloaded, not even in the capitol- a peacekeeper must always be poised to spring into action.

my face changes when i come back home.
i wash all of the grime and grit off of my face from the woods and brush my hair back to ebony silk. i don't bother when i'm out in the beyond, where there are no family names to uphold or opinions to give a damn about. i let the stone roll off of my expression and let my lips curve into smiles more often. the smooth planes of my face do not seem to be so hard, so cold, like ice. and sometimes, when i'm not lazy, i will put on a dress and brush makeup onto my skin and my eyelids. gossamer and silk and satin and velvet seems to hang off of me awkwardly- i am far from elegant.

my eyes change when i come home, too. they become less guarded. in the beyond, they are cold and dark as voids. i empty them out when i go back to the woods, not because i fear of letting my guard down greatly, but because i fear that sometimes, when i do feel sorry for the ones we capture, that someone will see it in my eyes. when i come home, they are not dark as voids but as dark as a thousand midnight skies, stars and all.


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i stand like a soldier, but that can't stop the abyss from staring back at me.