take all the courage you have left {bros v hoes}

She closes her eyes and sees the ghosts of everyone she has ever killed. She sees rotting hearts and melting skin, shattered obsidian obsession and sliced through eyeballs. The shell of a man walks through her dreams, haunted by the shadows she has so long found comfort in. They wrap around his skin, stabbing fingertips into his veins, marking their territory on the bones that creak and crack beneath their pressure. Wordless, he wanders, shadows falling from his body like rain drops, like scattered flower petals.

Like blood. 

Her eyes shoot open and she gasps, feeling her lungs shrivel beneath her chest. She is silent, wordless, nameless, faceless, thrown into this realm with a scattered soul and a glass heart. She rolls to her side, feeling the contents of her stomach rumble and growl as she does so. Everything feels cold, her fingertips crack every time she tries to move them, frozen to the ground beneath her. Her heart slows, every thump an echo of the people she's left to rot. Her lips part, but no words can escape. Instead, they deep root themselves in the back of her throat, howling with fits of laughter as she struggles, shaking in the shadows that she was born in. 

And then, it happens. 

Everything turns to fire when the bile in her throat forces its way to the surface, her words laughing with every gag. 

It puddles to her left, a mixture of ice cold blues and obsidian heart, burning holes into the shadows around her. It burns her flesh when she gets too close, spitting venom and acid onto her skin. 

She forces herself to her hands and knees, listening to every snap and creak of her bones as she does so. Her blood burns beneath her skin, spreading like fire underneath her pores. She heaves again, waiting for fire to spew from her throat like before. But the clock counts down the time until she finally gives up, forcing herself to sit upright again, feeling the shadows claw and grapple against her skin. 

This is a dream. She thinks.

Her first mistake is looking at the puddle of blood and vomit that lays beneath her. 

Because as soon as she does it becomes a mirror, ice spreading over the surface and she sees herself, swaying hips and venom lips and blood crusting beneath her fingernails. She sees teardrops and the flashing images of fingertips brushing against cheek. She watches her whole life flash by as if it is that of a movie reel, effortlessly showing her every indecency that clings to her heart. 

Her second mistake is being unable to look away. 

Because all at once the mirror shatters and she feels a hand wrap around her throat, feels the air pop out from her throat. The world turns to obsidian and then to dust as she feels herself pulled into the darkness. 

Her eyes open up to the fog of the Dead Lake, wrapping around her skin, tracing itself into her veins. It's a new sensation, the angelic presence of fog amongst shadows. It feels godly in a way, as if she is awaking on clouds, angel wings made of dust and gold. 

It's a foolish mistake. She has felt like a god before. She learned the hard way that they do not exist. 

That's when she sees him, walking along the shoreline of the Lake, muffled footsteps tracing the lines of his broken kingdom into the sand. His face is obscured by the darkness, watching the lake with every step he takes. But she knows him, she has felt every inch of his body, every curve every bump every crevice with blood-stained fingertips. For three weeks she gave him the pleasure that he had never been able to find in life. For three weeks she had turned his heart to ice, frostbite kisses dotting his neck, lipstick stains smudged onto his collar.

And then, she'd shattered that heart of ice as if it was a novelty. 

Her third mistake is calling to him. 


This is a dream. She assures herself. 

"Hello?" She calls into the darkness, feeling her lungs sputter and heave beneath the simple word. She touches her chest and feels ice. And yet, her body feels as if it is being burned at the stake. 

He does not answer. Instead, he stops, letting the shadows crawl amongst his flesh, snapping and hissing at the fog that encompasses them. 

Her mistakes are effortless, infinite, etched in blood across the cave walls of her flesh. 

"I have met you before-" On her final word his head snaps towards her and every shadow that was stuck to his skin melts off. She gasps, her chest collapsing and she falls to her knees, watching as his flesh contorts itself into the broken and lifeless face of the man she'd murdered. She feels the glass in her hands, feels every drop of blood falling from his eye to her fingers. Her stumbles towards her, split eyeball watching every breath she takes. 

And then, he charges. 

She doesn't even have time to scream before his body collides with her and the wind is knocked from her lungs. She gasps, clamoring for the air she has for so long taken for granted. It does not come. Instead, in its place are the shadows and the ice and the flames she fears. It encompasses her before all at once snapping to life, blurring the world before shattering again. 

She stands at the dead lake, watching her reflection blur and distort itself as the water settles. 

It's only when she feels the drop of blood hit her fingertips that she sees her eye, split from the center, glass shards sticking out of it, tear of blood dripping from the edges. 

This is-

a dream. She doesn't believe it anymore. 

"Achilles." Her words echo in the darkness, bouncing against her skull and shattering her obsidian heart. 

Slowly, carefully, she turns, expecting to see another Reflector, curling her fists in order to retaliate. 

No, it is Percy. 

No, it is not. 

"Percy." She stumbles forwards, reaching towards the girl, fingers outstretched, heart collapsing in her chest. 

"Is- is this a dream?" She spits the words as if they are poison to her, falling from her lips like blood. 

"No." She stops, finding her feet deep rooted in the mud and shadows. It crawls up her thighs, clawing at her skin and howling into the darkness. 

"Percy, wait-" 

"This is all too real." 

She shatters into a million pieces and Achilles Muto feels her chest explode at the seams, blood dripping from the gash just as it had for Percy Delacroix. She remembers the way it burns like fire as she falls. 

---

She is cautious when she wakes that morning, her first instinct being to run her fingertips against her eye, examining for the same glass shard that she saw in her dream. She traces lines across her chest, making sure it would not burst into glass as Percy's had. She had refused to watch the Anthem, burying her eyes into the dust beneath her. 

Even then, she had still felt their eyes drilling holes into her back, nameless as they may be.

And then, she's silent. She doesn't even lead the group, letting Lucrezia take the lead, tightening her grip on her war hammer with every skipped heartbeat, every howl in the distance. 

She was not raised to feel fear, not like this. 

Then again, she wasn't raised to be a human, either. 

Her body is that of shattered glass and pieced together obsidian, poisoned veins and yellowing skin. She was poisoned from the beginning, this is no different. 

It feels like her chest is being ripped open when she sees them coming in the distance, shaking the shadows from their figures, carving their indecencies into the rocks beside them. She had never wanted this, not since she had buried Justice Fray's face into the dirt, not since she had met the only male she had ever respected. 

Not since Lucrezia had told her about Stevie's face in the sky. 

She hardens into ice, drawing her face into the Career she was supposed to be, quickening her pace to take the lead in the darkness. 

When they stop to stare, Atlas speaks first. For the first time, she listens. 

"I was really, really hoping it wouldn't come to this." 

She drops her gaze, tightening her grip on her hammer. 

"May the best pawn win." No. 

She forces the words from her mouth, letting them hang in the air around them.

"The pawns never win." 

►

When it hurts too much, make a snide comment.

The anthem starts, I see Stevie's face, and I realize it hurts too much. Like I'm on the verge of tears and if I don't say something now this whole thing will tear me apart. And I don't want it to. I don't dare let it. I can't.

"What a waste of a good weapon," I say, shaking my head and giving a heavy sigh. "Should've let me have the golden sword, Eight."

I throw a smirk in his direction over my shoulder. I can't let this dead Stevie kid ruin me. Good thing I'm such an insensitive asshole.

"If I remember correctly," And I'm stunned into turning around when I hear him begin to reply. I'm not used to Eight talking back to me, let alone saying anything at all. And from the look of he plans on trying to knock me down a few pegs. This punk ass bitch thinks he can get to me? Pissing people off? That's my job.

"Atlas killed both of the mutts and you could barely hit them."

He sounds so much like my father I think for a second that I must be dreaming. This whole 'getting Reaped' nonsense ha all been a dream and I'm really back home, tossing and turning in my bed and remembering what my father had said to me earlier in the day. ("Kellan hit both targets in the half the time you took to even hit one at all.") I clench my jaw and tighten my grip around the handle of my axe. I know I failed today, Stevie's absence is proof enough of that. Why does Eight feel the need to remind me?

"I wouldn’t waste it on a guy with a dick on his face."

Wait... what?

I feel my eyebrows squiggle into confusion before I realize that the dream I had had yesterday and the snorts of laughter and strange compliments this morning were all because of some child-ish prank. That fucker drew a dick on my face. I pull up the blade of my axe in an attempt to see my reflection, but it's no use. I can't see anything. The confusion turns to a scowl as I wipe frantically all over my face, trying to brush away the embarrassment someone etched all over it. What the fucking hell will my family think? What the actual fuck was the prick from Six thinking ruining my image?

Glancing at Eight he saw a smirk on his lips, heard him snort in amusement as he pointed to his own cheek to try and help me out. This motherfucker--

"Shut the fuck up!"

He wouldn't get it would he? Carrying a legacy on his shoulders? A family name everyone knows and fears being made a joke? I rub frantically at my cheek in an attempt to smudge it away, fearing that it's already too late. I've lost every bit of my family's reputation within a day. Even when I do come home with a crown, fame, and glory the entire district will snivel at me. And my family will likely kill me themselves.

"You're being oversensitive."

I point the blade of my axe at him, continuing to rub at my cheek with my free hand.

"And you're lower district trash who I could cut down in two seconds flat."

"Do you even care that Stevie died?"

And I'm almost too angry to answer the question correctly. The words—"Of course I fucking care!"—dance at the front of my mind and on the tip of my tongue. But that's not what I say.

"Prick probably drew the dick on my face, so no, I don’t."

My cheek hurts. I'm rubbing it raw. I claw at it so that I have an excuse to have tears in my eyes. I hate him. I hate them. All of them I hate them so fucking much.

"I don’t think it was him," Eight sighed and I've had enough. This is supposed to my game. Not anyone else's, and especially not scum like his.

"Do you want me to split your skull, Eight?"

I see his jaw set. As if he has the right to be angry at me. I didn't start this shit. I didn't ask for a bunch of immature imbeciles to be my allies.

"Typical career, referring to me by a number instead of my name," he says it all clipped and snappy. I can tell I've finally pissed the fucker off. And for a moment it feels like a small victory. I keep it in mind to call him Eight as many times as possible now.

"You’re only in this alliance because you’re supposed to be good – "

And I know I shouldn't let it get to me. But I stop him mid-sentence with my fist as soon as he questions my abilities as a Career. And it's not because I am a good career that I hit him. But because he has voiced my every fear: What if I'm not good enough?

My knuckles throb, but I don't bother shaking the pain from my hand. I just watch him stand up straight again, look me in the face, and say—"Do you feel better?" Back to the same old passive self he has always been.

Fuck this. Fuck him.

I grab my axe off the ground and walk away. And I don't stop walking until the tears have stopped rolling down my cheeks.

---

The heat keeps me up all night. I glare from time to time at Eight as we walk on. We've taken to walking towards the parts of the arena which are lit up in in the darkness. First it was the flames, now it is a lake of molten gold. Nine says something about the sun and all of us living under the same sun and of course I think it's some flowery, poetic bullshit. But I nod anyway.

It's hard not to get swept up in the beauty of the pool of gold. It shimmers and reflects and bounces off the gems in the wall of the cave. And for a few moments I'm so mesmerized that I don't recognize the fight coming toward us.

I put the smirk on my face like a mask. Achilles swings at me and I manage to step out of her way. Twice. "Distracted by my good looks, Miss Muto?"

I twist around when I feel a blade slice into my back. My eyes find Miss Lucy and I touch my hand to my back. My blood glistens on my fingers as I twirl my axe around and around.

"Alright, babe, I think we should establish a safe word before this gets out of hand."

I smirk at her as I ready myself to swing. I kiss the head of my axe. Flex my biceps. Take a step towards her.

"How about 'peach cobbler?'"

heaven if you sent us down
so we could build a playground
for the sinners to play as saints
you’d be so proud of what we’ve made

Her war cry is that of bloodied innocence, shattered glass faces dancing against the fog in her mind. She charges, heart pumping poison into her blood stream, ice cracking at the ends of her fingertips. Day One and she had tackled him to the ground, marking her territory with a rock shard pressed into his neck. She can feel his hair between her fingertips, can still hear the gargles and sputters of his breaths as she forced him into the dirt. She can still feel his chest move beneath her, quickened and reeking of fear. 

And she can still see Percy's dead body nestled into the arms of a dead boy.

It's on the second heartbeat when the rage boils up like blood, seeping out from her wounds like wildfire, burning away every imprint a man's hands had ever left on her skin. It spreads and spreads, lighting the tattered satin sheet angel wings that hang from her back. Her vision goes red, images of the pool of blood hissing and screaming at them flashing through her mind. 

As soon as she lights herself in the fires of her sins she turns to ice, heartbeats counting down the seconds until she shatters. 

Her war cry is the catalyst. When she swings at him she puts everything she had never been given into it, feeling herself shatter underneath the golden glow of the pool that screams beside them. 

Styx had yelled at her, once, for letting her rage get the best of her. 

And when she'd done it a second time, she'd pressed a gun to the back of her head, threatened her life if it ever happened again. 

She realizes halfway through her swing that there is no substance to it, that she attacked blindly, boiling with rage and hatred at everything. Against a lower district it would have cracked their skull in two, sent brain matter flying into the boiling gold and to the dirts they fight on. 

Against a career, it is entirely predictable. 

He ducks and her swing goes completely over his head, colliding with air as she finishes her scream. 

Readjust, use the momentum. 

She halts her urge to stumble and stop her momentum and instead flows with it, as natural as drowning herself in the flashing lights of a nightclub, in the ocean of bedsheets that burn her skin like fire. She pivots on her heel and lets herself follow all the way through with the swing, nearly completing an entire turn circle before she uses her speed to raise the hammer above her head, aiming to bring it straight down onto the skull of the boy from One. 

Instead, the gem of her weapon collides with dirt, spraying debris in her face as Justice Fray rolls backwards away from her, quickly going from a crouching position to upright before swinging his fist at her jaw.

Hunched over and in the middle of pulling her hammer from the dirt she has no time to dodge. His fist collides with her jaw and she stumbles backwards, hitting the dirt and releasing her weapon. The handle falls to the ground with a small thud, embedding the gem into the rock. Her world spins and blurs for a moment, and it's in the clarity that she hears him. 

"Distracted by my good looks, Miss Muto?" 

She feels gunmetal press against the back of her head, ice gathering around the bruises her mother's clients would leave against her skin. She feels the glass in between her fingertips and she feels herself driving it into his eye like target practice. It'd felt like

a burning, almost.

this feels the same way. 

She grinds her teeth and stumbles backwards while he attacks Lucy, spitting venom at him in between iced over heartbeats. 

"Stop! Your fight is with me, One." She grins, grabbing her hammer and hoisting it onto her shoulder, narrowing her gaze at the career as he turns to her. Atlas's words ring out in the darkness, pawn to pawn. 

"Say, Achilles." 

She doesn't break her stare at Justice, wrapping her other hand around the hilt of her hammer and holding it in the air. 

"If I die, you owe me that kiss." 

She smirks.

"Maybe i'll give it to your friend here instead. I've never kissed a corpse before." 

►

"Maybe I'll give it to your friend here instead. I've never kissed a corpse before."

Atlas and Machaon seem to have their efforts based in one direction, while I've got the privilege of dealing with two at once. But apparently Achilles is off her game because even with only about eighty percent of my attention focused on her I still manage to dodge yet another of her swings.

"I'll have to pass. I ain't no cockblocker," I smirk Achilles' direction as she swings again. Her hammer lands hard next to me. "And you're having a difficult time making me a corpse."

It's easy to taunt when it's all I've been taught. The head of my axe is dripping with blood and when I look at it, I feel like I could actually be sick. So I don't look at it. I pretend I don't know who it belongs to, and I pretend I don't care. I pretend this is just like home—the winner gets all the praise and bragging rights, the loser simply sulks in the corner with a black eye or a swollen lip.

All I gotta do is play pretend a little bit longer. Just a little longer until I win this thing. Then I can hide behind heavy doors and beneath silk sheets and cry until every memory I have of this place disappears.

"You know that you’re supposed to hit him, right Achilles?"

I laugh because it really is hilarious. Seeing an opponent who is supposed to be stronger than you struggle to land even a single hit is always good for the ego. I remember the day I finally managed to get the upper hand on my brother. Of course it was only for a moment and I ended up the loser anyway, but in that moment I finally felt what it was like to be better. And it feels exactly like--

"Ah, fuck!"

Once again a blade tears through the bandages and stitches on my right arm. The pain is enough that for a moment my vision goes completely black. How is it that the three big hits everyone seems to land on me are all in the same fucking spot? When my vision returns all I see is the remnants of a smile on Lucy Eckhart's lips.

"Stop! Your fight is with me, One."

I see Achilles picking up her hammer again, but her words are lost on me. Besides, I know how to play mind games. And beating her allies while she is useless to defend them is one of the best mind games a Career like me can play.

"Sorry, Two," I say through gritted teeth and a grimace so deep I'm sure everyone can see I'm in pain. "But you'll just have to wait your turn."

I throw a smirk in her direction before swinging again at her ally.

heaven if you sent us down
so we could build a playground
for the sinners to play as saints
you’d be so proud of what we’ve made

Her teeth pierce her tongue as she misses again, the gem of her weapon shattering the rocks and embedding dirt beneath her skin, smearing across her flesh like tar. Her mouth fills with the sins she's swallowed, iron and venom seeping into her tastebuds. She exhales, grinding her teeth together until the sound it makes blocks out the sound of Justice Fray's constant taunting. 

When she inhales, the fire in the air catches her off guard, seeps into her throat and turns her frostbitten lungs into a wildfire. It burns through her chest, snapping against her ribcage and torching the veins that bleed and pulse beneath her skin. She grips the handle of her hammer but her reaction is slow, icy, chilled to the very seconds she clings to in this arena. Her form was sloppy, made of half swings in the sunlight, half pledged prayers made in the bedroom underneath shattered, ice cold moonlight. And now, as she sits bare and broken, piecing together the shards of a broken reflection, watching Petra become a bloodied canvas, she stops to think. To focus, to gather, to-

realize.

They are all broken, in one way or another. 

Styx's lessons were composed of cyanide, dipped in poison and threaded into every ounce of flesh that covered her body. She remembers every single one of them, has burnt them all into the back of her mind with the fires she fights with. They flit through her head like a broken movie player, flashing and pulsing like the lights of the night clubs she'd mark her territory in, appearing and disappearing like the faces she's come to recognize, tracing jawlines and cracks in their armor with the ice on her fingertips. She'd learned that from Styx. 

She hoists the hammer up and catches her reflection dancing across the metal, blurred and distorted like the shadows of the night, cracking and breaking their limbs like some sort of twisted dance. Her reflection screams at her, blurring into the images of her last night's dream, her eye ripped open, stomach pouring out every prayer she's ever stomached, pooling against her skin like obsidian. 

That's when they come, the memories. 

They're bloody and corrupt, conceived beneath the glare of shadows and satin bedsheets, of harshly lit training centers and strobe lights bouncing against stripper poles. Her mind swirls in the shadows, frost blossoming along the surface, turning to blood and giving way to an array of ghastly blues and death soaked purples. When they bleed away she feels Styx's eyes staring through her, ghostly and lifeless. Fires swirl in her irises, cackling and spinning before falling into ice, shattering into a million pieces before melting away. 

"Achilles, do you know what the weakest part of a man is?" 

She remembers answering with unkempt youth, kindled flames spitting out answers about a foot to the crotch, sending testicles flying into their stomachs. And, she remembers, amongst the shadows, watching Styx grin before shaking her head, drumming her fingernails against the wood of her desk. 

"No. See, Achilles, the weakest part of a man is also his strongest ally- his mind." 

She had learned at eighteen that in order to mould someone into what you wanted, you first had to break them. 

"You break that, and they are like putty." 

Her hammer was her own body, laying them down on fresh linen and planting frostbite kisses against their necks, turning their hearts to ice and then to stone, laying them down to rest before shattering them into her palms, playing with their minds like clay. 

This is no different.

She's brought back to reality as Petra's hand hits the dirt, blood spewing from the stump of her wrist and she blinks, casting her gaze to her allies as Lucy takes a jab at her. 

"I'm sorry Lucy, and i'm...sorry Petra." Her gaze drops with the latter, watching the blood pool at her allies feet. 

"He's better than I thought he was." 

Bend and break, she turns towards Justice Fray but lets her war hammer drop to her side. 

"But was it ever good enough, Justice?" 

She begins her descent, letting the golden hue of the pool to her left dance against her skin, giving her a godly presence as she circles the career from one, aiming to wipe that grin off his face with words instead of a blade. 

"I've seen a lot of men like you. All talk, using words to cover up what they fear the most. Trust me, I know how it is." 

She wipes her fingers against her lips, smearing the blood of a split lip and the venom that seeps from the wounds across the back of her hands. Her hammer drags along the ground, tracing her kingdom around Justice Fray's mind.

"In fact, if I had to take a shot at it all, I think I could get it pretty spot on." 

She stops and stares him down.

"So let's do that." 

Her steps are made of shattered obsidian, the floor freezing as she begins circling him again. His eyes move with her, lips still curled into a slight grin. 

"So much pressure from a Career family, isn't it?" 

Her question becomes arsenic, spreading through the air and filling both of their lungs. It's a double edged sword, this wordplay, because with every shot to her enemy she feels it snap against herself, her broken pieces falling to the ground beside her. 

"And, in all of the pressure, the safest place becomes alone. But is it truly safe there, Justice?" 

She waves her fingers in the air, pondering a thought she'd had at the ready for days. Finally, she narrows her gaze, putting every bit of poisoned chill into her voice. 

"And trust me, you are alone in this. Your sister was all you had, wasn't she? With her slaughtered, where do you stand?"

She begins her approach towards him, staring blankly at his face.

"What's there left to do but give in, Fray? Haven't you already failed them all?"

It's in the process of his answer that she strikes.