Leave me home [Arx/Tristen/Rave/Cass/Kousei]

I stare into the face of impending death and all I can do is repeatedly drum my fingers onto the wooden table in a soft but sudden pattern. The wails of 'how could you?' That were called by my parents quickly become background noise behind the soft tap, tap the moment I step onto the railway to my own special kind of hell. Granted, the luxurious nightmare almost makes me forget what I volunteered for, almost.

I can't help but smile at the notion of it all.

I haven't looked Fray in the eye yet. Like the countless curses and tallies scratched onto my skin, she quickly becomes background noise behind the tapping of my fingers against the desk and I don't even think to mutter a single sentence of even contemplate starting conversation. Isolating my own district partner is a mad notion - I clearly haven't learned my lesson.

But when the older Fray comes into the picture he refuses to fade into the same static noise behind the soft tap of my fingertips against the desk like his kin does; he's more permanent. I suppose when you don a crown fashioned from the bones of twenty-three kids even I have to nod in approval. He doesn't even appear to be breaking from the weight of such a crown. Then again, I shouldn't be too sure; District one is full of people who play pretend.

Opal herself dons the same crown, albeit older but still all the same. Just as permanent and just as constant, twenty-three dead under your feet is all the same enjoyment to me.

Somehow I don't think that Justice cares about seeing me wear the same crown, unlike Pillar, I'm not lucky to carry his last name.

I grin, wide eyed and wolfish. "I'm not a Fray and I'm not a Shore, I'm not even sure if I'll win this, but I'm still going to tear the throat out of anyone who I set my eyes on whether you want to help me or not." Just like that, the tapping stops like a shattered heartbeat.