you can have whatever you like//[Asha V Ditto]

In war, death cannot be validated by faces in a false sky.

Sanity and reason quickly spiral down the mental drain at unthinkable velocities, I'm biting my lip to suppress laughter. I'm constantly repeating the sentiment in the back of my mind underneath the blaring of the Capitol's anthem. The face of a good career son is the first to peer from behind the Capitol's false stars. I should be able to rest easy knowing Torka Hammerfell is sleeping with the stars but I can only twist and turn in my resting spot knowing it wasn't my sword's song that would be his final lullaby.

Two more unknown female faces are insignificant when Mitchell stares down from the false sky. My hand instinctively moves and strokes the matted grey fur of the beast I slew today, dead eyes of the Capitol's fabrications staring into oblivion while remaining propped against my form. Trophies of vengeance, an ugly head along with matted stinking fur wrapped around my shoulders. If I didn't know any better I would say the stars weep for the little bird that lost its wings to the black raven too soon, too bad I'm not a fucking idiot. Not even the worms that'll feed on his flesh through the casket will remember him in years time.

And to think he wanted to be no more than a legacy.

I can only remember him as a catalyst for what little rationale and thought I possessed, only he managed to make me feel uncomfortable in my own skin. Questioning the insanity I had been forced to wear upon my ragged sleeve, he put my back against the wall and almost made me question my competence when I did not manage to tear the flesh of the beasts prior quite deep enough. It only took one broken sentence ('Mitchell-') for shock and awe to break out and the system to go to complete shit. Even in death, with the eye of the storm in my pocket and his final wish ('don't lose your mind') he makes my spine shudder and me feel flesh unwelcome in chains and presumed definitions.

I shouldn't think, it's bad for me.

I am awoken by rain pelting hard against my face and chills being sent down my spine. For once, rationale invokes panic in my veins and concern in the front of a fragmented mind as I hoist my self up, gripping the sword in my good hand and the head of the beast in my other. "Shit!"

Five days spend blinded by a black and white smokescreen that quickly became my reality (monochromia; colors can only be distinguished by-) but I find myself in a predicament when I spend five seconds blinded by the environment fabricated by the Gamemakers. "Jenoah! Desimae!" I almost forget to suppress the call for Mitchell, it wouldn't have made a difference either way for my voice is quickly carried by the bellowing storm.

Despite the fact I possess the eye of the storm in my pocket, I cannot navigate my way through this one.

('Don't lose your mind.')

But what do I do when I've lost the remains of a system I could not salvage the previous day?

One glance to Mitchell's killer by my side and I manage a scowl. "You best stay with me!" I shout down to it and ignore its dead gaze.

No longer wishing to stay inactive in the eye of unfamiliar deceit I cannot navigate, I aimlessly move through the weeping sky and pelting rain. If I did not know any better, I would have thought the rain wept for the system that cam crumbling down around me. Too bad I'm not that stupid, he was more than just a legacy.

Rest for the wicket but no mercy for the righteous, I allow an exhale of cold relief despite wet tangled hair and a hunting pack long since lost. Time was long since lost in the eye of a relentless storm, I lost track of time and my pack. Exhaustion, rust, monochromia I bury the point of my sword in the ground, lean against the hilt and I inhale-

(canon fire, it does not belong to me)

- and howl at the burst of pain followed by a familiar warmth running down my forearm. I am not horrified when I see the Captiol's creature fly by with black blood dripping from its beak, I balance the hilt of my sword in my palm and allow the former slain beast's head to slip from between my fingers and hit the ground with a satisfying thud. I ready my falchion and sneer at it.

('Don't lose your mind.')

I do not wave the white flag to signal the end of a war. After all, a cornered hunter without their pack is the most dangerous one of all.

The truth before my eyes twists and turns, morphing into an extension of fear I cannot feel. Undefined on a spectrum of absolutes; I wonder where I can place the mutation before me I wonder? There was a grim feeling of satisfaction when my sword came down on its wing, two beasts matching wound for wound. Grey, smokescreens, blood, and monochromia cannot match the truth bending before my very eyes.

It's not flying anymore.

No screams of shock to match the gravity of the situation, no white flag to wave in surrender, I struggle to comprehend what the fuck just happened. One minute it was flying and I'd almost clipped its wing with the force of my rage and desperation, the next it's on four legs with blades gleaming bright for the kill.

For my kill.

Undefined on a spectrum of absolutes, I suppressed a scream when the truth as I know it morphed into something inconceivable that I did not wish to comprehend. Worse than broken mirrors of suffering and a stolen sword in my hand. However, a heart encased in ice does not numb me to the physical pain of the Capitol's sadism; I do not manage to suppress the scream when it charges for my stomach and I lift my forearm to block the blow. It's surprising how my cries of bitter agony are so easily drowned by the pelting rain; seconds quickly ticking down to zero and I pull my skewered arm from the blade and stumble back.

('No one belongs here, Asha.')

Desimae's voice rings and I almost cast a glance back as if she's right there with me but I'm not that stupid. Instead, I hold a four fingered hand against the hole in my sword arm, I should know that pressure cannot fix the product of slow reaction caused by surprise. The blood spills from between my fingers my fingers and quickly washes away in the pelting rain.

Proud kings slain, tall giants toppled, it's always the essence of the grief they leave behind that's remembered.

I am not a proud king or a tall giant; I was stabbed in the back barely forty eight hours into this thing. I am mad but I am not delusional, I know that there will be no grief for a madness with no method.

('Where is the method to your madness?')

I am no king or tall giant.

I'm

just

Asha.

And I possess the eye of the storm in my pocket and the final wishes of a dead man ('don't lose your mind') scrawled on the surface of a storm long contained. The face of Mitchell Laws did not verify his death, but it verified that there was a gravestone standing proud and tall waiting for all of us. I told myself a tombstone with the name of a madman would be worth feeling something. After all, I've been questioning the value of a heartbeat written off as numb since I was thirteen.

But when it's thawed by blood lust, I do not want to die.

"Bad mutt." Harsh words spat through gritted teeth and digits closing around the hilt of the key to whitewashed washed walls enclosed around my mind. I will continue rotting in the corners of white walls with the world to hide if it means continuing to be able to hold a hand to my chest and feeling nothing.

('No one belongs here, Asha.')

Monsters do.

When it changes I pull back. Thrown off by a shape shifting truth, one second it has horns and my blood dripping from the end, the next it's morphed into a familiar beast I do not wish to see again. I've been rotting underneath the dregs of insanity for years, but I have not sunk deep enough to remain unfazed by a truth I cannot predict. A truth that's inconceivable is not frightening, but it takes half of my willpower to suppress the scream sitting in the back of my throat all the same. "Fuck this!" I grunt, rain blinding me to the bitter reality and all.

Balance regained, barely, and hour seventy two is shoved to the forefront of my mind. Hole in my hand, knife in my neck, I did not care that it had not severed arteries and veins. I cannot help but wonder if this is how Mordecai felt in the second ticking down to detonation, blood draining and facing an inconceivable challenge of four souls who wielding flame and just wanted to live. Watching crimson spilling and forced to call out to a name I did not comprehend at the time or think to remember up to now.

Gashes riddling my flesh, stripes of black decorating my skin. There is no beauty to be found in art that can only be seen in shades of grey but I will be the canvas all the same. Slights on my pride, a network of violations forming mazes of scares along a trembling white washed mind, even the haziest of similarities can be seen by a madman latching onto the edge by a thread.

It threatens to snap when it changes right before my eyes once again. Piercing through a smokescreen of black and white, and overshadowing porcelain pride riddles with violations formed by the silver steel of words. Undefined on a spectrum of absolutes; it is not a nonexistent fear that causes my heart to race and thaw, but the promise of blood lust, red and monochromia.

We are not proud kings waiting to be slain, or tall giants waiting to topple mountains; immortality cannot be found in the veins of someone with a tombstone calling their name from their homeland. Two steps back from the remnants of a sanity quickly crumbling like the hollow walls of a system I grew to love, compared to a knife in my neck and a stump in place of a finger, the strip of broken skin topped by black weeping from the smile is barely cringe worthy. I only step back and recoil with rare thoughts of safety in the back of my mind.

The key to freedom slips from my fingers and is replaced by the axe looted from the corpse of a would be queen with not even forty-eight hours struck against the clock since the beginning of the end.

A cornered hunter is only more dangerous without his pack.

('You can do better than that, Asha.')

Bloodied fingers coil around the handle of the axe and I seethe through gritted teeth and pelting rain.

"Okay."

When the truth changes before my eyes, I do not pull back, I aim for its head.