the ones who could {kousei's victor AUs}

In another world, I wonder if I could've been anything else other than this imperfect pill-popping paradox. Anything other than a man who holds something in his hands that isn't the shattered pieces of one, two, three, four lives and monochromia in his eye. Callous doctors told me I would do nothing but chase phantoms in search of color for the rest of my life. I am numb to conscience, but names like fog against the shards of shattered glass windows are crystal clear.

(Joselle, Sacha, Ansgar, Hyacinth)

They still couldn't put me back together with everything but the spare parts, so now I'm fumbling to hold a wine glass in the absence of ring finger and commitment to run through these veins. These hands do not shake at the venom spat into my face or the blood of Brookwater, Todd, Dupont and Mortuus caked underneath my fingernails - it was clear that I never knew the symptoms that came with guilt from the first day of illogical reasoning. I could never stop to assess the damage that dared to cut deeper than a gash or a severed limb - even the president questioned if I was even human.

(fire in her hair, hazel eyes, dead eyes)

The television screen blares and I trace her black and white jawline with a sturdy finger and it's easy to forget it's a fragmentation of a past reality. "You could have made me human." It comes out as nothing louder than whisper. The definition was never conspicuous and the symptoms followed the same theme of vagueness, humanity was never meant to be found in a river of red that could only ever be viewed in shades of grey. Besides, it's easier to forget.

My maimed hand instinctively moves up to scratch the empty eye socket that calls a glass sphere an eye, moving to satisfy dual phantom itches in one motion but I simply pause - 'there's just nothing we can do about your eye, finger, or vision Mr. Lumiere.'

The world stutters and I still feel it now, my black and white smokescreen pierced by the tip of a hot knife and just red flood -

('YOU FUCKING-

bitch, whore, cunt,

kill me,

make me human,

kill-'

iamdying

justdoit')

"Just die already!" And the red wine glass flies from my hand to the back of the wall, the shattering sound dispersing Hyacinth's fear once and for all and my hand flies up to my glass eye in an attempt to grab the hilt and wrench the blade from my eye.

(there is nothing to pull this time

I am an imperfect pill-popping paradox. The career son who painted his monochrome world in shades of red and didn't stop to take pride in the results, the ruthless killing machine they all wanted. I was the villain, I am the villain they craved because I enjoyed going into an arena and painting whitewashed walls in shades of red. I can still see his hatred through the black and white smokescreen and feel it clasping around my throat. The wrong blonde bombshell career from District One came home, Snow wanted me to die in my deep crevasse of my insanity, he questioned a humanity that I never had.

I don't want to take his drugs.

'Every day you refuse to take your medication, we'll televise the execution of every living Laws, Rasoio, Warble and Lumiere.' So I spat in his face and told him I didn't care. Afterall, I have the the blood of four caked underneath my fingernails - I don't have a pressure point.

(Mitchell, Jenoah, D e s i m a e, just Asha)

So they began to chip at my newly revealed family right before my eyes with a bullet.

They shot Annika right in front of me and left the house cleaner to clean her blood.

('This medication will control your anger but it will change you-')

I wanted to slit the callous doctor's throat with my nails-

('Side effects may include; impotence, lack of sex drive, mild bouts of hopelessness or sadness)

- watch a canvas run red with his blood.

I shudder, lifting four fingers to my stubble and running a hand down my chin - I never knew the symptoms of humanity, even if it could've been seen from that red hair and hazel eyes - 'no one belongs here, Asha.' I heard her voice and saw her hazel eyes pierce my whitewashed walls when I looked into the mirror before smashing it with my fist and yelling with my one good eye wide open. "You could've made me human!"

But I never wanted to be, how could she have made me human when I never wanted to be? The symptoms of humanity were always a riddle, drowned by calls of war and Sacha's cries when my axe tore through his foot and ear. Forgotten beneath a short pause and static burn followed by my warhammer splintering Ansgar's skull along with his bloodied divinity I did not care to see. A rat, a pendant, red eyes, dark hair - slowly drowning in faith.

He could see the lack of humanity in my blue eyes, just like Jenoah and Mitchell did, just like Justice does.

The wrong career came home and the look in his eyes and the soft clink of his prosthetic leg when he turned and walked away from my hospital bed is a constant drum in my ear - he wants his sister, not this imperfect pill-popping paradox. In truth, it's obvious why, watching replays through the television blurring through the empty victor's house with the only visitor I ever cared killed by a bullet hole not even my mother's gentle touch and a plaster can fix, killed by something more than knee scrape. It's obvious when anyone watches the replay of the finale through anything thinner a smokescreen and a golden family name.

One wide eye, nine fingers, flesh seared shut, a number 10 branded upon my back - I see it all. Dried lips, gold spattered with flecks of black and fragile armor in tatters, my yellowed pages should've ended with the conspicuous symptoms of humanity never pondered. Holding the final shade of grey to distinguish down by the throat with one hand and screaming fire into her eyes and spitting blood into her face while my axe hovers over her head, I could barely distinguish one shade of grey from the next. "Why can't you fucking kill me?" And questioning why she dared thought her survival could ever be narrowed down to black and white strategy - "I will pry the truth from your throat Mortuus, even if I have to reach through your fucking mask." But her mask was nothing but porcelain in the end.

I raise my axe but her body went limp and her canon fires - the final harmonic in this song of steel and blood sounds. She died with her secrets unrevealed.

And somewhere between taking on the weight of a golden crown of bones and the envy of twenty-three other families, Annika being pried from my fingers and chasing my family from the victor's village with a kitchen knife and swearing to gut them if they dared step foot near my house again, I finally managed to distinguish between shades of grey.

I can still see their blood caked underneath my fingernails and taste the hatred of someone who's sanity hangs from a fragile thread - Joselle, Sacha, Ansgar, Hyacinth. And I can hold out a hand and feel the envy of the other ones on my fingertips Mitchell, Jenoah, d e s i m a e.

But that's not what makes my body tremble and shudder at the sight of the black and white liquid that stains the wall and the carpet, what makes me hug my knees to my chest and breathe in and out against the couch.

I volunteer words spoken just so I could hold my bloodied hand against my chest and feel a beat - nothing can be seen in this hollow chest of mine, nothing but gears, cogs and oil; breakdown- monochromia. I always saw the world in shades of grey anyway - distinguishing colors from symptoms only serves to make me feel colder.

"Mr. Lumiere, it's time for your daily dose."

Holding back screams, eye searching frantically for a knife, an axe, a sword, a gun, an escape route -

"I just wanted to feel my heartbeat, that's all I wanted." And I shift, extending and bending fingers on my burned hand.

"Please don't make me call in more staff, Mr. Lumiere - we don't want to have to force feed you again."

I swallow my pills and he leaves me to watch my victor's interview - they may as well have held a gun to my head so I would fit their image of the perfect career son who brought glory to his district - brought glory to his lifelong cage. But I was always flawed, missing the vital piece to be a son, a brother, everything but a perfect killing machine

"humanity."

To watch them fade again - Mitchell, Desimae, Jenoah - to watch our imperfect system to defy death's scythe shatter like porcelain before our very eyes, piece by piece.

Monochromia; a life defined by the chasing of phantoms in search of color.

A life defined by crimson rain that I cannot even distinguish from salted tears - the only reason I can feel anything other than a hollow fantasy when I hold a bloodied hand to my chest.

(I feel myself slowly drifting)

Look at the letters in correlation with Asha Lumiere and there are only a limited number of purposes to attach to the array of presumed definitions.

One just happens to be to involve slowly shattering into pieces; it was worth a void only partially filled, I suppose - even if it's with the bones of humanity that never could've been.

♔