Mending Fences [Salome & Atlas]

I've been walking a fine line since the day I learned to hold a spear followed by the day I learned to thread open wounds.

It takes a split second for human reasoning to be temporarily forgotten, my eyes widen at how simple it is for hurt and heal to be so closely entwined. At the sight of blood dripping from synthetic open wounds and gashes my eyes light up in a natural career wanderlust, for a split second I forget what I am, I forget where I am and I forget why I need to learn this-

(for a split second, I am weightless)

wanderlust, everything comes crashing down and I remember and to make it even worse I understand. I reside in the palace of the damned and the damned, trapped within a seer's crystal ball with no sight of the future behind white and grey clouds and smokescreens and mirrors. Like a soul bouncing around a fogged glass and that's why I need to recall the years walking a fine line between two opposite ends of the spectrum.

“Would you mind passing me the bandages, if you please.”

My eyes snap open and my jaw instinctively clenches, a lack of human forethought burning my blood. For there's a burning instinctive impulse to look to whoever called me and ask "who the fuck do you think you're talking to?" because all I am and that's all I know to do.

(but in the presence of human forethought, I let my gaze wander)

Especially from District Eleven but truth be told, she's pretty and I can't quite put my finger on whether she's a threat or a victim at this moment in time.

(and that's just how I force myself to think, how we all need to force ourselves to think)

The spare bandages hover in front of her, guided and held by my own hand.

"Well, since you asked nicely, here you go. I'd be careful if I were you though, I don't know if you watched the games last year but there are some people who share my surname that would rather give you something a whole lot sharper and fatal for bothering them," I pause, letting a playful grin spread across my features. "But I suppose I'm a nice guy. I think."

And for a split second, I forget wanderlust and I remember with a soft chuckle, "although, I suppose you could say the same thing, Izar."

(because we are all defined by bloodlines here)

“I make a habit of not letting someone’s reputation precede them.”

I can't help but internally scoff at the notion, reputation not what perceptions are built upon after all. She doesn't even seem fazed, or offended at the mention of one of her predecessors or caution of who I am and where I come from. Perhaps there's a benefit of being blind to reputation after all, you tend to ignore past tales and focus on the present truths.

A broken reputation is a component to one of the reasons my family compelled me to come here, as if the tools to fix such a fragile thing can be found in palms rough in carrying something as heavy as the world. I suppose perception had always been built on reputation and so am I.

I'm about to turn away from her and leave the short exchange as another line drawn across the sand but the sound of her voice stops me in my tracks before the boundary can be drawn. “Do you want to practice with me? I could use some company.” I'm so used to hearing that sentence, someone asking me to practice with them, help them, show them something other than the ace of spades up my sleeve. “For all these people… it gets lonely when you do something like this by yourself. Besides, I’m no good tying bandages to myself or a dummy. I do better when I have someone to hold onto.”

To be a sturdy support to hold onto.

"Sure, might as well." I say, shrugging my shoulders and shuffling closer to her. "Y'know, you seem more like a healer than a killer, so why would you ask to be here?"

In this world of hurt.

She reminds me of the light that pries my eyes open every morning I presume to live through nightmares. The way she speaks as if she embodies every virtue under the sun, the way she is: a healer, a speaker, a giver - she didn't come because she craved the scent of glory, she came because she wanted to stop starvation at its roots. I would almost call the sacrifice noble if I hadn't dismissed the idea of nobility altogether.

She's the light that slips through the blinds and breaks the shadows, the silver lining that brings a wave of despair into my still beating heart because not everyone here is like me. In a strange way, it would feel almost wrong to snuff out her light because we need people like her to break the shadows lest we only know the darkness.

'You shouldn't be here-' I want to proclaim but the words simply die in my throat. The fact of the matter is that she is here, simple as that.

“If we stand for nothing, we will let them do anything to us. And I couldn’t live with myself if it meant they would take it out on so many when one of us could have stepped forward. So I did”

And perhaps that's why it's better not to care.

She begins wrapping her bandages around my bicep, her gentle touch setting my nerves on edge as she pulls me closer, years of mother bandaging up wounds and plastering scrapes from the career center resurfacing at the very brush of a bandage.

('It- it hurts.')

('It means you're becoming strong, Atlas.')

"You're good at this," and so was she.

“What do you miss most about your home?”

(moments like this)

It's instinctive for me to say some kind of flirtatious but charming comment but I kill the thought before it can surface. It doesn't seem right to say some kind of pick-up line to her. "A lot of things. I miss routine, I miss waking up and not feeling like I have to carry everything on my shoulders, I miss coming home from a hard day's training and feeling like I'm doing something with myself, and I miss my family," I pause, choosing my next words carefully and sitting on the edge of caution. "I miss simply talking to girls and not wondering if I'll gut them at some point in the future or not."

I shrug my shoulders, looking down at the bandage wrapped around my bicep and the next words come from thirteen years nurture- I can't appear weak in the face of competition after all- "but I suppose it'll be worth it when I win."

(if I win)

That belief is what keeps this brittle crown from shattering.

Nothing - the only color I'm bleeding today.

She wraps white around my arm as if she's binding a wound but nothing hurts yet, there is no crimson grin against my bicep to warrant binding it shut with pinpointed pressure that makes me nod my head impressed. There's nothing, nothing for the fact that it's entirely possible that one of us will kill each other (and I refuse to die) and nothing for the fact that everything about her is nothing but a walking contradiction to everything I've ever stood for, to everything this place stands for.

(what do these seven correlated letters stand for?)

She's a healer, not a hunter, and yet she's the one giving pieces of herself for others, the one who will bite the hollow bullet of loss and feel cracks reverberate through her life's blood. "I'm impressed, that's a good bind." But these words are filler to pass the moments, passing the moments as I begin to come back to the same end points and start points - we all end the same.

“My grandmother used to say, boys talk about what they want, and men tell you who they want to be.” She adds another layer to the bind, another complication to the logic behind my reasoning.

Eighteen years and I've been lost and refusing to be found, simply wandering through cycles like I'm nothing more than a heartbeat and refusing to even acknowledge the possibility of a long term. Eighteen years and not once have I cast ambition to stretch further than the next six months. "She sounds wise," I say with a grin meant to slowly burn the seeds of doubt before they take root.

“Do you want to be remembered, or loved?”

I pause

(we freeze)

but she continues with nothing louder than a whisper - "I happen to think we’re only going to get a chance at one or the other.”

And while we all run on borrowed time slowly spiraling into nothing at terminal velocity there is nothing to indicate that she is wrong. In fact, what's to say I won't be neither? I saw Aedan's eyes when her hand lashed across my cheek - ("just make it quick, Atlas.") The way her voice cut through gales and riptides and left me stunned.

How could anyone love anyone with blood on their hands?

"I wasn't born to be loved, but I was trained to be remembered," there is truth in these words. I stare down at the bandage and recall being polarized since five to forget that I was more than the spear I held in my hand and the golden bloodline I'm slowly letting myself decay for.

I close my eyes and my mind drifts to countless moments and whispering sweet nothings into a woman's ears between the sheets, not once did the words 'I love you' correlate to form a sentence.

Mother and Father flash before my eyes. "The only people I can honestly say I care in that way are my family." I pause, letting my words hang for a second before further armoring myself in justification to shield myself from judgement. "And to be honest, I've never loved a girl I've... been with."

It's a riddle I know the answer to without solving.

"So, how can I expect to receive something I've never been willing to give?

Like a cyclic heartbeat, I always finish at my start point find a way to finish at my start point - nothing. I sigh. "I'm assuming you would rather be loved." It's an honest question. After all, there's nothing else to expect from someone polarized to an opposing plane to me.