Blood Drips {Josie/Andros} Blitz

In just a year, I should be back here.

There are always whispers, of course, about which Careers will actually take their stand each year. Many of them simply age out, that small lingering doubt inside of them holding them tight around the wrist and drawing them away from what they’ve been training for their whole lives. I’ve never had that doubt. I would lose nothing in the process of volunteering. No one would wait for me at home, and no one would miss me if I didn’t succeed. Not even Harper Libertine, despite his unrivaled simpering upon the subject. There is nothing to be lost in my going to the Games, only something to be proven.

I take a small sip of my black rose tea, rolling it around in my mouth in disinterest before swallowing. If the steam coming off the top is any indication, the tea is still too hot. Still, after all these years of testing and trying, I don’t feel it.

”Are you alright?”

The voice comes from beside me, and I turn to face a woman staring in concern at my hand. I follow her gaze to my hand, furrowing a brow at the red splash across my skin. With a sigh, I take one of the cloth napkins off of the nearest table and press it to the wound.

“I’m fine. Barely a scratch. I didn’t even feel it.”

There it is, that look in her eyes. They all get it, that curiouser and curiouser tick-tock in their head. ’How peculiar! He must have felt it, unless… The children merely wanted to test the limits, the reality that I could stick my hand into an open flame and not flinch, but the adults… No, the adults were much more concerned with my disorder.

It’s what I am to mother, and father, and this woman looking at me with such thinly veiled wonder that I feel myself biting venom behind rows of careful teeth. I smile thinly at her, lifting the napkin and pressing my forefinger into the wound without breaking eye contact.

“Not a thing, ma’am. I assure you,” I reply, tone even despite the way I feel my mouth pull into a hard line. I am no disorder. I have my purpose, and I have my strength, and I have my future. A future without people looking at me like I’m some child in need of a cure, but a person to be feared, to be looked upon in awe.

’Sorry, but… Do you ever feel pain?’

A small, fleeting smile curls over my lips as I drop my gaze back to my hand, covering the cut again. Cup still in hand, I take another sip, the texture in my mouth a little rough from my earlier attempt at drinking it too hot. I assume it’s cooled down slightly.

“No, ma’am. Congenital analgesia,” I reply, voice smooth and face even. My eyes flit elsewhere in the room, glancing over the lavish Capitol guests- (is that a woman with a snake as a necklace?)- before turning my attention back to the woman standing beside me. She hasn’t moved, transfixed. I cannot blame her, despite the tired rehash of hundreds of conversations prior.

“It didn’t take long to find out when I broke my collarbone and didn’t react.”