let the sky rain down ash like snow [stella v. zombie] day 3

"We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust."

They drag Vesper, the pieces of her lost to the fight nowhere to be seen. Pieces of themselves lost in their retreat. A beautiful girl who deserved something more beautiful than the life that she had been given. They drag her to the end of the world. To the darkness. To where blackness meets the dead, cold ground. Stella is enraged - a fire burning inside of her that threatens to break free. She deposits her satchel with a throw to the frozen ground.

She paces, her hands in her hair to quiet the demons that threaten to break her spirit and destroy her state of mind. This place was created to test mental strength as well as physical. She was nearing the end of her tether and the boy from Nine was the only one to hear her anger. Perhaps this is salvation - this sick twisted place meant to destroy atom after atom. Muscle after muscle. To build you back into a new being. A new supernova. Reborn from the ashes. She had been dragged down to hell and would return to the world of the living completely changed.

She reached the end of the world carrying hell in her heart and cursing heaven with every beat.

“What the fuck just happened? How the hell did we just…..? They just make me so mad. Twice we’ve been up against them and we can’t even land a hit and we lose Allie and then Vesper and it’s just….it makes me so mad.”

“They’re like immortals, Fin. What can we do against immortals? We have to find a weakness in their armor, an Achilles heel. That’s the only way we can beat them. Or pray someone gets to them first.” Her hands are in her hair, weaving through them and scratching at the base of her skull. Drive out the demons and she may lose her angels. She had never been one for saints after all. Angels or not, she would claw her way back.

“People are cruel and we’ve got to accept that.” Finley finally answers her, his eyes gleaming in the low fire light.

“They are either born cruel or made cruel by others. The ones we should be afraid of, are the ones who remain cruel even when they have the opportunity to change. It means they are cruel at heart and there is no stopping someone when their determination is lead by the heart.” He’s wise, wiser than she had given the boy credit for. Perhaps that was why he was so quiet. His own demons silencing his voice.

“And then Aeson threw flowers at me like some sick ass sociopath. ” Stella was ranting, waving her arms around the as she paced back and forth in front of the fire. Violence on her lips and her heart turning darker as she thought about the wealth alliance and their careless, apathetic, almost bored way that they seemed to carry themselves.

“You have sisters, right? What would you tell them?” She spins, hair wild, and all the fight is suddenly gone from her. A candle extinguished. She drops next to the fire, pulling her knees up to her chest, her head resting on them, arms wrapped around the denim of her jeans. Stained with Vesper’s blood. And maybe Isaac’s as well.

“I don’t know what I would say. I am not a good brother, they are strong enough to live without me.”

“We can’t keep running from place to place hoping they won’t find us.” She pauses, a low howl rippling through the night. They weren’t alone. They were never alone in this place.

“We can go back to where they struck down Allie. Pray for refuge in the blown out Cornucopia?”

They agree to head there in the morning, but not before Finley asks her about the bouquet of flowers that Aeson so lovingly threw at her hours earlier.

"Let me look at those flowers."

“Take them. Nothing good can come from a gift from another tribute in this place.” She digs in her satchel to pass the bouquet to him, a thorn cutting her finger.

---

They take turns sleeping. Stella says nothing at all, but simply stares upward into the dark sky and watches, with sad eyes, the slow dance of the infinite stars. Under twin moons. She sleeps fitfully, watching the dance of the flames as it settles her soul in ways that ballet only could. The dance of fire and the dance of the human body were one in the same. There would be no dancing here that did not involve death or violence. There was no joy to these steps. But they continued - like a monotonous march towards something.

Her soul craves rest, but the night won’t allow it. The darkness beckons her memories and all of her regret. The darkness dangles her hopes and dreams on a string she cannot reach. It calls forth her demons, singing to their grimly lit existence. Calling her name with so much love, it traps her in a lightless cloud. It consumes her, but she never forgets that she is a light, a fire that cannot be put out.

---

With the burned-out shell of the Cornucopia on their minds, they walk away from the Snowflower Meadow. Away from the body of Vesper that vanished overnight and the memories of the day previously. Like a film on repeat, the strike that Aeson dealt to the redhead was flashing in Stella’s eyes as she kept pace with Finley. A helmet on her head, shin guards on her legs, and thicker boots on her feet. Someone up there wanted her to have a fighting chance. Ripred knew that she needed it.

It was colder than the days previous, Stella’s breath curling around her as she clutched her coat closer to her body.

Shuffling, growing louder. They were not alone.

”Fin,” the blonde breathes, clutching his arm with one hand and her spear tighter with her right, her head darting around for the source of the noise. A slow moving avalanche approaching them from behind. The bodies of two dead tributes called forth by the Gamemakers. Reanimated to bring sadistic pleasure to the masses. The Capitol must be eating this shit up.

”Allie,” Stella’s voice shatters. Breaks into a thousand pieces. His uniform is in tatters, his legs are deformed and he is walking with a limp, his eyes are blank and his skin is bright blue. Crystallized blood shining in the sunlight. He was heading straight for her, his movement impeded by the wounds that Allie had suffered at the hands of the wealth alliance on the first day, but still descending upon her. She tosses her satchel to the side, adjusting her grip on the spear.

”How poetic,” Stella says with a wry smile, pulling the hood of her fur coat off of her head. ”Are you going to kill me, Allie?

(Let the sky burn,
let it rain down ash like snow
and let us waltz through the remains.
Cover me with the soot of all that once was,
I want to dance with you in the new.)

♛