two steps from hell // d2 train
Feb 17, 2019 14:15:30 GMT -5
Post by lance on Feb 17, 2019 14:15:30 GMT -5
And then it was over. A whirlwind, an empty Justice Building (for she'd told her parents that if she was ever to step up to the plate that she hoped they would understand), and a speeding train. Two was left in her periphery, perhaps never to be seen again.
Her brain had been set, but her heart was a maelstrom, her stomach queasy as the first doubts ran through her head. Was this what everyone had felt before her, everyone who was lucky not to have their name pulled out of a glass bowl yet had thrown themselves into the pit of hell all the same?
But no, it was too late for second thoughts. She'd stepped forward towards this very moment for seventeen years, motives constantly in flux but the end result never wavering. Better to die a legend than live a life of painstaking normality, she'd always told herself. Perhaps it was a mantra of motivation, perhaps just an excuse to escape the fate of mine worker that had inevitably been placed before her ever since oxygen had first entered her lungs. She didn't know, and frankly, she didn't care.
What mattered is that she was here, on the very same train that had carried so many before her to their destiny.
She'd expected a volunteer from her counterpart's spot, as there had been one four years in a
row before now - first a Hammerfell, fallen at the hands of a little boy from Three, then a suicidal idiot who'd thought that fighting a giant beast was a good idea, then the very same kid that had been passed over twice by that haphazardly duo who fell at a clearly more lethal boy from Three, and then finally the twelve year old named Shy who had been granted the boon of life as part of some half-assed Quell twist.
But this boy was not what she expected. Sitting on the other side of the train, staring at something she could not see, he hardly had the air of someone who would volunteer. Not a Hammerfell, not someone who'd struck her as a diehard Career fanatic, but someone more like her, if she were a dude and in possession of a great deal more money. Pale and brunet, a key hanging around his neck, she read him more as "rich kid performing an act of rebellion" than "Career who wants to win the Games."
But there was an air about her that intrigued her nonetheless - and right now, she would latch onto anything that would clear her head of the billion thoughts whirling around within.
"Hey you," she called out, arms crossed, leaning back against her seat. "Rich looking bitch. What's your story?"
The unspoken clarification hung between them. Why did you volunteer?
Her brain had been set, but her heart was a maelstrom, her stomach queasy as the first doubts ran through her head. Was this what everyone had felt before her, everyone who was lucky not to have their name pulled out of a glass bowl yet had thrown themselves into the pit of hell all the same?
But no, it was too late for second thoughts. She'd stepped forward towards this very moment for seventeen years, motives constantly in flux but the end result never wavering. Better to die a legend than live a life of painstaking normality, she'd always told herself. Perhaps it was a mantra of motivation, perhaps just an excuse to escape the fate of mine worker that had inevitably been placed before her ever since oxygen had first entered her lungs. She didn't know, and frankly, she didn't care.
What mattered is that she was here, on the very same train that had carried so many before her to their destiny.
She'd expected a volunteer from her counterpart's spot, as there had been one four years in a
row before now - first a Hammerfell, fallen at the hands of a little boy from Three, then a suicidal idiot who'd thought that fighting a giant beast was a good idea, then the very same kid that had been passed over twice by that haphazardly duo who fell at a clearly more lethal boy from Three, and then finally the twelve year old named Shy who had been granted the boon of life as part of some half-assed Quell twist.
But this boy was not what she expected. Sitting on the other side of the train, staring at something she could not see, he hardly had the air of someone who would volunteer. Not a Hammerfell, not someone who'd struck her as a diehard Career fanatic, but someone more like her, if she were a dude and in possession of a great deal more money. Pale and brunet, a key hanging around his neck, she read him more as "rich kid performing an act of rebellion" than "Career who wants to win the Games."
But there was an air about her that intrigued her nonetheless - and right now, she would latch onto anything that would clear her head of the billion thoughts whirling around within.
"Hey you," she called out, arms crossed, leaning back against her seat. "Rich looking bitch. What's your story?"
The unspoken clarification hung between them. Why did you volunteer?
