bad moon rising | myra & berlin
Feb 19, 2019 21:31:23 GMT -5
Post by alex 🐺 on Feb 19, 2019 21:31:23 GMT -5
Dark rolling storms and pewter skies and Berlin was awake, bearing witness to the wars of the gods, and jumping rope in the Training Center. Clouds looming of near atomic proportions, the sky cracking in two, lightning flashing like a heartbeat and he jumped to the percussion.
One foot and then the next. The tempo an easy beat to keep after years of practice. Sweat beads down his temples and onto his bare chest. Hands grasping the rope as his lungs, arms, legs, hands ached from the exertion. It’s three a.m. and the boy couldn’t sleep, so what better way to pass the time than to quiet the demons with exercise?
Words that he whispers to himself during the day always come back to haunt him at night. Whispers that wrap around his heart like the clenching body of a snack, a constrictor hellbent on squeezing the life out of him.She should have lived.You should have died.Why couldn’t you save her?
A thousand demons he had fought and killed each night in his sleep but the one that he could never escape always found him when the sun dipped below the horizon. The sky turning the color of obsidian, the lights of the Capitol bathing the urban sprawl in a dull golden glow. Gilded streets were the same as a gilded cage, after all.
He turned the sound up louder on his earbuds, the black devices the best technology that the Capitol could provide. He had already pocketed four pairs. Poor Finley - her’s had been “missing” for days. The music crescendos and he stops, chest heaving and hands on his knees as he tosses the jump rope aside for a trainer or Avox to deal with. Another flash of lightning and he has dropped to the mat, ten, twenty, thirty pushups as the sky erupts around him. The insomnia was worse here, but he refused to name his demon. To give it a name was to give it power and if anything, the boy would never cede that power willingly.
Berlin pauses, rubbing his hands together. The calluses a welcome comfort. His longest relationship. The thunder pounds a welcome beat, easing the pressure on his soul. How intoxicating his fall from grace had been. How intoxicating his fall from grace would be, mere days away from the Bloodbath. You don’t mourn a soul that is already dead and gone. Berlin mourned not himself nor the twenty-three other boys and girls on this journey with him. They destroyed and remade their world each and every day in the Training Center. Building and breaking, bodies and muscles. He was simply completing the cycle until the inevitable climax at the Bloodbath.
The door opens behind him but he hears nothing, the cacophony of noises silencing her movements. He barely noticed her entrance as he grabs the jump rope once more, but nearly jumps out of his skin when he sees the girl from One.
“Fucking shit, you scared me!” a wry laugh and Berlin rubs the back of his neck, embarrassed beyond measure. “So uh, can’t sleep?” he askes, lamely. Smooth, B. So damn smooth.♛
