turned to me and said don't sway [diplomocera+hg+troupe]

You fear death all the damn time because you're so content with being alive. I've been there, yeah, I've died, seen the shit that happens and now that I'm here again — do I even want to be here? It's so empty. So void. And yeah, being alive is alright, but it's not the magical moment I thought it would be. Callum is here and yeah, it's nice to have some company again, to have the undying scent of sick back — but I know that I'll never be the same.

The sun sets and rises in a different way. It's almost like the night rises and falls instead, and that dawn feels like how the night used to. Just as dull and dark, the stuff of nightmares that forces children to hide under their bedsheets in fear. Being alive feels more like a curse than a blessing because it fills like silence is everywhere around me, breaking only for voices but then coming back even silenter, even stronger. And there's no escape from it, I'm absorbed into it, controlled by it and unable to beat it.

I guess this is what I signed up for. A volunteer, yeah, how stupid of a move was that in hindsight?

I mean, I suppose I have achieved my goal of getting lost. I've lost everything I've ever known, including everything I've ever loved. And for some reason, I don't think there will ever be a chance to feel that golden feeling of getting to love it for the first time all over again because when you're a shell of a person, all hollow, all fragile — you're even easier to break.

And no matter how hard the Capitol might want to try, the dead will always stay dead. A void doesn't become un-void just because authority wants it to. A void is just as unforgiving as death itself, because the void is death's creation. I place a hand against my chest to feel my heartbeat, and I feel it, I feel the pulse in the palm of my hand but it feels more like an echo of something that once existed than something that still exists. Like the voices that got carried through the catacombs until the end of eternity, my heartbeat feels like it has lost all the meaningful parts. It's punch has been replaced with a softer touch.

Maybe Hellemine should be here instead of me. Maybe I was fighting for a second life without realising it'll never exist in the way I want it to. When Callum and I move onwards, I see the life bouncing in his footsteps and I follow behind like a ghost. So cold, so full of nothingness.

A sequel never is as good as the original.

We come across two tributes and a mutt. And maybe if I still had an ounce of my former self left inside me, I'd try to let us all get out of this alive. But an empty heart beats in my chest and the butterflies in my stomach don't exist anymore, I don't have a care in the world because I've died and the life I've been given is somehow worse than the hell I woke up in yesterday. I'm sorry, Helle.

The girl throws her knife in my direction and it cuts across my cheek. The dead never rest in peace.

I don't even know peace anymore.

[ bird ivy attacks kenji nakamura ; knife ]

9oCCtt0x|_knife

[ 2010 -- Shallow Cut on Left Thigh -- 3.5 damage ]

The human blocks your swing with some kind of big colorful rock that in some other circumstance you'd like to poke at and in this circumstance are thoroughly annoyed to see; it doesn't hurt through your shell, but the impact reverberates uncomfortably. You wave your tentacles at him and flap around in indignation. If you're honest, you're pouting, and in a minute you know you'll settle down and accept that being stopped from breaking a rule isn't the end of the world; but you need that minute to sort yourself out, and you're still in the middle of trying to do that when the human brings the rock back up.

It dawns on you, with the sound of your shell cracking open for the first time in your life, that you may, possibly, perhaps, have made a grave mistake.

You almost hit the ground before you recover yourself, wings wheeling hard, alarmingly aware of your blood dripping into the mud below. On instinct you turn to the other humans; you know you'll be in trouble for hitting someone, but no one has ever made you bleed. Surely they'll help? At least, you think they'll help, but apparently nothing in your life makes sense anymore, because humans can fly—or at least these ones can; if they all could, wouldn't the humans at the testing center have just come to get you instead of flailing around at the ground that time you flew up to play with the ceiling vents?—and the rest of this group aren't paying any attention to you at all. More of them are calling out but none of them are talking to you, and two of them are busy throwing things at each other—no, three of them are busy throwing things at—ow!

You panic up instead of down this time as a blade burrows into the newly-opened crack in your shell. The curly-haired human who flew up hasn't helped you, but she hasn't hurt you, either. Pain-wracked and panic-addled, all you can think to do is race up to get her attention so she can make it all stop.



Waffle [Flying Diplomoceras] attacks D8F Steel Campano, blunt
OBFCmOJ8f8blunt
[Gash/Bruised Right Collar Bone - 3.0]

I've imagined my death a lot.

I mean, I've lived it, too, but before that. I thought about what it would be like. I considered whether or not I'd find it as peaceful as I'd hoped it would be. Whether or not I'd be surrounded by people I cared about and people that cared about me. Whether or not there'd really be a light at the end of the tunnel that my soul would just kind of drift into. Whether all the white noise suddenly turns to black and your soul is there, trapped or whatever, waiting for it to fade into something else.

But it never fades from black. It only fades to black. I know that now. I've lived and died that experience. I've been to the far walls of life and carved my name into either side of the spectrum; the light and dark unable to find itself a place in my body because the emptiness is just so goddamn consuming that it eats everything that threatens its power.

Yeah. Death is shitty. Death is really shitty, and when I volunteered for the games, I was hoping for a story I could get lost in. I wanted a story that meant something, you know? A story that people would tell again and again and that the audience would get lost in too. But there's a bitterness in the air that snatches that satisfaction from me, as if to every word there is a bite, there is a buck and there is a punch that wants to knock me out cold. I volunteered for something that didn't exist, and yeah, it's depressing, it's real depressing, but all those stories at least prepared me for a moment like this.

When you've already been to the end of the world, there's nowhere else to go. There's nothing else to see. Nothing else to explore. No more adventures to have. And yeah, maybe I'd have liked to have seen what else life could possibly throw my way: a love or two, heartbreak, family, future - whatever. But I had my time and to put in bluntly, that time was up yesterday. I think I've realised that escaping the catacombs wasn't a second chance.

Not really. It wasn't a second chance for me, anyway. It was just a narrative. And whilst I love stories, I love stories so much, I don't want to be part of anyone else's. I want to be in my own, firmly and completely, wholly, so that it can become my home.

But the pages of my book are weathered. They've been weakened by the author's tears, Mom, finally realising that her daughter is just a normal person and is just as vincible, just as mortal as all the characters who came before her. Not even close to being a hero because quite frankly, she was stupid, blind. Wrong. Normal. Making mistakes and paying the price. Wishing so desperately she could go back, but the clocks don't rewind just because some girl from Twelve wants them to. Life doesn't work like that.

I've lived a life already. I know it doesn't.

I stand before these two other tributes. They've broken me down. I thought this was going to be the sequel I had always wanted, the glory, the hope, the gold that shines through the window in the summer, the warmth of a hug, the intimacy of a first kiss. But this is even worse than being stuck in the Capitol's vision of purgatory; demons are real and they come in the form of your peers. And I have Callum, I've always had Callum, but not even Callum can fill a void in a person.

The boy and the girl look at me. I hope they're happy with what they've achieved. They're killing someone who is already dead. Good luck finding redemption from that. Because I know that when they find it, it'll be just as broken, just as mangled as the girl they killed trying to find it.

"I missed you when I died before, Callum, and I'll miss you even more next time." Even if I don't want to admit it. I look down at myself, whatever life is left in my blood dripping down my arms and legs, my eyes glazed over like I've been pulled into an ethereal realm. I think we both know how a fight like this goes. "Keep on keeping on, okay?"

"And think of me, please, even if it's only when you're sick."

Though I use almost all of the strength I have left saying a goodbye that means something, I still fight. Because that's how normal people die - they die fighting. They don't give up. They never give up. All the normal people in the stories I loved died being who they always were.

And when you're from Twelve, when you've lost your teeth, your homework, your sanity, your emotions, your Mom, your life - you realise that fighting is all you have ever done and is all you'll ever do. 

[ bird ivy attacks kenji nakamura ; knife ]

dtSy_d5t42knife

[ miss ]

[ accuracy ]

knife

[ 2065 -- Shallow Cut on Right Calf -- 3.5 damage ]