hearts that beat and bleed | {hades/astrid} blitz

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You dye your hair black. Girls grab at your wrists, pulling you into the shadows, whispering "He's dangerous."

You smile back, blinded by deep and dilated irises.

"So am I."

Nebula floats around your head and lights up the room. You can still feel the words that hung heavy in your throat the night it was delivered to you. Still taste the vodka in the air. Everything you wanted to say but could not, paralyzed by your own fear.

You were so much younger, then. So self-conscious. Nebula sang you to sleep and you'd slept soundly, waking up to sweet little lullabies that convinced you there was good underneath those dark eyes. Something worth opening yourself up for.

He had cracked your ribcage open.

You had let him. Gladly.

And still, still he stayed in the half-light.

They said he was terrifying, but you are the one that poisoned your tributes like nobody else had before. They said he was the bad guy, but whispered villainous tales about how you had gotten your position. All lies, of course. But you let them make you the villain.

They said you'd fucked the first Gamemaker you'd befriended - a lie. So let them tell the truth the next time they speak that way about you.

Let them make you just as bad as he, so that when they spat you deserved each-other it made your heart sing like Nebula's beautiful little melodies.

Cinder and Marina - your own blue-green prototype - squeal through the air, bobbing along in tow with you both. Nebula sits at home waiting for dusk, a secret kept just between you both. If I get knifed in the street, the thought makes you shudder as the kiss on your cheek lingers. Your mother had said you had shifted after the games. Become different. Darker, somehow. She thought it was a result of what you had had to do, not who you did it with.

Did it for.

You chuckle at his remark, "It would be my honour."

At first you had thought you had to pull him into the light, reveal his every secret and drink them in like blood. But the longer you lingered by his side, almost there - but not quite, tugging gently on his rigid hand, you realised that it was he who had to pull you into the shadows. So you waited, and waited, and waited --

when you feel the pull at your hands, you do not hesitate.

"Do you?"

You're the observant one. It's why the late Jeremiah had picked you.

But you are also young, and a little foolish. So into the shadows you plunge, only half-knowing if Hades Lochlan would be there to catch you as you fall.