novah, district ten / fin.

You were young, once.

A springlike smile dancing on your lips, eyes wide and drinking in the world around you, stars swimming in your gaze. You went about life as if it was a dream, walking along an illusion of a dreamscape earth, everything in a bright technicolor. Youthful innocence, some people would say, but you look back at it as youthful ignorance.

That was forever ago, though.

You've grown, learned to pull apart the world like a machine instead of a flower, observing the tiny intricacies that make the cogs turn like you would the petals. You learned that to see things for what they truly are, you had to break it apart and piece it back together, to know it like you know the back of your own hand. It was the same with people—you had to see them for their worst, the darkest and most vulnerable parts of them, to see them for their best.

It was in a dream, an actual one, that made the illusion crack.

Well, no—nightmare of being trapped in a box. Dark, pitch-black like the night sky, but there were no stars to guide your way here. You were closed in, completely empty with no details to wrack your mind over or indentations to run your fingertips across. Even your screams, painful and raw, went nowhere. The sound echoed and bounced off the hollow walls and back to you. That's when the lack of hope set deep within your bones, winding around the marrow, slowly chipping away at you. And then you wake up, a cold sweat on your brow and a cavity in your chest.

It was just a dream, but it unsettled you in a way you couldn't shake, in a way you couldn't move past. That tiny crack in your vibrant, saturated view of the world widened until it shattered at your feet. It was a gut punch, almost, seeing the blue sky fade to grey, watching the blooming flowers wilt, seeing the truth bleed and tear down your reality. That's when you realized you had to grow up. The universe isn't kind to girls made of dreams - it tramples them underfoot.

Strange.

The practical, machine-oriented girl becoming the face of a most impractical, enigmatic subject. But you, however, found it fitting in an odd way.

Before then, you bounced around from subject to subject, pouring all you had into chemistry and mathematics, but it was frustrating when the answers escaped you. Infuriating, almost. You weren't like Dolly, who absorbed everything she learned like a sponge, soaking every drop of knowledge she could. No amount of studying could fix the way your mind worked, even if you tried. For a long moment, you focused on robotics, you had a way with machines. Maybe because to you, they were simple, you tore apart microwaves and clocks to find out what makes them tick. That came in handy when constructing things on your own, using mechanisms you've observed to get your desired end product.

But, like the others, it didn't feel right. And Dragomir always stressed finding an area of study that fit right, what you chose was important after all.

It was more happenstance that led you to shift into a wildly different subject. Perhaps it was fate, if you believe in things like that. You don't, not truly, but it helped keep up appearances. You first found it in Dragomir's office, you had been in there many times over the past year, trying to find anything to catch your eye. She kept an assortment of objects for kids like you, those who were lost and didn't know exactly what path to tread on. It was hidden behind a mountain of things, as if everyone before had picked it up, intrigued but then discarding it to the side. At first, you weren't the exception, you were drawn, almost pulled, to the slight purple glow illuminating the sphere. You held it close to your face, as if to say, "Tell me my future (so I can control it)." But it was just the sunlight beaming off the dark glass, the illusion of it cracks.

And then something inside of your hollow chest clicks, a puzzle piece falling into place.

You had always been good at reading people before you even touched a tarot deck - at picking them apart like your machines and discerning their wiring, their emotions, and reactions, the things that make them run the way they do. It wasn't as simple as most devices, since they don't have a mind, so many more variables, but it was still a science. And sciences can be learned, perfected into a sharp blade that sticks in the target every time.

But, you found that those who came to you to have their fortunes told, whether it be a palm reading or a regular reading, they were at the most vulnerable. Or, to you, the easiest to pick apart. In that moment, they were a machine to you. And as cruel as that sounds, it wasn't about them, or taking advantage of them. It was never about that. For you, it was always about control, about never letting someone have the upper hand. About never being in the dark. Only remnants of that ruined girl you once were remained, and that childhood dream is one that still lingers over you, haunting your existence. Not that you would ever admit that, though.

Manny.

He's just a memory now, a painful one, a scar on your skin. He isn't dead, but to you, he might as well be.

It was your blunt-edged demeanor, you believe, that drew him into you. For a boy blur to be seen, truly, for the first time. You were good at picking people apart, knowing things about them they didn't want to recognize about themselves, and that was different for him. He spent all of his time running away from things and now, for a second, he could slow down.

It's not always about control with you, but it bleeds into your subconscious, in the words that spill out of your mouth before you can think, in the things you do subtlety. You think he liked it at first, having someone take the reins from him, matching his fire with your own. But he got tired of that, like most things, the hollowness in his chest expanding.

You blame yourself, though, for letting your guard down. You saw the signs, saw the way his eyes flicked away when you said you loved him, the way his head hanged a lower, and the way he spent more time running his life away than with you. And you tried to shift the variables, change the outcome so he'd get over whatever slump he was in. But the results were fixed, you poured your heart into a boy whose mind was already gone, already running off to someplace new. It broke you, in a way, to be confronted with the truth, something you usually chase. And you hate him for that, for making you feel, even for a moment, that you were in that box - vulnerable, no control.

For making you look in a mirror, staring daggers at your reflection, and say, "I see you."