royal courts of day and night [larissa vs torian, day eight]

"Why'd you volunteer?"

This was a question in the same way it was a poison-coated dagger; there was no way she could answer honestly without setting something much worse into motion. People always got asked this in the Games- why? It was honestly a valid thing to wonder. If the career districts genuinely tended to have some advantage, more of them would've won, no? Larissa herself had often wondered if they all had some sort of death wish, saw the Games as the most honorable way of being done. She guessed now that she thought about it, none of the golden children ever really knew they were as such. Not from their parents. To them, every child was a disappointment until they wore crowns on their heads. Maybe, then, it was acceptance they were usually after.

Larissa wasn't like any of them, though. Her answer was real, and so much bigger than her. Her tongue was on fire with it and she would've loved nothing more than to scream it. But the trees taught her valuable lessons: Her words here- even if spoken quietly- would travel all across this arena and all across Panem. She couldn't even risk thinking about her goal of destroying the Capitol for too long in this place. Sometimes the vines and the flowers were a bit too intuitive for her comfort.

Her eyes flicked to the skies, sending Torian a silent message as a warning of her censorship. Her eyes pulsed with flashes of light along with the rest of her: a flickering bulb that needed replacement, that's what she was at this point.

"Destiny. Duty..." She smirked. "Familial pressure."

The unofficial career's insignia. That's what she was the whole time, it turned out: another career.

Little Torian, with his tall glaive. Tall Larissa, with only a little knife missing its partner to call a weapon. They clashed, she managed to divert the separation of her arm that would've surely otherwise happened, but only by allowing Torian's blade to rip through the length of her entire left bicep, from the shoulder right down to the pit of her elbow. She screamed, her form violently flashing and flickering as she did. What's happening to me? She thought, willing an intake of breath that wouldn't come.

The hand on her good arm shook so she squeezed her fingers around the hilt of the knife as tightly as she could. The other arm was limp at her side- the slightest movement stung. She wouldn't let herself look at the wound but she could feel the little pathways of warmth dripping down on the outside rather than in, and the fact that her fingertips were already going numb and cold wasn't a good sign.

While he was in close, she tried to take advantage of their differences in size by stabbing the knife down at him.

[larissa attacks torian, knife]
9upCS7qvtoknife
[fingies, 9+1]

These days, when it came to regret, Larissa could feel it on some level in regards to basically every aspect of her life. She regretted telling the boy who asked her to prom no, because she had other plans. She regretted the time when Sunny was only a little girl who wanted to be like her and she made it a point to tell her it would never happen. She regretted not speaking her mind more around her parents, about all of the things they'd failed to do in raising a family. Leaving Perry and Bellamy in the state they were in, only to see Bellamy's face light up the sky the next day. She even regretted the time she'd demanded to get a bob haircut when she was twelve for efficiency- some people simply didn't have the cheekbones for short hair.

All in all, over the last few days Larissa was already coming to terms with the fact that regret seemed to be one of the most present feelings in her life looking back on it. So it was funny when Torian asked: "Do you regret it?" In truth, part of her never wanted to come here in the first place. There was so much resentment for them all, for the responsibility that was heaped onto her shoulders even though none of them thought her capable enough to handle them. She came because no one else left would. She came because all before her had failed.

Well. Except Ridley. But eleven years later and a lot of change that brought, huh?

Did that mean she regretted it? She compared her feelings now to the ones she had when she spoke to Aunt Eury before the games: when she'd offered District One to her if she came back alive. 'All its coffers filled,' she'd promised. Back then, Larissa hadn't even wanted it. Why lay claim to an empire she planned on burning to the ground? But now, here, at the end of it all, she was less sure. Maybe the point of castles really was to protect those within. Maybe it wasn't just some symbol of power and wealth. Maybe the biggest targets had to have the thickest barriers. Empathetic shepherds coddled the sickly, the newborns, the elderly. Experienced ones cared for the moneymakers first.

"Only if I fail," she explained honestly, after some consideration. If she was able to end this and make it back home, if she was able to set all of the things into motion she planned on setting, then no, there was no regret. Even if it meant sacrificing her own chances of happiness, or being a good person, or her own chances of a long life. If it meant an end to all of this, it was worth it.

He attacked but she managed to block this one. Torian had moxie, but Larissa's experience won out that time and allowed her to foresee the attack in the moments before it happened. It was a stiffness, a hesitation while the brain waited to spring the rest into motion. As he pulled back, she stepped in, and when he swung, she slid to the right and watched the point sail past her. Then she returned the favor, matching him blow for blow.

"But I guess that's not really a fair answer, is it?"

[larissa attacks torian, knife]
9k0wHkxClYknife
[bicep, 8.5+1]

She remembered over a week ago, right in the middle of explaining to Torian how to wrap the wire around the stake when making a snare, when she had inklings of a worry that this exact thing would happen. The fear of it had eventually been outweighed by other dreaded potential eventualities- what if she'd had to be the one to kill Bellamy? What if she won this fight jut to go on and have to kill Perry? This arena taught her that in order for dreams to come true, so did nightmares. But her reluctance to fight Torian occurred first chronologically for a reason: he had potential. Not just as a victor, that was always better seen than talked about, but just generally speaking. The way he quickly was able to understand her instructions and replicate them, the eager way his eyes lit up at the mere idea of learning- it reminded her of herself at that age. Eager to understand.

Though, for herself, to understand was to know how to destroy. To him, it was probably something much more kind in nature. Or at least scientific. Glancing at him, unseelie boy with his horns, and comparing him to herself, pulsing with radiating warm light, she thought that maybe fate had given them each other's armor to wear by mistake.

In this situation, there was no way for her to win and be the good guy. There was no way of distinguishing herself from the others who came before her. But that was already ruined when Apocalypse, her previously shadow-laden sword, finally got its fill of Xaahira's blood. The blade became exalted, shimmering in light. And her own light diminished in comparison.

"It's a fair enough answer. If you die, there won't be much time to feel that regret."

She would feel it every single day. But she would feel it. She came so far already, crossed too many lines for it to have been for nothing. Even if she could never learn another valuable piece of information for the rest of her life without glimpsing Torian's curious gaze, so be it. Larissa was already going to be haunted by ghosts. What was it to add one more? One she might've actually enjoyed remembering?

"Well, I don't plan on dying." Not said as a threat, not even particularly cold. She said the words as evenly as she could. It was stating the obvious. But so was reminding herself that plans could change at the drop of a hat.

Her eyes flicked to her backpack as she slowly inched her way closer and closer to it. She could, in theory, have ran for it right then: dove forward and hoped he didn't foresee it, grabbed her stuff and ended this right then and there. But she wasn't convinced he wouldn't see it coming. Torian was clever.

Larissa was wise.

She attacked.

[larissa attacks torian, knife]
k_YUGJtZhRknife
[head, 9+1]

Every moment further into the fight, Larissa wondered if it'd been enough for them yet. With each time Torian nearly skewered her through and through, with each time Larissa raked her knife across him: Is it enough yet? Could they stop? Had they reached a point in which she could actually shove him back into the water, whistle for Icarus, race to her things and be gone? Time ticked on. The blood was taking longer and longer to disappear in the water as more and more of it fell.

That time wasn't going to come, was it?

She was tiring him out, which made sense: he was smaller and carrying a lager weapon, and now he had a formidable-sized wound on his forehead, right in the sweet spot between his antlers, where the helmet couldn't quite reach. This is where her confusion came from: if she were a career, this would've been something to be proud of. This was something she would have expected on a highlight reel at the end, a shot as clean as that. So why, then, did her stomach turn at it? She wasn't selfish or stupid enough to apologize, but every ounce of her wanted to.

Recognizing great sacrifices had to be made in order to a better future was one thing. Carrying said sacrifices out was another. He was just a boy. She, just a girl. But they had to be so much more than that in order to live- an unfair amount of things a person ought never want to be.

He swung at her and she fell to her knees, managing to dodge the hit entirely. His breathing was labored, blood began mixing with the sheen of sweat above his brow.

Briefly, she was fourteen again, probably around Torian's age. The boy she sparred against made joke after joke at her expense. He was taller than her, you see. Stronger. In the moment she'd wanted so badly to prove herself that she threw her sparring knife at him and now he would never be able to see out of his right eye again. She realized she hadn't thought of it once since her private training session. Plenty of other traumatizing stuff pulling her focus, she supposed.

Upper hands could be lost. That was what her mind chose to remind her of. She didn't feel proud that she had one at the moment, because it only took Torian wanting to prove himself badly enough to win this and she knew it. He had the strength, he just hadn't the time yet to learn how to use it. There was a reason she shared the highest private training score with him. Looking at how far he'd come now, she didn't have to wonder what he did in there to know his score was deserved.

Taking advantage of her position, she swiped up at him from her knees.

[larissa attacks torian, knife]
mQ_UM7MKhnknife
[neck, 10+1]