your encore. (ninety-seventh finale)

🎕

In an alternate universe, I pick up the phone when Flynn calls. It doesn’t really matter though – I don’t need to hear his voice on the other end to know what he would have said to me. He’d tell me that I have a chance. That I shouldn’t feel bad about Artemis, that I was just doing what I needed to do. That I’m so close to the end, and that I can’t give up now. That he’s proud of me.

Ugh. So predictable. So gross.

It’s everything he needs to hear himself say to make sure his guilt is as minimised as possible. I get that, sure, but it’s absolutely the worst kinda stuff he could say to me in the moment. So he can be mad all he wants that I threw the only thing connecting me to the life I used to know into the pits of Hell, but I don’t really give a shit. As far as I’m concerned, it’s not that personal, not that deep. I just don’t have the time or energy for another guilt trip.

Without Flynn or Circe or Artemis or Nori or Carmen or really anyone at all to keep me company, I don’t really know what I’m supposed to do. Should I go forth and traverse the sands to confront Jupiter and get this over with already? I think more likely I’m supposed to sit here and wait for some artificial storm to come screaming through and force me to go where the Gamemakers so desire. And look, I hate being told what to do as much as the next person, but I hate the heat of this hellscape even more. I’ll gladly sit and wait for my death to come knocking.

In saying that, Jupiter’s probably on his way right now to finish the job off once and for all. Damn Careers and their efficiency. Well that’s fine with me. Let him tire himself out trekking through the desert. I’ll be ready.

(Maybe.)

(Probably not.)

But Jupiter doesn’t come to find me. Our final day in the Arena plays out uneventfully, not dissimilar to all of the days previous, with the exception being that I don’t sleep at all through the heat of the day this time. Strangely, it feels harder with only two of us left to give in to my exhaustion, as opposed to when there was twenty-four of us navigating the desert and the chances of running into someone were so much higher.

It's when the temperature drops about five degrees, on the brink of nightfall, when the sandstorm arrives.

Blistering particles pelt my skin and face like tiny shards of glass. I’m at the mercy of the wind, being pushed across the sands to a destination that is both known and unknown all at the same time. It’s only a short journey, in the end. And when the mist finally evaporates and the ground stops vibrating once the dust has settled, it doesn’t take long for me to realise where I am. Really, in hindsight, I should have guessed it. I swear they do this every year. The Cornucopia? Finishing things off where they started? How original.

And like clockwork, as some kind of probable punishment for my internalised sass, I’m plunged into a suffocating kind of darkness, which unnerves me immediately. Has me on edge so fast I’m pulling out the block of flint from my bag and letting the spark ignite. By the time the fire catches, the lights have already come back on, and it all feels a little bit silly to be holding a blazing weapon like a torch when I can now see perfectly well what’s going on.

I’m late to the party; Jupiter’s already there, sitting lazily in a chair with his name embroidered on the back. There’s a spare seat next to him that I know is intended for me, but taking my place next to him feels just a tad suicidal, if I’m behind honest. That’s when I notice that even though I know where I am, everything seems vaguely unfamiliar.

“That’s new, right?” I point to the stage where the lights are now flickering through a myriad of rainbow hues, dancing spotlights casting eerie glows across the animatronics from my nightmares. They’re playing more of their usual ear-bleed music, but I’ve gotten pretty good at blocking out the discordant guitar riffs.

“What do you reckon? Should we climb up there and take the heads off those god awful things to make them shut the fuck up?”

I’ll admit it, I’m just stalling the bloodshed. So sue me for not wanting to cement myself any further as a killer. And I know that can’t have all that I want in this world; I know that preserving purity and surviving the night cannot co-exist anymore. But I’m still trying to work out what it is that I want before it’s too late.

(But I think it’s already too late.)

sera lights her neolithic spear on fire (1/3),
and attacks jupiter

vWTJb7NLzJspear

sc left thigh – 3.5

1-50

+2

🎕

In another alternate universe, Izzy and I are never friends.

We turn up to the orphanage in the same year, get told to share a bedroom with three other girls. We’re the youngest of the group, so we get shoved into the corner together, beds facing each other. On the first night, I’m too scared to talk to anyone, so I go to bed hours before curfew, but I don’t fall asleep. I’m shivering in the middle of Summer; that’s when I learned how to know when I’m truly petrified. Laying under the covers with eyes wide open, counting how many breaths I can take until another set of footsteps walks into the bedroom.

(Three thousand, two hundred and thirty-four.)

“Hey. You awake?”

The voice comes from directly over my head, next to my left shoulder. My breath hitches loudly in recognition, giving away the fact I’m very obviously not asleep. But I don’t say a thing against it.

“You missed dinner.” The voice trails off getting softer as she takes padded steps towards her cot. I know exactly where she is based on intuition alone – and so I guess even in this universe, we still share a common silvery thread between us.

Her bed creaks under her weight as she settles in for our first night in this new, wretched world. She doesn’t try to speak to me again. Maintains her silence for years as we pass over birthdays, adoptions and Reapings all bundled into one, until we’re eighteen and packing our duffle bags side by side in the room we’ve stoically shared through it all.

Like that first night, she’s the one who speaks first.

“I thought you hated me.”

I tell her I didn’t. Don’t. Want to tell her I would have liked having a friend to see me through the last six years. But that’s the part I leave unspoken. We’re older now. On our way to being evicted and ejected into the world as promising young women with morals and hopes and dreams that we’re supposed to have cultivated in the stuffiness of eggshell white walls and weekly therapy sessions. I don’t think we get to be each other’s havens in this life.

There’s an alternate universe where she lives, and I don’t feel a thing.

There’s an alternate universe where she dies, and I don’t feel a thing.

There’s an alternate universe where I don’t die, because I’m not trying to find the part of myself that died along with her.

And then there’s this universe: a final two, like I always knew it would be. It’s just not with the girl that I thought would be standing by my side, to the very end.

“I don’t know about climbing.” Jupiter answers me with Izzy’s voice – warily, wearily – and not even a second later, a fuse blows somewhere towards the left-hand side of the stage. A timely reminder that there’s probably a million volts of electricity running through the podium, and any attempt to ruin the Gamemakers’ pièce de resistance would kill us faster than either of us could.

Well. That would certainly put a dampener on the entire day, now wouldn’t it.

Jupiter’s playing right along anyway though, willing to indulge my childish proposition. Like any diligent little Career he’s thinking three steps ahead of me as he pulls a knife from his pocket and slings it with a practiced ease towards centre-stage, spearing the frontman’s throat and opening up a treasure trove of sparking wires.

I swallow hard, my own throat suddenly feeling very, very hot.

“Oh. Yeah. I guess that works.”

If you heard my voice break, no you didn’t.

“If I’m going to die here, I want it to at least be silent.”

I nod my head in agreement, close my eyes for half a second to welcome the nothingness that’s coming to greet us in our dramatic ending.

Except it doesn’t. In fact...

“Ugh. That just made it worse!”

Because even though now there’s only three creepy animatronic eyesores playing their ghostly instruments, it’s clear the lead guitarist was holding the whole cursed act together. Even if they’re not completely sentient, without their frontman, the rest of the band members start to lose their way. The bass line drags its feet across the stage, heavy and clunky. The drummer loses his rhythm with a misplaced foot on the kick that causes the keyboardist to lose her own count, white keys being played on the wrong beats. The damn instrument might as well be fully out-of-tune; it might honestly be an improvement at this rate.

I’m sure there’s a metaphor to it all. Something about how you need every part of yourself working together to achieve success. So then it’s probably not a great sign that my head and my heart and my hands can’t link up for long enough to figure out what I even want out of the next thirty minutes. But I can at least try and pull myself together for thirty seconds.

“Guess we’ve got some work to do.” I shrug my backpack off and crouch to the ground, one eye locked on Jupiter at all times. Can’t trust a Career, something Flynn would tell me under the guise of being a helpful mentor. I dunno though. Circe wasn’t half bad.

“Hey, I’ve got one of those too.” I pull out a knife identical to the one coiled around Jupiter’s wrist – the same weapon he’d come at me with a few days ago, when Circe and Carmen were both still alive and I still thought I was ready to die. “Like an old friend!” It’s painfully easy to fall back into that memory – to feel the sharpness of the blade and the bite of the venom quickly entering my bloodstream. If I look close enough, I swear I can still see the radioactive traces glowing deadly at the tip.

“My aim’s not as good as yours, obviously,” I warn him, the shadows of Portia and Artemis circling as my words echo in more ways than one. I take a few steps closer to the stage before letting the knife fly out of my hand shakily. I’m just praying it sticks the landing, not knowing anymore if I’m trying to impress Jupiter or prove a point to myself.

The dagger doesn’t bury itself into a metallic limb, but rather whips through the air like a boomerang, carried by the swinging momentum of the attached chain. It wraps itself around the stand of the snare drum which slowly starts to topple over, straight into the path of the rest of the drum kit. A hole punctures itself through the skin of the kick drum; the cymbals come crashing down in a golden rage. A tiny tamborine rolls across the stage. It’s comically cathartic. And wholly satisfying to hear the softening of the orchestra, and know it’s by my hand.

“Hm. Slightly better.” I turn to Jupiter, give him a thumbs up. “Batter up!”

sera attacks jupiter; flaming spear (2/3)

CoJlansaLgspear

sc right forearm – 3.5

1-50

+2

lightstep attempt on jupiter’s attack

1-10

🎕

Jupiter doesn’t even have the audacity to look apologetic as he regards the dagger I pull from my backpack, despite knowing full well what the hidden undertones in my words are supposed to mean. He doesn’t offer an apology for almost killing me. He doesn’t offer condolences for the loss of Circe. He doesn’t even show a trace of remorse for Carmen’s death, his supposed ride-or-die only a few days ago.

These sentiments are all things I never really expected from a guy I’m not convinced even knows the meaning of the word sympathy, but I still feel cheated. Didn’t I deserve more, on my final day of living? His indifference is eerie as he bites down his guilt, refuses to scrutinise the shortcomings that have brought him to now, this pivotal point in his life.

But at the end of the day, we’re just strangers to each other. And it’s probably unfair to assume he’s as bad as I’m making him out to be. I’m sure he’s a really complex fellow! How am I supposed to know how Careers deal with their emotions? Who am I to judge when I’m probably no better at it then him?

At least he’s not gloating yet.

“Y'know... I think these were supposed to be celebrating us.”

More than likely. Seems like the kind of ironic spectacle a Gamemaker would shill their pennies out for. It feels like a hollow victory, and I guess that’s the point. It’s too bad we spoiled the show.

“Oops.”

A hi-hat rolls across the stage and falls off the edge, landing in the sand with a sad little thud.

“They might just kill us both off for a stunt like this.”

I dunno. It probably looks really cool on the TV screens. Capitol’s probably eating this shit up right about now. Enemies to friends, it’s a classic trope.

“Would you care? If they did?” There’s something in that, right? Kids becoming killers, not knowing how to cope with the evil they’ve awakened, unable to even fathom the idea of living with their own heavy conscience. Admittedly, it seems to happen less and less in the Games these days – I’m sure that says something great about the current state of our world. But hey. Maybe Jupiter’s the new-age Career type that actually feels bad about cold-blooded murder.

So tell me how you feel about dying, Jupiter Graves.

(Maybe it’ll tell me how I’m supposed to feel.)

And I could poke and push and prod at the tender space by his jugular, knowing that just a few seconds of pressure would be enough to render him either unconscious or writhing, whichever’s more uncomfortable. But between words exchanged he swiftly takes out another Headliner, leaving only one cursed robot to work the stage alone. And it just doesn’t seem fair that they get to take all the undeserved glory for their self. It suddenly feels far more important to silence them all.

“Think you can spare me one of those thirty-two knives you’ve got in there?”

I’m not really expecting him to oblige, but he extends a spare dagger towards me, blade pointed outwards. I let my palm close around the cool silver as Jupiter lets go – and almost instantly feel a sliver of blood pool between the fleshy space between my thumb and forefinger. I glare at him accusingly, ready to call him out on his forceful drawback. We both know he meant to break the skin. But I’m the one who asked for his knife. Don’t you know? Girls who play with fire are bound to get burned.

Echoed fate is the tip of my spear glowing hot and true, slick with stolen tar. I’m trying to keep the flame alight, fighting against the humidity of the night as it sucks all of the oxygen right out of the air. We don’t need the fire to see anymore; the stage is illuminated as ever, blindingly so. But there’s something warming in the lick of orange cast against the browns and silvers of my crude weapon.

I take a chance on the moment, bringing knife tip to spear head. I hold my breath as I wait for the sparks to catch, and when they finally do, it is magnificent.

The flames erupt from the smaller blade, dancing across the glinting surface like witchcraft. It shouldn’t work, yet it does. The tiny weapon is almost fully engulfed by the fire – it travels up the hilt of the dagger, inching closer to my clenched hand.

“I’ll take pyro over death metal any day of the week. Let’s watch that shit BURN!”

I always said I wanted to be cremated when I die. But I won’t let these flames reach me; I guess that’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back, makes me realise I probably don’t want to die, not really.

So I steel myself with a heaving breath, choking on ashy fumes as my eyes begin to water. I let the knife fly seconds before my entire right hand sustains third-degree burns, and watch it seek shelter in the conglomerate of sparking wires and metal pipes – on a collision course for a final act of destruction and rebellion.

seraphina attacks jupiter; flaming spear (3/3)

MX9kHo8zWispear

stabbed in stomach – 9.5 + 1

1-50

+2

🎕

It’s a lot more dramatic than I’d thought it would be.

I guess part of me thought the fire wouldn’t take, or the knife would miss, or some other third excuse for things going wrong would eventuate. But it’s almost too perfect, the way the flames engulf the last remaining Headliner and proceed to dance along the stage front, blazing everything in its path. Instruments on standby start to melt. Wires snap as the heat burns through the insulation coating.

At least it’s quiet now. Well, save for the occasional crash of fallen metal scaffolds and the crackling of embers being stoked. I can just about hear my own laboured breathing now; it makes it a lot easier to hear Jupiter, too, for better or for worse.

“Always next year... right?”

Right. One of us is supposed to return back to a life of guilt and glamour and run the next bunch of tributes through the gauntlet just to watch them inevitably fail. Over, and over, and over....

And then... oh god. Then I’m in the same boat as Flynn fucking Garner.

That thought alone’s enough to make a girl wanna kill herself.

I shake my head at Jupiter, roll my eyes at the drama in his words. “They’re not killing us both. They’ll just make sure whichever one of us survives is perpetually miserable.” Joke’s on them though: I already am. Jupiter too, probably. He’s got that dead in the eyes look about him, though I couldn’t say if it was there a week ago.

For a few moments then, nothing happens. Neither of us speak – even the fire seems to bend around time, if the lack of falling objects is anything to go by. Or maybe the flames have simply run out of things to engulf. That’s okay. Soon enough they’ll come for us, bodies and souls either alive or dead.

My hand grips tighter to the spear in my hand, knowing we can’t stall like this forever. Flynn would tell me to take the moment, to not let him get to me first. But it feels wrong to break the tension with an attacking lunge. It’s only then I realise he hasn’t even answered my question, and I’m trying to figure out whether to call him out on it or let him off the hook and just get the damn fight over with – attack him like a good, obedient little girl – when he whispers in a voice softer than any I’ve ever heard before:

“I think I would care.”

My response is to bite down hard on my tongue. There’s the taste of blood in my mouth that my canines bring to surface as I draw on every last ounce of my strength to not reply with muscle memory: I don’t think I would.

It’s the question I’ve been grappling with for a year already, and I still don’t feel certain of an answer. But how much of the truth can I give to him? Would he even understand how I walk the line between wanting to live and being ready to die every single day? Is admitting I was ready to throw my life away two weeks ago enough of an argument to surrender and let someone who actually wants this take it all for their self?

Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. Maybe it’s better not to know who Jupiter Graves is.

But I guess he’s not content to make a stranger out of Sera Keoch.

“What do you think they'll make of you? If you win?”

Thinking about the future has always made me uneasy. Perpetually pessimistic, unreasonably superstitious: all the things I’ve ever yearned for have never eventuated to anything more than disappointment and a broken heart. I think if I told myself I was going to wake up tomorrow and make it through the day without a single issue to plague me, I’d probably die in my sleep before I even got the chance to see the sun rise. And so to stand with Jupiter and speak into existence how I imagine my life as a Victor might play out? Well, that just feels like I’m asking for trouble. Celebrating the gold medal before you’ve even crossed the finish line. I just wish the prize was something worth dying for.

“Damn. You’ve thought that far ahead? I’ve barely thought about tomorrow.” And maybe that’s just evidence to how far the chasm between us stretches: one of us contemplates her death, and the other envisions a life of what could be. “I guess this whole situation has probably changed their minds on us, hey?” Maybe before this moment we were something malleable and impressionable to them, but I don’t think they can think that about us anymore.

I look at him properly then: steel to steel, blood to water. See the orange that dances in his irises as it reflects back an image of myself I don’t like the look of. I wonder who Jupiter Graves might be beyond the grave. I wonder if he even knows himself.

“What about you? Reckon you’re gonna go back and restore One to its former glory? They’d probably forgive you for this if you did something like that.” He’s got a nice face. Would be easy to turn him into a hero, I think. Or maybe I’m just being too generous, too optimistic.

Funny how I can never say the same things about myself.

seraphina attacks jupiter; flaming spear

Qk|UUYOf3|spear

sc cheek – 3.5

1-50

0

self-defense on jupiter’s attack 9152

3-8

🎕

Kinda knew what Jupiter would say before he said it. About not having a choice or a say in his own story. I guess he’s been thinking about this moment his whole life, training for the brutal final minutes before he becomes immortalised as a killer, gets air-lifted out of the Arena and has a golden crown placed atop his head. By then, my body will have started rigor mortis, hacked half to death, a likely mess of severed limbs bent at every kind of angle. Maybe they’ll just leave me to burn in the desert, engulfed in the very flames I created here.

That’s the first time I really, truly feel panic set in. Because if my body doesn’t get back to Six, then I’ll never get to be with Izzy again, and all of this would have been for nothing.

“You should be thinking about it. Thinking only about tomorrow got you this far.”

But that’s not true. Becoming a killer isn’t what got me to this moment. I think the only thing that’s kept me alive this long is thinking I’d be better off dead through it all. There’s less to lose if you’ve already given up your life.

But what if I’ve lost the only thing I’ve ever cared about with my reckless destruction?

“But tomorrow’s not just any regular day, is it?” I softly gasp out, struggling to regulate my breathing in the face of fear. Tomorrow is the start of a new chapter for us both; the beginning of one story, and the ending of another. I still don’t know which of us will end up with which book. “Maybe that’s why I’m trying not to think about it.”

The future is a scary place to be. Almost as paralysing as the past. Impossibly, the present feels like the safest place for me right now. The irony is the fact that the flames don’t seem as angry, and Jupiter’s knives don’t seem as sharp as what’s waiting for on the other side of the new day.

Maybe he’s right though. Maybe thinking about tomorrow is the only way to ensure I get the ending I want.

And yet. The clock keeps ticking, the world keeps burning, and I still don’t know what it is that I want.

“What about you, Seraphina? I'm sure Flynn Garner would love to have another Six victor for all the headlines.”

I find the space in my crowded head to still roll my eyes at the mention of Flynn’s name. I guess it’s only fair that he’s with me at the end, to finish this how we started. “I wouldn’t count on it. He doesn’t seem like the publicity type, if you know what I mean. I’m, like, convinced he’s just trying to prove to himself that he’s a good person.” But where does that validation come from? What’s one tribute surviving every ten years in the shadow of the twenty-one that don’t?

My thoughts drift back to Jupiter’s prior words, as he spoke about his own future; the life he must have always dreamed of. I think about the kind of Victor he would be. Someone practical and strong-willed, dedicated to coming out on top. Someone who might spare a solemn thought for a tribute lost, but it wouldn’t be on his conscience, ‘cause “there’s always next year, right?”

I think about him in a penthouse in the Capitol, making the golden streets his own after being paraded through them and admired for his triumphs. I think about newspapers emblazoned with images of flames licking his skin, promoting this destruction as a planned performance – the romanticisation of my final moments immortalised in glossy print as an afterthought.

I see it so clearly, that it makes my heart ache for not having a future of my own to fight for.

I think maybe I had one, once. Some vision of Izzy and I in our own dingy apartment. The plumbing would be fucked and the only water we’d get through the pipes would be icy cold. We’d have a single lightbulb in the middle of the living room and have to light candles past 7pm just to see each other’s faces. I’d probably learn to cook begrudgingly because Izzy would insist that it wasn’t fair that she was keeping forty-five plants alive while the most I was doing to turn our shack into a home was dusting the cobwebs and sweeping the floors from time to time.

It's almost laughable to think how differently Jupiter and I see the world. Always have, and likely always will. Because maybe I could think about what happens if I make it out of here. Maybe I’d take Jupiter’s penthouse and read magazines with my name on every second page and find some purpose in trying to make other kids think they have a chance of surviving instead of spending their last days on Earth despairing at their inevitable mortality.

But that doesn’t seem like the life I’m supposed to lead.

(I wonder if I could learn to have it.)

“Do you think... people can change their minds? About what they want?”

What I mean to say is: does it make them any less of a person for being so fickle? Because really, isn’t that just what the human experience is? But maybe the punishment for our own humanity is being locked into the decisions of our adolescence – and if so, there’s only one way that this day ends for me.

I just...

“I think I’m starting to change mine.”

sera attacks jupiter; spear

6H_bTcewpHspear

sc stomach – 4

🎕

The smoke’s making me light-headed now. Clouding the air so far that the images in front of my eyes shimmer faster and faster and I’m having trouble differentiating between reality and my imagination. Reminds me of the time I gave myself heatstroke when I stubbornly stayed out in the sun too long on the first day of Summer. Iz had to keep replacing the towels on my forehead with more and more cold water when I finally came back inside. Was bedridden for forty-eight hours. We lost a lot of money that weekend, I think; truthfully, I don’t really remember much of it.

Don’t know why I’m thinking about it now. I guess the heat holds more significance than I gave it credit for.

“I want you to think about it, Seraphina.” I begin to shake my head despite my dizziness, stave away the thoughts he’s trying to push onto me, but hold myself steady to save looking like a poor and fragile creature. “If I'm going to die to you, I want you to know what you'll do tomorrow with my death.”

Silly boy. Thinking he will matter past tomorrow if he dies today. He’s lucky, though. I’ve been making a habit of holding on too tightly to the ghosts of my life. So I guess I’d carry him with the rest of them – those who’ve gone, and those still to pass – held on a pedestal one tier below Iz. I’d probably return to Six and find a run-down shack to live in like I always wanted to do with her. Try to descend into a world of anonymity. Try to find a new normal in the old familiar.

Is that what he wants from me? An admission that my proposed tomorrow is only a smudge on the illustrious lifestyle he’s already planned for; and thus, I’m nowhere near as deserving of being a Victor as he is?

I think if I said it aloud, I wouldn’t be able to find it in myself to disagree with that assessment.

“So, what’ll you do with tomorrow?” He taunts the idea of lying to myself about being a good person, and all I can do is laugh in his face at the very notion.

“Oh, nah babe. I already know I’m not a good person. No threat of thinking otherwise.” I know he gets it: we’re both killers now, after all. Have probably always been, if you believe that you can’t change your fate. “But I’ll keep you alive, if that’s what you’d want.” Or even if he didn’t, I think it’s an unavoidable reality. I’m not a malicious girl; try as I might to believe otherwise, I have a conscience that doesn’t let me forget.

“Or I could try to let you go.” Leave you to a cemetery that I’d never visit. Rid you from my mind so that the only thoughts consuming my waking hours are selfish ones of myself. Maybe I’d even learn how to let go of Iz somewhere along the way to numbness.

I won’t stand here and ask him what he wants, just to turn around and do the complete opposite out of spite. If I lived, I’d try to uphold his dying wishes. I think he’s owed that much. I think I’d want the same.

Makes me think I should have asked Izzy more when I had the chance. Seems ridiculous that for all those years of living, the only thing I knew about her dying was that she wanted her plants to outlive her.

But there’s no one left to keep them alive.

And it brings me back to the question weighing heavy on my chest, growing in size and girth by the minute: Do you think people can change – their minds, their wants, their needs?

“Maybe you can,” Jupiter concedes. Closes the book on the possibility of him ever achieving that same peace. This time, when I try to shake my head to disagree, I don’t stop myself.

“I don’t think it’s too late.”

Once, a girl thought her life wasn’t worth much. She grew up in an orphanage, accepted the fact that nobody loved her, and that she would never amount to anything great. Found a friend, against the odds, but knew it didn’t change the fact she’d still die with nothing to her name. Thought that maybe her purpose in life was never to live in it at all. Lost a friend, had her suicidal thoughts validated, felt content in the impeding end. Never thought she’d see the day where she changed her mind, so she knows better than anyone what he means when he says it’s too late. But.

“I just think you want to have to change.”

But –

“I don’t think you want to.”

Because once, a boy thought his life wasn’t worth much. He thought the only way to survive was to be ruthless, rising from the ashes of his past through tears of blood and poison-tipped talons. He was told in order to bring back the life he took away, he had to continue down his path of destruction. Pushing through door after door, cutting down whoever stood on the other side. All in the pursuit of being remembered. He learned you cannot be lauded if you are not callous, and so. Here he stands – unwavering, unshakeable, on the precipice of glory and the crown he’s always kept at arm’s length.

He says it’s too late for him, and he breathes a sigh of relief at that simple way of thinking.

What a cruel way to live.

“So, Jupiter Graves. What happens now?”

sera attacks jupiter; spiked blunt

YELIrGRYLgspiked blunt

broken rib – 7 + 1

🎕

In an alternate universe, I know my parents. We live in a house in the heart of Six, close to the frenzy and wonder of existence. He’s a doctor; she’s a housewife. They met in high school as sweethearts, married in the fall after graduation. Always made sure there were fresh flowers in the kitchen and cold milk in the fridge. Always made sure I knew what love felt like, so I’d be able to find it myself one day.

In an alternate universe, I don’t think I know pain. I marry a guy my parents approve of; we have two kids and I end up in a cushy administrative role at the hospital. I never pledge my life to Izzy. I never throw my name into the ring of fire. I never meet Flynn, Carmen, Portia. Circe, Artemis, Jupiter. And I most certainly don’t spend my days pondering on alternate universes.

I wonder if Jupiter is thinking of other lives he might have had, when his eyes flicker uncertainly from side to side, and his hands flex instinctively around his knife. I wonder if he’s looking at the person he could have been, or simply ruminating on the ghosts of his modern-day making.

He answers me soon enough, so that I don’t have to waste precious seconds trying to become a mind reader.

“I just really, really don’t want to change.”

Hey, fair enough. And good for you! Knowing what you want and who you are. It’s far more impressive than being a girl who can’t hold onto a solid thought to save herself. I’m almost jealous of how simple it is for him. I nod at him: an acknowledgement. What more is there to say?

That’s when I look around – a final glance over the landscape of ruins surrounding us – and wonder if this is everything he ever wanted it to be.

I hope it is. I want that for him.

What happens now? I’d asked. Never been good at taking the lead. Iz was always the one jumping head-first into bad ideas.

“We charge, we fight.”

Circe’s gift of a spear trembling softly in my hands.

“Are you ready?”

Orange poppies falling, buried in the sand and crushed into oblivion.

“Yeah, whatever.” Have to be sooner or later. The time for sentimentality is over.

Jupiter lunges at me without a second thought; everything slows down after that. Flynn’s voice swims in my ears, “Don’t let him get to you first.” Carmen’s there too, sitting on the train trying to fold in on herself, “I’ll take the pastels if she won’t.” Circe is the ghost floating through a sea of flowers, her voice hauntingly beautiful as she whispers about a legacy I’ll never know: “Peace despite everything.”

Iz is close by. Always has been, even when I didn’t want to look for her ‘cause I didn’t want her to see the monster she turned me into. And we could have been standing anywhere – in the cemetery; in the veggie patch past the orchard; on the rocky cliff of an ocean she once murmured something about in a lost dream. But we’re stranded on an alabaster couch in the room where people say goodbye, and there’s the familiar sarcasm in her voice like it never died, like she never died, “Think you’re bringing the mood down, baby.”

She never promised me she’d fight, in the end. Guess I have to do all the work now; and it’s comforting, I realise, to know that some things never change.

sera attacks jupiter; spiked blunt

LJY79bZJT0spiked blunt

broken left hand; hits armor