the last supper / throne room fireplace / day 5

Curious how they twist and turn around each other, like spinning tops that the travelling bards used to let fly, their metal acorn bodies screaming as they slammed against one another in the dirt. The knight pauses for the smallest of moments, the memory falling over his vision like a curtain.

For one tiny sliver of a minute, the knight can hear a voice calling out his name. The sound teases at his memory, picks at the fraying edges, tugging swiftly on loose threads as if attempting to unravel him then and there. He turns his head, gaze lost to the passage of time.

It's been happening more frequently in the last few days, these pauses, as if his mind is taking one last deep breath before releasing for the last time. It wasn't like this before, when the invaders had yet to arrive. Back then, his aimless wandering had been as empty as he was.

There was a looseness in that, a freedom.

But now it's suffocating.

Their fault

the thought comes unbidden, a snake in the long grass, twisting and curling at his feet.

Destroy them Ser Knight, all those that would do you harm.

It isn't his own thought, it's a half-memory, a nagging thing, not quite real.

A command he received once, a long time ago now.

The curtain lifts. The floor of the throne room glistens in the light cast by the fire, marble surface slick with blood. The knight lifts his arm almost lazily, blade falling towards the nearest body it can reach.

There is a dead space where its heart once lay, an absence of feeling so complete that when his sword finds flesh, when he hears the tearing of sinew, the breaking of bone, the knight simply stares in silence. Then, he pulls his blade back and flicks the blood off of the end, before turning away to find his next victim.

The knight approaches. He’s made of stone and helmeted on top of that, but I swear I can see reluctance in his gait. Each pounding step on the throne room floor seems slower than the last. But still he moves forward. Is it erosion? Is that what’s getting to him? Beneath the layer of stone, crumbling away, is there a beating heart — an empathy chip of some kind, installed especially for him by the Gamemakers so they could round up their numbers and have a nice, divisible twenty five people to torture.

And just like everybody else, the Stone Knight is resigned to his task.

I could be wrong though. It might not be regret or anything like it weighing him down. He could simply be tired. How many simulated years of fighting has he been through? What history did the Gamemakers force into his head? To him, it’s all real. To all of us, it is all real; the kingdom is in ruins and someone has to reclaim it. There isn’t any point in insisting to yourself that none of it is real, that this is just an arena. For now, this is all there is. For most of us, this is the last thing there ever will be.

So, I forgive him when his blade clips me. What else does he have to live for other than blood? He’s just like us. I worry that the Gamemakers will let him win the whole affair in the end. Imagine that. I slice down whichever one of these fools — the ones I’m fighting, one of the fleeing ones by the dais — and cheer, just for the Stone Knight to come up behind me and take out his grudge on Eulalie on my neck.

Would I feel my head hitting the ground?

But what is wrong with me? Why am I standing here? Why am I thinking myself in circles? Why did I barely react to his sword cutting me? I shake out my hair, shake out my brain. D’arcy Mason is buzzing around like blonde blue bottle fly, seemingly at both edges of my periphery in the same instance.

I think she’s gone mad.

_{[ DARS ]}

"What? No personality?"

She scoffs and I smile. It’s faint, hidden in the dark behind a wall of protection. Personality was all I ever had, maybe I had too much of it. In fact, could be whatever a person needed in the moment. Perfectly sculping a fantasy to meet whatever desire the one sitting across of me needed in the moment. A smile for those who held sorrow deep in their eyes. A joke for the ones down bad on the drink for one reason or another. Playing a game of pretend in the dark with someone as deadly as they come. It was a balancing act if I had ever seen one before. Only it was not long till I had tipped the scales; Loosing myself in the art of personality.

All of it a lie. The truth was cold as stone, a numbness inexplicable for the loss of oneself. It hadn’t been there before, or maybe I have just never noticed how much it hurt when I felt another part fade away into oblivion. It could have been the chance for a new start, reinvention or rediscovery of who I had been before I gave myself away so carelessly.

The girl strikes Thompson, I can see the will to survive. A flame in its own right but I can’t let her burn to bright. Eulalie strikes the final blow, and I know I should sorrow should overcome me. Deep in my gut there should be something screaming for my friend, a yearning for his tales and truths to be as vivid as they were that first day in the library. This time the emptiness was all too familiar; it was the only reminiscent of who I known myself to be.

For the day Marcus died it was the first time I had ever felt this void.

I could final breath…I still was myself. I should thank him that in death he had just gave me the greatest of gifts, a reminder of who I thought I had lost. Or did I have Eulalie to thank for that? Another thing she had gifted me without knowing, lending me a hand in self-discovery and purpose.

Everything was rushing to my head at once, split ideologies of what was yet to come. All I know is that I wanted her at my side, but I refused to plead as August had done the day before. She did not owe me a thing and I never intend to make myself dependable on someone who’s name was the only real thing I knew of her.

But it was my time to break the silence…choosing to fight by her side and allowing her to choose me. An uncanny parallel to two years ago, putting back on a smile and working the rest of my shift as if I had not just lost someone who meant more than words could describe.

My eyes lock onto hers, reflecting in the light of the fire. I had forgiven her for a moments time, knowing we would go the next step together.

“Wasn’t it my personality that impressed you the most?” I questioned Eulalie, in a different setting it could have been just the two of us by the fireplace in each other’s arms after a long day. A moment so intimate but my voice loud enough for the girl from four to hear. Let’s kill her together. A thought I did not speak out loud, romanticization of violence and all of the chaos that had come with it.

“Together?” I asked with a daunting smile. It would never be the two of us against the world, but it could be just for this moment. Even if the fire on my spear had been extinguished, you could still feel its echo’s as I lunged towards the girl. The willingness to do what it takes almost as intimate of an act as there was.

[Tsiuri attacks pearl; spear]

u7UqS1dJrkspear

[3.5]

i half-expect august to ignore me, but he cannot resist a retort. like mine, it is a double-sided coin; a face for our onlookers, unaware of the secret we share - and another face for me alone, encrypted, hidden in code. 

ha! you can keep the real world, sweetheart. i just wanna go home. 

it is not a sentiment i can relate to. i had a home, once, and more than anything i wanted to leave it behind, escape its tower-rooms and shackles, untie myself from the burden of it. i didn't want to carry it along on my back anymore, and so i let it go, and i have been much better off for it, despite the lack of significant reduction in the average thread-count of my sleeping arrangements. i am probably the only person here, though, who does not not dream of returning to the place they came from, running into the arms of the people that love them and whispering, i did it, i'm home, after all. my version of happily ever after ends in martyrdom, and honestly, it's a freeing experience.

i am about to offer august a double-barrelled threat when he suddenly catches sight of something in the space behind me, and abandons me with all the haste and assurance of my own father. unlike my father, when i turn to see where he has gone, i am rewarded with an answer. 

he has turned from the suicide mission of threatening andromache to dance straight toward eulalie's axe. i am ready to kill him myself when he taunts her, tossing empty threats out in front of her like flags to a bull. there is only so much you can do before you simply must allow someone to make their own goddam bed. it is not, however, august that lies in it. 

there is a reason why i have not gone in with my knife out and challenged eulalie to a simple dual. she is not the sort of girl who loses a fist fight, or a chance to have a dig, or, upon reflection, anything at all. in this moment she sparkles in all of her blazing glory, wields an axe like an expert, commits a murder as though it is her destiny. i suppose it is. she is terrifying, beautiful, incredible --- and now august is standing right in front of her, the thompson-shaped shield between them now lifeless, triggering a cannon-fire that reverberates around the emptying room. i cannot save a fool from himself. 

i stand still, a statue caught in a moment between the blood and tears. on one side of me is a squadron of careers - brilliant, terrible eulalie, indominable andromache, and pearl, who seems to have offended everybody. on the other side is august, a broken boy, caught up over the friend he was never going to get to keep, tsuiri, social-climbing on eulalie's back, and d'arcy, who slips betweens us all, trying to stay out of it, trying to avoid the narrative that has been forced upon us here. 

suddenly i am angry. she does not get to opt out, to run through the fray untouched, whispering sorry, as she goes. we're all sorry, and yet god has not granted us the grace of a getaway. we must all stand here and repent. we must choose sides, we must, as august has done, choose between our enemies and our other enemies and the people we wish did not have to be our enemies at all. 

what is it, d'arcy? what's so important you're going to miss out on all of the fun? i have seen the way she is fixated on the table; as though nothing, not even six tributes twice her size brandishing weapons indiscriminately, could keep her from it. there is something on the table of critical importance to her. because she should run. she could run. and yet she is still here, pushing her way toward the table. if you tell me what it is, maybe i won't kill you. 

i have absolutely no intention of killing the kid, but i wave my knife at her, for effect. 

_[DARS]

I have desperation and rage on my side, but Eulalie has speed and precision. My body slam/knife combo only stalls her for a moment, and then she’s back on her feet, looking unhurt and vaguely annoyed. ”Did you not pay attention?” she growls, a thing they must teach the kids in career school to do, to be more intimidating. Or maybe she was born with it. Either way, it’s working; I’m back on my feet, readying my knife again, but at the force of her threat, I hesitate just a few seconds too long.

”You want something to avenge? Have it.”

Her axe moves with a calculated swiftness, so quickly that everything around her seems to slow behind the arc of the blade as it falls. ”No!” I shout, rushing toward her again, but I might as well be rushing to stop a cobra mid-strike. I’m too late, again.

As I watch him fall, a door inside me opens, letting out all the air in my lungs. It escapes me in a strangled, shapeless howl; I reach toward Thompson desperately, pressing my hands in vain against the gaping wound she left, as if anything I could do would stop the way blood pours from everywhere, Thompson, my friend, gone, replaced by this empty, slumped-over, leaking shell.

I turn to Eulalie, rage foaming up in my chest like tar, heavy. I know what our roles are in this land of make-believe; I think I always knew, but here I am kicking and screaming against the current. I wasn’t cut out to deal this kind of damage, I was born to be a maker, and my hands will obey little else. But Eulalie, like some wrath-bringer from another planet, stands here before us as the embodiment of pure, clean destruction, devoid of hatred. It’s that last part that makes me want to scream; she does not revel in it, sadistic, like Pearl, though she’s good at it. I hate her for robbing me of my reason to hate her, and I hate to imagine the alternative: thanking her for ending his life quickly.

And Tsiuri. I find myself gaping at her in disbelief as she turns away from Thompson. Her eyes are locked on Eulalie as if she’s in some kind of trance, and sure, maybe I would have understood the admiration, from afar, if she was still on my side. Instead, I’m suddenly even more alone now, Thompson’s arteries oozing his still-warm blood through my fingers. I can’t hear what she says over the pounding in my ears, but the coquettish look on her face makes my blood boil, and my anger mounts to a level I’ve never felt in my eighteen years of pacifism.

I taste bile as I snarl at her, ”Tsiuri, you back-stabbing snake! You won’t even look at him!” My hands shake as I begin to pull knives from my belt, one after another, throwing them in the direction of Tsiuri and Eulalie with little care for my aim; for once, I just want to bite them back. ”Turn around and look at him!”

As I yell, I try to pull Thompson’s lifeless body out of the fray, horrified at the thought he’ll be stepped on, again.

_{D A R S}

Florentine is a brilliant, violent vision, bright white hair aglow amidst the carnage threatening to douse every last trace of light that forces its way into the throne room. Have I always felt this way about her? It's hard to say. Even our days in the Training Centre feel like they belong to a different life now. Whatever opinions I held back then belong to a prototype version of Andromache Stewart. The Andromache Stewart Tribute has finally been released to the public for voracious optical consumption after spending a long sixteen years in development. Not every original aspect of her has survived to the final version, but we think that you will like what you see.

Deep auburn hair, angry eyes, and an uncanny ability to form grudges. 

I think I felt this way about Eulalie before. Eulalie, so beautiful and sure of herself from the day we were reaped up until right now, when the illusion she cast over me has finally disappeared. She wasn't strong enough to resist the pull of the waves. She wasn't strong enough to hold onto me or onto Florentine, her best allies. The undeniably best allies she could've had. The two allies she did have, and that she traded in for a single ally of questionable value. Tsiuri Dermott. 

I look at Eulalie over my shoulder, see the trace of an apology on her lips. I doubt she'd bothered to look for us at all. I bet she just jumped into Tsiuri Dermott's outstretched hand. But I can't say I blame Tsiuri either. Her original allies couldn't hold a candle to Eulalie if they tried.

Enough about her. Enough wondering and worrying. We've spent days wondering and worrying about Eulalie Blake. I turn back to Florentine just in time to hear her taunt D'arcy Mason. Now this is a role I'm used to. How easy it is, despite everything that has happened, to become proto-Andromache again, and start to play the second fiddle in a band of bullies again.

“Look, she’s like the running robot rabbits they used to let loose for us in One for target practice!”

_{[ DARS ]}