i can almost hear {harmony} // Chaos

We've walked for days.

My mind knows little other than the crunch of the cold snow under my feet, a tunnel of pristine whiteness and the fog of my breath as it leaves me in laboured pants. Whatever focus I would have had - hunter's instinct, killer's instinct - has been worn away by the days and nights trapped in different rooms, trying so hard to repair both my body and my brain. One comes along as it should, wounds sewing themselves together, but the other remains painfully raw. A gaping hole where pieces of me should be.

I know Luna notices it by the way I've gone sullen and silent more often than not, how she tries to bring me back to myself with soft touches and coaxing words. Some part of me appreciates it by the way I take her fingers with my own and bring them down to my lap, playing with the spaces between her hold, but other days I can barely summon the will to stay awake. I foolishly thought my physical scars would be the extent of my damages once we emerged from that seventh hell - an already fractured psyche is impossible to damage further, right? I've lost the voice I once held so dear to me.

The District is beautiful in a tragic way. I watch the flashing lights on the towering buildings with a certain sense of wonder - they cast shadows upon all those that are inferior to them, hues of pink and green and purple upon the grey snow to lend it the magic it lost under the boots of these greedy citizens. But all is silent now save for the frozen wind that howls mournfully through the sparse, skeletal trees, lamenting the loss of nature. It feels unnatural to be somewhere without roots and open air now after so long within, too exposed. There are a million invisible eyes that watch from every gnarled knot of worn concrete and every shattered sidewalk. Never have I ever seen such broken magnificence, a place that once was absolute in its brilliance only to be led astray. (It reminds me of many people, surely, but that is another tale for another time.) We walk among what little cover the woods can provide - I know our footsteps are an obvious sign as to where we've been and who we are, but the numbing frost lulls me to forget. I've come to enjoy the cold where I can hardly feel my skin and the pain that it brings.

We step into the shelter of the decrepit house with relief - it is an old man, leaning heavily on its cane to one side, the windows creating the sad slope of tired eyes. The air is musty and unused with the distinct scent of aged books and stale animals snuffling about in the corners, chewing away at his foundation and pulling his broken hips into crippled balance. The backs of my fingers trail along the warped wood as Luna rids me of my sodden coat (like a little child unable to care for themselves) and mentions something about getting warm, her hands shuffling about in her pockets for a match. The sizzle of the flame makes me flinch back by instinct, my lips curling up into a grimace as I instead wordlessly make my way up the groaning staircase. Away from the light and the memories that come along with it, I feel a distant pang of guilt for leaving her so readily, but it's smothered as the hearth flares to life and casts its broken shadows upon the weathered walls. My steps echo as I haul myself to the second floor.

Nothing has lived here for a long time, that much is certain. Dust gathers in a fine layer over every surface and tickles the back of my throat when I inhale, filtering light through the grimy windows to form patterns in the musty air. Perhaps at one point it was a happy home, but nothing remains other than a shell.

A metal bedframe has been pushed up against the wall with no mattress in sight, two little night tables guard beside it. There were pictures once for they leave an impression upon the walls but somebody has since removed them and the memories that accompany them. Perhaps it's better that way - strangers should not share what should only be yours. The planks under my feet are scratched and worn, and there are the distinct impressions of little feet pattering along the ground, faded with time.

(This is what my house will look like eventually. Kaya's house... our house. It pains me more than I care to think.

We never had the chance to form those tiny feet, to make memories like these people. I turn away.)

I forget where my feet take me, but I sense her presence before anything else. She is the only thing I am completely tuned to these days, the only person my body still remembers. The distant heat from downstairs has not yet begun to creep through the rest of the house, and my skin is still as cold as ice - my palms welcome it. "I wonder if the ghosts in here will mind us using their home?"

This miserable house is the salvation from the squalor outside, but I would gladly brave the frozen winds if it meant staying away from the destructive light I now here crackling away from downstairs. Its burning heat has not yet reached up these floorboards and I welcome the cold damp, letting my breath escape me in one long rush and paint mist all along the walls. Still, Luna welcomes the light after all of this, and I am never one to deny her; my steps are soft as I follow her downstairs and away from the gloom.

Once settled, I take the furthest corner from the fireplace, huddling into a ball to warm my icy skin and glaring at the flames from a safe distance. Unable to curl my hands for heat, I instead stuff them under my arms and scowl in an attempt to ignore the hunger gnawing deep in my stomach. It seems no matter where we go the hardships are the same.

"It's so fucking cold." I grumble to myself, hunching further and discarding the obvious fact that the bones of my spinal cord stick out from under the skin of my back. Staying in District Six did little for our health, mental or physical, and the cold helped none. People there are hard like in Nine and would rather save their our skin that aid two bedraggled strangers who look like Death has stamped over them and left them out to rot; I heard that the Peacekeepers there are brutal, and any attempt to aid possible runaways could result in brutal and unforgiving punishment. My scarred fingers wind nervously in the blanket pulled up to my knees, shuffling my feet anxiously along the floor until my back hits the freezing wall and I feel some comfort against the heat, faint but smothering all the same.

Sometimes I wish I could see the ocean - people say it is warm but never hot, cool but never cold, and the salt stings your eyes and the sand gets into your toes and for a few precious moments you feel your worries drain away. I want to take Luna to the sea.

(el mar, il mare, la mer)

We traveled far but not far enough it seems - some part of me always thought that escaping the places that haunted us would relieve us of our burdens; a foolish notion, I know, but I would give anything I could ever cut away to forget the pain of remembering Kaya's smile, silver-sharp on a bruised canvas, brushed and blushing in the light of dawn. Or even the brittle reeds that I ran through before all of this that now bear a startling resemblance to Desma's hair as I held her for the last time, the ends of it brushing my bare arms and sending cold chills down my spine. Everything I do brings up a memory; a lovers exhale, the sweetness of morning, the sin of night. I long to scrub it all from my skin like words that have embedded themselves far too deep and Luna is both the brush and the soothing balm that heals all wounds - she must see the apology in my eyes whenever I pull away from her touch, for she is the only one still able to read me in ways I would rather her deny. All the others have gone, lost to the threads of time and the deep, angry caverns of my tortured memory.

"How long are we going to stay here?" I mumble in question, tossing my damp hair behind my back that has just begun to melt. Wind howls through the cracks and the old house moans its discontent, slanted roof creaking dangerously in the gale. From outside it looks like an unhappy old man, slumped to one side and supported by a rotting cane jutting from his lumpy stomach - his mouth gapes oen to welcome us into his cold and aged belly, begging us to spark life back again within his core. I'm unsure as to what we can offer him now, as dulled and disused as we are, but anything could be better than fading away into obscurity and light-washed wooden boards.

Does a sinner ever want to talk of their past? Does a dying man wish to speak of the future? I grit my teeth together and clench my hands the best I can, glaring so hard into the rotting walls they threaten to burst into beautiful flames. We are the only living beings in this white-washed world, encased in our own little universe of frost and darkness... what was that poem? Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice?

(from what I've tasted of desire, I hold with those who favor fire)

This place is close enough to that, enclosed in a tiny space with so many unsaid things suffocating between us. Things have not been the same since we were released from our own little hell; we operate silently, Luna often trying to fill the voids between us with words that mean far more than they say. I barely find the energy or the will to respond and simply watch her watch me with unblinking eyes. We dance on a fault-line primed to explode and it is thick in the air between us that taints all we breathe until I can scarcely draw air into my starving lungs. I hate what this has become, a mockery of a friendship because I am unable to crawl over the mountains of my fears, but the Detention Center has exposed to me the undeniable fact that I am achingly human, able to be torn down and battered like the rest of them. It haunts what used to be my unbending whim, taunting it with sickly sweet barbs of what used to be. I can't look in a mirror these days for fear of what I'll find.

"No." I mutter sourly, but she shouldn't be surprised - when do I ever want to talk these days? I find the cadence of her voice soothing, a balm to my weeping wounds that are as much on the soul as the body. Sometimes I urge her to speak with a brush of my fingers against her wrist, or an unwavering stare. At night I hear her voice in the dark and it lulls me into a state of twilight that is so much better than my dreams, light and airy. I wonder if sometimes she grows tired of it, the constant barrage of noise. But she never stops regardless and I am grateful for that. (Among many other things, unable to be put into fragile human words.)

(but if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate)

Despite all her ways that say it is not so, I wonder to myself when she will leave. Will I close my eyes tonight and she will slip out, like a shadow in the snow? Or perhaps later, days from now, when the storms have passed and we enter a strange new land? She tries to paint all the things she wants me to know in her words that mask their meaning and her eyes that always say what she wishes, but her light hurts my eyes and I shield it from the glow and her message is lost in the background. I used to embrace it, be warmed by it, but I want no warmth anymore.

"You, uh..." I swallow hard and look to the fire as a way to distract myself; anything to take away from the heat of her body against my side and the rise of her chest as she breathes and the gentle heartbeat of her thigh against mine. We fit so perfectly together that there is not a soul in the world who could worm their way between us, not like this, sitting in the dark with nobody but each other for company. It is something so perfect I can't bear to part with lest I be the one to take it away - the blow softened if I let her leave before she does so herself. Cut away the wound before it festers. "You can take the big coat, if you want. When the storm clears and you can go. You need it more. "

I try to make it sound neutral but it is ruined in the way my voice cracks at the end; I clear my throat and turn away, running my hand through what remains of my hair before I forget about my wounds and flinch back with a hiss. It's so pathetic that it brings tears to my eyes but instead I bite down so hard on my tongue it bleeds to fight it away. I've cried enough in front of her to last me small eternities. "I won't be mad."

(to say that for destruction ice is also great
and would suffice)

"Aren't you?" I snap back, harsher than intended because she needs to stop doing this, talking to me like I'm something about to be broken and saying things she can't keep. Everybody leaves in the end, whether it be of their own volition or through death or another means; even if somebody else takes them away. "That's funny, because I remember you saying something like that in the District before you ran and never looked back." It hurts to speak like this to her, but her words have broken something in me that has kept me silent until now. I boil in my misplaced fury, hot under my collar despite the freezing cold and the damp clothing that sticks to my skin.

Once upon a time there was a god named Mars in the sky; he ruled over his volatile descendants and was forever cemented into time and space and void. I am raised into his legacy of anger and hatred; his fury is mine from a million miles high, his burning passion that we see even from our ground. My eyes are pinpricks in the gloom as I turn to her, studying her face in the firelight. She holds our two pendants like it could solve everything (maybe it could but I am too stubborn to try) and her gaze is strangely combative, firm in the ways I'm not used to. Though she has toughened herself on the months we've been on the run it's never been so open like this - the notion that she would fight for us sends a chill crawling up my spine.

"We're meant to be together, huh? Tell me how we can be together when we're stranded in a foreign district with no money, no contacts and no clue? You could pass now, but I'm ugly as fuck with these scars and they won't look twice before throwing me away like trash. You should escape while you can so that you can start a nice new life like you wanted to when you left the first time." I've gotten up in her space now, rising to my knees like an angry dragon. It's ridiculous to think that after all we've been through, all we've seen, that she thinks we can just throw everything we used to be away and start over. Ghosts of the past always haunt the present no matter how firmly you try to keep them at bay; I know that Kaya ended up here and the mere thought of being in the same district as her makes my heart scream in my chest with a lonely boom that's been left disjointed ever since she went away and left me to rot. It won't ever stop, not even now that it tries to latch onto Luna's warmth like a greedy child. I won't let it, not again.

Everything that I've ever thought about everybody seems to want to come from me at this moment but I have always spoken in silence; this strange new need to speak makes my throat hurt where the words all jam against each other, fighting for dominance. I know I say things like angry bitter disappear finally but in them are hidden darker things (pathetic lonely unsure asphyxiate) that I never truly learned but came to me anyway as a product of my inherent nature and proven nurture. Everybody who says you can beat their upbringing is full of shit - I ruin every good thing that I touch because that was what I was born to do, to be like the opposite of Midas and shatter what he turns golden.

"And besides," I mutter bitterly, turning back to glare at the flames, "the sun and the moon were lovers, right? I don't think it applies to friendships." It was no secret that my heart wanted her, first, before it was blinded by all the other things that came along. Perhaps it is for the best, as those kind of bonds are so easily broken, lacking the tenacity that years of friendship brings. Despite the fact that I am so eager to chase her away, I want her to stay more than anything in this world; she has been my stability when I lack it, my voice when I am silenced. Losing her would leech the colour out of this already monotone world.

But why would I tell her that? Weakness is easy to obtain and difficult to admit, refusing to be voiced aloud let it ruin something good. Maybe we aren't good, not right now, but we are... alive? Yes, that seems the only way to describe it now.

They say a star is brightest in the moments before it dies.

All that matter that expanded to swallow suns collapses on itself in a split second, its own gravity its undoing as it condenses into a small, singular point of origin - in the silence before the chaos it fades from existence only to return in an explosion that shatters worlds and outshines suns, pushing inwards and outwards all at once until the whole galaxy bears witness to its power. They said it is God's finest creation, giving such a magnificent thing a final act of glory before it vanishes into the threads of eternity. Sometimes I am the silence before the storm but she has both taken my power and stoked it anew, pulling me into the vacuum of rapture her mouth creates.

After a moment of indecision I fist my hand in her hair, uncaring of the way it aches, pulling her closer by the hip like an artist would sculpt his finest creation from clay. I do not know how long I have been waiting for the touch of her against me, lain across my body, knees to knees and chest to chest and lips to lips. I breathe in and all the dead stars relight in my chest from where her palm presses until I burn with another fire entirely, searing incinerating burning away the fear and the doubt and the cold that has sunk into the deepest ridges of my old bones. The house creaks in approval as I shift slightly, desperate to draw her closer to me.

Sometimes when we first met I would take her in with both of the eyes that I possessed, watching her with all the focus I owned at the tender age I was. She was a mystery and a martyr and I was drawn to her unexplainable gravity until I orbited her smaller frame like my own god. When she couldn't sleep I would secretly thank the stars and roll onto my side so I could whisper across the rift that held our beds apart and let my words travel through endless eternities to meet her ears, watching the hesitant smile bloom bright on her face that only grew as time went by. My new obsession was coaxing it from her expression which would often grow sober and serious, haunted by ghosts of the past. I knew all too well what it was like to be smothered by such a burden it threatened to swallow entirely and gave my sympathy by brushing my hands along the solid curve of her shoulder or the arc of her back.

Time went and we fell apart and came back together as matter always does, blowing apart and coalescing until they lose all sense of time, known only by the moments they are bound through something mankind cannot tear apart. I sense her in every thread of my core, every atom of my being, her warmth worming its way down and integrating into my blood until it colours indigo like the nebula of her eyes and every vein of me is stained, altered, forever untouched. I welcome the corruption that feels too much like purity to be wrong and smile against her lips that press to me, unsure and yet not shaken at all.

As all mortals must I heed the passing of time and reluctantly pull away, lessening my iron-grip in her hair that sends sparks of pain down my arm. My eyes travel and I expect to see something so close to regret it sours the back of my mouth but there is nothing but an expressively blank canvas, awaiting my reaction. She has closed the divide I was too afraid to toe and now I must cast myself, ask myself; can I jump? My mind says no but my heart says yes - my heart has been wrong before, truly, but somehow... not this time.

“I... I don't...” I lick my swollen lips and sweep my distracted gaze down the definition of her cheekbones, shadowed in the flickering light of the fire. It makes her seem regal, ethereal. Untouchable. (But my hands all over prove her otherwise.) “Why did you... I'm not complaining,” my laugh startles me, nervous but real, “not at all. But... why me? You know what I've done and who I am, how much shit I carry with me... I don't understand.” There are so many other people, so many other burdens to bear. She knows of my past but not of my future, uncertain and flimsy after these months have broken me down and worn me away into the dust that gathers in the creases of this house. I tilt my head back to better watch her expression, waiting for even a flicker of regret or uncertainty - there is a part of me that begs to run before she hurts me in a way I cannot shoulder, not again, but she stays where she is and the seconds tick by as the distance between us aches with a palpable heartbeat.

Even separating for seconds are seconds I cannot bear, and wonder to myself if I will ever be able to stop this crumbling she makes of me, yanking my supports until I have no choice but to fall into her arms. But this time it is my arms doing the pulling, ignoring the agony as I pull her closer once again and connect our mouths together, lips curling into a smile. With a sigh, I give my borrowed bones to the stars that form anew from this collapse and allow her touch to pull away all uncertainty that remains.