change [WONDER] // blitz!

Maybe she'll like flowers? The thought slips into my mind while walking through the District One streets. Kiera Dempsey hadn't typically been one for dramatics, or sentiments, but just the thought was there, was that not enough? Her grave was now covered in a dull coat of winter snow - it'd been a while since she'd been buried now, a long time. She was dead though, so I suppose it didn't particularily matter, to her that is - it still mattered to me. All of it mattered. Kiera was the only one that I could visit now, Aria wasn't to be buried in One, neither was Wednesdae, Bran, Curtis, any of them, they were all buried under their very own fields of snow in their own Districts - with family.

I really have no one anymore, Dad is dead, Kiera is dead, Aria is dead, Wes is dead, Mother is as good as dead - the shop isn't even needed anymore, but I pay the rent, for good measure, for memory. Maybe one day I would re-open it. Maybe one day. But there was a lot of time to spare between now and death, one day could be forever away, for now - I can grieve. I can grieve for as long as I please, visit Kiera as often as I'd like. And give her flowers - blue poppies the colour of the polished aquamarine that hangs along my neck. Hey Dad, isn't it good to know that the things you taught me still go to good use? The polished stone sits next to me open, the the wolf charm of Aria Wolfe, to the charm of Jon - her lover. There was so much I didn't know about them all, but there was a life time to go. With poppies in hand, I walk up to the counter and place them, the cashier giving a sly smile, a knowing smile - did she know where I was going? Was I still on camera? Everyone seemed to know what was going on in my life - more than I did. Aria, help me please.

Oh who am I kidding, what in the world would a dead girl do with a bunch of flowers? Pick the peddles and ask over and over if she was dead or not? I am dead, I am alive, I am dead, I am alive - she is dead. Dead girls can't sniff flowers, dead girls can't complain though, so she would get them whether she liked them or not. Something tells me she wouldn't though, 'Put those pansy flowers away - if you want to get me something, get me a knife to slit your throat.' I could imagine her saying something along those lines, it was then I could feel a smile bursting across my face - beaming, I could feel the smile spreading contagiously, a giggle? No, that would be stupid.

Even in death my friends could make me laugh - my sister. "Peri? Is that you?" My sister.

Is it me? I don't know - am I who you want me to be? Picture perfect victor of District One. Smile, click. Take a picture, and leave please. Take your pictures. I look up to see the giant boy, with a smile across his face, the boy I once thought was my one and only friend. One and only, what a joke. Once upon a time - I was a boy who was entirely happy with a chance meeting in a flower shop with Clayton Sinclair, the fact that for once I had a friend. "That it is." It's been a while - too long even, there'd been at least twenty-four deaths since our last meeting, maybe more - how long had it been? Time, that was one thing I couldn't really grasp at anymore. I bow as a joke, a sarcastic joke but showing any sort of humor was a sort of moving on method, I guess. "Alive, and in the flesh." Peridot Myler, picture perfect victor.

The District was much different than I'd remembered it upon returning - probably because I left a boy alone in the world, looked down upon and returned a winner. A winner in the eyes of children who wanted to be exactly like me, they know so little but pretend they're so great. It's sickening, really. They'd all watched me, all of them, watched me create friendships, win fight after fight without doing in particular, the watched me cry mercilessly when Aria - left. When she left me, they watched me and probably snickered, or wondered how I could cry. Wasn't I a career? Once upon a time, I would have liked to think so. Peridot Myler, the boy who scored an eleven, did training, ran away from the world of gemstones to the world of death and destruction - he was a career, but what am I? Broken. I am broken.

I smile at the boy, muttering along his words - treating me like I was so much greater than I was before - what else was new. Being a victor seemed to give people entirely different views on me, and maybe that's what made this place different, no longer home. I'd seen the world now - and I know of places much better than here, the gentle forests of Seven, the dark caves of Twelve, the armories of Two, even the Capitol and all of it's galore. I know many a places now, and One is no longer my home. But it was nice to know that someone at least, from where I came from was cheering me on - here I was thinking the world was cheering on Kiera - when I had a fan, a fan. It sounded so silly, according to the Capitol I had thousands of fans, people who wanted to see me win, but they were all suck ups anyways. Every one of them.

"Thanks for - watching." I didn't know what else to say - thanks for watching my friends get killed! Thanks for cheering me on in my life! "Thanks for - missing me, too." I guess, there was nothing really that I could say to the boy, so much had changed, and I hadn't been trying for friends here, I've had my fair share and they've all died. It couldn't hurt to be genuine, but it was hard, who was real these days? "Really." I smile, I've gotten good at that.

I can feel the watchful eye of other customers digging into me, more and more at each passing moment. That was common nowadays, I guess the title came with a fame - I'd survived twenty-three deaths, nine days in an arena without dying so people were expected to look. But still it made me uncomfortable, the walls had ears these days, one day I'd say something and I'd hear whispers the next, nothing was personal any more. The sudden glares of other customers were starting to make me anxious - stop, stop looking please, I'm just talking to Clayton nothing more. I have no glaive at my side. Though I often missed the company of Selenite in my hands, grabbing for it in the night when I heard sounds - there were always sounds in Victor's Village, it seemed.

"Can we," Oh god, this was so awkward to ask, yet still I couldn't stay here anymore. "you know, leave? As symbolic as meeting here again is -" I look around to the other customers yet again. "Let's just go." I lead the way pushing out the door, the bell screaming as it's brushed by out into the snow. "I've been good, you know." Of course he knows, he said himself, he watched. "All my body parts still here, so." Good, that was the best he could say as he left his footprints along the snowy trails of District One, not home. But close.

That was a bad joke, an awful joke. Stale, uncalled for. Or maybe, you know, maybe I'm just a lot more - sensitive, these days? No, that was a stupid word. Sensitivity came with no longer being strong, by caring for others and by, well, I wasn't broken. I am not broken, I am strong, and I have won, and there isn't much for me to care about any more, not with Aria and Kiera and Wes and Bran and Demeter and Atlas gone, all of them gone, like a flash of a memory, a moment in time completely lost and suspended. The joke was bad, but maybe to someone else it would receive a small chuckle, a smile of delight. But why kidnap Clayton? No. That would be stupid, I've seen too much hurt, destruction to last me a lifetime. (So why do I keep visiting the training centre?)

"I'm not." I'm not going to kidnap you, I won't harm you, I won't. "Going to kidnap you." I smile, I imagine it looks forced, unnatural, bizarre, uncomfortable - because to me, it was surely all of those things, this was not something that I'm used to. Being forced to someone due to life and death circumstances is different, way different. That's where friendship can become love, you can make brothers, sisters - but here. Not so much. I can only seem to connect with the graves of souls that are so lost, so far gone. (Just like me.) "We're uh -" I look up to realize that I'm not quite sure where I'm going, the restlessness accompanied by watchful eyes had forced me to run, run, run, without particularly knowing where I was going.

Clayton looked freezing, without a coat standing in the cold, and I was leading him nowhere, causing him harm without the intent of doing so. That was the victors life I supposed - you couldn't get here without killing, can't live without death, and now, well, now I cause harm wherever I go. "Sorry, I really don't know where we're going." Where would we go? People watch so fervently whenever I pass as if they need one last look before I pass away, don't they know I fought to stay alive, I'm not going that quickly - no, no I am not. "Maybe we can go back to my house? Or we can like, part ways? I'm not too picky if you don't want to -" Want to what? Drink coffee? Watch Games recaps? Listen to my nightmares and console me from the cackling mouths that plague them? "hang." Don't want to hang. Smooth, Myler.