heave, ho, heave, ho // [Lalia]

Everything in my life will culminate in the Games. It’s something that feels right in my bones. Going to the Games is a necessary step in the right direction and I can’t just let something as petty as emotion ruin that. Emotion does nothing but cause harm to everyone I see and observe. Those with emotion suffer at the hand of it. They are too happy to notice the unavoidable cliff just before them. They are too sad to do what is necessary to stay functioning at peak performance. They are too excited to find focus and do what is necessary of them. Emotion is nothing but the tool by which the downfall of humanity is crafted. It is a painful thing to play with and an even more painful thing to believe in and purposely touch. I simply choose not to touch it. I leave it untampered with somewhere deep down in my core where it cannot hurt me or slow me down from reaching my goals. Harper seems bent on destroying that carefully laid groundwork for all that I am reaching for, seeking to rip the carpet from under my feet before I have the chance to make it to the top. I won’t let someone so foolish be my downfall.

I watch Harper with careful eyes, as I always have to. He moves fluidly despite the rough angles of his skinny frame, rolling over and propping himself up on pointed elbows pristinely. His own eyes trace my arm before his fingers crawl across the sand as if a spider waiting to pounce. Pounce it does, tracing over the webs in my arm as if they are his own, as if he created them and maintains them. That Harper would consider himself essential to the blood pumping through my veins is a joke stacked upon the highest mountain of ridiculous notions. I lived long before he entered my life and became part of my routine and I could easily slip into a routine devoid of him. I will, when he finally gets bored of playing with the android boy. It won’t be long now that he’s seen a crack. He seems so intent upon his task, but it’s not at all disruptive like his attempts to snuggle into my side or curl around my soul. It’s almost soothing in how his fingers whisper across my skin like he’s trying to finger-walk the road through me to my very core. I prefer the gentle approach to his obnoxious gestures and lewd noises, if only because there is no risk in it on my part. I know he cannot break through like this. He knows it too. “I suppose that would take too much effort for you, princess. You have to put all of that into your appearance, no doubt,” I mutter, letting the words seep into the air quietly as I look up at him. A small ghost of a smirk crosses my lips before I let my eyes fall shut. “I suppose that’s true. It’s like you’re not even here, really.”

It’s strange to think of leaving this place. All of my life, I have grown upon the dusty shores and swirling waters that are District Four. Even when (not if, but when) I win the Games, it won’t be the same. These could be my last few months of living a normal life in this district. When (not if, not if) I win, everything will change. I’ll be moved into a new house with new things. It will be larger than the little cottage by the shore I live in now. It will have room for me to breathe in. I could dedicate an entire room to just be my breathing room, if I wanted. It could hold all of my emotions, the ones I so vehemently deny and bury deep down within the marrow of my bones so that no one can reach them. The people who fear me now will revere me instead, but I won’t have to see them. My trials will be done. I won’t have to prove myself anymore to those around me. With my life’s purpose completed, I can die, happily, if I choose so. Happily would be a nice way to end it.

There’s something about the silence that is unsettling. Harper isn’t the sort to be quiet. He’s the type of person to cause a scene, to make a riot, to scream until your ears bleed. Quiet is not in his programming. I let my neck go limp and my head falls to the side, eyes fluttering open to look at him. There’s a coldness to his image, and not just the cold that so obviously surrounds us. He looks frozen, tired, defeated for a moment and it seems as if I’m not the only one to lose the game today. It balances, as we always seem to do in each other’s presence. He’s still tracing across my bare arm, my skin just picking up his touch but not nearly as much as it should. It never does. It’s winter and I’m lying on the beach in a t-shirt and long pants and no shoes. His words ghost up to my ears as he curls what little bit he can into his sweater. It doesn’t seem to help him much in this icebox. I blink slowly at him for a moment before breaking the contact and looking up at the grey sky. “No, I don’t know how cold it is, Harper…” I murmur, a small sigh slipping past my lips. “I can’t feel it. I can hardly even feel your fingers right now. There’s pressure, but nothing else.”

The trails wiggle down my pale arm, across the webs of constricted veins begging to be put under some kind of jacket before they freeze altogether. I can’t hear their cries, though. I suppose that’s the reality of my condition. I’m stronger in the sense that I can push forward. I’m weaker in the sense that I know no limits. My body doesn’t know when it is hurt, or when to stop trying, or when to heal. When I was six, I tipped a pot of boiling water over and it scalded down my left arm and hand. I watched as the skin turned white, then pink, then red. It blistered in minutes. Some of it opened into wounds all down my arm and onto my hand. My eyes were fixed upon the flesh that was disappearing and changing and practically melting. By the time mother found me, my entire arm was swollen and bleeding and the water had burnt the top of my left foot as well. I hadn’t even moved. My mind told me I was hurt, but my body told me everything was fine. The disconnect is staggering to see play out in slow motion. I tested my body after that, letting knives go astray while training to cut through the flesh of my thigh or ribcage. Sometimes, I would let ice sit upon my skin for hours until I was paler than death and the frostbite had set it. There was a sick fascination with being unable to feel.

Even now, I can’t really feel anything. The sensation of Harper’s fingers sliding down my arm is present, but there’s nothing behind it. There’s no feeling. His fingers interlock with mine and I let him tangle us together, letting my own hand creak closed to curl around his. ”It must be nice to never be cold.” I turn my head to look at him just as he wriggles around to rest his head on my arm and turn his back to me. The cold is still there, but I just don’t register it. It’s not that I’m not cold. I am. I always will be. It will simply never translate into a language I can understand. Carefully, I twist onto my side and sling my other arm across his bony waist, displaying the scars running down my skin and across my other palm. “I am cold. I just can’t feel it, nor anything else,” I whisper, letting my head drop behind his as he declares my warmth is for him. I don’t try to tell him otherwise. It would be better if someone else made use of it anyway considering I’m oblivious to its presence.