the blood that i'm { o w e d } // chaos

It's been a long time that you've been on the streets.

How many weeks has it been? Months? Years? You barely keep track of the seasons anymore, the roads cold underneath your feet, the winds biting and cruel. Sometimes you visit your sisters and some of them worry over how gaunt you've become, the hollowness of your eyes and your cheeks, and your mother cries as she holds you close to her breast. You promise to come more often, to fill the void your disappearances have left, but you lose time as easily as you lose sleep until you show up and a whole summer has passed with no one but Moira at your side.

(And Kiera, of course. She's always there.)

Summer has been hard on your project - the pieces rot before they can be attached, the whole thing festering until you have to pick apart the stitches and restart entirely. Moira warned you about striking so quickly, how much blood leaks onto the desecrated grounds of the District, but you've given up the capacity to care. Though the joy you lost has returned, it bears a sharper edge that you have grown addicted to. Even if they tried to make you, you couldn't stop.

You are telling Kiera as much before a shoulder collides with your frail frame, sending you spinning to the ground. She flies out of your grasp and rolls under a dumpster, her body disappearing from the weak light of the streetlamps. You gasp and scramble on your belly, hand frantically reaching for her own, your fingers curling over her head carefully when you rescue her.

The fuck was that? she snarls, livid. Who the hell is that bitch?

You wipe the water from her cloth skin and return the sentiment, spinning.

(Your other hand fingers the knife in your dress pocket.)

"Apologize."

Kiera sees the hand move first and she snarls in your head, voice garbled from the water that now soaks her cloth skin. Bitch wants to start something? The bustle of the city is loud in your ears and you hear the laughter of the other residents rebound around your bricked prison, feet trampling, drowning the sound of your featherlight heartbeat in your throat. She watches you with her cutthroat eyes and the familiar aching feeling begins in your chest, creeping up to your throat and down your limbs, followed by the flush of tension that brings your breath into heavy pants. You don't get nervous, no, but the anticipation is enough to pull you under the current of your coursing blood.

Your hands curl by your sides, careful, placing Kiera in your other pocket. "Stop distracting me," you mutter quietly, eyes sharp. "Do you want us to get stabbed?" But Kiera's attention is already diverted, and you feel your own eyes drifting to the careful placement of the older girl's hands. In your mind's eye there is a flash of calm, caring fingers unknotting your tangled mane and stroking down the side of your jaw. They look just like those that she used to have before the Games severed them from the bone. You lick your lips, heat building under your collar.

"Apologize, or else they'll never find the pieces."

But you're starting to think her fate is sealed anyway.