Marvela Eaves // D1 // [FIN]

"... 'Would you have killed me?' His eyes plead for an answer, tears making them twinkle in the dark, like the stars above his head. 'Would you have killed me if we had been Reaped together? If it was just the two of us at the very end, would you have killed me?' And the way his voice cracks and shakes, and the way his tears have begun to roll down his cheeks as he stares at me, waiting for the answer that he hopes for, makes me want to scream in agony. My heart beats on, but now with an agonizing ache, but I can't manage to cry. My heart may be breaking, but still I can't muster enough courage to show it, even to the person I love.

'We weren't reaped together-' is all I can manage before he cuts me off. 'No, Carver! No more circles just answer the question! Ripred, is that all this is to you? A Game? It's all still just part of the Game? You already won! You have the crown, the title, the mansion, the luxury - what the hell is it you are playing for now, huh? There isn't anything left!' He makes his way closer, his voice getting more and more hushed with each step he takes towards me, but his voice is no longer begging for something. He is screaming at me in anger, even if no one else can hear him but me.

I can usually stare down my opponent with such conviction that they have to look away first, and that's what I do in this situation, holding those piercing blue eyes so filled with rage and pain, waiting for him to look away first so that I may have that small victory- No! It's not a game anymore! And I look away. Down. Staring at his feet. Bare feet, gnarly and dirty toenails - I love them. 'So what is it then? Tell me. Just tell me and-'

And in that moment I feel anger pumping in my veins. No longer do I feel bad for him or wish that I could answer differently, I only wish that I could still look in his eyes without feeling like I had already lost. He made me fall in love with him. And for that, I ..."

"Marvela!" And I am so startled that my pencil swerves across the page, leaving a dark trail through some of the words I had just scrawled into my notebook. "Get your ass outside this door before I come in there and drag you out by your hair!" I shuffle quickly to my feet, shoving my notebook beneath my pillow and rushing to the door, aiming to shoot out of it like a rocket and careen down the stairs, but instead I squeal as I run straight into Auric. I stumble backwards but catch myself before I fall to the floor. Instead I only fall awkwardly into the door, catching myself on the knob. His eyes are bloodshot and his jaw muscles are clenched. I stare at the floor as fear paralyzes me.

Stinging pain makes its way across my face as slaps me across the face. I fall into the door again with all the force he used, but I don't even get the chance to recover before he is lifting me chin forcefully so that I have to raise my eyes to his face. "Never look away from your opponent." I set my jaw and stare back at him, swatting his hand away from my chin. He laughs. I hate his laugh. He's always laughed at me, always chose to hit me, not hug me, and though some call it tough love, I just call it sadistic. And because I am too busy imagining drilling a hole through his head I don't even notice when his laughter stops and his vicious voice rings through the house again. "What did I tell you about this stupid hobby of yours?"

And I look in horror to where he points to my balled up fists - my pencil. I can't stutter out the words that I want as i avert my eyes again to the floor, the ounce of bravery that I had mustered up before vanishing with one question from my brother. "Huh? What is it? Spit it out! Tell me what did I say to you!" And my brain is just one big mush of jumbled words and the fear of being hit again that no matter how hard I try all I can do is stutter a bunch of nonsense, flinching away from him and shaking my head in a futile attempt to clear my mind. You can't fight blades with a pencil.

"Come on." He says, grabbing me by the arm and shoving me towards the stairs. My high heels click towards the top of the stairs and I can hear him groan about the noise as he always does. Pretty dresses and shoes and jewelry and make-up aren't for true Victors. I feel tears in my eyes, knowing full well what I will have to endure when I get to the training center, but I force them away, knowing showing any more signs of weakness will only make it worse. Be strong. It's too bad I'm not anything like Carver ...

Bravery does not come easy to me. Nor does wielding a weapon or beating the shit out of someone for fun. Not like it does for Auric, who has trained his entire life only to be disappointed when his name was not called at the last Reaping. Now he is bitter and hopes to live out his glory through me. And because I am smaller, kinder, weaker - I have no choice but to live my life the way he wants me to. It doesn't matter that I hate training or that I hate wearing clothes that would suit a boy much better than a 16 year old girl or that I choose a pen as my weapon of choice. I don't matter. I'm a doll dummy and the world is just one big training center where my brother can waltz around and move my limbs, dress me, and make me do whatever pleases him. That's my life.

---

He pulls a sword from the rack with a - zing! - and makes his way towards me with a devilish smirk drawn across his face. His eyes shine and I imagine that I am looking straight at the devil. I hold my pencil defensively in front of me, backing away slowly. And I can't stop myself from begging. "I c-can't f-f-fight blades wi-with pen-cils." I say it evenly, but I feel a tear slip down my cheek. Fuck. He laughs again - that laugh that makes me want to jab the pencil right in his throat and watch him bleed out ... "That's right little sister," he chides as if I answered incorrectly. "And now I'm going to teach you - again - why that statement is true." And before I can beg him not to - before I can plead that I have learned my lesson, that I will never write again - he swings the sword at me, the blade whooshing through the air as I roll away from him.

I even manage to kick out at the back of his knee and bring him to the ground where he kneels for a moment before bringing the sword back over his head. I dodge the blade again, only to get a face full of elbow. He towers over me as hold my mouth, swallowing the blood that pools in my mouth in an attempt to hide it. I hate giving him the pleasure of seeing my bleed at his hand. He doesn't need anymore satisfaction, not at my expense. "Stand up and fight with the pencil you are aching to use." And as he laughs again, I clench the pencil in my hand and jab it as hard as I can into his foot. His laughter is cut short as he yowls in pain and stumbles away from me. I take the chance to stand up and face him, but all he does is stare at the pencil sticking up from his foot and curses. "Alright, bitch," he mutters, slowly pulling the pencil from his foot and tossing it to the side before looking up at me with predatory eyes. I swallow again as blood fills my mouth and fear creeps closer. "Now it's my turn."

He runs at me and all I can think to do is run directly at him and so we collide and I fall flat on my back as if I had tried running straight through a brick wall. And then his foot is pressing into my throat and I am struggling to grasp even a bit of air. "Think you can beat me, Mar? Huh? Is that it?" And he says it through his teeth as I scratch at his foot, kicking out with my legs as I try to wriggle free of the pressure on my throat. "What? Nothing to say?" And the edges of my vision begin to go black - and then he releases me and my eyes fly open as I gasp and cough and roll around on the ground as air is pulled into my lungs. "Good, now you have enough air to scream."

And with that, he slices at my arm and I screech as I attempt to scramble to my feet despite the pain. He only grabs at my foot and yanks me to the ground again, where I fall on my stomach and he slices another shallow cut into my skin, this time across my shoulder blade. I scream again as pain begins to radiate through my body. "Kai!" I yell as I try again to scramble away, only to feel the blade cut into my calf, slowing me down in my vain attempt to run. "Kai!" I screech again, turning back towards Auric, gauging whether or not begging for mercy would work. And in the split second it takes me to recognize that it will not, he jabs the sword through my foot.

"Auric! What the hell are you doing!?" I groan and cry as I stare at the blade jammed into my foot, watching as my blood drips down the blade slowly. I hear and argument ensue, and I can tell that Kai will win, just as he always does, but I'm too lightheaded to focus on anything as I pull the sword from my foot and collapse to the ground. And then, instead of hearing Auric's laughter, I hear my own. This was the way I wrote Felix and Carver's first encounter. I realize now that it is all wrong because there is no way in hell I could fall in love with anyone who jabbed a sword through my foot, and that is a bit upsetting, but it's funny because I never thought I would get the chance to live through a similar experience. I mean, that's the definition of fiction is, right? Something invented by the imagination? Literature that tells stories which are imagined by the writer? Something that is not true? The world sure is cruel. Making me live through scenarios that I force fictitious people to live through in my mind and in my notebook. Funny!

And I laugh and laugh and laugh as Kai carries me home and bandages my wounds and sets me down on the couch, kissing my forehead as he covers me with a blanket and shoves a pillow beneath my head. Only then, when the coast is clear, do I let myself cry.

---

The comb runs through my auburn hair and from where I sit, staring at myself in the mirror, the deep brown of my eyes looks like chocolate. Every time I would complain about my eye color momma would tell me that she thought brown eyes were the best of all. Sure they weren't the color of grass in the spring or the clear blue sky, but they looked like tasty little treats which was better than even the most prized emerald or the clearest blue ocean. Maybe if she had eaten a few less treats and a few more vegetables she would still be here. But then again, I barely knew her, and I am happy enough to have my sister brushing my hair and braiding it as she likes. I've never really known much different. Eight years old and I had a dead mother, a father who is never home, and I was the happiest little girl in the whole wide world.

The Eaves family was as rich as can be with my father at the top, a big business man who probably should've been born a Capitolite, and a long chain of cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents following behind and helping to guide the future of the family. I am the runt of the operation. As a career family I was expected to train like the others and to grow into the perfect little killer just like the rest. But I have no real aptitude for success in the physical realm of training. I'm smart enough to get myself through a fight, but I have little ambition to succeed in training. I'd much rather sit in my room and write about ... well, stuff. Sure I enjoy the Games - I was raised in a career family what do you expect? - but my love for the whole thing lies not in the glory or the gore, but in the people - the characters. The psychology behind the whole thing has always been the part that fascinated me - not the death or the blood.

So of course my family shunned me when I thought writing was much more interesting than learning how to wield not only a sword, but a knife, bow, spear, flail, etc, etc ... the list is seriously endless with my family. And I've always been weak and small and really more of a dummy for Auric. My older siblings, Leilani and Kai, (yes, twins - very happy day for my parents when they were born) were always very serious about training, but neither of them had the passion to be Reaped. Or maybe they did, but lacked the vicious, sadistic passion that Auric has.

I've been his play thing from the very first day, but as soon as he aged out, he began to seek me out each and everyday so that he could, "train me into something worthy of a Victor's crown." Not someone but something. As if I would ever let that monster turn me into, well, him. But I will never be able to beat him - not without the training he does give me. ... The world is cruel. I raise my hand to my face where my lip is swollen and my cheek still bright red. I sit still as my Lei re-wraps my bandages and tells me about Wren, my baby niece. She doesn't let me see her when I look like a pile of shit like I do now and like I do most days, but when I do get to see her, she is the light of my life. Lei smiles when she is finished, kissing my forehead.

"Where's Kai?" I ask, my voice cracking in the process. She shakes her head at me and frowns. I look away then and my lip quivers. "You know he will never accept you, Ela. Not since you so clearly denounced career training." Kai used to work me as hard as Auric. But when I said I quit, that I hated it and hated him, he let me be. I had only meant to get out of training. Instead, I got out of having a brother. Kai, Auric, and I live in one big house together and the only time I ever see Kai is when Auric has already beaten the shit out of me and am too senseless to talk. He refuses to ackonwledge me now, though I was his favorite when I was younger. We were best friends. And now we are nothing. No matter how hard I try.

"When can I see Wren?" I ask as I hug Lei goodbye at the door. And she smiles at me as she makes her way carefully down the stairs. "As soon as you can walk without a crutch." I shut the door behind me before I stare hopelessly down at my foot all wrapped up in fluffy white gauze. I lean on my giant stick that I will be using as a makeshift crutch and begin the ascent to my room. I ache all over, and I groan with every move I make, but most of all, my heart aches as I realize nothing about my life has changed. Everything will be exactly the same. Auric will keep trying to kill me, Kai will keep ignoring me, and Lei will forever keep herself at a distance.

I set myself gently on my bed, ignoring the mirror, fearing what sort of ugly scars I will notice if I look too hard, and reach under my pillow. There I find my notebook just as I had left it a few days before. "...He made me fall in love with him. And for that, I ..." I shuffle around at the edge of my bed until I find a pencil. I sigh as words come to my mind and when the tip of the pencil presses into the paper, my hand just sort of takes off. But where it is usually happiness driving my imagination, I find myself crying onto the paper, sniffling like a child would when they scraped their knee. Only I haven't scraped my knee. My soul received another gash and now my heart aches as self-pity takes over.

"... And for that, I hate him.

'Yes. I would've killed you. And you know what? I would've enjoyed it. And you know why that is Felix? Because I hate, hate, hate you. You hear me? I hate you.' And my voice is filled with pure conviction as I spit the words at him, my heart beating fast, my fingers curling tighter and tighter. His eyes are pouring over with tears now and I wonder if I should laugh at him for more dramatic effect, but then he smiles. Yes, smiles, at me. 'Good.' He says, reaching out and touching my cheek. 'At least you are finally telling me how you feel. That's all I ever wanted. That's all.' And then he drops his hands into his pockets, turns on his heals, and leaves me standing alone in the dark, tears streaming down my face."