mohs aurum ; muffin/arctic ; white elephant

It's Easy to Lose Yourself, I Know

His chest heaves and tugs as he swallows the frigid liquid, hands trembling tight on the pale, frosted glass. Heavily lidded eyes lose their grasp, dipping down into the bottom of his drink and though it doesn't reek of chemical indulgence, he so wished it did.

The panic attacks grow worse and worse with the intensities of the snowfall, and he attributes it to the pressure in the air aggravating his leg, aggravating the denizens of one, aggravating his entire life. Fuck snow, fuck prosthetics, fuck frostbite and fuck winter.

A hand lifts and spreads apart his neatly combed hair while his shoulders shiver until his fingers collapse on the bartop. "Another- please." he shakes out while the bartender lifts an eyebrow and offers a second water. He downs it in an instant, and glares at himself in the cracked, broken mirror housing reflections of multi-colored bottles.

Roughly two weeks already behind the games, but the blow still sends tendrils of rigid frustration against his flesh more often than he'd like, and it seems like the only remedy is to either let the episodes pass, or do something more proactive like walk- but that meant braving icy sidewalks and frozen passageways.

It seems like a better option than sitting and letting it pass in public.

He dips his hand down to a wallet and tips the tender for the filthy glasses, catching the door on his way out. Pale eyes lift to the steadily falling snow, fat flakes fluttering away. Though it is only three or so and kids are finally getting out of school, the heavy cloud cover makes it feel much later to the male who struggle against the blankets gathered at his feet.

Right now, he'd rather struggle against heavy snowfall than with his own demons, and the male starts past the games square, cleared by heavy footsteps pounding away ice crystals as they watch rerun after rerun after rerun, waiting for Harbinger Rhodes to arrive like a savior for their forgotten people, for their fallen warrior.

It's all sick; not how they've turned the lives into such a spectacle to behold, but how his district reacts to the glimmer of hope. They drank, they partied, they embraced each other because it was almost assured- and then they tore him to shreds, mangling a legacy traced in blood.

And it was all his fault. If he had just let himself go, just offered his body as a prize and his blood a fine coat of paint for the winners, maybe the Lexig family would still be relatively intact. Miserable, but certainly not mangled.

After all, what use is a one-legged boy to a district of diamond miners? He can't hold a pickaxe, he can't lug a cart, hell he can't even tell the difference between a starcut and a starburst ruby. All he knows is how to keep someone's insides from splattering on a regal street, and he can't even do that.

No, the male tells himself. It's just the panic, let it pass.

He slips, graceful for a moment as his legs flick out from below him on a particularly slippery patch of pristine, aqua colored ice, and lands absolutely flat on his back, arms flailing to catch him before he makes contact with the stony ground-

but it's too late, and he's flat and can't breathe though his lungs suck and pull, and for a horrifying second, he wonders if this is what it's like to puncture a lung, and just lies there as the shock passes over his chest in waves.