An Eye For An Eye [Riordan/Atlas]

I am blinded by speculation and numbed by anticipation - we haven't quite bled yet and it would be premature if we had done so, I don't even know anyone here by anything other than the number sewn to their sleeves. Today I am surrounded by enigmas and what-ifs, this entire room running on variables and I find it practically impossible to stake out possible threats and challenges. Everyone's shielded by a black and white smokescreen and I fail to distinguish a variable from a constant. I'm halfway along the path of throwing up my hands and abandoning my efforts to be more productive or possibly letting persistence get the better of me and to keep on trying - I always hated giving up.

(just one of fifty-two, a piece of a gamemaker's puzzle)

To surrender to the shadows of failure was to silently admit to myself that I'd lost, to pull apart threads proudly stitched across bleeding skin to conceal my weaknesses, to admit I was ready to allow the weight of the world to crush me. I once would've called it inevitable, thirteen years of polarization from the blade and now I call it inexcusable, I am not weak.

Planted onto the bench, I temporarily allow my vision to slip from watching over tributes in their battle from versatility to fall onto my knuckles and imagine them stained in various shades of black and blue, I'm used to the sight of it. In my temporal lapses of self control and my desperate needs for a sudden stop in motion, for a very real need of static flood, I would wake up with my head pounding and my knuckles throbbing at even the slightest touch. Now I couldn't find a temporary lapse even if I wanted to throw my life away.

(why must I be confined to righteousness in my final days of living?)

I twitch, fifty-two lives all tied in a taught knot but the pressure of the world rests on me. I cannot give up after I've just found a match to strike a flame upon my trembling skin, they told me I was only kindling the flames that would be my foundation after all.

I do not let doubt show beneath my tired sigh.

It's only five steps tapping and tracing across the metallic blue ground and transitioning onto combat mats for the pretense of friendly sparring but I do not plan on swelling my knuckles in varying degrees of black and blue. To scrape a trembling fist against sturdy skin; to spin the wheel of violence and see who dares to break first. Never mind the fact that many of these lives entwined with mine are malnourished and inexperienced, never mind they're all enigmas and I cannot decipher whether they are worth my time or not-

(and since when did I ever think like that?)

a part of me thinks it would be unfair, they're not worth my time. I do not question it, I've never been one for questioning the system anyway. So I turn to leave the training mat and find something better to do to pass borrowed time as it spirals down the pit at agonizingly slow pace.

"Lumiere, care for a spar? Show me how it's done and all. Though, I doubt you could."

The male voice makes me freeze in my tracks and my teeth grind, cold fire fury running through my veins, dying them in blue and making my organs ache - he's not even worth a riptide felt on the horizon by the sound of him. And this fact is confirmed when I spin around, fists clenched at my side and my stare a hail of daggers. "Not quite sure if you'd be worth my time, Six. Besides, didn't your mentor tell you not to piss off the careers who will probably very well bend you to their mercy in a few weeks? No? Oh wait, I almost forgot." Bitter sarcasm dripping from my tongue.

There's no living mentor from District Six, and for good reason apparently.

And it appears that we are polar opposites; I've never been one to challenge the system while he seems content to trample all over it armed with nothing but either bravery or madness at his side - sometimes not even I can distinguish between the two. Either way, I've never been one for raising a white flag; never been one to surrender my crown to a kingdom over a million miles away to a stranger. "But I suppose if it's a fight you want, it's a fight you'll get."

My fists grow tighter and-

(he comes a network of veins and arteries, kill potential flowing through each vessel like a red river)

-pieces of myself of myself are lost to aggression poorly hidden beneath the surface when I step forward and swing my right fist to his left eye.

There is a phantom canon in the back of my mind; the mere sound of his voice is a catalyst for red rage personified.