And You Thought The Lions Were Bad | [Speakers v POM]

Vision blurring into two and I see streaks of crimson along the night sky. There is a relief that I no longer reside in the home of borrowed time that only ticks tonight, for now the red sun lowers so the blue moon can flourish and the night stars can burn. I keep the now empties jug of water tight against my chest when the chorus of the Capitol's slaughter began to boom across the arena. I am terrified to look down but petrified to keep looking up -- it seems my allegiance to the pain wins over self preservation because I do not blink when Diorite Fray's eyes burn holes right through me.

Her death triggers an metallic aching of black and blue in my fragile organs, a reminder of what happens when I let someone cut from the same stone as me see through the ash, smoke and mirrors that I define as morality. When I let eyes other than my own see beyond this thick veil of deceit to the truth that once buried behind the eye of the needle and the neck of bottles. Her face dissipates -- I remain the only one who hasn't fallen to a creed that beckons for the blood of the strong.

I wanted to call her beautiful, once. I never did, could never say the words directly even though I should've, before she allowed herself to be swallowed by mutations and the gears of her borrowed time came to a halt.

Faces I do not care about blur into nothing but the appearance of Ronnie's face in the sky makes the weight of the world feel ten times as heavy and the crimson cracks in the sky all the more prominent. I want to ask Salome if she sees them to, the red streaks cutting through white stars but I think better of it. The pressured gaze of Ronnie weights just as much as the medal he thrust into my hand before pushing me away from an objective I never should've set.

Corrode the Kingdom and save the people; all I've done is fuck up and let others bleed into the hands of false gods.

The threads of fate twist and tighten against my limbs as riptides form when Ophelia's blank eyes stare at me from the sky, confirming that everyone I once shared a truce flag with is gone. I should've expected it but I was never well accustomed to loss, contrary to what I told Salome a few hours earlier.

They taunt my consciousness; three days, seventy two hours, of painting canvas in the only color the Gamemakers see as fitting. I suppose shades of red are a careers color anyway. Despite the bitter iron upon my tongue, the bitter taste of defeat when the tables are turned and our blood stains our truce flag but a white flag of surrender is never in sight. Three days and they already taunt my mind when I sit, when I think.

When I sleep.

I catch Aedan's voice within the bloodied taste of forgotten stardust when I stir in the morning ('just make it quick, Atlas.') No wishes of luck, no promises of a better future; just condemnation to watch red spill. Just red, never ichor for I lack the substance to be the son of dreams. Just the boy awoken by sunlight spilling over his body and his spine creaking beneath unthinkable weights.

“This is the worst… oh my gosh…”

Salome's groans and her hands are on her head, I instantly recognize the signs and symptoms of a hangover. I manage a laugh, having been in the same predicament multiple times but I knew it was coming. When she steered us away from the embers, away from the rose garden and into the desert and right into a ditch. She needed the rest and the consequences I suppose. "I would say drink plenty water but I don't think that's much of an option," and I laugh at this but something tells me she doesn't appreciate the laughable sentiment.

Laughter feels dry in my throat anyway, like it's undeserved.

I freeze, two figures arriving from the horizon, my hand slowly moves to the loop where my axe is stowed but Salome's voice cuts through the tension like a knife. “Atlas… Atlas! They—they’re alive! He’s alive! Tamron!” And she sprints towards her district partner, her extension of home.



Yet any conversation is cut short when the ground shifts and shakes beneath me, beneath all of us.

(we are falling)

It shatters like Molly's knee or Tamron's shin.

I hit the ground and my veins run cold, I lay still within these isolated layers -- click, click, I feel movement along my limbs, across my feet; fear floods through my veins and runs my blood hot at the thought of close proximity with the unknown.

I cry out, a dull shooting pain crawling up my bicep along with a claw digging into fragile flesh and bone. I look to Tamron and the girl from Five, the same situation coming into play for everyone but Salome. I scramble up, worry and fear driving my movements at the thought that I could have more mutations latching onto my body. "The fuck is this?" I hide the worry within my voice, the tremble dies in my lungs.

Danger plays in the corner of my eye but the cracks in my skin remain hidden beneath layers from by years of career brutality. I will not follow his icarus dive into madness, into bloodshed -- the world on my shoulders does not make my spine buckle and tremble. Light cracks in my skin remain hidden while veins and empty arteries run hot and threaten to boil over when the form of Eva Hope, the girl from ten and Wylla from three make themselves known as the threats to the stability of our sanity.



"Hey Atlas.Took you a while to find me. Why couldn't it have been the same in bed." She says with a grin that blazes through the settling dust and I force a weak smile but whether it's for the cameras or for myself I do not know.

No time for a joking retort, I do not shield myself from the inevitable -- what happened in the training center will stay in the training center. Another notch on the oaken bedpost.



I no longer tremble at the match I strike against my morality with every swing. It's instinctive, movement automatic, I take the over-sized axe stowed in the loop of my tote bag by the handle and heft it. I no longer fear the match struck against mortality and neither does Salome, for she explodes into a fit of rage boiled over and her weapons ignites, the flames of her furious drawing coming to life, killing intent real over a man whose name I do not know, whose name I do not care to know.

She becomes a firestorm, burning brighter than the crimson streaks I thought I saw in the skies. Booming louder than a thunderstorm and the riptides that break and signal disturbances and the twisting in the threads of fate tied taught against my limbs. I do not fear the match we must strike against our mortality -- I am a career.

There is no grimace or churning of my stomach when Salome's razor fan blooms a crimson flower across the source of her anger's thigh. And there is no fear that envelopes the creaking foundations of our sanity from the back of my mind when Eva's own weapon sports hell's fires and the flames lick oxygen. Remembering my words underneath the night sky, I see Asha's dead and eyes and spilled ichor in ever single flame, even when it veers in my direction but strikes the armor clad chest of Tamron instead.

Strike another match against disintegrating morals; I do not bound forwards as a boy seeking vengeance for the sky across his shoulders but as a career with tragedy forming hidden cracks in his skin.

Shattering his fantasies.