{ bird in a cage } | emberly vs. walherich, day 7

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die sehr weite grüne erde
das reiche schöne wasser
the very broad green earth
the rich pretty water

Blood trickles down Walherich's back in a bent path. She wonders how many gallons of blood she has spilled now, how many times she would have to clean crimson off of her blade and stare at her bloody hands knowing that she is a murderer and she's not finished killing. Not until she is the only one left.

A droplet of scarlet slowly falls down the side of her sword like a scarlet tear. She tries to think of the sunsets at home instead of the blood. Scarlet — scarlet sunsets, scarlet all over the sky just like blood spilled all over the Arena ground —

McCarthy's blood in the sand Raquel's blood on the rocks Rhetoric's on her shirt Wendell and Lace's on her hands, all over her hands and she'll never be able to wash it all off, there's still some of it dried and caked in the lines of her hands —

Sunsets are useless now, a comfort that doesn't feel so soft anymore. Saffron said home is where her strength comes from and she's right, she's right, because if she was wrong Emberly wouldn't still be breathing. Instead of the sunset, she looks inward: Kiara, Ment, Saffron, Paige. She lets them strengthen her, the memory of their faces and the softness of their voices.

("It ain't about being fair!"

"Em, can you give me a piggyback ride, pleeeeaaase?"

"It's in your blood. Our blood."

"You have us. You will always have us.")

If she returns home, perhaps the sunset will comfort her again, but she never wants to see the color red again right now. After being drenched in it, after it has been caked in her skin and hair, it has become a disgusting color. She once heard that war is beautiful, but on the contrary, Emberly has never faced something so hideous. A war — that is what they fight in this place, in this cage. With themselves or with others, but a war nevertheless.

Kiara Ment Saffron Paige Mom Dad McCarthy Clementina Raquel Ree — she lets their names run through her head, lets them fuel the growing fire in her blood.

Walherich hesitates at her question — "What do you have at home to fight for?" She keeps her blade raised for now but lets him speak; she yearns for his answer, needs it if she is to continue making him bleed. She swears to herself to never kill a stranger again — Lace Eon's blank story is eating at her insides and she can feel holes punched into her body where there was once hope and light.

Wendell Gordon: a bully from District Twelve who loved to inflict pain and terror. He loved few people — himself, perhaps his parents, and his cousin, who died on day three. He fought for himself because he simply didn't want to die.

Lace Eon: a girl who Lace Eon — she draws a blank.

The only thing Emberly may ever know about her is that she was a quiet girl, but now Lace's silence is killing her.

"Who I'm fighting for?" he turns the question back at her and then finally he answers."Margaret. She's a lady down the street from where I live. She lost her husband a few years ago and doesn't have any children. Her house was a project I took upon about two weeks before I got reaped."

An answer she didn't expect; Emberly finds that many people from home other than her family blur into the background. They are not points of light, an intense fire that burns within her — a woman down the street could never give her the strength she needs to push on. Only Kiara's tear-stained cheeks, Paige's fiery green gaze, and Ment and Saffron's worried copper eyes, that can do that for her.

"I'm fighting to help her, because I promised her I would." Promises — things she decided could never last in the Arena, and yet she is so fixated on keeping the one promise she made here. "Never," she said. She would never stop fighting; it is the only promise she can truly keep in the Arena.

"She's a part of my home. It's the place that always taught me to never break a promise," he finishes.

Home is where your strength comes from.

Walherich strikes at her, but she is poised and ready, tensed and full of blazing adrenaline. She blocks his blade with her own, and she looks her opponent in the eye as their blades clash.

"I made a promise, too. I promised McCarthy that I would never stop fighting." He never lived to hear her say it, of course, but that didn't make it mean any less to her. "I wanted to promise my little sister that I wouldn't leave her. I wanted to promise my twin that she wouldn't lose me like Myara."

Myara — her name leaves an acerbic taste in her mouth like she's swallowed poison. It hurts to remember her, hurts more than a broken bone or a gash oozes a river of blood. There is no greater pain than the loss of a sister, at least not that Emberly has experienced. Myara is a constant knife in her heart, and even if she survives this, she knows it will never fade. That kind of agony is eternal.

And that's exactly how Ment and Kiara will feel if I die, she reminds herself.

He strikes again but she swerves to the side. The tip of her sword grazes the ground, tracing a curved line into the dirt as she steps backward.

"But I couldn't make those promises because I didn't know if I could keep them. I still don't," Emberly goes on. Thump, thump, thump — as long as her heart beats there is still hope, still hope that she can keep those unspoken promises that she always wanted to make. As hollow as she feels, as broken down and tattered as her heart and her soul has become, there is still a single flame of hope left in her. Without it, she would be nothing.

"They are who I'm fighting for — my family. And I can't stop now. I wish that I could — I wish that I didn't have to kill people so there won't be a second empty bedroom in my house."

[Emberly attacks Walherich; The Queen (sword)]
7PruqJm9sword
[1009 -- Severed Right Ear -- 8.0 damage +1 blades]

die grandiose natur sorgt immer noch für ihre kinder
hoffentlich können wir es irgendwann verstehen
the magnificent nature still cares for its children
hopefully one day we'll be able to understand it

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wir gehen zur anderen seite des horizontes
hoffentlich können wir es irgendwann verstehen
we go to the other side of the horizon
hopefully one day we'll be able to understand it

When Emberly strikes, she does so with precision, lunging out to meet her blade with Walherich’s ear. She would rather kill him in one blow so that he won’t feel anything, but perhaps adrenaline will do that for him anyway. For his sake and for hers, she hopes that it does. It isn’t simple to just stab someone through the heart; she looks for an opening, but when she can’t find it, she wonders if she just slowly takes him apart —

His ear flies away from his face in a blur of crimson and falls to the ground. The moment it makes contact with the earth, blood begins to pool from beneath it and cakes in the dirt. Emberly grimaces and casts her eyes back to Walherich, but finds that it is an even more sickening sight.

Blood spews from the side of his face, where there is a now gaping, bloody hole where his ear once was. It runs down his cheek to his shoulders in thick crimson streams in the way that a river flows after a downpour. There is nothing in his face — perhaps a glint of pain in his eyes, but almost nothing more.

She’s killed two people now — she should be used to this, but every time she spills blood she just feels that same crushing feeling, that same pang in her chest. No matter how many times Emberly has to do it, it’s all the same.

She just wants it to end, but it isn’t over until twenty-three people are dead.

Emberly wishes that she could cry, but she hardly even has the emotional strength to manage that anymore. You’re doing this, you’re doing this, you’re the reason he’s bleeding like that and it’s all so you can see them again — the realization crashes through the surface of her mind and hits rock bottom, the thought sinking into her head like a mental tattoo. Emberly Lowe is supposed to be noble and unselfish, but in this moment she has never felt so selfish. Trying to remind herself that she’s doing it for her family does not fully justify her actions in her mind. Deep down, somewhere within her, she knows that she is also fighting for herself. But if keeping her life was her only motivation, she wouldn’t still be breathing.

It’s her family who keep her strong, who keep her from giving up and laying down to go to sleep forever. Emberly hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in five days, not since Clementina died, and her body is scarred and bruised and covered in bandages. She is so tired, so heavy — and yet somehow when she fights, she feels so alive.

Inhale — Kiara, exhale — Clementa.

“Most people normally fight for family, which is respectable,” Walherich says. She doesn’t know how he’s still speaking, but even as he talks to her, her eyes stay glued to the blood that still spills down his face.

“However, somehow, I find your response different from most. You want to keep them company, not leave them in the dust and alone. I respect that.”

Walherich moves quickly this time and slashes at Emberly’s calf, leaving behind only a thin line of blood and a stinging sensation. She doesn’t take the time to glance down at her wound, but she knows that some of the pain must be numbed by adrenaline.

“Until my heart stops beating,” she steals a breath of air between words and tightens her grip on life, “I will never stop fighting for them.”

She could never leave them, not when they have already lost so much.

“Do you feel the same way about your family? Do you wonder what will happen to them if you die here?” She knows that she does — she dwells on the thought every night. Ree and Raquel and Clementina would be sitting beside her by the firelight, beneath the all the stars. The real stars are at home, she would remind herself, and if she fought hard enough, she would gaze upon them again.

But sometimes she wonders if the other tributes aren’t like her, that they are more like Lux. Hollowed out by all of the violence and destruction in this place until they hardly feel a thing anymore. For years she’s seen tributes fight for the same reason that Ree Fer fights: for themselves and no one else.

Emberly will never reduce herself to that but she wonders if Walherich has lost sight of his family, if he has one at all. She asked him what he was fighting for and he had only mentioned his neighbor. She wants to know him, or at least pieces of him. She can’t be the only one fighting for her family — but there are moments of weakness when she wonders if she has too much heart, if Lux is right.

Her heart is what fuels her, but perhaps someday it will be her undoing.

Somewhere in the distance, a cannon fires. She prays to whatever is out there, perhaps the universe or destiny, that the cannon is not Ree’s. Emberly chokes on the idea — she remembers holding Clementina’s hand when her cannon fired, how the warmth slowly faded from her fingertips. If Ree dies today, she wouldn’t get to hold his hand like Clem or say goodbye like Raquel. There would just be a new hole in her chest that she doesn’t know how to fill, with no farewell to complete their journey together.

At least when Raquel and Clementina died, she at least had a few moments to say goodbye. “Or in the sky,” he had said. Part of her wishes that the anthem wouldn’t be the last place she would see his face.

She swallows the lump that grows in her throat. “I know I do.”

Emberly feels that flame burn in her body once more, but it's far more than adrenaline. Desperation — she recognizes the feeling and it leaves a bitter taste in her mouth. It subsides as she realizes that this desperation isn't so empty and cold and gray like she's felt so many times before. Instead, it runs through her in screaming color.

She lets the fire eat her alive, consume her whole, lets it feed her and her every movement.

[Emberly attacks Walherich; The Queen (sword)]
IpgOg1pZsword
[1055 -- Deep Gash on Left Thigh -- 8.0 damage +1 blades]

wir gehen festen schrittes
alles lebendige stirbt eines tages
we go with a firm step
everything living will die one day

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ob wir zum sterben bereit sind oder nicht,
der tag kommt sicher
whether we're ready to die or not,
the day'll come certainly

She still wants to believe that she is pure. But there are stains on her heart, black like pen ink — two dark spots for Lace and Wendell and flecks for the drops of blood she has spilled. Emberly was never meant to kill; she believes that her destiny was always to live out her days at the farm as an animal nurse, giving life rather than taking it.

Snow made sure to alter her path forever, and there is no turning back now. It doesn't matter how much she wishes on the false stars in the sky; she cannot go back in time and change what happened to her or what she has done.

Emberly catches a glimpse of herself in the reflection of the springs water, the first time she has looked at herself in days. "You're still pretty," Titus had said to her, three days ago now. But she doesn't think so — her cheeks have sunken and her eyes are sullen, still bright copper in color but lacking that exuberant luster. There is blood dried in her auburn hair and sweat glistens on her face, catching the grime smudged on her skin. She hasn't had enough water to wash herself clean in days.

As she slashes The Queen at Walherich's leg, she tries to think about taking a bath if she survives this fight. But nothing can distract her from the cold guilt creeping into her heart, the fear gnawing at her insides — not truly.

“Of course I do. It’s hard not to; what else was I supposed to do when I can’t sleep?” he says. Walherich's tone has changed, but she can't quite pin exactly what emotion is showing through his voice. “Anyone would know I don’t bother talking. My nights were overflowing with worries of home.” She has always known that much, at least — just like Lace.

He attacks her again, and she flinches as his sword grazes the surface of her skin. Still, she does not bleed like him — only a few droplets trickle down her flesh, while Walherich is bleeding profusely. Somehow he is still standing without a wince or a whimper, strength that Emberly can admire, even if he is trying to kill her. She is trying to do the same to him, after all.

“Me too,” she replies. Emberly recalls countless nights of staring at the wall of her bedroom in the Capitol or into the canopy of the tropical trees and thinking about home, the sunset and her sisters' red hair and the horses that run by the winding creeks in the valleys. “Someone wise once told me that our strength comes from home.” Saffron — her words are still etched into Emberly’s head. She had scrawled them in ink onto a slip of paper that is still wadded up in her pocket with Ree’s deck of cards and the Lowe’s family photo.

“It’s a shame, you know. We’re not so different.” It's a shame that I have to kill you, she says to herself. If he does not die, then she will. Ree once said that he fights because he is afraid of what comes after death. It is something that Emberly has tried not to dwell on too much, and if she is lucky, she won't have to find out what death is like for years to come. If she hopes for anything else other than to live, she hopes that dying is just like falling asleep and never waking up.

Cannon fire — it rips through the air like one of Clementina's bullets, marking the death of another tribute. If she lives through today, she will mark two more tallies onto her photo. Please don't let that cannon be Ree's, she prays. She does not believe in a god to pray to but she prays anyway, simply because there is nothing more she can do but that. We never should have split up, she thinks. It was a mistake. Ree could be at my side right now, it didn't have to be the end at dawn.

His pack of cards feels heavier in her pocket as she imagines his face flashing blue in the sky.

She wishes she could smile, just a little bit, but when she tries her body acts against her. Maybe she's just too broken to smile now; it isn't natural anymore, not when she bears such heavy weights on her shoulders. Emberly wants to be that girl from day one again, the one who gathered flowers with Walherich for McCarthy's body. She had smiled at him then but she can't bring herself to do it now.

On the way to save herself, perhaps Emberly ended up losing that girl — who she really is.

“I'll never know you completely, Walherich. But I killed someone once and the only thing —” Emberly takes a breath between her words to swallow down the cracks that threaten to show in her voice. "The only thing I know about her is that her name was Lace and that she was quiet."

("Tell . . . tell Wes . . .")

"If I kill you, I don't want you to die like she did." And if she returns home, Emberly promised herself that she will find out who Lace Eon was. If she dies — if she dies here, she will die never knowing who the girl she killed was.

[Emberly attacks Walherich; The Queen (sword)]
doYvRTyvsword
[1130 -- Shallow Cut on Left Thigh -- 3.5 damage]

ist das der engel, der vom dämmernden himmel hinunter flog?
ist das der teufel, der aus der felsenspalte heraus kroch?
is that the angel which flew down from the dawning sky?
is that the devil which crept out of the rock cleft?

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tränen, ärger, mitleid, grausamkeit,
frieden, chaos, glaube, verrat
tears, anger, pity, cruelty,
peace, chaos, belief, treason

Only a few droplets of blood drizzle onto the ground. She opens Walherich's skin again and in turn he slashes at hers but she's so used to pain by now that she hardly blinks.

”Silent? It won’t be much different from before,” Walherich retorts. The blood on the side of his face has slowly begun to dry and stick to his skin. If she kills him, he'll go home like that to his family, all beaten and bloody with a missing ear. But Emberly told herself a long time ago that she would do what is necessary; it's not as if Walherich is about to lay down his weapon and let her end him just like that. She could make it quick and painless, she wishes with everything she has left in her that he didn't have to hurt.

But she knows that she would never surrender; she cannot expect Walherich to do that. He says nothing a family but even if someone has nothing to fight for, no one truly wants to be murdered. Ree has no one but he fought still — he fought for himself every day and he is more of a warrior than Emberly ever will be, even with her body count piling up.

”What makes my words different from anyone else's?” Everything — everything because she isn't killing everyone else. She's killing him, slowly making him bleed to death.

"Everyone's words are different. But right now, I care about yours because I just — if I have to kill people, I don't want them to be complete strangers to me." Lace, Lace Eon; would Emberly ever know who she was? She reduced Glacia to a ghost, a bloody memory to forever haunt her mind. She did the same to Wendell but at least she knew who he was.

"I feel like if I don't know who someone is, then maybe one day, their deaths would mean less to me because I won't feel the true impact of what I've done. Killing should always mean something." She feels obligated to be guilty for the deaths she has caused; if she is not, she fears that she will lose a piece of her. Emberly Lowe is compassionate and gentle, not a cold-blood killer who hardly blinks when they take a life. She never will be — it is one of the only promises she knows that she can keep. That, and —

"Don't stop fighting."

"Until the end."

[Emberly attacks Walherich; The Queen (sword)]
h91DIF|zsword
[1006 -- Shallow Cut on Left Bicep -- 3.5 damage]

wir werden gegen unser schicksal ankämpfen
wir dürfen uns nicht in unser schicksal ergeben
we'll fight against our fate
We mustn't submit to our fate

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mit trauer und
entscheidung im herzen
with sorrow and
decision in our hearts

It only takes a few more words and another slash of her blade, another puddle of Walherich's blood on the ground, to realize that it is almost over for him.

”I think you know as much about me as you need to. And if you don’t, consider meeting Kiki. She’s a wonderful girl.” There is a glimmer in his dark, dull eyes when he speaks her name. She must be someone close to him, a sister, perhaps. Emberly can easily recognize love in someone's voice when she hears it, no matter how tattered and worn they are.

"Tell Kiki that I'll miss her." They are the words of a dying man.

("Tell . . . tell Wes . . .")

He strikes at her but it seems almost hopeless for Walherich now. He is covered in blood that still drips down his skin, a dead man walking but still somehow still keeping pace with their battle. She pities him, feels a deep pang for the dying boy in her heart and prays that he will find peace in death, that this suffering she is inflicting on him will end forever. Emberly has always imagined death to be just like falling asleep; all the pain will ebb away into oblivion and your eyelids become heavy, giving way to an unbeatable drowsiness . . .

A third cannon fires in the distance and Emberly almost jumps, thinking for a split second that Walherich's heart has finally stopped fighting, but the boy is still standing. Three deaths today — surely, Ree survived. She will see him again, she believes. They promised until the end; she will see him again on the last day, in the finale of the Hunger Games. She has hoped for it so much in her heart that it has almost become a fact in her mind.

Emberly raises her sword and braces herself. She will hear one final cannon today: Walherich's. She tells herself that she won't let it crush her this time, she won't let killing someone destroy her from the inside out. Not like Lace. But the fragile seams keeping her together are already fraying and she isn't entirely sure she will be in one piece by the time this is all over.

"If I live to see her on my victory tour," she says, "I will." Emberly does not promise; she knows better than that by now.

[Emberly attacks Walherich; The Queen (sword)]
9lHzKHedsword
[1044 -- Shallow Cut on Left Calf -- 3.5 damage]

zeigen wir den willen weiterzugehen
niemand darf eigensinnig seines lebens beraubt werden
we show the will to move on
no one mustn't be deprived of his life waywardly