the bladed dance; alex

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kousei ♚
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last seen May 7, 2022 17:23:18 GMT -5

now and forever

the bladed dance; alex Jan 30, 2018 10:25:30 GMT -5

Post by kousei ♚ on Jan 30, 2018 10:25:30 GMT -5

a e s o n kight .

("Oh Lord, guide our son's soul through this darkness.")

You step from the elevator with nothing but the clothes on your back and your home sewn onto your chest.

The universe finds itself stripped threadbare beneath the Capitol's limelight and you quickly realize you're all the same shade of fucked down here. It's not too different to lesson the black words scrawled on those yellowed pages taught you before you set yourself alight for the sake of a brimstone crown. Beneath Ripred's watchful eye, everyone was stripped bare with nothing but their sins on their skin so they could be judged fairly and justly. It didn't matter what corner of the gutter you came from, you were all the same shade of vulnerable in his eyes.

What a fucking joke.

Here you stand, skin alight with nothing but the clothes on your back and a number upon your chest but there are no prayers on behalf of your soul upon your lips. You want the limelight to reveal the sins on your skin and the blood peeling from your hand and soaking into your skin. You've formed red roads and painted webs of crimson spatter on your trail; it seems irrelevant now. Beneath Capitol limelight, you're no longer anchored to those atrocities your life revolved around, the centre of your galaxy fades to obscurity.

Just like everyone else.

But you won't lose yourself, not to this metallic blue floor and you won't be blinded by the Capitol spotlight that kills those who get their fair share of it. You stuff your hands into your pockets and every step that doesn't leave a crimson footprint in its wake feels like a transgression; yet there's not a single gear within your body built to perform the function of repentance.

The boredom in your facial expression flickers to dull amusement for a second, for you see a smaller girl gripping a blade between awkward fumbling hands. The blade itself is far too large to be a knife and the girl herself is far too clumsy to be a career, or a threat at all for that matter.

You're no career, you've never held anything as sophisticated and elegant as a sword. The mountain of lives wasting away beneath your boot comes from unrefined brutality, not a plethora of riches and and resources at your fingertips.

Despite your amusement, you roll your eyes as you lazily stroll next to her. "I hope you're not planning on relying on that to keep you alive," you lazily pick up the mind closest to your and let the point play across the tip of your index finger and sigh, a brief smirk plays along your features. "You'll skewer yourself before me or anyone else gets the chance to get anywhere close to you."

alex 🐺
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a la folie

the bladed dance; alex Jan 30, 2018 18:30:47 GMT -5

Post by alex 🐺 on Jan 30, 2018 18:30:47 GMT -5

(question: how does a girl who falls, no actually, jumps, eyes wide open, down a rabbit hole, plummeting into chaos, come out unchanged? answer: she doesn’t.)

Until an hour before the Devil fell, God thought him beautiful in Heaven. Hades thought Persephone beautiful enough to drag her away to Hell. Stella was no fallen angel, her wings had not been plucked from her shoulder blades. But she had been dragged to this hell in a gilded carriage. The bright lights and colors of the Capitol blinding her as the sensory overload incapacitated and dulled her senses. The Capitol had marked her for death with four uttered syllables of her cursed name. Her walk to the stage a walk to the gallows, to her executioner to atone for the sins of the oppressed.

But Stella was a galaxy all on her own. She needed no other stars that the ones resting in her heart. She banished away thoughts of salvation as the terror faded, leaving behind smoke and nothing more. A consciousness wiped clean with the concussive embrace of a nuclear explosion. She was a dying star, but she willed herself to burn out rather than fade away into obscurity. To rewrite her fairytale and escape from Hell, whole or otherwise.

___________________________________________

She pulled herself from bed early on her first morning, stretching her legs and cracking her back before dressing in the attire that she had been provided with. The pants were tight, as she preferred. Easier mobility, you see. Her thoughts drifted to her forgotten dance studio back at home - it was simply a room with lacquered hardwood floors and mirrors from floor to ceiling. But it was all her own. She schooled her thoughts, biting back the emotions that threatened to break her. She may be ill-prepared for whatever machinations the Capitol had in store for her, but she would not allow herself the weakness of feeling.

Reaching the Training Center before anyone else, the girl gravitated towards the swords. Sharp. Ever ready. Long and lethal. She grabbed a small dagger, no longer than her forearm and took small tentative steps with it. She could dance, that much she knew, but wasn’t sword fighting just a dance with a blade?

After a few minutes of calculated and measured steps, she pulled her hair back in a loose ponytail, gnawing on her bottom lip in thought as she analyzed the weapon. A boy’s voice pulled her out of her reverie and she spins towards him, blade outstretched as if ready to begin the Games now. Protocol be damned. "I hope you're not planning on relying on that to keep you alive. You'll skewer yourself before me or anyone else gets the chance to get anywhere close to you."

Her jaw is set and she encounters the first move in a game of survival in this hell. This cemetery of dead souls kept alive only by the sadistic wills of the Gamemakers for just a bit longer. Just until they can play with us for a while. Lions circling their prey, teeth bared. Systematic torture for sport.

(One might have hoped for less
less damage less smugness Even now
you seem to me monstrous)

”Do you have a better suggestion? Or is this one of those ‘psych out the girl from Twelve’ moments? I want to know so that I can play along.”

"You can romanticize me all you wish, but the devil wrapped in silk is still the devil."

the smell of night, inhaling stars.

kousei ♚
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last seen May 7, 2022 17:23:18 GMT -5

now and forever

the bladed dance; alex Jan 31, 2018 14:04:06 GMT -5

Post by kousei ♚ on Jan 31, 2018 14:04:06 GMT -5

a e s o n kight .

Left to hold one broken second for every missed moment for opportunity, you don't recoil when the eye of her blade glints in Capitol's light and burns a hole through your soul. Your heart doesn't so much as race, you're left clutching onto apathy and disregarding empathy -- it's a familiar feeling. It would be far too easy, for a single step forwards followed by a thrust for that sword to be buried through your sternum, stealing your breath with every second your lungs find themselves immersed within an ocean of bitter pride and lost opportunity.

Yet you still clutch apathy to that empty chamber of yours.

You've stared down the eye of a blade far too many times to count. You've felt the bite of steel's point across your skin and, the first time you anticipated you would lose yourself to a red sea. Yet every time, you still found yourself breathing and now you're anchored to every single wound left upon your skin. Whether they be black and blue knuckles or scars twisting shallow across your skin. You don't tremble at the threat of a thousand bullet wounds.

And perhaps, there lies the root to the madness that's been left to fester within your mind for eighteen years.

Besides, you see it in her eyes. There's a red flash of annoyance with a tinge of defiance, but no desperation and no malice. You know she won't bury that blade in a place it doesn't belong. But her words still try to leave an impression upon your skin, expose every wound missed by Capitol limelight. "Do you have a better suggestion? Or is this one of those ‘psych out the girl from Twelve’ moments? I want to know so that I can play along."

And perhaps you're in a good mood because you only chuckle at that. Once, you might've taken the closest blade near you and plunged it into her stomach for daring to exert a power over you she falsely presumed to have. Wait, that did happen. Once. However, you don't. You find it slightly amusing if anything, despite the apathy entangled beneath your skin.

Amusing, but like most people, you struggle to find any value she might have at face value.

"Psyche you out? Why would I waste my time doing that?" You ask, keeping your hands in your pockets as you shake your head. "Trust me, if I wanted to kill you, I wouldn't need to play mind games with your pretty little mind." You state simply, shrugging your shoulders as you lazily pull a knife from the rack and twirl it between your forefinger and thumb before holding it the way years of back alley jobs have taught you.

You don't need to kill her, not yet anyway, because there's a whole lot more for you to learn. Mind games can come later, if you feel like it.

"But hey, you looked half-ready to run me through right then. So what use do you have for better suggestions from some boy from District Six?"

Defined by a number but not a legacy; you shrug.