redux // maxwell

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My name is Maxwell Temple, and I...

...

At this point, I don't even fucking know anymore.

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When I open my eyes, there's no pearly gates of Ripred's heaven or damning fires of the devil's hell. Not even a blank nothingness expanding into infinity, some fucked up form of purgatory where I'd be consigned to wander forever in search of a salvation that doesn't exist.

Death disappoints, as has everything else in eighteen years of tortured existence.

White light scorches my vision, but this isn't something holy or divine, this is man-made and artificial and oh so real in appearance. Nor is it silent - the quiet hum of machinery is ever present in the background, while a steady beep, beep, beep pierces through to the forefront.

Everything hurts. I thought death was supposed to be painless.

And besides, what the fuck is...

alll.....

....

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My name is Maxwell Temple. Or was. Is, was, who the fuck cares.

Here's the thing. I was told for eighteen years that if I ever got reaped for the games, then that was something in which I would be signing my death warrant. District Nine had exactly one living victor in living memory, and he'd long since given up his role in public life since before I'd reached my teenage years.

Then of course, the aligning of the stars went all wrong. Eighteen years old on the first Quell since the downright suicidal of each of our homes, including three from my own district, threw their lives away in a spectacle that prioritized death and destruction over entertainment. Needless to say, I was not looking forward to seeing whatever spectacle followed this sort of shit up. Or maybe I was, a little, if it was another thing where the whole randomization aspect was thrown out the window in favor of letting the stupid and suicidal run off to their deaths.

But in a first, the twist wasn't revealed before the Games began. They didn't even give us anything for after the games had gotten underway either, unless smacking over skinny boys from Nine with broken beams counted as a worthy twist of sorts.

But there'd been no time to think that through. I'd fought my way through five rough days, taking damage in the bloodbath, taking damage from the mutts, fighting my way out of a situation in which I was outnumbered two to one, and then meeting even more insurmountable odds head on instead of fleeing with my tale between my legs.

My spear hadn't pierced the Lyons girl's eye, though I'd come damn close in my hail mary charge. But close wasn't enough, and by all means she should have struck me down with her next blow.

And really, it seemed like it. Whole fade to black bullshit and everything.

Only then I had woken up inside this fucked up facility, granted the knowledge that this was not, in fact, some fucked up afterlife, but that I had survived the blood loss and injuries that I had sustained from the girl from Eleven and Fiona and Seven and Lyons. It was like the whole thing hadn't even happened. Aside from, you know, the countless half-healed wounds dotting my arms like angry red freckles and the burnt flesh on one arm and the scar on my cheek from Fiona's own attempt to take my eye out and-

Yeah. You get the idea.

Short story? We lived. All of us. Me, Auto, Larceny, Carter (that was an awkward conversation in more ways than one), everyone from Harbinger's relative that ended up being the first death to the girl that had teamed with Minx before our meeting to Minx himself. Apparently he arrived only minutes after I had, yet had recovered faster. Typical, he was a stubborn little fucker right to the end.

Yeah. I don't know. Is this the Quell twist? Is this what happens to everyone after they die in the confines of the force field? Am I doomed to forever be a Capitol puppet in the literal sense, used like the corpses of tributes past like in the Seventy Eighth? Or will we be let free at some point? I don't know, I'm not fucking omnipresent.

Heh. I mean, I've only been saying it for several days now.

I am only fucking human, after all.

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