to each, their throne ♔ [ ss vs dg, day three ]

And for a throne, there is a heartfelt price to pay.

The small face of the girl from Two is the first to emerge from the shadows on the ground. Her face: stitched with grit and a glint in her eye that aches for a pain bigger than she knows. She is a career, brutish in her ways, born and bred to burn for blood and bone. But it does not mean she is any less deserving of a right to survive, and it does not mean that she deserves anything less than the love from the lines of my heart.

Her blade dances like the sunflowers in the wind, coming down on Berlin's skin to create a small wound on his neck. This is the length people go to for an extra jewel in the crown; to bleed to bone is brave, but demonstrates a thirst for a throne that has risen from the ashes of justice. Dirty crystals, just like the ones in my family jewels, dirty crystals that have been tainted by motive and motion, by action and reaction.

A diamond in the rough is still a diamond—it just needs help to shine.

I believe that I am the type of person who can help. I have thought it once and I will think it until the sun goes down and the band won't play; I champion the forgotten and silent, emptying my heart of love so that they can feel the warmth of worth. My heart would fill back up again, as it always would, because there's enough love in me to make the world go round countless times. A career does not deserve to be treated any different solely because of their upbringing; that is a choice they did not make. They have the luxes because they had the luck.

One glance at girl from Two, Jessica, and I see someone who has a rusty heart. And part of me hurts for her because she is blind to the system she is giving in to, and if only we were at a different place at a different time—perhaps I could put a crystal in the sun, and shine a new light onto life as she knows it.

The boy from Twelve, Nico is his name—I made sure to remember them all before entering the arena. The least someone can do in these circumstances is understand someone more personally, and less an obstacle standing in the way of glory. Putting a name to the face allows a connection that isn't usually considered; being called by a name is emotional, it reminds a person how they lived, how they should live and who they are. It is something innate and special, an identity that does not change for the world. No crown will erase a name, and no throne would break it.

Nico retaliates with his spear, a cut on my arm from his movement as he strikes forward. My eyebrows come together to wince slightly, but I must remember: pain is only skin deep. There are people back home and watching all over the world who have suffered much worse than this, and they have felt pain as ripe and as raw as it comes. I do not want to make a scene over a silent scream.

Besides, I know what it is like now. Real pain, I know that feeling after watching Zion fall into the arms of the sky as if the sky was his mother calling him home. A caress from a cloudless blue, a kiss from the lips of the aurora.

A third boy comes: he is from Five, and his name is Francisco. He wears a face that wants to get a job done, determination that likely has the same attitude as Zion: people have become numbers, and he is a number cruncher. I wonder what it would take to make these people reconsider the Hunger Games; to tell them that it is okay to feel their heart and not feel they have to fail it to follow logic. I would tell them to have faith in their heart—it may be hard, but it knows the way.

I follow and lead with it and feel a power; it brings me to a better self. When I'm grown up, I'll know it for sure.

As the ground between us feasts on the shadows of human fire and flowers, it is courage that burns the darkness away. It is just like yesterday: the image of Berlin staring a horse in the eye like they hadn't almost killed him moments before. He does the same here, bright-eyed as he casts a gaze over the fight watching and waiting before he acts like it is his final scene. His spear slashes at Jessica's flesh and it is certainly better than any of my efforts to save us from sin. I look at him and sadly smile: he lives as if he is going to die. It may get him bruised and blue, but maybe it will keep him alive.

It may turn him to stone. Cold and hard, jagged because it is always ready to attack. Someone who is stone plays with their heart like it is a game to win. I think of myself more as a precious jewel: shining and reflecting the love in the world, just like how life is an echo of the same.

I look to the sun with wide eyes—it hurts, but it illuminates me. A spectrum of all the good things in the world, a ray of light that does not forge a path, rather, an empire.

And as long as the sun is still shining, I burn royally bright.

The burn runs in my blood: it is blue and moves like a river through a valley, a flow of royalty pulsing through my veins to ground me and bring me to my roots. It is familial, and though I am not my father's daughter, I am ablaze with my bloodline.

Sunshine beats down, a reminder of the hooves just yesterday that signalled a destiny of doom. The rays are fool's gold, an illusion from the world to try and distract and cause dismay, but I have grown up in love with the things that sparkle, and know all too well that all that glistens is not gold.

My father being the prime example: sweat drops on his forehead like tiny diamonds encrusted into his skin, but there was no excellence or craftsmanship to him. It was a feigned brilliance, feigned because he was not golden, rather stained. His shine was fractured, peeling to reveal rust underneath that was as a result of long days and sleepless nights. He was king to his own empire, but had no throne. The substance was overcast by style, his skin silencing his splendour.

I am thankful that I did not fall into the same ways as him. I fell too far from the family tree—it did not make things easy, but it did put things into perspective. It taught me lessons, made me realise that the world was not contained within a home. It was not orchestrated by a man in an office; it was far bigger and far worse than I would have ever thought. The shine that was in my eyes was the only shine Seven had—everyone only had empty eyes that felt like they tried to creep in and darken my soul with each look. That is what made me realise something had to change, and if change wasn't going to trigger itself, someone would have to force it.

I would be the one. With elegance and grace, a force that was a touch rather than a push.

The Hunger Games has a different kind of force. It is a fight for rights, for an individual's personal justice which is a goal some people will not stop for. I have seen it before: four, five, six bloods on the hands of a victor—a caress on the cheek would be a smear on the skin. It is different to see it on a screen and then have to live through it; I am convinced that my love will go long-time, that it will make all things alright and right, in my own books, and that the world will click into place just as I had dreamed. There would be peace, a time to cry out the hurt to allow space to heal.

Here, people live as if they are running out of time. They live as if the clock is counting down, and so there is no time to cry, no time to feel—no space to heal. The fight around me progresses so quickly. One moment it's only a small wound, the next, it is gaping and oozing with thick blood that will not let up. Scratches and scars did give structure to a story, but they also threatened to cut it short. I look at Berlin, I look at Jessica and Nico and know that this is one thing: it is a fight to the death.

I can feel light turning to shadow.

It is in Berlin's voice when he tells Hisidro and I to take the horses and go. It is in between the breaths he takes, it is laced in his fibres and I do not know why he is letting it win so easily. He is still standing, he has fallen before and got back up, just like a phoenix from the ashes. Life is to be lived, and death is for dying; as far as I am concerned, he should live like he is still living. A death wish would only let him live in moments that the shadow consumes, he will forget the light, and he will forget his own fight.

"We're not leaving you," I say to him frankly, eyeing our shadows as they get lost in between those of the sunflowers. "We're not leaving you again, we've learnt from that." It was a sad sight to see him return yesterday in such pain with great wounds. We did the most to heal what we could, and I opened my heart hoping that he would hear the strings play for him, but he could only hear cannons. I loved in the night, I said a prayer for him and though I am not sure anything will ever come of it, I figure it is better to be safe than sorry.

He speaks again, his voice hitting like Zion's cannon did to the sky. A boom and a pulse, radiating through my body just like the burn in my blood. "Forget your head, listen to your heart. It's still there, right in your ear." I can hear mine in my own ear, too. And as long as the both of us can still hear our heartbeats, we are still alive, and there is still life to live. I do not want him to give up.

Jessica, Nico and Francisco are quiet, concentrated. They are strung together carefully as to not ever fray, and their silence intimidates as much as it soothes. I can see that they use their weapons as their words, the wounds writing everything that they want to say onto our bodies. Their eyes speak to the sunlight too; they stare into the fool's gold and the glint in their eye is only half a shine. 

I look to Berlin, desperation hiding his frustration, the two working together to tie his tongue. I look to the alliance and see red but feel blue—my body beats just like the sun, just like yesterday's hooves, and I feel my senses amplified. I can hear people back in Seven saying goodbye, I can hear Zion's family shedding their tears, I can hear the whispers of the Capitolites talking about the day before, I can hear the silence from those opposite me.

Loud white noise and light white eyes, but it lives in the shadow of blue blood and a blue heart.