sweet; a little selfish | ams&di | day 8

The day draws to a close; Ronan's eyes flicker in the gold on the sunset, before turning a silver as he slips on to whatever lies ahead. I stand up and look at him—I see the cold but do not feel the chill. I feel a sense of warm remorse after he dies because he asked me to do him a favour and I had honoured that; he died exactly the way he had wished to live. He was a performer in the bravest fashion and his final show was certainly one to be remembered.

As night falls, I move away from his body to leave him peacefully. The people working the arena will take him, free him from whatever hell is set to roam tomorrow, and it will take him back home. I don't know if that is what he would want, though, for he seemed to resent his mother quite adamantly. But still, a mother's love is as undying as time itself, and though she may not have found it in her heart to accept his life, she will surely do so in death. He will sleep a thousand sleeps and she will cry a thousand tears—that is just the way it works.

Staring up to the sky, I wait in silence for the anthem. I am accompanied only by the rising and falling of my chest because there is nothing in the air, and for once, the first cannon seems to have removed itself from my ear. The silence is louder than anything before, and it moves through the night like the shadows that took Berlin. Slowly but surely, the whole night becomes encased in a silence that turns the whole world grey: the horizon becomes a line of pen ink and everything else just a silhouette. The moon does not sing us a lullaby, and the glisten of her silver is perhaps a melancholy reaction to today's events.

It comes sooner rather than later, the anthem, and when it does, I cross every inch of my body hoping that Hisidro's face does not make it into the night. But I am quickly put into misery, for his face in the first. His eyes distorted by the pixels of his image, his soul not captured in the slightest in the final picture most will see of him. I roll over and tell myself that whilst it would be perfectly normal to cry at a time like this, given the fact the only person I could trust and fall back on has gone, given how I am truly on my own now—I do not want to.

And this is not the workings of a hardened heart, because I can feel myself on the brink of flooding these plains with every thought of Hisidro that graces my mind. His defences and protective self, how he was quiet but knowing, how he was a friend when I did not have anyone else—and all of a sudden, I lose sight of not wanting to cry and realise that I need to cry. For the ache I feel in my heart is similar to what I felt when Zion and Berlin both died, and I did not deny myself the right to feel it then so I cannot deny myself now.

My sob tries to break the silence, but I find myself sucking the sound back in. My eyes squeeze together tightly, as tightly as I held Ronan's hand, and I do my best to try and let go of today in favour of a better tomorrow. My tears dry on their own, and of course, the sad tears of a clown would always smudge a painted smile.

In the morning, part of me expects there to be someone else to watch over, just as how it had been in the days before. The sun comes up and does not reveal any allies or friends, though, rather it just reminds me that I am completely alone in a big, wide world with nobody to protect me but myself. It's quite a daunting thought, just as it was yesterday, but something about it feels more real now that Hisidro is dead. I'll never get to see him again, and every friend I've made in this arena has been killed. I do not feel sorry for myself; I am a killer, after all, a killer clown and a killer queen—I'll accept whatever pain comes with that if it means I get to stay alive for Seven.

I tuck my knees into my chest and stare out for a few moments before starting the day. Isolation can be extremely damaging for people, and in a place where people are increasingly damage by the death of others and themselves, taking a moment to heal feels precious and right. My touch reminds me that I am still here, the heartbeat in my ear echoes to remind me that I can still count on love, and the memories of home tell me that there is still everything to hope for. My eyes close and I exhale a deep breath to prevent myself from starting the day in the same way I had ended the last. The breath steadies my spirit, yet it still feels as free as ever.

My bag feels heavier than ever, yet all I have added in the journal that Ronan gave me. Perhaps it is just a combination of exhaustion and the weight I have placed on my own shoulders to aid Seven. I lean forward into my walk when tracing the grass plains, watching as the blades of grass bend gradually into flowers, and I pray that they lose every element that makes them a blade. The sunflowers were initially a place of great warmth, I can remember first seeing them and thinking that it was truly a beautiful, extraordinary sight.

Time has changed my perception of said place, and though the petals are vibrant as ever before, this place holds a darkness I do not want to see again. This is the ground that Berlin bled on, the ground that caused me to freeze like my own life mattered more than Berlin's. I think of that moment and it feels as fresh as ever; the coal of Jessica Braun's eyes and how everyone was fighting each other with such force and vigour, as if courage is defined by cuts and bruises. I have shed my tears for what happened that day but I cannot shed my skin, and so, that is what will always make me remember.

The dirt sparkles under the sun like it has been encrusted with the jewels from every tribute's fallen crown; tiny droplets of dew bringing life to the air that was once so peaceful with death's presence. I take a breath but do not let it linger, I feel it swirl within but let go before it can inject itself into my veins. I can't let that happen, not at this point, because love is the only thing that fuels my actions and is the only thing that leads the way. Replacing that with a taste for murder would involve me betraying myself.

I may be many things: a daughter, a princess, a clown—but never a traitor. Not to myself or anyone, for that involves breaking the trust that was formed through love.

My pacing continues until I raise a hand above my eyes, spying a figure in the distance. It is just like how I had first seen the people that killed Berlin, and thought makes my spine tingle with fear. But I do not let myself feel it, I simply acknowledge it and think that there may be a situation at hand in the near future that may require intervention. I hold my head up, careful to keep the family jewels safe, and stride forth because I refuse to be frozen by these sunflowers like I was days before.

Ronan was wrong about change. I have not changed, I still lead with my heart as firmly as I did on day one. I have grown, though, for I have grown wiser, older, but still keeping my youth in tact because there is a separation between growing older and growing up.

The figure emerges as Ambrosia, and his voice is the needle in a haystack of silence. He asks if I am Diana and I nod my head firmly. His next words tug at the strings of my heart, and no tune is played, rather I just feel the strength of the pull more than ever before. Hisidro told him to be nice to me—and it does not take a genius to understand what that means.

Ambrosia has killed Hisidro, and even when dying, Hisidro was still thinking of me. When people ask how I know there is love in this world, that is what I will tell them.

Before I can respond to him, he's playing with fire and axes, blades sharper than the grass ones slicing through the silence to turn it to shreds. They knock at my head and I can already feel a wide open wound that will require love's hands of healing.

"It is quite sad that you would be so quick to disobey the wishes of a dying man," I say, a hand placed over my heart. Alas, I am not sure I should have expected any different given the course of the games, given how often I have to keep reminding myself that Mackenzie Pryce was right, and that it is kill or be killed. "Quite sad indeed," but I suppose that not everybody is like me, not everybody still has their heart. "Still, if this is your 'nice', I dread to know your 'unpleasant'."

I begin to think that Ambrosia is one of the people who lost sight long ago. To confuse nice with an act of such cruelty, or to completely ignore the final wishes of a dying man—by me, that is the act of someone who concentrates with their head instead of their heart. Thinking of the complications of said actions, trying to compensate for something that may be missing, but no wounds can ever replace the feeling that comes with having heart.

He says that he is just a background character in this arena, whatever that means, because it was yesterday I figured that life is one large stage and we are all performers. There is simply no time to fade into the background when there is work to be done, songs to be sung and changes to be made; it is almost like giving up the spotlight in favour of the shadows. And I do not trust the shadows in this arena for they are what took Berlin, and whilst they were once a thing of beauty, they were an illusion—and I will not be tricked twice.

I do not think anyone in this arena is a background character. We have all showed ourselves to the Capitol in the only way we know how: some of us have stayed true to ourselves, some of us have tried to save ourselves by polishing the best parts of our person up, hoping that the shine will make the Capitol buy into our stories. I am the first, but I do not think that gives my place in this arena more weight or strength against someone else's; hero or villain, whatever someone feels, there is a story behind that. There is something worth listening to.

Why does Ambrosia feel he is a background character? There's reasoning, an explanation behind that, and so he is not really a background character at all. Besides, when you become a killer as the two of us have, I think that you have the responsibility to carry the story of someone else. Ronan said that he did not want to be forgotten and I told him that he was a story for the ages, and that even if I tried to forget, my heart would remind me of my roots that throb with the pain of taking a life. Ambrosia has killed Hisidro, and for that, he owes an ounce of himself to being sensitive to Hisidro's life and death.

I am sure that Hisidro, like Ronan, had a story for the ages. He was stained with a silence that was too strong to have happened on its own. Love could have filled in whatever gaps were present in Hisidro's heart, and perhaps then he would have been truly free from whatever was choking him.

I sigh a little because being respectful to your dead is how I see it, and not everyone sees it in the same way. These games make people blind to what nice really is, and it is the smallest, most simple things, that are the nicest. Confusing nice with a stab, slice or cut is not nice at all. It's sad that people feed into their desperation to stay alive and forget about the things which need equal attention, which must be paid equal love to stop a person losing their humanity.

Humanity is a tricky thing. Of course, we are all human but I think a distinction can be made between people who have humanity and those who do not. Ambrosia—he says it is his job to be that bad guy and I completely disagree. I shake my head at him because this arena is big enough and wide enough to accommodate any story he wanted. And even if he did feel like falling into the wicked ways of a villain was the only way to put some weight to his name, he has the means to write a story of his own.

I think of the journal that Ronan gave to me and I think of my own diary. They are the words that we do not want to say aloud, perhaps out of fear, out of naivety, out of worry that we would be putting our hearts in harm's way. For all I know, the world could see me as a villain too, but I think that what I have written would explain to them that I am a girl who hurts and aches too much to be defined as a villain. Besides, I am a free spirit—I am Diana above anything else.

But maybe that is where everyone else goes wrong; they brand themselves something that makes them forget who they really are.

"I fight against the unpleasant things. I do not like them, so you are right, I think their place in the world has to come to an end one way or another." He warns me of his attack before it comes, and so it gives me a moment to steady myself to brace for impact a little. The axe slices against my skin to create a small wound and I do not even feel the pain of it, not like before, because I am concentrating on how there is worse pain to feel.

I know that is true, certainly true, because I have felt it myself.

The unpleasant things in the world are what make my skin crawl, they remind me of being younger and looking at the world with such sad eyes. It makes me think of how my father gave up his morals in favour of money, how he let go of family to pursue handshakes in the darkness and long hours where he forgets he has blood of his own to take care of. Broken promises and broken backs—Seven might be a breaking place, but it can be fixed. It can still be shown, be made to feel love.

"You know, being the bad guy is not a job. It is a choice. I chose to lead with love long ago, but you can still make that choice. There is still some time."

I do not like his tone. He speaks with a bite and I am careful because it is like he has sharpened his words like one can sharpen teeth; they try to tear away at my goodness, telling me that I spew nothing but absurdity. I shake my head solemnly because it is not the case—what I say makes perfect sense to those who have enough love, enough space in their heart to dedicate a moment to understanding them.

And besides—to talk out of one's arse would be impossible.

His smirk quickly falls out of place when my flames carve away at it; he could do with a permanent smile like I have if he is so set on twisting everything into nothing more than a joke. Perhaps that is just a coping mechanism and I should not frown upon him for that. We are all struggling in our own ways, trying to put right our wrongs and protect ourselves and our hearts from falling into a state of disrepair through disregard.

But part of me thinks that Ambrosia is not coping at all, and that is why there is such malice in his words. Because I think that a signal that someone is coping is that they are trying to make things pleasant, and of course, his definition of what nice is seems to be rooted in something darker than necessary. Surprisingly, though, his unpleasant nature seems to hurt less; a scratch and cut here and there is nothing that will leave a permanent physical or mental scar. It may hurt for a split second, but there are worse things that could happen, and far worse situations to be in.

When he mentions living in a fairytale, part of me feels a little hurt at that. A fairytale is supposed to be kind and considerate, it has a happy ending where everybody lives happily ever after—there are twenty bodies that already prove that is completely not the case. Whilst my thoughts are perhaps quite idealistic, to remind people the power of love and restore it to the places that need it most, still, a fairytale is something of fantasy and this is my reality. I am desperately trying to prove to those who doubted the place of heart in this arena, desperately trying to prove that love has a strength far purer, truer than the violence conducted through accepting a sorry fate.

Maybe the princess does win in fairytales—but those princesses were the definition of perfection, something I deviated from the moment I volunteered to save Lenox Lachance. Perhaps I am perfect in the eyes of some, but not most. I have outgrown what it means to be a perfect daughter through following my father's commands and obeying his every word, I have broken my own idea of perfection through feeling love so strongly that it made me lose sight of making the impossible possible, and so I killed Francisco Bloom, and I did it again when I killed Ronan Keeni-Einfallen.

The princesses in those stories needed saving, and I am own my own quest that has morphed me into a killer clown and a killer queen. I do not need saving when I am the person trying to do the saving.

"I'm not like those princesses. I don't need a knight or prince to show me the right path to take, to stop me from getting in harm's way. I have my heart for that, and I trust my heart more than I could trust any man. Men do not have their priorities in the right place." Because my only real experience of men has been through my father and he is not the type of person to make the best decisions, at least, not decisions that are the most loving for all involved. He would lead me to the paths and tell me to take the longer one, just so that he can be alone on the shorter trail.

Maybe the men I have met in this arena have proved themselves to be worth more than my father—Zion was good, funny, a friend. He was a protector and someone I could run to the find my feet and find my defences. Berlin exhibited bravery in the best way; to stare and walk into the fires that burned you just a day ago and feel no pain, have no regret is a feat I shall never forget. With Hisidro, it felt like he owed me his body as a form of armour; to save me would be to sacrifice himself, and I suppose that in the end, that is what happened. Ronan fell out of touch with himself but I am convinced he could have been a good person given time to heal, if he was in a different place at a different time.

Ambrosia is different. He tells me that he leads with love whilst aimlessly swinging his axe around, my own blood dripping onto the ground beneath our feet. I do not believe him when he tells me that; maybe he's trying to convince himself that what he is doing is loving but I do not see it at all. To so proudly boast that Hisidro told him to be nice to me and then pair it with a slice at my head is not love. Love would be to honour final wishes, to feel responsible for what you have done and want to try and make things right.

"If that is true," I say, looking over to him with a melancholic frown, "you are following a love that is not from your heart." A feigned love perhaps, or the love of a person—it is different from following bare love. Emotions can cloud one's thinking, false love can tie the wrong ends together to create something rather dangerous. No heart would tell someone to act in such a dark way whilst portraying such a light smile. "Maybe we do all have a villain, but I think a lot of people forget their enemy. What ever happened to 'love your enemies'?" I ask, because it feels like I am the only one who fights such cause.

Because loving one's enemies takes the strongest heart, and such love will scare the hell out of hate.

There's a clink against him armour; love bounces off from hate this time, but I know that it will compose itself, sew itself back together with the strongest of seams. That is the only way it can combat the darkness in the world to the best of its ability, because it creates the most brilliant light it can possibly create.

I watch as Ambrosia pokes his finger into the wound on his face and I turn my head with a slight frown. There is something rather off-putting about him, and though I do find it in my heart to dedicate time to him, to hear his story as I did with Ronan, something tells me he has far more trauma than there is time. He continues to parade around the twisted smile whilst there is blood dripping from his cuts and from his fingertips and it makes my stomach churn.

To feel nothing—that is what it looks like—to feel nothing must be the art of the broken.

It worries me how many people give themselves up to try and survive, as if, your own self is not good enough for the games. Staying true to one's own self is something so important to me, especially after I had tried to fit the image of a perfect daughter. I suppose there comes a time where you realise you cannot please yourself if you are constantly trying to please others first. It takes a second to sort your priorities and straighten them out; follow your own heart, not someone else's, and certainly never follow someone else's head.

I cannot even trust my own, let alone somebody else's. And in a place like this, of war and weapons, the broken make this place their home. I would not do what anyone else said when their head is almost certainly, completely, utterly in the wrong place. To glorify the blood on their blades, to stare at the starless sky and want to see more faces up there is criminal.

A childish criminal is still a criminal, no matter whether they are sat in the dart drawing soft images. Nothing can mask the sharp edges of their mind. Ambrosia's finger carves through the dirt to create a small picture of this scene: one boy, one girl, many sunflowers—but he draws smiles on their faces. It is not true of me, even though I am painted with the face of a clown, because it feels like my frown has turned the made up smile upside-down. "Perhaps to you," I say, standing tall with the sunflowers, watching him intently.

And then he starts to speak into thin air—the air that cannot be trusted because there was something in it that took my friends—and he speaks with a friendly tone, as if the air is not a stranger but a soul mate. The broken pieces of Ambrosia Sin cannot be put back together, and whilst I know that love is the be all and end all, I fear that love cannot find all his pieces. It is like he has been broken into a thousand tiny shards that can never be found, and so, when the broken man walks, he treads in the person he lost, his former self cutting into his feet.

It is a path I would not tread; love would never lead me such a way. Maybe love has not given me my most desired route through this ordeal, but I still have faith in it, I still have faith in fate.

He picks up a baseball bat, gently turning it through his hands before looping it through the air. The air flees in fear and I know that he will try to make me the next victim, but I stand as if I can not be knocked. He swings at me and the bat clashes against my armour, denting the piece across my chest. I feel the impact and stumble slightly, but am gladly unharmed. I take a breath and step forward once more, looking to Ambrosia with sad eyes.

He speaks to himself, and not to the world—friends with the dangerous air, still seeing beauty in the sunflowers. I think that to kill him would be another example of love as mercy, because it is clear his coping mechanisms are not working. I do not think he is coping, rather collapsing. And though I could ask about who he is talking to, what the point of it is, whether it provides some kind of peace, I do not want to potentially fan the flames. It might be sensitive, personal, and I do not want to intrude where I am not necessary. Broken people can do broken things.

But to ignore his brokenness would not be loving, and so I look to him with a full heart, and a tongue ready to try and lull the pain away. I open my mouth to speak but there are no words, my throat feels dry, and I realise that in the moments like this, actions speak louder than words.

There is protest where my words fall silent and short, Ambrosia meeting in the middle to question how a game cannot be fun.

I like games—hide and seek back home was always so much fun, darting between the trunks of trees and always having my shadow give away my place. I like pretending I was part of some fantastical world whilst at school, riding alongside mythical beasts and going on imaginary quests to try and feed the hungry, find the missing, heal the hurting. Being younger and letting loose was one of the best times of my life, obviously there was very little to worry about, especially given how my father had tried to shelter me from the sights that would make me turn my world on its head.

Those games were fun because they were harmless and peaceful, they were simply my imagination running wild out of my mind and into the world. Having nothing to worry about meant I had everything to think about, and so there were no restrictions on how big and wide I could dream, to what extent I could mix reality with fantasy.

What I have seen in the world has changed my perspective. It is good to still mix fantasy with reality, but it should be done in reason. It can become far too dangerous to lose oneself in a state of make-believe because it compromises how far you can see. Falling for a dream is like turning a blind eye, and that is a difficult price for someone to pay when there are threats in every corner of the circle. And perhaps I was someone who was too hopeful for their own good, but that was then and this is now—I haven't changed, I have learnt and grown.

In the Hunger Games, you are not playing for fun, you are playing for your life. You are playing for a cause, to become something bigger than anything you would have ever thought. In some ways, it can fuel the fantasies everyone has a child; if you are the one victor then you are set for life, rich enough to live comfortably with the family and your future family, opportunity knocking in places where there were not even walls, let alone doors. Latching onto a future that hangs in the balance is why so many people fall short of achieving the goal that is moments away, and so, they lose their life as easily as they had conjured it.

"Playing with life is not fun. If it was, the grim reaper would not be grim at all." I say, otherwise love's light would not be trying to eliminate darkness. The game is meant to be fun for the people watching, but almost certainly not for the people playing. Because to them, we are pieces—but we are so much more than that.

He stares back to me, eyes fixated on mine but it feels superficial, as if he is not looking into me, simply just at me. A tilt of the head signals that something has intrigued him, his bat beating against the ground to create an ominous droning drum. He accuses me of being a liar, of wearing a fake smile and I stare blankly back to him because he's right.

"And what about it?" I question him back. "I do not think of myself as a liar, rather as playing a part. But it is my part, on my own rules—so I get to decide what part I play." Ronan had made me realise that life was a performance, and that though we are all performers in our own right, how we are played ultimately falls to us. And I do not want to become a beautiful tragedy like Ronan Keeni-Einfallen, I think there is so much more to me than a reason to cry and feel upset, that is what I have tried to document through my own words and writings, an explanation of my story through a diary.

Maybe the smile is fake, but it provided me with a reason to smile that was genuine and real, it was warm, special. Though that feeling was a fleeting one and the clown has since become a killer, it was once true. Painting over my mouth to give the illusion of a smile was something I did to try and find fun in this game, something that Ambrosia insists games are supposed to be, and maybe I had found it for a day or two—but I took a life, and everything fell into reverse. I have not cried the tears of a clown, but I have felt them.

Ambrosia shoves his finger into a wound and it makes me shy away a little, the blood on his fingers looking deeper and darker than usual. He wipes it across his face, his own version of my smile appearing on his lips as if to make a point that two can play this game. I want to shake my head at him, tell him that it would be sick to wear blood as war paint and hide behind the wounds someone dead has inflicted.

"We are very different," I say, watching as he brings the bat down on my arm. I fight for life, and it feels like he is fighting to feel death. He is broken beyond repair, and though I have done broken things, I have preserved my heart and acted with love. It has kept me whole, held me close and kept me sane. "I am not a destructive person."

A destructive person would thrive in a situation like this; knives and swords becoming bricks and mortar to build a kingdom from the ground. But I think that when a kingdom is founded on broken things, a person builds a time bomb. Each second is like a curse, each minute stealing a breath until there is silence—and finally an explosion.

That is what happens when you are at one with destruction: you see it, feel it, and so, become it. Ambrosia seems to have done a fine job of surrendering his sanity for the sake of survival; the smile, the smirk never seems to leave his face and it is like there is pleasure through committing such deadly acts, as if pain is the source of his pleasure. There's a glint in his eye that is not like the darkness in Jessica Braun's, it is a single drop of sun—but it cannot be sun.

It is hotter, perhaps a single drop of hell.

His light tone is a stark contrast to his darkness. I know that love could try its best to heal him, but I am starting to feel he is broken beyond repair. The pieces of his person fell apart long ago, they have become victim to time, and just like sea glass, the pieces have been rounded out. They are still sharp in the metaphorical sense, but dull in physicality, and so when they come back together—they could never fit. The corners and edges of who he used to be are gone, the aspects of personality which make a person easy to love and give yourself to, it's all gone.

Indeed it is sad. I wish I could be the person he so desperately needs, but my only option seems mercy.

"P-A-T-H-O-L-O-G-I-C-A-L." I say, completing the word where he falls flat. "I told you we were different. I'm good at spelling."

And then he accuses me of destroying everything that I touch, and I simply shrug because I've figured him out. There is no point believing the words of someone projecting themselves onto someone else, it is the epitome of what I am trying to combat through fighting for my cause. Giving into the thoughts and words of another and potentially losing sight of what is important to me is a risk I cannot take—livelihoods are at stake, and so is life. This may not be a game I like playing, but still, I am playing.

"You best not get too close then," because if I destroy everything I touch, he could be next. Love can be destructive in the wrong hands, but my hands are in the right place; they are close to my heart and are constantly reminding me that it is best to lead that way. "If I am as destructive as you say, for your own good, it may be wise to keep your distance."

Part of me feels like it would be the most loving to humour Ambrosia for what he is, to let him smile in peace without questioning it because I know that some of us would kill to wear a smile like that again. Maybe trying to fix someone whilst they are broken would only stick fingers into the wounds of trauma. It could bring up a painful past, a recollection of memories which were suppressed for a good reason. Whilst I do think there is a time and a place to address such issues, perhaps on a line between life and death is neither.

These could be his final moments, if love comes around, and I don't want him to feel as hopeless as Ronan looked.

His weapon clashes against my shin, the sound of metal piercing the air to signal a battle at its height. The armour peels from my leg, clattering sadly to the ground. I look to the ground and see the shadows of sunflowers around us, the darkness threatening to close in on our battle field, but I pray that love will be the light, that love will make it alright.

Some of us still have every reason to live: home, faith, happiness, the future. Of all the things that were once on the edge of impossible that have been lured back through my growth, Seven still stays at the top of the list. The broken hearted faces of the old and young flash into the head, but I know there is always more to them than a simple face, hence why I lead with my heart. They still have every reason to live, too, they just need reminding.

Zion tried and I cried, it fell to me.

I am the reminder.