waking nightmares [z/k | day 7]

Kahinta walks, and grieves a life of so much wonder and woe.

When she was little, she used to dream of far off places, of kingdoms with towering buildings constructed from spiraling glass and spun silks, refracting light and painting the horizon a thousand different hues with broad sparkling strokes; of songs sung deep beneath the earth, a symphonic vibrato shaking the ground apart underneath all of their feet and weaving magic through their veins such that they never died; of peace and kindness in equal measure, a balanced scale sat untouched by man and whatever lie beyond alike.

A fantasy, wrought from the dirt of their family farm, and the blood of her sister, and her own voice crowed into the clouds on days when the rose-tinted vision of her youth hadn't seemed so naïve or dangerous as she'd learned it to be.

She can feel the way the cotton candy threads of her childhood have spun in her throat, sickly sweet in the way she swallows and swallows and swallows, but can never get rid of the thick feeling that chokes her as she travels further into the fog. Peach and apple in the texture of her grief, wound tight around her, clouded vision in nights past, fires and the smell of burnt sugar and chocolate and the feel of a hand passing through her hair on a morning when a boy thinks she still sleeps. Her eyes ache as she keeps her gaze fixed forward, trying to ignore her air-light steps over cloud and sky, in favor of blinking away the sting of tears that never come. A part of her longs to breakdown all over again, curl into herself and pretend that the mists will swallow her whole and offer her passage somewhere far away over the water, that the sky will soften her fall beneath her.

It is not the sky but the earth that welcomes her, hard-packed dirt unwilling to let her fold into the shadow of an unmarked grave not yet graced with her name.

She has time yet, even as part of her wishes it would run short.

-----

Nothing before her and nothing behind.

If she's correct, Kahinta's walking toward the invisible wall she'd run into with Oberon and Daemon, and the incline she'd felt at its base when she and Oberon had left down a number the next day. Perhaps if she could make it that far, if she could find whatever ascension there was to be found amongst the fog, she might be able to get above it. It's as sound a plan as any she can think. It doesn't feel good, or right, or particularly intelligent, but it's all she has to work on, and it's better than whatever plan Oberon and Callum must have come up with after she had walked away. A frown tugs across her lips, anger simmering under her skin hot enough to flush her face at the thought.

Idiot, she thinks, not sure if the word is meant for her district partner or herself as her free hand bunches into the fabric of her cloak. She'd wasted days, days, protecting him and trying to settle her frustration with him, not so much trusting him as willing herself to believe he could be trusted for a time. And for what? For this?

"Is that really what you've been assuming about me all this time? That I want to be here?"

His face had said so much more, fury writ in every tense muscle, in his brow and jaw and eyes.

Do you even see me as a person or just as a shield to get you farther?

Kahinta hiccups on a sob, breath struck from her chest without any prior warning as her vision goes hazy with the tears she thought she'd cried out of herself the night prior. Her footsteps stumble to a halt, fumbling a few steps as she nearly trips over uneven ground, vertigo-tip-toeing through the stretch of the clouds. Drifting thoughts carry her to cookies and a polaroid picture tucked safely away in her backpack, of curling up at Oberon's back and knowing she could sleep despite their usual squabbles, a figure standing over her to help her up and guard her as she scrambles from the Bloodbath without a weapon.

A shield. He was just a shield. They both had been.

Another wretched sound, torn from her throat too loud and too desperate to be held back, eyes turned up to the sky above. Of course they weren't, despite her running calculations of how much longer she could use them to get ahead, how much longer until she had to walk away or turn her weapon on them. Oberon, and Daemon, and Callum, and Niko, and Kenji, and-

What else was she supposed to do? Decide their lives were more important than hers, that sending them home was the best choice, that someone needed them more than Temple or Melora or Bette or anyone needed her?

Kahinta remembers years of spinning tales and chasing figments without a thought to how her sister bore her weight for her. Never call her unselfish, even in ignorance. She took everything then, wove her words and dreams like the finest silks to wrap around herself with the belief that her world was made of nothing else. She would take everything now, rough hands and rougher heart stitched together with blood and so many nights spent in dark alleys hoping to find a way to make those childhood dreams a reality, though made of cotton and worn wool instead of the silks she'd once imagined.

If she has the chance to make things better by going home, Kahinta won't waste that chance.

She certainly won't give the Gamemakers, the Capitol, the satisfaction of watching her lay down her arms.

A sound like a step in the distance before her, and she stops, holding her breath instead of breathing in despite the way her lungs burn. Moments pass, but there's nothing, no stir in the monotone all about her, no other noise. Kahinta breathes in, shallow and restrained, weapon trembling in her hand as she steps quietly to the side, crouching slightly to try and make herself smaller.

Another sound, a crunch against cracked earth, closer.

Her heart thumps rabbit-quick beneath her ribs, pulse quickening as the realization that she's well and truly on her own for the first time settles across her shoulders heavy like a funeral pall, sinking deep in her chest and smothering her.

The fog swirls, and just out of the corner of her eye, Kahinta sees a dark shape through the distortion. For a moment she thinks it's just the figure that has followed her around, followed them all around, since the very beginning, just far enough to be indistinct but remarkably familiar. No, this shape is different. There's no long ponytail, no hint of glittering along the sides. She only sees the back of them, dark hair and broad shoulders and a long blade disappearing into an expanse of white and grey to the left of her.

It feels like the air has been sucked out of her, and before she can think of why, she pushes back up to her feet and starts after him, struggling to inhale as she stumbles into a large gravestone and clutches it as if it could support her in her crumbling.

"Daemon?" she whispers, voice thin, lost immediately to the quiet all around her. He keeps moving, fading from her vision again before she can force herself to move. "Daemon?" Louder, wavering and rolling with the ragged inhale she takes immediately after. Kahinta staggers forward after him, switching into a jog quickly, hair brushing her neck as she whips her head to and fro, searching for any sign that he-

There.

"What's going on? What's hap- happening- They said- The Anthem said you-"

Her throat catches around a sob, feet continuing to carry her forward as he moves away, still turned from her, seemingly unable to hear her despite the way she calls for him to wait. What if he's doing the same, chasing figures in the haze and hoping they'll have answers, trying to figure out where they all went wrong?

Was it in the Training Center, when she'd walked over to ask him if he'd want to align, and he'd greeted her by asking if she came there often? Was it in the dark of the petal storm, skin still stinging from a rough shave and careful fingers sewing her head back together? Was it after, leaving him next to the invisible wall instead of trying to drag him away?

Maybe she could have- Maybe if they had just tried-

"Come back! P-Please, come back! We're not done. I told you, we're not done!"

They keep moving, separated by days and paces passed, twisting farther apart with every winding trail.

-----

Before long, her boots no longer tread on hard-packed earth, but soft sand, sliding with the decline, red beneath her feet, though she cannot see it.

Kahinta follows, sluggish as she moves, eyes fixed on the barely-there outline in front of her, sniffling as yawning suspicion grows in the core of her, hands shaking on an even shakier inhale. She's struck again by the same feeling she had felt just the day before as she had watched Jade grow pale before her, as everything seemed to slow and stick like syrup between breaths, too thick to breathe properly around bubbling resignation. It doesn't solidify inside her until she hears the splash of her feet in the water, Daemon's figure still moving another two, five, ten feet out, dark form fading into the fog faster than she can keep up with. Her feet are wet, but it doesn't matter. He's gone, and the place she had felt that loss so deeply inside of her just feels hollow with the trick of it all.

"I hope you're happy," she mumbles to the waves, words indistinct between her lips, chapped and bitten red. "I hope you're fucking happy."

It's no kind goodbye for a boy who had helped keep her together. Just empty words for whoever is fixated on her face in some tiny room somewhere, trying to find the angle that makes her tears look like they match the crystals glittering along her ribs.

Her hands fumble with the jeweled clasp of her cloak, pulling until it releases and releases her. Her bag goes next, tossed just up out of the wave line. She sets her morning star by her feet. Rolling up her sleeves, Kahinta leans down to the water, submerging her hands and bringing them up to splash red across her face, to wash the dirt from beneath her nails. The sound of water fills her senses, and she hopes it can wash away everything inside of her as well.

"Good to see you again, Kahinta."

It almost doesn't register, that the words are directed at her, that the voice says her name. Another trick. Another figure in the fog to lead her in circles until she ends up where they want her.

"Guess where you're going. Let me give you a Kahint, you'll be seeing Jade soon enough."

Jade?

Fuck.

Kahinta's knees nearly lock as she tries to stand from her crouch, fingers scrambling to latch around her morning star and swing out behind her, blocking a blow with a clang as she whirls to face the tribute who had snuck up on her. The girl, Jade's other ally, no Dom in sight around them, strikes at her again, all force and no finesse. With a shove, Kahinta sidesteps the arc of her blade, hand lingering against her arm for just a moment as she goes past. A few feet separate them, boots splashing through the edge of the water noisily. An otherwise quiet standstill, as Kahinta tries to think of what to say, but everything feels wrong on the back of her tongue, even as she's already speaking.

"You should- You should choose to either be really bad at making jokes, or really bad at fighting, not both. People won't have a clue who you are if you choose both."

She blinks, trying to wrack her brain for any recollection, but Kahinta can't remember a thing about this girl.

"I don't have a clue who you are." she admits, too honest, and too raw, and too much like sitting at the window in the Training Center with Arabella, trading whispers of their wishes in the dark. Fingers flexing around the handle of her morning star again, Kahinta wishes for herself, chooses to take like always, moving back into close quarters and swinging her arm around as hard as she can manage.

Crack.

A familiar sound by now, trembling in the air. Kahinta breathes deep, wrenching her arm back as she watches the girl stumble with the force of it, struggling to take a breath of her own. Broken ribs, maybe, or her sternum, like Oberon.

Deep breath, and a forceful shove at the memory of him shaking against the gravestones, trying to keep his feet under him.

Kahinta fidgets with the weapon in her hand briefly, knees just a little bent, eyes fixed as the girl doubles over and coughs hard with a hand against her chest before being able to bring herself back to rights. Her white cloak, her white everything, is stained and sullied with days of struggling to survive, a stark comparison to the black of Kahinta's shirt that tries to hide everything among its folds. Like Kahinta herself, another deep breath and a straightening of her spine. No time to waste on tears, on pleasantries that would cut too ragged across the expanse of her chest and leave her bleeding.

She still tastes the sourness of her words, still wracks her brain for who this girl might be despite the respite of finally being able to put aside her name and just remove her. If only it were so simple to remove her own heart, beating faster against the cage of her ribs, fluttering like the butterflies of the day past, frantic and wild.

"Don't worry, my name doesn't matter. None of ours really do, honestly."

But they do, they do, they do, she wants to scream, words turning to ash in the furnace of her chest, too much anger and sorrow wrapped up to make any measurable change to this girl or any other with shouted indignance in the midst of horror. Her mother had named her, had breathed and sweeped life into her from the earth itself, gentling her passions with sure hands and a surer heart. Named for the plums of her mother's mother's mother's mother, generations of history lost to the tide of the Capitol in ways that she can't begin to fathom. They matter, their names matter, but for how many years had they been taught otherwise until the lie went down just as easy and twice as sweet as the truth?

She sets her teeth and refuses to swallow it again.

"Oof, you really got a good Kahit in there, didn't you? Now stand Kastill so I can hit you."

It's stupid. It's really stupid, and Kahinta cannot help the breathy laugh that leaves her, even as she tries and fails to back away from the girl's glancing blow to her right calf that tears through the black of her pants and scrapes at her skin underneath. More disbelief than anything, that this girl continues to speak as if her words are anything more than fodder, anything more than a desperate attempt at carving themselves into the stone with what little they can in what little time they're afforded.

"Those are- You realize how bad those are right?" and it's sarcasm syrupy sweet on her tongue, teeth barely visible behind the pale wreck of her lips. Her eyebrows raise as she circles, a little farther into the water, pale of the sky all around them, red as blood underneath the facade that's blanketed the Arena.

"I can't tell if you think this is genuinely threatening or not," Kahinta says, morning star swinging idly at her side, brushing along the tops of the waves that peter out against her calves. She lets them push her into motion again, resolve along the lines of her weapon arm, readying a swing. "It's not, by the way. You have to know that, right? You don't have to- You don't have to pretend. You don't have to put on a show."

"What do you want me to do? Scream, 'I'm going to murder you!' over and over again? At least let me try to be original."

A laugh, bitter and hardened, striking more solidly than any move the girl had made against her as of yet. An echo of her own, biting disbelief.

No, no that wouldn't do either. Still a theatric, still an attempt at acting out her part in their tableau, the vengeful woman staring down the edge of a knife. They were all just playing parts, and Kahinta feels the discomfort roil in her stomach, days of trying to play the faithful district partners slick against the toil of it all, of playing the stalwart leader incapable of real pain or sorrow. It burns, like oil catching in the summer, too hot and sputtering firework trails in every direction, sizzling and searing away at every person around her. How long has she been burning, and burning everyone around her while she's unable to put out her own fire?

"I've died once already because I wasn't interesting enough to stay alive, trust me, it's all a show."

Kahinta doesn't bring immediate word to sound, too frayed to piece together her thoughts until after she's found brief reprieve by striking true. The snap of a leg, high on the girl's thigh, quieter than the fault-line Kahinta had collapsed in her chest but no less painful, she's sure. She staggers back, careful to keep her morning star slightly raised and in front of her, measuring a distance wide enough between them that she'll be able to react to whatever move the girl next makes against her. Instead, she watches faltering footwork, planted in the sanded sky but unsteady with the shattering of bone, and her body tumbling sideways into the water.

"Bruh that Kafucking hurt."

Brow furrowing, all frazzled anger and conflict, she speaks without filter, wishing she had the grace to stay her tongue and finding no one to take the choice from her.

"You died once already because they already made their choices. What you do in here doesn't mean a fucking thing to them. You've already disappointed them, and you'll keep disappointing them every single day you're still alive, because they chose someone who wasn't you on day one when all of our names were pulled out of bowls or shouted over crowds," she cries, face hot and mouth pulled into a sharp slash across her face, teeth bared as she pants.

She's only just spat the words out when the girl comes at her again, trying to drive her knife up toward her face. Another clash of her morning star against the girl's knife, their free hands scrabbling to turn the tide. Their wrists twist together, uncomfortable angles and forced positions, fingers coming undone and weapons splashing into the shallow surf.

Hands open and empty, Kahinta doesn't- can't- take the time to back away and search for her weapon with the girl right on top of her, and instead strikes out with her boot for the girl's injured leg, desperate to distract and create enough distance to give her the chance to regroup herself.

"You don't know the first thing you're saying, Bitchinta."

It's like something fizzles out, or maybe sparks brighter, even as the girl hurls another imaginative bastardization of Kahinta's name her way. It's the first time she can see the crack in the façade to the frustration underneath, to whatever real anger lies just beyond the act. There's hurt, raw in the way the words are growled, like she can't bear to dress them up enough for whoever is watching them- if they're watching them.

Kahinta wouldn't hold her breath for it.

A girl from Ten with a score of Five, and whoever she was facing with whatever score.

Obviously not very high, considering Kahinta can't even remember her district, let alone her name. She wonders what that says about her, that she cannot for the life of her remember the girl from Four's name, though she knows it starts with a P, or Dominic's last name. No, instead she remembers the ones she wants so badly to forget: Kenji, staring up at her in disbelief; Niko, screaming and clutching her as he falls; Jade, strong and stoic until she wasn't.

Daemon.

Oberon.

Arabella.

She wants to forget, to exhale the rust that grows in her lungs, sharp and grating with every breath as she sits through every night trying to wash them from her chest before they eat away everything she has left, everything that keeps her moving. If it means killing every tribute left alive, Kahinta will go home. If it means taking, and taking, and taking, until her hands and lungs and throat are ruined with blood, she'll find a way to claw her way out of the waters that threaten to overtake her. It was never a choice. She would rather die having become something she cannot recognize, stranger than the late nights of Salus and Vulcan in the abandoned barn, than not try with everything in her to rise to Temple's plea to come home.

For Temple's plea to give them hell.

Damning herself in the process seems a small price to pay to see her sister's face again.

Her foot strikes somewhat true, unbalancing the girl as she goes sloshing into the waves, twisting back to shove off-center at Kahinta and send her stumbling back through the water as well, boots sticking and sliding through the loose sand until she crashes backward into the water. Below her left arm, something familiar and comforting in its brutality.

"I know enough, and I know they want nothing more than to see me die today," she says, voice a quiet calm, too even in its delivery to be anything other than rage, rage, rage. An effusing cold that settles her uneasy stomach, familiar in its intensity. Her eyes, narrowed so tight she can hardly see as she stands, wading through the knee-deep water to stalk back toward the girl still in the shallows, scrambling for her knife. "I won't give them that satisfaction. You can't make me."