d2 . freya reed

Aster Reed was the name of a ghost, spoken between her father's lips as he lay in his bed dying. Well, that's a lie. He wasn't dying, he was just asleep. Regardless, it was a name that was often whispered when he lay on the couch, incapable of shifting to his bed before sleep overcame him. It was probably because he was too tired, buried beneath his several jobs as he desperately paid for her career training. Her mother wasn't in the picture, a messy divorce after she found out that their marriage was built on a lie and that father had been sleeping with other women.

Fair enough, it was a real dick move, but Freya couldn't hate him for it. yeah, he'd blown up their entire family and pushed them into a terrible financial and mental position. But, he hadn't run, okay, well maybe he'd ran from his other responsibility, abandoning Aster after he'd knocked up that other woman. Okay, so maybe he wasn't the greatest guy, but he hadn't left her, right? Well, he wasn't ever really around, sometimes forgot to give her food or get her new clothes, but he paid for her training and watched her fights. That one isn't a massive lie. He watches some of them, one or two a year. Well since she'd turned twelve he'd at least watched her once.

It didn't matter in the end, she wasn't on the streets, she had a roof over her head and for all his faults he did care about Freya and Clara. There wasn't much more she could ask for, not when her classmates in school were struggling more than she was. Hell, she'd heard through a few whispers that her mum's new boyfriend was nothing pleasant. She tried to care about it, tried to pull some string of empathy from her heart to feel for her mother's position, but nothing came. It was the same when she watched Clara fall over and scrap her knee, or watched her dad trip and fall on his face after drinking too much. There was nothing there, no desire to reach out and help them, to ask them if they were okay or check on their injuries.

It was the same for her own. She felt the sting of pain as it lanced through her body. She felt the way the air stung the wound and the blood pooled at the edges. But, she could rationalize every sensation, understanding that it was merely a response from her body to tell her she was wounded. Clara said it was weird, poking and prodding at training wounds until Freya would eventually snap out of annoyance and tell her to fuck off.

Freya made choices based on logic, every decision derived from her mind like an equation calculated to define the benefit. It wasn't worth her time or energy if it ultimately didn't help improve her skills or give her something in return. Injuries were like that, unless they impeded her ability to perform they were nothing more than a nuisance.

Career training had its pros and cons, the chances of being reaped in a district like two were extremely low, but on the off chance fate decided to fuck her over she needed to be able to fight. So, it was with reluctance but care that she spent her father's hard earned money on learning how to wield weapons as though they were extensions of her being. By the time she turned seventeen, she'd learned how to find a rhythm within training, and the puzzle of understanding the way others moved became more intriguing. The fundamental understanding of mind and body was simple, but put that into the arena where emotions took control- she wasn't sure she could predict people's actions.

That was when she convinced Clara to come along with her to underground fighting. It wasn't for money or fun, but rather to expose Freya to the complexities of human emotion. She hadn't intended to get involved, to put her name down or step inside that blood-stained pit. But then, Freya had never been one to truly learn from watching. It was the experience, the living through the damage and threat that trained her mind and honed her skills. So after the first night, she slipped to the front, scrawling her name down as the man at the table gave her a concerned look over her small appearance. She ignored it, used to the way people underestimated her size. She might not be the strongest but years of training had gifted her strength, her size giving her speed.

There was no doubt that if she could learn to read emotions and understand how they impact a fight to the death -or well, in the case of these battles, a fight until you're knocked out cold- she'd be able to apply that to her training. It would perhaps invalidate many of the moves and positions she'd spent years honing into her muscle memory, but then, the lack of real interaction where your mind and soul was on the line was why she would not be able to survive. These fights were shifting her logical perception beyond the limits of her thinking, and exposing her to a world she was enthralled by.