running on empty :: saylor/fridae

I'm trying to shake the feeling that I'm already dead. Walking through storm clouds, thoughts catching upon their static. I know what's coming over the horizon and the only way I can think to fight it is closing my eyes. Is it pathetic to cling to hope or is that all I have left?

I've grown up watching heroes and villains, fairy tales so far out of reach that I never learned to fear them. We can't reach through television screens, in spite of knowing better I told myself I was safe. All selfish greed and self-satisfaction, seventeen years and seventeen names until mine and each one of them stopped being a person the minute the escort called out to them. There's no such thing as retribution, but this must be something close.

I'd give anything to know ignorance again.

But here I am, desperately wanting to live and having no idea how to. I'm real, but not, eyes unfocused in an attempt to spare me from all the things I'd rather not know. Cameras and mirrors and tributes that see everything I never learned to hide. Holding myself because that's the only comfort I have left, breaths still shaking though we've settled in a delightful purgatory.

We're safe but it sure doesn't feel like it.

I come from hunters, but I always despised feeling like a predator. There's something unbearable about the cruelty of looking upon gentle, beautiful things and seeing only weakness. Now, I'm surrounded by much of the same.

I've always been desperate to prove nature wrong, rebelling against what everyone tells me should be. That must be why she's caught my eye, first from it's corner until I'm all but enamored. She's caked in sweat and suffering, fighting against the wind when it's obvious she'll have to bend. Sooner or later, she'll lose.

Again and again, I watch as this strange girl chooses later.

I'm too selfish to know her name, so lost in condemning myself that my companions faces amount to little more than the monsters that haunt brand new nightmares. And I resent her a bit, just for being that much stronger than I.

But I'm always rebelling against nature, so I run towards her instead of away. "Room for one more?" It sounds nervous, I wasn't really in the habit of conversation back home. I've got plenty to offer, at least, after all I gave up ages ago. "I've heard it's easier when you're not alone."

I don't know that, of course, but I hope.

It's not bravery, but something close. Her eyes are glazed with exhaustion, like that could obscure the blue flames blazing within. More than enough to wound but I'm so cold that I revel in the way she lets me take up space beside her. Not drawn into her orbit but allowed to exist within it.

If I met her outside the Capitol, would she still resemble a bad omen? I'm memorizing faces, wondering if her's will be the last I'll ever see. What weapon might she wield when she tears out my throat? Will she wear regret or relief? I've got so many questions and answers to none of them, but I still hope she'll at least remember this insignificant little moment when we were just as damned but a lot less afraid.

"Saylor, yeah." Heat floods my cheeks, heavy with guilt at the way she says my name. She's from the Distrct before mine, I'm certain enough of that. "I'm not quite as good with names, sorry 'bout that." Mumbled at her feet, fingers digging into the back of my neck to give me something sharp to focus on. Simple conversation is suffocating, people are less predictable than livestock.

Something tells me that'd be a shitty explanation, so I bite my tongue.

Then she smiles at me and it's strange how I feel like that gives me permission to smile back. It splits my lips, too much teeth around the way I hiccup out a nervous laugh. She accommodates my company like it's the most natural thing in the world, like she didn't even have to think twice about what to say to me.

I feel a bit foolish for thinking she wouldn't.

Lonely is the worst thing you can be this close to the end.

"I can do it!" A reflexive lie, grandstanding just like my father taught me. Like pretending to be strong will keep me alive, all bad habits I can't quite shake. I bite my tongue, concentrating on keeping my grip on the metal bar though my palms have started sweating.

Silence is heavier I remember as I pull myself up over the bar three times before I lose my grip and my breath, with my back flat on the mat and very much wishing it could swallow me whole. I can only hope her expectations were so low I still managed to exceed them.

I cover my face with my hands and it makes me feel a little safer.

"I don't think I know how to be strong." I admit through the gaps in my fingers.