biting down. terra, 6th.

A carriage. A whale. Soon to filled with strangers -- all for you.

How odd, had been your first thought. How awful, your next.

And then the relief of Babe and Mo drowns it all out, the small hug exchanged with Five's newest victor and a friendly elbow nudge in Nine's sole survivor's side. For now you can forget this past year. Forget the training, the missions, the doctors appointments. Forget the pain, the numbness that follows, the mourning for a person you knew for a day, perhaps two. Forget that you are adored, loathed, somewhere in-between. Forget that you're an outcast. Forget that you're all alone.

It is a pity you are to be joined by strangers, poking and prodding and avoiding your eyes like a deadly animal on spectacle. You expect the bravest ones will speak slowly, loudly, as if the higher the volume could cure you of the irreparable damage the Capitol had caused. For now you will savour these moments before the games, glad to be in the company of this country's finest.

"It's good to see you", the feeling of your voice syncs up with the way your hands move in front of you, slow but steady.

You smile as you speak, nodding towards Mo - you had practiced all week just for him. It's hard to forget the terrible things that have happened to you. You don't want to forget the scattered good, Mohamed on the train station platform months ago making an effort to communicate with you in a way no-one else had.

To Babe you raise a middle finger and poke out your tongue, failing to hide the grin that twitches between your ears. How lonely you have felt this past year. How much effort you had made to isolate yourself from everyone and everything. How wonderful it is - and how strange - to feel the complete opposite around the very few people on this earth who understand.

If you are to witness this every year for the rest of your life, you're glad you get to do it with them.

Isn't it strange, staring out of the carriage window with a frown, unable to remember what the train that took you to the capitol sounded like?

Around and around, around and around, it circles you like a shark. Taunting. Mocking. Crease in your forehead - why can't you remember the sound?

All you can remember is how it felt, an uneasy rumbling in your bones;

and the placebo bite of a shark, violent and abrupt, as the boy from One buries his axe into a girl's leg.

The screen speaks for her, pixels your eyes eat raw.

// But terrible and terrific come from the same place, right?

Juno Tallis' lips move two seconds ahead, eyes as dead as Fawn Grangers. For a moment you stop breathing - hanging on to every single word.

// I figured out a long time ago that being the terror is much more interesting than being one of the terrified.

And right then and there is the first time you swear, you swear, you might just have heard someone's voice amongst the ringing.

She catches you off guard.

You hadn't been watching the screen, preferring to stare out of the window of the train carriages and watch. The show begins and you think of the whales, how they swallow you whole in your dreams, how you can still hear things when you sleep. How you mourn noise every morning when you wake. How you bury it in your chest as you swallow down, hard and fast.

Cordelia Blake's little blonde head was facing away from you, but her lips curl around the end of something terrible as she turns to stare you down. Blows a kiss in your direction, in your dreams it will sound like a gunshot.

You spin and glance at the television screen but it's too late, your eyes claw at images - no words, no sound.

"What did she say?" you bark, pointing at the blonde girl yawning on-screen and then your mouth. "What did she say?!"

The Capitolites just stare at you, wide-eyed and blinking, curling in on themselves like you're the one with the axe thrown over your shoulder. Your words are loud, probably, scratchy and manic -- you can't tell, you don't care enough to soften yourself for their benefit. They took away your hearing. The least they can do is translate, fill in the gaping hole they dug up.

But they don't say a thing. Because they're scared, and all they see is a violent girl simmering with something in-between rage and fear, and they don't understand what's going on.

You do. You know a threat when you see one - even if you couldn't hear it.

And Cordelia Blake just made a threat.