Antidote

Everyday is the same. It fades, from black to grey, before drowning in darkness again. Like cloth pressed into a dark dye, the type they have in District Eight. I saw it on my tour, which seems so long ago.

Useless. Worthless. I have never amounted to anything but a mistake.

The Capitol credited me with two of the most gruesome kills seen in the Hunger Games five years ago. But they were wrong. I'm not brutal. I'm nothing.

Perhaps it is a fluke, the way they both have the same dark, long hair and piercing, blue eyes. The same tone of skin and striking features. The way she has spoken to me is so different than that of Carina, and yet…I can't help but feel drawn to her. Brutal. Dark. Powerful. She is the flame, and I am the moth, so entranced. Even with the way her hands cut through their guts, even with the way her teeth ripped at his neck…

The tour was four years ago, but it feels as though it were yesterday. She was dressed in a white and green gown, resemblant of sea-foam. So suited for Four, and on her it was more beautiful than beauty itself. Contrasting so greatly with her dark features…why was I so drawn to her again?

Her name is Zoe.

I had never imagined feeling so…filled. Ever since my victory I've been so empty, nothing more than a husk, waiting for death. The yellow tinging my skin, coursing through my veins. Powdered lungs and a silver-coated black heart…nothing more, nothing less. I was empty. I was a void of destruction, wallowing in despair.

And then I found my angel.

You're infatuated, Sungyeol. You really want to stoop so low as this?

I don't understand why she acts the way she does, walking on air around me and making excuses to leave the room when I enter. I only admire her from afar. I know better than to touch the beauty of her…to feel the curve of her unblemished skin or brush my fingers through her long, dark hair. No, we could never exist in reality. But to dream…well, it's been forever since I've had one. Now, I feel I could live there once more. Away from reality. Away from her hatred, and my district's hatred, and the Capitol's hatred.

I could never be anything that they wanted.

If I was asked only two years prior if I would feel emotion again, I would never have answered yes. I was detached. But my angel appeared…and I am drawn back to the light.

A dark light.

I will be with her even if it means getting burned.

The fall is such a fear. I've been a pawn of the Capitol for so long that I never noticed that which was right in front of me. I've been waiting to die for so long...and yet I'm scared. Why? Why is this?

The needle slips from my hand, crashing on the floor with a tiny sound, morphling oozing from the sides of the broken glass, forming as small pool on the floor. I hide my head in my hands. I don't know how I got here any more. I feel myself shaking, body wracked with dry heaves, gasps for air, but I can find nothing. There is nothing left for me in this useless high. There is nothing left for me in real life...

Or is there? What if there is something to live for? What if there is her?

I sit in silence near the back of the viewing room with the other victors, my head facing downward and my hands shaking. I've failed again. Four years, and I've failed. And I will continue to fail.

I am useless in comparison to the others.

I can see her standing, just a short ways in front of me, with her hair pulled back, a tear running from her eye as her second tribute falls.

Without a thought to process, my body moves from the seat, forward toward her. I snake my hands around her waist and entwine them.

And she pulls me off, pushes me away without a second thought.

But I don't mind. She is the antidote to my poison. And I will love her even if it is unrequited.

"What are you doing, Sungyeol?" He asks me. "What are you doing?"

"I'm finding my purpose."

"You're a fucked up, worthless creature. A hopeless love is a fate worse than death."

"But it isn't hopeless. I need her, and she needs me. I am the poison and she is the antidote."

This is part two of the Poisonverse, centric to my take on the male morphling from District 6. If anyone is reading this, I would suggest that you read Poison first, but perhaps in can stand alone. Anyway. Until the next.

-Junhong