Hey everyone, Paradigm here with a brand-new chapter for Declaration of Death, Chapter #7: Conspirations of Sorrow. I hope this chapter finds you well, for I am much better spirits. It has been quite a while, I am aware, about two months just about. Life has really gotten busy, and I didn't really find the desire to write a lot, but I've slowly come back to it. I am here with another set of intros, and today we get to meet the wondrous Philip Woodacre (D10M from TheRaichuinRavenclaw), Azalea Oleander (D11F from Reign of Winter), Velimir Novotny (D5M from symphorophilia), and Jasione Byun (D3F from Firedawn'd). Like I stated last chapter, I knew this group of tributes you would be meeting today are quite special, and each pov honestly feels like it'd belong in my hall of fame, for this is some of most fun I've had writing a collection of tributes in my life, I'll admit. It's another stacked group, with a lot of sorrow abound, so I really hope the wait was worth it. Please enjoy, Chapter #7: Conspirators of Sorrow.

"Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad," ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Philip Woodacre: District 10 Male P.O.V (18)

The area has exactly what Philip Woodacre is looking for, the subdued peace and quiet. The downside, as he glances down at the withering tombstones and the ilk moss that grows from the oak trees above his head… the solace is found in a graveyard. It feels fitting to him, in the moments where he has only his thoughts to himself, and the social chatter of his parents and his family has blended away into a subdued thaw around his body. It traps him and keeps him close to the wall, where he can mutter apologies into the seams of the wood, where there will be voices who do not hear what he says.

Philip has to believe that the voices that he speaks to hear him, or otherwise he is unsure of what he will do when coming to the reality that they're gone. They're gone, and they won't come back, and it causes him to become breathless like all those days ago when-

A few tears trickle down the boy's cheek, he doing nothing to wipe them away with his hand. A low moo of a nearby pasturing cow with the rest of its herd can be distinctly picked up when the wind is not blowing, but the domesticity and the reminder of home does nothing for him any longer. It had been different out in the wild, where his parents tell him that things would be safe and their family would be okay, and-

"Except we came back," Philip thinks to himself with gritted teeth, grinding them together so hard that his jaw pops. "We came back, and even then we weren't safe. If we never ventured out so far then maybe…" It is futile to go down the warpath again, for Philip cannot stop reminiscing about the past and the what ifs when he lays awake at night, looking about the ceiling of his bedroom.

There are faces in the wall, but they do not scare him any longer like they used to. His best friend – "Well," Philip cracks in dryly, a light cough slipping in with the whistling air of the thought, "Used to be friend…" Averett had understood what that meant. The curving of the walls to formulate eyes, how the light that streamed through the blinds fell in oblong shapes to represent arms on the far side of the door.

Guilt.

The word Philip is thinking of is guilt.

The word sits at the forefront of his skull, building pressure like a headache that could threaten to cause Philip to collapse to his knees. He wouldn't do that, however, for he wore the wrong pair of pants to the cemetery. He's always forgetting something like that now. At first it had been not kissing his mom, Ursula, when he'd leave for school. It morphs into not thanking her or his father for the meals they've prepared – the Woodacre patriarchs have never cooked a homemade meal in their life, they've only stolen the scraps of others that have fallen to the wayside off of the table of their betters – which results in reprimanding.

"Be a Woodacre, Philip! We didn't raise a barn animal!" There's a bunch of fingers prodding in his chest, crocodile tears shared all around since Philip accidentally left the toilet seat up one evening during a midnight bathroom break. A snicker is passed around the table, as it looks like Philip cannot control his regularities anymore, but even under the cajoling laughter at his expense, Philip doesn't crack a smile.

He seldom even gives them a chuckle.

Philip Woodacre rushes to the bathroom in the middle of the night to rub the circles out of his eyes. To get those damned faces out of the wall, so visible it looks like a physical body is going to actually burst through if he doesn't turn the table light on in a flash.

Philip cannot keep watching the man die.

If he sees it just one more time-

"You know it's not just going to go away on its own…" Philip grumbles to himself, picking at a scab forming over his knuckles on his left hand. "You did it," he hisses, and the wind picks up as if it were breathing along with him in agreement, "You had the knife in your hand and you… argh!" Philip cries out, thrusting his arms forward in a stabbing motion, before vaulting himself too far and stumbling on the gravestone he's placated himself in front of.

He collapses onto the ground, hitting his knee against the side of the tombstone. The pain only makes him hiss, as he clutches his knee, lifting up the pant leg to see that he simply scraped atop the skin without actually doing any damage. It's a relief, he supposes, getting his mind off of the corpse that he had dropped off at his feet. If the pants were to be ruined… not only would the maid want to hang him up by his pretty little neck, but the wrath he'd also experience on the date-

It's Reaping Day, and Philip Woodacre has to look the part in the pens of corralled teenagers. A loyalist who stands tall among the other children, teenagers who have become orphans for their parents are dead in the ground as they supported a stupid cause. His suit must be ironed and crisp, his muscles the largest of any boy his age, the paragon for what every District 10, Capitol-loving citizen is to emulate.

All Philip sees is a fake.

He gets to his feet, dusting off his knees, the pants untattered, luckily. Philip takes a hand through his dirty blonde locks, brushing a loose strand behind his ears. He's stayed long enough, vanishing from the house without a trace, and Ursula Woodacre does not like one freckle or pillow out of place, let alone another living and breathing human being.

"Machine," Philip cuts in, and then aloud, "Mother needs to account for all of her living, breathing, machines."

He reaches out to press a hand on the tombstone, eyes slowly closing shut, the picture of the corpse with rage in their eyes returning to the forefront of his mind, knocking away the guilt-

"There you are! Dammit, Philip, you've got to stop doing this!" comes a voice from Philip's right, and the boy opens his eyes as quick as he can. He immediately turns his outstretched hand, which had been resting gently on one of the corners of the gravestone, into a fist.

Philip looks over past the other sea of tombstones – dead rebels, dead patriots, dead children, dead wives, dead men, dead doctors, dead artists, dead villains… so much death, and Philip feels the deadest inside out of all of the corpses around him – to see his brother, Marshall, at the head of the cemetery. His brother pokes his head through the bars of the iron wrung gate, a goofy expression on his face, not befitting his age, as Marshall had just turned twenty-one a few days ago.

"How'd you know I'd be here?" Philip asks, but the first half of the question stumbles out into a stutter, he making a face at the disruption. Another good word, a word he'd use to describe his state as of late… disrupted. In school, with the right angle of his tilted jaw, and a crooked smile, there were plenty of girls – and a few guys that Philip lightly tells that he is not interested, only for Marshall to then scream it at the guys who didn't get the hint – falling over for him. His acts of bravado during the war – Philip would hardly call himself a veteran of any kind, for he never enlists – only raise the ante on people wanting to be in his pants, but it only causes him to blush whilst simultaneously throwing up in the school's bathrooms during transition breaks between his classes. That easy natured aspect to him replaces itself with a stutter and awkward facial expressions.

Marshall lops his head to the side, green eyes moving serpentine over the sight in front of him. "Philip, every time you disappear, you're here," he nods. "Right… there," he punctuates that with a pop of his mouth, Philip shuddering at the way the words curl around his throat. Accusatory, as if he's sinning. A wrongdoing, being in a graveyard.

"I like the peace and the quiet."

"You like the dead, Philip," Marshall retorts, shoving his hands into his pockets. He is not dressed like Philip is, which has the boy scoff to himself. He has to show up for reaping day, the only one in his family by law who is required to go. His older brothers are out of reaping age. Marshall shakes his head, looking up to the sky for a brief pause, before flickering back at Philip's morose expression. "Particularly them," he adds.

It is not just a single tombstone that Philip stands in front of, though his fist has relaxed into the open palm once more. It is a nestle of four, an entire family wiped out.

A bright and sunny day with clouds in the sky. A picnic with smoked ham and a jar of pickles for a family of four to share. An exploding car bomb down the street. Chaos, gunfire, people… all the dead people in the street. A knife, Philip is given a knife and then he-

"You need to get over it, Philip," Marshall says.

The younger boy is jutted out of the vision, the tears continuing to stream down his face. "I can't just get over it, Marshall!" he yells at his brother, turning away from the grave. His brother's face is unwavering. Silent. Cold. What a Woodacre represents… not a bleeding heart who hears the screams of the damned rising from the floorboards of his bedroom.

"We cannot have another Colt in our family!" Marshall snarls, taking one brisk step in Philip's direction, a wave of warm rage swamping over the indifference that had been there just moments prior. "You have to think beyond yourself, Philip! Mom and Dad have to watch Colt lose his shit any time a shadow passes in front of his bedroom window all because he was too much of a coward to-"

"Don't," Philip hisses, locking his jaw. There's a pause, as Philip's anger bubbles to the surface, he locking his eyes with his brother when Marshall stops in the middle of his rant. "Do not say he was a coward. That day was a complete shitshow and you know it."

"If you had just used the gun like Dad told you to, perhaps you wouldn't be so eaten up about all of this, then," Marshall says, but it is no of comfort. It is does not do Philip any favors to watch the man fall to the ground with a freshly bleeding bullet hole in the middle of his skull than with the blade lodged in his windpipe, spurts of vermillion gushing out like a geyser into Philip's hair. Philip drops the eye contact, hands trembling as he reaches out to grip the tombstone. "You're lucky I haven't told Mom about these visits." Still no eye contact. "If they knew…" the threat hangs in the air, malice seizing Philip's heart. "If they knew that their loyalist son ended up being brainwashed into rebel trash…"

"You're the one who's brainwashed!" Philip screams at him, thrusting the finger over in his brother's direction, but the motion is aimless through the blurring of tears that muddle his vision. The moss of the trees blends into one homogenous blanket of snow that covers all living creatures, except it is now a wave of ash from the volcanism of Philip's actions.

Marshall does not react to his brother's statement, he having already turned around and walking away from the graveyard, back to home, back to the Woodacre estate that Philip would rather watch burn down to the ground. It'd get rid of the faces in the wall, at the very least.

"You better be home in ten," Marshall calls out, as he starts to slip out of sight. "Dad wants a family photo of everyone on your last reaping," Philip can tell his brother has stopped walking, for his voice steadies at a constant volume. "Do not be late, and you better show up."

Philip hears the crunching of dead leaves beneath his brother's shoes, bulking up his tongue inside his mouth against his right cheek. The skin there has been bitten away time and time again, acting as a way to get the boy to stop screaming out, so the family can finally have some rest and stop haunting him.

He lets the curdled scream go uninhibited, Philip Woodacre collapsing to his knees underneath the guilt of the bright sky and the moss blowing above his head. Reaping bells toll, and his sins have yet to gone unpunished.

Azalea Oleander: District 11 Female P.O.V (18)

Warm sunlight spills through the blinds, falling down onto Azalea Oleander's face. She groans, rubbing her eyes and moving a hand to cover her sight from the disrupting glow, shifting slightly out of her comfortable position on the bed. It is a feather bed by the way it hardly seems to squeak as she shifts, and the lumping mass next to her shifts as well. A lump of heat and skin and organs through teeth, Azalea tilting her lips down in a frown as she takes stock of the current situation in front of her. Another night with shots of whiskey and a clamor for the nearest toilet. Another sleazy man. Another-

"Good morning, Tulip," says the lump, which moves again, lifting the sheet off of their face. Azalea sits back some, resting her head against the pillow. He's… young. Much younger than she remembers when she spies him from across the bar, and perhaps way too young to even drink, but somehow, they've landed here, and no one winds up in Azalea Oleander's bed without a nursing shot of tequila and a lemon to chase it, and a girl to pursue those sour moments in between.

Azalea scoffs, rolling her eyes and sitting upright so the sheets hang off of her body, which as expected when she takes stock of herself, she's nude. "It's Azalea," she corrects him, slinking her way across the floor to her clothes that are placed in the middle of the room on a chair sitting up against the closed door. It's her ritual, whenever someone comes to check on her and see how she's doing… a chair means a client, and a client usually means… "But thank you for not calling me one of your other preferred words," she says, without the hint of a smile.

A client usually means needing to wash the stink of rot and carrion from the sheets.

Vengeance. Righteousness extruded at the wrong price, a price Azalea has yet to truly figure out the costs of.

"Well," and she hasn't looked at the guy, who must be a Peacekeeper recruit for his voice is too lofty for that of the Earthen and downtrodden District Eleven citizens that Azalea has spent her entire life around. He's from the Capitol, perhaps, to be sent on the Great Gray Way – it's what is dubbed as the Peacekeeper path to Eleven, to don a suit of white armor and leave only but ash in the wake of their movements – and he's, depending on who's asking, unluckily fallen into the bed of an Oleander. At the tone of his voice, Azalea pictures it, even with her back turned, that he's grinning, a lopsided shit-eating one at the corner of his mouth that only hints at him having teeth. Teeth she feels on- "It's still early in the morning, Tulip."

Azalea grits her teeth together, feeling the grinding in the back of her neck, muscles spasming from the pressure. If the boy is as insufferable in the morning of what is supposed to be a spending evening, then how had their excursion been when the crickets chirped?

"Let me make you some tea," she says, as Azalea sticks her left leg through the pants that are just not buttoning for some reason this morning. She supposes there's shame in the fact that this has turned into routine, to find some stranger in her bed, and to shuffle to the corner of her room with the overturned chair to slip into pants that should fit just right. Azalea supposes there's something else in the room too, a higher sense of power when she has to strip the sheets since the vermillion stains in them cannot be allowed to linger. "I imagine you're probably pretty thirsty."

"That'd be nice," and Azalea looks back at the man now, waiting for the magic word. None of them ever say it. Please is as forbidden to them as the word 'stop,' or the phrase, 'Don't do this…' when they take and take, and take and take, and take-

"Sure thing," she grins, and the man chuckles.

Azalea leeches off into the next room, hands going for the kettle and the gas stove that'll bring the conversation out of business and into informality. She mouths the word 'please' to herself as she fills the kettle with water and grabs a few cherries sitting in a porcelain bowl at the edge of the kitchen counter that runs from the door to her apartment to the bedroom. It is one long and continuous piece of her furniture, and Azalea considers it her history.

"What's this?" the stranger asks, from last night, as he picks up a Peacekeeper glove just like what is on the man's hand now, tossing it back and forth between a leather grip with no semblance of sanctity and pause.

"Mementos," Azalea whispers. "Remembrances," she wraps her arms around her waist, unable to look at the new Peacekeeper while the memories of the gloves come back to her. "Sins…" Azalea's voice is hardly above a peep, and the man does not hear her. His back is kept to her, and he's studying the other Peacekeeper tools left there. A pocket watch. The glove. A shoelace from a Peacekeeper's running shoes. A love letter.

The love letter hurts the most.

Azalea hears the Peacekeeper back in the bedroom getting dressed as well, and as she expects, if she were to go back in there and check on him, there'd be no way in hell he'd be making his side of the bed. That is for her to do, according to those she brings back, as the cake pays well, and the other stipulations do not seem to stop any time soon, that women like her, like Dew… they're good for one thing only.

"Ravishing," the man's voice is over her ear, Azalea's skin bristling at the close contact, at the callousness of his hands on her shoulders and her elbow. "You are utterly ravishing."

"And what of my personality?" is the question Azalea asks, she tilting her head back to look at the man so he can take stock of what he'll do. Of whom he'll be with for the evening, and for perhaps the last evening the man will ever experience.

"Who needs a personality when you like you do?"

Azalea grips the cherries in her hand and crushes the fruit in her grip. The juice spills down and between her fingers, dark skin bleeding with viscosity as the juice drips onto the counter. Her parents would-

"It doesn't matter what they'd want," Azalea snaps at her voice in her head. "They aren't here to help me now, and I don't care if they don't like my methods. I am just doing their work differently."

Her parents tell her that nothing happens in anyone's life without asking, without saying that magic word of 'please.' Azalea has yet to meet another person who has. It's all about the taking, the taking and the stealing, the taking and stealing and the ravishing. Who cares who is damaged in the aftermath as long as the chaseable moment had been a perfect crystalline memory forever stuck in time?

The rest of the cherries, the outer skin, has crumbled away, Azalea shaking that off of her hand, dipping the pits of the cherries into the cup of tea. She isn't thirsty, but on mornings like these, she never is.

Light padding of feet, feet who are barefoot on the floor when they should likely be covered, for Azalea is unsure exactly what viscera and diseases are on the tile at any given moment, causes her ears to perk at the sense of movement behind her.

Azalea grabs her rolling pin, which while not suitable for grinding in most situations, it is the tool closest to her. She smashes the cherry pits into the mug, having grabbed around seven or eight of them, for the branding of tea she wishes to get is always horrendous. The sweetness makes up for it in more ways than one nowadays, it seems.

"You're taking your sweet time with that tea, aren't you Tulip?" the Peacekeeper asks, and by the creaking of the wooden ceiling, he must have his arms pressed against them.

She cannot be bothered to correct him again, for if she's done it twice in the morning, who knows how many countless times he must've intentionally not used it last night. Azalea turns around, the kettle starting to sing, the scream a familiar friend to her ears, dark as sins, ravenous in its hunger.

"Just adding some jasmine to it for an extra hint of flavor," she says, at level, tipping the kettle towards the cup.

Azalea gets a look at the Peacekeeper standing in the doorway. He must be just about drinking age, for he wouldn't have been admitted into The Garden regardless of his career status. The Peacekeeper has a young face, but the overall demeanor of the man is slightly weathered around the eyes, and his hands are quite cracked. Pale skin, bright blue eyes that pierce through her.

Azalea has been looking at the faces of blue-eyed men for far too long, and those teal spheres of influence bring nothing but trouble. Nothing but pain, nothing but plague and gravestones and-

"I hope the tea isn't too bitter," Azalea says, as she hands it to him. He takes it from her, but there is no 'thank you' or even a semblance of gratitude. There'll never be a soft smile, for Azalea knows what he sees in her. A ravished woman.

"You want one for yourself?" he asks, though the tone in his voice is not concerned at all.

Calvin had been concerned. It is what Azalea misses the most about her father, where he brushes a lock of her hair out of her face, kissing her softly on the earlobes and down the middle of the skull to assuage the nightmares that Azalea feels. Even in the end, when his face is damp from the sweat that pours down from skull to sternum, when the wrists go gaunt and Azalea can grip them with the same amount of force that they'll break, her father's concern still sticks out.

"What will you do without us?" Calvin Oleander asks, Azalea curled up right by him, head on his chest, for she must be this close to hear her. Anything farther away than that, and she'd need a hearing aid.

"I'll go on. I'd have to, won't I?" Azalea muses, but she cannot look at him.

"You know that your mother and I are just concerned for you, Azzie," Calvin says, but he's too weak to lift his hands and soften the hair atop her head.

Azalea lets the tears spill down her cheeks. "I know, Dad. I know."

Azalea does not let a single tear spill down her face as the watches the Peacekeeper down the tea in three quick gulps, and the belch he lets out only makes the greed at watching him drop the saucer only a minute later all the better.

It's almost a shame to her, watching these men think they're so invincible wander in and think she's something to be tamed. Azalea Oleander is not a caged panther, she's the cage. There have been a few good apples here or there, and they get to go on their merry way and stay up late at night thinking of the girl at The Garden who has changed their life for the better.

Those apples must have been at the bottom of the barrel, for Azalea keeps on looking.

She looks, but she does not find.

"What- what did you do?" the Peacekeeper asks, his voice slurring, speech jumbled together.

Azalea tilts her head to the side, the fake joy all but gone, and what has been left behind in its place is vacuous curiosity. A fake concern, for as far as she's the one being asked, they did it to themselves. "What? The jasmine too strong for you?"

"You-" the man points at her, accusatory, but Azalea will own up to it once he's slumped between the barrier of the kitchen and the bedroom. "You did something to this drink, you bitch!"

"Well," Azalea scoffs, tilting her head back. "I'd say that was highly uncalled for, sweetheart." She takes a step towards him, slow, for she has time to make sure her point is known. It's about five minutes or so from the initial ingestion of the cyanide-influenced tea for their hearts to stop, and Azalea Oleander is a master on filling up time. The man takes a step back, and it causes him to trip over himself. As he gets to his feet, he stumbles once more onto his knees. Azalea stands above the man, scowling down at him. "Simeone Leons," she says. It's a name, and one Azalea will not forget.

"Wh- what?" the Peacekeeper sputters, and the man's pale face, and those shining blue eyes are starting to fill with the beauty that is panic… the same panic that his last victim, ever, felt when he-

"Simeon Leons," Azalea repeats. "The last woman you…" she kneels down, getting in his space, for he won't be able to push her off of him even if he tries. "Ravished," Azalea says, letting her lips connect to his ear, so he can feel his blood turn to ice instead of the feeling of wind on the back of your neck.

As she stands upright, the Peacekeeper's confused and terrified stare turns into that of outrage. "You are a monster."

"I'm not the one who left a girl to bleed out behind a dumpster because she refused to become your next tulip to water," Azalea says, and she presses a hand against the side of his face. "She'll continue to help grow many gardens, while you become the weeds that are hacked away," she spits out.

"You'll burn in hell," the Peacekeeper says, but even then, the speech there is completely lost to the slowness of it, as he starts to sway back and forth.

It won't be long now.

"Perhaps," Azalea nods. Her parents would have told her the same thing, that she'll burn because she's broken all the laws of nature with this vengeance streak. "But I know for certain, you're going to get there first," and, as she wants a sweetness of her own, "And you'll get there way before me."

Azalea gives the man a hard shove in the chest, he crying out with a pained croak that is harshly cut off by the bringing of his heart attack. The Peacekeeper falls back onto the ground, hands clutching at his chest to stop the pain that'll never stop.

She watches, she watches as he writhes and dies, and she holds his hand when he passes.

There's a series of notches in the wall by the bowl of cherries, which on her way to the market, after the Reaping, she'll have refilled. Azalea finds a pencil on her nightstand, and notches her next dead Peacekeeper, a sleaze off the streets that no one will miss.

She finishes her thirtieth notch.

Azalea steams up another kettle of tea.

Velimir Novotny: District 5 Male P.O.V (18)

The heart that beats in Velimir Novotny's chest is surrounded by a veil of chains, hanging off of the arteries and clinking together when they make impact with one another. The organ has started to erode into a pallor piece of flesh that can be caught between teeth and bit down as if it were a squeaky toy between a rottweiler's bite. His soul that surrounds the heart is of an anemic gray, pulsating every so often with another shred of back pain, and flaring a dark, vicious blue when the wailing rises from the corner bedroom every so often as expected. The misty shroud warms up to an ochre amber at the sight of the wailing creature, and one of the chains will unlock.

The days when he had been a glass half full person were decent, genuinely good days. All Velimir sees now are broken glasses that cannot hold a droplet of wine in them. No sustenance, no power of life fluctuating in a basin.

He sleeps in his work uniform again for the third time in a row, despite being told that he has the day off.

The foreman lays his hand on Velimir's shoulder, sturdy, and firm with creaking joints to accompany the movement. A bristling mustache that barely hides the man's mouth that has been creased together in a firm line. The sorrow in his eyes.

"Spend this time to be with your family, son," the man tells him, but the tone makes it sound like it is a firing, and Velimir does not want to collapse to his knees. He can't beg anymore, for he isn't like- "You just have to get through Monday morning, and you'll be set."

"Will I?" comes Velimir's response, almost immediately off the cuff, he tilting his head to the side, his voice percolating with the same emptiness that has filled the depths of his soul.

It brings comfort to him in a way, a pathetic sort of way that his physical thoughts cannot. They're all yelling at him at how worthless he is, yet the taffy colored, off-yellow vest of a power plant worker that saps an ounce of strength out of him a minute is what means he's… stable. Somewhat stable at least, for it gives him the ability to put food on the table.

Not for him, however.

It's for Vasilisa. It's all for Vasilisa.

It could've been for Mikhail too, but-

"No," Velimir's voice in his head is louder than the one he'd ever used aloud to another human being. Velimir Novotny, outwardly, is calm and softspoken, sweet and tender, and on the inside, the colossal screw-up, the words banded on the inner lining of his eyelids whenever he sleeps. "You can't think about that today. He cannot be your priority, you have other things to tend to, Mir." He's always thinking about Mikhail. Mikhail the blameless, Mikhail the fracturing stone.

Velimir rubs more dredges of sleep out of his eyes, his bare feet prickling at the goosing feeling of the chilled tile underneath his worn-out soles, skin that feels tarred over each other, layer after layer like a pair of pants. Opening the fridge in the tiny set kitchen of whichever friend has let him crash for the weekend.

Emrys keeps the fridge as stocked as they can, now feeding for three people than just the one, which has Velimir incapable of expressing his gratitude, for while he helps, he needs the money, and Emrys overflows in compassion and sympathy.

He's exhausted of all the compassion.

Velimir wants someone to grip him by the sides of the face and lift him off of the ground to scream in his face. You're a disgrace. You have let your children stay in areas that'd be unhealthy for him. Screw up. That's what you are. Dogs have a better purpose than you, for at least they heel.

He pours the tiniest bit of milk left in the bottle – a store visit will be in order after the Reaping is over, the fact not lost on Velimir, it sitting atop his head like a crapping bird that'll ruin his day any moment now – into a cup, cradling that in his hands.

A precocious whine breaks the air in the other room off of the living room, for Emrys does not have much space in his apartment besides the living room, the kitchen, and the main bedroom where Vasilisa's crib is. Velimir doesn't expect there to be room for two cribs, but-

"I got you something to drink, sweetheart!" he says, as he peeks his head into the bedroom. He takes sight of Vasilisa, his – "She's my daughter," Velimir says to someone once, shouldering the toddler on his shoulders, despite the judging stares that people gave him for they looked nothing alike, "She's my daughter, and I am her father." – daughter in her crib, face beginning to turn a turnip sort of color from exhaustion and thirst. He'll scourge up an apple to cut for her, for he knows Cassian and Yelena will not be by to provide any more formula or other food.

It's been him from the get-go with her, and Velimir expects it'll continue to be him until the end of time, but it's what he'll do, for there is nothing else in this world he'd rather do. He owes it to Mikhail, so young, so gentle, so-

"Drink up, baby girl," he soothes her, running a hand atop her head, and Vasilisa's face changes instantly the moment Velimir's crests over the wooden railings of the crib. He tilts the cup gently to her mouth, letting her take a few sips. "That's it," Velimir encourages her, Vasilisa giggling back, a bit of milk dribbling down her chin.

He wipes at her mouth with the back of her hand, reaching forward to give her another sip of the drink when there's a knock on the door.

Velimir frowns, the rim just barely pressing against Vasilisa's lips, the milk inching forward to her skin like an onrushing tide trying to reach the shore. He sets the cup down on the small bedside table next to Emrys's tidy bed.

"Up we go," he says in the sweetest voice possible, while picking Vasilisa up.

It is a short walk from the crib to the front door, which cannot be barged into for there are two locks, Emrys installing the second one after Velimir and Vasilisa move in.

"Isn't there supposed to be a third?" Emrys asks Velimir, as the trio is standing in the doorway, the pitter-pat of the rain on the tin roof drowning out the roaring heartbeat in Velimir's ears.

"A third?" he asks, confused, rain dripping off of his face and soaking his already dark hair to blend in with the shadows on the wall. Velimir's chin buckles, his lower lip quivering, but he doesn't crumble to his knees any longer. "Emrys, you know I don't have Mikhail anymore. You know-"

"No," Velimir says, jutting him out of the memory, but he's not saying it to the memory. His stare burns through the skull of Yelena Zankovic, she standing in the doorway out of the beating sun. He looks at her, and he is still happy to note on some invisible tally board about how she looks so much worse than he does. He's always stuck his nose out of the white powder and the tableaux and the shots of gin – okay, there were a few times when it'd snow, but still – but for Yelena, it had been onset since birth.

"My mom began injecting me with her concoctions as early as nine months," Yelena tells him on their first date, a cigarette between her teeth, and all Velimir tastes in their kiss is tobacco. Tobacco and misery in greenlight splashes on her gums, riding his tongue, swallowing the anger and the sorrow like a droplet of acid.

"Oh, please, Mir," Yelena's voice is as haughty as ever, and she starts to cough, as if she's hacking up a lung. Velimir recoils from her, shielding Vasilisa away from her mother. "You haven't even heard what I am going to ask."

"I know what you're going to ask," he says, kissing Vasilisa on the side of the head. "I do not have anything for you to take."

All the overthrown couch pillows and cushions. The cupboards that don't close correctly anymore since Yelena throws them open in a rage. She needs the next escape, the next high, the next low, and none of it can be found in Velimir's arms. Not after Mikhail, especially. She promises a woodcutter will install new shelves in the cabinets, but the promise is never upheld.

When he finds a sand dune of it in Mikhail's room, Velimir knows there's a problem. When some of it lands in one of Vasilisa's sippy cups during breakfast, he knows that there's no helping her. Yet he… he stays, until-

Yelena's scoff disrupts that train of thought, Velimir tensing up. Unhinged had been her favorite mood in the past, depending on how warm or cold their shared bedroom is, and if Cassian had slept over or not.

"That is not what I was going to ask you," Yelena scowls, bringing her hands together, which are trembling so hard it causes her entire frame to be wracked with movement. "Don't be stupid, Velimir. You needed me today, so I'm staying clean for you."

"Bullshit," Velimir spits out, acid in his voice, acid in his throat, pain flowing through his veins. The pain has not gone away since he's nine-years-old, when his mother. Rodika leaves him, and he'll never be able to find out if it is on purpose or not, for what parent would do that to their child? The court is out in session on whether or not his father, Miroslav Novotny means the things he says, the things he screams in the quieting hours of those summer nights without Rodika, but he had Velimir, and he wasn't enough. Velimir has never been enough. "You didn't do anything for me, and I needed you back then." He cannot help the voice crack that rises through his throat, tightening the yoke of chains around his heart.

"You have to go to the Reaping," Yelena says, rubbing at her nose, which is tinged red as if she had taken a blisteringly hot shower. She isn't clean, he can smell it on her, the glass cleaner that sticks to her skin and leaves splotches of gilded heroin white. "I was thinking that Cassian and I could take Vasilisa for the day, and when you get back, perhaps we can all-"

The woman is out of her mind. When Velimir spots her in one of his classes staring at the back of his head, as she didn't turn away from him when he'd look back at her, he figures she's the one, the one to put the pieces back together, except all she's learned how to do is take a sledgehammer to his puzzle.

She hadn't been there, not really, when Velimir discovers Mikhail, and the autopsy brings back a fractured skull. It's the first time she really hits him, with a punch to the gut, that causes Velimir to cough up blood on his hands that were outstretched in front of him on the floor of the hospital wing. There hadn't been any blood on Mikhail, which startles him frighteningly so to see it splatter all over him.

"You are delusional," Velimir says, taking a step towards her. Emrys's apartment is up a flight of stairs, and all it would take is him to push her off of it. It'd solve one problem, he anticipates, but he isn't a killer. He's a man of his word, a man of compassion and love, and desperation, and a need for validation and- "I'd rather trust a complete stranger to look at Vasilisa for the rest of her life before I ever, and I mean, ever, leave her in you or Cassian's care ever again."

"Well," Yelena is at a loss for words with this, simply capable of laughing with her head titled up to the sky. "What are you going to do with her instead?"

"Hire a sitter in the next hour," Velimir shifts his feet, placing Vasilisa in his arms versus up on his shoulder. "And if that doesn't work, I'll just…" he looks away from his ex-girlfriend's stare awkwardly, "Take her with me..." he whispers the last bit of it out.

It's a horrible, dreadful idea to do that, but he will not leave her by herself, and he certainly would not leave her with Yelena anymore.

"What kind of father doesn't let their child see their mother?" Yelena rasps, and when Velimir looks at her again, there are crocodile tears forming at the edges of her face. She's never been a wonderful actress.

"A good one." Velimir hardens down on his stance, already beginning to take a step back.

"As if you have any room to talk," Yelena bites back, snapping her teeth, gnashing them together with fury in her eyes. "Your mom went and got herself killed, and you said Miroslav-"

Velimir doesn't hesitate to simply slam the door in her face, locking both locks immediately once Yelena's face is out of view. He can feel the prickling of tears, genuine and real burning tears at the corners of his eyes, but he does not dare drop Vasilisa. Yelena is out there still, on the outside, on the porch, banging her fists on the door. She's screaming, but there isn't a single moment when she isn't nowadays.

Velimir also locks the door to Emrys's bedroom, hugging Vasilisa close to him, who due to the fervent change in his pace, and Yelena's outbursts, starts to cry, a wetness soaking against his chest while he holds her close.

"I know, baby, I know," he soothes, as he begins to rock her back and forth. "I know, I'm sorry," Velimir says. "One day, Vasilisa, I'll get you out of this. You and I will go to where riches are abundant, and there's so much joy," he says, as he looks her in the eyes, bouncing her up and down.

He lets the screams of his past haunt his back, while the screams of his present and future wail in front of him. For Velimir Novotny, this is his life. It is one he didn't ask for, but it is one he'll take up and work with.

The reaping draws near, but Velimir doesn't move. He'll stay here in this bubble until he's told to leave. He won't ever leave her behind.

It's what a good parent would do, and all Velimir Novotny wants to be, finally, is to be good.

Jasione Byun: District 3 Female P.O.V (18)

Pieces of the newly erected wooden post fall at Jasione Byun's feet, the switchblade in her hand hacking and slashing downwards, and left, and right while the rage that flows up from her shoulder blade and down to the tips of her fingers hooked into the beam. Each new chip that crashes makes Jasione grit her teeth tighter than before, to where her ears pop from the pressure change. Each one is a dissenter, someone who tells her that she's worthless and won't amount to anything. Each piece that hits her exposed ankles are those in the crowd that jeer for her end, the ones that wish to go her public hanging, and it saddens her just a little bit – it doesn't sadden her at all – that she has to let them down.

"Neck," Jasione breathes to herself, the switchblade entering the upper carotid artery of the imaginary's foe neck, and a subdued warmth passes over her upper arms and elbows when she retracts the blade. "Gut," her next strike dives into the middle of the wooden beam. "And knees…" she exhales, her voice trembling under the exertion of her workout. "And then, you're dead."

She thrusts herself back from the wooden post, as if she were kicking the mimicked corpse to the ground, where their head would collide with the solid Earth and do the bounce that resembles mortality. Jasione reaches for the white rag that is slung over the rusted pipe, it tattered and on its last limbs as it reached the normal life expectancy for a rag. She wipes the sweat away that pools in her sternum and down the ponytail she has tied in the back.

The tightening yoke of the hair style keeps her thoughts clearer as the blood in her cranium pools around her head. The low swinging light above her head casts her shadow longways across the ground, surrounded by other metal pipes that hiss with steam and bubble with life while the gurgles of District Three move on above ground.

Jasione sits on her haunches, feeling her heartbeat beneath her skin. She hasn't had a workout out like that in months, which is all her fault, for the last time someone in the system had seen her skills, she's given a label of Dangerous on her casefile which removes all sorts of privileges from her room, but it's not like there were that many privileges to be had when Jasione Byun has been declared an enemy of the state.

"It's better than being labeled a dead enemy of the state, I suppose," she quirks to herself, snapping the switchblade back into its hiding spot, tucking it into the front of her sweatpants. Her thoughts are dry and sardonic, which has become the familiar state of them for a long while, as Jasione is unsure what it means to be filled with precipitous happiness unlike any other.

She did, once.

Heavy note on the once.

There's a canteen of water underneath behind one of the bricks she moves out of the way, the hidden alcove kept away from the path underneath District Three's sewer system. In a wave of new building projects, District Three's mayor receives enough money to fill a service tunnel once Jasper Overheart and Vesuvia Vocanova's demises in the Hunger Games are replayed for profit… the dynamic duo that ended in a wreath of flames and cinders is a cash cow to the Capitol, and one of these new projects had been a redesign of Three's infrastructure.

She watched the old Three burn away, even before the firebombs started, or before the sun is blotted out by a gray haze that matches that of the mist and fog that shrouds her entire body. At home, when home had been filled with anything but a loving family, Three had been in shambles then, as well. The intelligent ones were seeing how District Three was a smoking iron about to let off an eruption of steam at any moment, taking to Five like shaken rats. She's surprised her mother didn't take the plunge, for Rishita Byun had never been a strong woman.

She stayed, though, she stayed with Emerson Byun even with the fists that made her arms look like bruised night skies. What does it say about Jasione that she stays now, even with the abuse that the Capitol has given her?

Jasione can hardly go anywhere without the whispers, or the iron cuff that keeps one hand tethered to the Peacekeeper escort that must go with her by record of the agreement drawn up between her, President Emrick Israel, and the mayor of Three. Many of the district citizens want to see her burn, which Jasione can appreciate, for she is sure the fire will highlight her complexion and the dance of madness in her eyes perfectly, but she has to prove to be a disappointment.

It'll only be a little while longer of a safe haven until the new wave of Peacekeepers discover that she's slipped away from house arrest, though it isn't her house anymore. The old one is gone, as it should be, with the copper stains that had been remnants of a bloody past, the rotting wood burned away as the Dark Days shrouded Three and all of Panem in a fine layer of soot.

Jasione doesn't cry when the other inmates tell her about the new attacks that reach her old neighborhood, as the tightening yoke wraps around Three like her father's grip on her mother.

He grips her so hard one night that Rishita's wrist breaks from the pain, and Jasione is pounding her father on the back, but Emerson Byun is a force of nature, as he claims, and the backhand that causes Jasione to crash to the ground hurts her mother more than it ever would her.

She takes the absolute most pleasure in slicing his jugular like he was a piece of meat, letting his skin fall forward like slices of ham that would be sat between loaves of bread. She doesn't deny the action when presented in front of a judge, though she rests the quelling outcry when she's charged with both her mother and her father's murder.

It is the only nugget of joy she's able to hold onto, that Emerson Byun is no more, but that all changes when she discovers-

"Veryn," Jasione exhales, and the wooden beam seems to shatter. The girl crouches down again, swallowing the bitter sob that rises in her throat. It is inescapable, this onrushing feel of guilt and pain and loss. Veryn Alenti, the girl whose hands and words and smile Jasione cannot ever forget.

She is the second nugget of joy, and this one only involves a few weekly instances of murder if they can help it, but at this point, it is Jasione versus the world, and she sees no other way to obstruct the past and build a better future except through pain.

It is taken from her by a club to the side of the head, and dead bodies all around her, where there are promises made by creatures in the shadows with voices that give no air of trust. She should've expected the bait and switch, even all that time ago, where she's locked back into irons and expected to feel the shame of what she's done.

She's done nothing wrong, and Jasione will die by that statement. Some of her methods may be brutal, perhaps, but it is not as if the Capitol and Panem as a whole can be the white, glistening standard of fairness and freedom and equality, or a lesser form of her own brutality. Veryn teaches her that, with her ethereal frame that had always been surrounded by a halo of dust above her head, that her rage is justified, and the sins she may ever commit do not pale in comparison to the good works that she creates.

Veryn Alenti even gets Jasione Byun to pray. Rishita Byun prayed, and, well-

Jasione stands upright, kicking the brick back into place with her foot at the sound of a creaking door. Shit. Her hands find the switchblade in her pocket instantly, pulling it out, gripping onto it for comfort. The metal grooves have gotten her out of a lot of jams, and as long as she holds the weapon in her hands, Jasione holds the power. She has never been powerless, even in the orange jumpsuits and even when she writes letters to Veryn that she'll never send, for they'll only end up in the dirt, as Veryn Alenti is dead, dead, dead, and Jasione knows she's never coming back.

The calm to her chaos, the jubilance to her melancholy, the stability to her fluctuations.

She tenses in midair, hands stilled, as she slowly opens the switchblade. Perhaps it is just another passing creak, but the thought is immediately disproven when the door to her hallway, her safe haven, is slammed open, and the evident sound of a cocked rifle hits her ears.

"You sure she's down here?" A Peacekeeper's voice but modulated. The death of Jasper Overheart led a second insurgence in the backwater areas of Three, for a split second, as a rebel dies, and in its wake, the Peacekeepers are no longer safe on patrols. It is not as if Jasione were to ever hunt any of them down as long as they stayed out of her way.

"That was her earring left on the stool outside." There's at least two, but Jasione is anticipating there must be three. She kicks herself mentally for leaving the earring outside, but it is not a calling card to scream where she is. It's a sign of safe passage for any others looking for sanctuary, those whose vengeances need to be quelled before they're turned into firestorms.

Jasione left her wildfire run untamed, which leaves her with a dead mother, a mother she must mourn, and prison mates that have to become her next family, until Veryn draws her into the Alenti's.

The sound of the Peacekeepers' shoes scuffle on the linoleum floor of the corridor, off to her left, and the way back would be past them. She can always run ahead, but Jasione has only hidden in this passageway once before, and past the fifth turn, she's blind.

"Always blind," a voice that isn't her own whispers in her ear. "You've always been so blind, Jasi. When will you learn to see?"

"Whenever you shut up," is her reply.

The beam of a Peacekeeper's searchlight falls on the pipes just past her elbow. She sucks in a deep breath, careful to not exhale it, switchblade on the ready and in her hand. The space is too small to fight in, lest she ends up with a cracked skull or a broken wrist. There's only way out, and that is to-

"There she is!" cries one Peacekeeper, almost too excited for the war criminal to be found in their scope.

"Get her!"

Run.

Jasione bolts away from the wooden post, pushing it out of the tie to the floor with all of her might. "Good luck!" she calls out at them, unable to help herself, the pole colliding with the soldier in the lead, but they simply brush it off.

"Get her from the other way!"

Her feet collide into the floor as she runs, Jasione ensuring to swing her arms. Proper form, proper form to run from the authorities, though it is not her first rodeo. It's been a long time, but despite that, she cannot stop the whoop of hollering that rises from her throat. It's like a crack of arthritis in her hands that spills free, and she even waves bye at the Peacekeepers as she flees.

She has to duck when a Peacekeeper takes fire at her – "If he even hits one of those pipes the wrong way…" she thinks to herself, swallowing the fear down into her belly – but he misses, even with the searchlight, the bullet hole marked deep into the brick.

As expected, Jasione makes the fifth turn, the switchblade still clean, which she expects will be bloodied quite shortly.

She takes the next left and collides with the wall.

Dead end. "No!" Jasione cries out, turning around to run straight ahead, but the opening is blocked off by the swinging of a Peacekeeper's baton to the gut.

The blow fells her instantly, Jasione groaning in pain as she crumbles to the linoleum floor. She tries aiming the switchblade for the Peacekeeper's ankle, as any distractor would be enough, but a booted foot slams down on her wrist, breaking her grip on the blade as it falls from her fingers.

She gets one look up at the Peacekeeper, their face shrouded by the visor they wear, but she can feel their contempt bearing into her soul. She can tell that they hate her, for anyone with the name 'Byun' is a threat to the idyllic peace.

"Please, Veryn," she pleads in her head, and she hates that a tear slips out through her veneer. "Don't let them kill me like they killed you," There is too much desperation in the thought, enough to fill a tub. "Don't let them win."

The Peacekeeper hits her square in the forehead with the butt of his rifle, and Jasione Byun's world goes dark.

Somewhere, everywhere all at once, the bell for the reaping in District Three tolls, and it looks like she must attend.

Did I cry many, many times while writing this chapter? Yes, the answer is yes. We have the second set of intros done, Chapter #7: Conspirators of Sorrow, done with the morning of the reapings. Showcased were the tributes: Philip Woodacre from D10 by TheRaichuinRavenclaw, Azalea Oleander from D11 by Reign of Winter, Velimir Novotny from D5 by symphorophilia, and Jasione Byun from D3 by Firedawn'd. I love each of these kids so much, and this chapter really feels like some of my best work in quite a time, so thank you guys for that.

The next set of intros is going to be Reaping Day, and it'll follow the same pattern as Liberty's: check-in, one tribute from the girl section being reaped, one from the boys, and a goodbye, plus a Capitol pov attached to the chapter as a reaping recap which I like to keep at the end. The four tributes you'll meet then are Sable Faru, Desdemona Farsiris, Smoke Hartisan, and Astra Enoshima, and I am so excited for you to meet them! The Capitol POV is from Cain, and there are plenty of things afoot there too!

I will try to get back to my wanting to post every ten days with chapters like these - at least a week, of course - and since I am currently out of college (I graduated this past December with my bachelors and am looking towards a Master's degree, simply undecided right now) I expect I should be able to keep up, for this cast and story deserves it. Thank you all so much for being patient, and I'd really appreciate your thoughts. See you soon with Chapter #8: Summoners of Sacrifice. Love you all! Have a good night! Bye!

~ Paradigm