A/N: and to the surprise of *absolutely no one* it has been uhh… like eight months since the last chaper. Yeah, that happened. Sorry, my first semester of college was an absolute clusterfuck and a half but thankfully it's over now and I should (hopefully) be able to get some good writing in now! Here's District 8:

Rian Pierce, 15

February 5th, Year 118 ADD

The stubble of dry grass prickles at her skin as she kneels in the clearing, copper curls tumbling over her shoulder and into her face as she leans forward to brush away debris from a patch of cracked, dusty soil with one pale palm. Isha-mea', the coyote moon, hangs supple and glowing overhead, providing all the light Rian needs as she carefully empties her satchel onto the ground before her. The quiet snick of matches striking breaks the heavy quiet in a way that almost seems sacreligious somehow, and she finds herself hardly daring to breathe as she lights each candle in practiced sequence, arranging them deftly at the points of the star she carves into the dirt with steady strokes of the small jack knife her father still hasn't noticed is missing from his top drawer.

She opens her grimoire with gentle care, spreading the journal's brittle pages with a soft touch. She holds the worn book open with one knee for reference as she etches a sigil into a dry curl of cedar bark about the size of her hand. She lays the sliver of wood in the center of the pentagram, crushes yarrow and sage and heather with sweet-smelling hands, and breathes in crisp air that practically thrums with life and energy and something else even less tangible.

As the herbs begin to burn, thin trails of smoke drift up into the darkness along with the teenager's hissing voice, barely more than a whisper, the words rhythmic and practiced but still feeling unwieldy when she holds them in her mouth:

"Spiritus noctis, invoco te ad lucem lunae.

Exaudi oration meam; confortare…"

She trails an index finger under the words spelled out phonetically in her journal in her own messy, sprawling script, copied hastily down in the dusty back corner of the library storeroom weeks ago, because the words are supposed to hold more power in this language and power is what she craves, a yawning hunger deep in her abdomen that aches for control, for dominance, for the kind of strength that would make her untouchable, make her stop feeling as horribly andagopat (breakable) as she always has.

When she reaches the end of the prayer, Rian licks her fingertips and pinches each candle wick out carefully in order, smears away the evidence of her ritual, packs her bag again meticulously and in silence. She dips the tips of two fingers in the pasty, tar-black ashes she's left on the ground and swipes them over her face like war paint. She pulls the rusty cinnamon curls back, away from her face, ties them back with quick and practiced ease into some semblance of a braid, taming her fiery lion's mane.

Rian is silent and near-invisible as she scampers back through town, clinging to alley walls and crouching low on overhanging roofs, wending her way down into the densest ward of her District, where cigarette smoke and grime hang low in the air like there's no clean air left for the smog to escape into. She ducks under an old, rusted wire fence and makes her way to the back door of a graffiti-plastered old factory warehouse. Rian raises a fist, bounces twice on her toes in an effort to push away the nervous energy, and knocks firmly in a pattern she no longer has to concentrate on remembering.

The man who opens the door is at least three times the size of the fifteen year old, gruff, tattooed, and angry-looking, but he breaks into an alcohol-scented, chipped-tooth grin at the sight of the redhead.

"Ay, there she is! Was beginning to think you'd chicken out tonight, kid."

Rian's lips curl into a snarl as she flips him the bird, striding past the man even as he chuckles at her attitude.

A wall of noise assaults the teen as soon as she steps past the bouncer and into the cavernous warehouse, packed tight with District Eight's dirtiest and least law-abiding citizens, cheering and drinking and shouting themselves hoarse. At the epicenter of the mass of sweaty bodies and the stench of alcohol is what she's come for: The Ring.

A circle of rope has been erected between the factory's original concrete support pillars and within it stand three figures. Two boys maybe a few years older than Rian herself are fighting brutally, a tangle of wrapped fists and bruised flesh and the rhythmic smack of skin on skin, a makeshift referee hovering just outside of the reach of their blows as they brutalize each other. She crouches at the side of the ring and watches the fight as she begins to wrap her own knuckles, determination surging through her veins as she prepares to face whichever contender comes out on top. This has been her nightlife for months now, nothing to channel her impulsive rage quite like the no-holds-barred, all-out brawls this particular venue has cornered the market on. And, if she's being honest (she almost never is), the winnings she makes from the tournaments' betting pools doesn't hurt either.

When the boys have finally finished beating each other into pulp, they are dragged off of each other and out of the ring. Knowing her cue, Rian ducks under the rope, strips off her jacket, and turns to face her opponent: bulky and muscular, Rian's superior in both age and size, but she's not nervous. She doesn't really get nervous anymore; she's getting ever better at swallowing back her emotions before she even knows they're coming.

The sharp clang of the referee's bell echoes in Rian's skull and like a Pavlovian dog on command she launches herself at her competitor, all fists and knees and teeth as they collide. What the boy has in strength, she neutralizes with speed and sheer aggression, something primal and bestial taking over, soothing the burning rage in her chest like a balm even as on the outside her fair, freckled skin begins to darken with the shadows of bruises she will carry into the next week.

When the boy is half-conscious on the concrete floor beneath her and Rian finally stops seeing red, panting heavily with exertion as she shakes out her hands and spits a glob of bloody saliva to the ground, dizzy with the deafening buzz of the crowd around her, there's a moment where her heart almost stops in her chest. A moment where she looks at the broken young man on the floor and sees nothing but Nova's blue-tinged pallor and glassy stare. Bile rises in her throat but she pushes it away with a hard swallow and eyes squeezed shut, shaking her head in a rough jerk.

Because this is nothing like that. This isn't senseless violence, it's atonement. This is how she creates the insurance policy she'll need the next time the rug is pulled out from beneath her feet; this is how she creates a semblance of security. And in any case, the people she fights have volunteered for it; there's nothing wrong with what she's doing. Even if there were, she's not sure she'd care. "Right" and "wrong" feel less like concepts and more like words every day.

A/N: Alright, there you have it. I'm not completely in love with how this one came out, but at some point it's better to have something I'm not fully sold on than nothing at all (that point was probably like multiple months ago, but I digress). Many thanks to Marie464 for Rian, and I'll see you all ASAP with District Nine!