day eight, part one: mechanical animals
We were neurophobic and perfect, the day that we lost our souls –
maybe we weren't so human, but if we cried, we would rust.
Seeing Ailith's face in the sky is surreal.
It's not especially upsetting – why would it be? Tati didn't spend enough time with Ailith to really know her, and all things considered, she'd had more of an opinion on Kellen than she did the girl from District Two. They may have been allies for the better part of two weeks, but two weeks isn't time enough to form meaningful connections, no matter the company a person keeps. Camaraderie, sure, rivalry, certainly – enemies? Perhaps.
But friendship in the Games is overrated.
Okay, correction – it's not like Tati wouldn't consider Patron a friend, in the same manner she's made friends with a lot of her clients, the ones who frequent parties at her warehouse and bump 'dust with her out at the abandoned railyard. There's a connection there, something solid that likes to show itself through banter and arguing and occasional snogging in the repudiation of the other's company, but it's not significant enough to break her. There's a few whose funerals she might attend, provided their funds are enough to even have one, but more who Tati wouldn't blink an eye at, much less shed a tear. Patron might be the former, but the rest of them?
The rest of them.
She and Ailith weren't… close. They were hardly even amicable, beyond morning greetings and the occasional nod of solidarity whenever Elysia started going off. Sure, they'd had a couple conversations – friendly enough, despite the awkwardness of trying to engage with a practical stranger – but it was all pretty relative when Tati thinks about how things ended. She never had a problem with Ailith, but she hadn't liked her either – they'd been allies of necessity, and nothing more.
And yet.
Ailith Echeverry cared enough about her to try and save her life. She'd acted in a way without rhyme or reason, sacrificing herself so that Tati could escape, and the reason why is still a mystery. Now that her cannon's fired, there will never be closure – not closure, not an answer, just a fucking slew of more fucking questions that Tati doesn't have the guts to confront.
Even at the end, she was trying to be a hero.
Fuckin' bleeding-heart rebels.
Tati's shoulders slump as she looks down, her hands still a mess from where they'd grabbed hold of the staircase on the way up, bits of rock and jagged edges leaving cuts along her palms. Always putting themselves in the line of fire and for what? It never works in their favor – all the bravery and brevity and sacrifice for the cause. They're so selfless, and it's not fucking worth it.
(Sorrow. Pain. Dying in the name of whatever she cared for most. Freedom, desperation, longing and need all rolled into one little package. That was Ailith, in a nutshell.)
(… she's the one that deserves to be here.)
(Not Kellen, not Elysia, not Patron. Not a fucked up, worthless junkie with a massive chip on her shoulder, whose bark has always stung more than her bite. Ailith may have been on the Capitol's shitlist, but she wasn't there for being Panem's scum, she was there because she was a martyr. A godsdamned, fucking martyr who threw herself to the fire for a pair of idiots she hardly even knew, left them to run while she was murdered, and Tati didn't have the guts to say a fucking thing, even when she heard the Twos screaming bloody murder from down in the basement.)
There's nothing you could've done, she tells herself, her eyes misty as she looks out over the hillside, quiet and calm under the vibrant sky. Survival requires selfishness. When it came down to it, it was her or you. You did nothing wrong by prioritizing your survival.
(… you did absolutely fucking nothing at all.)
The wood creaks at her side as Patron steps out onto the porch, taking up the space beside her with crossed legs and a steady back, his shoulders fixed in a square-ish set. Tati greets him with a sigh, saying nothing as he sits, close enough that their knees are practically bumping – any words she might have probably aren't worth voicing aloud.
"Good morning!" feels too brazen.
"How are you?" holds unfortunate connotations.
"Sleep well?" might as well be rhetorical, and if she cracked any jokes today, he'd probably beat her.
She can't even say that she wouldn't deserve it. All of her impudence… her lack of respect for those dead and gone, be it Ailith, Patron's District partner, or all the addicts that she'd damned back home, left to crawl through sewers of filth, debasing themselves for a taste of her products, just one little hit, Terranova, just one tiny bump, that's all I need, I promise, I can repay you.
It's painless for her to feign ignorance, but maybe that's why she does it. Eighteen years into life and she's still looking for the easy way out.
"I used to be like her," Tati murmurs, her sudden admission causing Patron's head to turn. Shifting her eyes to the side, she pressed her lips together, the chapped and cracked skin feeling too bare without its usual yellow coating, and far worse after the stain of her frustration was lain upon them by gnashing teeth. Still, she offers him a smile, and then a sigh as her gaze averts, returning to the world before him without their once-held stars.
"Ailith. She believed in something – not in us, but something else. Humanity. Spirit. Change, maybe? Fuck if I know. Always sort of thought that rebels were cracked." Tati wheezes a little laugh, pulling her arms into her lap. "I lost my hope a long time ago. Six'll do that to you – entire place is a fucking cesspool, and Lowtown's got the worst of it. The only thing people there have to believe in is morph, and if you're not getting a fix, you're probably wearing yourself thinner than thin. My sister never understood it, but…"
Tati closes her eyes, turning her head away as she runs one hand back through her hair, the yellow-dyed strands thick with dirt and oil from spending days without a shower. She'll need to remedy that soon; maybe today, provided Elysia and Kellen aren't just out there waiting to chase them down. The lake's probably good enough to wash in – just a shame she doesn't have any soap to make a real difference. Not that vanity really matters in light of their betrayal…
She hums.
"Still, it's sort of admirable, to put that much faith in something. Don't you think?"
Patron mumbles something that slips through her skull, going in one ear and falling out the other, no sense of time or thought or reason to make it stick. Seconds tick past, one after the other, as her head fades blank and rings with static. After a moment, the world darkens. Tati bites down on her lip, turning emotions over in her head. Tamara and guilt. Taji and grief. Ailith and failure. Patron and uncertainty…
Every memory has a feeling, and every feeling has a name. Try as she might, she doesn't have the energy to purge them – neither her mistakes, nor the past's remnants. They'll linger 'til she's dead. Gone, buried, long forgotten…
Forgotten.
Blinking, she shakes her head and comes back to herself, reaching down to pry open their sole bag of remaining supplies. The contents inside are meager, but she's not about to try and complain, especially after all the shit that went wrong yesterday evening. And given what happened to Ailith…
She and Patron were lucky.
(Beggars don't get to be fuckin' choosers.)
"Y'know, if I got told two weeks ago that I'd be rubbing elbows with a pretty boy from the right side of Panem's tracks, I'd probably have lost my shit," she remarks offhandedly, sparing a glance up to Patron as she slips an apple out of the bag, then pulls the drawstring shut. "But hey, guess that's life for ya. Full of motherfucking curveballs."
Tati smirks, sitting back up and leaning so her back's pressed against the cabin wall, wooden slats acting as a support for her slanted body. Tossing the apple up into the air, she watches as it spins under the morning sky, red against a backdrop of orange-and-gold, so picturesque that it's nearly aesthetic. She inhales, pulling her breath deep into her ruined lungs as her hands stretch forward, open palms waiting for the fruit to come back down, her confidence undaunted by the headache shading her depth perception. She's caught enough shit in her time to trust in her reflexes, clumsiness and clamminess aside.
(Withdrawal might make her irritable, but it's not enough to kill her vibe – not so long as she's got face to save. Besides, twitchiness and restlessness are things that she can handle; she's been staving 'em off for the better part of eighteen years, letting her moodiness feed her rep while stifling her ambition in a mix of alcohol and demerol. High was made for her when the headaches became too much to stomach, but it doesn't mean she's forgotten how to function all off on her lonesome. Granted, she's never exactly liked being clear-headed, but right now, it's better than the alternatives.)
(She may be aching for a fix, but for what's ahead, she needs to be sober. That much is a given.)
Holding her hand out to the left, she waits in silence for Patron to take the apple, light spinning circles across the shiny red surface and rebounding in her eyes with the force of the sun. It's not much of a peace offering, but it should do for now.
With luck, her closed mouth should say the rest.
Patron's fingers barely brush against her own as he plucks the fruit from her palm, the silence between them oddly companionable. He was right that they're not friends – not friends, not enemies, not much of anything – but Tati's spent enough time indulging the company of snakes to feel at ease beside a spider. Maybe friendship isn't in the cards for them, but they're still partners.
(Partners means a hell of a lot.)
Patron's teeth sink into the apple with an audible crunch. The Six girl shifts forward, resting her elbows on her thighs as she stares out to the east, where the sun is steadily peaking on the far horizon. For the first time in a long time, her head is calm, noise drowned out by pain and pain drowned out by tranquility, the sort of calm she thought she could only find at the bottom of a bottle, her sorrows drowned in bleeding ale.
She's spent her life avoiding the austere, trying to run away from the responsibilities that her childhood heaped on her. Consequences went unrecognized in the midst of her drug-fueled haze, and obligations only lasted so long as she could stomach them, regardless of whom they might have been pledged. Tamara and Taji had given her so many lectures about pulling her act together and shaping up, yet even at her youth's end, Tati had remained impervious, keeping her ears stubbornly closed in the hopes that ignorance might lead to further bliss.
Her apathy is the reason she's here. If she wants to live, she can't continue to let it stand.
Maybe she's a criminal. Maybe she's a junkie. Maybe she's the butt of the world's fucking jokes, but she doesn't have any more time left to indulge them. Like it or not, she's in the Hunger Games – if she wants to make it through them, she needs to start taking this shit more seriously.
Here, at her wit's end, she has both nothing and everything left to lose.
(If she manages to make it back… perhaps Tamara will finally be able to forgive her.)
You were my phenobarbital;
a manniqueen of depression with the face of a dead star.
"You know who I am, don't you?"
The memory echoes in his skull, voice hollow and faraway despite the owner being so near, sitting at the end of the bed half-dressed, his head turned away from the mistakes he'd chosen. Silas never looks at Rhys when their time has ended; can't bear to see his face, associated as it is with infidelity, endangerment of everything he holds dear. Their relationship is one built upon the existence of shadows; lingering resentment, rebellion and dissatisfaction, every secret word and hidden kiss a testament to the fact that the world runs on image, and without face, a person stands to lose everything.
Everything, including discretion.
Everything, including their head.
"Discretion is the better part of valor."
Rhys reaches toward the nightstand, aimlessly grasping for the pack of cigarettes resting on the edge. A lighter falls into his hand naturally, so naturally he isn't entirely sure from where he's managed to conjure it. He flicks at it until a flame bursts out of the top, then raises it to the end of the mood-killer dangling between his lips, an open taunt to his lover-not-loved and all the man holds dear.
(Silas always hated the smell of smoke.)
(He said it clung too much to the things around it - like a perfume, but worse, because it reeked like misery and death, and if his wife ever caught whiff of it, she'd know what he was up to. Hanging around on the shady side of town, where no upstanding citizen would be caught dead 'less they had a damn good reason… such an image-tarnisher, and especially for a man so reputable as the mayor. He couldn't have anything damaging his campaign streak. He couldn't have anything…)
(Rhys deserved better.)
"It would be best to keep these meetings between us. You can be my little secret."
Cigarette between his lips, Rhys reaches out to run fingers along the stain-covered wall beside his bed, the texture of peeling paint against his skin somehow welcome to his disoriented brain. Sleep-deprived and drug-addled, as it were, though it's not enough, it's never enough, and most of all, he is never enough… not for Silas, not for himself…
Not for anyone.
(Esme was right when she called him nothing.)
(She was right to believe nobody would miss him.)
(Why is it so hard to accept that? Why is he –)
(Why is he still fighting?)
With flailing arms and a sudden shout, Rhys snaps back into consciousness, vision pitching red and black from the force of his hurt. He looks and all he can see are dots; static dancing before his vision, clinging to the outline of his limbs and the hems of his clothes, settling into place like the pieces of a jigsaw. A set of hands are on his shoulders, gentle as they try to restrain him, and if he focused hard enough, he can almost hear a voice beginning to speak, somewhere in the fog of his fading consciousness. Despite the confusion, he's not so incognizant he doesn't understand this – the fact that he's been dreaming, all the thoughts of the present-him bleeding into enmity over his past. He's meant to be moving forward, yet for some reason, he can't stop looking back – pity the sentimental for their fucking foolishness.
Malaise settles in his bones, turning his gut and muddling his head. His jaw shifts – only a touch, but enough to alert him to the fact that something, maybe more than something, is now wrong – and he winces, every inch of him sparking dead and silent. He grits his teeth and starts to speak. "The fire… it… it's – done with?"
There's a shift from the space beside him – a startled intake of breath from someone he knows to be his ally, even though he can't entirely see her.
"Rhys?" A faint voice asks as a hand presses to his arm, steadying him in his position as the speaker leans in closer. The relief in their voice is nearly brazen, and for some unfathomable reason, soothing. Even though it's unneeded, it still….
"How bad is it?"
The glare wanes as he opens his eyelids, attempting to make sense of Pangaea's face amidst the cabin's dank walls and sunny windows. It takes a moment before the Ten girl finally comes into view, phasing through his periphery like the image of a phantasm. She's frowning.
"... Rhys, I… I did everything I could –" She begins, but his eyes nearly narrow at the attempted avoidance, not caring for it in the least.
"How bad, Pangaea?"
"It's bad, okay?" Her voice this time is harsher – snappish, even, with the grief and frustration of a person who's only just realized the limits of their autonomy in a world designed to erode those without power. "Fuck, Rhys, what do you want me to say? That everything's fine, that you'll recover, that this isn't the Hunger Games, and we're not both set on a path to dying, regardless of how much we might want to fight it? I almost lost you!"
(I will lose you.)
Laughter bubbles up in his chest, spills out of his lips like water from a burst pipe.
"Now you understand," Rhys says, bemused. "You're… st… arting to s… ound like…"
Me.
But the last word never crosses his lips.
Instead, a fit of coughing takes him, making his body lurch forward with desperation as his back contorts and his lungs begin to shudder. His hands grasp with futility at his expanding chest, heaving for breath in a place where there is none. He coughs, and he cracks, and he cackles amidst the onslaught, but still he cannot find breath, there is only smoke and it is stifling – overwhelming the air, making him choke, choke, choke until he can hold on no longer…!
Pangaea's hands are stable as she eases him back, his shoulders meeting with the cloth of bunched blankets laid out atop a sleeping bag. Rhys doesn't protest as she arranges them around his body, trying to prop up his wounded head, the burns along his right side smouldering cold. His lips part, but only to draw in a breath – speaking at this moment is beyond him. He's not even certain what'd be left for him to say.
"It's okay," Pangaea whispers, practically able to read his mind. "You don't have to talk right now, okay? Get some rest."
Rhys grimaces, or at least attempts to. He doesn't want to rest.
(He… wants to cry.)
Sadness bursts from the locked wall behind his heart, but no tears can be bothered to leave his eyes. There is no liquid to wash down his face, no rain to coat the sclera of his burnished orbs, stinging of salt and regret while his lashes flutter, every part of him so corroded he's become inflexible. One of his hands moves of its own accord, reaching up to bracket his face, fingertips tracing along the scarring in his cheeks, running down the curve of his jaw until they reach his neck. Slowly, he tries to take in the feel of his flesh, catalogue his features so he can assess the damage (damage, he's damaged, broken, blighted, hurt beyond hurt, the only thing he'd ever had to boast about was his beauty and now it's gone, just like everything else, this isn't fucking happening, it can't be like this — !)
…
…
…
He doesn't feel a thing.
Saliva pools in his mouth, heavy and viscous with his dryness. Rhys' medical experience is limited, but it doesn't take a genius to piece together what's happened. Between the burns, the exposure, the lack of oxygen and the scarring… not to mention whatever cuts and bruises he likely sustained… there has to be at least some nerve damage. His face, his hands… something's happened that can't be fixed, and the repercussions might not even be fully obvious. He's not dead, but he is –
Maimed. Marred. Disfigured.
– ruined.
He thinks of Esme, spiteful in her entirety. Jaded, despondent, envious and embittered, reveling in his disgrace much like he had wished to revel in hers. What lies is she spewing about him now that he's hit rock bottom? How much of his misery has she chosen to mock for the sake of her own wounded ego, using his peril to save face in the audience of peers that most likely hate them both?
Gods, she must be having a field day. Playing the martyr. Scorning the victim. Finally, she's ruined the homewrecker. All this fucking competition…
And here you are at last. Cast aside and left for dead.
Just another body to be rolled up in a tarp and tossed out into the streets, nothing more than a feast for crows and rats.
(Will there be anyone to miss me? Anyone to give a shit about my demise, or all the shit I've been forced to grow through? )
(Silas could care less. So could most of the others.)
(Even Chance never knew me well enough to play at closeness; he might linger when he hears the news, but soon enough it'll be a drop in the bucket. I'm nothing but water in a sea of rain.)
… my District might as well be dead to me.
Capitol knows I'm already dead to them.
The lids of his unfocused eyes flutter. He draws in a breath, exhales it slow. Around him, the world begins to spin – Pangaea and the cabin fade from his view, replaced by a fog of familiar doubt. Crumbling buildings and off-white walls, stained yellow by the weather's erosion… wooden steps lined with rusting nails, jagged pipes crisscrossing the interior of brick walls… how much of his life did he squander, chasing after fruitless dreams? How many years did he fail?
(Strangely enough, when he thinks of Three, he does not think of home – of memories left behind in an abandoned apartment, between the fabric of clothes long untouched and weathered mirrors dug from beneath the heaps of trash – but of hollowness. The dead look in his eyes that held whenever he caught a glimpse of his reflection… the grey streets shadowed by even greyer skies, streams of rain that pelted against shattered windows and bathed the world over in misfortune. His childhood had been bleak, but in a sense, his adolescence was bleaker, bound to the lure of favors held in roaming hands.)
(He'd traded his youth for the sake of being something, and yet he isn't certain it was even worth it. The vanity. The lust. The allure of moulding himself to an image, not for his sake, but for the sake of society – a society that wanted nothing more than to strip him down, not just from clothes but to the fucking bone – and tell him what he had to be for their sake, for their sanity.)
(Their desire had been a leash. And sadly enough… so had his own.)
Rhys turns his head, shuttering his pain-struck gaze. He understands now.
He understands.
Why Esme chose to disparage him. Why Three voted him in. Why it has been so hard, all these years, to face the realities of his trauma – to admit to his missteps, his flaws, his failures. It is so easy to make monsters out of others, especially the people he has nearly-loved; it is easier still to put their names on a page, scream them into the wind and say 'this is your fault. It's your fault I'm like this. It's your fault I'm ruined.' and begrudge them the sins that he allowed.
(To be honest with oneself after so many years spent lying is a thing so arduous it feels backbreaking. He can argue and snarl and bare his teeth, but his face of denial cannot mask the truth – not anymore. He is scarred, scarred so deeply that his bitterness will never heal, and the wounds that mar him are not just skin-deep.)
Silas had infidelity. Esme had animosity. Pangaea has ignorance. The Capitol has avarice.
Rhys Intarsia's poison is pride.
He inhales, and the sound of it is ugly, like the gasping of the beggars he'd known in the streets, unable to pull themselves from the gutter despite their most fervid efforts. His chest flutters as it heaves, moving up and down with an effort so vigorous that he feels as if it's about to burst, split open and leave him gaping, emotional and loveless on his future deathbed. A splitting pain cuts through his side, crawling through his flesh and upwards into his body, leaving his muscles aching as he shudders, halfway to retching from the bile swarming his raw throat. The anguish in him is so great he can hardly bear to hold it.
It's ironic, Rhys thinks, his breath heaving and shuddering as something cool presses to his face, the sun through the windows gleaming on Pangaea's hair, once more setting the world aflame. How life weaves the strings of fate…
His mouth slips open, tongue parched. Words linger on his lips without falling, evaporating into the air as he collapses in on himself, sunstruck and burning.
(To be made of flesh is to know humiliation.)
(To be made of pride is to be nothing.)
And I was a hand grenade that never stopped exploding;
You were automatic, and as hollow as the 'oh' in 'god.'
It's a beautiful day.
Argenta isn't usually the type to get all emo about weather, but truth be told she doesn't see many beautiful days in Five. With the overcast skies and the constant influx of factory smoke, sunny days are few and far between – rare enough that she's always known to savor them. And moments like these… sun and oxygen and plenty of grass, tickling the skin of her arms and legs… are even fewer.
She's trying her best to enjoy it.
It's hard, though. Hard to let herself feel free, when just yesterday she was stuck on the fence of killing her own ally, and then separated from 'em less than an hour later. With Cordy and Vyn lost in the wind, she can't help but feel sort of untethered, like half her reason for being's been snapped from existence, leaving her to stew in amorality and conflict. She shouldn't be resting – isn't allowed to rest, with twelve tributes still running around like little pigs free of their fucking pen, each of them ripe and prime for slaughter. Murder is her mission, so why the fuck is she sitting here trying to idle? Where does it leave her? What does it get her?
… sometimes she wonders if she's forgotten what it means to be a kid.
She still is one, obviously – twelve years isn't enough to suck all the child out of a person, even when you get fucked up and jaded like Argenta has. But the more she thinks about the last few days… playing games and cracking jokes and causing mischief with no rhyme or reason… the more she feels like there's something she's lost. It seems like all she ever does is worry about Bruin – his expectations, his plans, his fucking grief and displeasure when ever she does something he doesn't approve of. With him, she'd never had much chance to do things so mundane; it was all workworkwork, every day and 'round the clock.
Good hits meant praise and affection. Bad ones meant criticism and scorn. The moments in between were left for training, where she'd scraped by on sculpting herself into the shape he wanted; his tool, his child, his pint-sized enforcer. But somewhere in all that pleasing, she'd never really had time to think about Argenta. What she wanted out of her duties. What she needed to leave her mark on the world – to make a name for herself, to achieve, to strive, to long for, to be happy…
Maybe being a mercenary wasn't her full calling.
Maybe she just needed to be twelve, at least for a little bit, and figure the rough shit out later. Honestly, she doesn't know.
Her face pinches up as she tugs another handful of grass up from the dirt, scowling when she throws it back aside. Velezen reaches over to give her a thump on the skull, ruffling her frizzy hair before he withdraws. In retaliation, Argenta smacks at his retreating hand, mirth washing out of her chest as she throws him a look, trying to take full advantage of the eyepatch in her aesthetic.
It's nice with just the two of them.
Nice, because there's less concern to be had over what she says, and the air's made free of both skepticism and frustration. With four people, there's too much shit to wrangle… all sorts of thoughts left unanswered and feelings left unsaid, since talking's usually mundane or more trouble than it's worth. Arguments brew too quickly in a quartet; there's less of them to be had in a duo. Less fits, more hits… maybe it's in poor taste for her to like it, but as far as she's concerned…
The Games are still a match-and-set.
Argenta combs her fingers through the clumpy dirt, scooping bits of it up into her palm. There's power to be had in numbers, yeah, but being rid of Cordy and Vyn means that she probably won't have to kill 'em, or worse yet, watch 'em die for her own benefit. Even if murder's the name of the game, the thought of her allies just not existing seems sort of wrong.
(Bruin might call her soft for getting worked up over this, but what he doesn't know won't hurt him. 'Sides, she knows better than to show her upset on her face.)
"Hey, Zenny," she quips, waiting for her partner to turn his head. The dirt in her fingers feels more like mud, now, slick with rain and all sticky to her, but Argenta isn't perturbed. "Catch!"
Slinging her hand back, she unclenches her fist, letting a rain of brown-and-black collide with her partner's shocked expression, smeared across his cheek and purpling nose just as much as her own palm. Velezen blinks in shock, a crease settling in on his brow once he realizes what she's done, and she barely gets out a giggle before his eyes narrow, playful even when pissed.
"You're such a shit," he gripes, reaching up to brush the filth away from his cheeks, Argenta's lungs filled with squeals as she topples onto her back.
"It suits you!" She retorts, not bothering to hide her shit-eating grin. With a cheeky smirk, she reaches down to grab another handful, only for the recently-cleared muck to spatter across her chest, staining the khaki of her tribute's uniform a disgusting brown.
"Brown's not my color," Zen says with a shrug, crossing his arms. "Seems to suit you, though - I think it goes with the moniker, hmm?"
"You're the shit," Argenta responds, allowing her mud to fly free without a second guess. Velezen cackles as she springs to her feet, kicking clods of dirt in his direction. "Velezen's a shit-shit, always gotta bitch-bitch, he can't fuckin' catch me cause I'm a fuckin' quick-hit."
Her tongue presses past her lips as she closes her eye, blowing her bro a big ol' raspberry in return of his scowl. Then, before he can jump at her, she backpedals, spinning around and screaming as she runs in the direction of the lake, both feet kicking wild over the lush grass as she lets herself spiral, down, down, down to the water's edge.
"Big words from a fucking toddler!" Velezen shouts from somewhere over her back, his own steps adding to the cacophony that spins around her body. Argenta slows, reaching down to pull off her shoe, then chucks it back over her head, not even bothering to see where it lands. A curse fires off as Velezen nearly yelps, his outrage quickly overtaken by Argenta's laughter as she turns around, jogging back while flipping him a double-bird.
"If you ran like your mouth, Zenzen, you might be in better shape!"
"And yet somehow you're the one that's talking," he says, in between huffs as his jog slows to a walk. "I swear on the fucking Order… keep it up, and you'll be the next strange smell coming from somewhere in a District Five attic."
"Nah," Argenta refutes, dropping both arms back down to her sides. "If you killed me, you'd miss me too much."
The smile slips off of her face, lost and gone with the sudden speeding of her heart, all of her features feeling too stiff, too stoic, too numb.
"I'll miss you too," she admits, unblinking as she watches him, staring her down from across the open field. "I never wanted to care…"
Strength wanes from the set of her shoulders, dropping down into her ribcage and falling out of her chest before she can even question it. There must be something in her voice – something bitter or sad or just a touch off – because Velezen's jaw shifts to the side, lips parted around a breath that she can't hear as her fingers find the knife Zen salvaged from their fight, curling around it as if to pull it free.
"Argenta."
His voice is warning, now – cautionary, just like it had been with Cordura, after she saw Maevyn crying on the floor of the cabin, desperately begging to be left behind with all that remained in the arena of home.
(At least, to a degree, she had a home. Argenta's only ever had Bruin. And Bruin doesn't want –)
(She's not a child to him.)
(She's a weapon.)
Whipping the dagger out, Argenta raises it to hold the flat end against her throat, pressing it down right against her jugular. She knows a dozen ways to make somebody scream, but this is one of the ways to make it silent, quick and efficient without much suffering. Maybe she doesn't deserve it after all the shit she's done, but it's better this way than the other – better that she's gone before she has to kill Velezen, or even Cordura and Maevyn. If she couldn't do it yesterday, then how the fuck is she going to do it tomorrow, or two days from now, or another week?
Her parents never wanted her.
Bruin only wanted her in his image.
But her friends here haven't judged – Velezen's more a sibling to her than any of the kids she'd met in her neighborhood, more family than her blood or her peers in the Ring. She never understood why Parker was reaching for Jerome when she died, or why she'd been trying to cling to his hand even when Argenta's blade struck home and the light faded out of her eyes, but she's starting to realize, and realization scares her.
She doesn't want to be his.
His assassin, his enforcer… his apprentice in murder and mayhem, the one he'd made to do his hits and trained in the art of bloodshed with no qualms for the youth he was taking away. Bruin might be the closest thing she's had to a real parent, but even he's tried to make her live vicarious, a slave to his ideals and warnings and whims of desire. If he hadn't told her to deal with the Gales – if he hadn't taken her and shaped her with his hands, grooming her as a successor instead of a daughter –
"Argenta, stop!"
Velezen's hands grip her arm as the dagger begins to cut down, hauling it back and trying to tear the knife right out of her hands. On instinct, Argenta shoves him backward, beating her fists against his chest without rhyme or reason as he tries to keep her still.
"I hate you!" She screams, vicious as she lashes out with both her hands, her nails scratching at his arms and her knuckles pummeling his sternum, careless of the blade that inhabits her fist. "I-hate-you I-hate-you I-hate-you I HATE —"
The knife clatters to the ground, tumbling across the ruddy grass to rest at the edge of the riverbank.
All she can see is red.
Her arms lock around his back as she leaps on top of him, her momentum and the weight of her body intense enough to knock him flat in the dirt, legs and arms splayed out like the lady she'd left in the cabin, both her arms slit open wrist-to-elbow to give the impression of suicide. It feels like so long ago that she'd killed that one – before Windsor or the Umbers, whose names she'd been more apt to remember, because all the early ones were meant to be faceless. Faceless made it easier for her – made it easier for everyone, anonymity being low-risk and detachment purifying. If they weren't human, it made it easier for her to focus on the craft, to think of it as a job, fun and games to make her father proud, all she'd ever wanted was for him to be happy and why, oh why, can't she even do that?!
"Argen–"
Velezen tries again as her hands slap against his face, the squelch of his unhealed nose almost worse than the crack she'd heard when it broke. His eyes stare up into what remains of her own, dark and soulful and concerned, and for some reason the concern is what does it, it's too much for her, she can't take it, she can't take being here with him, with him, with family, she can't!
" – don't have to –"
I'm sorry, she thinks through a haze of tears, her face contorted with her ugly crying, so much pent-up aggression seeping out of her body, the wrath and the rage and — she shouldn't like him, he's the enemy, they're all the fucking enemy, all she needs is her and Bruin… her and Bruin, her and Velezen, she wants to take him home with her but she knows they can't both win, it's a Game, and someone's always meant to lose, she won't lose, she doesn't lose, she has to lose –
It only strikes her when she looks down that the throat she's managed to cut isn't her own.
… oh …
Oh my god.
"W-wait – no, no, fuck –" she bites out between heaving sobs as she stares down at him, ohgodohshitohgodohfuck. "This isn't – it's not supposed to be you, it wasn't supposed to be you, Velezen, please, I – I didn't mean to!"
Her head bows as she collapses halfway on top of him, her shoulders moving up and down with her fatigued sobs. Both her fists come to a halt, wrists bracketed by Velezen's wrists and held just over his chest, scarlet stuck on her palms and under her torn-up nails.
"Come on, pipsqueak…" her brother wheezes, another tooth fallen free of his mouth and red trails seeping out of his nose. "This isn't you."
His chest is heaving, up and down under their joined fists, and as it rises, a river begins to run from the gash in the side of his neck, gushing out in spurts and staining the grass under his back. His hands shift against her wrists, as a breeze ruffles through the grass, the only noise between them soft gurgles as his own blood clogs his windpipe, choking him on his own words.
"I'm sorry," she apologizes, curling her fingers into the row of buttons down Zen's front. His breathing's slower now, waning on the breeze as it grows shallow, but still he holds onto her, wheezing his lungs dry with a saddened smile on his lips.
It's not fair.
Argenta's hands press firm against his throat, futiling trying to keep his life from spilling out, but she saw where she cut and he's too far gone. Too gone to save, too gone to help, he's dying and it's all on her, on her, she loved him, she didn't want this, IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE ME, DAMMIT – NOT HIM, ME! ME!
"I'm so sorry, Zenny," she chokes out in between her tears, keeping her palms firm against his skin. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm s–"
"Argenta."
Zen's hold tightens over hers, and from the gutted hole at his pulse-point, she can sense his heart speeding. He looks up at her, bloodshot eyes more calm than she's ever seen them when his hand once again finds her own, thumb trailing circles along the inside of her wrist.
"I promise, whatever you might think…"
He speaks, and his words are hoarse, so impossibly hoarse, even as he looks at her with that infuriating, winsome smile. Tears spill down his cheeks as he begins to pry free Argenta's hands, exposing his wound to the summer air without a qualm left to be spared. He stares up at her, and as her own lips part, his settle, finding the words that he's been trying to voice for far longer than Argenta knows.
"... suicide isn't the answer."
Her eyelid flutters under the dark patch, slipping closed over nothing. Guilt compounds inside her stomach, mixing with her confusion and mounting sense of self-hatred. She swallows, blinking the fog away from her good eye while Velezen blinks his own eyes back, nothing in his face expressing condemnation.
"What was their name?" Argenta asks, understanding more than she thinks she should. "The one who… who saved you?"
Velezen smiles, tears sliding free of his dark orbs to wash the crimson from his cheeks.
"Theia," he whispers, so soft she can barely hear him. "Her name was Theia."
They'll never be anything, anything at all.
They'll never be good to you, bad to you – I'm never gonna be the one for you.
She hasn't been able to look at him.
Twenty hours have passed since their alliance broke, shambling Elysia's ideas of victory before they'd had a chance to reemerge.
Twenty hours have passed since Kellen did the unthinkable, slaughtered his District partner in a way that held no rhyme or reason, his apathy driven by a lust for violence more potent than Elysia's ever seen. Rage, bloodlust, lunacy… there are a million names by which she can call it, yet none of them can match the sensation that strikes her when she looks at him, all of her anger roiling and bubbling under her mask of skin.
She's always been the type to bury her rage.
But it's only a matter of time before it sees fit to surface.
(Once she unleashes it, it will destroy her – destroy her in the same way that she destroyed Anka, pummeling her down with such brute force that neither her mind nor body could bear the pressure. She'd stomached a lot, taking care of Elysia; dared to humor her and dared to love her, always hoping that one day she could make pottery from her broken pieces and fix the remnants of what her childhood had ruined.)
(Her hope had always made her beautiful. She wasn't careful, but in her rosiness she was pure driven to see the good in the world around her, and driven all the more to cherish it. One might have called her senseless, but her rose-tinted lenses had been a balm for a District overflowing with battered souls, worn down by the years they spent stifling their empathy and training to become killers, as if inhumanity was the most human thing a child could aspire to.)
(Elysia had forged herself into the ideal, and she suffered for it.)
Her suffering had broken Anka.
Kellen's had broken Ailith.
They're not so dissimilar as she wants to believe. Her, and the boy from District Two. While Elysia may not have given herself to the lure of spectacle, she'd been just as willing as he to strike the final blow; Ailith, after all, was competition.
(Competition cannot stand. So she'd taken the coward's path, and turned her head.)
Kellen gave her the opportunity to say no, yet she'd told him to go ahead. She'd bitten her tongue at Ailith's pleas, averted her gaze from the wreckage of her body, charred skin and bronzing bones, all of her livelihood snatched away by the grip of a flame-turned-ash. The dissident's blood is still on her hands, white flesh dappled red before the umber of her death. Whenever she looks down, she sees flecks of it spread across the fabric of her uniform, soaked into the creases and spattering the buttons, the stain worn through clothing to her very soul.
(It shouldn't daunt her the way it does, but when she looks, she still sees her face. Dark eyes set in a battered skull, staring into her heart with all the force of a raging sun. Elysia's tried to expunge the sight from her memory, denying her sympathy with accusations of betrayal – a rat is a rat, and a traitor's a traitor. Traitors don't deserve regrets; the fraudulent burn, and the world is better for it. She was a rebel, a Judas, a liar. She's the antithesis of what I was raised to cherish, the enemy of my compatriots and the country that I love. I'm loyal to One, and I'm loyal to the Capitol. I'm loyal. I'm loyal, I'm loyal – but no matter what words she dares to utter, Jade Echeverry remains.
A spectre of her sympathy.
Her second greatest failure.)
She knows she shouldn't fault Kellen for playing the Games, but when she hears his voice all she can hear is the taunting –
"A convenient lie from a seasoned liar."
"What a shame the dying have such loose lips."
He scorns the dead, and the dead reward him. Murder merits fanfare, merit merits nothing. The Capitol's sent them salvation in the guise of an oblong box, and they feast on warm bread and salted meats while Jade's remains are left to disintegrate, amidst the ruins of a machine built for refuse.
Elysia eats, and all she can taste is bile. She washes the food down with a new, clean bottle of water, and pours out the painkillers for a chaser. Defiant thoughts plague her mind, bombarding her from every angle, and she's never felt more like plunging a dagger through her own head. Even now, images of the dissident spill over into monologue, muddling her senses as they turn… turn and turn and turn and turn…
(She is trash for her defiance.)
(We are trash for being children.)
(Her sacrifice will be rewarded with enmity.)
(We reap the rewards, and our rewards are empty.)
(Isn't it death that should mark a betrayal?)
(Is it only death that is truly blind, fair and merciful in how it takes us?)
(Why should I grieve the loss of a thorn?)
(How could I ignore the roses blooming from her dented skull?)
(She does not represent Panem.)
(She is what defines Panem.)
(She was the worst of us.)
(She was the best of us.)
Maybe this is the true legacy of her District – the reason why One lost both Varsen Santana and Angelo Veroge to their own hands, when they had each been so close to making it back. Death looked them in the face, and in turn, they understood the world in a way that they were never meant to. Elysia has no desire to end up as the third in a line of Career suicides, but she'd be lying if she said she didn't understand it: the allure of cutting the voices out, unleashing her agony and making it stop, letting the world crash to a halt with no care for the resulting impacts.
I would never have to feel again.
I would never rage.
I would never hurt.
I would never have to imagine the disappointment, or the shame held in everyone's eyes – Anka saying I could have been better, Casimir saying I should have been dead – family, missing the space I've left instead of simply filling it up, going on with life while pretending I didn't exist, what is Elysia except another fucking mistake, such a failure even the Academy couldn't wait to get rid of her…
A cannon sounds from above their heads, shaking her from her reverie as the pills drop into her stomach, two at a time.
"Halfway there," Kellen says, looking skyward. Elysia hardly acknowledges him, lying back on the grass with her hair loose, nausea eating away at her intestines.
I'd rather be anywhere, anywhere but here, she thinks, allowing the cool air to whip over her face, ruffling the cuffs and collar of her uniform. It's too difficult to linger.
(Lingering means acknowledging her wrongdoings. Lingering means having to care, not only about the state of the Games, but about what's still ahead. The tributes she's yet to best and the obstacles she's yet to surmount... there are so many problems that stand between her and the possibility of victory, and it's impossible to focus when all she wants is a chance to rest! If she could just find some sort of reprieve – a stopping off point, where she could just sit for a while and drown out her conscience… anywhere but here, anywhere but here!)
"Do you still want to go after Eight and Five?"
…
Kellen's voice is becoming an irritant.
"I don't know," Elysia responds, and there's something about the answer that sounds defeated. "Why are you asking?"
"Because we can't just sit around, Elysia," Kellen snips back, as if the answer wasn't obvious. She takes a breath in through her nose, her lips staying stubbornly pursed as she turns over onto her side, the grass crunching under her weight. If he's smart, he won't push her – not more than he already has. She's not in the mood to be dealing with questions.
"... One, we need some direction."
Go fuck yourself.
Elysia gives him a grunt instead of an answer, the pommel grip of her sword digging into her hip. It bothers her, somehow, that Kellen seems so stoic – as if he's unfazed by Ailith and what they've done, their sins no more than a bump on his supposed path to victory.
It isn't fair, she thinks, this time directed more to the world than to any individual person. I used to be like that – I should be like that. Detached, confident… able to properly compartmentalize. One raised me to be a Victor, so why is it that I'm only proving myself incompetent? Why is it, that no matter where I am, or what I do, I can only ever fail to measure up?
Kellen sighs, shifting closer to her, close enough she can feel the heat radiating off of his body. The proximity almost makes her sick.
"If you're not set on Five," he begins, the tone that he takes on so inhibited and careful that she can't help but feel ired by it, "we should try to find the others. Get rid of Six and Nine to make a show of strength… you know as well as I do that it's what the Capitol would expect of us."
"Kellen?" Elysia asks, less defeated and more dispassionate. "I don't really care."
The supply bags shift at her back. Elysia doesn't look when she hears one of them tear open, contents spilling out onto the hill, metal clanging against metal and bottles full of medicine rattling. Kellen stands to his feet, and her cheeks are wet – kill me, do it, get me out of here – though her mouth and throat feel parched – if you don't, where the hell do I have to go? – and dry as sun-bleached sand.
(There's screaming, then.)
(Screaming and cursing and bitterness and anger, and she's not sure if it comes from her mouth or from his. The line between the pair of them has been fading, ever since that third morning in the camp, when she'd snapped and been met with a mirror, caustic melancholy and a phlegmatic temper, the pair of them oxymoronic in their desire to self-destruct. She looks into his eyes and what she sees is truth, regret washed down with the wine of acceptance, twin voices, twin vices, a set of spears and swords all pointing home. In Kellen she sees herself and in Ailith she saw Anka, and like clockwork, the mistakes of the past repeat themselves time after time in a futile cycle, and why, oh, why did she ever believe that it could be different?)
Her eyes open to the sight of the forest, trees like sentinels standing guard over filth and rocks. She watches them for a few moments before she blinks, and when she does, the colors ebb together, blue and brown and green trading places, each bleeding over until all she can see is grey.
It takes an eternity before she looks back over her shoulder, staring at the empty space full of endless mess, torn bags and discarded daggers thrown about with no care or cause.
Just as she'd hoped, Kellen is nowhere to be found.
This isn't me, I'm not mechanical!
I'm just a boy playing the Suicide King…
13: Velezen Vilarys, District Five. Killed by Argenta Brandt.
A/N: Mechanical Animals by Marilyn Manson.
Shorter A/N this time, but yes, I am working on updating the blog… and the next chapter has already been started. Hopefully we'll see another update by the end of July, as once we've passed the next one, this story will truly be in the practical endgame. If you feel like leaving predictions, you know I always love to hear them.
Now, as for the more difficult topics…
Dyl, I loved Velezen. I loved him as I love characters who I have an innate kinship with, who I inherently understand on a level more than just pen and paper, because their experiences mirror my own so closely that I can't help but attach. He was a rebel to his very core, willing to go to any lengths to maintain autonomy in a world that only wished to stifle it. Though he struggled in so many ways, he never allowed himself to be invalidated – and he never let the ostracism or heartbreak he experienced overtake his heart. I thought it fitting that his story end in the passing of a torch – Theia's unconditional love saved him, and his unconditional love saved Argenta from a fate that was once nearly his own. He will be one of the most difficult for me to let go, but I hope that you can find some solace in the poetry of his sacrifice… and the fact that he found at last the acceptance he'd been long searching for. Long live the Solar King – mortui vivos docent.