Hey everyone, Paradigm of Writing here with a brand new chapter for Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Death, Chapter #10: Gossip of Blackbirds and Ravens, which is the fifth out of six tribute introductory chapters, so we're almost there, even though it's taken me like three months, but we don't talk about that, okay? Last chapter we were introduced to Dill Waylon (D11M), Portia Beninblade (D2F), Zachary Edison (D5M), and Poem Cavalli (D8F). The next four tributes we have to fully meet are Cecelia Blackstone (D1F by A Proud Bibliophile), Pierce Alversway (D6M by Merlin's Brown Jacket), Diana Kratovska (D4F by Firedawn'd), and Gemini Lennox (D9M by Apple1230). It's a good set of tributes, and then one more final set of four with an appearance from a Capitol OC and then off into the official, official pre-Games stuff, which I am excited about, and just one step closer to the arena. Please enjoy Chapter #10: Gossip of Blackbirds.
"Lack of boundaries invites a lack of respect." ~ Anonymous
Cecelia Blackstone: District 1 Female P.O.V (13)
So far, the journey of trying not to cry has been failing miserably. Not naïve, just... hopeful that it wouldn't be this many tears coming from her, but the world has always liked to prove her wrong, she supposes. Thirteen year-old Cecelia Blackstone holds back the tears as best as she can, sniffling to herself while looking out the window, catching the green of Panem racing by through the parted glass. A five inch barrier protecting her from the evils of the world, when perhaps the world's worst evil is the one currently getting her a glass of water. Cecelia looks over at the person that their Capitol escort, the woman Adriane Lantham with her witch claws and terrible colored hair, considers to be her district partner. The word feels weird, rolling it over in her head and on the tip of her tongue, a phrase that doesn't make sense to her. The guy is from home, but he is not home.
Catalus Drachma steps away from the drinks table, which rattles back and forth sometimes by the jolt of the train, the fluffed tapestry underneath rocking as well, he holding out a hand to steady it, but there's already an Avox at the beck and call of any trouble to keep it steady so he doesn't. She sees Catalus lock gazes with the silent figure cloaked all in red, a hood over their face so their eyes cannot be seen, but from Cecelia's spot she can still make out the ghostly white flesh peering from underneath the dark veneer, and then beyond that, she can tell, as a ray of sunlight falls down and over the Avox's body, how their face seems stitched and pulled back, a shiver running through her. Catalus mouths something she cannot hear, before turning to face her, handing her a glass of water.
She accepts it soundlessly, fingers batting away at the tears that have slowly started to stop streaming down her face. He takes a seat across from her, sighing heavily while he props his feet up just on the other side of a different chair. Cecelia stares at him, though he hasn't looked over at her, for he's more focused on the avox going back to fix the tablecloth, despite the fact that there is nothing off about it in the first place. She doesn't know if it is a good idea or not to tell him to put his feet down, for with his height against hers, Cecelia's aware she could get body slammed at any moment by his sheer size difference, but something about resting shoes on the side of a chair, regardless if it is the Capitol's or not bugs her, a itch spreading on her scalp, but she keeps her hands on the glass, trying to also not look over at the Avox.
Avoxes are a relatively new thing to Panem, as her father tells her while tucking her in for the night, perhaps being a bit too old for that now, but she wishes for it sometimes when she's feeling a bit more down than usual, until her dreams take her away. The first one she sees is given as a servant to Friedrich Calvary, the man that makes her skin crawl whenever she sees the mayor from One, the other half of the traitor duo who sold District 1 and the rest of the country up the river to save his own skin. Somehow it rewards him with a person who has had their tongue cut out of their mouth, but that is a specific that'll only have her shudder even more, for she's already entering the full body spasms looking at him. It bothers her just as much as it nearly bothers her when looking at Catalus.
No one in their right and sane state of mind would ever volunteer to join something like the Games, the very thought chills her blood to the core, but here he is, sitting here across from her, being the first volunteer in history, on Day 1, Year 1, jumping headlong into it and she feels too scared to even ask why. Cecelia looks back out at the greenery of Panem, the sun starting to set just lightly over the trees. After the reaping, in which she bids a goodbye to her parents while entirely unable to hold the tears back, their hands plaiting her hair and smoothing out the ponytail she has flush against her back, the ride over to the train station in the cramped convertible is hot and stuffy, with Adriane between them, Catalus rather silent despite being full of personality on stage, and Cecelia holding back her teared hiccups.
She's never this emotional, but she figures it's warranted given what they're about to walk into. The city that never sleeps, the city that dines and drinks on the flesh and blood of children they'll murder in a platinum gilded cage, all for the sake of entertainment, disguised as 'punishment.' Speaking of the fact about the Avoxes, she looking over as the person returns to their post, she unable to determine their gender from where they are, but she assumes it to be a man. Catalus scratches his lower thigh, it being a rather... lewd movement that has Cecelia avert her eyes again before she takes a sip, the solid gaze catching her reflection. Rather tall for her age, at 5'7, but frail and skinny as a rail, where she can feel the cold winter chills hug her tight and squeeze the life out of her. Her white blonde hair, depending on the day, will be up in a ponytail, or down in frizzy waves that go past her teal blue eyes, and, though it might be a bit pretentious of her to feel this way, she senses a lot of etherealness come from her, wafting off into the air vents of the train, circulating her power among the other inhabitants of the train.
Cecelia uses the four hours of being reaped and the invite to dinner by Adriane's cockatoo voice echoing along the train walls for sleep, but looking at the dark rings underneath Catalus's eyes, it seems to her he didn't sleep a wink. Not in the break, and certainly not last night if his eyes are any indicator. She's unsure exactly as to what prompts her to say what comes spilling out of her mouth, but it has her lips upturn into a slight smirk while she hitches the end of her dress. Her mind goes off on a thousand different tangents as to why he didn't get any sleep, perhaps the solid answer being why he put himself on that stage, for she recognizes his name, and recognizes him, but the gears do not create action as to who he is. "You look terrible," she says, trying to hide the glee in her voice, perhaps the one real release of emotion she's had all day, which spills out into a laugh.
Catalus tilts his head to the side some, taking a long sip of the amber drink in his hands, she watching his fingers play up and down the glass like a spider crawling up a drain chute, a smirk also rising on his lips. He keeps his gaze directed on the sheer rock wall on the other side of the train, past the avox and the refreshment table. They're passing through District 10, if Cecelia remembers Adriane correctly. "Gee, I thought I looked pretty good..." Catalus looks at her, and the smirk rises into a grin. He sets one hand down on the arm of the chair, still with his feet propped up, she seeing that he's rolling his fist back and forth as if he were holding a ball underneath it normally. "Catalus Drachma," he reintroduces himself, which might be stupid, as the glint in his eyes would foretell.
"Cecelia Blackstone," she goes after him, though a lot quieter, holding the glass still and firm in her grasp.
"What's your story?" he asks her, very quickly after that, she watching the bob of his throat. Though she knows him and his name, not knowing him fully, he bleeds richness and luxury to her, which Cecelia can taste on her tongue as the sweetness of honey, perhaps coupled with the barbed sting of the bee in which the honey would come from. It is just the way he holds himself, Cecelia having a hard time imagining what kind of wealth would make someone simply feel as if they were debonair by existence. Home life for the Blackstone's, a last name she has always loved, for she's heard the horror stories of people who would have horrendous last names being forced to live with them, has been modest, middle-class, and relatively unaffected by the rebellion, the Dark Days or Ash Wars or whatever the people are calling it.
It might be the naïve, foolish schoolgirl deep down inside that Cecelia wishes didn't even exist in her heart to begin with that has her laugh at the question, raising an eyebrow. Story? There is no story, no story at all. She's a girl plucked out of the masses, not for how pretty she might be, or how brave she is when she decides that she'll brave the Swamp Monster that is her father hiding under the mesh of blankets on her bedroom floor, but because the world wills it, and while the tears fall, Cecelia Blackstone lifts her head up, chin kept austere, hands curled into tools of violence, though she rather wishes the world didn't choose her. No grandeur to it, for surely the man who picks himself as the first sacrifice - the very thought of the word makes another chill go down her spine, causing her to gasp lightly while she sets the full glass of water down - to go into the Games must be far more compelling than her, no?
"I'd rather hear yours," she ventures forward, he looking at her while she shrugs her shoulders. Being five years younger than him is quite intimidating, as Cecelia has found the older kids on the other side of the cafeteria to be quite scary with their loud voices and their cigarettes and their dreams splashing in greenlight halo colors on the wall, but when her mother kisses her on the knuckles before sending her to the wolves, she knows it is because she's witty. Cecelia Blackstone hangs around with the cool kids because she might be the coolest kid on the block. "Besides, for the first volunteer into the Games, there must be some reason out there. Besides, the Catalus Drachma in the Hunger Games?"
"You've heard of me?" Is she mistaken, or is there a very faint hint of happiness in his voice, at the idea of being noticed. Catalus shrugs to himself, taking another sip of his drink, she getting the first whiff of it, causing her nose to scrunch up. Smells like whiskey, the faint tinge she's took a notice of on her father's breath, when he champions, perhaps fifteen weeks too late, in his underwear mind you, on the dinner table with a bottle high in the air and his mustache left untamed, about heading into the rebel army... it reeks then, her mother, Angelique chiding him, Marcel, for all the kids are watching. Cecelia is a bit mortified of his actions, but her much younger siblings are howling with laughter at the sight of their father making a silly goose of himself in his PJ's.
"I mean, Catalus Drachma and the Drachma Conglomeration, correct?" Cecelia runs a hand through her hair, piquing her voice up some, reaching over for the glass that she sets on the windowsill, but only to wet her hands. "Definitely a story behind that." Everyone who is anyone knows what the Drachma Federation, Drachma Conglomerate... what all of that means to those in One. Perhaps the richest foundation and organization to exist in all of Panemian history, somehow left alive and away from the headsman's ax as President Israel calls for heads to roll, funding a rebel cause, and their famed son and new heir taking the stage... she smells a dark odor on the air. "So what is it?"
Catalus chuckles lowly to himself, running a hand on his face, fingers brushing over stubble, as droplets of liquid sunshine seem to roll off of his forehead. He is a beauty and a delight, in all honesty, and if Cecelia were a few years older, she wouldn't mind asking for a kiss. However, after his laugh, she sees his lips part, while he stops rolling his hand back and forth on the arm of the chair, eyes darkening, another shiver going through her as the atmosphere of the dining car seems to plummet. He sets his drink down, not even taking a sip from it while he looks at her, Cecelia wishing she never opened her mouth to even speak to him, just from the hint of shadow that gleans back at her, though he might be trying to mask it as best he can.
"Erasure," Catalus remarks, and then he reaches over for his drink, downing the rest in one quick swig, though there is a hefty amount of liquid left. He holds onto the cup however, rolling his thumbs together, before standing up. "A story of erasure," he repeats to her, then. Without bidding adieu, he exits the dining car, leaving Cecelia sitting there, hands on her knees, tears still fresh and falling, with the Avox's stare still firmly primed on her left shoulder.
She takes a small sip of her water, gulping.
Well, so much for taking some trust in the little piece of home the Capitol could give her, she supposes.
Pierce Alversway: District 6 Male P.O.V (15)
"Where is it?" he shouts at the top of his lungs, flinging the bedroom carpet over with a heave. "Did you hide it?" His hands struggle underneath the bulk of the item he's trying to overthrow, for more of his anger and rage has been tossed into looking for his missing item. He can hear the sound of his district partner's footfall, someone he doesn't really like - she seems like a bitch, but don't let anyone hear him say that, of course - following him after he pushes past her in a moment where he's lost himself. He's entirely here and awake right now, but just a few moments ago, after turning the box upside down and there not being anything to fall out of it, all fifteen year-old Pierce Alversway can feel is upsetedness flowing through his veins.
Porscha Watanabe's presence is felt as she slings her own door open, an incredulous expression on her face as she sees Pierce rummage through her room, things being settled nicely while they're on the opposite sides of the train, getting into their room. The sweet woman from the Capitol points him in the direction of the gameboard section in the recreation room on the train, he hungrily snatching it up and going to the dining car, taking one of the free tables that didn't have some sort of refreshment or cakes placed there. "What on Earth are you going on about?" she asks him, after bursting through her own door, as Pierce turns around, his face flush, his long curly brown locks going down over his forehead, his chest rising and falling while he looks over at her.
"The last piece to the puzzle!" he barks at her, Porscha jumping somewhat at the expression of anger that comes from within, he moving the carpet back into place. "It- it's not there!" he wails, shaking his fists back and forth together in an angry motion. He can see that Porscha is looking at him weirdly, taking an odd step back towards the train hallway, but he shakes his head, scoffing, and brushes past her again. No, no, no. This is all wrong! Everything's going wrong, and he can't find the last piece to the dolphin puzzle he's working. He knows it is a bottlenose dolphin from the way the creature smiles at him through the inanimate picture, and of course, from how the nose is shaped. He wonders if Porscha would know what type of animal it is, but she doesn't strike him as being very intelligent, he supposes. He just is able to sense that off of other people.
"That's what has you so upset?" Porscha's voice is almost mocking, to the point where he can hear a harsh, stuttered laughter come from within her. "A missing puzzle piece?"
"It's more than that!" Pierce hollers back at her, but he's moving away from her. Porscha scoffs to herself, then secludes back to the sanctuary of the dining car. He starts the puzzle shortly after the quick nap he has, tugging on the escort's arm, a woman named Ayanna Jett who claims to have family in Six, but that has him laugh, for no one who's anyone has family in Six. Ayanna looks at him with a disapproving glance, her lips tuckered into each other in her mouth, as if she were trying to eat them, before begrudgingly leading him from car to car to the recreation room. It is a beautiful 1000 piece painting, a bit juvenile, for Pierce has done a lot more puzzles in his lifetime that were a lot larger than this in front of him, but it is what it is, and he's sure he isn't really in a position to argue and nickel and dime people.
Getting told to stop the puzzle, as he's trying to find the last piece, a random blue edge of the water that causes it to look like a strange seven-sided shape, given the smooth edges, has him nearly break into another fit, Pierce breathing in through his nose and out his mouth. His parents are not here with him to help calm him down after his episodes, so to speak, so it is up to him to pinch the fold of skin at his elbow and go through the routine that they've taught him, a routine he tries and seems to not get right no matter how often he works at it. He almost has to go through it when he realizes who his district partner is, almost going up and pinching her nose for all the suffering she's caused. Well, he knows she, Porscha, didn't, but her father sure as shit did. Being the main reason why the Capitol were able to keep their hovercraft supply in constant upticks is not going to warrant any favors.
He supposes it could be karma, if such a thing exists, for he claps and cheers after her name is drawn, though Porscha doesn't cry or buck under the pressure of having the entire nation see her... for it is the harsh cry that leaps from his lips when Ayanna, as sweet as she is, says his name into the microphone, and the Peacekeepers come for him, and he's crying, holding onto the cube in his pocket, before they tell him to drop it, and the tears fall down harder. Porscha doesn't hold any consolation, not that he'd take it from someone who's a traitor, but it does bother him nonetheless that she wouldn't even hand him a tissue. Dinner is awkward, with the many eyes of the Peacekeepers and Avoxes on the train looking at them, Pierce feeling daggers bear into his spine, the curves where his synapses break from their barrage.
Every few moments, as if he cannot tear himself away, Pierce looks over at the puzzle, Ayanna's gentle reprimanding bringing him back time and time again. It is no time, truthfully, as she claims that the meals they're having are going to be the most important aspect in all of this, to daydream or dawdle. "I don't daydream or dawdle," Pierce grumbles to them, out of turn, which gives him a slap on the wrist from the pair of salad tongs, Ayanna telling him to mind his manners. "I work. That's what I do, I do work," he snips at them, while nibbling on a piece of bread, moving his hand out of the way just in time so the tongs don't hurt him again, for they come from a devilish woman dressed in ivory and pink. However, she's right. There is not a lot known about the Hunger Games for a majority of it, except that it is awful and requires people his age to die.
Twenty-three of them in fact. Twenty-three, it is an odd number, a prime number where it is only divisible by one and itself. Well, he likes to think it could be divisible by three if he were to think about rounding it up, but that would just place it at 7.6 infinite, and though the concept of infinity is cool, it terrifies him. How does something last forever and go on forever if human thought only exists up to a point? Perhaps he could be the person to discover the actual limit in terms of someone's consciousness and their concept of infinity, but first that'd require getting through the next week. Ayanna tells them, with Porscha running her spoon around the edge of the bowl which makes a slight ringing noise that is harsh on his ears, that they'll arrive in the Capitol tomorrow afternoon.
After that, they're to be whisked away to something called the Remake Center, and done up in outfits to show off to the country, as if the first impression of them at the reapings hadn't been the strongest indicator. Pierce agrees with the sentiment and the notion, for he knows that there can already be people trying to call him out on his bad reaction and thinking he's weak. He's not weak. Just- just sheltered, Pierce would try and remind people while holding his lip down from quivering. From then on, the realness of the Games begin, with two days of training, learning how to work a weapon - he sees Porscha's eyebrows rise up at the idea, he seeing her fingers twitch back and forth. Has- has she killed before? - and then, after that, performing for the Vice President, Head Gamemaker Cain Passionia and then given a score from one to twelve - he has to interrupt and ask if someone can be given a zero, which has her glare at him for being interrupted - that'll help determine who's a threat and who isn't.
Pierce hates the bluntness of the statement, but he supposes it makes sense, given that if someone is able to adapt to the change thrust into their lives, it means their chances rise up. He hates having to call it 'chances,' for statistics are a nice word, a full word with promise and grandeur attached to it, but that is how Ayanna expresses it. Then, the next day, and the last day before the arena, going on stage and speaking to the Master of Ceremonies, Richmond Anvil. Pierce hates him and he's never even met the man, but he'll get his chance to, he supposes. He doesn't like him for the sole reason that anytime he sees the man's face, only bad news and awful omens come out, for it is Richmond Anvil, with his wife, Head Peacekeeper Lydia Wickervein standing next ho him, who announce that the president has a matter of national security to speak on... and then the bombshell of the Games.
It's all terrible, but he supposes that in the concept of infinity, there has to be a good and evil, a balancing act, as his mother would say while washing the dishes. Nothing is infinite in terms of a human's life, however, Pierce knows that. The few books he has resting up against his bed talk about it, the philosophy of life and if there is meaning to it or not, but Pierce knows he has meaning or otherwise everything he has ever done has been for no good reason, no purpose, and he is not going to meander around with purpose. Purpose is built into him. He cannot, and will not, but there are some ways life forces its hand. He wouldn't stay at home forever, for his parents wouldn't be with him forever - "Now even earlier than expected..." Pierce murmurs to himself, running his fingers over his temples, trying to assuage the headache coming on from looking for the missing puzzle piece. - and he wouldn't be in school forever, and they couldn't be his teachers and-
Pierce flings himself onto the carpet in front of the puzzle rather dramatically, letting out a large sigh. Ayanna is sitting at the dining room table still, nursing away at a cup of coffee while talking to a Peacekeeper standing next to the alcohol cabinet, for earlier Pierce sees the man trying to coax her away from the bourbon and rather towards the glasses of water, Porscha crossing her arms and sighing. Something about how without her father and her dance teacher - Pierce thinks she stands funny, but apparently she's always perched in second or third position - are no longer with her to try and monitor what she eats or consumes, Porscha Watanabe can have whatever she wants. She ends up still having water at Ayanna's persistence, Pierce getting some sort of sweet tasting drink that's called Pop.
He's not sure why it's capitalized, but perhaps it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. It's super sweet, though, stronger than he expects it to be, sending a dark brown spray of droplets onto a napkin that has Porscha turn her nose up at him. Every one is so judgmental, so he stares back. A Peacekeeper standing there chuckles too, Ayanna looking at the man before he turns away, Pierce thinking he recognizes the sound, but no, that wouldn't be true, his parents were needed elsewhere that morning, to cover up some sort of incident at the market. A girl, apparently, getting into a fight and-
"What happened in the market last night?" he asks, at the table, trying to remember where his hands should be while holding his fork, for he gets it wrong every time and Mr. Jacksons has to constantly keep it steady for him. "My parents said they couldn't say goodbye because they had to clean up some blood?"
Porscha chokes on her water then, needing to be excused, and when she excuses herself, she doesn't come back. Pierce raises an eyebrow at her, looks back at the puzzle, and then back at his chicken for Ayanna chides him once more. All the woman seems to know how to do is chide, and complain, but he supposes when someone's earrings look like hers, or have the lips she has, he'd be complaining too. Pierce sighs to himself, in the present, looking at the puzzle. The dolphin is a fast swimmer, a faster swimmer than he is as a runner, but it is all odd as to why the puzzle seems to be alive, as if it is flapping a flipper at him and laughing in the way they do. He's heard the noise before, saving it on a tape recorder when going down to the tiny marine biology lab just on the outskirts of the district. The trains are always running, scientists and socialites and businessmen coming and going, stopping for refueling in Six, and then staying... he always wants to see who shows up, but Mr. Jacksons and his parents don't let him out of the house that often anymore.
"They'll hate you for who we are," they both tell him one night while helping clean up after dinner.
"More than how they hate Datsun Watanabe?"
It is their response that always get him, to help put things in perspective, that has him rolling the syllables over his tongue, back and forth, back and forth, and back and forth while saliva builds underneath. "He built the machines, but we ran them. We used them. We- we have blood on our hands..."
Pierce looks down at his own hands, turning them over and over so he sees his palms, and then the right side up, and then his palms once more. "We have blood on our hands..." he whispers to himself, and then down at the puzzle, imagining if one single cardinal droplet were to slide off his pointer finger and splatter just onto the dolphin's eye.
Before all of this is over, he figures he'll be having more than just droplets slide off and splatter.
Diana Kratovska: District 4 Female P.O.V (17)
Faces. Many, many faces. Some of them troubled, a lot of them distraught, others with grins stretching from ear to ear. She looks at all of them, raising eyebrows when she sees the volunteers from One, Two, and Eight, for she can see the fight in the guys known as Catalus and Magnus, but the girl Poem with her dancing and skipping up to the stage has seventeen year-old Diana sit up with eyebrows raised, trying to hold back a laugh. Everyone knows what the Hunger Games are, even if no one truly knows, for the president goes live on the air and tells the entire nation what will be happening to their little darling children. That has Diana look at her district partner, Orion, someone she vaguely recognizes but not enough to really garner any sort of connection. She knows that refusing to shake his hand on stage after their escort, a grey haired elderly man with spectacles - not glasses, he corrects her, with a posh tone on his voice, she almost stabbing him in the arm with her salad fork - named Wyvern Sienna tells them to, but she doesn't feel like shaking his hand, not after the world plays its cruel jokes.
Diana looks back at the faces on screen, hers being one of them, her jaw set, gaze icy, with Orion's more at ease disposition making quite the odd dynamic on stage. District 1 looks odd, for she has no idea why someone would willingly volunteer, though Catalus Drachma doesn't look very happy for volunteering, while Magnus Winterthorn is all over it. The girls are rather dismal, but she finds it interesting to see Jasper Overheart tackled, or the fact that those in Five hug one another when she wouldn't even shake his - Orion's - hand. Diana picks underneath her fingernails, keeping her arms by her side, shivering under the air conditioning on the train, while Orion has his arms spread out wide, as well as his legs, she trying to not notice the rather sexual way he's laid out, but it doesn't seem to bother him.
Wyvern takes off his glasses - "Spectacles, Di," a tiny voice that is unlike her own, one full of sweetness while hers is bitter and sharp, filled to the brim with vitriol, corrects her - and rests them on the side table next to him, they sitting in a parlor car where all there is to occupy the space is the gray couch that stretches from end to end, the purple carpet to adorn it that reminds her of dishes filled with eggplant, and the dark tv monitor resting on the other side of the wall. There's a fireplace too, but it is left unlit, they all rather staring at it to see if fire would spring up from someone narrowing their eyes, but none of that happens and instead Diana is left freezing cold. She doesn't want to be the only one sitting there, but she'll take her losses when she can and find a way to win some other way.
Their escort turns to them, putting on a smile. She hates him. She hates the very idea of him, of someone who came from the rich city to try and educate the poor, though she's never been poor, and she could put an arrow or two through his eye before everything goes sour, she might. "Well, what do you think of your competition?"
Diana opens her mouth to respond, something sarcastic and snappy and witty, but Orion overrides her with a frown, she shutting her mouth closed to glare at him. "Competition?" there's a slight mystification on his voice, she feeling the way he most likely furrows his eyebrows together. "Why competition?"
"Because we're killing them, darling. Twenty-two of them," she tells him, careful to rest a hand on his outstretched arms. Orion frowns at her, moving his arms to his sides. Also, as she looks at him, the fact that he's bothered by the very concept of competition causes her to frown likewise. Didn't he volunteer for this? Would he not know that people would be dying? Only ingrates or those in denial, as she figures the girl from Eight to be like that, entirely in denial by the way she practically floats to the stage, not looking athletic or well built or kept together in the slightest, to actually know what she's diving into. Diana bites on the inside of her cheek, for she knows she just lied and said that twenty-two would die. Twenty-three people are to die if she wants to live, and Diana wants to live very much, and that means the death of the attractive blonde sitting next to her.
With a striking clarity that hits her like a thunderbolt to the forehead, she recognizes him as the person in front of her in the line to get checked in for the reaping. He's the one who jumps at his finger getting pricked, almost backing up into her while she waits for his turn. At first it is a daze inside her head, that she has to even be there, but her father forces her to go while moving his bandaged arm around, it still in a sling after the last mortar shell detonates and he's flung off the roof of a building in Four, the terrace being repainted and rebuilt after the destruction. He won't attend, but after her name is plucked out of the masses, an immense feeling of dread sinking into her ankles, her father tells her he ran out of the house, still partially undressed, to save his darling little girl.
"I don't need anyone to save me, Dad," she tells him, while he has a hand against the side of her cheek, the free one left to its own whims and desires. This conversation doesn't happen then, in the moment, in the room, but months prior, before the building explodes, when he's not rotting in the ground alongside her mother. Kate and Joshua Kratovska, leading District 4 one day at a time and-
Her father shushes her immediately, before the Peacekeepers kick the doors down, dragging him away to his fate, a single bullet lodged into his brain. "You are my daughter, and I will always feel the need to protect you..."
It is that reason why he puts the bow in her hand, for self defense. She's ten years old when he takes her down to the beach, by the palm trees and the slight salty breeze that rides the air is tangy on her tongue, with the bow firmly in her hand. Tensions in the district have not started to bubble over yet, and it almost feels peaceful and content in District 4's merry little life, with the high rise cliffs and the waves that smash into the shore, blonde hair blowing in the breeze, and her defiant attitude raised to an eleven. The arrows were self made from palm tree bark and branches, whittled down with a knife, one taken from his day job at shucking oysters, but they feel weird in her hands, she scared of getting blisters and splinters. Oh, if little ten year-old Diana Kratovska knew that splinters and blisters would be the least of her problems.
She didn't become comfortable with the bowstring and tugging the taut weapon back till she's around thirteen, but that is when she sees her mother take the deep dive into the world of rebel fighting, Diana looking as her mother wasted away into a pit of depression until the vice president goes on TV about a dead son and a pregnant wife and the world explodes... this is the chance she needs to go out and make a difference, and it is when Diana takes her bow and goes to the water to shoot. Not for practice, but for the killing. The first lesson Joshua teaches her, while correcting her on the form in holding the bow, is that she should not aim her arrows at anything living, for there'd be no reason she's ever brought to that point. Arrow after arrow shot into the water, she never understanding why they'd be wasting good arrows in such a meaningless exercise, until Diana sees her shots arcing farther than ever before, landing in the water farther and farther... and she feels the bulk within her.
Diana will not lose lying down, but standing up and bleeding from all the palm tree cuts and splinters, and if Orion Maythorpe, who volunteers for an unknown reason she is sure he'll tell her eventually, wants to live and take the crown from her, he could seize it from her dead, cold corpse.
Wyvern looks at Orion concernedly, dark eyes deepening into sadness while he leans forward some in his chair. "Son, were you not aware that people would be dying in this? That for you to live people will die instead of you?"
"Of course I did," Orion grumbles, crossing his arms.
"Then why does it bother you that we call them competition?" Diana asks, gesturing to the screen. He's a rebel, she gets the scent, after seeing her mother and father and those they'd interact with, but how can there be a rebel who is afraid of blood and against the idea of killing? Her best friends would love him, she snorts, and perhaps, if he's the one who lives, he'll get a chance to meet them. "I'd prefer we call them what they are. Sure, they have names, but at the end of the day, I won't lose a wink of sleep until they're gone and I'm alive."
Orion looks at her, his eyes glazed over, but she can sense the contempt boiling within him, shredding up his insides, but hers are tubes of steel, hard-lined and churned by the stormy waters. "I wonder if you'll keep the same tune the first time you draw blood."
"Yeah, I saw you flinch when the Peacekeepers pricked your finger," Diana smirks, crossing her arms as well. Life has dealt her an unfair hand, she the first to ever recognize that, but she has not sat down in the sand and let the tide take her away. She returns to the beach to continue firing arrows, to learn how to whittle a bow herself, while cooped up on her best friend, Bree Lourdes's couch, the girl painting anti-war signs, Diana throwing them away into the surf when the girl isn't looking. They aren't the friends she necessarily wants, but they're the friends she has, shouting about there being more compassion in the world and less violence, but Diana knows that is all a loud and clear load of crock. Violence is the only way anything can get done, for the Capitol wouldn't have taken the districts rebelling by simply bowing. "I'm sure you have your reasons for volunteering, but I was chosen to go, not because I wanted to. I'll do whatever I can to survive, Maythorpe."
She is not sure what hurts him most, insult wise, by the way he bristles, but the contempt in his eyes switches to something akin to respect, if that is at all possible, but Diana sees the way he moves, more upset by the comment about blood than the fact that she uses his last name. Wyvern sighs, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Listen, you two," and that draws both of their attention's back to him, he drawing up all the power in the room. "I am not going to sugarcoat things for you. My job, as well as those of the other eleven districts, are to prepare you for the Games and I will not be doing you any favors by lying, as I know some of my coworkers will feel like doing, to make some of the younger kids feel more at ease, but that'll only hurt them in the end," he looks at Orion a bit more pointedly, her district partner sitting up a bit more. "You will be killing people, for it is absolutely a kill or be killed situation here. President Israel and Vice President Passionia hate you and your kind, and they are not going to make it easy on anyone, so if you feel nervous about harming others, you might as well throw in the towel. Neither of you strike me as quitters, right?"
"No, I'm not," Diana says as confident as she can, lifting her head up, her blonde ponytail lightly ghosting over the back of the couch.
Orion chews on the inside of his cheek, rubbing thumbs underneath the balls of his ring fingers. "No," he adds, after a second, though she believes him even less than she believes her father when he tells her that she'll never have to use her arrows to harm a living creature, for Diana loves nothing more than finding a fish skewered on one end of the arrow if the surf brings it back. She's never struck at a human, that is true, but how much different can it be? Some of those kids, a vast majority actually, are all her age or a year older and she can see that Catalus Drachma from One rushing her, and it is down to her fight or flight response in whether or not she survives. There's zero chance in hell she's going to hesitate on sending an arrow through his cranium.
Wyvern doesn't look convinced at Orion's answer, and frankly, neither is Diana, but if he's all she has, she might as well make the best of it, given that he volunteers on his own free will instead of whatever boy could've gone with her, but he's strong, he's good looking, he could be useful. "I know that I can tell you all sorts of things and you might not listen to me," Diana frowns at that. Who would be stupid enough to not listen to the person hired to help her? "But I believe, right now, that you two should ally together," she sees Orion's lips just slightly curve downward in disapproval, but she keeps her own mouth shut. Let the problems flow free when there's four of them alive, and not the entire pack. "You both are good looking, seem fit, and Four luckily isn't hated by the Capitol," their escort reaches over to grab his spectacles off the table, holding the frames by his left hand. "You'd be surprised how many people there don't hate you just because you're tan and come from coastline. You might have a very easy shot at this, depending on what you let slip about your personal lives..." there's an edge to that sentence however, devoid of the warmth that comes from him, and yet again, another sharp glance in Orion's direction.
Diana leans back on the couch, pushing her ponytail up even further. There's no need for a debate or hesitation on anyone's part, he's useful, and she wants to have the best leg up that she can. "Sure," she says, without another second to delay or let seeds of doubt burrow into his brain. "You down for it, Orion? Allies?" She holds out her hand to him this time, hoping, praying, pleading that he turns into a smart person and shakes back, or otherwise all of this is lost and for naught. No need to beat around the bush.
Orion looks at her, sea blue eyes like the rolling waves, and he accepts her hand, shaking it. "Allies."
Wyvern looks rather pleased with himself by the way he falls back into the couch, keeping a little grin on his face, but Diana keeps her grip firm on Orion's hand, pressing her thumb into the pressure point just slightly, but to his credit, Orion doesn't flinch nor break his gaze, it rather steels itself back at her while she looks at him as pointedly as she can. "My alliance, my show, my rules," she tells him with her eyes, hoping it comes clear.
Though she wouldn't be against it, someone as handsome and fair as he is doesn't deserve to die at the hands of someone he knows from home, for Diana would do it without a second thought, all because of what her father tells her on the sandy white beach, blonde hair blown everywhere, the waves gently tickling her toes and washing over her heels.
"When you aim, you shoot to kill," he tells her.
Diana lets the arrow fly.
Gemini Lennox: District 9 Male P.O.V (17)
There is not enough alcohol on this train to drown out the negative thoughts, whilst he watches the sun sink beneath the horizon in bands of cerulean blue, fluorescent hot pink, and sharp vermillion. Positive thoughts however overlap one another, chatter hitting him in the head and on the back of the skull, vibrating up and around to his brow. He's in pain too, but if he doesn't think about it, then the pain doesn't exist. He's already cried, though someone's said not to cry for it'd stain his pretty face, he baring his canines at them though they're hardly anything remarkable, feeling the cold District 9 air whistle around his shoulder blades, all while he tries to keep himself upright. The drip has left him, there being no more medication coming in from the makeshift field hospitals, they all burnt and blown away to ash, sand dunes made from corpses, Gemini finding that to be an amazing color to duplicate in his art, but the sand dunes have been weathered away before he is even able to do something with them.
The world is not in black and white, he always hating that expression, but in monochrome colors, and burnt sienna, and hot orange that smooths out crippled, rough edges around the outer end of a grisly gray picture frame, it eaten away by a moss caterpillar trying to survive on rot wood and sunlight. He'd paint it all if he had a brush with him, there seemingly not being any art supplies on the train, their Capitol escort Clair Rosenbaum, a woman who walks around in high heels that are way too gigantic for her, inches off the ground where her head seemingly brushes against the ceiling disappearing into some compartment that looks like a gym - they have exercise equipment but not an easel and a palette and paint on a train? - for the rest of the night after dinner, leaving him to the world's devices.
Gemini finds himself lying on his bed, one hand curled into a fist just resting at his sternum, feeling the thrum of his heartbeat beneath his fingers, a quivering pulse with the faint flap of a hummingbird's wings. Sitting around is boring, and only prepping him for the inevitable doom. There is something useful he could do, but that's right, as he closes his eyes, hearing the fist hit the wall above his head time and time again, or the angry male voice that tells him he's useless and worthless and never amounting to anything, there never is something for him to do when the paints are taken away, and the drip slows. His mother's coughs no longer rattle the shingles of their dilapidated home, and he might not ever see her again, which is why he cries so much, for it is only his father who comes to visit him, a hand holding him close by forcing his neck forward. He doesn't even say anything, just the look that he's seen a thousand and one times of 'don't mess this up,' and then he's gone, Gemini feeling his heartbeat.
That is how the negative thoughts start, but he knows better than letting them fester without at least coating them in a wash of vodka. Straight, it has to be straight, so the burn in his throat dissolves whatever pain lingers behind after the slaps or the needle insertions. He rolls a thumb over one of the last scabs, before the morphine is taken away, he having painted over it in a pink splotch, because more people feel liable to ask about the pink dot on his arm rather than the puncture hole. There's a mirror above his bed, which has him sit up in alarm the first time he lays eyes on it, given he's never seen himself in that manner, his caramel colored skin glowing a ochre amber with the sunlight peeking through the curtains, though that is slowly starting to dip away behind the tree line. They're going through District Four's long coast, there being another train near them on another track, but he forgets which one it is that Clair tells him about.
He finds the vodka easy enough, but he's not about to drink the entire bottle by himself. It is late now, it starting to dip into the double digits in terms of time, he seeing it say 11:15 PM on the clock that rests in the dining car where he grabs the bottle. A few of the doors are locked, he trying them on, they being the avox quarters and the Peacekeeper quarters, as well as Clair's room, but that won't stop him from at least venturing forth and seeing where he can find some company. The one awake Peacekeeper, who he nearly bumps into in the dark while Gemini is in the parlor car that they watched the reapings in. He takes note of how his district partner, the gorgeous girl that is Camilla Rodriguez is a shaking leaf on stage despite her best efforts, and he's too lost in the shaw of shock to make a competent first impression after they shake hands, for he sees himself on screen look at her as if he's just witnessed paranormal activity.
Part of it is true, that this must've been a divine moment to snatch him away and out of the hands of his family, as dysfunctional as they might be, but also for he's never seen someone so pretty. Someone's called him pretty before, and though he doesn't swing Camilla's way all the time, he looks over at her as if she had stepped out of painting. To give her a halcyon background, drop a line of blue across her forehead as the navy streaks fall down on her tanned face, and weave lines of purple ivy through her long locks of hair... it is as if she comes alive for him. He smiles to himself, sitting up again on his bed, when he goes looking for the drinks. She's not in her bedroom, which is the first place he checks, that causing him to raise an eyebrow. He remembers the little kid in the reaping section that he is in, just a few pens back, crying out for her, Gemini believing him to be her brother, but he doesn't volunteer for him when Gemini is reaped, not that he would've let the guy do it anyways.
He finds himself going to the veranda car, there being a brochure list that he grabs when entering the train the first time all those hours ago, though it feels like eons have passed by in his life since then for it. A horrible job in its design, Gemini has to admit while flipping it over back and forth, seeing a terribly made up sun smiling back at him with, in a crimson cursive font Panem's Railways, and something about people taking new avenues in reaching different destinations. He almost crumbles it up until he flips to the first page that has the list of cars and a mini description of it, eyebrows piquing up when he sees that there is his and Camilla's room listed, their names being in italics. Does that mean every train going to pick up the other eleven districts are different? Possibly, he figures, though that isn't really a question he needs to ask an official or anything.
Gemini steps into the veranda car, it being lowly lit by swinging lanterns hanging from the ceiling, it an exposed glass ceiling with the night's dark shadows settling onto the carpet, it soft and a muted green, it looking more navy underneath the deep black sky. The door closes shut behind him with a swish, it causing the other occupant of the car to turn around, they sitting at the far end of the leather sofa, knees tucked underneath the rest of their body. Camilla's eyes flash in the darkness, Gemini smiling and holding up the vodka bottle and the two glasses in his other hand. She simply nods, turning back around. It is the back of the train, Gemini feeling the weird push forces trying to blow him back in the direction of the front of the train, the world moving fast, dark woods spinning counter clockwise through the walls.
It is quiet, there only being the faint, very faint hum of the train going over the tracks, wheels clanking and clattering on the steel beams keeping them from going off the rails. There is also the sound of his feet on the carpet, though Gemini is barefoot, liking the way the cold air nips at his exposed toes, he unable to see where his leg starts and ends, given he's wearing dark pants in the shadows. There are a few potted plants that he walks by, a gorgeous hydrangea, and one poinsettia, perhaps a very awkward color clash. He has a plant at home too, a failing rosebush, his mother liking the roses for the thorns as she pricks herself, and the copper fluid runs free and his father screams at him because he had been out by the lake painting and not making sure his mother didn't injure herself and the drip drips and-
"Gemini?" Camilla's concerned voice breaks through the bleak, he jarring out of the memory, having started to sway, his eyes focused on the poinsettia. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine," he blinks through the gray waves that decide to start scattering across his eyes, he pressing the cool glasses against the pink spot on his arm, over the scab mark. Morphine is a liquid that he'd drink if at all possible, but President Israel puts an embargo, or a very limited one on it at the very least on the districts, for the Capitol needs it more than they do to cover their injuries. "Their injuries?" Gemini recalls scoffing to his bedridden mother, she too feeble to even nod her head. "They have scrapes and bruises, we have amputees. We're bleeding out of our eye sockets and..." he works himself into an agitated frenzy, and his father is upset again, but he goes to his happy place by the lake, listening to the crickets and the cicadas, one landing on his easel. Gemini clears his throat, stepping as far away from the plant as he can. "I was just mesmerized by the color in the dark," he sits down on the couch, Camilla scooting over to make room for him, though there is already plenty of it to begin with. He sets the glasses down on the small coffee table just a bit away from the couch, but he holds onto the vodka bottle. He looks over at his district partner, unable to fully see her hair, but her eyes seem to luminate in the dark. Eyes of a pit viper. "Are you okay?"
"Yes," Camilla says, rather abruptly. Quickly. He quirks an eyebrow, an amber light swinging above their heads, the light dancing across his forehead, exposing his facial expression. His eyesight is better in the dark than hers he suspects, but Camilla's lips quiver some, and her eyebrows turn downcast. "No," she runs a finger along the top part of the couch. "You couldn't sleep?"
"I never sleep," Gemini chuckles darkly, before handing her a glass, while still holding onto the vodka bottle. "Everyone else was asleep and I figured that there wouldn't be anyone to stop me from trying something new," he hoists the bottle in the air, it sloshing about, clear liquid, almost like tears, in the glass prism. "I was friendly enough and got two glasses," he uncorks the bottle, letting the cap slide off somewhere. He expects that they'll go through the entire thing in just an hour give or take, for that's his specialty, now that the morphine is gone and his supplier at the hospital is legally unable to give him any lest they wish to be whipped in the town square. "You drink?"
"When I have to."
"You're gonna want to, I bet," and he pours her a glass first, filling his up. He sets the bottle down, nods the glass towards her in a toast, before tilting it back and down his throat. Fiery lacerations to the esophagus, exactly what the doctor ordered. Camilla looks at the shot glass in her hands, running it back and forth as if she were modeling clay, before shrugging her shoulders and taking it back too, though hers doesn't seem to go down as smoothly by the way she hacks, hitting her chest. Gemini feels awful for laughing, but he still does, giggling wildly before filling his up next. "Only down it if you're an expert!"
"I swore someone told me that vodka isn't sipped though..."
"Again, experts," he smirks at her.
Camilla smiles back, faintly, pearly whites through the foggy dark, before setting her glass down, it empty, as Gemini takes his next one fully. His father wouldn't let him have alcohol in the house, for the fumes would give his mother a headache, and if it is a rule from Mr. Dirksen Lennox did not leave an untidy house... but is willing to let their bodies- he stops the thought, biting down on his tongue, spilling vodka all over himself when he pours his third shot glass. Camilla pauses, starting to run a finger around the rim of the glass. "You have that look in your eyes again," she tells him.
"What look?"
"The look of loss," her voice is floaty, on air, as if it almost doesn't exist, as if she never had spoken in the first place. "Like you lost something you can't get back," Then, a more belabored pause, her shoulders rising and falling. "Is that why you drink?"
"More or less," Gemini says, resting his elbow on the outer rim of the couch. "Morphine would be preferred but... yes, I've lost someone. More than one. You?"
Camilla nods back silently, a tranquility settling over the veranda car. "I've lost a lot, and I'm about to lose more, especially when we get there."
"There has a name," he tells her, pointedly, tipping the glass forward. Dirksen Lennox never minced his words, always the harsh truth, the vile truth. "The Capitol."
"When we get to the Capitol," Camilla repeats her statement, and he sees her painting bloom in color, washing out the darkness in a tide of bright blue and roaring oranges, her hair the color of liquid sunlight, her eyes blooming with the ire of a thousand suns, lighting bolts erupting and crackling from her gums as she speaks. "The Capitol, the one place I always used to want to see, and now the only place where I don't want to be."
Gemini doesn't know what to say to that, truthfully, while the train bumps over a rough spot, vibrating her glass on the table, as he goes for the bottle. He fills up his fourth shot, shirt damp and starting to smell of vodka as it rises to kill the hydrangeas sitting on those tables. Camilla looks at him while the drizzle noise of poured liquid fills the silence, he looking at her, lips tugging up in a smirk. Her eyes, he decides resolutely, are diamonds, despite not being blue, but they will be, azure and filled with cerulean irises, pupils of the darkest coal. He holds the drink out to her, tipping it while nodding his head.
Another shot, another shot, another shot.
And the train rolls on and on under the gossip of the blackbirds and ravens flying above.
The Capitol soon awaits.
Alrighty, ladies and gentlemen, that was Chapter #10: Gossip of Blackbirds and Ravens, the fifth out of six intro chapters for the tribute introductions. We have met Cecelia Blackstone (D1F by A Proud Bibliophile), Pierce Alversway (D6M by Merlin's Brown Jacket), Diana Kratovska (D4F by Firedawn'd), and Gemini Lennox (D9M by Apple1230). We had a lot of cameos this time around, getting more chess pieces on the board with escort names and watching reapings and all, and things are drawing tighter and tighter until we reach the Capitol two chapters from now. I had a really fun time writing this, and once again though I swore I wouldn't try to, I wrote three POVs today with Cecelia's done last night, this update almost getting pushed back to Sunday given the power and Wi-Fi went out late last night shortly after finishing Cecelia, but here we are!
As always, reviews and feedback will be greatly appreciated, now that we're soon to be in the Pre-Games parts that throws everyone off their game, and I am hoping to really reach the bloodbath, which I have set as Chapter 21, by Halloween, which is literally three months from now, or, numerically, about twelve updates. Our next chapter, #11: Entrance to the Promised Land, will introduce us to the last four tributes that have not had a pov yet, they being Calen Kinegrove (D10M by silversshade), Kai'sa Shadow (D12F by SetFiresJust2WatchThemBurn), Sylvan Adello (D7M by In Writing), and Vesuvia Vocanova (D3F by Platrium). It's a great group that you don't want to miss. Chapter 11 will also have a bonus Capitol POV from Head Peacekeeper Lydia Wickervein. If you are at all familiar with how I ran my first two SYOTS: Sheep Led to Slaughter + Bombs and Bullets, I had chapters alternating full of tribute POVs or of the Capitol OCs that are mainly all met via the prologues. This time around, the Capitol storyline, while still very important, will run along the tribute POVs, where occasionally there'll be a Capitol pov that starts or ends the chapter, with the tributes too, rather than single chapters or larger chapters focused on the Capitol, cause I want to focus on this amazing tribute cast too. Just a heads up, it is five POVs next chapter, not four, so expect a slightly larger update, though 10k+ intros for every tribute intro chapter is still insanity.
I love you all so very much, and I hope you have an amazing day! Which tribute is your favorite; I'm dying to know. Be safe and as always, stay awesome. Love you all! Bye!
~ Paradigm