"Burn it down to feel its warmth"

A/N: Monotony is the greatest enemy of an SYOT writer doing a dozen intros, so I'm getting experimental with my writing style to keep things fresh for myself as well as all of you.

Warning: Chronic abuse is detailed in both of these characters, particularly Nikola. This is rated T, and I don't go into explicit detail, but things are fairly vividly alluded to that might make many of you uncomfortable. If you find yourself unable to read Nikola's POV, don't feel any pressure to force yourself to do so. You can skip it, and PM me for a summary if you want one. If you want a more specific idea of what his POV entails before reading, you can PM me about that as well.

~The cycle repeated

As explosions broke in the sky

All that I needed

Was the one thing I couldn't find~

River, ~14
Some Months ago.

The woods were silent. Wind rustled against the trees, branches rocking back and forth as leaves blew across the forest floor. In the midst of the foliage, a young girl stood still, crouched, mud painted across her cheeks, while dirt caked her once blonde hair. Hazel eyes darted across the forest, leaping from one section to the next, while her face remained like a statue. Even the air she breathed in seemed to do so without notice, only the soft expansion and compression of her chest giving proof to her life.

Her fingers slid deftly against the string of her bow. She watched the elk lower its head in the distance, and envisioned an arrow in her quiver. She pictured the soft touch of feather as she pulled the arrow, the thin string tightening at her control. The elk turned towards her, large, hazel eyes just like her own meeting with her. Their heartbeats pounded in a fierce unison for a single moment, the elk's ears lifting up in an emotion the girl was unable to understand.

The string loosened in her grip, her finger soundlessly gliding off the bow and hanging in the brisk fall air. The elk looked away, slowly trotting away from the clearing as it followed the promise of larger, greener patches of grass. The girl felt her hand tighten around the wood of her bow, and soon averted her own eyes from the large animal as it escaped through the thick foliage.

She took her lone arrow from her bag, rubbing her fingers across the rough exterior as extrusions of wood thinly pierced her hands. She tapped her finger against the arrowhead, imagining the black tip flying through the air, the sound that it would make when it sunk into its target.

A breeze brushed against the girl, and she snapped the arrow asunder. She didn't look where the pieces ended up when she tossed them into the nearby bushes. The girl wiped away the water near her eyes. Dirt was left in its place, and some of that soft earth shook off of her as she stepped out of the bushes.

Even now she was sure to leave no trace, every step coming with careful consideration. There could be no sound as her bare feet stepped on damp earth, no imprint left to track, not even a branch bent out of shape. She didn't live within the forest, but rather on top of it, a phantom that borrowed only what it needed, and did so without noise. There was no coexistence, or mutually beneficial systems in place. She scraped just enough off of the sides that there could be no notice of what she had taken, and wanted no more than that. That was her rule.

But wants can't be contained so easily. The girl wasted little time in finding The River. It was nothing extraordinary to look at, just a thin runway of water, split into two different branches that ran across the land that their people had settled. Stepping beyond The River was seen as incomprehensible, an insult to the gods that would result in damnation for all people in the forest. Even submerging oneself into the water was seen as sacrilege, asking the gods to curse you for being egotistical enough to believe yourself worthy of the honor.

The girl didn't dare step into the water, she didn't even like to touch it. Yet she found comfort in looking at it. She sat in the woods, her back lodged against a tree near a small pile of stones, and she would skip stones, watching them become one with The River as they were enveloped into the deep waters. She was born of The River, and she liked to imagine that she still belonged to it in some way, that it were still as much a part of her as it had been the day she was found. Anything to give herself some greater purpose.

She wondered if any part of her was aware of what was going on when she was found. Sure, she was only a baby, seemingly unable to comprehend anything of the world outside of the basket that kept her afloat, rocked her softly so that it made her eyes tired. Yet still, something that monumental, something so strange and out of place and lacking belonging in the neat, compact place that Oikos was, how could even a newborn see that as normal. Did she cry out louder, knowing that she was fated to always be an outcast, motherless? Maybe she didn't cry at all. The girl thought about that day a lot, creating memories where her mind held not even a fragment, and she had a picture that she had become most fond of by then.

The River would have been calm, the sky clear, but not so sunny that one had to shield their eyes with every step out of the shadows. The basket would drift down the river soothingly, barely moving at all, and she was silent, her eyes painted on the blue sky above her, her arms stretching out as if to grasp it and pull it close to her chest. A child would notice the basket, and would step closer to the water to see it for themself. When they saw there was a baby inside, they would run to the village, and before long Wanderer would come running, by himself, and would wade through the water to bring her to shore. More of the villagers would arrive, and they would all crowd around to see the child whom The River had gifted to them. They would give her a name. She was The River's Daughter.

This was all a fabrication. It came rooted just enough in truth that she could turn off the parts of her brain that would protest, and she could pretend that it might have been reality. She would do this while she sat on the forest floor, and looked up at that same blue sky that she imagined, and let names ring through her head that they would give to her. None of it was true though, and the girl knew that well enough that those thoughts would never take too firm a hold before she found herself snapped out of it. Perhaps she would come back to reality when she felt a chilly breeze on her arms, or when a cloud would glide across the sky and obscure that great blue void. It didn't matter how, it always happened.

The day had been cold, dreary, and rainy, with a heavy overcast that left the sky a dirty blend of grey and black, dotted with blue drops of rain. It was a warrior who first saw her, and he did go and get the elders, but only after throwing his spear at the basket first, the tip crafting a scratch into the side of the basket. Wanderer was there, but so was Big Hunter and one of his sons who had yet to earn his name. She thinks he's named Healer now, but she isn't sure. It was Big Hunter who had waded through the water to retrieve her, dragged her to the shore, and after a brief debate, condemned her as motherless, and left Wanderer to raise her as an outcast.

This too was a fabrication. But all stories are, in one way or another, and it was in this story that the girl had found her deepest, most honest belief in. It contained whispers of reality, shadows of truth that became fainter and more weightless with each time it was retold, first from Wanderer and then by herself in her own private thoughts. Before long it would be no more truthful than her dreams, yet it would always feel much more real.

There was a rustling in the bushes behind her. She heard two sets of feet behind her, but didn't turn to see them with her own eyes. If she looked at them they would run, and leave her alone. Even if she couldn't see them, or speak to them, the presence of another person was something she was so deprived of she would take it in any dose she could. The footsteps weren't breaking off towards the forest, though, or moving towards a distant part of The River, a basket of clothes to be washed. They neared closer to her.

She risked a look when she heard the steps turn into running. "Get her!" She heard. The voice was a boyish one she could vaguely recognize. She spun around in time to catch a glance of the two boys, and recognized them instantly from the village. They were sons of the elders, not much older than herself, prominent enough to already have a name, even before adulthood. They were Starlight and Seeker.

This was all that her mind could process before the two boys grabbed onto her, pushing her forward and thrusting her into The River. There was no time for any sound to escape as her face was dunked into the water. Bubbles rushed up around her eyes, clouding her vision as she opened her mouth to scream. Waves swirled around her as she thrashed with her arms and legs, kicking and punching and clawing at the four arms that attempted to keep her submerged.

She was able to slip through their grip just enough to lift her head into air, her vision still a watery swirl as she gasped in half a breath, water entering her mouth as she was dunked back under before her breath was completed. She choked on the breath, could feel herself growing weary as she hacked away under the water, everything varnished with a gargled veneer, water filling her eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and every waking thought that still shot through her panicked mind.

Through that watery prison that occupied every one of her senses, she heard someone yelling in the distance. The grips on her back laxed just enough that she was able to bring herself back above water. This time she was left unattended as she gasped in air. She flopped onto her back and slashed away from the two boys, deeper into The River. The two boys were no longer paying mind to her, though, their focus on the woman in the distance who continued to shout their names.

"You damn boys stay away from that child! Don't you touch that motherless curse!" The boys exchanged a sheepish look, as if caught stealing away dessert before clearing the rest of their plate. The two hurried towards the woods with their heads down, the woman following them the whole while, chastising them, going on about their stupidity for even being near her, much less letting her touch them.

The girl was only vaguely aware of this. She still sat in The River, only the top of her neck reaching above the now-calm surface. Her breath was still ragged, water dripping from her mouth as she choked out liquid that had trailed down her throat. She had just enough sense to wade towards the shore, crawling onto the solid ground when her knees touched the dirt floor.

Her arms ached, but she refused to let them give way, her limbs shaking like jelly as they struggled to keep her stable, as her body shuddered with strained breaths. Her chest threw forward and inward with each moment, while water still dripped from her tattered clothes and tangled hair, ran down her face so that she was unsure whether or not she was crying. A damp coldness took over her, and she was unable to tell apart the shivering from the shuddering, and momentarily couldn't decide if it were even cold.

There were no thoughts that she could cling to. Her mind was a scattered pattering of thoughts and sensations, muddled by paranoia and buried fear. She wondered for a moment if she were dying, when even after what felt like minutes she found herself barely able to haul in a shaky breath, her arms and knees slick as they slid against the dirt, tempting her to just fall to the ground.

By the time she could focus enough to grasp at a thought, she held onto it tightly. She knew those boys, she had seen them with the other kids in the village. They had always seemed so kind. When another of the children, a girl of about the same oldness as herself, had been yelled at and hit by her father, the boys had chased after her into the forest. They had said soothing words to her, sat with her and told her it was all going to be okay. She had watched from not far away when that had happened, and imagined that those words were being directed towards herself instead.

If she could just understand. Pain swelled from all around her, from the cold and the dampness and her tightened throat and aching arms and reddened back where they had dug their nails into her as they tried to shove her further down into the water. But those were pains she could understand, pains that she could make sense of and relate to. She had been scratched and bruised. She had spent nights freezing cold, drenched in rain. She had even known the panic of breathing in water, and felt the hoarseness in her throat afterwards as she huddled beside the water. It wasn't the pains that she understood that hurt her.

They had seemed so nice. She had never said a word to them, and they had never said any to her, at least none that she had heard. Deep down she knew that they all spoke of her, that mothers tucked their children in at night with scary stories of the motherless child of The River. They all hated her, and no matter how much she tried, no matter how many times Wanderer had explained their fears, she could never understand. The words were there, the explanations all memorized and repeated over and over again, but together those words were just that: words. How could words ever explain something so far beyond what can be spoken?

She longed for something more. For a mother to be with her now, to hug her close and brush a hand through her hair, whisper soothing words into her ears. It didn't matter what the words themselves were, it was just the voice, the presence, that mattered. A voice could warm her now much more than any flames could hope to. But there was no voice. How was it she could long so desperately for something that she had never had? Something she had never known and had to lose?

Maybe she had known it once. Maybe that baby that silently floated down the waters in a basket didn't cry, not because of a blue sky or easy waters, but because of a voice which was still recent enough to not have disappeared totally into the past. Maybe that voice was already fading by then, only a fabrication. But that would have been enough. Even knowing that voice existed would have been enough, that it had whispered sweet words into her ear, before she had sailed down The River, further and further away, until even that fabrication faded away and left nothing, not even dust.

She didn't know for certain. Couldn't know. Never would. She would never know if a voice had whispered soft words to her before placing her in that basket. She would never see that baby's eyes, and see whether or not tears stained her cheeks on that day. The sky would always be alternating between storm and calm, the people who had discovered her a constantly changing, shadowy recreation. Fabrications were as uncertain as they were ever-changing, deteriorating in some ways and added to in others.

That fabrication was wholly her own, and in the cold, the girl reached out for some form of warmth in that ever-changing picture that she had created. She needed something, a burning, raging fire that could keep her from freezing, as her limbs threatened to buckle, yet refused to allow herself to fall to the dirt. She couldn't envision a face, or a body. But a voice was distant, just pliable enough to stitch together. Plausibly hazy enough, distorted so that nothing specific remained, not even a tone or a sound, so all that remained of this created memory was a feeling. A warm, caring voice, soft with regret as her child sailed down a river that was at the same time calm and fierce. She pictured a name passing through that voice's lips as that child faded away, far enough into the distance that the movement of the waters could have been a distant child crying.

Nikola Surge, 17
1 Day ago.

The match struck, a flicker of flame illuminating the dim room as he held the match up to his mouth, lighting the tip of the musky cigarette. He inhaled, closing his eyes as the smoke filtered through his lungs. The smoke held there for a long moment, tightening in his chest before he was forced to exhale, wisps of smoke snaking through his pursed lips. The lone window in the room let in just enough of the evening light for his narrowed eyes to make out his surroundings, and so he pressed his fingers to the match, the flame snuffing out under his skin. The room brightened the slightest bit every time he inhaled from the cigarette, though he preferred his eyes to be closed while he took in the smoke.

His skin cooled, fatigue and nervous energy that existed in strange coexistence both ceasing to exist as he entered into a state of simpler being. His thoughts seemed to seep out of his mind, and if he wished to ponder something he got the feeling it would need to be said out loud. The feeling was gratifying. Peace was so rarely found in his days. There was always some desire or another guiltily assailing his consciousness.

The day had gone by relatively like any other. He had spent the previous night sleepless, tangled in sheets with Solario for part of the night, but spending most of it in his own bed, restless. Morning had gone by as most do after a sleepless night, slowly and drearily, but without much consequence. The work day was much the same, it all blurred together for him at this point, so that he only remembered pieces of it. Not even necessarily the important bits, he wasn't sure there was anything that had happened that fit that description.

He remembered tidbits of conversation with Gaia. Sweet woman she was, really thinking that she's just an HR worker at a machinery manufacturer. Best that she didn't learn any more about the business.

They had exchanged light-hearted complaints about the dismal state of the coffee. He was charming as always, didn't even blink when she joked that he should use his sway with Mr. Surge to get some better tasting morning brew. Such comments were like private jokes, unfunny ones that only reminded him of his own sick, twisted disgust with himself. When he laughed and said he'd put in a word, he envisioned the request being made in a whispered voice through tangled, stained bed-sheets. It could almost be funny, but it wasn't anything more than ironic. He was on the knowing side of some perverse inside joke that he found no amusement in.

He took another drag, the smoke pushing those thoughts out of his head as he reached for his paintbrush, examining the blank canvas that was in front of him. Assorted colors awaited the touch of the brush, longed to be transferred onto the white space, but the yellows and blues and greens remained dry and ignored. He dipped his brush into the grey, and painted with an absence of thought.

Trivial tidbits demanded his focus, small pulls from conversation and news broadcasts. Parents executed for hiding their daughter from the registry and shielding her from the reapings. A group of free expression radicals discovered hiding out in an abandoned power plant, their ancient books all burnt at a massive fire. An independent village existing just outside of District Five's borders discovered, the adult population slaughtered and the few children seen as not yet indoctrinated brought into the district.

That one stuck with him in particular, the images on the television of the dozen feral kids looking at the urban landscape with wide eyes. He wondered how long it would take for most of them to end up trafficked through his father's business. Uneducated, nonvocal kids with no family to go to, no place to call home, no skills to find legitimate work? The lucky ones would be muling drugs by the end of the calendar year. The more stubborn ones would find less desirable work being demanded of them soon after. Life in District Five was unkind to those without family to shield them.

His brush painted a harsh stroke across the center of the canvas, and he set down the brush for a moment, cracking his knuckles as he took a step away from the painting. It was just a few strokes, dashes and lines that all formed a familiar pattern. He could feel a phantom hand trace the scars along his chest as his eyes traveled along the path. He picked up his brush again, and sloppily worked on covering up the pattern that brought forth sensations that he hated himself for desiring.

He could taste whisky on his breath as he took a long drag from the cigarette that continued to burn in his free hand. Fresh red marks from the previous night burned along his back as he was reminded of their existence. Even now cold hands roughly grasped his sweaty skin, greedy, unwanted hands that he had long ago stopped fighting against. It disgusted him to wonder why he had given up, because truthfully he wasn't certain.

What he felt was beyond words. It was tantalizing at times, and more often disgusting, and nearly always inevitable and hopeless, above fighting back against. There were feelings there of some sort, as much as he despised the thought, but what they were he couldn't know.

It wasn't love.

Love was an almost foreign concept to him at this point, an abstraction that was purposefully opaque. Love was something simpler. Love was Nikola, at six years old, sitting on his mother's lap while she knitted a sweater for him, telling him a story that had escaped his memory long ago. It was a good story, though, that he was certain of. He remembered asking her why she bothered knitting a sweater, even when it took her hours upon hours, and made her fingers swell and ache, when she could just buy one at the store instead.

He remembered the way she had stopped knitting, looking down at him with a smile that somehow managed to say so much. That smile was what he envisioned when he heard the word love. A mother, amused that her son couldn't understand why she would want to do something for him, telling him that she wanted to knit a special sweater, for her special boy. He couldn't remember how he had reacted to that, what he had said, or how he had felt, if he had stuck out his tongue and squeezed his way out of her grip, ducking away from any affection like kids always do, before that flame is suddenly extinguished, and you find yourself yearning something so simple.

The way it made him feel now was still with him, though. He had to set his brush down for a second time in order to avoid becoming emotional over that sole memory that could still bring out that long-buried part of him. He sucked on the cigarette, focusing on the feeling of the smoke as it rippled against the ridges of his mouth, and slid down his throat.

He exchanged his brush for a thicker one. He would paint in broader strokes, specifics and intricacies always lead him down the same beaten path. The rest of that story would always end the same way, and he preferred to keep that moment as it was, his mother frozen in time before she was lost to it. That story would always then lead to those feelings so unlike love. He was ten years old that first time, and emotions were so much simpler at that time. There was pain, echoed by the sounds of his own screaming, and fear and betrayal and afterwards a burning hatred that smoldered over time. As much as his own emotions became clouded, that lust in his father's eyes always remained the same. No matter how much Solario spoke of love, that other L-word would always be dominant.

The painting was all grey, and Nikola dipped his brush in water, washing it anew as he began to bring other colors onto the canvas. But still no yellows, no blues and greens and oranges. Never those.

He skipped forward.

There were innocent enough thoughts that he could linger to. He could trail back to the trivial ones, though those never satisfied him for long while he thought in solitude, and he always would find a path back to those darker thoughts. There was enough to satisfy his muse in his other place of conflicted emotion. Dynamo Arden, did he still even remember Nikola's name?

That was a stupid thought, of course he did, the two still spoke every once in a while. The two had been friends, in some ways still were. Nikola was unsure whether friendship was something he was able to reciprocate anymore. For as much as he could ponder back on love and friendship and hatred, he found it increasingly harder for such strong emotions to dominate over him anymore. He only had his mask, his charming persona he wore, and his more self-serving aspirations and drives beneath it, the ones that reveled in others' sorrows.

Long ago, though, Nikola could have admitted to himself that he liked Dynamo. Perhaps he still did, but what did that matter if he couldn't even admit that to himself, in his most private and intimate frames of existence. It wouldn't matter, anyways. He belonged to Solario. It didn't matter that Dynamo reminded him of his mother, sweetness and kindness not out of reason but out of feeling, of love.

No, thinking about Dynamo Arden wasn't worth anything. Just as fruitless as mindless trivia, nearly as painful as farther back memories. He would skip further forward. To something that wasn't tainted by shame, or pain, or disgust, even if it ought to.

Another drag, another cleaning of the palate, back to the familiar grey. His cigarette was beginning to burn to its end by now. He wouldn't continue to paint without a smoke, that tended to defeat the purpose of the whole thing, whatever it was. He wasn't quite sure himself what the purpose of these sessions were. Maybe it was just a way to block out an hour of his time he would otherwise have to spend wandering the halls of his house that Solario still stalked through. Maybe it was more. If there was a deeper purpose, he couldn't say what it was.

His work was what he focused on now. On normal days it would be all he would think on, but today there was little to focus on. Still though, he always had ways to think about the family business, how to run it more smoothly, precisely, even expand it. Vice was a sector that could always be expanded. Lust and addiction were never satisfied.

He liked to imagine himself in that position that Solario now stood in. In power, the lives of others fully within his grasp. Already he had a taste of that power, the rush he got knowing he held complete control over another living being. He could be merciful, have them smuggle drugs, or even more kindly, have them recruit vulnerable others. Or he could force them into the worst that their business dealt in. The scars that were left on his chest were nothing compared to what would be done to them. That power was his to hold, and his only.

The flames at the end of the cigarette began to burn his finger as he gripped onto it, and so he set down his brush, and looked at what was in front of him. His scars were still familiar, painted across a mirror set of bodies, just recently carved in by a bloodied knife that was in the hands of one of the figures.

He swatted the canvas off of the stand. There would be no purpose making sense of these paintings. Whatever they had to say, it was nothing that could benefit him. He was making his way in the world, his own way, and his way was what he knew well. That power was always within his grasp, and satisfied his cravings in a much more substantial way than smoke in his lungs or paint on a canvas ever could.

The cigarette now seared his fingertips, and he was forced to drop it. He watched as it fell onto the painting, the flame looking like it was beginning to catch for a split-second, before dimming and eventually fading away, a thin line of grey smoke rising up from the image. Nikola stood near the painting for a moment, catching the taste of smoke on his tongue and letting it linger there, so that it stayed with him, even after the smoke gave way to a timid smoldering.

A/N: This really felt like a gargantuan task of a chapter to tackle. Both of these characters have such complex issues and internal dialogues, and I hope I was able to capture them in all of their many states of being. I know this was a much less action-packed chapter, but I enjoyed getting to try something a bit different than my normal style of writing for once, and I think these two served well to try this out with. Expect to see much more doing in our coming 3 chapters. (and speaking more broadly, these two are going to be seeing a lot of interaction in the coming pre-games, which is part of the reason why I wanted to focus more internally, while I had the chance)

(PS: Solario is Nikola's dad, in case that wasn't clear enough)

I'd just like to take a moment to say that I've been blown away by the amazing support this story has gotten so far. I've loved reading all of your kind and thoughtful reviews that you've all left me, and it motivates me to continue to work on this story at this consistent pace. So thank you to everyone for supporting me, it really does mean a lot :)

Trivia(1 point): What's your favorite book of all time?

Trivia(1 point): Have you seen any characters you think your tribute (or someone else's) would be interesting to see interact with and/or ally with so far?