Wiress
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
She can remember that there was a time when words were something that came more easily to her. She thinks that she remembers school and friends and laughter because there was something that she had said that they all thought was funny - the humorous kind of funny and not the laugh at her expense type of funny that the people around her often think of the manner in which she speaks now.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
She may remember that there was such a time when she did not have to struggle to find something that would convey the thoughts inside her head to those around her, but that does not mean that she can remember how it was that it was accomplished. That skill is beyond her now. She lost it somewhere in the arena that was her first. She lost a lot of things in that arena that was her first; she lost more things after the arena left her. Victors never really leave their arenas (even though the arenas themselves go away). That knowledge was one of the things which she gained from that first arena. Such things are both few and far between and so worth noting when they come. The words are all still in her head. They form themselves into pictures and diagrams and equations. They draw connections between one thing and another and they display for her the means by which one thing may become another if she touches or tweaks or moves or rearranges or just generally meddles with it in one way or another.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
She has always liked machines. They have always made sense to her, but it was not until after her arena had left her that she lost herself in them as much as she had. The machines and technology were something safe and sensible and comforting in the after, and she had let them swallow her whole because being swallowed up whole was the only thing that she wanted in those days. The meddling and the tweaking were easy. They were far easier than her other available options.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
People had not made sense any longer, or maybe she had no longer made sense to people. She did not know. She supposed that it did not matter. All she knew was that the first time she had let herself slip out of the patterns and equations in her head with their displays of the way things could be made to fit together and tried to explain it to someone who was standing nearby it had not worked. The person in question had merely stared at her. She had repeated herself, but the stare had remained. She focused very, very carefully and realized that the words that she was trying to say were not the ones that were coming out. The shifting pieces in her head - the bits and bobbles that were turning around and around to see where it might be that they fit next - could no longer be translated into the words that other people were using. They got caught and twisted. They turned into something that relayed no meaning.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
It had not taken her long to get used to that fact. She had not really put any effort into getting used to it. She had merely accepted that that was the way that it was and allowed herself to slip back into the only world that made sense to her - the one where she understood everything and everything understood her. She stayed in her world where everything was stable and followed predictable patterns. She stayed in her world where she could exercise control and make things bend to her will. She stayed in her world where the things from outside of her head had no choice but to leave her mostly alone. She would have been content that way; she had been content that way. She would have stayed that way until the end of her days (natural or otherwise), and she would have not given it another thought. Then, he had begun to talk to her.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
She had stopped noticing when other people were trying to talk to her. The twisting of the words that tried to make their way from her mind to out of her mouth seemed to suffer from a similar malady in the opposite direction. The ones that came in her ears seemed to make less and less sense the longer that she did not bother with people. His voice was different. There was something about the sound of it that garnered her attention. She did not know why at first. She just knew that she was hearing it, and she had not truly heard anything for a very long time.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
The first time the words that he was saying actually got through to her she jumped. It was not because of the words or the fact that she understood them; it was because the sound breaking through alerted her to the fact that he was standing directly behind her while leaning over her shoulder to look at the sketch that she was drawing. She may have been out of touch with people, but she still knew that one did not sneak up on and stand close to Victors. It simply was not done, but he was doing it. He was far too focused on picking up a pencil and leaning further over her to add a new detail to her sketch to realize that he was invading her space.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
When he was finished, he stood back up straight and looked at her. He did not look as if he even realized what it was that he had done - that a cardinal rule for what they were had been violated. He did not look remotely sorry or even as if he knew that there was something to be sorry about. He looked expectant. She continued to look at him, and the thought that she was really, truly seeing another person instead of just letting her eyes ghost over him was washing over her in a wave of emotion that she no longer could conjure up the words to name. He gestured with the pencil still gripped in his hand at the drawing on the desk.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
"Fixed," he said. The word actually registered and processed. She knew what that meant. She knew that word. She knew what he was saying. She understood it. She looked down at the sketch that she had been struggling to determine the best way to finish and noticed that he had solved the trouble with a simple stroke. It was fixed. He had fixed it. He had fixed something in her as well (or he had, at least, started the process of fixing).
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
That had been the beginning, but she was of a mind to think that they were nearing the end. She did not want it to be the end, but she found that the idea did not frighten her the way that she thought it would have frightened the her that had had no trouble making words that worked. If it was the end, then it was the end. She had done all that she could to make things work out the way that they were hoping for them to do. She was mostly afraid of being left behind - not by the arena this time. She was afraid of being left without him. She had gotten better after years and years of practice, but she still could not communicate with anyone else the way that she could with him. She needed him. He had made her dependent on having access to someone who could help her out of her head. She did not want to go back. She did not think that she could be content with it any longer - not after so long of having him teach her something beyond contentment.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
They were running out of time. In so many ways, they always seemed to be running out of time. They had run out of time year after year as they gathered and planned and watched yet another arena leave another one behind to join their number. They were so close. He was so close, but time was fighting back against them. It was quite literally doing so in this particular instance. She knew that, but her trouble with words (tempered by years of practice and having him around to help her through them as it was) was still strangling all her attempts to tell them. The only thing she could manage was a rhyme that she had pulled from some recess in her brain that was doing its best to scrape out the words of which she had had mastery in her childhood. She needed to try harder. She needed to tell them. He needed to know, and she could not let him down.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.