Achilles {{ Two (FIN)

[pogue]

trigger warning: this bio sort of gets dark and alludes to some things that people may not be comfortable with (specifically, the topic of rape)
i'm sorry and thank you

[pogue]

"What do you want?"

"I want to be feared." 

---

At the age of fifteen her voice was steel, forged in the flames of unkempt youth and kindled by the black, obsidian hands of her future. It was dark, in that room, overhanging lights flickering on and off and on and off, synchronized with the gentle, subtle shakes of her hands behind her back. She remembers feeling how heavy the air was. How, with every breath it circled and swirled in her lungs, roaring and crashing until it was a hurricane inside her body, drowning her over and over and over again. Mist and misfortune, her clothes were one step away from having the word 'nothing'  laced within every fiber.

Moth balls and tears accompany the pangs and aches of toothpick bones and bulging ribcage. Gravity grappled against her nose, dragging bloody bullets from broken nostril down onto her shirt, staining it as a reminder of the abuse of power. There'd been three of them, puberty stricken teenagers that had demanded her money and her pride. Scuffles and shortcomings, she remembers her fists bouncing against and off and their chests as they circled her, childish fury fueling a hopeless helpless battle against the boys. She'd always found that an eternity felt a lot shorter when you put your life and your money and your pride on the line for it. Her fists had curled but their fists had struck and, amidst the shadows of the alleyway his fist had found it's home in the dead center of her nose, cracking it under the pressure of their own manhoods.

In the end, she'd given them everything she had, coins and bills rolling out of her palms and into their hands.
Eternity had suddenly felt a lot longer when one of their hands had wrapped around her arms and the other had covered her mouth and her spine tingled bang against the ground. And there'd been a single tear on her cheek when the stench of his breath meets the stench of her own fear and-

She'd counted the eternities it had taken to find a snuffed out fire and wrap digits around glass shard and feeling it slip and slide against her fingers as it crashed through his eye, sending his vision spiraling into the abyss and his body rolling off hers in pain and agony and-

She'd found she was invincible when the tables had turned, pointing another glass shard at them as they grappled their unconscious friend, passed out from the pain and the blood and the-

"Go." She'd muttered, fingers clamped on the glass shard until the stench of their fear is masked by the shadows they'd trapped her in.

"My, my. What a show."

---

A table and, drenched in the shadows it casts, a woman.

Fists curled, breaths quick. She could feel strikes of pain streak up and down her chest with every heartbeat, counting every thump of  her petrified heart as she watched, as she waited for the woman to speak. It's more a cell than a room, shattered window obscuring the moonlight that dances across her own face, chill of the air nipping at the pores of her skin, jolting her awake every time she feels herself lulled into the sleep of tragedy. She's feeling her arms for the bruises their fingers left on her, clutching the glass shard between her fingertips, letting the blood dribble down between her digits, staining the floor below. 

"Fear...fear is a powerful thing." 

She was born in the darkness of two drug addicts, the output of a narcotic fueled love session. Strangled by bedsheets, overdosed on insomnia her parents had never considered the consequences until they were faced with the sun of the morning. Heads pounding, raw fury and feverish addiction, when they realized what was coming they told themselves they could never love a child as much as they loved the escape of the drugs they took. 

She was wrapped in the same bedsheets she was conceived in, carried through the dumps of the district on a stormy night, moon shattering above and dropped on the stairs of the nearest orphanage, crying and wailing and empty and cold and-

She doesn't remember becoming a fighter. 

Ten years old and she can count the scratches that line the foster homes walls. They dance across the mantle, childhood fingertips traveling along the course they make, tingling at every ridge that passes beneath her skin. The wallpaper twins and swirls towards her, reaching for the jet black hair that falls from her head. She used to fear the silence in here, used to sit in the corner and cherish the echo of the slam of the door and the click of the lock, playing it on repeat in her mind over and over and over until her fingertips curled into her kneecaps, leaving red marks on the surface, blood specks dried up deep beneath the fingernails. The windows shut, curtains drawn just enough so that the sunlight has to squeeze to get in, pulling itself so hard that it splits in two and spills its innards all over the floor, sunlight spots scattered across the room, a tragedy of the holes that make their home on the curtains. This room was supposed to teach her to be Nothing, to do nothing. Nothing was good, nothing was subservient. Nothing didn't clench their fists or get in arguments. Nothing didn't grind their teeth or claw at the other children. 

Nothing was here, in this room.
This was confinement. 

She doesn't remember being a fighter but she remembers her fingers digging deep into the skin of his cheek, threading blood on the tips of her fingers and ripping it straight from his face. It was a childish affair, spurred by the taunting of a boy and the retaliation of a girl. 

But still, fighting wasn't tolerated in the orphanage.
For her, it was her third offense. 

Idiot had seemed like a weak insult when creaking knuckles had wrapped around her wrists, straightened fingertips catapulting towards her cheek, branding the punishment of disobedience onto her face. The woman's face reeks of old age, waves of wrinkles and frown lines carved into the stone cold marble of her features, etched so deep that it swirled in the ocean of her soul, bitter tidal waves roaring and crashing with every scold and jagged, pointed finger. Tsunamis swirl in her eyes, accented by the specks of sunlight that dance in the room. Stumble and stop, drag and destroy, the feet of a ten year old can't keep up with the angry adrenaline of her guardian. But she follows, hand going numb in the whirlpool clench of the woman's hand on her wrist and just as her ankles collide and her body falls forward into the oceanic abyss the woman sidesteps, tossing her into the silence and bang click locking her in. 

She feared her, when she tossed her into that room.
Fear, fear was a powerful thing. 

"I've known what being afraid feels like all my life." 

Shadows dance in the moonlight. One catches the woman's face and she can see a smile.

"But I want to know what being feared feels like."  

Hands push against the metal frame and the woman rises, spilling embers from her presence as she towers over her, short cut black hair draped down over her eyes. She'd seen tsunamis in her foster mother's eyes, deep deep swirling waters that suffocated her lungs, swooning inside the hollow chest that she called her own. But in hers, with her sleek black dress and her cut black hair. In her irises she saw firestorms, raging and destructive, chaotic and beautiful.

"I'm sure we can work something out." 

She liked the way fires danced a lot more than the way oceans swirled.

---

"You...you want her?"   

Eardrums pressed hard against the glass, she can feel every crashing wave of her heart beating inside the raging fire of her chest, every breath cold, calculated against the daylight sun. 

She can imagine it all, the way her foster mother's hands curl along the grain of the wooden desk, fingernails dragged slowly across it, reverberating against the sound of nails against wood. Straight backed, grey hair sprouting from her skull, even amidst the surprise of the announcement she can picture the frown on her face, etched into the surface of the mask she wears. She's the eery calm of a moonlit lake, the way it sends chills down your spine, the way the silence cracks through your senses. While at the same time she's the roar of the ocean, every criss cross crash of the waves against rocks, deafening you to the power it holds. In all her years of simply existing here she had never seen someone remain calm in the presence of her foster Mother.

That is, until today.

She's the crackling of a flame in all it's glory, the way a warm sense of calm overtakes the crowd around a midnight fire. Legs crossed, one arm resting against the armchair. Eyes focused, precise, drilling holes into the waves before her. 

"Is there a problem with that?" 

The tide advances, filling the room.

"Well, she isn't exactly...the most obedient child. Fights, arguments, her years here haven't exactly been...-" 

"Ordinary? Obedient? She has told me of what she's experienced here. Ordinary is certainly a word I would not use to describe it." 

And that's when the tide recedes, before collapsing and turning into ice. 

"Well, in that case, I will have the paperwork-" 

Smirk, swirling embers.

"I will have the paperwork taken care of. Pleasure meeting you today." 

Chairs creak against the wooden floor and she snaps her head away from the door, leaving the fogged up breath stains as a signal that she'd heard everything. Backed up into the shadows, she crosses her hands behind her back as the woman exits the room, cutting through the shocked strings of her foster Mother's nightmare. One hand flips hair out of her eyes, before she looks her up and down, curling one finger, beckoning her to follow. 

Their footsteps scream with victory, echoing through the household. It's like an alarm, blaring through the city as doors open, eyes peer out, refusing to make eye contact but refusing to waver. The woman pays them no mind, but Achilles is forced to, if only for a moment. 

She'd most likely never see these children again.
She straightens her back and marches alongside her new Mother.

The sunlight creeps up on them through the dim lit windows, before swallowing them whole all at once as the door swings open. Her words are silent, but they're the only thing Achilles hears as they make their way down the sidewalk.

"Achilles, you can call me Styx." 

"Now come, we have work to do." 

---

It was heaven on earth, martinis in gold plated glasses, waiters with their shirts clean crisp, shoes polished. 

Footstep after footstep, her silence had been learned through countless solitary measures, white-washed walls with scratched through wallpapers. She could remember every unmarked scratch that littered the floorboards, every dust bunny hiding where the sunlight couldn't reach. She'd trained her eyes to focus towards the ground, away from anything that could be considered drastic, away from anything that reminded her of what was, of what could have been. 

Still, her eyes wandered in this place. Lost, like a motherless child at dawn, desperately searching for safety, for warmth. Woman scant in lingerie, twisting their limbs around poles, reaching delicate digits out towards the men who watched, bunny ears hung off the one closest to her, drooped over each other.

Was it to look scandalous, beneath the lights? Or was it out of shame?

The Woman's eyes look fearful as she bends her knees and widens her legs, like they had seen through judgement day and a week after. Every high heel click she takes, every wrapped leg around pole her eyes darted away from the metal, avoiding the blurs of a bright pink bunny costume, wrapped around the pole as a reminder. 

No, it wasn't to avoid the pastel pink of the costume. It was to avoid herself.

I will never become that - She thought.

That's when she felt her ass grabbed, palmed like a playground ball, squeezed like the life from the throat of a dead man. Gaps and breathless, the lights and the music and the bunny ears and the polished shoes blend into each other for a single moment, her jaw dropping amidst the mess. 

Her hand stains red the mark of a beast, half bitten nails sliding across his cheek. Quicksilver, they strike like a knife. He smells of affair and alcohol, champagne sloshing from his lips, tidal waves from the glass he holds lapping over the edge and spilling over a lipstick stained shirt.

You beast.
"You bitch."  

His words are slurred, but the threat of a drunk man is all too real. This is no teenage boy, nothing that a glass shard can force away. His fingers curl and for a split second he holds lightning strikes in his palm and she, she is the tree too tall for its own good, reaching towards the sky, unknowing that a storm swirls around it.

"Now, now, Ed." 

Styx's voice is commanding, grabbing the attention of those who are unknowingly desperate to listen. Seductive, but not in the way of lace around thighs and bunny ears on the head of a woman. Seductive, in the way a snake hisses at victim, in the way poison laces itself in one's blood. Seductive, but not in the submissive way. This, this is power.

"Leave the girl alone, we wouldn't want anyone finding out just what you do here, would we?" 

He goes from lightning storm to flickering spark, cowering behind the midnight shenanigans of a bastard husband. He probably has kids.

His burns are those of a powerless victim, stumbling off into the crowds of the night, shame written on his back. Styx's eyes met hers, flames to ashes. 

"Ed's a Peacekeeper Commander, but none too bright. Best to avoid eye contact, at least in this section of the club." 

"This section?" 

"Just keep following me." 

If the first level was lust, the section they entered next was envy.

The lights don't scream at her like the others, there's no lost love strippers dancing their lives away, falling into the laps of men who are paying to be unfaithful. No, this level is dimmer than the last, but shines bright with the rich, the powerful, the dangerous.

She can smell it.
It smells, oddly enough, like confinement again.

She welcomes this one.

"Achilles, this is my domain." 
"What do you mean by that?" 
"I own this, this entire operation." 

Operation? 
She bites her tongue.

Styx's office is sparse compared to the rest of the club. Wordless, soundless, papers filed neatly on the corner of her desk. 

"Do you know why I took you away from that place, Achilles?"

"I'm assuming it was not..out of kindness." 

There's no smile this time. Only embers.

"You assume right. See, I saw fire in you that night. Something to nurture, something to kindle."

"What is this place?" 

There it is. There is the smirk. The embers turn to full on raging fire. This is worse.

"You will know what you need to know in time, Achilles. In the mean time-" 

Her eyes narrow, staring through her.

"Let's make you strong." 

---

It is three years later and she knows three things:

One. The club is no club. Rather, it is a hitman's paradise. Amidst martinis and popped champagne bottles hide the most dangerous men and women in all the District, waiting for their next assignment. It comes in cards of gold, wrapped in satin and slipped like medicine into drink. Medicine into drink, that occurs on the first floor, on the coverup, with the polished shoes and the lipstick stains and the bunny eared women. She avoids that floor at all costs. Not out of fear, out of pride.

Two. She is the prodigious pawn of the most powerful woman in the District. Training was rigorous and stressful, sore muscles and bruising bones. If you fall, you get back up, if you're bleeding, you throw the blood in your opponent's eyes, blinding them so you can finish them off. It had not been for bust. In three years she has become one of the most prominent Careers in the training center, grinning down the length of her blade as her opponents lie helpless on the floor. Her training does not only come in regality. On the other hand lies the training of the undergrounds. How to grasp a gun, how to avoid detection. How to threaten, how to maim, how to murder.

Three. This plan is far bigger than what she can accomplish alone. 

Axyl Morstaad, underground extraordinaire. Legend has it that he ran a die hard black market on the playground in elementary school, paying off the fifth graders with gum and candy, protecting himself with the bullies who gave boys and girls skinned knees and bruised egos, relishing the tears that stained the sands they played on. He was born a scumbag, and he was born proud of the fact. At fifteen he was into hard drugs. But not the taking of, the selling of. Every white knuckled scrape skinned addict craved Axyl's fix, crawling to him in the deepest, darkest nights, shielding their eyes from the light of the street lamps, flinching with every footstep that echoed through the streets.

By twenty-one he had infiltrated Panem's higher-ups, branding himself the It man for anything anyone could want from the Black Market. If they were the addicts, then he was the risky needle, intertwining himself with the..less than classy parts of the District. Of course, that didn't stop him from masking the scent of scum with the nicest suit money could buy.

She sits in a dark room, legs crossed, eyes narrowed. It is night, and the moonlight throws itself across the table, bloody brain matter of a shattered celestial body staining the table she sits behind. There was a time when she was scared of this silence, of confinement, of who- what lurked in the shadows. That was years ago, though, when the floorboards were of her interest. She is not scared of the dark anymore, she is not scared to be alone.

Perhaps, in itself, that is part of the problem.

The door screams and footsteps meet her ears.

"Why, hello gorgeous." 

He fixes his tie as he saunters in, devilish smirk on his face, drink in hand. She can't tell whether it's gentlemanly or scandalous, but he holds another drink in his other hand, offering it to her as the door closes.

"I know better than to accept drinks from men like you, Axyl Moorstad." 

There had been fire, Styx was right. But in the same effort, there had been ice. She had found that both were equally useful.

"Harsh words, sweetie, considering you're the one who set up this meeting." 

He grabs the other chair and swings it effortlessly out from underneath the table, gliding it through the air before landing it innocently on the floor in front of him. His drink does not even stir in his hand. Equally as graceful, he lowers himself, positioning himself into just the right position before leaning backwards, drink set on the table in front of him.

"How old are you, even? They said you'd be older."

"Old enough to be here." 

He rolls his eyes, mocking her with a false, silent impression of her words. It is child's play. Just, this child owns the undergrounds.

"Listen, kid, I've got things to do. I understand you have a deal for me?" 

She smiles, nodding slightly before taking out an envelope from her bag. It is not marked, it is not signed. Her fingers twist the wrapping open, shattering it like ice before sliding out a single picture, letting the moonlight hit it before placing it on the table before her and sliding it gently towards the man. 

"I understand you have certain...business relations with this man." 

He runs his fingertips over the surface, narrowing his eyes before taking a long, hard drink of whatever is laced within the glass before him. With a grunt and a chuckle he looks up at her, swiping the picture towards her, past her, off the table. It flutters to the ground, landing in the glow of the moonlight. 

"Girl, if you wanted an assassin, I'm not your man. Now get the fuck-" 

"I understand that you have been supplying this man with young woman for whom he may entertain himself with, Axyl. Would you like me to put it that way?" 

He shuts up and she strikes. 

"While the Woman I work for is none too pleased by that, that has not stopped her- us from taking advantage of such opportunity." 

It is an innocent mistake, a gentle slip up. But to do it in front of a trained thief, it is a downfall.

"So you work for her. Fuckin' hell, I've had that club breathing down my neck since I first started." 

He turns sinister now, angry.

"You got some nerve. Now get the fuck out or i'll shoot you myself." 

"Stop." 

She hides the desperation under false confidence, pulls out a creased and wrinkled trump card. He looks surprised, like he isn't used to being told to stop. She doesn't blame him.

"Excuse me?" 

"The Peacekeeper Corps has recently launched a full-scale operation to seek out and bust underground markets and criminals, people like you, Mr. Moorstad." 

She swears she can hear his teeth grinding.

"If you help us with what we want, we can guarantee you immunity from such sniff outs. You stay safe, your competitors get busted. It is a win-win, no?" 

He leans back again, emptying his drink, passing the seconds with a stone cold stare. She forces a smirk onto her face, staring straight back at him.

Finally. It is a murmur.

"Fine. What do I need to do?"

Simple.

"Make me one of the woman that man desires."  

---

"Achilles, I don't know if you know this, but I'm not exactly buddy buddy with this man. This is a slow process." 

It was a slow process.
Until someone tried to kill Axyl Moorstad's life. A rat, most likely.
And then the process ground to a halt.

His fists slam on the table and she flinches, eyes to the ground, hands behind back. Styx sits in front of her, raging fire under lightning storm clouds. She remains calm in the wake of his anger, fingertips tapping against the wood of her desk as he leans forwards towards her. 

"This close." He presses fingertips together, before tearing them just barely apart. 
"One inch and I would have been dead. Ya hear that, Styx? Instead, my best man has a bullet hole in the side of his brain. And for what?" 

He turns to her, now, pointing at her with a shaking finger. 

"So I can get your little whore assistant into bed with a man twice her age? You folk are nuts! It's over-" 

"Mr. Moorstad, I suggest you calm down." 

It is not Styx that says it. Instead, it is her prodigy, her right hand, her pawn. Her daughter. 

"Don't you dare tell me to calm down, you little shit-" 

"Axyl, Axyl." Styx rises now, fingertips resting on the desk, eyes burrowing holes into the thief and dealer and survivor in front of her. She turns, gathering herself before making her way around the desk, high heels clicking against the wood floors. Axyl steps backwards, wary of her. He has always dealt in cards of ice, stone cold addiction. He has never felt fire before. Not like her, not like Styx. Her fingertips brush against his cheek, chuckle escaping her lips before she pushes him backwards into the chair behind him. 

"Axyl, you have been in this business since fifteen. You have had countless attempts on your life made at this point, no? Midnight deals gone wrong, business meeting blown to bits, no?" 

He stutters to get the words out. She doesn't let him finish.

"We will find you a protector, an assassin. Until then, I most certainly hope you are not getting cold feet on our deal. That would be a very big mistake, dear." 

She narrows her eyes, letting the man in front of her breathe. Finally, he rises, gathering his suit jacket before storming his way towards the door. A silent agreement, reluctant.

"And Axyl, dear."

He stops short, one foot in the doorway.

"If you ever call Achilles a whore again, there will be a second attempt on your life. And I will not miss." 

If Axyl's specialty was thievery, then Giovanni's was killing. An assassin since twenty, dealing in the death of others, and a constant member of the club her mother ran, he was the top choice from the beginning. One man, living on the other side of the town, in the suburbs. His kill count was legendary amongst hushed conversations in a midnight ally, those who paid him never having spoken his name again. There's  butterflies in her stomach as she makes her way towards the apartment, every footstep precise, calculated. She had not feared Axyl, no. He was child's play. But this man, he was danger exemplified. For all she knew, she could be dead by the end of today.

For all she knew, it wouldn't matter.

Three knocks on the door of his home. The hallway is dark, looming, harshly lit. Silence. How odd, for it to be completely silent in the daylight. Three more knocks.

Three more minutes in silence.
She never thought picking locks would come in handy.

The smell that meets her nose reeks of grief and death, sour and foul, destructive and chaotic. Her hand goes to cover her nostrils, a useless attempt at stopping the smell from reaching her. She takes three steps into the apartment, prowling, calculating.

That is when she sees him, laying in the sunlight. Three bullet holes rip open his skull.

The assassin is dead.

And that is when she feels the cold metal of a gun touch the back of her head. Nerves tense, spine shudders. This was not expected, this was not planned. Her hands fall from her nose slowly to her side, stopping dead in her tracks.

"Who are you? The voice asks, voice wavering, gun still.

"I came to make a deal with this man. And you are?" 

Silence.

"I'm his daughter." 

She assumes, gambles. 

"Well, I may have a deal for you, then." 

---

She never thought that their plan would work, truly. 

To become  an object, like that woman in the club that night. It repulsed her, sickened her to her stomach. The thought of lace wrapping her legs, her breasts exposed for everyone to see, it was something she hadn't entertained. At least, at first.

She learned the hard way that when Styx wanted you to do something, you did it.

Axyl's skill was impeccable, especially when under the protection of the assassin, Petra. She was remarkable for her age, a prodigy just like her. In many ways, that was the only thing they had between them. Her fingers trace the bedsheets she lays on, feeling the fibers run beneath her fingertips. For a long time, she hadn't forced herself to count such meaningless things. Not since the orphanage, not since confinement. But now, as she sits, waiting to have sex with a man just as dangerous as the woman who adopted her, she can't find anything else to do.

She could run. She could fight. Neither would work out well.

The door opens and he steps in, hunger on his lips. It's mixed with liquor. 

"He has a thing for eighteen year olds. That's what makes you perfect for this."

---

His hands are on me, now, breath on my neck, satin bedsheets covering us.

All I can picture is that woman in the bunny costume, how lonely and afraid she looked.

I will never be her. 

And maybe, maybe I already am.

[pogue]

Finally done hooooomahgawd

Achilles

Eighteen

Protegee, pawn, career.

[Avalon]

I called dibs nobody touch her xoxo

[Avalon]

Because I'm always late at doing these
I've been busy I promise Ily Pogie
Do I even need to comment? You know it's beaut as always!

[googlefont="Euphoria Script:400"]Accepted!