love at third sight (liza/woody)

[sidney]

I have been watching Laurence for the better part of three days, if I’m being honest. Not obviously, like the way that greaseball trainer looks at me every time I show up to work out, but occasionally. The first day he caught my attention by accident. Because I had wanted some alone time, without people breathing down my neck or eyes on my every move. Here, we’re always observed. Always judged. And I just wanted to shoot an arrow for me. But I wasn’t the only one with that idea. He stood across the room, axe in hand with a dummy before him. It was pockmarked and tattered from a day of teenagers swinging at it, stuffing littered on the ground and a cart of weapons a few feet behind. I spent the next hour shooting a full quiver of arrows, slowly and meticulously placing them consecutively in the target’s rings, still glancing over at him out of the corner of my eye every so often. But he never did swing that axe. Not once. In fact, I couldn’t recall having seen him done so at all earlier that day. “You hit it with it,” I called out to him with a half-smile, motioning a fake swing of an invisible axe with my arm. He didn’t look over for long and I left without another word. But I thought about it for the rest of the night: why he never hit anything with the axe and why I cared. The second time I noticed him was the next day. The day we were told we’d be sparring. Thus followed his subsequent disappearance once the day’s training had been announced. It wasn’t necessarily that I saw him that day, rather it was that I didn’t. I didn’t like that. And I hated that I didn’t like it. The third time was today. Yet again after the day’s training had concluded and I decided I wanted to stay, so did he. But this time when I noticed him, I approached immediately - interest piqued for reasons I still can't understand or explain. In his hand, however, is not an axe this time, but a baseball bat. Though it still doesn't seem like he's swung.  "You hit that thing yet?" Sauntering up beside him, I reach out toward the cart and pick out two knives. "You do know that's what this is for, yeah?" I grip them tightly in my palms after a little spin to show off. Why the hell are you showing off? I know the answer and it makes me so angry at myself, so I lunge forward and sink both the knives into the dummy's chest with a sharp exhale. I've never been good at this sort of thing. Being nice, talking to people - especially ones I already can't stop thinking about. Fuck. I spin on my heel and try to recover from this stupid nervousness swirling in my stomach, making me behave like a headcase. "I'm Liza, by the way." Smooth.

[arx.]

laurence woodruff.

She won't leave me alone.

Okay, so maybe, that's not entirely true and maybe my gaze just keeps catching on her and the way she's perfect. At everything. It's hard not to clench my fists when I watch the way her muscles move in one fluid motion, as if born for this shit, as if arrows were always meant to follow each other through the air and skewer mannequins.

Fuck, I can't be a fucking mannequin.

It's the heaviest looking axe. Because that's how you prove yourself here, surrounded by Panem's future gods and goddesses of the underworld. Hard not to fall for a pitch like that, right? Hard not to see it and want it, y'know? So why the hell can't I swing this thing?

Swing, idiot. Swing. Fucking swing. Just. Hit. It.

"You hit it with it."

My grip tightens, knuckles going white and a burning sensation flaring in my cheeks. Kids always made fun of me for that—said they could tell when I was frustrated, when they were getting the better of me, when they'd beaten me before I'd even got the chance to take a swing. Not that it would matter, would it? I use blades to cut alfalfa, knives to peel apples, axes to chop fucking wood, dude.

Fuck. Fucking fuckity fuck fuck fuck.

And I'm supposed to beat her?

Kill. Yeah. Kill. Fully dead, fully a funeral for her and everyone that was important to her. Not beat, not win against. I have to, like, make sure someone doesn't exist anymore. I have to make sure that her timeline stops and history stops remembering and all that's left is memories—people who remember you, people who talk about you when you're gone when they need to feel just a bit better. Sometimes.

But then sometimes all I can remember is how I found Mom on the floor one day in a pool of her own puke, piss, and blood and that's- that was it. It wasn't even really her. Honestly. Just an empty husk I had to clean up so I could cook dinner for myself that night.

I miss her. I wish I'd been better, I wish I was.

I think I've been letting her down a lot lately.

But mostly I just think that-

"You hit that thing yet?"

Well mostly I just think that this career girl is refusing to leave me alone. Seriously? Why is she always here?

"I'm not stupid."

And wouldn't you know it, she can make knives look terrifying, too. My knuckles go all white again, cheeks reddening. As if I'd snap. As if I'd swing. As if I hadn't been staring at training dummies for the past three days and fucking seeing nothing but my future—two knives too deep for my heart to stay beating, just another dead loser from nowhere, with nothing. Just nothing.

Nothing like her.

"I'm Liza, by the way."

"Okay."

It's pretty fucking annoying how breathless the word comes out. Definitely didn't want it to sound like my first instinct was to tell her that my Mom always went by Lizzy or that I have a tattoo on my ribs, baseball stitching over the scar I got the last time someone got this close to me with a blade. But what would she care about all that shit?

I swallow the lump in my throat—"Cool."—and tap the end of my bat at my feet for a few beats too many.

"I'm Woody."

"By the way."

I raise the bat over her shoulder, shove the end of it into the thing's chest next to where she'd jabbed the knives.

"So," I take a deep breath, try not to trip over my question when I lean in. "Where's someone learn to do this?"

"destroy yourself, it feels so good to fade away."

♪