hazy hearts | {ghost gen v team titans}

[я𝑜𝓈𝑒]

She tries to duck from the javelin that the tribute from Nine throws at her, but it ends up skimming the side of her face. Luya winces and gnashes her teeth together, but it doesn't quite silence her hiss of pain. She still isn't used to this, the constant fighting every day; she doesn't have the reflexes for it. Luya can swipe coins from a stranger in an instant, but having to be constantly aware of her surroundings and her entire body is a completely different game.

Ginny cries for help, and Cedric answers it — Luya hops out of the car and makes a start towards her friend, but she stops when the boy she shot speaks. His eyes are cold, full of steel, a look she's never quite seen before on anyone.

With every moment she is in this Arena, she is reminded of how little she knows of the world, of human nature. How could she be expected to? She only just turned fourteen. Her only real knowledge of life comes from books, but living it is different.

"You chose this. You all chose this. It didn't have to be this way," says the boy. Luya jolts as his gun is fired at her, but the bullet skips over the sand instead.

Something in her wavers unsteadily, and then snaps.

None of Luya's choices in her life led her to this moment. She had refrained from buying too much tessera to avoid being here, but here she is anyway. Corralled into a pen, destined to die for a show. She wanted to live. She did. She had nothing and no one, but she wanted to have that someday.

She has Ginny. But if she comes home, Ginny won't be coming with her. She'd be alone again, but at least this time, she would have a chance to make a life for herself.

"Chose?" Luya repeats. Her voice is small, it always is, but there's something in it this time. A hardness she didn't have before, a harsh undertone to her words. "F-fuck you! I didn't volunteer for this! And — and if I don't try to kill you, I'll die!"

Kill or be killed, that is the choice. A wretched one they've been given, but it's all they have.

Luya raises her gun at the boy with shaking hands. Her eyes are wild with adrenaline, but they glisten with unfallen tears. Despair and determination, intertwined. She must look silly, staring down this much older tribute who towers over her. She's five feet tall and so frail looking, like you could just hit her once and she'd fall right over.

Her finger finds the trigger, and she flinches when the gun sounds.

[luya attacks gavin; gun]
o0Jcgo|rcrthrowing knife
[9116 -- Knife Deep in Chest -- 9.0 damage + 1 target practice]

throwing knife

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

She flinched at the continuous gunfire, each a violent overstimulation so bad that, for a moment, her other senses dulled. She couldn't hear, she couldn't see, she couldn't do anything except... react. The shut down made her cold- she'd gone from being on the verge of a nervous breakdown to- this. To still hands and a dull expression and removal. She felt like she was in the next room over, listening to all of this horrible stuff as it happened to someone else. Not her. Aneesa Warden wouldn't be able to handle something like that, would she?

The small girl was a firework exploding in her face and, to be fair, she tried to warn her off three separate times. First, so quietly it might have only been a thought, a hope for quiet. But the second time she said it aloud for sure: quiet, but spoken: "Shut up."

It didn't work, so she tried it again, only when the words came out, she was shouting them and her throat stung from the effort of it. Her palms were stinging and she realized she'd been squeezing her fists so tight that her nails had broken the skin.

"Shut up!"

She couldn't think. She needed to think. She- this didn't make sense. Something about this, it just... She should've already taken a chance to attack by now, but she was so distracted by the alarming sense that had just taken over her: she was both there too much and not at all, seemingly removed from the situation and enraged that she was still there and still in pain all at once.

The boy with the hooked nose and the sleepy eyes said something and the confusion grew for a moment, because whatever conversation he was a part of, she wasn't. Maybe he thought Aneesa said something Cecily had said, or something. She guessed that made sense: why on earth would anyone have ever respected Aneesa Warden enough to, at the very least, grace her with the entirety of their attention while they killed her? She was no threat. She was nothing. The dullness tasted like rust and it made everything intensify.

Gunfire and gladiators and this: Ginny Lawson refusing to leave until it was too late. Someone would die now, no matter what. No- not fair. Everyone would die here. Eventually. No rules, no rights, no wrongs, right? All the things she'd feared turned out to be true.

Even if she survived the day, she couldn't survive the arena. She couldn't. She couldn't. And yet there was a stubborn voice within, a coldness that guided her hand to another spear, and she understood: that wasn't the point. The point was that she was going to try to live, anyway.

[ aneesa attacks ginny, javelin ]
uT2E160nukjavelin
[ but not, like, super hard uwu ]

[aneesa uses tar]
1-50
[ extinguished ]

javelin·1-50

[✨ zozo.]

ginny lawson;

"Shut up!"

"No!" Ginny screamed back, heaving air in from the effort, just as the blonde one drove her weapon into yesterday's wounds.

She was the one dying here. That thought, that realisation, brought fresh sobs to her throat. She was embarrassed to cry in front of these kids, in front of her newfound allies, in front of all of Panem. How her sisters must be turning away from the cameras now, cringing into their hands, rolling their eyes. Ever, who probably isn't even watching -- her grip subconsciously tightened around her weapon, so angry.

She was dying, and that mattered. It mattered to her, god damn it -- and she could go down screaming if she wanted. She was allowed this small thing, to die on her own terms.

I matter, she thought to them. To all of them, here and back home. I matter.

Cedric heeded her call, slicing toward their enemies with expertise. And though Ginny guessed he thought nothing of it, it meant the world to her. See?, she thought with a death-glare, clinging to the shell of the car in fear her knees would buckle underneath her from the pain. I matter.

Unlikely allies, new-found friends. They told her she mattered. Through actions, not words she was so desperate to hear. They were the first -- and last -- people to do so in Geneviere Lawson's short little life.

And now she would have to leave them through no want of her own.

"I told you, don't tell me what to do!" and on the final word she lashed out, a snarl following the arc of her blade.

table by elegant // gfx by me.

ginny attacks aneesa, machete (sword)
sFfNd53__Bsword
shallow cut 3.5

sword

[maverick hale 🌧️ d5 [nyte]]

And then I blossom. Crimson tendrils soak into the fabric of my shirt. It's not painful but unbearably warm. I hoped maybe that'd be comforting but of course it isn't. There's metal tearing into my skin and then through. There's this moment of complete panic where I swing my barrel toward the little girl who's just shot me and I squeeze as hard as I can as though that will make her suffer all the more. Then I hit the ground and my vision goes white; agony is heavy because I can't even scream so it all gets trapped there inside my throat.

Blood roars in my ears, an incessant hungry growl. Barely mine anymore as I leak out into the dust coating this stupid fucking crater. It's not that I want to die at the bottom of a dry hole but I've got to admit it'd be pretty funny if I did.

"Sorry." I mumble, barely coherent as I bite the inside of my cheek to trap the feeble laugh that had begun to stir. "Never did like when things got serious." My hand presses against the bullet hole, packing soaked-through cotton into the wound. I'm closer to my heart than I've ever been, I can feel his frantic fluttering right there beneath my palm. So I speak to him in a hushed whisper, "Was it like this for you too?"

But I know it wasn't. He was everything and then nothing, gone in less than an instant.

I'm sure we'll argue over which is a worse way to die when I see him again.

It's a struggle to tear myself from the pleasant haze adrenaline has lulled me into. We're still fighting, Aneesa's still in danger and Sasha's spear is tearing into that scared little girl. I'm so fucking proud of her.

Cecily's eyes boil with rage and fear - I know so much about her in so little time. She carries a selfless kind of greed, If only we could have met before the Capitol called our names. I'm trying to speak but the words come out jumbled - like I've forgotten how to speak.

"C." But they can still wrap around her name.

Just like I can still reach out to her.

"Need- I need to help."

Something's trickling out of my mouth.

Rotten pennies.

"Help."

My fingers are cold; my fingers are expectant, they wrap around the air where her skin should meet mine. I can't feel anything.

[gavin 5m attacks luya 11f -- gun (throwing knife)]
ivzxlNEih8throwing knife
[3.0]

throwing knife

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

If I don't try to kill you, I'll die.

The girl from Eleven's words are short, to the point, honest in a way that makes Sasha sidestep them in her head. It's the kind of thing a girl with allies doesn't want to think about. The kind of thing she's sure every single person here would rather coke on than say out loud.

But Luya says it anyway.

"None of us did either."

That doesn't change anything, Sasha knows, but it's the truth all the same. Aneesa didn't sign up to have a girl with needles for arms swing a machete at her like a feral thing. Gavin's boyfriend died here and just his fucking luck, fate decided he'd die here, too. Cecily even tried to run. Is still trying to run, Sasha thinks. Hopes, even.

Sasha thinks about Maisy, tiny and bright eyed. I'd die for you, she said, fierce. Sasha doesn't remember when that fire died. I'd die for you, too, stupid.

Sasha remembers rolling her eyes.

She's glad her sister didn't try and follow through, but she doesn't know how to say that out loud. She doesn't even really know how to admit it to herself.

"Shut up." It's sharp, awful and under her breath, but Sasha hears it all the same. "Shut up!"

Sasha tries desperately to ignore the things that it stirs in her chest, the flutterings of recklessness that everyone around her has been trying to coach her out of her entire life. It feels useless though, standing here next to Anessa and watching Needles stick and poke her like she has a right to take her life.

It's the gunfire that stops her in her tracks for a beat, and Anessa gets sliced by Needles silly machete because of it. Sasha bites down on her tongue, clenches her jaw, feels herself exhale in a huff as she tries to clear the ringing from her ears. She doesn't look, doesn't think she'll be able to handle what she sees if it's Gavin on the ground this time. Tiny Girl From Eight, Ginny Lawson dies or Sasha's friend dies.

That's a no brainer.

Sasha shrugs.

"Nice try, Needles."

d7f sasha attacks d8f ginny, spear

RIbkzryRQDspear

dg on neck, 10

spear