girls of war | [delia/terra]

[hesper hart 🐺 d9f]

The truth is that violence has changed me.

Me, a glut of bone and of blood. Still-hungry me, scentless as venom and rich as gold and pretty as diamonds. Me, yearning for another war to win. Always wanting more, more, more, as long as there is more to give. Always demanding it, always saying it through clenched teeth. And I continue to want and to crave and to speak it into the world until there is nothing left for me to take, nothing left of me to forgive.

I haven't kissed anyone in a long time. I've forgotten the feel of another's fingers intertwined with my own. I taste the rust of blood in the absence of love's sweet flavor- like honeysuckle in spring- and now I am an unloving, unloved thing designated to the end of the line. The martyr, the shadow, the marksman, the dove, the unspoken- the other five are pillars of their own divinity. Some, like me, are crafted into weapons, forced to teach others all of the sickening ways a knife can end a life. Some, like me, have been forced to share ourselves with all, not just those who deserve it, or those we choose, all with enough power to demand as much. Company and collar-bone kisses and a second's difference between a reluctant payout and a murder charge.

Some, like me, have had their power tested again and again by them, by the unbeatable, by the Capitol. They are the titans who crafted the pantheon of gods soon set to rule Panem- they still say what goes until someone takes a scythe to their stomach.

I smile, because that's me: victor number six, Vengeance.

I've made a lot of sacrifices for my godliness. It is only fair that I receive my offerings where I can get them.

I've waited 8,760 hours for them to be stupid enough to let Terra Markov get this close to me- separated only by a glass wall and a whispered dare. I heard rumors, even, that her team forced her to cancel all her trips to District One for the year, poor, pathetic, thing. I walk all the way up to it, a devil's smile on my lips, and draw the same line across my neck now as I had once I'd killed her tributes last year.

"Remember me?"

She thinks because she bested him that she can do the same with me. My fist slams into the solid surface of the glass, rattling it and causing a loud bang from within my holding cell. She thinks wrong. The tributes haven't started but I have. I hit it again, again, again, the knife in my waistband begging to taste Terra's throat. I scream, shoulder check the unbudging glass, kick it as hard as I can.

I am vengeance, that is all I seek right now.

I'll stop at nothing to see it through.

[[ retro gm ] angel lí ✨]

don't tell anyone what you are
you're sacred and they're starved

"Again?" she smirks with her hands. Babe in handcuffs, silenced. She knows they've kept them shackled to his wrists for more than just the inability to properly communicate, but Terra knows better than anyone there is more than one way to speak and shout.

Babe does too. It's why he's in the cuffs, "what did you do this time?"

A smile toward Mo through the glass, "You alright?" - if it's soundproof, she can't tell. Another sunny day, air vents pumping cool air from the ceiling that causes her dark strands of hair to dance. From the distance she thinks she can pick out her tributes - or perhaps not. Lost causes all look the same.

Her mind shifts - what if it were raining. Does she remember the sound of the rain?

The answer is no. Terra feels it, outstretched in spring downpours that the brown grass of Ten drinks up without hesitation. Pitter patter in her palms, she thinks she remembers. It must sound how it feels, yes?

The only time she can tell it is storming is when lighting flashes through her bedroom windows. Even then, the thunder has already come and gone. Not that she'd know.

But how she mourns to remember the little things. How much it pains to not. Things she has no right to mourn - the sound of Mo's voice when he blushes. The Panem anthem. Babe's chuckle when he laughs, eyes crinkling. Things she had never heard before. But she mourns them all the same, like the ghost of rain pounding against her skin - begging to be remembered.

One thing Terra will never forget is the way Cordelia Blake looked at her through the train window's glass. How could she ever shake that sheer feeling of -

terror.

Funny. Her lips twitch when she appears in her peripheral vision - a nod to Babe, Mo. I'm okay, she says with one movement. I can handle this.

Match-maker, these Games. She had met her match, and it keeps her awake all night long - the silence of it. The deafening, echoing silence of Cordelia Blake's vengeance.

Deep breath in, Terra holds it in her lungs and turns.

Cruel lips curl around two words: "Remember me?" and if Terra were anyone else, she would have flinched at the fist slamming into the glass pane between them. But she is not anyone else. She is, was - is, Little Terror.

The only thing she has ever been sure of going into that arena, leaving it. And how unsure this girl makes her feel now is perplexing, infuriating, fascinating.

A grin, twisted forcefully, eyebrows raised and a shake of her now-brunette head. No.

"Should I?"

Narrow eyes as her enemy shrieks and thrashes - Terra will play Cordelia's silly little game until the end.

Even if it kills her.

and their art is getting dark
and there you are to tear apart

table by ele