``morning boys still cast tall shadows {bros}

[aya]

Ice has covered up my parents' hands
Don't have any dreams, don't have any plans
Growing up in some strange storm
Nobody's cold, nobody's warm

Alexander Hood —


It was still. That was what struck Alexander the most after the last tribute fell: the frozenness of the frozen landscape. Nothing left breathing aside from the arena itself — bitter wind besieged them, howling across the snow-laden planes. In all directions, there was nothing to be seen but bleak, empty whiteness. All directions, that is, but down. Beneath Alexander's boots, the slush was dyed — not stained, but dyed to the point where it was impossible to discern that it had once been a pristine ivory — a violent shade of crimson. Violent. Undeniably violent. The nine corpses stacked around their spoils attested to that.

Alexander refused to feel guilty. They met the same end that the rest of the tributes would, with the only difference being that she and her alliance would be subjected to a more prolonged torture. None of these nine would have to face the snow or the wind or the brutal namesake of the Games: hunger. No, the nine that lay head their feet ought to be thanking Alexander and her new brothers for the swift demise they'd brought about. They couldn't take all the credit, however; there had been others assisting in the fierce battle. The District Seven was quite pleased with the fact that she'd never needed to cross blades with the girl from Twelve, who had personally felled three of the tributes that surrounded them.

There were so many. Nine piled heaps: some were mangled and messy and entirely unrecognizable to the District Seven, who hadn't payed much attention at all to her fellows; others were largely whole save for a wound or two, and if those could be overlooked, it was more like they were sleeping. Peaceful, even. Alexander envied them. She wasn't exactly disappointed with how well her alliance had performed in the bloodbath, but the whole experience had drained her. It wasn't the physical exertion — when an Alexander day was comprised of a dozen hour-long days of moving logs and tearing through calluses and breathing in pounds of powdered trees, there was absolutely no exercise that could wear her out. But there was something that had tired her nonetheless, something that she couldn't exactly place. Perhaps it was that, now that the fighting was over, the bloodbath seemed so much more trivial. Useless. They'd gotten the wealth, and eight lay dead at their feet for it. Eight? Wait, nine. Didn't matter, though.

With a sigh, Alexander flopped down on her back, indifferent to the blood-soaked snow that was now staining her light-colored winter gear, indifferent to the fact that this would make her visible from hundreds of yards away against the backdrop of white. If someone wanted to kill her, let them come. Let them come right now and kill her where she lay, right smack in between the most and least mangled tributes: two she recognized, the District Ones. Thoughtlessly, she began to flap her arms, making a wide arc around her head, down to her side. Her legs unconsciously joined in, fanning out and then coming back together methodically, not exactly synchronized with her arms. After a few minutes, it occurred to Alexander that she'd been making a snow angel, so she stopped. Now motionless on the ground, smeared and spattered with blood, there was no discerning the District Seven from the nine other comrades that surrounded her. Nothing passed through her mind. The frigid air drifted in and out of her lungs as it pleased. For all intents and purposes, Alexander Hood was so dead to the world that a cannon may as well have fired for her.

After a period of time that could've spanned anywhere from ten seconds to ten years, she hopped up — or, tried to, anyhow; her boot caught an icier patch of ground, which sent her toppling back to the ground, spraying bits of bloody snow everywhere, including the tributes whose cannons had already sounded. Alexander couldn't even see where it had landed on the boy, who resembled little more than the ground beef she'd purchased on the rare occasions there was enough money for meat — she was reminded that the ferocious District Twelve girl had had her way with him, and made a mental note to avoid combat with her for as long as possible. She stood up again, more successfully this time. A single clump of bloodied snow — sent flying from Alexander's impact — stood out on the forehead of the District One girl.

Something that vaguely registered as sorrow stirred in Alexander's chest; she was somehow moved by the sight of this tribute — the victor's sister — who was completely unscathed aside from her fatal wound. There was something different about her, compared to the rest — compared to the lives Alexander and her allies had helped to end. The fact that the District Seven made no contribution to this death — that no one save for the boy who had killed her had even touched her — somehow made it seem more significant. And the new clump of snow somehow seemed like such a desecration on the largely intact girl's state of death that Alexander couldn't stop herself from stooping over to gently brush it off with her glove. She paused a brief moment before righting herself, though, captivated still by the Ross girl. "Shame," she observed, voice rough from disuse. She'd just needed to break the silence. There'd been too much of it for her liking. This was entirely her own fault, however; if her allies had been speaking — dividing the wealth, making comments, anything — Alexander had been too lost in her own absence of thought to notice.

She took a step back and surveyed the rest of the field again. So this was winning? In essence, they'd won the bloodbath simply by not being one of the nine on the ground; they'd won it even more by being the very reason most of those on the ground lay there. Their wealth of items was the final of the three victories that Alexander and her new brothers had attained this still morning, and for whatever reason, she felt as if it would be one of their last as a unit. Which she thought was perfectly alright.

[Baby Wessex d9b [earthling]]

for what it's worth, I always aim to please
but I nearly died

The end of the century
I said my goodbyes
For what it's worth
I always aimed to please
But I nearly died

For what it's worth
I have a slow disease
That sucked me dry

For what it's worth
Come on walk with me
Into the rising tide

[/b]" which was definitely Captain Obvious talking, but what else was he supposed to say? Good job, you kill well or, well, now I'm going to take you more seriously. Mace didn't usually contemplate his words so closely, but the knowledge that he remained on the screen, coated in blood adjusted his mindset. His words would be the only things his siblings could cling to. He felt the sting of missing them as he turned his gaze over Alexander. "You alright?" which was even worse than the first statement. He blinked, revised, "I mean, are you injured? You know, badly?" He wasn't sure he could help much, but the realization that he would at least try made Mace feel a little bit better. At least he wasn't a complete bastard, all his actions that morning much to the contrary. But what could he do?

Mace set his mouth into a thin line, shutting down the thoughts. He would think about Alexander, and Aesop, and Denver. And that would be all.[/ul]

For what it's worth
Filled a cavity
Your god shaped hole tonight[/size]

banner credit: jurate
lyrics:placebo for what it's worth

[L△LIA]

Tell me everything that happened
Tell me everything you saw
They had lights inside their eyes
They had lights
Inside their eyes

[/i][/color][/center]

A labyrinth of frozen salt water rivers have drawn architectural blueprints across my cheeks by the time I begin remembering how to be human, creating a maze I don't think I'll ever be able to find my way out of. With each twitch of the muscles in my gaunt face, I can feel the thin sheets of ice crackle and break as if the shatter patterns were being etched into my skin and maybe they are, memory isn't only in the mind. Fragments of history will embed themselves in a body like shrapnel as they scatter incriminating evidence throughout a crime scene; History wants to be remembered, it doesn't like being forgotten. So even in muddled moments when my emotions don't feel like my own — I am a sun-giant of the cosmos; the red voice of angels that dance across the earth in prisms of light ricocheting through explosions — I know they are a rebellion of time, a refusal to remain in the quiet of my ignorance, insistently pricking at my subconscious: Don't call me a liar, boy. What you've done isn't the same temporary fiction that plays out in the theater of your mind. Some things stay and stay and stay. They will always —

Half-truths of confusion whimper through my lungs in the form of a low hum, sending echos into all the hollow places of my huddled body where they can tremble and shake and sing out the hush of sorrow without shame. Although quiet, the sound helps to block out the voices in my head that want to remind me — no, please don't remind me why the red didn't fade away into white with the other colors, why my mouth tastes like I've been licking pennies, or what exactly this is I'm cradling in my arms. Curled up in a snowdrift against the golden prize of the Cornucopia, I pull into myself a little more in hopes that the less space there is between my limbs, the less they'll shudder and flinch. Braid them together so tightly that they'll never be able to move again, never be able to — The persistent droning of my incoherent vocal chords grows a little louder, stuttering against a mountain range of hitches in my throat as it clenches with a sob that sends me into a coughing fit.

Did you see the closing window?
Did you hear the slamming door?
They moved forward and my heart died
They moved forward
And my heart died

[/i][/color][/center]

Graceless hiccups stumble out my mouth, as if my lungs are attempting to become a back-up heartbeat — they know I can't live without one and my old heart went away with Ripred's fist. Went away, went away, went away. It's not there anymore, not for me. I know my thoughts are true because there is an emptiness in my chest that tells me so. Maybe I can't trust fickle things like sight and smell and touch, but bodies are solid. They exist even when everything else is nothing more than imagination. You have a body. It's all knotted up from misuse, but it's real. My head shakes in response — no no no — because bodies are less than prophets and I am the angel's sun — I am the angel's sun and sun's have no bodies. They are light that shimmers in the air, kissing everything with warmth and the opposite of all this gaudy wreckage surrounding me.

Why are you cold if you are the sun? History chidingly whispers in my ear, tapping at my knuckles and pointing to the snow. I don't know. I don't know what I am if I'm not a sun; if I'm not a son; if I'm — My cheeks are damp with saltwater again and they grow itchy as the air continues turning my tears into sheets of fragile crystal, trying to preserve them for memory's sake. Cold preserves all things, with no regard for what wants to be kept or what would rather rot and evaporate away into nonexistence. Raising my hand up, I attempt to brush them away with the back of my wrist, pressing the jutting bone into my eyes after, digging into the sockets as if pressure might be enough to staunch the stubborn streams, like wounds. However, there are some wounds that can't be stopped or mended and if today is to leave me with one lesson, it should be that.

Oh, please tell me what they looked like
Did they seem afraid of you?
They were kids that I once knew
They were kids
That I once knew

[/i][/color][/center]

My eyes are squeezed shut so tightly that it hurts, eyelashes knit together and sealed with glass padlocks. If I open them now, they will rip like stitches, but I can still see, even in this fuzzy dark: calligraphic spatters of red spewing from the mouths of ethereal beings to write holy scriptures in the snow; thrumming heartbeats like a drum choir of the damned, singing out a last-ditch lullaby of desperation, an S.O.S. to a savior that was never coming, not for us; the contortionist ballet of children with liquid bones, discovering new means of movement as the final restrictions of their bodies were cut away and reforged. Flashes of the unavoidable world beyond me continue to spark and burst across the projection screen of my eyelids, a series of disconnected images that I can't quite make sense of beyond the inherent knowledge that they're about death. Death that I —

More choking sobs jolt out my throat as my gut twists with pangs of remorse, even if I can't yet comprehend what this agonizing guilt is for. I was a sun. I was a son. I was a sun. I was a son. I was a — My veins are still hazy from the drugs my mentor gave me before I entered the arena, preventing my thoughts from fully reintegrating with the reality of my existence, although the chemicals have been filtered from my system for the most part. There is a piece of me that hates — has always hated — the false visions I drug my blood with, that resents his backwards attempt at kindness that sent me into war armed with nothing but lies. It's the same way my brother taught me to cope with our mother's death all those years ago. If there are other ways to come to grips with problems, I don't know them, but sometimes I think it might be nice if people thought I was capable of attempting them.

I could say it, but you won't believe me
You say you do, but you don't deceive me
It's hard to know they're out there
It's hard to know that you still care
Dead hearts are everywhere

[/i][/color][/center]

Fingers twitching, I wrap my arms further around myself, finding comfort in the way my palms don't pass through skin and limbs like air. No, I am not a sun; I am solid. The keening drone doesn't stop, but there is an awareness that it is mine and must therefore come from something else — a body, a body, a body — that is also mine. Despite the lack of humanity in this frozen land, a lonely thought in the back of my mind clings to the idea of being a person, declaring that it sounds like a word I've heard at least once before, in one of the moments prior to the dawn of the drug's Otherworld. Perhaps remembering who — or even what — I was during the Bloodbath could have — could have what?

Awareness is akin to a body bag for me, a demon that breaks tentative quiet with whispers of ruination. I've never been afraid of tangible things like spiders or snakes, but knowing is terrifying. The idea that I could have found the courage to step off that plate if I were conscious of what I was throwing myself into — it's more than laughable. Perhaps my mentor wasn't pitying my yellowed skin when he slipped me that pill, maybe he had glimpsed a deeper problem (it's harder to hate him for that; it's much easier to hate myself), the basic flaw of everything I am. What I am exactly still eludes me, or at least the answer to who I am. Thin skin and quaking bones can only define so much, words and names and identities are far less obvious, returning in snippets that don't always settle into place quite right.

Did you touch them?
Did you hold them?
Did they follow you to town?
They make me feel I'm falling down
They make me feel I'm falling down

[/i][/color][/center]

Over time I've discovered that it's easier not to worry about details like who you are or what you're becoming. Fate will come for you whether you greet it with open arms and a chipper hello or attempt to barricade the door and keep it out. Life keeps happening until it stops and on that day you cease to matter, the only thing left of you are the memories other people carry of your ghost. So it's not important how often I forget my own name — this is not the first time it has run away from the home of my mind, I know that much — as long as someone nearby catches it like a stray dog waiting to be returned to its owner. Although, maybe the same goes for all of me. I'm little more than a mangy stray in my worst moments, homeless and helpless, wandering without purpose, simply waiting for someone to assign me a task to while away my time with.

Sometimes I'd feel like I belonged, as if I were helpful and worthy of existence. There were people I used to take care of once, whose fates I could polish until their futures gleamed with a kind of promise I've never had within myself. For a flickering moment the memory of my sister, and all the hope she carries with her like pretty myths that no one has to make up because they're true, drowns out the technicolor horrors that refuse to be shut out by something so simple as eyelids. Calliope always made my shortcomings okay, because what little I got right in life, I got right for her. It didn't matter how often I swallowed pills that rotted my veins when those pills were what fed her and kept her in school. An altered state of reality got me from one day to the next and there was a kind of logic in it all. But this new reality that tastes like salted copper and smells like a kind of guilt I've never known before... I don't know what all of this is for. I only remember how to hum lullabies in my lungs and hope this cold preserves something other than just my wrongs and regrets.

Was there one you saw too clearly?
Did they seem too real to you?
They were kids that I once knew
They were kids that I once knew
Now they're all dead hearts to you

[/i][/color][/center]

[/color][/justify][/size][/blockquote][/blockquote]

[Deleted]

{*| Let's get this party started |*}

[/color]

What you do on your own time's just fine
My imagination's much worse, I just never want to know
What meant the world had folded
Like legs and fingers holding onto what escapes me[/size][/font]

After the cannons, there is silence.

But even in the suffocating quiet those nine booms reverberate down to the very center of who I was am, the low vibrations cleansing away the frenzy and bloodlust that had been at the forefront of my mind and leaving only a numbness that is neither comfortable nor desirable. I look at all these dead children and I want to feel something – satisfaction, envy, even remorse – but I’m as empty as the tundra around me, frozen to the fact that my alliance was then end of over half of them. This could all just be a horrible dream; it has that feel of not-quite-there surrealism wrapped around it in a fuzzy veil, but the red on the snow is too bright, the cold too sharp, the silence too deafening to be anything other than harsh reality. I’ve always been good at hiding from the bad things in my life, just burying my head in the sand and pretending not to notice everything that’s wrong. So I try, I really try to just spring out of this terrible state of nothingness and be something, anything, but all of the carnage has left me a scooped-out shell and any emotion I try to muster just feels distant and false and wrong.

But the boy I used to be is still locked up somewhere in the back of my head, away from all this blood and violence that would break him if I let him back in full control of a body that’s running on nothing but adrenaline and survival instinct – I am not Denver. I am only Denver’s will to live. What an odd thought – and with some careful coaxing just a little bit of him manages to leak out into half-frozen veins, calling up a ghost of a smile when the reasonably intact forms of Mace and Alexander cross into my line of vision. Then I remember. It’s just us now. We won. We’re all alive. And all of the Cornucopia’s treasures are ours. The thought makes my grin widen and sets me in motion toward them, lanky limbs breaking free of the cold’s vise-like grip and trotting over to stand beside them, all of us gazing at the surrounding carnage. “Well, boys, some mess we’ve made.”

The messiest part of said mess is by far the disfigured, carved-up heap of a body slumped a few yards away, and I remember with a shudder the things I witnessed out of the corner of my eye about halfway through the Bloodbath, averting my eyes and turning back to my brothers. “Okay, if no one’s maimed beyond belief I want to grab our stuff and get the hell out before that scary chick from Twelve comes back. You sure know how to pick ‘em, Mace; d’you see what she did to that poor bastard from One? Guy was an ass, no doubt, but sweet Ripred. I don’t know if even he deserved that kind of… Wait, where’s Aesop?”

My answer comes in the form of a low keening sound from the other side of the Cornucopia, a mournful drone that gives way to sobbing after a few seconds. A brisk walk around the golden horn reveals the huddled form of the final member of our alliance, weeping for all he’s worth (exactly what I’d be doing if I really let all of this sink in instead of slipping through my mind on a frigid breath of air) on the cold ground, and as much as I want to pity him I remember why he’s like this and that’s what makes the irritation spark red-hot behind my eyes as they narrow into a withering glare, hands darting to to catch his collar and hauling the form that’s even more emaciated than mine up into a standing position.

“What the hell, man?!” I hiss, barely even noticing how he’s still a blubbering mess and faraway and gone in that way that drew me to him in the first place because it reminded me of Jess and home. “Really, Aesop? Really? What were you thinking, coming in here all whacked out like that?! What if you hadn’t been able to take care of yourself, huh? We would have had to watch your back and ours. You would have been dead weight, and we can’t afford dead weight at this point!”

I let him drop back to the ground with a disgusted huff, stalking a few paces away and carding fingers irritably through my already-messy hair, not bothering to think of how there are now red streaks pulled through the normal wheatblonde. Yes, my alliance is in the lead as much as it’s possible to be in the lead of something as brutal as the Hunger Games. Yes, we all made it out of the Bloodbath alive, and with the best of all possible outcomes. But that doesn’t mean we can slack. In the hour or so that I’ve been in the arena, I’ve gone from the grim acceptance of my own death to the fragile hope that maybe one day I might make it home alive, or at least one of the three others around me might. One of us can win this. We can. But for that to happen, we’ve all got to be at the top of our game. Maybe it’s just time for that leading by example thing. Casting another haphazard glance in Aesop’s direction, I hike my rucksack into a more comfortable position on my shoulder, squinting off into the endless white of the horizon. “Come on. We can’t just stand around here forever. If we’re gonna play the game, let’s play it already.”

Calm before the storm set it off, and the sun burnt out tonight
A reception less than warm set it off
This is me standing in the arch of the door
Hating that look on your face that says there's another fool like me

[aya]

And the power's out
in the heart of men
take it from your heart
put it in your hand

Alexander Hood —


For awhile, the silence Alexander had felt the need to break with a single syllable — one coarse tone of observation for all the carnage stretched out around the quartet — was perpetuated, the arena as still and dead as it had been when the last body hit the ground and the adrenaline rush dissipated. At that moment, Alexander didn't like the silence. It made her feel cold and uncomfortably alone, as if she briefly forgot that she did not generally like to hear what others had to say, as if she briefly forgot that she was Alexander Hood and she preferred to be her own company.

But then, it seemed, the others finished their own silent introspections and added their voices to the constant static produced by the bouts of wind. Hunger Games smalltalk, she decided; the trivial observations that somehow felt necessary, despite their obviousness. 'Some weather we're having lately, huh?' 'Definitely. I wonder if that will affect lumber shipments.' 'Gee, we sure killed a lot of people.' 'Looks like it. We should probably go through their stuff.' Some of these remarks simulated in Alexander's head turned out to be legitimate, like Mace's inquiry: "Are you injured? You know, badly?" She shook her head. "Nah, I'm fine." A few bruises were nothing, especially when compared to the abundance of amputated appendages that littered the ground around them, many of which she herself had severed.

It was when Denver spoke that Alexander remembered half the reason why she didn't go out of her way to talk to people — or why she was seldom receptive to conversations initiated by others. She didn't dislike him, and was therefore willing to chalk it up to nerves, but she found herself silently wishing that he'd shut up. There really wasn't a whole lot of use in discussing the other tributes or entertaining the possibility that they'd be back soon; after all, the four of them had clearly done enough to scare everyone else off, and if any returned for another attempt at their new wealth of items, Alexander had enormous faith in their ability to defend their cache. In Denver's whole long-winded spiel, she could only pick out three useful syllables: Where's Aesop?

A turn of Alexander's head revealed that the fourth member of their alliance was much worse at maintaining composure than the rest of them. Over by the golden horn, the District Six was curled up, body shivering with sobs rather than cold. At first she thought that he might be injured, though he, like the rest of them, didn't seem to have much in the way of wounds; for all the blood that was on him, Alexander doubted that a single drop was his own. Though she was a bit irritated at the fact that one of her allies had seemingly already gone off the deep end maybe an hour into the competition, the District Seven knew that there was no way she would've reacted in the same manner as Denver, who was quickly losing points her her book.

The sandy-haired tallest of her new brothers (and her new brothers each had at least six inches on her) pulled the distraught Aesop Bloom to his feet, shouting curses at him. For whatever reason, Alexander didn't think this would be particularly effective at calming him down, but, as had been the case for much of her time since being Reaped, she lacked the patience to deal with it. She'd been dealing with too much for what felt like her entire life — too much work, too much stress — and simply refused to try another inch or care another ounce. Not when she could count the number of days she had left to live on her fingers; no, she had very little time left with which to live and Alexander would be damned if she didn't get to spend any of that time enjoying herself. So she floated above the guilt, the caring, the responsibility. The past handful of years had too much of that for her liking. She was done. No more.

Finishing his verbal assault on Aesop, Denver suddenly seemed eager to leave the frozen, blood-tinged ghost town. Years of being the head of her household had conditioned Alexander to assume responsibility, so she didn't like being told, even indirectly. Trying to keep the huff out of her voice: "We can't leave just yet. We ought to get rid of the items we're can't carry, unless we want the others to make use of them. Here—" she gathered a handful of pliers (why on earth were there so many of them? Some sort of inside joke amongst the Gamemakers?) "— I figure these could probably be used as weapons, and I'd really rather not lose my eye to one. Let's put them…" The only way to get items out of the arena that Alexander could think of was to send them on out with a dead tribute. It didn't exactly seem respectful, but the guy from One definitely resembled a slab of meat more so than any of the others, so she began to press the weapons into his body where they fit — the knife wounds in his stomach from the District Twelve girl left her a lot of room. It wasn't pretty work, but it seemed necessary. She stood off and brushed her hands, as if she was merely clearing them of sawdust, though the blood did nothing but stain.

"What else have we got? Any spare blankets we don't want to share? Medical supplies we don't have room for?" Now that the dust had fully settled, so to speak, from the Games-opening combat, Alexander found herself more satisfied being busy than not. Even the most mundane actions were more comforting than just lying around, making snow angels without realizing it. Or thinking. As it was, she'd rather her memory of her life be confined to the week or so since leaving District Seven, as thinking of home came with the guilt she'd much rather push away or drown out. She should spend time wondering about or worrying about the siblings she'd given her life — quite literally, as it would turn out, for she would not be here if she hadn't become Alexander Hood — but it was far too draining to hope for them when she already knew they wouldn't be getting along fine without her and when she knew there was nothing she could do about that. She could, on the other hand, watch the backs of her new pack of brothers, and she would gladly do just that.


ooc — I think this might be some sort of speed record for me.

[Baby Wessex d9b [earthling]]

for what it's worth, I always aim to please
but I nearly died

Mace got Denver. It was more than just that the two boys seemed to use the same dialect. There was something beneath the words, a familiarity that Mace had been avoiding. But when Denver referred to the mess they'd made, Mace couldn't help but hear Cygnus' voice parroting back the words after a long day of slaughtering cows. It really wasn't such a different thing, after all, except for the twisting of his gut, the fences he was building inside of his mind. There was just as much blood and disaster as some of the worst days in the barn. Turns out, cows didn't want to die just as much as teenagers.

Mace leveled his gaze at Denver. He was in no fucking mood to be teased. And like he was supposed to know that Charas, with her full lips and swept-up eyes would turn into a psychotic animal when she got to the Cornucopia. He'd managed to pretty much avoid her, although when he caught glimpses in the Bloodbath he hadn't exactly been thinking about her rage or power. He'd been thinking about the reach of her arms, the long slow fall of her legs, the way her face changed. Mace was never going to win any awards for identifying female emotions, and usually he didn't bother to worry about it. But he did wonder, now, what Charas was feeling. Had she enjoyed the slaughter? Had she done it out of necessity? And what had that done to her?

In the end, it didn't really matter to Mace. He'd still have gone into that elevator with her, and if he could find one in the arena, all bets were off. But that still didn't give Denver the right to needle him about it. "Whatever, man. Shiiiit." And for the millionth time that morning, he wished he could have been in Ten, out in the fields with his usual repertoire of weapons. He mechanically reached for his belt, his hand gliding over his right hip where the cattle prod usually hung. Instead, his fingers tripped over the hilts of his knives, and he was no longer quite so interested in defending his honor. He still felt the burn of it though, in his stomach, and it swelled over the guilt and regret. Mace didn't want to kill anyone else that day, but damn could he use a good tussle. Just something to get his mind off things.

Like his incapacitated alliance member. Mace jogged behind Denver, and folded his arms to watch him accost Aesop. The signs were pretty obvious, now that Denver had identified them. Withdrawal was a bitch, but never before in his life had Mace so desperately wished he had some sort of substance to rely upon. He gazed down at Aesop's withered form for a moment, dead eyes betraying nothing. He really wasn't sure what he thought about this development, but he didn't think slapping the boy around would solve the problem. So, he turned to Denver, shaking his head. "Doubt he just decided to shoot up before coming in." Mace glanced back at Aesop, trying to figure out exactly what he wanted to say. When he looked back to Denver, he found that his early anger had already evaporated, a brief spark frozen over by the tundra. "Whatever you want to do though, man, I'm in."

And finding supplies was already at the top of Mace's list. He nodded his consent, turned to find Alexander making speedy work of the pliers. Mace snatched one from the pile and tucked it into his rucksack. He wasn't sure why he wanted it. Maybe because it reminded him of the tools scattered around the community home. It probably wasn't useful, but it was small and he just wanted it, damnit. He picked over a few other items, tucked them away, and then secured the sack over his shoulder. "He's got a point." Mace nodded to Denver, and finally focused his attention on Alexander. He couldn't quite figure the boy out. He was smart, but that was pretty much all Mace knew about him, which was going to be a problem pretty soon. "Yeah, medical stuff, weapons... I guess that's it. I've already got a blanket." Mace hefted his sack for proof. "I'd feel a little better with a few more sharp things though. Seems stupid to waste the whole day here. I don't imagine it gets warmer at night."

And that was truly a motivating factor for Mace, which was a whole new concept. He ranched some in the winter, but when the storms rolled through, they kept the cows close to home and rotated them through the barn. He'd never spent more than a night or two out below freezing, and it was already almost colder that than in the daylight. He didn't like the idea of traipsing over the mirror glass ground with only the moon to guide them. If there even was a moon. He could remember cows getting lost in the blizzards, succumbing to the winter's breath in the night. He wasn't going to die that way, no sir, and he didn't plan on letting his brothers go quietly in the dark either.

Mace attacked the pile with a renewed vigor, motivated by the idea of freezing to death. Along the outskirts, near to the body of someone (Mace thought maybe female, blonde, but that was all he could identify), he found a blanket which had done a good job acting as the sponge for the tribute's blood. Mace gave it only one pull and it slid on the slick snow, bringing the body closer. He debated being more respectful, and then finally just let himself do what he needed to do. He put his foot on the frozen arm, pushed down with his weight while he pulled up on the fabric. The sticky blanket came free, and without glancing back, he turned and marched over to Aesop. "Best I could do,

[/color]" he said gruffly. "You sure as shit are going to need something.[/color]"

He looked back one more time over the wealth and the carnage. This was no stopping place. It wasn't exactly that the blood and bodies bothered him, but more that now all the other tributes had a better idea of the size and topography of the Arena than they did, and there wasn't any food buried in the Cornucopia, at least not that he could find. No, it was time to push forward. Mace rolled his shoulders back, felt the weight of the spear and cat o' nine tails which he had secured to his sack. The weight of them brought him more comfort than he could have imagined. "Time to move out." He nodded curtly to the other boys, feet already crunching over the snow as headed away from the Cornucopia and into the biting wind that brought promises of death.[/size][/blockquote]

banner credit: jurate
lyrics:placebo for what it's worth

[L△LIA]

( A E S O P M Y K O N O S B L O O M )




The door slammed loud
And rose up a cloud of dust on us
Footsteps follow, down through the hollow sound, torn up
How did any holes in the snow-tipped pines, I find
Hatching from the seed of your thin mind, all night

[/i][/color][/center]

"What the hell, man?!" The sound coming from Denver's mouth doesn't really register, my eardrums jumbling up the consonants and vowels until they're little more than foreign jibberish. There are only two things that my disassembled mind is able to draw sense from, sliding the fragments into empty places within my conscious memory like jigsaw pieces. One, his anger is enough to shake my bones and it does, his fists knotted into the loose slack of my coat as he forces me to my feet. Jaw locking itself in response, I uselessly attempt to restrain the soft wailing creeping pathetically out my lungs, but my lips are still trembling and there's nothing to be done about my damp, bloodshot eyes. "Really, Aesop? Really? What were you thinking, coming in here all whacked out like that?! What if you hadn’t been able to take care of yourself, huh? We would have had to watch your back and ours. You would have been dead weight, and we can’t afford dead weight at this point!" The second moment of recognition is stronger and stirs within me, mixing disconnected pieces back together into a muddled whole: Aesop.

There is familiarity in that sound and it fits into my identity with little more than a blink, leading my mind back to itself and drawing me closer toward shaky reality. The rest of his words and their underlying emotions don't click into place until after he has released me, my body dropping back to the ground like the aforementioned dead weight. Time drags by as I attempt to clean the shimmer of static from my thoughts, as if unwrapping them from layer after layer of cellophane, lining them up into neat little rows. Questions still echoing in my head, the answers begin to come easily enough, but speaking does not, the words coming out so soft as to be carried away by the wind, little more than a mumble. "Hell," my voice cracks, fragile and childlike as I glance at the endless plain of white and red, gray lumps scattered in the snow surrounding us, "yeah, that's what this is." Pausing briefly, a muted beat of failed laughter dies in my throat as my face contorts with another grimacing sob and I fumble back to my feet, swaying unsteadily. "I never claimed to take care of myself, bro." Cheekbones jutting out to make more than one kind of point as I look at him — I never subjected myself to starvation for the sake of vanity — I resist the impulse to drop my eyes to the ground, because I forgot to go to confession before talking with the gods, so I suppose I should now.

And you will go to Mykonos
With a vision
Of a gentle coast
And a sun to maybe dissipate
Shadows of the mess you made

[/i][/color][/center]

"Lost causes aren't worth the effort," no, we're not, "and I h-ha—" Have? Had? Have. "—h-have a sister to look after." With the mention of Calliope — I've always been okay with sacrificing my life for her, but that's different than what this senseless arena is asking of me — I lose the willpower that held my gaze up, my stomach lurching as it drops to the severed leg still clutched within my arms. The thick rubber sole of a boot stares up at me, blood frozen into the treading that's most likely imprinted marks of shame into the flesh of my cheek from all the time I spent curled up around it, senseless and sedated. Instinct tells me to release it, but I can't let go now. It seems disrespectful. There's a nagging feeling within my gut telling me I owe a debt to the limb, that once something is claimed, it's yours. Abandonment is not an option and I know the others won't understand. Just like they won't understand the way empty veins gnaw at me as if the Gamemakers have released their mutts inside my body, sending claws raking across the lining of my stomach and teeth sinking into sinew and cartilage.

— but that little white pill was about more than that. "Loyalty." The word gets tangled up in my still quivering lips, muttered with the opposite of confidence that makes it clear that I don't think anyone is listening, that these statements are more for myself. My mentor put himself on the line for me — no one ever does that, not for me — when he slipped the drugs into my palm and now that Denver has called me out to the whole of Panem, he could be dead for that tiny piece of pity he gave me. Exactly how many deaths are we responsible for today? "I was thinking," my hushed voice grates into its own jagged edges, raspy and forced, "that it was the least I could do." Eyebrows knitting together, I can't bring myself to admit that having chemicals running through me is as much the opposite of dead weight as I get. I'm a downhill wreck from here on out, because after the final remnants of my whacked out motivation leave me, the only thing left will be shaking, sweating, and desperation, coupled with agonizing misery as I'm forced to endure an ironic kind of hunger the Games weren't intended to be named for. The three of them will figure that out soon enough though, whether I tell them or not.

Brother
You don't need to turn me away
I was waiting down at the ancient gate
You go wherever you go today
You go today

[/i][/color][/center]

As Alexander starts sorting through supplies, Denver and Mace turn away to do the same while I stand in unobserved silence and self-loathing. Time starts to slip away from me, a whirl of speckled white that seems to glow around the edges, but at some point I force myself to follow their lead, untangling my arm from the straps of my rucksack — it too was alive once — as I empty it of its contents, tucking pliers and rumpled masses of plastic and fabric into the arms of the corpse nearest to me, to be carried out of the arena with him. Look at us sharing the Wealth. Staring into the shadowed emptiness of the bag, it seems infinite and capable of holding anything and — maybe it's only a lie of the warped visions that never leave my mind, but — the severed leg (of that girl over there, oh god, what did I do to that girl?) I'd been holding manages to defy some distant law of space and logic to fit inside. I am the proud owner of a black hole that promises to keep all my secrets and it seems I already have more than enough to fill it up.

Wandering around half-heartedly gathering the most useful supplies from the grips of the ice — armor, medical supplies, an excess of weapons that I don't have near enough arms or willpower to make use of — I cross paths with Alexander's snow angel of death. Memories flicker back


WIP WIP WIP

BRB. I HAVE AZN THINGS TO ATTEND TO. I'LL FINISH WRITING THIS LAST PARAGRAPH OR WHATEVER IN A BIT. YAY LOOPHOLES.

I remember how they took you down
As the winter turned the meadow brown
When out walking, brother, don't you forget
It ain't often that you'll ever find a friend
You go wherever you go today

[/i][/color][/center]

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