a {lion-hearted} girl :: dempseys + detective

[Deleted]

KIERA NIAMH DEMPSEY

here i am, a rabbit-hearted girl, frozen in the headlights
it seems i've made the final sacrifice
we raise it up, this offering, we raise it up
this is a gift, it comes with a price, who is the lamb and who is the knife
midas is king and he holds me so tight, and turns me to gold in the sunlight

The interior of the Justice Building is so posh that the utter richness of it throws Kiera off a bit, puts her out of her element and standing on the precipice of the richly-decorated room as if she isn’t quite sure she belongs there - she doesn’t. The person who truly belongs here is somewhere in the District with her brother, cavorting around in the freedom that was won at the price of Kiera’s noble sacrifice. And that’s okay. Uncertainly, she takes a few steps into the space that grows to feel more and more like a damask-wrapped tomb, perching carefully on a divan upholstered in rich brocade and letting skeletal fingers trace the intricate whorls and rises of the fabric. The Arena is something she can handle. This, these next few minutes, this will test her to the very edge of her endurance.

She wills herself not to think of them, but their faces swim to the forefront of her mind nonetheless – Blair’s tentative smiles, Aurora’s quiet steadiness, Cora’s boundless affection, Moira’s inherent joy – and the prospect of leaving them makes liquid fire lap viciously at the backs of her eyes, producing a stinging sensation that she hurriedly blinks away. Kiera knows she’ll be back - he promised her that she had what it took to be a Victor and Kaelen’s promises are rare things, not to be taken lightly - but the time she is about to spend apart from her family will sit heavy in her bones.

In all reality, the idea of being away from One, the only place she has ever known (at least on the plane of physical perception), is nearly as burdensome as leaving her family behind. She wonders if the water in the Capitol will hold the same wisdom as the water here, whether it will sing pretty hymns of absolution and words of life or remain silent, plastic and stripped of all feeling just like the inhabitants of its homeland. The idea of a world where the water is silent is so quietly abhorrent that Kiera’s breath stutters to a halt for a moment, her hands half-suspended in the air as if she could gather the vapor from it and cradle it close to her to sing her to sleep in the vast catacombs of the Arena.

The small table next to her holds a mirrored tray covered in a variety of little glass bottles, surely for decorative purposes since most of them are empty. Kiera’s fingers ghost contemplatively over the smallest of them, her eyes flicking up to the windowsill where she can see a rain gauge mounted outside the glass, still full from last night’s storm. There’s something almost frantic in her movements as she dives for the window, shouldering the creaky old thing open and grabbing for the plastic vial of rainwater, tipping it with the utmost care into the little blue glass bottle cradled in her palm. As the water travels to its new home it whispers reassuringly, granting her an inner peace she desperately needs. I’ll go with you, daughter. Even in the darkest places you will never be alone. Murmuring a quiet “Thank you,” Kiera places the cork firmly in place in the tiny bottle, folding it securely in her sweaty palm and sitting calmly back on the couch.

“Three minutes.” The door creaks open and Kiera braces herelf for whatever might be behind it, content in the knowledge that she’s only doing what is righteous, and that even if her family is beneath the plane of understanding she will surely see them again to explain her purposes. For now, though, she can only prepare to look up from her lap at everything ranging from terror to betrayal in their eyes, her thumb running absently over the vial of rainwater in her hand and silently begging it to lend her its strength and wisdom.

“I’m sorry.”

[/color]

i look around but i can't find you, if only i could see your face
instead of rushing towards the skyline
i wish that i could just be brave
i must become a lion-hearted girl, ready for a fight
before i make the final sacrifice

[/size][/justify]

[gamemaker kelsier]

Talking
Doing
Deep Thought
Hearing
In His Mind Place

One can walk and live among humans for years, and still never quite understand them. For example, you have a games where people go to kill and die, but mostly die. The chances of making it out alive are very small, as everyone wants to see you dead, including the audience and the person organizing the game. It's not going to be an easy death however, no it's going to be one filled with complete agony because it's only worth it if it's interesting. I have seen young people go into the games every single year and it has never touched me. Not even last year, when one of the Ripley boys went in. I dealt with them extensively once, it had something to do with a dug up grave and someone's pelvic bone. The point is, I knew them, but seeing one of them die did nothing.

Why is it, that suddenly my heart is beating faster in the way it does when I have a particularly good case. How come my breath is coming in short little gasps, the way it does after a strenuous work out? Why are my thoughts becoming all jumbly wumbly and excited? This is a new reaction, one inexperienced as of yet. Nothing has ever made me feel this way before, not even that one time I thought Vests had died and it turned out that he had only passed out. Who knew that making him stay up for three days straight would be such a deciding factor? I don't know why my heart is beating like this, or why the feel of her skin is still linked to my hand in such a terrifying way. I clench and unclench my fist, I can't stop it, not since I took her elbow in mine and brought her up to the announcement of her death. I am the one who dragged you down to perdition.

Now she is in a small room, waiting to say goodbye to her sisters, and not being able to say goodbye to one 'dead' twin, or her 'dead' cousin. I'm still annoyed the idiots and headquarters pronounced him dead, when he's so obviously coming back one day. I don't know if she wants to say goodbye to me, I don't know if that should matter, but I want to talk to her. I don't want to say goodbye, oh goodness no, I absolutely detest goodbyes. They always become so weepy and sad and then I have to send Vests to dry clean my coat and he makes a big to-do about it.

I'm already angry, rage already bubbling below an ice cold exterior. People don't think I have feelings, I don't think I have feelings, but sometimes they just happen. Oh come now, I wouldn't really call it anger, just intense annoyance. When I enter the room, and hear a calm, "I'm sorry," that is when I become really angry. She's standing there, so calmly, like the goddess she thinks she is, like this predetermined fate. Well, I've never believed in fate, or religion, and I'm not planning on starting now. I stand still for a moment, my face betraying nothing but an easy smirk, like it always does, like I was trained to. I will betray nothing, there is nothing to betray. A mantra we all had to learn, a mantra I was forced to learn. No one will ever see what I don't want them seeing ever again.

"I'm the sorry one, my dear, think of all the angry murders I'll have on my hands due to your glorious sisters." My voice is calmer than I expected it to be. A good sign, except for the fact that I've lost the ability to read myself somewhere between this morning and now. My hands are loose, my body relaxed. So why do I feel like I'm about to jump off the deep end. In annoyance, I shove off the door frame I've been leaning against, and slip into the room. The door closes behind me with a quiet thud. I'll have a bout two minutes before the Dempsey clan gets here, all but one of the girls come to say goodbye. Sighing, I walk across the room to where Kiera stands, Pulling a strand of long hair through my fingers, I ask softly, "And what does Eden think of this, I wonder?"

My features shift into a reproachful glare as my hand leaves the strand alone, and I say with more malice in my voice than intended, "What were you thinking Dempsey? In all actuality, have you learned nothing, I thought you were intelligent. that's the only reason I tolerated you." I pace away from her, voice rising in agitation with every word, I've never been so worked up in my life, not since I was just little, and eve then, I must have been five. Well I'm not a bloody five year old anymore. I don't like the new substance in my veins, cracking my exterior like ice melt. It must be fear, or panic. But bullocks, I don't panic, I'm The Detective, I don't even have a real name, I am something created by the capitol, I don't do feelings. I do not feel.

I'm not looking at her anymore, I am afraid to, I am afraid. But I cannot be afraid, I am The Detective, and I fear no one and no thing.

[/color][/size]

[Deleted]

KIERA NIAMH DEMPSEY

here i am, a rabbit-hearted girl, frozen in the headlights
it seems i've made the final sacrifice
we raise it up, this offering, we raise it up
this is a gift, it comes with a price, who is the lamb and who is the knife
midas is king and he holds me so tight, and turns me to gold in the sunlight

“I'm the sorry one, my dear, think of all the angry murders I'll have on my hands due to your glorious sisters,” a sterile, deadpanned voice sits calmly in the air of the room, its tepid, noncommittal simple state of being doing at least a little to calm the storm raging just beneath Kiera’s skin. She looks up in surprise, having expected to see her sisters’ tears and her father’s rage but instead met with an impassive, boyish face and an eclectic choice of clothing that have come to symbolize both irritation and something close to comfort over the time she’s been acquainted with them.

“Detective,” she replies, keeping her face at a careful impasse equal to his and nodding slightly in greeting. “Nice of you to come. I thought you said you didn’t do goodbyes. Unless – oh, this is rich. You’re my guard. Charming.”

An elegant hand rises into the air in front of her, carefully grasping a stray strand of mottled brown-blonde-red that has floated out of its intricate braid. The sort of unsteady calm etched into his features sets Kiera on edge, finding the barely-controlled chaos surging in her own veins echoed back behind the depths of green-blue eyes across the space between them. Normally he’s the embodiment of the icy composure that Kaelen made into a familiarity that felt like home, but now the both of them stand on a delicate tipping point, here in her velvet-wrapped prison of which he’s been made the warden in something that she decide whether it’s a cruel or comical twist of face. Perhaps both. The two of them always did have a penchant for finding the undiscerning hand of irony to be something beautiful even in destruction. There’s a sort of stillness between them that speaks more volumes than even Kiera’s elevated state of sentience can comprehend, whole libraries of words unsaid that both of them are too stubborn to give shape.

“What were you thinking, Dempsey? In all actuality, have you learned nothing, I thought you were intelligent. that's the only reason I tolerated you,” he snaps, voice rising to a pitch and resonance that Kiera would have never thought him capable of. She jumps slightly in surprise before countering with a glare of her own, determined amber meeting intelligent ultramarine in a clash of wills fierce enough to shake the foundations of the universe.

“Ella’s brother is my friend. He didn’t even know if she was alive, I wasn’t going to sit back and watch them suffer like that. They don’t deserve it,” she snaps back, knowing that her divine logic is beyond his understanding but determined to make him see her side all the same (she still remembers the water rushing around her hands in pretty hymns of mercy, the ragged gasp that scraped through his lungs when she pulled him to the surface at the last minute, the coy smile sitting on her own lips. “You don’t believe it of yourself, but I see light in you. You’re a great man, but with a little work I think you might even be a good one someday.”). With Kaelen disappeared into the vast chasm of memory he is all she clings to in the hope of someone who understands, who can validate her choices with comprehension even if not with acceptance. “But what do you know of self-sacrifice? I shouldn’t expect you to understand what it’s like to give of yourself for the sake of others. You’re a selfish creature like the rest of them!”

By this point Kiera’s voice has risen to a panicked, half-hysterical shout, her hand clenching white-knuckled around the crystalline bottle that holds the very essence of salvation. “Do you think I want to go into the Arena?! Do you think I want to put my family through that kind of hell?! Of course I don’t! But I can win, I will win, and Ella’s soul will stay pure because of it. She won’t have to know things like blood or guilt or terror, she won’t have to be scared…”

It takes a moment for Kiera to realize the extent to which she’s shaking. Her whole body quakes with visible tremors, from her spindly fingers to the stray locks of hair escaping from its elaborate style. Almost in awe, she raises a trembling hand in front of her face, stares at it curiously. For all of his preaching that the truly righteous should never have to be afraid in the midst of their sacrifice, Kaelen never seemed to realize that Kiera would never grow to be a paragon of might like he was. In the end, perhaps she was too human for that. The sudden realization of the visceral screams of no, no, don’t make me go, I don’t want to go boiling up from the depths of her soul breaks something within her, sending her icy resolve collapsing into dust as liquid fire laps viciously behind her eyes, trails over a gaunt cheekbone and paints itself in a salty stain over her trembling lip. “I’m scared… I’m so scared. I don’t understand. He promised…”

Kiera can’t give voice to the end of her statement, lost beneath a single sob that escapes against her will, arms curling in front of her chest as if to hold her rapidly fracturing composure together. He promised that I would be a goddess. And goddesses do not know fear.

[/color]

i look around but i can't find you, if only i could see your face
instead of rushing towards the skyline
i wish that i could just be brave
i must become a lion-hearted girl, ready for a fight
before i make the final sacrifice

[/size][/justify]

[gamemaker kelsier]

LOL
THIS
IS A
BLITZ
POST.

“Nice of you to come. I thought you said you didn’t do goodbyes. Unless – oh, this is rich. You’re my guard. Charming.”

"What, did you lose your Observation skills along with your brain? I was the one who escorted you to the stage." It's no good, everything is coming out with too much emotion, too much strain on everything. This is wrong, this feeling. Pacing angrily, I swallow it, something that she doesn't need or want to see. She can't see my fear, and I can't see mine either. I don't want to know if she has fear. We're like two sumo wrestlers dressed in red, tiptoeing around a sleeping bull in a china shop. She's right when she says I don't do goodbyes. I can't do them, and no one I have ever met in my long life has expected me too. That's she wants one is just another reason for me to cut my ties with her, and give her up as already lost.

Panem knows how many times I have done it before, well they don't, but that's beside the point. But there have been countless times where I have been too afraid to do what I feel like doing because I don't know what a feeling is, I cannot figure it out. It's not something I can deduce. There's never been anything that's stumped me so much as her. She's a question that I've spent days trying to answer, each lilted note a lullaby to my thoughts at night, always present, but never fully there. Her words always play through my head again and again, like no other's. I brush off everyone else's like so much dust, because they mean nothing in the grand scheme of things, nothing does. Only some things, some deeds that have built themselves up to become monsters of men. Her words, suddenly mean more than anything I ever accomplished, and they plague me, I don't know why.

I don't hold onto things. If I did, I'd be a basket case, and besides, too many weird, squishy feelings inside my chest. No, it's best to keep a clear head by simply letting go of every thread, but never forgetting, no don't. You don't ever forget the way he looked at you, just once, or how his head turned away in hatred and disgust. You don't forget about the way she died, or how she gave you away. You pretend to ignore the man that sometimes likes to enjoy a good smoke on the street outside your home, because you know what he's really for. And that terrifies that a man with an umbrella doesn't need to follow you to know you.

You can't help wondering why they won't just leave you alone like they promised to, that last night you saw them all. Pity. the thought of it brings an angry sneer to my lips as I slip as ceaselessly back into the moment as I can manage on such short notice. I remain expressionless at her attempted jabs to cause a reaction, she always does this, plays with me, like she can turn me into a lesser thing, but she hasn't been able to move me yet. Things she has said have kept me awake at night, but most everything has. I've been asked why I don't sleep, and I suppose it's because I'm a little afraid that I'll wake up and everything will have changed again.

Everything is such a dance, and it's like I've arrived too late to learn the steps.

[LOL WELCOME TO ELEGANT'S VERY FIRST WIP. basically things happen, and in like a minute the detective leaves in maybe an angry huff.]

[/color][/size]

[L△LIA]

( E L L A W R E N D A H L - M O R E N O )

Destroy everything you touch
Today
Destroy me this way
Anything that may desert you
So it cannot hurt you

Ever since I flung myself off that stage — a swan-dive of shame in the eyes of District One, but a leap of faith on my part — and tackled my back-from-the-dead brother, I haven't let him go. Honestly, I'm terrified that this is all a sick hallucination. So I alternate between tugging at his hand, tucking my arm into his, or wrapping myself around him as if hugging him tightly enough could pull him into the safety of my ribcage and redefine the meaning of heart place. Now and then I stop and throw my fists into his chest, yelling "Bastard!" through clenched teeth and messy sobs, because his ghost has been pretty cruel to me since the last time I saw him. But I've deserved every second of that torture, so I always follow it with a disintegrating whisper of: "Hate me. Hate me, you awful bastard." I think part of him does hate me, just the same as there really is a piece of me that is so godawful pissed at him that I could just kill him for everything that's happened.

It's all I can do to stop myself from pulling at his clothing and demanding that he show me his legs, his arms, and his ribs. I want him to prove that his bones aren't still as impossibly broken as when Zane and I mistook his mangled body for a dead man's, but this isn't the time and place for these things and he knows it, even if I don't. Auggie has always been just a little bit better than me at paying attention to what a person should and shouldn't do. That's why my trouble making and his have always ended with very different consequences, even though he's the real brawler. So he's more restrained than my shameless outbursts, reigning his messier emotions in for the moment to a series of inconsistent facial expressions and indecisive fists. I think he really does hate me and it's driving me crazy... crazier that he won't just have it out with me here and now. Maybe he can't yell and scream back at me because his voice is still all broken up from howling my name out at the Reaping —

But I don't think that's why.

It's not until he pushes a door open and leads me inside that I finally fall as still and quiet as I was back up on the stage in the District Square. I had hardly even realized we'd been walking somewhere and I'm so single-mindedly selfish that I probably wouldn't even have come here if Auggie hadn't led the way. He knows what a person is supposed to do.

I'm face to face with Kiera Dempsey and now everything is clicking into place.

When she volunteered for me, her name and the sound of her voice were such distant flickers of recognition that I couldn't place them, but now all those fragments of childhood memories are beginning to swell up within me. It's a little funny that the last time I saw her I was probably standing barefoot on her kitchen floor and here I am, standing barefoot in front of her yet again. Not so different. When I saw Auggie for the first time in so long today, his presence filled my soul up because he's so undeniably mine. Kiera, she's not the same, but looking into her eyes, I can't deny that something deep within me feels a little fuller and a little more there because of her. I know her. She's not Auggie, but she's still a little bit mine.

Still, the truth of our situation — of how she just saved my life — is so overwhelming that I can't focus on the way we used to grin and laugh with each other as children. The only thing I can think about is how: "I wouldn't have done the same for you."

You only have to look behind you
At who's underlined you
Destroy everything you touch
Today
Destroy me this way

[Deleted]

KIERA NIAMH DEMPSEY

here i am, a rabbit-hearted girl, frozen in the headlights
it seems i've made the final sacrifice
we raise it up, this offering, we raise it up
this is a gift, it comes with a price, who is the lamb and who is the knife
midas is king and he holds me so tight, and turns me to gold in the sunlight

She watches him go with a sort of heaviness weighing like lead behind her sternum, a silent murmur that stings to much to acknowledge; it voicelessly whispers that perhaps in a world where they'd had more time things might have ended differently. Their dysfunctional friendship always held a hint of something she couldn't place, but it all seems to come to a melancholy conclusion in the way she still feels the ghost of his arms around her and in the eerie, sorrowful harmony the rainwater cradled carefully in her palm sings.

"Bye, Detective," she whispers to the unyielding wood of the closed door, mysteriously unhurt that he didn't grant her the same courtesy (as much as he always denied it Kiera knew that he was more like Kaelen than he'd admit, shying away from things like attachment and goodbyes that were the only things in the world that had the power to wound him). The stuttering, faltering rhythm of her heart is the only sound in the hollow cavern of the room save for the ethereal melody that only she can hear blooming from the tiny vial in her hand, pretty promises of inner peace and righteous justification that pull her back into her shaky foundation of calm, a slender hand coming up to paw at the sticky tear stains marring the gaunt planes of her cheekbones. There is a mirror hanging over the ornate mantel of the fireplace and Kiera loses herself in it, flat amber gaze combing the features of a tiny, malnourished wisp of a girl in a threadbare dress with beads and feathers braided into the mottled palette of her hair. To her relief, the girl does not look frightened, instead wearing a steady, peaceful mask of serene acceptance, content to go and perform her duties as the saviour of the world. Perhaps she will never attain the level of divinity where she will cease to know moments of weakness and fear and doubt, but as long as she can continue to usher lost souls into the light Kiera is content with even her own faults.

The door creaks open and Kiera pulls her eyes away from the effigy of her own reflection, fixing them instead on a bundle of dark hair and inner fire and eyes that blaze like their own galaxies crossing the threshold. Usually those she saves never thank her, but the knowledge that Ella Dahl-Moreno has at least come to acknowledge her sacrifice makes something warm and appreciative flare in her veins. She hovers uncertainly in front of the richly-upholstered couch, locking eyes with Ella in a clash of kohl-lined citrine and violent blue until the other girl breaks the silence between them. "I wouldn't have done the same for you."

"I know." Kiera's voice is soft, consoling, holding the sort of boundless wisdom it only does when she carries souls into a new realm of purity with water singing in her veins and on her skin. It is perfectly understandable that Ella wouldn't echo her sacrificial suicide action. After all, she is not one of those that stands in the light of divine understanding. She is simply human, and humans by nature are vain, selfish creatures, not predisposed to selflessness. She could never hold Ella accountable for something ingrained in the fabric of her being. "And I wouldn't ask you to. This is a gift, Ella. It doesn't ask for anything in return."

The reassurance fades off into another long stretch of silence broken only by the water-music and the soft, broken keening of Ella's damaged soul beneath her skin, not yet begun to heal. But it will. Kiera's self-sacrifice has ensured that the girl with fire in her veins can mend herself into something that once again shines like the sun, just as she remembers her. Only moments ago, she had questioned her decision, but now, watching Ella stand there with her brother in a beautiful cataclysm of hope and new beginnings, Kiera knows she has taken the righteous path. She is the one here with the Victor's Spirit, the one who will emerge from the Arena sullied, but if there is one thing Kiera understands it is that all souls are capable of being cleansed, including her own. And because of this, Ella has been saved from the arduous days that now lie in her path instead.

Perhaps it is her form of a fledgeling goddess' blessing, or maybe just the bit of mortal weakness in her that calls plaintively for comfort, but in a flash Kiera darts forward and flings her arms around the other girl's slightly taller form, all lean musculature and softly shattered existence and the smell of laundry soap mixed with something a little edgier and grittier that the Morenos couldn't wash out of her. "I only ask that you live well. Take this gift and use it to rise to your full potential, Ella. That is all I could ever ask of you."

[/color]

i look around but i can't find you, if only i could see your face
instead of rushing towards the skyline
i wish that i could just be brave
i must become a lion-hearted girl, ready for a fight
before i make the final sacrifice

[/size][/justify]

[sadniss everdeen]

[img src="http://i49.tinypic.com/2uf64ao.png

"]

.{and you, my dear, have taken away every piece of me}.

[/size][/center][/font]

I limp out to the sound
of your cannons in my heart

[/i][/right]

The building reminds you of the funeral parlour.

Not in the way people rush in and out in a frenzy of white coats and white gloves and black souls (the dead never rest but are always silent) but in how it innately smells like sorrow - the sterile air that brushes across your face as you step through the doors underlined with a darker, deeper scent. You've come to associate it with Siberia - the one Dempsey who truly disappeared - and really, you think you'll go insane if every thought of Kiera from this day forward brings upon the same thoughts and the same distress.

You know in your heart of hearts that she's not coming back home. People always scolded you for never hoping and never believing, but through your life you've noticed the same pattern of disappointment. They call you broken, cruel, sick. Only one of your sisters knew enough to look past that and she's going now, and the anger that rears up startles you with your intensity. You're very rarely angry, lurking upon the cold depths of hate with your iceburg-eyes and stone-set jaw. But as you remember the Reaping and the crushing mass of frightened bodies, the shock that gripped you from the moment that familiar head of hair ran on stage has melted and replaced itself with something that wants to become anger but is too scared to fully spread its wings inside your narrow chest. Suspended between the line of two Hells, you choose to remain in Purgatory and instead sweep through the halls with much more force than such a tiny body should possess and no expression giving you away.

They watch you go by and they know who you are (how can you be invisible, cousin to a monster and sister to a family with its own brand of evil) as you trace your way deeper and deeper into the building, ignoring the pitiful stares or the curiosity that pricks them as you pass. They are nothing but poorly-trained animals stuck in a cage of white walls and white paper with unseeing eyes not yet opened to the world. Your own are ringed with purple from nights spent in the shadows of your room until the moon fades away to be devoured by the sun. Sometimes your vision swims, but you're used to it now - another obstacle, another nuisance.

(Life is nothing but a nuisance. They should thank you for taking them away from their troubles so early.)

A man sweeps by, and it's hard not to recognize the scent of rotting flowers or the face that accompanies it. The Detective has a mask that looks strangely like emotion, his lips drawn into a taut line and his brow furrowed deep. You barely pause to scan him from head to foot and note the hunched shoulders that make him walk with an invisible burden; one that perhaps, both of you share. It's hard to think that maybe in another lifetime you could have gotten along - he is stunted like you, something wrong in his interactions and the way he views the world. You both struggle with the problem of everyday life and the feeling that you're a bit off-kilter, born with a weight to one side that makes you stand crooked. Your eyes meet his and they narrow of their own accord because you won't allow yourself the chance to feel companionship. Not after you realized he knows about you and the way you cope with your own perceived faults.

(His doll is sitting half-finished on your desk. You tried once, to protect your secret, but you see the way Kiera watches him sometimes and regretfully abandoned his soul to its proper vessel, safe where it was born.)

The door swings half-open and you cautiously move towards the murmuring voices within, pale hands gripping the frame of the door to peer inside the simple (prison) room. Kiera is as neutral as ever with her dark eyes flickering in the dim lighting, catching on the silver in her skin and creating a halo of shine around her head. Across from her is another - you talked to her only once, enough to know that she is damaged. One damaged person can find another simply by watching them and how they move, different from the rest of the masses and how they believe themselves to be something better or nothing at all.

That time you thought you could let her be.

Now? That forgotten pool of anger rises up and makes your cheeks hot and your skin itchy to where you feel the heat of your rage vibrate outwards into the room. It fills up the small space - Kiera always knows you, always and forever, and that might be why her eyes slide over to the doorframe and she suddenly crumples into an expression that looks achingly like guilt. Your jaw clenches and you breathe carefully through your nose, pushing down that warmth back into the frozen pits of yourself before stepping into the room and noting how your footstep sounds like a gunshot.

"Leave." You growl but it comes out more like a strangled hiss. Your throat aches and for a moment you think with horror that you're going to cry (never cry, said a younger Kaelen Dempsey with his strange fingers curled around your biceps, still young and soft with childhood - you're better than them. Only lesser beings let the world take them.) but the moment passes when you close your eyes and center in on the delicate scent of her skin and the soft pant of her breath that expels from her chest.

For a moment you just look at her - you study the slope of her jaw and the shimmer of her eyes and the long, glossy length of her hair. You remember nights spent curled up in her bed, content to simply lay there as she was swept away in spider-spun dreams. How she wordlessly found you after school with the bloody bat clutched in your frail hands and the boy dead and gone beside you, closing his eyes and leading you away. She stares back just as focused and you don't even hear Ella's footsteps disappear into the distance.

"Why?" You mumble so quietly it's a strain to hear it come from your mouth. There are countless questions in the universe but none so prevalent as this - why leave everything she is behind to die all alone? Why now, why for her, a girl with so many wrongs inside of her it would never make a right. Why does she get to live while your best friend falls for her cause and you get to sit here for generations after with all your quiet regrets that sit heavy on your chest and linger in the darkness of your mind? "Why her? Why now?" This is the first time in so many years that your emotions peak and they pour out of you in colourful trails and in ways that bring bile to your throat because you are weak, weak in this little room with a ghost of a sister and all the things you wanted to do that will never be done.

"You promised! You promised you wouldn't leave me but you smiled up there and now you're going to be gone a-and I can't go with you!" A sob wrenches its way from your mouth but you're shouting and you can't stop, little hands balled into fists and complexion red with the strain. Only Kiera has such a hold over your heart, to make you feel while you strive to feel nothing at all.

A shame (or perhaps a blessing) that when this is all said and done, nobody will be able to claim that honour again.

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[charade]

"It is time once again...

Oh? Is it really that time of year again already? It must have slipped my mind somewhere in between the forced attendance to this ridiculous farce and the forced attendance to the last one.

The reapings were nothing but a singularly droll affair for Ambrose Dempsey; they were not particularly enjoyable and in recent years, they had become rather... predictable.It'll be yet another of the Moreno brood of course. Wouldn't surprise me if there were two this year, seeing as how the replenish their stock more often than the grocers. I suppose it wouldn't it be a stretch for another Harper to be reaped as well. Though a full house beats a pair by several hands."Caring nothing for the proceedings, and laboring hard to stifle a yawn, Ambrose let a bored sort of frown fall across his features as part of his prediction came true only moments later.

So it's to be a female Moreno this time around is it? I wonder if this will affect their breeding program.The patriarch held back a grin as Peridot began marching up the stage. The only redeeming feature about the whole business was the chance to mock the districts elite in the safe confines of his own mind. It was the only time of year they arrayed themselves like colorful birds of paradise to cover the festering pustules of self-deprecation. Oh he knew all too well how scaly they truly were underneath their greasy painted faces; the sharpness of the barbed wire tongues behind perfectly straight, chemically whitened teeth.

Thankfully, the remains of his family tree had not been the focus of the preening vultures for a few months ever since his traitorous monster of a nephew had been presumed deceased. Ambrose was still not entirely sure how he felt about that; on the one hand, it removed a blight from the Dempsey name but on the other, it had also removed a charming, well mannered young man that could have gone very far in life indeed.Can we please get on with this before we all die of boredom? No sense in delaying the inevitable. Get these tributes out of here so they can die magnificently in a spray of arterial blood and we can all stay pleasantly distracted from your brutal oppressive regime for another week.


It was then that the cry of a volunteer launched the crowd into a new frenzy of activity.Delightful, I had almost forgotten how like a coalition of chattering monkeys this gathering could sound. Now which of these self-serving families do we have to thank for this current ruckus? The Rex's? Lightwoods? Or dare I say the Shores?Now that his interest had been mildly piqued, he paid more attention to the cameras and watched as a brunette made her way up the stairs to the stage.Good heavens, I must need to have my eyes checked out at my earliest convience, I could almost swear that that was...

"...Kiera Dempsey."

It was a cold sort of clench that wrapped around his stomach as his daughters voice came out of the microphone. Or was it that the temperature around him actually dropped as the feeble-minded cretins around him began to shoot cold stares at him for the audacity of his progeny to besmirch their precious games with the Dempsey name.

My dear girl, whatever have you gotten yourself into now?

***

There was a wealth of emotions to wrestle with, as well as a thousand and a half diatribes with which to berate his daughter for her actions.What were you thinking? No, No, dismiss that, clearly you've taken leave of your senses; you do remember logic don't you? It's the part of your brain that's currently weeping in frustration. What have you wrought? What have you brought upon your mothers heart, your sisters? Me? Dearest Kiara, the last thing our family needs is to be put back under the spotlight. Now the entirety of Panem shall know of our family's shame. Of course, I can only blame myself. I had thought I raised you better than this. No, No. Constrain yourself Ambrose. Retain your composure.

But as he paced feverishly towards the justice building, the thoughts continued to spurt forth like blood from a severed limb. Frustrated anger mixed with sorrow, disbelief and a form of pride came together as the bitterest of cocktails.

A Moreno, A Moreno??! Landsakes My girl they breed them like prized pets for their glorified cock-fighting, why would you throw your life away for her? I know she's related to Moira's beau, but really, its not like there's any shortage of people in their family.

He was wringing his hands now; rare was the occasion that Ambrose Dempsey was taken off-guard. But as he neared the doorway that held his middle daughter, his anger began to dissipate and give way to rationalized anxiety.

You've always been the most headstrong of your sisters, and though I do not fully understand your motivations, I feel I must give you some measure of trust. Fate is a cruel mistress Kiara, and she has taken much from me. My brothers, the nephew I loved as a son... She can't have you too...I...I can't allow it. But perhaps neither will you? Always a step ahead, like when Kae was teaching you how to fight under my nose. As if I couldn't see through the ruse. You only learned from him because I allowed it, I... had hoped you would grow weary of it and go back to less violent pursuits. Such was not to be.

Have I failed you as a father Kiera?"

Turning the knob to enter that room was one of the hardest things he would ever have to do in life, and it was not something he did lightly.

This is the hand life has dealt me and my house of cards is being blown away by the wind. Where is the ace to complete my flush? It's usually hidden up my sleeve, but it is nowhere to be found for this occasion. My past might be catching up with me. How does the saying go? The sins of the father...

"3 minutes Mr.Dempsey."

Entering the room, the moment his gaze fell upon the sad but stern expression on his daughters face; everything he was meditating on then fell away to ashes. Was there even a need for words at this moment?

She doesn't need an authority figure right now, she needs her father.

And so, he stood there for a moment, before coming towards her rather quickly and wrapping her in his arms and clasping her head to his chest. It was easier to stand silently and stoically then say what was on his mind.

After a moment of breathing, he moved her chin up with his thumb and forefinger to look her in the eyes."I...fully expect you to come back to us. You are a Dempsey after all."And Dempseys would rather lose it all than fold.

[Jimmeh!]

What was broken can be remade. What was remade can be rebroken…

This was the second time in less than a year that Cora had been reduced to a gibbering wreck, heart torn apart, holes punched through it. This time, it tore through the still raw, still bleeding ruin that Kaelen had left behind. Kiera. Kaelen’s prodigy. Who knew she would have his talent for tearing Cora to pieces. She was, once again, broken by the actions of another. Once again, inconsolable. This time, without the capacity to hate. She could never hate one of her sisters. Least of all Kiera. Kiera who was so calm. So collected. So sure in her purpose. Even today, facing the precipice of her possible doom, she had not faltered. Not that Cora would have noticed. She had wailed as loud, as she had when Kaelen left. A banshee’s cry of indescribable pain. Anguish. Tearing away all dignity. Tearing away at her heart.

And yet still, the flare of hatred, the bright spark, with nothing but the cold, wet mass

[/i] of her sorrow to flutter ineffectually against, still that seed of the most intense, purest hatred sat, thought dormant for so long, began to grow. That seed that had been planted by the only person in the world who could hold such sway over her. Kaelen…[/i] Somehow it always came back to Kaelen. Rage continued to claw away at the inky abyss that her heart had become, the tar-like misery that oozed through her veins doing what it does best. Suffocating. Drowning.[/i] Obliterating everything it smothered from existence, until only her grief was there for all to see.

Two works had flayed her feelings from the deepest recesses of her scarred core, that same unholy pair repeated themselves over and over in her head, like a broken record, countless voices, each one belonging to Kiera, each one subtly different, a different pitch, different emphasis. Some mocking. Some sorrowful. All ripping her to pieces with equal measure. She, and the rest of the Dempsey family were outside the room Kiera was in. She paid none of them heed, head held in her hands, tears rolling freely down her cheeks, from eyes that were red from the grief she felt. Her fingers clutched at her hair, pulling at it as she rocked backward and forward, breathing coming in deep sobs, bottom lip trembling, occasionally whimpering, unable to control even her most basic functions without being wracked by fresh peals of tortuous woe.

The corridor they are forced to wait in oppressive. Blank stone facades, emblazoned with the Capitol seal, immovable, implacable, unfeeling. In stark, taunting contrast, ostentatious décor lines the blank prison-like insides of the Justice Building. How many tears have been shed in these walls? How many shrieks of loss have echoed through this corridor? Bounced off the thick door, never to be heard by the occupant? She cares not. Only hers matter now. Not Blair’s. Not Aurora’s. Not Moira’s. Not her father’s. Not her mother’s. Only hers. The ceaseless stream of fluid misery, untameable, running in rivulets over the porcelain face of a hollow doll. Fragile. Ready to fracture, crack. Shatter. She doesn’t notice Blair smuggling herself into the room, as she swayed, as unstable as a palm tree in a hurricane, buffeted by the maelstrom of her hurt.

The Peacekeeper by the door opens it suddenly, without preamble. He announces simply ’three minutes Mr Dempsey.’ She takes that as her cue to join Kiera in the room, stopping only to look at Ella, tears streaming down her eyes, unable to well up the hatred she so desperately wishes she could level upon her. Be damned to Kiera’s sacrifice, be damned to her brother being in love with Moira. She had cost Cora much. To lose a sibling was a terrible, curshing pain. And worse still, Ella knew that pain. Why bring it upon another? Her bottom lip trembles, and the only thing she can muster is to look away from her, before she bursts into a fresh wave of tears. She took her place immediately behind her father, head bowed, lost in her thoughts and her remorse.

She shuddered as he pulled the oaken portal to yawn at her, to the lavish, cavernous maw of the room that had devoured Kiera. In her head, all she can think is How you can condense a lifetime of love and care into three minutes? And it wasn’t even just three minutes for Cora alone. Three minutes for all of them. A cry of pain at the thought that these were quite possibly the last three minutes she would ever see Kiera in person, tore itself from deep in her lungs, as she dashes through, slamming into Kiera’s frame, that frame that made Cora seem so dainty. Her arms locked around her chest, squeezing her with all her might, tears staining Kiera’s best dress, as they had stained her own, bawling her eyes out into her shoulder. The sheer force that she had slammed into her sister, shifted the pair of them backward, somehow staying upright, to the centre of the opulently furnished room. She mewled piteously, uncontrollably. She almost didn’t hear the words that fell from her mouth, in that same voice that whirled about her head, scant moments ago.

’I’m sorry.’ She pulled away from her, eyes agitated, still sodden with the molten manifestation of her sorrow, damp tracks running down her features, pulling a contrail of black eyeliner behind the teardrop. Her lower lip, plump as ever, shivers, eyelids blinking away a fresh wave of moisture, shaking her head, looking at her, confusion in her eyes, mixed with unchecked misery. ’Why Kiera… Why…’ Once again she burst the dams of her resolve, melancholy pearls, shimmering in the artificial light cast by the chandelier above, descending once again. Weeping and snivelling without the faintest hint of dignity or self-control. What did it matter now…

Word count: 1066

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[wimdy]

The funny thing about life is that it's a bitch. Actually, I suppose that's not so funny after all. In fact, it sucks. I suppose that's why I've hated this game all my life. Life's game is full of subtle tricks and devious twists to throw you off balance and into the fire of hell. It wasn't designed to be fair. The gamemaker of life had done well to ensure that the odds of survival by game's end were, oh, let's see, zero. Everyone is going to die at some point. We'll all kick the bucket, be spirited away, lose our marbles, have our souls taken to the good place. There are so many ways to say it, but in the end, it's all the same. In the end, we'll all lose. There's no use in fighting it or denying it. It's going to happen. Cease transmission, goodbye, the end.

However, the inevitability of losing manifestation in the world doesn't ignore want for life. In fact, it is the certain closing of our stories that drives us, every single one of us, to try harder for one moment to just live. Everyone searches for their purpose in life and clings to it desperately in hopes that it will give their sorry excuse for existence meaning for just a fraction of their meager grant on earth. That purpose, however, is elusive. It evades grasp and defies order until one is simply ready to give in. More often than not, the only time that that meaning for life is found is just before there's no time left. It leaves you waiting for the end just moments after you've finally found what you're looking for.

I haven't found my meaning. I haven't had a revelation about my life. I haven't found purpose for my actions and justification for my sins. I don't know if I ever will. It's been so long since I've even felt alive that I'm not sure what I am anymore. Surely I'm not alive, not feeling like this. I am a ghost, defying law and drifting through the living for just a little longer, searching for the purpose I could never find and hoping for the peace I could never have. I almost prefer it that way. Nothing can hurt me if I'm already gone, my heart no longer beating and my soul no longer feeling. I must already be gone if I am haunting this District with beady eyes of unseeing glass and sallow skin that could shatter with a simple touch. My soul is not troubled by the games I've initiated or the lives I've taken or the dreams I've shattered for it does not feel that, not anymore. In fact, those are the moments I've most felt alive. Those are the moments of my life where I've been given the control that my body and mind has been deprived of for so long as a wandering spirit, begging for some semblance of life for just one more moment. For too long, I've been sitting between worlds, wondering what I am and what I will be, but now, just now, I've realized what I am.

I am human. I am every bit alive as Blair and Aurora and Cora and Kiera. I bleed and cry just as they do, but for the first time in years, I actually feel it. For the first time in years, I know what pain and anguish are, my heart having been shielded against life for so long through my endless games. I know how loss can make the human heart ache and bleed and stop in one fell swoop. It hurts more than I can bear and I can hardly breathe, my lungs expanding to the point of bursting, but no oxygen fills my blood. I am slumped against the ground, breaking apart and desperate for air, but no relief comes. For a moment, I wonder if this is how my victims feel when they take the slow road to death offered by my wicked hands and decide yes, I would much rather my life flare out in a moment than drag on in years. I know it more surely now than ever that I would rather end abruptly than let myself suffer this again, year after year, one after the other of my sisters dragged away whether by will or by war. I am suffocated by my fear, heart racing as I try to pull myself together but find that my pieces have been scattered. The cards have been ripped from my hands and strewn about by the wind, far too far from my reach to get them back. I have lost and I am losing and I will lose again and again, my fate sealed by the shattered bits of my soul having been scattered about.

It feels like ages before I'm able to pick myself up off of the ground (physically, not mentally) and gather what little I can of my composure into myself. My limbs feel like lead as I drag myself across the emptied courtyard, my flats hardly leaving a mark upon the ground. I'm practically floating, my head adrift in the sea of dark clouds above me as I try to hold onto the little piece of sanity I have left, but it's all in vain. Kiera has volunteered and that's all that matters. She's a stupid, selfish little girl. Doesn't she know what this is doing to us? Doesn't she know how this is killing me? Doesn't she know how this will kill her? I can hardly even comprehend her stupidity, here sheer recklessness, and her unrivaled selfishness. She's stubborn and self-serving and ignorant like a child. All our lives, she's been the most unpredictable of us all. She's the wild-child with her hair in the wind and her lips set in a defiant smirk. It didn't matter what she was supposed to do. She did as she pleased. I just never expected her to go this far for the attention. I never expected for her to try and make a goddess of herself, leaving us all behind to watch as she's thrown into the fires of Hades, too far for us to save her. She's selfish and I hate her for what she's done to me. A queen shouldn't cry, yet I can't make myself stop.

It takes me exactly two minutes and fifty four seconds to cross the square and enter the Justice Building, cold sterility of its inner walls sending a chill up my spine. Everything feels like ice under my fingertips as I let them slide across the smooth walls and ghost over plush curtains and drift over marble statues as I pass. This is not a place of life. It's a dwelling of death. We don't belong here. This seat of power is reserved for the dogs of the Capitol, the hand of a false god. My skin is crawling, pinpricks traveling up my arms and spreading the frost splintering across my chest unevenly. I am drowning in the cold without any hope of staying above water and there's no use in trying. I'm sure it is only going to get worse. The Capitol representative who sealed the fates of many lives today sits stiffly on a couch on the far wall, her eyes like a cat's as I slip down the hallway in silence, trying to ignore the tightening in my chest as I get closer and closer to the room down the end. My heart is slow, dreading the inevitable scene that I will see in that room, unwilling to come to the conclusion of this journey. It seems others don't like this path either. In fact, the Peacekeeper who had led Kiera up onto the platform goes rushing past me, his face red and his brow furrowed in a dark brood. (I wish I could ask just what has happened, but associating with a Peacekeeper like him, a detective, is just far too risky for me. My games can't be compromised.)

The door before me is nondescript, as is the stone-faced Peacekeeper who tells me to keep my visit brief and that time is already ticking. I lean against the door the slightest bit, sinking into it and willing myself to go inside, but my body won't move. If I go in, it makes it real. It makes the goodbye final. I don't want this to be final. I want this to be a dream. I want it to be a game. It has to be a ruse, a trick. It's just make-believe. Ella is leaving after all. It simply has to be. When I step through the door, however, the reality sinks in. Kiera is leaving and I will not see her ever again. Kiera is already gone, actually. Her spirit has surely already been whisked off by Blair, the youngest of us just finish snapping a picture of her as I slip in. Just Kiera's body remains, all hard lines and defiance. I can practically feel myself falling from the moment I step in, my lungs seizing and rendering me breathless as it hits me. I have failed her as a sister, a protector. I am to blame for this. I should have saved her, but all I did was stand there as she threw her life away.

I'm gasping as I surge forward, my hand coming up to strike her across the face hard, the resounding slap echoing in my ears as I let my emotions spill forward. I'm screaming at her, my voice raw and wavering as I shout through my tears. "What is wrong with you? How could you do this to me? How could you play this Game? You're such a selfish bitch and I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!" I find myself falling into her arms, curling my shaky hands into the back of her dress and trying hard not to let her go, but I know she will. She's already half way there and there's nothing I can do to change that. Nothing. Nothing. Every cell in my body is clinging to the desperate hope that this will all be over soon, but it won't be. It won't be done for a great many years to come. This is only the beginning of my fall and I can't seem to find anything to stop me from plummeting towards the earth. I am free-falling and clawing at the sky, searching for any way to fly. My wings have been clipped. It's all just a cruel game and I'm no longer the mastermind. I am the pawn without control. This Game has just begun, but already I have lost everything.

[Deleted]

This is a WIP that I will fill in after the BB. Yes.