it's a battle cry | {i&m}

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

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I remembered laughing at Mara's words. Sure, most of them were insults, but they were also warm-hearted in a way, and I knew they were the closest to a proclamation of her liking me as it was ever going to get. So I thought of them as compliments. ("Stop talking." "You are making me laugh." "I hate you." "I like you.") We walked in silence then, though. I thought perhaps her anger from earlier, a response to my own, still lingered, and I chose not to push the issue. (I couldn't afford to lose her.) I had already lost Hedvig and that pain was still an annoying little pinch in my stomach each time I thought of it. I had watched countless people die in bloodbaths before on the training tapes back home. I had even witnessed several deaths first hand in the arena. Yet the only one that found me in my sleep belonged to Hedvig Fabre. I was honestly a bit saddened when I saw Riot's picture light up the sky: not only because her hands were holding the sword that sucked Hedvig's life right out of her chest, but because I had actually enjoyed being around her once. The times we had spent in the Capitol, both trying not to get lost in Leon's babble, quietly communicating on the train, discussing our favorite cuisines here in the Capitol, Riot had become a friend before the arena, and in the end she had become an enemy all the same. I wondered if the same thing would have happened with Hedvig, if it would eventually happen with Margaret and god I hoped not. The only sounds came from our shallow, rapid breaths as we tried warming ourselves from the cold, and the crunching snow beneath our feet. My left foot stung with each step because of the toe that the cold had taken from me, so my footsteps fell in an irregular pattern. It was early in the morning, so early that the sun still hid itself from us, and the creatures in the forest around us were just waking from their slumbers. "Can y-" I started, but I froze in my tracks. I shoved my hand out to stop her from walking, and when she looked at me with concern I held a finger to my lips. "Listen!" I whispered urgently. For a moment there was no sound at all, and I wondered if the arena was claiming my sanity, but then the same noise echoed around us. Footsteps. Weak, like that of a drunken-man on his way home from a tavern. There was only one set, and at first I thought perhaps it was the boy from Eight that had stitched me up after the bloodbath, but instead, it was a girl that became visible.

LEX RONDHAL DISTRICT 4 MALE THE 69TH GAMES made by anzie

[D6f Carmen Cantelou [aza]]

pixie ruined

Stone-heart, machine gun
Firing at the ones who run

It felt as if I had been running for hours. The vivid scenes of Mystic's arm flying past my face before she finally fell - Gaia being stabbed until she was red all over, lying face down in the snow. Running away from it was providing me with the comfort I ever so desperately needed. But, my sickened mind still managed to play the awful memories like a video on loop.

The temperature had turned a deadly cold. Before, I felt warm. I had my allies at my shoulder - and although their deaths were inevitable, I still wasn't expecting them all to drop like flies so quickly and dreadfully. The warmth which they gave me had somehow died with them, leaving me alone in the blizzard of white which surrounded me.

They are lucky. They don't have to deal with the pain and heartbreak of losing each other. They probably both dead before they even knew. I wonder what their last thoughts were. Maybe they were about me - but I hope they were thinking of something nicer. A calming memory of being back at home with their family or relaxing waves washing effortlessly against a sandy shore. I just wish it was peaceful.

My serene walls manage to crumble - the silence broken by a bone-piercing shout.

"Listen!"

Oh - fucking hell. I'd just left one fight with blood seeping from my few wounds. I don't want another one - I want quiet and happiness. I want to be surrounded by a place where I feel welcome and secure.

Listen. Listen. L-i-s-t-e-n. It implies that there is more than one of them. But, how many? Two, three, four? It seems that the others in the group aren't making any noise. No speech, no footsteps - just a stabbing silence was in the air. I stopped in my own footsteps - my eyes peeled back in surprise. 

I begin to edge forwards - doing my best to keep quiet. But the snow beneath my feet makes that too hard. With every step there is yet another crunch, crunch, crunch. I breathe. This could be it. I still can't see what is ahead of me. The snow is falling thick and fast, obscuring my view. 

I manage to peak through the snowflakes and find a tree. I run over to it and feel the bark in my hands. The feeling of touching something else that is alive gives me a strange sense of relief. But the tree can't give me a hug - it can't whisper into my ear and tell me everything will be okay. It can't, and it's denying me of what I am hungry for.

I bend down in the snow - trying to focus my mind on my situation. Do they still know I'm here? Stupid question, of course they do. But they don't know it's me - and I don't know who they are. Why did I have to get into such a scene? Why me?

My fingers dig deep into the snow and I begin to create a ball of the soft white substance. I pat it down, securing the shape into an uneven sphere. I take a shaky breath - something which I seem to do a lot, it seems - and throw the ball in their general direction.

"It's me!"

It's me. It's me. Could I have possibly been more stupid? 'Me' could be anyone - it could be the irritating little shit from district nine or it could be the pretty girl from district eleven who I never managed to speak to. I decide that I might as well walk towards where I think the voice came from, and as I do - I'm exposed to two people.

A boy - the boy from four. He'd received one of the highest training scores. The scores are the only things I can seem to remember. And then there is a girl. Her name slips my mind - although I'm confident it starts with a M. Melanie, Maggie, Mary? Fuck knows.

My hand sits tightly around my harpoon as I am weary of any funny business. I pull a geeky smile before awkwardly standing at the edge of their set up.

Oh Ripred, please don't let this be a bad decision.

[Deleted]

When equations are balanced With terms on each side— Hate on the one, And love alongside— We tend to let the thought pass from our mind That terms and conditions Last only for a time. We set on in silence, pace shifting from a moderate jog to what could barely be classified as a crawl, and with each step my thoughts shift and swivel. The anger no longer circulated through my veins, but it had managed to leave about a void in the vessels. Lex was supposed to care; supposed to be the one whose beating heart was a metronome that I could set my own heart by. But Lex was human, just as I. And every human falls out of rhythm. It seems that we’ve chose now as this time, for instead of watching the horizon that stands before us I find my gaze trailing at his feet, and as I count his steps the sounds of the morning fade to a blur in the background of my mind, and for a single moment I can hear nothing but the crackle of snow against his shoes. (One, two, three, four, five—) “Can y—” That silence is broken by the shards of concerned words, and as I begin to speak he lifts a finger to his lips, whispering to not only my listening ears but that of an invisible intruder, “Listen!” But I do not get my first notice of the girl from five by the sounds she makes, but by the ball of snow that comes hurdling into my field of vision faster than I can process it, and before I can make rhyme or reason of the situation it’s hit me square in the shoulder, and in the same time it took the snow to fall at my feet I’ve dropped my anger with Lex, instead replacing it with dislike from the girl who stands in front of us. “It’s me!” Immediately I place my hand on the handle of the spear, body tensing in anxiety as she steps out into the clearing. (Oh it’s you alright.) I don’t like forced warmth, and in a place where the cold numbs every extremity before you can count to make sure they’re there, that speaks with a great volume. But as she makes no movement to disgruntle Lex or I more than she already has, I let the spear fall to my side, the tip dragging in the snow as I turn to face Lex, hand curling into a fist before socking him in the shoulder, “That’s what you got us worked up over?” But I can only keep my eyes trained on him for a moment longer, my attention snapping back to the girl who still stood just in front of us. I point the tip of the blade so that I’m looking down to line up with her heart, and as it wavers a little in my failure to stay steady I spit at the ground towards her feet, words falling like the snow drifts from the early hours of morning, “And you—who are you, exactly?”

MARGARET DUBOIS DISTRICT 7 FEMALE THE 69TH GAMES made by anzie