holes in your { coffin } // key

[Stare]

now your kindest remark does not move me
both your face and your heart do not suit me
holes in your coffin, fool

They didn’t give her a spare moment to catch her breath. She supposed that was the way that life would be for her from that point forward - all rushed, a heartbeat’s worth of hello’s and goodbye’s stolen away by the passing of time, with not a moment to think or remember or feel. Maybe it was better that way, life zooming past her so quickly that she couldn’t grasp onto something that she would only end up missing later. As she was escorted into a big room with old paintings and a lush carpet, she reflected on how it had all slid through her fingers so quickly. She kicked off her shoes and curled her toes against the softness. They only had metal floors in the clock tower, always ice cold. She ran the numbers quickly in her head. One hundred and forty others had passed through this room, experienced the same dread and horror and fear.

Klaus Goravich had returned. No one else.

Her heart tugged, and all at once the small breakfast she’d shoved down early that morning - stale bread with jam - made a reappearance on the pretty floor. She cried out as her stomach convulsed again, finding nothing else to release and tightening around itself. She heard the doors slam open, then voices, and someone held back her hair as she heaved. She caught a glimpse of the hands, calloused and blackened by Ripred knew what, and the familiar smell of alcohol and cigarette smoke flooded her senses. Uncle. They stayed like that until her body calmed and the acidic taste was all that lingered in her mouth. By then, their time was up, and he only managed a brief “I’ll fix the clock” before they dragged him out again. Because that was all that mattered to her anymore and he knew that, and that was how things had always been between them. Short, blunt, with moments of affection so fleeting that both of them missed it most of the time. The doors closed again, and she was alone.

He was all she’d had left in the world, and he was gone just as quickly as he’d come.

As she brushed her hair back and away from her hair, rising to curl up in the sofa, she felt something familiar banging through her left pocket against her leg. The pocket watch. She pulled it out slowly, thumb brushing quickly over the cool metal design on the front. So she would always know the time in the Arena, not that it mattered to anyone but her. Her hands wrapped around it, clutching it until it was as warm as blood. She knew that her days in the clock tower were over no matter what happened, but her days as a timekeeper never would be. It was who she was, practically laced into her blood. She knew what they wanted. They expected her to be polite and tidy and sweet. They expected her to behave.

But she was the wild, crazy clock tower girl, and she would never behave. She’d give them hell, because it was all she knew how to do anymore. It was all she had left. She wouldn’t go quietly, like a second hand that suddenly stops moving. No, she would show them the inferno within. Plenty had done it before her, and plenty would do so afterward. But this wasn’t for the Capitol or the Gamemakers. It wasn’t for revenge. It was for herself. She was Kiena Ward and she refused to be afraid any longer.

One name out of the hundreds that they could have chosen for District Three.

She’d make them regret that it had been hers.

if the cross on the door doesn’t scare you
and the beast of the moor’s gonna spare you
boy, come home to me