hey, dark eyes {cass/arx}

[Onyx]

[attr="class","borntodie"]

I threw up twice on the journey to the Capitol.

On any other day, in any other circumstances, I might have worried that I was pregnant, but today that thought only fills me with a sour amusement. If only. I've watched the re-runs of old tributes, premature babies torn right from their arms as they're forced onto their podiums, and they never illicit favour from the syrup-hearted spectators. As it was, however, the sickness was caused simply by toxic, twisting, bile-flavoured anxiety, rolling up and down my throat like the caterpilla tracks of a tank. The ending tendrils of my usually perfect hair stink of vomit now, as I gaze at my shaken form in the bathroom mirror. The logical half of my brain spurns my body for letting my situation get so out of hand, and then the rest of me fights right back. You started this by acting without proper thought. Inside me the storm continues to rage as I wash my mouth one more time and carefully pat my unblemished chin dry on a towel.

As hard as I try, the events leading up to taking my place on the stand alongside my partner and our brand new entourage remain intangible, like coloured light filtering through a dirty stained-glass window. Did I wake up alone, or with another by my side? Did I eat? Yes - pulses, I just saw evidence of that. Whatever happened before the doors to the Justice Building closed behind me, however, no longer matters. My life begins now.

Opal Earnest is one of the most beautiful women I have ever met - including any of the doll-painted Capitolites I saw the last time I was there. There's a thought I hadn't considered yet - going home, truly. Perhaps my parents will be there. Standing face to face with my mentor, I cast this thought away, as I know it will only make me sick again, and I have a reputation to begin building. Like I have done my whole life, it is time to reintroduce myself to a new community with the same evasiveness and mystery that I always hold. Like my mother taught me, smile only with your mouth, laugh softly and tread lightly, and ask two questions for every one that you're asked. I pull my shoulders back, mimicking the perfect stance of this beautiful woman, and gaze into her eyes-

And her eyes break me.

My disguise, that hermit shell of mystery I wrap closely around my soft flesh, falls away, but it isn't vomit that rises inside me this time, it's sobs. Her face warps dreamily behind my welling tears, and my shoulders shake uncontrollably. Here's my impulse, taking me over again. I no longer care about killing, I forget showing no weakness. All I want to do is let Opal, beautiful, sad-eyed Opal, see me for the girl that still existed inside The Woman. I know my District partner is behind another door somewhere nearby, but for now it's just me and Her. When my voice finally finds me, it's soft, and broken.

"Help me, Opal. Please, I'm scared."

ooc: none; theme: link;

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[arx!!]

justice fray

I walked past a mirror without looking. That's how I know I'm not okay.

I glance at my watch, the seconds slowly ticking by. I can't look like a coward, being away from everyone for too long. But there is some comfort in being in the bathroom. I spend so much time getting myself ready that there is some solace in the soft gleam of the overhead lights, polished granite, and checkerboard tile. Though I'm sure I could find even more comfort listening to a girl's heartbeat, I don't see that as much of an option at this point. Maybe when we get to the Capitol I'll feel better, more like Justice Fray—king of the whole damned world.

I take a deep breath. One more minute and then I quit being a little bitch. A little less like Pillar and a little more like Scout. A little more like a victor and a little less like a loser. I stand and begin to pace around the bathroom, jumping to shake the jitters out of my system. I finally find the bravery to look in the mirror, only to be completely disappointed by what I see. I've got a stain on my shirt from Ripred knows what, enough fly-aways to make me look like a porcupine, and I've got enough popped veins in my eyes that I'm sure everyone will wonder if I'm high.

This hangover is going to fucking kill me. I look like complete and utter trash. I run the water in the sink and wash the gel from my hair, hoping it'll just fix itself. But leaving these good looks up to chance? Shit. I run my fingers through my hair in the hopes that I can make it behave. I'd kill for a comb right now. Fuck. I've got 5 seconds to get my ass out of this bathroom. And now I've got wet hair, a stained shirt, and no prospects of getting laid tonight.

"Come on, Justice, get your shit together."

For a guy who has spent his entire life in front of a mirror, it sure has taken me a long time to see myself.

With the inability to fix my appearance, I've relinquished the last bit of control I have over my life. But my time is up, and I've got a game to play. I shake droplets of water from my hair and twist the doorknob, calming myself with one, final, deep breath.

I've already had enough when I walk into the words, "I'm scared." I have no idea what her name is, but I do know Opal. Or at least I've seen the Games re-runs and special features. I know full well what she is capable of and who her family is, even if she doesn't share the name anymore. The Shores have been the Career family over-shadowing us for years—and it's all because Opal brought home the Victor's crown nearly 10 years ago.

I know I should probably respect her for more than her good looks, but shit is she gorgeous. So I jump on the opportunity, hopping into a nearby seat and taking a bite into an apple from the table.

"Yeah, Opal, how about you 'help' me out?"

I take another bite of my apple, looking through my lashes at her. I look her up and down, grinning from ear to ear.

"I mean, in EARNEST, we all know you've 'helped' tributes out before."

district one . seventeen . word count:565 . tags: cass Onyx

[cass]

Almost ten years ago she claimed the victor's crown. And in those ten years she had accomplished the feat not once. Again, she was faced with another Fray, again another volunteer. Two more kids to add to her tally. She didn't want them to die. Glancing at herself in the window she sighed heavily, dragging a hand through her hair.

"I can do this." She breathed, meeting her own tired gaze. She managed a small smile, turning away to look back into her room. Ky rested on her bed, he blinked sleepily at her. "Mama, you can do anything," he said, giving her an adorable smile, she returned the smile, gaze lingering as she watched him close his eyes. He was asleep by the time she slid the door closed.

Turning she made her way through the train, she found the volunteer in the food cart. Renée Perdris looked at Opal and she looked back, stomach twisting as she met those frantic eyes that seemed to break in an instant. Why? Why must this happen? Again and again she saw children break, and looking into those eyes made her once more realise she was going to watch it happen all over again. Opal Earnest flinched, averting her gaze. Heartbeat rapid in her chest as she wrung her hands in front of her she cleared her throat. She couldn't do this, she couldn't listen to these broken children and try and make it better and watch them die. She'd promised Katelyn she would do this, that she'd try again and again and again, until she finally accomplished her goal.

You can do anything.

She breathed, faced the young girl in front of her, and gave her a brave smile. "It's okay, Renée. I'll do everything I possibly can to help you." The girl seemed sweet enough, a stark comparison to Scout Fray,  a nicer face then Quadrys. Perhaps she'd finally get to tributes that weren't hope-

Suddenly the smile dropped. "Yeah, Opal, how about you 'help' me out?"

One could hope for two likeable tributes.

Justice Fray plopped himself down on a chair, devious grin lighting up his entire face as he eyed Opal. He was every bit the same as Scout Fray, with an attitude as appealing as a wet sock. She already did not like him, but she knew that she would never hate him. She'd already failed the Fray family once, she'd try her hardest to not fail them again. As much as she disliked that attitude. With a raised eyebrow she moved towards the table, plastering a smirk on her lips.

"I mean, in EARNEST, we all know you've 'helped' tributes out before."

Funny, guy, huh.

Moving around the table, she dragged her fingers across the cloth, glancing at him with half-closed eyes. "Now now, Mr Fray." She chided, long fingers wrapping around the handle of a knife. She raised it, twirling it in her fingers as she stopped in front of Justice, leaning down so that her eyes were level with his. "Do you want me to help you right now?" She raised an eyebrow in question as she brushed the knife against his cheek. Leaning forwards she whispered in his ear, tone cold and furious, "disrespect him again and you won't have a dick to even help yourself." She slammed the knife into the table, giving him a sickly sweet smile, before pulling away, turning and dropping into a chair opposite Justice.

She sunk into the chair, slinging a leg over the other. Tilting her head towards Renée Perdris, she asked, "what do you want to know?" 

[Onyx]

[attr="class","borntodie"]

I regard Justice Fray the way I'm sure he regards the weak and unfortunate. From the first moment he steps through the carriage doorway and fixes Opal - not me - with a leer I know all too well (those men who come to my 'office' thinking they can impress me with their 'sexual prowess' are usually the ones who cry the most when they finally understand my power) I find myself totally and utterly repulsed by him. Here is a boy who, back in the District, I would probably already have tied up and beaten bloody, listening as his cries turn into sighs of pleasure and waiting for that inevitable moment where he tells me he loves me. They always do. However, standing here as he lounges in a chair, legs opened disgustingly in an invitation, I want nothing more than to spit in his face and tell him to respect the woman who's here by choice, to help us save ourselves. It's amazing how quickly my fear has dissipated now that I'm faced with another tribute. Acknowledging that, I hope it carries through to my time in the Capitol, and beyond.

In my haste to see her as a saviour and a guide, I managed to forget the fact that Opal is, ultimately, a killer. She came from a Career family - the notorious Shores no less, famous for being on the whole utterly relentless. Watching the family interview once Opal outlived sixteen of the tributes, I couldn't help but notice they were surprised she had made it so far. "She was always a little different," one of the other teenagers mused to Caesar - but now that she's come out alive, with blood on her hands where they said soil and flower seeds once were, how different can she be? She moves around the table towards Justice with fluid subtlety I admire and recognise. My customers find that kind of hip-swaying self-assuredness sexier than anything. The way she handled the knife made it impossible to doubt that she had used it before (I think of watching the light go out behind the eyes of Yaa Valarro, leaving Opal alone, and alive, and victorious at the end) and I suddenly find myself embarrassed that I had initially acted so weakly in front of her. She must think me a fool. She holds her own with Justice admirably, threatening his "manhood" in a way that makes my eyebrows shoot up my head. I smirk in Justice's direction and let him take the lashing.

Finally, Opal turns her attention back to me, ignoring Justice the same way I am now trying to. Watching her stand up for herself has stirred my natural confidence awake again from where it was cowering in my gut, and so this time I meet her gaze dry-eyed and level-headed. "What do you want to know?" It's a good question. Is there anything I want to know that could possibly save me? My logical mind says no, of course not, words never did anything for anyone. I would have become an actor if I thought words would get me as far in this world as sex has. I smile, slowly, like my mother taught me - "A three-second smile, darling, that's the key to success - just long enough to be intriguing without looking like a complete imbecile." - and shake my head. "Can you show me I haven't just made the biggest mistake of my life?" Now, I think of Opal's child, and what sort of mother she must be. My own mother taught me how to be a proper lady - but really that's all she was: a teacher, not a mother. I worshipped her as an idol, just like everyone else did, and never felt like I was anything special just for being her daughter. I continue to stare at Opal with earnest eyes. Perhaps she can make me special, instead.

ooc: none; theme: link;

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[arx!!]

justice fray

You know that feeling you get when you realize you've fucked up beyond repair?

That feeling just slapped me in the face, blew out me kneecaps, and wrenched my heart out of my chest. Because I thought this would be funny or that she'd scold me for trying to play the tough guy. Instead, I've got one of most gorgeous women in all of Panem glancing at me with a smirk on her lips and a devilish gleam in her eyes. As her fingers dance across the table cloth, I feel the smirk slowly falling from my face.

Holy shit, she-- she wants me?

"Now now, Mr Fray," I watch her slowly move around the edge of the table, her eyes half-lidded and catching on mine. I shift in my seat as she gets closer, my palms starting to sweat and my heart starting to pound wildly.

"Do you want me to help you right now?"

I mean, I heard the rumor that victors were easy, but this? I must be better looking than I thought if I can get someone like Opal to ride me like a--

Shit.

I feel a blade glance over my cheek, the cold steel jolting me back into awareness. I hadn't even noticed her pick it up off the table. My heart leaps into my throat and I sit stock still as she leans in close, my muscles frozen in fear. Thank fuck my brothers aren't here to laugh at me as I hold back a whimper. I feel her breath hot against my ear, the knife digging just a little bit more firmly into my cheek.

"Disrespect him again and you won't have a dick to even help yourself."

Duly noted. No more bringing up Potato. Got it.

She pulls away from me and slams the knife into the table. She looks satisfied. And though I fucking hate to admit it, I know full well that she has won. Score 1 for Opal Earnest, score -5,000,000,000 for Justice Fucking Fray. She takes a seat across from me, looking back to my district partner with poise and composure, as if I hadn't even touched a single one of her last nerves. I can guess how she and Scout got along; I imagine there were more knives.

The volunteer girl asks a question and I use the time to lick my wounds instead of paying attention to what our mentor has to say. Whatever the advice, I'm sure it doesn't apply to me. This girl volunteered and is having regrets; I was Reaped and I was born for this. There is nothing to regret, nothing to be considered a mistake, nothing that I can do to get out of what I was destined to do.

Part of me wants to tell this girl as much. ("We're Careers. Doesn't matter if it is a mistake or not, this is what we're supposed to do. Fight. Win.") But the other half of me is still feeling like an idiot. The latter wins out and my lips stay sealed as I look anywhere but at Opal or my district partner. I opt to stare at the knife stuck in the table, the blade shimmering as the light catches it just right.

I can see my reflection in the blade. And I can see my imminent death.

How the hell am I going to do this?

district one . seventeen . word count:554 . tags: cass Onyx

[cass]

Her gaze kept dancing between Renée and Justice. She watched as Renée seemed to gather herself, pick up her scattered emotions and put herself back together. She seemed like a strong girl, prone to moments of weakness, but it was those moments that decided your strength. It seemed as though Renée was very much capable of pulling herself forwards. Opal nodded, she'd need to be able to do that. Although she could not share the girls thoughts, nor honestly understand her, she did know what it felt like to not want to die. She'd not been the one to put herself in the position, but she could understand the sudden terror of realising the choice you had made was not the right one. That sudden pressure on your chest as you realised that - holy shit you're probably going to die.

At the same time she couldn't help, but feel sympathy for the young Fray, and although she'd warned him against speaking about Potato she didn't want to shut him off completely. She'd done that already with Scout and Scout had died, maybe she wouldn't have, had Opal opened her heart just a little bit more. Besides, the kid had an attitude that reminded her of Elya Johnwayne, or Harbinger, Circe, some of the greatest tributes the arena had seen. From that quick exchange between them she could already tell that Justice Fray was not Scout. He was a lot timider, he seemed to understand the situation he was in, for what it was and... she squinted, shifting closer as she watched him peer into the depths of the silver knife. He looked scared. What could she possibly say to him? She'd been in his exact position, a career, dragged to the stage, hopeful eyes of her family and parents waiting for her to dominate. They'd been in the shadows too long, as the Moreno family claimed tribute after tribute and finally one of them was in the arena. Her entire upbringing had been for that moment. She'd been a career, it had been her duty to win, her family had decided. But she couldn't piece her thoughts together.

She turned back to Renée, knowing what she had to say to at least one of them, "all we can do is believe that we won't regret the choices we make." A hard lesson that she had learned. A lesson that you had to learn to survive. "So you win, Renée, you have to show me that it wasn't a mistake. That's the only way I can prove it." She responded, eyes drilling into Renée's. There was no other way for Opal to prove that her choice hadn't been the wrong one. Not unless she took that crown home, then and only then could Opal tell her that it hadn't been a mistake. The dead don't know the difference between right or wrong.

"Justice," she said, her tone soft. "Don't look for the doom, look at what you have, first of all. Look at the fact that you've had the experience to hold a weapon, whereas eight percent of the others haven't. Don't see your family and feel pressured by that name of yours." She didn't know if she could say the right words. She wasn't good at this, but she had to say something, because she'd been right there.

"If you don't know how you're going to do it, then let me just tell you; don't  do it for the name 'Fray', don't fight for that family back there. You have to fight for you." She stops looking at Justice, she directed her next words at both of them. "The only person who is going to get you through this, is you, so you do whatever you have to, to come home. It's not a matter of how you're going to do it, because you don't have a choice. You have to do it."

She had to bring them home.

[Onyx]

[attr="class","borntodie"]

"All we can do is believe that we won't regret the choices we make."

When I first arrive in District One, everything I brought with me fit into one suitcase. Although I was as small then as I am now, slender and soft unlike the Careers I saw all around me, I had no trouble carrying it from the train station, through town, and to the plain apartment that would soon become my 'office'. The real burden was the weight of all the things I had left behind. I was always the sort of girl who was enamoured by beauty, and back then my definition of the word extended to all the faux and artifice that the Capitol put in front of me. The only dresses I could bring out of the City with me were the plainest ones, the rest would set me apart as an out-of-place for sure, and although my preference for scarlet lipsticks and painted fingernails wasn't so obscure in the District, I certainly had to tone down the glittery embellishments I decorated myself with in order to fit in. Material as I was, I was heartbroken to leave my baubles behind, and I thought of them naively often as I settled into my new life.

The lack of beauty, however, was never as great a burden as the lack of honesty. My mother had perfected the art of professional mystery without ever telling so much as a white lie, mostly through her air of pure superiority which made anyone too afraid or awestruck to ask her questions. I, on the other hand, had to use misdirection and evasion in those first few months to establish myself as a nickname. I certainly used her tricks: the knowing smile, the slight tilt of the head like you can't quite work out why anyone would ask you such an intimate question uninvited - yet still I found myself having to dance away from fact and spin fiction around myself like a spider in the middle of a web, in order to become The Woman and not just the Child, or the Runaway, or, worst of all, the Whore. Over time I managed to make myself undetectable, notorious but never revelatory. People came to me out of curiosity, and left just the same (although perhaps knowing a little better that I was someone to be afraid of), and only then was the load of the lies I had had to tell lighter to bear.

But worse, oh, so much worse, than both of those pains was the lack of love. When your trade is sex and your coinage is pleasure, there is no time for love. "Love" becomes just a word that people cry out in the peak of ecstasy, a word that you learn to ignore as you stop your sand-timer and retrieve your customer's clothes from a cupboard. In the Capitol, I had never known love myself - but at least it was all around me, visible at every turn, and notably in the Capitol's people's love for their leaders as much as their love for each other. In the District, love was a secret, dirty thing. As a teenager, it would only break your heart - your obligation to serve your District as a martyr came before any personal emotions. As an adult, it was secondary to producing the highest class of future tributes, and so the pattern of childhood to adulthood to childhood continued. Falling in love was never on my agenda. Perhaps I wish it had been.

Still, as I settled into a new home, a new persona and a new set of laws to live by, did I ever regret the choice I had made? Not even for a second. And so, as Opal urges me on with hopeful eyes and powerful words, will I look back on how I ended up here, speeding back towards the life I left behind me? Never.

"So you win, Renée." No - I don't need to win. All I need to do is what I've always done - damn well put on a show.

ooc: none; theme: link;

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