when we finally break [Asha vs Hyacinth vs Sacha]

[kousei ♚]

ASHA LUMIERE

This isn't violence this is just a war in my head,
I give it time but it never seems to end.
I feel a fire in the back of my throat,
So let's get covered in flames and play some games with the smoke.

Books, tales, fables; they all tell the same story of-

"Decay."

- and begin with nine sturdy fingers fumbling, bloodshot eyes staring and reading over the final wish of a dead man before passing.

("Don't lose your mind.")

Words scrawled along the surface of a storm unlike the one encountered on the fifth day. "Slowly. Decaying slowly." It's a concept the mind of a mad man is all too familiar with. Long before apparitions of the Capitol's sadism pried the life from Mitchell Laws' throat and long before I was faced with an unknown truth while the unknown reality riddled Desimae's body with spears and created a red canvas from her porcelain skin.

I've been slowly decaying for four years, it only took a single canon for me realize it.

Look at the letters that spell Asha Lumiere and there is a man who is falling victim, not to the constructs of his mind and presumed definitions but to time. Weathering, breaking, rotting before my eyes. The storm cleared and takes its pelting rains and winds with it; I did not succumb to the intricacies of the elements but there's still a graveyard calling for the names of six others. Counting violent outbursts like they're seconds on a broken clock, I tuck the eye of the storm back into my pouch and prop the slain head of the Yeti from yesterday next to me and keep its furs wrapped around my tired form.

("Where is the method to your madness?")

I long since lost count of how many times I dared challenge the system with angry words and furious fists but I know that each time I held a hand to my heart I could not feel a racing pulse. Early beginnings of decay, signs of pure rot, the symptoms and start points all flew over my head.

Five days spend chasing a red I cannot appreciate (monochromia; chasing phantoms in search of color) and two days tracing my finger along a card unseen until pried from the fingers of a dead man. I was stupid to only realize how far along the decomposition process I truly was. As if my life could be summed up in a book, but the pages have long since yellowed and the cover has long since began to tatter to the test of time. Scrawled words upon yellowed pages cannot pass as an obituary to any one; you would have to be mad.

I turned a page and left Desimae's body to Capitol's hovercraft. Jenoah had bore the weight of grief when Mitchell Laws' throat had been opened while Desimae quickly broke down into a flurry of curses and profanities in the face of loss. When faced with the disappointing death of a star, I gathered my bearings I turned my back to the cold corpse of Desimae Warble without so much as a promise of vengeance.

I didn't even loot her body and check for supplies, she was more than just a treasure chest.

I'm reminded of this when the phantoms of day 5 make their final appearance to the Capitol's favorite harmony. No option for a white flag paired with no final chance of redemption; when I anticipate their deaths in the face of their features across a sky studded with false stars that is the best I could come up with.

The presence of District Seven twitches my mouth upwards and a shiver curls down the gash along my back. When the features of Desimae finally glare down at me I simply numb and instinctively move to satisfy the itch I forgot was simply phantom - there is no commitment to be found in these hollow veins after all. Death's door tells me she burned brighter than a supernova but she was never meant to exist in my galaxy. The death of a star is supposed to be brilliant (explosions, bright lights, colour-).

But I only see decay.

(- worms, gravestones, soil.)

Hand pressed against my chest, it feels as cold and hollow as it did on the day of the reaping when I willingly offered my throat to the reaper's scythe. My heart does not thaw at the fiction of what could have been and what was before me.

"You could have made me human."

---

Day Six rears its head and light pries open my eyelids. I do not think to be thankful of the fact I still draw air into my lungs or can still count six tributes waiting to be slain.

I hate counting.

But I still count metal-clad footsteps tapping. A shiver passes down my spine and I cast my gaze up to the grey clouds that threaten to weep at any given moment. My footsteps are heavy but my footing feels ready to crumble with the canon fire at my back. Muscles popping, gears grinding, all sense of direction had long since been lost in a flurry of dotted pencil lines leading me across my fragmented mind.

X marks the spot, I do not dare to cast a distant thought to the boundaries I will cross to reach the final destination. It doesn't matter because they all look the same to me (monochromia; color can only be distinguished on basis of brightness) and besides, endpoints can only be truly measured in the final result.

"Death."

At footstep one thousand and four I find myself in an all too familiar situation. Deep in the rift of insanity, I am shocked when I cast a glance to the walls and find them not whitewashed. I am met with where Myara Lowe fell in slow motion to Jenoah's flaming glaive and Samira defied the wishes of the world we were both outcasts to.

And when I spot two figures in the clearing, I do not bare my teeth at the thought of blood lust nor do I press a four-fingered hand to my chest to feel if my hollow heart has finally thawed. Five fingers simply tighten around the handle of the axe at the sight of the metal clad figure of Hyacinth and District Five. Two colors left to distinguish, but we're all the same shade of darkness in here.

I throw the head of the her district partner's killer at her feet. "Guess who or what killed Mitchell." but my statement is all too hollow, giving it a pointed look before raising my axe without grinning.

Career instincts takeover and I no longer discriminate, I just want to spill blood.

"How is it you put it? I pause, letting silence slowly wrap around my throat. "Let's kill the ugly ones first." And my axe veers from one shade of grey to the other.

I remain colorblind to a truth I'm not searching for just as I'll forever remain undefined on this spectrum of absolutes. I cannot distinguish darkness from darkness when I've been willingly wasting away in the darkest pit of them all for four years now. There is no black and white mark at the endpoint for a body four years into the varying stages of decay.

Oh you're killing me right now.
(You're killing me killing me right now)
I think it's time you burn me down.

DISTRICT ONE MALE

[Asha Lumiere attacks Sacha Dupont, Axe]

Y4F6bJHvaxe

[11178 -- Severed Left Ear -- 8.0 damage]

axe

[lucius branwen / 10 — fox]

[presto][/presto]s  a  c  h  a   d  u  p  o  n  t

► ► ►

You want to go home,

(to what you never had.)

The night sky tells you that Reese is dead – no constellations of astrological omens in your heliocentric movement – but just his face alit above you as bright as the stars had been so long ago. You can still feel the touch of his fingers on the bridge of your nose, a quiet laughter and some kind of sedateness in his voice when he says, “you feel handsome.”

There is red all over your hand, peeling like iron, soaked into your clothes with the rainwater that dilutes the colour of a zenith you can still picture behind closed eyes. Your arm ends at the wrist, but your hand hurts.

You nurse a pain that does not exist.

There isn’t a beautiful thing here.

And maybe, you had lost that in the valley of falling things, when the earth shook and some part of you, (some part of him), fell into the split chasms with the contents of your backpack.

Because you discarded fragments of yourself in this arena, windswept on the mountain, buried in the granite flats, waterlogged in the rift – until you are now barebones and fifteen again, all ghosts and knives and District Five’s decay.

You gave him the butterfly hairpin,
placed it on his glass chest,

and watched it glimmer as the rain filled his sunken lungs. And in the morning that Pillar found you, gold hair sweeping your cheek, the sun had not seemed like the worst way die. You want the sunburns and solar flares, the blindness of loving too closely, the pain of growth underneath a blue sky. But there is only the taste of clouds and smoke, factories churning pollution into you. And you know you will die to a starless night.

{ x }

The mountain ridge shakes and caves in the distance at dawn, rose silhouettes disappearing to the earth – silken feathers and blood and Ryan at the top of the mountain collapsing as it goes all the way down. You wanted to go back to the mountain for this. But you will have to settle for the dust, the aftermath.

(The pain of all these things.)

The ground tells you that you have been loved once.

And you are back to who you were without any part of yourself sculpted around his veins. You were born with nothing but an instinct you thought you’d lost to the castles he raised, the wilderness tamed when you could imagine sunlight striking the wall of your farmhouse. A kingdom, soft and gentle, laid across your dreams. A safety you placed all your faith in, held onto even when he disappeared and left you bird bones, imperfect wings.

A boy throws a head at the feet of a girl, and this is just the way how people move.

“I want to go home.”

A long time ago, you'd thought that Ryan would take you back, your sweater knotted around her neck, no promises made, and the careful reassurance of a girl who believed in what she had to do.

But she is dead. And Sam is not here, and there is no one else who can take you to your house in the flowers.

You miss Seve.
And you miss who you were.

"Let's kill the ugly ones first."
A name, a pulse -- you always give yourself away in pieces of these two beliefs.

--

{ all my love was down
in a frozen ground. }

[sacha attacks asha, morning star]
xOsPUsJaspiked blunt
[14011 -- BROKEN LEFT ARM -- 6.5 damage]

spiked blunt

[Python]

Something innocent found its way into the arena, sparking embers in the eyes of Jenoah and Pillar. Killers morphed into gentle hands and soft gazes as Buttercup sniffed his way around the fire. He was an enthralling creature, but the joy he brought was unprecedented. It felt as if they had reverted to their original personalities, innocent citizens with families and futures and unraveled lifespans. Now, the Reaping had left them all tangled. Their lives were intertwined and someone would be there to cut them short. She had watched Jenoah impale a boy’s eye and smelled the aftermath of Pillar’s smoky handiwork. What was in store for them tomorrow? The peace they were sharing now would vanish. Violence would push it aside and flood the earth, drowning the unworthy. Buttercup’s sweet purring would not save them, but today it offered solace. Silence settled like the sun, cloaking the grey sky in a golden glow. She had nothing to say about Pillar’s apology. She didn’t care if it was genuine or a façade to mask dark intentions. Words didn’t matter, not to her and not to Bolts’ corpse. If Pillar sought relief in her own spoken apology, then Hyacinth would not rob her of it. However, she pursed her lips and remained silent. She managed a shrug, and that was all. There was nothing else to say. Dead was dead. She let Buttercup enjoy their company until the sunlight faded. To remain in the company of enemies meant certain death, and despite sharing a fire there was not a shred of trust between them. She bid them farewell, a gentle ”See you soon,” whispered into the air because she would see them again – in the sky or in a duel. Shadows replaced silhouettes, so they could not follow her in the dark. She relied on faded starlight to pave her path. When the anthem split constellations, the first face illuminated the landscape. From there, she could see the earth’s mouth gaping at her yet again. The rift seemed to haunt her, leading her back to its depths no matter how hard she tried to escape. Bolts’ face lit a path to its edge, and from there she found a trail. She didn’t care about the other three faces for any reason other than the light they cast down upon the rocks. It was just enough time for her to find a boulder and sleep behind it. When a cold nose prodded the palm of her hand, she stroked Buttercup’s face and his purrs erased the silence. ”I could die tomorrow,” she said, matter-of-factly. There couldn’t be many tributes left, and from now on she would be alone in her endeavors. If she faced Pillar, she risked being set aflame. If she faced Jenoah, she would lose. She killed with secrets and wisdom, not with weapons. She was not a warrior; she could only pretend to be one until someone exposed her as a fraud. From then on, she would be a corpse. ”If I do, leave me. Find the last living tribute.” She didn’t trust animals to understand her, but she hoped instinct would be enough to drive this friend home. He didn’t belong here, not as a mutt or a scavenger. Maybe it would be Pillar, and Buttercup would become the Fray’s newest addition. She almost smiled at the thought. ”One of us deserves to go home.” He slept by her cheek. A winter’s chill wrapped itself around her bones, shivering her core until she awoke to another gray sky. There was a tangle of dread in her guts, an omen for terror and destruction. She tried to ignore it and shuffle along the rocky trails until she could hear the gentle trickling of stream water. If her bones weren’t frozen, she would find peace in nature’s melody. A fire melted her a moment later, when she heard footsteps echoing between the pass. When she looked up, it was Asha. Asha and a no name, a boy whose identify she couldn’t remember. He had killed Deja, that was all she knew. The furry head made a ghastly sound at her feet, blood too dry and crusted to feed the stone. She recognized it immediately – the beast from her second day, a monstrous creature with claws like daggers. This had been the beast she slain, but it seemed another had stolen her district partner. ”I know,” her monotone droned, ”Jenoah told me.” She left the information dangling, wondering if Asha even cared. Did he consider anyone a friend, or were they simply allies? Do I have friends? His axe carved a gash into the other boy’s head. The gore left him without an ear, and Hyacinth decided that now was the time to choose her battles. Knives doused in tar overnight, she sparked a flame across each of them and watched the orange erupt. She could see Bolts’ face in every one. ”I want to go home.” Didn’t they all? She felt the heat licking her skin. ”They don’t care what we want.” And she didn’t care where her knife landed.

table by elegan

[uses jar of tar and firemaking to light 4 knives on fire]

[attacks Sacha – throwing knives]
or73kVeothrowing knife
miss

1-50
minor burn +2

accuracy reroll
throwing knife
miss

throwing knives�1-50�throwing knife

[kousei ♚]

ASHA LUMIERE

This isn't violence this is just a war in my head,
I give it time but it never seems to end.
I feel a fire in the back of my throat,
So let's get covered in flames and play some games with the smoke.

Black blood spatter flecks the ground in chunks, there is a bleeding hole in place of where his ear once was. Tall kings slain, tall giants dead, not once was it a pretty end. Black falls from his cheek in floods and I've lost track of my pulse. I do not hear curses or bitter profanities; I hear four letters in correlation that cause my arm to dangle and my axe to hang loosely at my side. I internally cringe at the thought or rotting within whitewashed walls and daring to miss the target. I pray dotted pencil lines across a fragmented mind do not lead me to an endpoint I do not wish to distinguish on the basis of brightness.

Home.

I pause; blood, gore, rust-

(monochromia; the inability to see red.)

- I inhale, decaying lungs and all, all I taste is iron.

I remain numb to the arrangement of four letters that form a tattoo in the air. I would never want dotted lines across a fragmented mind to end at those dreaded four letters (X marks the spot) anywhere but there. Home is whitewashed walls decorated by a red I can no longer see, home is shattered plates, holes in walls, broken noses resulting in fists swollen black and blue. At the end of a violent outburst I can hold a hand to the empty chamber known as my chest and still feel numb to the consequences.

A flesh tally branded into the back of my mind; I've lost count of outbursts that all amounted to naught.

Blood running down the edge of his face, a clump of gore on the ground - I do not even crack a smile at the maiming performed by my steady hand. He must surely begin to question if this is where his story ends. But I do not expect him to raise a white flag to surrender in combination of a bitter hope for home; the world does not work that way. I do not hope for him to drop his weapon and die easy; I hope for him to scream, sob and beg.

I just hope for him to be afraid.

Home is where I was born and bred for this. Gears clicked into place, parts confirmed, hinging joints unbroken and hinged - I'm still labelled defective as a weapon.

“I know, Jenoah told me.”

She leaves the legacy of Mitchell Laws just like that; another footprint in the sand and I'm beginning to ponder two possibilities. Perhaps grief simply transformed into acceptance long ago and refocus has found its way back from the corner of her peripherals. Or maybe, just maybe, she never cared for the final fragment of her home at all; perhaps he was always an insignificant puzzle piece to her victory. After all, I attempted to remove Pillar Fray's head from her shoulders on the first day - home is not always life.

When I look down I see his reflection in the corner of my axe, sword in hand, not bleeding, not broken - alive. Confusion floods my systems, "Mit-”

And I suppress a scream that catches in the back of my throat when I'm nearly knocked to the ground. Countless iron clad steps drag me from the morning star and the resounding crack that cannot be taken back. No profanities to fill the air, no tears to spill, everything just goes

south.

I can't feel my arm.

Grey begins to swim before my very eyes, calm, almost mechanical breathing replaced by deep pants between stuttered breaths amplified by agony. It's not quite the same as losing a part of myself not is it quite the same as color falling from the world at terminal velocity. He swings a morning star like a wild animal cornered without its back; he mirrors the violence of his district partner but with aim ten times as good but the same desperation.

Vision swimming, I look to the shade of grey with longer hair and see an enigma - question marks all around.

And the shade of grey with a missing ear and a missing hand is an unstable concoction, two parts desperation, two parts ferocity.

Perhaps if they put up a fight they'll scream more when the beginning of the end slowly ticks down. He's not going home if i have a say in it.

I barely notice Hyacinth's flames in the corner of my eyes. Light grey cackling, hungrily attacking the air in greed in search for a prey unseen. Her knife fails to reach terminal velocity or even hit the target, but flames kiss his flesh. In an instant, present failure morphs into the past failure and I see red hair, porcelain skin, hazael eyes... human eyes. Too many t's left uncrossed.

Dry chuckles fill the air.

"It doesn't seem to affect you that much.” I pause, lifting up my chin and smiling,"that damn fool would've sacrificed the legacy he craved so much if it meant he could've kept on building shrines to you, as if you were some kind of queen or something.” I state simply, chuckling at his foolishness.

He craved legacy but he still dedicated white pages of his story to Hyacinth Mortus - just another shade of grey to distinguish - all the while leaving one too many t's uncrossed until it was too late.

"He gets his throat torn out and you seem so... apathetic. Perhaps you're more like me than you would care to admit. When I watched the blood crawl from his neck, I didn't feel a damn thing either.” My small bouts of laughter are only interrupted by coughs, it stops abruptly when a thought comes to mind and my smile widens. "Here, let me show you what his corpse looked like!”

When I aim for his throat I am not following faded pencil lines across a fragmented map to home. I was not born to taste clean air within the confines of my home. Nor was I destined to turn white pages while whistling harmonic tunes and gazing at clouds as I contemplate my legacy. I was created to drown in the blood of others and taste iron until I finally rot from the inside out and run out of yellowed pages to turn.

"Let me send you home.”

Oh you're killing me right now.
(You're killing me killing me right now)
I think it's time you burn me down.

DISTRICT ONE MALE

[Asha Lumiere attacks Sacha Dupont, Axe]

OojU8CZXaxe

[11099 -- Block -- 0.0 damage]

Accuracy re-roll, Day 6

axe

[11073 -- Severed Right Foot at Ankle -- 9.0 damage]

axe�axe

[lucius branwen / 10 — fox]

[presto][/presto]s  a  c  h  a   d  u  p  o  n  t

► ► ►

"They don't care what we want."
(Nobody ever did.)

Your hand goes up to your ear.

There are a thousand colours swimming behind your eyes; the memory of a galaxy cupped in your hands spills from the side of your face, down your chin, and drips to the ground in warm, milky rivers.

There is no unsteadiness when you tread forward, holding a handful of blood that soaks the morning star. The sound of an arrhythmic heartbeat dies, fades to a gentle silence.

And maybe you should’ve been more careful with yourself all those years ago – breaking your bones and counting scars, sacrificing your eyesight for daybreak, your lungs for the motion of his chest. Your love for a fragment of that beautiful, transient thing.

Because you will realize someday, that maybe a cyclic heartbeat and the name you had fashioned from re-used letters are not the only two things you have to offer, that perhaps there is so much more to the magnificence of organs and synapses and movement that create you. You are eighteen now, grew up with no guidance but the compass of the stars – an adult who still believes in storybook ghosts and superstitions and omens.

But not in yourself.

Someday, you will be gentle to yourself. You will see the value of you without possessions, or history, or Seve.

You can be everything, and have anything.
(That is all you ever needed to know.)

But this is all you have right now.

And here you are, giving away everything to a boy who stole, and a girl who burns. There is a danger in knowing that you can still want, to know when to withdraw the heart you carry around like a pocketful of bandaids and keep something of it tucked safely away. And you can still dream one last time for yourself. This will have nothing to do with your mother and father, District Five, or Seve.

This is for you.

"It'll be okay," you say to her. "I'll have this –”

One way

or another.

He swings his sword.
You are falling.

But this is not the same as the wind in your hair, the chance motion of landing on something soft and precious. This is not growing tired and falling asleep in the afternoon daylight warming bed covers.

You hit the earth. And in those moments before scraping your skin at fifteen on asphalt, you are certain you want to be scattered with the stars, land like moon dust and never settle into the ground. You want to go home. And this is not the way you imagined it, this is not who you imagined would take you, but you still have time to dream an astral fantasy, one last time –

(and dream again.)

--

{ all my love was down
in a frozen ground. }

[sacha attacks asha, morning star]
IEY6UDSKspiked blunt
[14170 -- BROKEN LEFT COLLAR BONE -- 6.5 damage]

spiked blunt

[Python]

Crack went the skeleton – a gift from the boy’s spiked torture device, loud like thunder against Asha’s arm. An unspoken name dissipated in the air. Mit- Mitchell. Home. The bittersweet scent of alcohol wrapped around her throat, not quite touching the base of her tongue. The imagery that was Mitchell flashed vividly behind her eyelids. His queen of hearts was still tucked away in her bag, crinkled and erased of its symbolism. She was a collector of dead hearts, a title that meant nothing here. She could steal a man’s heart but they could crush her spirit into ashes, and what she had accomplished in this game so far was nothing. Sitting by, watching friends die, and wishing everything was different. That was her legacy now – an idle queen. Not quite as monstrous as Celia, but equally destined for failure. The image of a Mortuus shrine was borderline amusing. Mitchell had fought for another’s victory instead of his own, crowning her the queen of hearts when perhaps she was not worth fighting for. Selfishly, she craved life. To die was to lose every possible feeling, and although she felt frozen inside and out there were pieces of her that had thawed. She still cared about her family and valued their safety. Even if she hadn’t deemed herself worthy of surviving, she would do it for them because they deserved a world without suffering. She was not lifeless, not soulless, and she did not want to be kidnapped by death. Asha’s words were acidic. The story felt exaggerated, because how could Mitchell worship her like a queen? A crown of bones was nothing royal. In his deck of cards she was his queen of hearts, and he had promised that he would fight for her victory, but to claim that he would demolish a legacy to build her metaphoric Mortuus shine – preposterous. Yet he had been a fool, and Asha agreed with that. There was truth to his words and she wouldn’t deny them, but apathy was something she couldn’t ignore. The image of Mitchell’s neck splitting into a red, gory ribbon – it didn’t leave her feeling empty, feeling nothing. There was an ache in her chest that she wanted to erase, dead men’s hands clutching at her heart. Mordecai and Mitchell would not let go. They were not nothing. ”Don’t believe everything you see. I will not show the world my suffering,” she said. Not anymore. She would not scream for them, she would not cry for them, and she would try her damnest not to offer them a shred of satisfaction as they watched her struggle. If she failed, then perhaps she was not strong enough. However, it seemed Asha was convinced. I wish I could feel nothing. That was the way it used to be, every feeling whipped out of her by the Peacekeepers. An empty shell of a girl dragging herself across Twelve’s finest hospital. It was simplistic, easy. ”I’ve spent a long time perfecting this mask,” she continued, tone as apathetic as Asha suggested. ”Don’t expect to see anything behind it.” Because she was stubborn like her twin sister. She had wanted to abandon her vulnerability in the training center the day her true colors bled in front of the Gamemakers. Twenty-two dummies she had mutilated because they symbolized her hatred for the men who could pin her against walls for the sake of her family’s safety. Killing every last one of them was her liberation. From that point on, she had wanted to be someone who felt nothing. Things hadn’t gone according to plan, but she could pretend. The world would never know the difference. If the queen of hearts had a broken heart of her own, she would not tell them. They could use their wild imaginations to wonder, how does Hyacinth feel? Will she ever love? No. But she would protect. Her fire kissed the boy’s skin and it meant nothing. Asha wanted to recreate Mitchell’s corpse, but his axe had bitten through bone instead. All this boy wanted was home, and it was waiting for him. A graveyard and a casket.

table by elegan

[attacks Sacha – throwing knife]
z8Dlv35qthrowing knife
Shallow Cut on Bicep -- 3.5 damage

fire
1-50
Extinguished

throwing knife�1-50

[kousei ♚]

ASHA LUMIERE

This isn't violence this is just a war in my head,
I give it time but it never seems to end.
I feel a fire in the back of my throat,
So let's get covered in flames and play some games with the smoke.

Seventeen years I spent trying and failing to decorate my white washed walls in shades of grey. I only realized that it was fruitless in the past four years. Four years in realizing that I was surrounded by lies and masks of deceit, trapped in a constant cycle and playing games of pretend. This family, that family (Lumiere, Fray, Moreno -) and we were all turning in a never ending loop that would never come full cycle. All in the name of wearing a crown of thorns, I swear I would never bite the apple and give in to temptation. Step one to insanity; realizing your attempts are a fruitless lie but continuing down the same path of deceit all the same. It was only on the day of the reaping that I realized I was the lie.

“I’ve spent a long time perfecting this mask, don’t expect to see anything behind it.”

Half-truths, quarter-truths, black lies; it all morphs into a figment of restoration mid-swing. One second spiraling down the drain like the threads of sanity itself, my axe is arching towards another shade of grey I do not care to distinguish. One, two, thee -

- five - he's district five.

And the next Mitchell Laws' throat has been opened all over again but I don't pull back. My axe falls from his throat to his feet and it splits sinew, muscle and bone until his foot comes off clean. In one stroke, I turned pure ferocity into cripple and a mist of black sprays upwards and he's falling in slow motion. Dead flesh immobile, essence soaking into the ground. I do not stop to watch his features distort into a drink of two parts; desperation and agony.

No time for a moment of silence; here lies another shade of grey. I leave my axe to hang limply at my waste and I inhale.

If I was the perfect career son it would've been his head.

('What exactly are you good at, Asha?')

('Nothing really.')

The corners of my mouth tug upwards momentarily. He is a whirlwind, an unstable concoction, one part violence, one part desperation. A cornered hunter without its pack is too dangerous to let live, too sporadic and unpredictable to not cull. A sharp intake of breathe and I hold, taught tension builds up from pure anticipation. I possess a heart that only thaws at the concept of blood lust but I swear, it skips a nonexistent beat when he strikes so hard, I barely move from its direction but still hear the familiar, resounding crack of a torture device against skeletal systems.

I barely suppress a scream through gritted teeth and a bleeding cheek. Hyacinth's next flaming knife finds the target but fails to taste his flesh with the same bravado my axe has tasted his. A part of me wonders if her former ferocity died with Mordecai. Similar to how the remains of a humanity I refuse to embrace died with -

('-no one belongs here, Asha.')

I turn to Hyacinth and exhale. "Oh, you are brave. I cannot imagine the courage it takes to admit to being a coward who hides behind a mask,” I do not even chuckle at the irony behind words clad in monotone. "I've spent my whole life surrounded by masks and crowns, and not one person proudly wore them for all to see. And perhaps I've been wearing a mask myself and I haven't figured it out yet, but at the end the day, a mask will not stop the sun rising and illuminating the truth for us all to see," I pause, allowing my words to sink in. And trust me, that is not the way you want the truth to be exposed.”

But the truth will not always set you free. Fractured bones, iron in my mouth, monochromia. "Truth is, I love this, I was made for this. No mask is so well-crafted that it can hide that truth.” My lips tug into a grin.

Look at the presumed definitions attached to the name Asha Lumiere and it is found to be synonymous with monster.

I point my axe from Hyacinth to the fucker that's at least fractured two parts of my skeleton. He mirrors his district partner but I've dealt with the desperation of a maimed tribute from District Five before and come out alive. No time for a moment of silence I shoot him a blank glance. "Are you seeing red?” I ask simply, (monochromia; complete colorblindness.) No time for a moment of silence, I raise my blade.

"I'm not.”

He's a fighter, a whirlwind, a storm that won't die but he cannot stop me. He won't keel over and die, but nor will he embody resurrection and rise from the ashes.

Victory does not come from the finality of a white flag.

So, I'll just have to keep hacking until he's nothing more than a bleeding torso and I've escaped from this crevice of insanity and deceit. I cannot appreciate the beauty, but I'll happily drain him pint by pint if it means finally decorating this monochrome world in red.

Oh you're killing me right now.
(You're killing me killing me right now)
I think it's time you burn me down.

DISTRICT ONE MALE

[Asha Lumiere attacks Sacha Dupont, Axe]

sdFav_etaxe

[11185 -- Shallow Cut on Left Hip -- 3.5 damage]

axe

[lucius branwen / 10 — fox]

[presto][/presto]s  a  c  h  a   d  u  p  o  n  t

► ► ►

lmao filler bc i'm driving to canada
probably says something about red & Seve being the colour blue
probably thinks about mars or something grand

--

{ all my love was down
in a frozen ground. }

[sacha attacks asha, morning star]
6DLJoYNHspiked blunt
[14175 -- BROKEN LEFT SHIN -- 7.0 damage]

spiked blunt

[Python]

Fire was not her partner in crime. The orange wrapped around her knife fizzled out before grazing the boy’s arm; a cat scratch compared to his amputated foot. She hadn’t known what to expect when Ansgar donated his knives. To use them meant a close-range battle, but why not use her sword instead? Throwing them was wiser, yet twice as difficult. She was not a career. In Twelve, she could hardly defend herself. Her weapons were red hot lips and silky words to soothe the stormy tantrums of men. Balance was another, the power to keep herself level-headed through every situation. Watching her brother be tortured, for example. Watching Mordecai die. Imagining Mitchell in his last moments, gasping and drowning in his own blood. Listening to a skeleton shatter. She didn’t stray close enough to feel the wrath of this boy’s spiked weapon. There were plates of chain and armor cushioning her bones, but she was not a walking concrete wall. She was still vulnerable like Reese, who was blinded by death in the blink of an eye. Or Mitchell, who lost his breath to a mutation. And Bolts, the human torch, body perhaps sent away in a jar of ashes. Despite everything, her eyes remained fixed. Her expression was neutral, frigid, lips shaped into an unwavering frown. Asha labeled it brave – an unmasking of cowardice. She begged to differ. A coward did not guard the halls of a hospital in Twelve, slipping poison into drinks and forging documents to hide their deaths. A coward did not scour her hands in the black market’s ocean of blood, nor would a coward abandon chastity a thousand times over for her family’s sake. Broken jaws and black eyes from Peacekeepers who thought they owned the world – and the others she had wrapped around her finger like guard dogs. The one day her mask shattered, it did not reveal a coward. Just a girl, the soft insides of a newly-scarred shell. They tried to whip hope out of her and they almost had, but now was the real test. Hopelessness lurked behind every corner in this Games, like a plague. It threatened to infect even the sturdiest of tributes, and left her feeling weak in the knees. Today, she wanted to forget about it. ”It’s not cowardly,” she said, matter-of-factly, ”It’s strategy.” She understood the appeal of calling someone a coward. People romanticized the idea that facing the world naked was brave, honorable, and ideal. In truth, it was perhaps the stupidest thing she could think of. What happened to honest people? They ended up whipped, chained, killed for being tactless. The ones who hid at the sign of danger survived. The ones who breathed mist behind well-crafted masks were never detected of schemes and lies. Nobody had a clue of her true intentions. ”You say this like you have experience with masks, but you've been obvious from the start. We all know you enjoy this.” And Celia enjoyed it too, until they buried her ashes six feet underground. His strength was purely physical, and that was okay. That was the soulless statue their audience wanted. Without a heart, murder was easy. With physical strength, winning would be even easier. Asha was perhaps her greatest obstacle. If she joined forces with the other boy, they could shatter his skeleton to pieces. Except there was no guarantee. He could possess the strength of two careers instead of one, and let the streams run red with their blood. She had chosen her battle from the start, to side with a career and save herself for the final course. If she had to run away from him, she would. His skeleton was too damaged to catch her. He spoke of truths being illuminated, but hers remained dormant. ”The truth will only be revealed when I say so. That’s the beauty of a mask – I can control it. The world won’t know my weaknesses until I tell them exactly what they are.” Or I’ll make sure they die with me.

table by elegan

[attacks Sacha – throwing knife]
97b817Wzthrowing knife
Deep Gash on Forearm -- 7.5 damage

fire
1-50
extinguished

throwing knife�1-50

[kousei ♚]

ASHA LUMIERE

This isn't violence this is just a war in my head,
I give it time but it never seems to end.
I feel a fire in the back of my throat,
So let's get covered in flames and play some games with the smoke.

Shattered.

Terror never felt fills the air in a harsh grunt that escapes the back of my throat when the morning star crashes down onto my shin and the armor slowly falls in heavy chunks and fragments. Somehow, even with his corpse in a coffin and his flesh feeding crows, Mitchell Laws breaks for my sake for the first and final time. Two songs of canon fire, one reverberating through my skull and the other one a melody through the bitter cold air. I cannot place name or face to corpse nor wound to cause - the grief of some family from an unknown district is the least of my concerns.

I stumble back, as if two steps can take me away from the arms of the hurricane and shield me from torture; I've known for eight days that evading the scythe of death does not work that way. No mechanics to the method, no method to the madness, this is simply one of many brutal blows that fail to kiss flesh but taste steel. No doubt, had I not worn the armor of a fallen ally proudly it would have been my shin in splinters rather than fragments of metal I did not appreciate until less than two seconds ago.

District Five is a howling storm with a spiked weapon, it does not matter so much as who has the bigger stick but who is swinging it. I've been bred and trained to tear flesh to ribbons with steel and turn trembling skin into my personal canvas. Beauty cannot be found in shades of grey and I cannot appreciate the sight of the skin on his hip splitting into a crimson grin; but when tall kings are slain and their kingdoms shatter, it is not the color of the blood than ran through their royal veins that was remembered, it was the essence of the grief they left behind.

No gods to watch over me, I've built my own place of worship from bricks of grey for six days. The blood and tears of the District Five boy would make perfect stained glass windows.

Hyacinth Mortuus calls hiding behind a mask crafted from the taught shadows of deceit strategy. In truth, the strategy that came with pretend was always lost on me; besides, survival cannot be pinned to a set number of steps printed crystal clear upon a white page. She speaks as if I was attempting to hide a truth I never meant to hide, but how can I hide when there was never a mask that could quite fit?

“The truth will only be revealed when I say so. That’s the beauty of a mask – I can control it. The world won’t know my weaknesses until I tell them exactly what they are.”

Fire flooding my veins, ice in my heart; my hands tighten into fists at my side and the knuckle wrapped around the handle of the hatchet turn white and a cold scowl twists across my face. I do not burn brighter than the flames that lick her knives. Besides, I would never simmer down and die after opening a deep gorge across his forearm.

"Until you tell them, or they slowly pry the truth from your throat. No matter what, the result is the same.” I retort simply. Voice devoid of all spite or anger, I'm as apathetic as the mask she proudly wears on her sleeve and defends with words, fire and steel.

Iron on my tongue, ash in my lungs, fire in my veins -

"I'll send you home, Five. Your body is simply a cage; let me set you free. Let me send you home.”

One step through shattered armor that once clad my leg and a mercy untouched is as broken as fragile sanity shattering against the ground at terminal velocity. Unkind time turns to rebirth; Desimae rises from her ashes and Mitchell stands still with his throat untouched. Just stepping stones for a madness lacking a method. The shade of grey from five has two feet, two hands, two ears -

('Where is the method to you madness?')

I will quell the violent hurricane, there is no method needed in the madness that thaws a heart of ice.

Oh you're killing me right now.
(You're killing me killing me right now)
I think it's time you burn me down.

DISTRICT ONE MALE

[Asha Lumiere attacks Sacha Dupont, Axe]

UUOKA_Vcaxe

[11040 -- Deep Gash on Right Forearm -- 8.0 damage]

 axe