i'm running with the wolves | titus + lux

[gamemaker kelsier]

my heart still beats and my skin still feels; my lungs still breathe, my mind still fears

When my bat hits chester's chest with a sickening thud I know that he is dead and that I am a monster. I am a rag man held together by skin and bone, my sinews thread from the dread of this; myself. I am myself.

"If you see Teddy, tell him I'm sorry."

I'm sorry too. I'm so sorry.

I nod at the dying boy's wish and when he draws his last breath, a shaky, frantic laugh leaves my lips. I taste blood on them and the world begins to spin, the adrenaline gone. I pilfer Teddy's backpack, a crow after a battle. My fingers fumble with a bandage and then a needle on my thigh. I don't know what to do with my arm. My lack of arm.

Then something comes to me.

I'm sitting in the warehouse beside Mason, watching as he does some simple first aid on another gang member. The kid is sitting still, tight-lipped, even though he must be in pain. Mason heats a piece of metal in the fire barrel.

"Dude, what are you doing?" I asked him.

"Cauterizing the wound."

There's some wood in Chester's bag and I still have my flint.

It takes nearly too long. My vision is growing fuzzy from pain and blood loss by the time I manage to light a fire, one-handed. There's barely heat at first. I look through Chester's bag again and pull out his water canteen, gulping it back hungrily until my stomach hurts and then I toss it onto the flames. It's metal. It will heat enough, I hope.

I sit still, chewing on some leaves I found in his bag, waiting for the metal to be warm enough, desperately trying to ignore the pain in my arm. My brain hasn't accepted yet that it's gone, even if my body has. I feel like if I think about it, I'll scream.

A cannon booms and I jump. It's the third one after Chester.

That makes five of us.

I try to imagine how the fuck I've made it this far, try to calculate how I could still be alive, but I can't. I shouldn't be here, I know that. It always should have been Kaiser. My dad always used to say that life works in strange ways. I don't. I'm fifteen years old and down to one arm.

Maybe my death will come tomorrow.

I contemplate the canteen in the flames. Ribbons of colour light up the metal from the heat and I know that it's time but I am afraid. I've never felt so much pain. My head spins with it, I'll throw up soon. I take out my other canteen, readying it to cool my burn afterwards so that my skin doesn't just keep burning.

I use Chester's cane to tug the canteen away from the flames, taking it carefully from his grasp.

"I'm sorry."

Two words that he'll never hear.

I take a deep breath.

I press the stub of my arm to the canteen.

Pain shoots up through my arm, fast and brilliant, blinding. It's worse than the clean cut of the cane through my flesh, debilitating and shockingly violent. A scream escapes from between my lips and it blossoms into a howl but I hold my arm there, feeling the flesh bubble, knowing that I need to in order to live.

"MASON," I scream.

The world goes black.


I wake, confused and covered in sweat to the hollow sound of trumpets. The fire is embers and my arm burns. The sky is dark and my arm burns. Stars blink overhead and my arm burns. The anthem appears and my arm burns.

I gaze up at the colours there, watching as faces begin to appear.

Ree.

My mouth curls back and tears form in my eyes, blurring my vision. The last time we spoke, I was killing his friend. I think about that last picture that we took together, in the early morning light. If I'd known then that it'd be the last time we were alright, I would have said a proper goodbye, would have said anything, but I didn't.

Chester.

When I turn my head, his body is gone. It must have been taken by a hovercraft while I slept. I know the spot where he lay though. His pack still sits, yawning open. I'm sorry, god, I'-

Addy.

No.

"NO," someone shouts and it takes a moment to realize it was me. She gazes down at us, a benevolent god and the tears that were threatening spring foreward, overflowing down my cheeks into the dirt. I'd wanted to find her, to beg her forgiveness for killing when I should have died but I can't. She's dead now. Someone killed her, someone killed a god.

I didn't know that you could do that.

I sit up slowly, fingers in a pocket of my pack, searching for the snapshot I took of us, Cam's orange halo of hair like a strange effect in the background.

I gip it too tightly, I wrinkle the image as I fold myself foreward over my burning arm, tears coming too strong to sit up straight anymore.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," I gasp it out like a mantra over my missing limb, over Chester and Cam and Aline and Raquel, over Addy and Kaiser and Lace and Basil and Ree.

I'm sorry for surviving you, for being here.

For volunteering.

For living.

God I'm fucking sorry.

My arm burns and my heart hurts and my eyes fall shut so I sleep.


I wake with a groan in the morning, my head pounding from tears and pain. How many days has it been, I wonder. How much longer do I have to keep on surviving. When can I lay down?

I miss pillows.

I miss the concrete floor of the warehouse and my sleeping bag.

I miss toilets.

I find an appropriate tree and that's when the real struggle begins. If I thought that mornings were hard already, they've become even harder with the use of only one hand. It takes a while to get the hang of it and using my stump is a no go. The flesh is too tender. It burns as soon as I push it against anything so I hold it away from my body.

I wrap bandage around it, doing my best to protect it for the day because I have no doubt that I'll be shoved into the path of someone else.

My pictures are scattered on the ground beside where I was sleeping and Johno, after some searching, is curled comfortably up in my bag, nestled in all the spare bandages. Now that I look at them, they do seem excessive. I reemember where they came from though. It gives me comfort.

All my friends are gone now, it's just me left.

But they left pieces of themselves with me.

I stow the pictures carefully in my bag, fingers shaking as they brush over the images. I sling it over my shoulder carefully, and brush my fingers over the NASA pin for good luck before picking up my bat. The barbed wire has begun to rust from all the blood it's seen. I don't know if that makes it deadlier or if I'm just mad.

I don't know how I feel.

There's only emptiness.

So I trudge forward stubbornly, not even hesitating this time when I hear a rustling in the trees. Mutt or tribute, I can't lose my other arm.

[Titus attacks Lux with spiked blunt]
DXJq6Z7Mspiked blunt
[14062 -- BROKEN JAW -- 7.0 damage + 1 strength]

spiked blunt

[D6f Carmen Cantelou [aza]]

luxa pelotte

I walk alone. I have the company of my only remaining koala, Kenzie, but it isn’t the same. I shouldn’t be complaining because I only have myself to blame for this loneliness – but maybe if things were different, the people who are dead because I’m alive… maybe we could have been friends. I could have taught them a thing or two about murder back in Four, Adelaide could have walked me through how to survive drinking poison and Hero could have showed me his family.

Things could be so different. I don’t know whether going back in time would change anything that has happened, part of me doesn’t want to change anything that has happened. I just think that somewhere, out there, there is a world of alternates where we all managed to get along. Not tributes, just friends.

Admittedly, I’m not good at making friends. It’s a miracle I even got Hero and Jacob on my side, let alone Adelaide. I don’t want to admit it to myself, but I don’t think I’d be here without them. I realise that I am strong and that because of the past, distant and close, people have reasons to fear me – they think I’ll cut their tongue out if they speak a word that offends me, or I’ll break their legs if they wrong me. Do not get me wrong, I will, but it only takes being in the wrong place at the wrong time to be the opposite. It only takes being in the wrong place at the wrong time to be on the receiving end of a deadly blow, rather than the one delivering it.

They’ve saved me from that. They’re the reason I was at the right place and the right time, and I am thankful. Probably shouldn’t be given the circumstances of their deaths and how I am still alive, but I am.

I exhale. Night sets in, stars shining like pins, moon stinging its way through the mist that rolls in from the sea. It feels especially quiet; normally you can hear the whispers of the trees and the crashing of waves against the shores but it is strangely silent. It feels unbreakable – when I sniff, I feel like every living thing turns to watch me. Oddly intimidating, really, because when the anthem sounds I realise that there are only three other tributes left.

The first face to show is that of Ree Fer. Good, I think, good because he didn’t have it in him to win anyway. Far too obsessed with sex and bodies, I suppose that is probably why he found it so difficult to break one. I guess that his death puts an end to his suffering, I guess he isn’t searching for something to satisfy that addiction of his anymore.

Next is Chester Meisenzahl. Good, I think, good because he was far too quiet to ever be accepted by the Capitol as a victor. It takes courage; you need to be able to take shit on the chin and be the Capitol’s plaything. It isn’t for everyone, I don’t think he would last a minute and would turn out going missing like the female victor from Eleven. Nobody knows if she is alive, but I have the satisfaction of knowing that Chester Meisenzahl is dead, so that counts for something.

Adelaide’s face graces the skies next. Good, I think, good because they will all be forced to remember. That is all she ever wanted, and sure, it is a little strange she called it her ‘third life’ but she was dying and I was the one killing her, therefore I was in no place to argue or answer back. I tried though, and she tried too. She won, really.

Walherich next. His surname lights up the night but I am pretty certain he is the only one who knew how to pronounce it. Oh well, I think. That secret will die with him. I think that it is good that he is dead – Eleven has had their fair share of victors in recent years and it is time the crown was passed on to somewhere else. A more deserving place.

There are no more faces after that. I long to see the face of Emberly Lowe in the sky but her presence is still alive within the arena. Sad, I think, sad that she is putting her family through the same shit they went through however many years ago. Legacies never work out, the Hunger Games prefers new blood, fresh blood because it is thicker and easier to master. It is sad how she is holding on so tightly, refusing to let go even when her dead relatives call so desperately from below. Her time is not now; if someone doesn’t make sure of that, I know that I will.

Leaves rustling above, Kenzie nesting beside me, the arena’s natural symphonies lull me to sleep.

x

The sun shines above, forcing my eyes to open. Part of me just wants to lie here and let everyone else figure out the madness, but I am thirsty for blood. And if it isn’t me that takes the life of someone else – who will? The only person I trust in this arena is myself.

Slinging the bag over my shoulder, I trek forwards, not looking back and hoping that whatever lies ahead does not take what is mine. It only takes a minute or two before I emerge from the undergrowth and find myself standing before Titus Seraphim – Adelaide’s friend who didn’t speak much but sure knew how to kill. I think in the alternate world, wherever it is, the two of us would definitely be friends. We have something in common.

He lashes out against me, my jaw cracking under the force of his baseball but. I frown, my right hand moving to my mouth. My left-hand twists, fingers tightening around the handle of the mace. It has been good to me so far, so good to me, and whilst I realise that all good things must come to an end, I hope that the end of my luck comes in two days. 

"You." I say, looking through squinted eyes. "You've been good you know, but all good things come to an end."

{ lux attacks titus; spiked blunt }

K84unxMXspiked blunt

{ 14131 -- MISS -- 0.0 }

accuracy reroll

spiked blunt

{ 14020 -- MISS -- 0.0 }

spiked blunt�spiked blunt

[gamemaker kelsier]

my heart still beats and my skin still feels; my lungs still breathe, my mind still fears

The audible crunch of breaking bones. Again, again, again, like a fucking song stuck on repeat. It's almost comforting, like something you fall asleep to, a repeated sound.

Play it again, Sam.

My arm is numb, boldened by disuse. I have five fingers on my hands and a symbol in my chest, clashing and banging, fucking clanging far too loud, what the hell is wrong with me.

"I'm not good," I say vehemently, "Neither of us are."

I can't think of one good person in this goddamned arena left alive. The rest of them either died early or yesterday. My grip tightens on the bat despite the pain in my hand. My muscles cramp and I wish that I could switch it to the other hand but there's none to switch it to. My right arm is fucking gone but it hardly matters, at least I still have it, that thing we're all killing for. Life, I guess.

I remember sleeping beside Kaiser in the dinghy, the shape of it perfectly cradling me against Kaiser's chest. I don't know why I think of him here, so suddenly, bat burning a hole into my hand. I try to think of what he would do right here, right now.

Laugh?

I laugh.

Feels hollow.

I straighten my back, some sort of lion living in my grin. I've never been a predator, always the hunted. It feels odd, like a bungee cord taped haphazardly to my insides. This is not who I am, I know that. This is Kaiser. This is Mason. This is Tate.

Where the fuck is Titus.

I grin and it's empty.

Where the fuck is he?

"Do you know, who killed Addy?" I ask, bat at my side, "She was good. She was so fucking good."

But I ruined it. When I killed Cam, I ruined it. I feel her hands on my shoulders, like a bad burn, pushing me backwards and down into the ground.

"I warned you."

Not properly, I want to argue with her now that she's dead. She never warned me right. The closest thing I ever felt to understanding, to knowing what it was to stand alone after all of the friends, the people you chose had died. I don't think I would be alive now if she hadn't found me then.

I know I wouldn't be, I'd crawled into this rainforest to die. That night, what feels like so long ago, after the beach and the bodies but before the waves came to crash over our heads and my bat snatched Cam right out of her skull and ruined it all.

She swings at me then, dancing forward but I bend like a reed, like Emberly the other day, bowing out of the way, a finished actress. So polite, I dance away, body moving before me. I'm a tightrope walker, noose around my neck. One false move and I fucking finish last.

Maybe that'd be okay thow, maybe this is a good time to bow out too.

I'd wanted to apologize to Addy. I could do that in the afterlife too, right?

Then I think about Mason and how much I want to see him again just so I can tell him that it's okay that he doesn't love me like that, that it's fine my heart breaks everytime I think about him. It hurts to even remember what his smile's like, the sound of his voice. I miss the way his smile's slight before it's big because he's trying to hold back.

I think about how I haven't really met my siblings yet, how badly I still want to find them and say hello. I want to give them an older brother, a warmth like I had. I want them to know that I love them even though their arrival brought me banishment.

It's because I'm an idiot.

That's why I keep on fighting, I'm just an idiot.

I lift my bat over my head, tensing my muscles, waiting for Lux to slip up so that I can bring it down over her head. I don't know when I became like this, so detached from the boy that vomited the first time he saw blood.

Have I been disillusioned or ruined?

I didn't take her warning.

I swing.

[Titus attacks Lux with spiked blunt]
GBeQVUinspiked blunt
[miss]

accuracy
spiked blunt

spiked blunt�spiked blunt

[D6f Carmen Cantelou [aza]]

luxa pelotte

I swing at him, a miss, I spin and swing again but find the same fate.

"I’m not good," he says with passion, feeling the words that leave his lips. I tilt my head sideways, looking at him and thinking of how he so easily killed a few days ago – Adelaide’s friend who seemed to speak no words other than his name was capable of doing far more than the dirty, he was someone like me. Murder is for the best, I know it more than anyone but I feel like Titus understands this truth too; he has got blood on his hands, a lot of blood. Two killers, no hearts. Someone in the Capitol will write a twisted love story about this.

"Neither of us are." I realise that he talks about a different type of good. A good that isn’t about gore and glory, isn’t about death and destruction. He speaks of the good that exists in fairy tales, the good that you are taught about at school and that is drilled into your head by the peacekeepers, a good that is instilled in your fibres that makes you think anything else is bad. I came to a realisation that good can be a loose term, it can be the missing piece to the jigsaw puzzle. I have morphed it into doing what feels right, even though the consequences may make your hands tremble. Both Titus and I are good in my books because we have shown that we have what it takes: that we wait for no one and do not let death catch up with us.

He smiles. Stone cold and psychopathic – maybe that is what we have become but I have no complaints. I smile too, thinking back to being loved by the audience during my interview, replaying the memories of finding out that my score was an eleven, rewinding back to when Hero, Jacob and I found solace in the awkward silence and showed the world what we could do alone, and that we could be better together.

"Do you know, who killed Addy? She was good." I know exactly who killed Adelaide Throes. I was there, I watched it. "She was so fucking good." I have the souvenirs to prove it.

A weakened arm and a pile of supplies from her body, I stole her sword from her bag like it was nothing. It isn’t like she could whine about it anyway, I sent her to place where she wanted to be. Her third life wouldn’t need a longsword for you cannot fight a war of words with weapons. She lives on, for sure, now, because her face is one that I struggle to erase from my mind. The wide eyes and the pursed lips, the blonde hair and the cold hands which would make home feel an ocean away.

"Yes." I tell him, fingers gripping Throes’ sword. "I killed her. She wanted it." My words are blunt, hard to swallow.

"She’s in her third life, now." I nod my head, the fact that we are talking about her, remembering her acts as evidence. "All we have to do is remember. I trust you can do that for her."

I figure that if he can’t, the consequences will be brutal. I won’t pay him anything, not even dust if he cannot have the decency to give a girl what she wants. He’d become one of the forgotten in an instant, one of the people who tried and had their shot but missed the target by a mile. I don’t give apologies and I don’t take them either; one chance should be enough to show your worth.

Not all of us live under extraordinary circumstances like Adelaide.

He lifts his bat over his head, waiting for a second before bringing it down through the air. I step aside, dodging the attack easier than he dodged mine. Faces unreadable, the two of us have seen death try and fail and do not seem to be phased. We keep our composure, I do, at least, and regain my footing before staring up to him with the devil in my eyes.

I remember what is on the line – life. I think about how badly I want it; to prove a point to those who ever placed a doubt above my head, to prove that careers are worth rooting for and that those who have tried and found error did not have their head in the game. This is about becoming the real deal so that I can secure a steady, stable future that gives me the glory I crave, that gives my memory enough blood and guts to last a lifetime.

Rage hisses through my body like a poison – I did not come this far only to fail at one of the final hurdles. I am great, I am strong and though to outsiders they are just words which inflate an ego, these are words that provide me with a wrath that burns any last moralities, that cuts boundaries into itsy-bitsy little chunks for a small child to eat.

There is unrest in my chest and it won’t stop until there is another body at the foot of my throne.

"You don't have to be good or bad to remember. It's easy, so tell me you can, and if you survive, will, do it." Forceful tone because I am fiercely loyal – I told Adelaide that I wouldn’t let her be forgotten and it is a promise I will always keep. It isn’t a prom – not half a promise that has no binding contracts or small print – it is a full promise. Written in blood, written in her own damn blood and if I can’t guarantee that she lives on – who can?

I lift Adelaide’s sword; a permanent reminder of the damage she could do and did.

White knuckles, gritted teeth. I have no heart, only a one track mind.

{ lux attacks titus; sword }

DGbP37p5sword

{ 1056 -- Shallow Cut on Right Shoulder -- 3.5 damage }

sword

[gamemaker kelsier]

I'm losing it, the strength in my arm. It falls slow, a meter running on empty. I swing at Lux, bat moving too slow, I miss her. Once, twice. She moves too fast. Maybe I move too slow.

I've made it too far, killed too many to slow down now.

Sweat drips down my forehead and my arm burns so badly. I can barely remember the scent of the couch in Mason's apartment. I can't remember the colour of Kaiser's eyes. Everything smells of stinking flesh and my vision is painted red. This is what survival is. Life is a discomfort, a strange formality that we all cling to.

Why do I cling so tightly?

Why do either of us when it hurts like this?

"I killed her. She wanted it."

It makes sense. Of course she did, of course, I meet her here after seeing Addy's face in the sky last night. This doesn't feel anything but orchestrated and I wonder how they managed this, how the gamemakers engineered our meeting, there's no other way. This is for the Captiol's pleasure, their entertainment. I'm meant to scream in rage here, vow to get revenge for her death. I should, it aches still in the back of my head like a pounding drum. A repetition or pain like an echo, over and over again.

All of them.

Their deaths, even though I did not kill them, I feel the weight of them on my shoulders, their blood on my hands. I know that I am a terrible person but I also know that it isn't going to stop me from trying to live. I'm selfish because of that, I want to live more than I want to not kill. Mason was wrong about me, the gang was wrong about me. They always said that I was too young, that it'd ruin me and maybe it has but I'm still here. Some of me is still here.

I'm still him, still Titus.

Or an aspect of him, a facet, a different side of me turned towards the sun.

Do I still know the sun?

I used to be like a sunflower, always grinning, afraid to turn towards the dark. I thought I needed the light to exist, that I was born from it. Maybe that was just wishful thinking. Maybe I've always been this way. That's what Addy saw in me, that fake brightness, shining too much to be real. That's why she pushed me away.

I won't forgive her for dying.

For giving up.

For giving up on me.

"I'm gonna remember her," I say, "I'm gonna remember her until I'm good and old and I start to go senile and I develop cataracts."

That's how long I'm living. I've decided here. To spite Adelaide, I'll live for a hundred goddamned years. I'll never let her die. She'll live her third life so goddamned long that she'll wish she was dead.

I don't feel anger towards Lux. Nothing like what I felt when I looked at Raquel or Aline, nothing like how I felt for Emberly at first, at that moment when she killed Kaiser. There's only indifference. She's in my way. I know she feels the same towards me, that I don't register. It's only a moment of circumstance that we fight, because we have to. Only one of us can live.

Maybe there's nothing we can do but dance to the tune of the gamemaker's flute, maybe we do have to play this out to the end but they can't force me to feel. I won't let anger get the best of me here. Mason wouldn't; he'd be calm, collected, cold. Like a star in the night sky, I get it now. I get what the pin on my shirt is for. It was a direction from Nemo.

Burn so hot you become cold, become a star, energy ripping through, destroying.

I'll kill until my last moment, fight until the end.

"I don't hate you for it," I say.

I want them all to know that I don't. This can't be featured as a showdown of hatred, of anger, of anything than what it is.

"We're fighting because we have to."

"We're fighting because this whole thing is bullshit."

I don't really know her, but for the other day when she and Hero felt the need to protect me and then I killed a girl. That was kind then. I'd been afraid, everyone was together but I was all alone. Even Adelaide, whom I thought got it had Lux and Hero still.

I think about the warm meal that Chester gave me and how I broke his bones yesterday and how he was dead because of me.

I am not a good person.

My hands aches, blisters are forming but I don't grip my baseball bat any less tight. I'm not going to die here.

I'm going to go home.

[Titus attacks Lux with spiked blunt]
YRpl46qIspiked blunt
[14104 -- BROKEN RIGHT KNEE -- 7.0 damage + 1 strength]

spiked blunt

[D6f Carmen Cantelou [aza]]

luxa pelotte

Lashing out against him, I hope for an attack that hits harder than the moon when it plummets into the sea during sunset. Hopes are silenced and unanswered and I find myself back at square one, figuring out if there is an alternative way to put Titus Seraphim out of his misery - Ripred knows he needs it.

"I'm gonna remember her," he says, "I'm gonna remember her until I'm good and old I start to go senile and I develop cataracts."

That is nice, I think; nice that he is willing to dedicate so much time in his life to remembering. It isn't a full time job, if you have a voice you can use it to make other people remember. It lessen the responsibility on your shoulders and shifts it onto a million or so other people who have nothing better to do than watch people fight it out in an arena. Their lives are not in danger like tributes, victors, the average Joe in the districts - instilling a name and image in their mind will do far more than some people in this arena ever could or will.

My Grandma had cataracts before she died. Said that it went all cloudy and grey and she struggled to tell me apart from my sister. Isn't it funny how when you are separated from your seemingly normal life for so long, you draw similarities in the strangest of places? Perhaps it is out of desperate need to return to the loving arms of your own blood, to smell your bedroom again and stare into the eyes of the cuddly toy that kept you company when you were 10 years old - something you hate to admit. Perhaps it is just a coping mechanism that is a lot more sane than the ones I have developed. 

"Good." A single, simple word because I am satisfied. Though his life hangs in the balance just as mine does, I have spread the message and achieved what I wanted to. Nothing is going to make dying something worth smiling about but if I do slip away, I'll do so with a little less weight dragging me down. It would become less of a drop and more of a float; a feather rather than a rock. Although, I don't plan on dying until I too am grey and old and senile and have cataracts also - chances are, life will get heavier and when I'm on my deathbed, my life will hang for a split second before plummeting to the ground like a grand piano.

I don't plan on dying in this arena. I never have and never will.

"I don't hate you for it, we're fighting because we have to." My mouth scrunches to the side. He is right, but we both know that there is the option to throw yourself into the forcefield or drown in the sea to prove your unbreakable pacifism. The idea that we have to fight is nothing more than an illusion that the Capitol has created, the games are laced with an aura of unwritten rules which nobody dares to bend or break. 

I, for one, am fighting because I have to but also because I want to. This girl is a career, after all, and there is nothing I love more than the taste of blood on my tongue, all metallic and chilled, and the feeling of death looming behind me because I have reaped the lives two innocent parents from another district have sown.

"We're fighting because this whole thing is bullshit."

"Debatable." I tell him. The concept of the Hunger Games is one that I find easy enough to comprehend. It is just part of life, now, something we all look forward to with bright eyes or scared ones. Call me a monster, but sometimes I think that these games are necessary. They remind us of what we have lost and what we have to gain, and they teach us a lesson about grace and greatness, providing us with childhood heroes who are not untouchable and instead are people just like us. It ignites the fire we all need to stay alive in this world, even if some are too burnt to believe it.

"These games are a necessary evil, we are necessary evils." Two pieces in a game that instil fear and hope and every emotion in between.

"You can't know about good if you haven't been bad." Titus and I have both been beyond bad; blood and gore on our hands, it only means that the light at the end of the tunnel will be brighter than everyone else's.

It is mine to claim, and I am not going to slow down or stop for anyone or anything. Titus retaliates against me, his weapon smashing against my knee until it cracks. I frown, lifting the longsword and locking my eyes onto the target.

{ lux attacks titus; sword }

QoUMAv4Gsword

{ 1159 -- Shallow Cut on Left Thigh -- 3.5 damage }

sword

[gamemaker kelsier]

I'm going to go home.

Luxa's blade digs into my thigh and I twist, trying to pull away before it digs too deep. I'm faster now since my right arm, I don't want to lose another limb, I don't know if I can. If she takes my leg, I might go with it. Maybe that would be okay though, to die by Addy's sword. Maybe that would be some kind of form of forgiveness if I let her weapon bite me. Could she forgive me still? Even dead? Would she?

I'd never know now. I'd never get to.

My eyes itch to cry again but I can't here, not in front of this career in the middle of this skirmish. I don't have time. I become aware of how tired my body is through the adrenaline. I try to ignore it, stow the exhaustion away. I don't have time to get tired here. Three people stand between me and home. People are people and irreplaceable but home isn't. Home could be anywhere. I should know, I've made so goddamned many in the people around me. In Kaiser and Addy, in Basil and Lace.

I think about Chester lying in the dirt and what he asked of me and I know that he built a home out of Teddy.

I wouldn't let Lux stand in my way like I had in Chester's.

I wouldn't let Lux keep me from home.

I wouldn't let my own exhaustion, my weakness stand in my way either. Something so trivial as the burning pain extending out of my arm like a constant, pounding heat wave could be ignored. It was acknowledged. So it could be ignored now. I focus on squashing the pain down into the back of my head like I'm packing a suitcase.

Six years old and packing my backpack carefully for school with my mom, asking why she's putting underwear in and so many sandwiches, asking why my winter touque and gloves are going in, asking why she's handing me a plastic bag holding a blanket, asking why she's taking away my special house key, asking why she's handing me a box of matches and a ten dollar bill, asking why she's telling me not to come back, why she's locking the door, why she won't open it when I knock, asking where I'm supposed to go.

After being pushed away so many times, you'd think I'd give up on home.

I guess I'm just stupid, is all.

"These games are a necessary evil, we are necessary evils."

"You can be the lesser of the two," I say to Lux, giving my bat I light swing beside me for practice. My muscles scream from it, the overuse of my left arm combined with the constant impacts painful. Everything is pain. I can be evil here, I don't mind. I can find myself in the darkness of this bright paradise beneath the trees.

I think about it for the first time, how peaceful it really is here. You can hear the waves crashing against the sandy shore of the beach from nearly anywhere, and it's always a perfect temperature matched with the wind. To anybody else, at any other time, this would be a paradise. It's like a little vacation.

"Maybe this is where I bloom," I say, looking up briefly at the flower crown perched on my head. Maybe this was a test, a hazing into the gang. Maybe Lux is right, this is a necessary evil. Could the Titus from last week ever made it in the gang? I was delicate then, a bud.

Now my petals unfurl to face the sun and I see who I am, what I am.

Fifteen years old and a killer.

"I warned you."

Yes Addy, you did. Too late, she was too late. I'd already killed then. Maybe she could see it after Cam was felled, what I was becoming and who. I wish she'd told me more, hadn't always been so very vague.

"A flower can't grow without nutrients," I say, adjusting my grip on my baseball bat to even out the blisters on my hand, "Be a doll and feed the earth."

I slip my backpack off then, exposing myself. I don't care, it's easier to move without the weight of it. Carefully, I rotate my shoulder, the resulting crackle of air leaving the space between my bones satisfying.

If I finish this quickly, I can rest sooner.

So I step forward and I swing as hard as I fucking can, petals curling towards the sun.

[Titus attacks Lux with spiked blunt]
9M2Kxo|Aspiked blunt
[14074 -- MISS -- 0.0 damage]

spiked blunt

[D6f Carmen Cantelou [aza]]

luxa pelotte

The end of Adelaide's sword slices against the boy's thigh - it isn't good enough. I have been taught every intricate little detail about every weapon under the sun but this sword speaks in tongues that I cannot read; being a career has perks because you have prior knowledge and experience to bring to the table, but when it comes to the minute and moment, you realise that you cannot control everything. I have fucked with fate, told it that I am strong, well and truly, but it does not like when you take it prisoner and force it to do one thing when it so desperately wants to do another.

I don't let the small cut put me off what has to be done. Death waits for none and the two of us know all too well how to keep pushing forwards and make sure that it is left in our wake, pausing at a time like this would do more harm than good. The darkness would catch up, hands around my neck, tightening until olive skin turns blue and cold to the touch. On the ground, a lifeless corpse will be left for more than dead.

I think back to how it was when Jacob was killed. It all happened so quickly, but I can remember every inch of both crime scenes. The way his body fell into the open arms of the sea and how it snatched him up before Hero and I even had a chance to say goodbye. Then came the anger, the rage that swelled like a tsunami that dares to destroy every living thing that stands before it. It only took Hero to break her leg to trigger my inner serial killer - she came to the light, a new body to the surface even though one had just been lost to the depths of the unforgiving ocean.

The big bang, then retaliation, then a crack and revenge was settled. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life. Clementina Ogden assured me that I have what it takes to go all the way, and here, now, her screams remind me of the same thing. How beauty became brutality and how I took nothing from no one. Blood on the ground, in the water and on my hands, the monster in me was inspired and very much alive. Her scream rings in my ear for a second time and I feel the same emotions all over, tingles down my neck and spine and I feel like havoc is my middle name.

It isn't, though. My middle name is actually Estelle but that is besides the point. I felt like I could take on the world and all of the edges that came with it. It was like every question I had became answered, every hour put into making a murderer had paid off and I had achieved a small victory that counted for nothing, but meant everything. I know that Clementina's life didn't matter then and I'm not entirely sure that it does now because she's been dead for days and the rigor mortis has probably set in but - it showed myself that I was a player and not just a piece.

"You can be the lesser of the two," booms Titus' voice amidst the chaos. My frown deepens. "Maybe this is where I bloom." His eyes gaze up to the ring of petals on his head, the tilted crown that is set to wilt and turn brown and smell like canned death. Meditation taught me all about impermanence and whilst I gave it up so I could embrace the darkness within, it did make me realise that attachment is the best way to hurt yourself. Part of me thinks that Titus is in love with the portion of glory that is already his and needs more to quench his thirst. 

If so, does that make us any different?

"A flower can't grow without nutrients, be a doll and feed the earth." He drops the weight of his backpack, steps forward and brings his weapon out with a hope of stopping himself from going hungry. He should be used to the hunger, he is from Nine, after all, and that is like, really close to being the lowest district.

He tries so hard to not swing and miss but that is exactly what he does.

"No." I tell him. "I'm going to watch you suffer, watch you wilt and die." Petals on the ground, I'll count them to the sound of his screams of agony. A broken symphony, but one that is mine.

"It's all smoke and mirrors." I glance up to his crown that is nothing more than a ring of roses. "Be careful not to choke."

{ lux attacks titus; sword }

C_DsQQ|jsword

{ 1001 -- Shallow Cut on Back -- 4.0 damage }

sword

[gamemaker kelsier]

They wilt.

My petals wilt and I miss, I fucking miss. I'm not going home, I'm gonna die here, I'm gonna slowly sit here and die from Lux biting me over and over with that sword until I bleed out slowly.

Is this Adelaide's vengeance come to haunt me? That weapon doesn't love me anymore, Adelaide stopped loving me. The blade knows, it must know. My brow sweats with exertion, fever, pain, I don't know what. A strange panic grips my chest, it was never this hard before.

It'd been so easy the first time, killing. My bat had connected perfect with a resounding crack, like hitting a ball out of the ballpark. I'd had two hands then. I'd been whole.

Now I'm holy.

Wholy wrong.

I know that my mother didn't really love me or she never would have pushed me out the front door nine years ago but I had thought for a small moment there that someone did. I'd thought before Kaiser got his throat slit, before Lace died, before Basil bit the bullet that I knew something close enough. For a moment, sleeping on the sand with everyone, I knew that it was the last time I'd feel like a whole. When they took Basil the very next day it ended.

I was always alone, even together, I was alone. I should have known that and I did. I thought Addy knew it too, in the dark, chasing the words and sleeping together on the night that Kaiser and Lace died.

I don't know why I had to be born so stupid.

I stop, resting my weight on my bat, panting.

I don't know what I'm trying to do here. Lux is from four and a whole year older than me. She's stronger, been training for this her whole life and I've always been short for my height, stunted from lack of nutrients. I've always been small. Even kids my own age always got assumed to be much older. I've always been little and insignificant, a nothing.

A flower.

I'm not blooming here, I'll be stomped out before then. Here are my dying grounds, this clearing.

I look around, taking it in. The ground beneath my feet is soft and the sun peaks through the trees, dappling the ground in warm, sunny spots. If I'm to lay here, let it be in the warmth of the sun.

Lux speaks, telling me that she'll watch me wilt, watch me die.

I realize I'm already doing it for her without any effort on her own part, giving up as if I'm already dead.

I'm not, I know that. I still have most of my arm, I still have a whole other. I have both legs and I bleed but that's only because I live. My blood comes red and hot but it's numbing now, like a warm bath. It feels like nothing. (I tell myself that it feels like nothing.) I lick my teeth, grounding myself on the sun-dappled rainforest floor and I listen to the sounds of the birds and beasts in the undergrowth and the sound of the peaceful crashing waves. The breze paints my face and I let myself feel it, a blanket of confirmation washing over my skin.

I'm not dead yet.

I won't be her show.

I slide my foot back into the dirt, feeling just how goddamned here I am. I'm a wall, an unbreakable force that Lux pelotte won't pass. She's older than me, stronger than me, more experienced but I've slept in the cold for most of my life and lived through 4 winters spent outside. I've scavenged for food in dumpsters and learned to pick pocket.

I'm small, yeah, but I'm fast and I'm damn good too. Letting her psyche me out now would be a goddamn waste of my time so I smile, forcing my lips up even when they're so uncertain, as hesitant as my swinging bat.

"You sure know how to talk shit, Lux," I say, voice slipping into the silence politely, "Do you know how to eat it?"

I'll fucking teach you.

[Titus attacks Lux with spiked blunt]
NYeq_Auqspiked blunt
[14144 -- DEEP GASH ON BACK -- 8.5 damage + 1 strength]

spiked blunt

[D6f Carmen Cantelou [aza]]

luxa pelotte

Déjà vu. The sword only pricks him, it doesn't spike him, it doesn't show the person I am underneath. It is a portrayal of a failed attempt, again, a story of trial and error. This was not the way I have been taught to respond to a miss; you are supposed to hit twice as hard as usual, get the upper hard and control the fight from the top. It feels like my foundations are being dismantled brick by brick - but no, I don't think about it because I am still in the thick of it, fighting for what is right for me.

It is a knock to my confidence, it reminds me of when I saw Hero's face up above. Cadaverous and silent, I fell silent with him. I realised that I still had half a heart then, because I could feel it become ugly and broken in my chest. I had to dispose of it then, sever all ties before my own ties severed me and sent me someplace I don't want to go. The emotion was tender and raw, I shielded myself because careers do not cry and a career is exactly what I am.

Yes, I am a career, and in the Hunger Games, there is nothing more than a career. I find my feet once more, staring at Titus' glass face that, for some reason, seems impossible to break. Why does it all seem to slip away when I have come so far and gotten so close? Maybe both of us are just wilting at different paces and there isn't anything that will satisfy our undying needs, not even death itself. Not the toxicity, not the guts and not even the glory.

I shake my head. I know it isn't meant to be this way. My eyes burn, two suns captured from the skies and placed into my skull. A fire that can never be extinguished, not for a million or so years. It burns within me and I can feel it in my veins, pulsating around through my blood, giving me the evidence I long for that shows me I am still alive and have the power needed to show my worth, to live for those I lost along the way, for Jacob, Hero and for Adelaide.

Titus' stance shifts to a more offensive one and I mirror his movements, working through the pain of a broken knee. I'm not letting the hurt take me, not today.

"You sure know how to talk shit, Lux." Gee, thanks. "Do you know how to eat it?" I tilt my head. I've never heard of anyone doing anything that absurd in Four or in the Capitol - perhaps it is just a thing in Nine. I guess that would explain why half of them never seem to make it out of the bloodbath alive, though. 

He swings the bat around before bashing it against my back, I can feel it go deeper than I want immediately. The pain throbs but I have to ignore it, the blood runs down my back but I have to forget about it. As long as I am alive, there is still a career in these games. Unpredictable, unforgiving, unapologetic: we are the worst of the worst and the best of the best.

I should know better than to make a mountain out of a molehill, so I shuffle forward, sword in my hand and show Titus what I've still got.

"I don't speak shit, I don't hear shit, and I don't take shit. Know your place, and know that it isn't here."

{ lux attacks titus; sword }

9bbOspIgsword

{ 1024 -- Severed Right Hand at Wrist -- 9.0 damage }

sword

[gamemaker kelsier]

"Know your place, and know that it isn't here."

Her blade cuts deep but her words sure as hell don't. I feel it bad this time as it slices into my flesh and I don't know how I stand to stand. It must be the adrenaline cutting through my body. I'll feel it later, bad. I'm afraid for that. There's nothing to kill pain here, nothing to help me sleep through it. My side aches where her knife has gone and I swallow hard, trying to regain some sense of composure.

I don't get what she means. Maybe she's admitting her defeat. There really is no place for me here, not in this small clearing, not here on this forest floor.

"Yeah, you can have it," I say, words coming out stilted from the pain. I think about Mason, how good he was at not showing how much he was hurting and I try to channel him, gritting my teeth from the effort. I wish that he was here right now, that we were together. I try to think of what he might say to me here, what Adelaide might say.

How angry would she be that I was working so damn hard to kill another of her precious friends?

Maybe I never was one to her.

"My place is at home."

This clearing belongs to Lux, clearly. If she wants it, she can claim it. she can taint it with her blood and help the flowers grow and when the chopper comes to take her body away this clearing will still belong to her by right. She can seep into the earth here because I won't.

I won't be dying here today.

I steady myself again, wondering how I'm standing, where I'm coming from. I've never been good at bravado, at lying to myself. I never understood the reason for it and I wonder how this must look right now, how I must look. My breath comes heavy, chest rising and falling with effort. Every movement is a chore, every inhale a marathon and I know that I can stop for a break at any moment, I can check out.

it's up to me.

This is up to me.

I tap the head of my bat against the ground like I'm lining myself up on home plate. I remember long summer days in the quarry in the slums playing a pick-up game of ball with the other street kids. I remember Barry Hunter talking so much shit all the time until my team beat his seven nothing.

It didn't matter, no one went home mad because we all jumped in the river for a swim after. I know that I'll never have days like those ones again, live or die. Things are different now inside my head and home won't be the same if I ever make it back. I can mourn the difference or I can get excited, waiting for the hour I'll see Nine again.

"Thanks for the permission," I say, grinning.

[Titus attacks Lux with spiked blunt]
el0oBFCsspiked blunt
[14149 -- STABBED IN BACK -- 9.0 damage +1 strength]

spiked blunt

[D6f Carmen Cantelou [aza]]

luxa pelotte

His skin is sliced open with ease, finally, I think. I guess the power of Adelaide has been transferred over to me. We both stand on the same side of the line.

I suppose it is a reminder of the strength I have gained through this process, the growth, the resilience. Hardened from a little girl to a young woman who is programmed to kill and dance in what remains. His skin is sliced open with ease, finally, I think. I guess the power of Adelaide has been transferred over to me. We both stand on the same side of the line.

I suppose it is a reminder of the strength I have gained through this process, the growth, the resilience. Hardened from a little girl to a young woman who is programmed to kill and dance in what remains. 

"Yeah, you can have it," he says, his words tainted by the pain of my last hit. I am determined to take him down, even if it takes every remaining ounce of power and force that I have within me; victory is within touching distance and there are no consolation prizes for those that do not finish within the first one. Second is the first loser and everyone else is just another name written with a pencil. The next Hunger Games comes and everyone forgets, everyone else is erased; I think I know why Adelaide so desperately wanted to be remembered. It isn't just because she needed her third life, it's because she didn't want everything to amount to nothing.

"My place is at home. Thanks for the permission." He smiles.

"No." My words chime in directly after he finishes the last syllable of his sentence. "Your place is in the ground. Buried, waiting for time to turn you to dust." I shake my head. Victory isn't for people like him - he's probably a cliche. Not doing it for himself and doing it because he wants to see someone again and give them one last hug or kiss and tell them that they are loved, by him, and that, though he has seen the worst, he has come out the best. I shake my head because those stories are already written, the Capitol know them. They deserve something new, something worth watching and following.

They don't deserve people who are barely people. Lost in a battle where their humanity just clings on - they need to let go. They need to do what I have done and turn one day into day one, because then, and only then, will they prove themselves as worthy of something that has weight and isn't just a collection of dying flowers threaded into a ring. They fucking wilt.

Again, I am still breathing and that means, I still have a chance. It is time to be femininely badass, to do what I came here to do: kill. Not stopping for anyone or anything, cutting off those who dragged me down when I had one job, one job to rise. Femininely badass - that is being beautiful but brutal. I have thought it once but I am going to think it again because no one can stop me; I need to take this opportunity by the balls. Restore faith and stop myself from slipping, tripping and falling.

He slices my back and I feel like I have never felt before. This is what the edge tastes, feels, smells like. It tastes bitter, like a taste in your mouth that you can't eliminate with a glass of water or milk or anything. It feels like a thousand and one needles and you are searching for the single piece of hay - impossibly possible. It smells like alcohol, strong spirits that pull you close but that you know better than to get lost in. I don't let myself dive into the scent, I don't myself try to conquer the impossible, I don't close my mouth and taste the irreversible taste.

I live for now. Head inspired by the gore, I smile at my inner serial killer. 

Heart is non-existent. 

I take my mace in my hand, throwing Adelaide's sword aside. This is me, now, and only me. Take it or leave it.

"I think you'll forget to remember, you know. You'll be so in love with 'home' that you'll forget what put you there." I lift my mace, frowning, as always, and femininely badass.

"Yeah, you can have it," he says, his words tainted by the pain of my last hit. I am determined to take him down, even if it takes every remaining ounce of power and force that I have within me; victory is within touching distance and there are no consolation prizes for those that do not finish within the first one. Second is the first loser and everyone else is just another name written with a pencil. The next Hunger Games comes and everyone forgets, everyone else is erased; I think I know why Adelaide so desperately wanted to be remembered. It isn't just because she needed her third life, it's because she didn't want everything to amount to nothing.

"My place is at home. Thanks for the permission." He smiles.

"No." My words chime in directly after he finishes the last syllable of his sentence. "Your place is in the ground. Buried, waiting for time to turn you to dust." I shake my head. Victory isn't for people like him - he's probably a cliche. Not doing it for himself and doing it because he wants to see someone again and give them one last hug or kiss and tell them that they are loved, by him, and that, though he has seen the worst, he has come out the best. I shake my head because those stories are already written, the Capitol know them. They deserve something new, something worth watching and following.

They don't deserve people who are barely people. Lost in a battle where their humanity just clings on - they need to let go. They need to do what I have done and turn one day into day one, because then, and only then, will they prove themselves as worthy of something that has weight and isn't just a collection of dying flowers threaded into a ring. They fucking wilt.

Again, I am still breathing and that means, I still have a chance. It is time to be femininely badass, to do what I came here to do: kill. Not stopping for anyone or anything, cutting off those who dragged me down when I had one job, one job to rise. Femininely badass - that is being beautiful but brutal. I have thought it once but I am going to think it again because no one can stop me; I need to take this opportunity by the balls. Restore faith and stop myself from slipping, tripping and falling.

He slices my back and I feel like I have never felt before. This is what the edge tastes, feels, smells like. It tastes bitter, like a taste in your mouth that you can't eliminate with a glass of water or milk or anything. It feels like a thousand and one needles and you are searching for the single piece of hay - impossibly possible. It smells like alcohol, strong spirits that pull you close but that you know better than to get lost in. I don't let myself dive into the scent, I don't myself try to conquer the impossible, I don't close my mouth and taste the irreversible taste.

I live for now. Head inspired by the gore, I smile at my inner serial killer.

Heart is non-existent. 

I take my mace in my hand, throwing Adelaide's sword aside. This is me, now, and only me. Take it or leave it.

"I think you'll forget to remember, you know. You'll be so in love with 'home' that you'll forget what put you there." I lift my mace, frowning, as always, and keeping my head held high because I am a career and I am femininely badass.

{ lux attacks titus; spiked blunt }

r8ufGzBpspiked blunt

{ 14191 -- CRUSHED CHEST -- 40 damage }

The mace comes down on his chest. Just like Clementina, he feels everything.

Parallels.

In my own chest, I don't feel anything.

spiked blunt