parthenon | {elegant/dars}

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

[presto][/presto]

"lover, hunter,
friend and enemy
you will always be
every one of these"

Strands of web stretched across the outer boarders of the bruise on Mackenzie's left thigh. Little calculated lines yawning across his flesh, accustomed to its temporary home, daring him to try and wipe it away. He tried, and it only made him wince.

What was meant to be a harmless spar between himself and one of the other tributes had taken a turn rather quickly, and ended with a harshly rigid boot being slammed right into Mackenzie's thigh. It wasn't broken— he could at least be thankful for that. He could hardly see himself running away at the bloodbath if he only had one properly functioning leg, let alone standing to fight.

The medic applied some salve which tingled against the surface, wrapped it in cloth bandages.

"Leave it on for the rest of the day; the discoloration should be gone in hours, and the soreness should dissipate by tomorrow morning."

That simple. As much as it amazed him, it infuriated him. Everything here was so easy, so perfect. Stable electricity, state of the art facilities, an endless amount of food, ground-breaking medicines. The Capitol was a statue, forged from gold and sold for a pretty penny to stand in the middle of Panem just a bit taller than anything else around it.

This is what matters, the Capitol explained, looking down on those of them who were not born within it, Us. We are what is important.

"Thank you," he said, never one to confront someone without his sister by his side. Of the limitless traits and abilities Mackenzie Pryce had been born with, conviction and tact were not in the mix. He already recognized that it could be an issue once the games began, not knowing what to do, or not daring to do it out of fear.

Could he kill a person?

Could he?

From the infirmary, Mackenzie found himself walking back to the training floor, trying his best to hide the slight limp which accompanied him. He took a seat in front of the camouflage station, elevating his foot on a cement step as he began to decorate his hand to look like a magnolia. There were several trees just around his house, filling the air with a sweet, floral aroma in the summer time. When he was little, he would pick one for his mother on the days when she worked long shifts, just so she would smile when she got home.

The white petals curved around his knuckles, leaves wrapping themselves around his palm. With the help of his paint brush, the flower grew just as the bruise did: slowly, but all at once, until it was completed and proud of what it was. Like the bruise, the flower dared Mackenzie to wipe it away.

This time, when he tried, it really went away.

He stared at the smudged picture before him, yearning for something simple again, hoping that he would get it some day, when he noticed a shadow creeping into his light from behind.

"Sorry," he said, standing, "Was I in your way?"

[gamemaker kelsier]

”Are you ever actually sober, Andy?”

The more that I drink, the more I hear Violet’s voice in my head. So I don’t stop.

I start early, 7 am with amaretto in my coffee becomes a Bloody Mary so quickly until it’s nine in the morning and I’m drinking straight vodka and wondering how I ended up here. I know I took a train. I just don’t know how I got here.

I don’t know if I believe in such lofty things as destiny or fate but I wonder if mine was to end up here, comfortably living like a king in the tallest building I’ve ever seen a week before I am to die.

I don’t even know what’s gripping me right now, a cocktail of emotions drives my hands, leaves my tongue dry. Water. I drink some. No, that was vodka, shit.

IT’s a strange world here. The training center holds anything you could possibly want in it, but so does the dining hall and the entertainment rooms. They offer every last sin imaginable, we are encouraged to partake in anything and everything as a last hurrah. I found a drawer of neatly stocked condoms in my bathroom this morning and I get it now, why the tributes from past years always seemed like party animals.

Because they make us into them.

Not me. I was a sinner before I came here.

Tributes make eye contact with me in the hall and I look away. Maybe if they can’t see my face, they won’t be able to tell how goddamned drunk I am. I land next to an avox and I stare at them. They stare at the ground, waiting for an order or too petrified to move, I don’t know.

”Where’re you from?” I whisper..

Nothing,

I hazard a guess, ”Six?”

They shake their head the tiniest bit.

I can only be wrong 11 more times.

”Eight?”

No.

”Eleven?”

A slight pause and then the smallest of nods.

”I’m from Four.”

Another nod.

I say nothing for awhile. The Avox doesn’t raise her head. I don’t have anything else to say but I feel right here. Unnoticeable. I lean against the wall beside her, leaning slightly to the left, disjointed and out of my depth. Someone walks by and all I see are their shoes. I like it. No one looks at me. And then I realize why this is so comfortable.

At home too, no one sees me. I might as well be an avox. My parents act as if I don’t exist all because I choose to put on a bit of makeup and you know, suck dick.

And I’m so comfortable here because even knowing Violet loves me, that he’s waiting for me at home, I don’t really feel much at all. I feel like I’m living in a layer so thick that everything is muted.

So I stand against the wall with the girl from eleven for some time, I don’t know how long. Long enough to know that I should be practicing my knife throwing or eating something with any actual nutritional value.

I wonder what’ll happen if I die in here, what they’ll do. Just have the games with twenty-three?

I don’t know.

I move away at some point and head down the hall further into the training center. It’s mainly empty at this time of day except for a crouched figure at the camp station.

That’s my station, I want to say. There’s no one better at makeup than me, I’m an expert. I mean sure, you can stab me in the chest with a spear or something but can you accomplish the perfect blend and contour? I fucking doubt it.

And something maniacle is living inside of my head because it eggs me on, telling me to shove the boy aside who is painting so carefully.

I think about that Avox girl and I just stand still instead, watching him carefully paint flowers onto his hand, almost effortlessly. I wonder if his father calls him a faggot for it and ignores his very existence for that skill.

I think about Violet hitting that guy at that party from what feels like years ago for flirting with me and getting too grabby and I wish that Violet was here right now so I could stir some sort of emotion in him again. To feel wanted, to feel loved.

I’d kill to feel that again.

He stands, speaks and I curve my lip up, hand on my hip. I know boys, what they want. I know what I want.

”You weren’t in my way,” I say, voice soft and even somehow despite the alcohol in my system, ”Your work is beautiful.”

”Care to practice on me?” I offer him my hand, eyes on his lips.

[dars]

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

[presto][/presto]

"lover, hunter,
friend and enemy
you will always be
every one of these"

"You weren't in my way," the boy said, something like an apology. The way he held himself was of a strange sort. It was true that he had confident shoulders and a proud chest, but Mackenzie could see the war within him.

He was painted and dressed, already his own person. When Mackenzie had arrived at the Capitol, they had stripped him of air, scrubbed his skin raw, and turned him into someone the Capitol might have liked. But this boy, with his confident shoulders and his war-torn mind, had arrived as such. Some people were just born to be great, he supposed, meeting the boy's gaze.

He was art, in its most honest sense. Painted lines of hard and soft, long limbs and a slight build, tragically attractive features, and a story that remained unearthed. Parthenon of a person. Mackenzie felt particularly ordinary, suddenly.

"Your work is beautiful," he said, noticing the smeared flower painted on the back of Mackenzie's hand. It was, he thought. The boy offered his hand, softly, and said: "Care to practice on me?" There was a pause. Mackenzie was no artist. He drew flowers in his notebook at school, or a river if he felt adventurous. His mother bought him s water color set for his birthday once, so he learned how to hold a brush, but he was not artistically inclined. Max said that maybe he just lacked artistic discipline, that he didn't know which direction to go in yet, but the truth was that he lacked the sort of poetic vision all the great artists had.

Still, he could recognize a work of art, especially when it held its hand out to him and asked him if he dared to potentially ruin it.

"Sure," he said simply.

He had always been reckless.

He took the boy's hand, cautiously placing it on his bent knee for leverage, and averted his gaze. He wondered if cold fingers were a running theme in District Four, or if this boy was special. Even through the fabric of his pants, Mackenzie could feel the cold touch of each finger as it laid in silence on his leg.

Mackenzie dipped his brush into the same white paint he'd used on himself, suddenly nervous. This was a boy who would possibly place a piece of forged steel directly into Mackenzie's gut if he got the chance, and that was frightening in and of itself. Every person here, every friendship he dared to make, every conversation he dared to have, every glance his eyes met, could have been the determining factor of if he would be hunted down and killed, or forgotten about.

Hiders and Seekers, the murderers and the murdered.

"I'm not an expert," he tried, careful tone. He focused on the strokes, on the coolness of the boy's touch. He could feel the others staring, and he bet it was in envy. Part of him wanted to recoil, to make up an excuse and run away, but part of him was flattered that the work of art, the one they all had eyes on, the one with the confident shoulders and the war-torn mind, had chosen to sit with him. With Mazkenzie, that oaf from District Seven.

"We had magnolia trees in the woods around my house," he explained, coloring in one of the petals, "I used to pick them for my mom when I was little; Thought it would make her feel better on the bad days, you know?" He stopped himself. He shouldn't have said that. Jacinta had told him herself that anything and everything could be used as ammunition in the arena. It wasn't a difficult fact to learn about someone, that they had a mother. It was sort of obvious, huh? But now this boy knew that his mother had bad days, and that he picked her flowers to make her feel better, and that was not fair. That was something personal. That was something he could have used against him later on, just to break him down moments before he shattered him to pieces.

"Sorry," he said, falling silent once again. Work of art or not, this boy wanted to live too. War-torn mind or not, he probably thought about how nothing mattered more than his survival too. And he now had power over Mackenzie, and that was not something he enjoyed knowing, so he tried to break even.

"What about you? Is District Four's ocean as blue as they say it is?"