here at the party you came to alone /cas+sin

[gamemaker kelsier]

S I N .

When we all fall asleep, where do we go?

Everything was labelled in the dining room, dishes piled high with things that glistened under the warm lighting. Sin stared at it for awhile, hands in his pockets. There were some things he recognized, like bread, roast meat, obviously. There were also bowls overflowing with weird looking berries, stems draped over the edge of platters, bright green fruit intertwined with shades of red. Sin passed those, uncertain.

Even if he could read the labels, he didn't think he'd know what they meant. So he settled on an apple and three dinner rolls pushed carefully down into his pockets. Sin had always eaten like that, half for now and half for later just in case.

He stuck the apple in his mouth and sat down at a table on the eastern side of the room, back against the wall. An Avox approached him quickly, a jug of water in their hands and Sin tensed, protective of the apple now cupped in his hands. They filled his glass, looking anywhere but at him and moved on.

The water tasted like chemicals and it was too cold. He let it fall from his mouth back into the cup. He'd been poisoned before just so his sisters could test their antidotes out. Unless he drew the water himself, he didn't trust it.

Sin slipped a knife on the table in front of him up his sleeve, uneasy since the Peacekeepers had taken his pocket knife. Having lived in a specific way for most of his life, Sin was out of his element. he knew the hospital, he knew Twelve. Everything about the Capitol was too much.

He fell into watching the tributes, looking them over slowly as he nibbled on the apple core. It was routine for him to begin the search for a target. Who would be weak, easy to take out and bring to his sisters so that they could rip them apart like bad stitching.

Sin's eyes fell on a kid sitting alone only a few tables away. He hesitated when he moved, fingers brushing over everything in front of him too carefully, almost as if he couldn't fully see it. Sin leaned forwards a bit, suddenly intent. He could recognize easy prey when he saw it. A kid like that was a simple mark and with such a young body, his sisters would be pleased, his organs would fetch a good price.

"We don't do that anymore, Sin."

He winced slightly and then rubbed the back of his left hand absently. He'd forgotten himself again. It was easy to when his sense of self wasn't all there to begin with.

Sin watched the other kid's slow movements for the next few minutes. He thought about the woods in twelve, the deer he'd seen once as he'd been walking home, fingernails dirty, shovel over his shoulder. It'd paused when it had seen Sin, ears flicking back and forth as it caught the scent of blood in the air. The forest had held its breath, the bird song ended as he'd made eye contact. When Sin had been younger, when he didn't know better, he'd thought that the animal was god. But he'd grown older and he'd started carrying a slingshot and a hunting knife.

Someone like that didn't belong in the games.

Sin stood when the other kid did and bent his wrist to keep the knife from slipping out of his sleeve. Someone like him was best left behind, here, where it was still warm. It would be cruel to ignore that fact. So Sin decided to handle it in the same way he would have dealt with a wounded animal in the woods.

He followed him out of the dining hall, eyes trained on the back of his head.

[tick 12a / calla]

C A S T O R

► ► ►

The building they're keeping us in isn't the best, but it's really not the worst either.

They keep the lights so bright that it makes finding my way around a little easier, gives the shadows more of a contrast. The elevator buttons have little raised edges on their numbers that are enough to trace over. I listen to the other tribute's voices during free time and I try to match them to their footfalls when they train. It's hard, and I doubt I've got any of them right yet, but it's almost like a game.

But the whole place has brought a kind of independence that's a little scary. I don't mind if people watch me walk down the hall with my hand along the paneling, it's not like I know they're there.

There's an Avox that comes to the fifth floor every morning and takes me to the dining hall, then the training centre and then back again. At least I think it's the same one, because whenever they're ready to go they take my hand and draw the same symbol along my palm. I've started calling them M in my head because I think that's what they're trying to draw out.

Usually when I'm done eating then M will tap on my shoulder and then draw on my hand and then we'll go. Today's different though, because I sit there for a few minutes and nothing happens. And I know I shouldn't be leaning on them, I shouldn't be getting attached, but it's nice to have someone.

I relied on Pollux for so long, I can't help it.

When M doesn't come, I take it as mission #1. Because it's not like I'll have them in the arena, it'll just be me and my feet and my hands and whatever else they throw at me. I know how to get back to our floor, I made sure to memorize it.

So when I get up from the table, when I go along the edge of the room and follow the wall to the hallway with the elevator, it makes sense to be a little extra careful. Maybe that's why I hear it. There's a little scuffling sound from behind me, and I've walked far enough that I don't think it's just a sound from the dining hall. I can't really hear the clanging of the cutlery anymore.

There's a creeping sort of feeling on the back of my neck and I can't help it when I freeze. But it might be another tribute on their way back to their own floor, and then I'll look silly. It might just be an Avox, maybe M, or it might even be nothing and then I’ll look even sillier

“Hello?”

[gamemaker kelsier]

S I N .

When we all fall asleep, where do we go?

His target moved slowly, which was expected. Rocky movements and a hand trailing along the wall only solidified the feeling that someone like him couldn't hope to survive in the arena. A kid like that would have been followed back in twelve, Sin grateful that his target was so easy that night, knowing he wouldn't be missed.

If you couldn't work in the mines, then you were of no use. You were just another fucking mouth and should disappear without being a nuisance.

And Sin had been so damned good at making those people disappear. The people that always fell into living in the between of places. The ends of sidewalks, the alleyways and the dropped eye contact, no one ever cared when they'd gone missing.

Sin hadn't killed them, not always, but he'd delivered them to the death gods in the crumbling hospital on the edge of town. Everyone had always said the Mortuus hospital was haunted but it wasn't. Demons only overran it, and when people swore they could hear screaming from the place, they weren't lying.

Sin had learned to tape their victim's mouths shut.

He tightened his grip on the knife, the sounds from the dining hall long faded. The blind kid was still moving but he was slower, head raised higher. He knew.

"Hello?"

His tone was gentle, too sweet. Sin lunged forwards and grabbed him by the shoulder, then slammed him hard against the wall. The knife was pressed against his jugular, his hand over the kid's mouth before he could make another sound.

Sin's breathing came faster, it'd been so long since anyone had heard his approach. Eiryls had warned him once not to underestimate a target with missing senses, the body found ways to accomodate.

[tick 12a / calla]

C A S T O R

► ► ►

The whole thing goes off like a bomb. There's barely even a beat, not even a sound before the breathe is being knocked out of me and my head bangs again the wall. It's hard enough to make me gasp, but something snakes up and covers my mouth and I think I try to scream, scramble against it before I can even stop myself. My hand latches onto something but then there's a cold line being pressed against my neck and all I can smell is soot and there's a shadow looming against the light and I can't breathe.

My grip has never been strong, some lasting consequence of being born, but I still hold on as tight as I can. It isn't until ages go by that I realize it's a wrist sitting against my palm. I can feel a pulse, and all the little bones there. There's warmth fanning across my face and I'm hit with the sudden realization that this is a person holding me against the wall.

They're taller, I can tell my the fact that they completely block out the lights in the hallway, and the darkness makes me press further into the wall, just to try and get away.

Something digs into my neck and I try not to think about what it is even though I'm pretty sure I know.

And shouldn't this be better? Pollux won't have to watch me die on a screen over and over again if they just find my body in the hallway. But of course I don't want to die. I want to go home and curl up beside the window again and listen to the rain, but I have to do this first. That's what I told my family before I left, even if they didn't believe me.

So I just hold onto this person and count the seconds between their heartbeat, try my best not to hyperventilate underneath them.

[gamemaker kelsier]

S I N .

When we all fall asleep, where do we go?

Sin should have finished things sooner. He didn't know what had stalled him. The knife in his hand was more suited towards spreading butter than slicing someone's throat, but that hadn't ever stopped him before. It usually just meant he had to apple a little more force.

And he was stronger than this weak thing from Five, Sin knew that. It wouldn't take much, he could carve a path before the kid could break free.

"We don't do that anymore."

The hospital had become a real place of healing in the months after Eirlys' death. Sin hadn't been bothered by that, not at first. In those first few weeks, he'd been ignored. After they stopped questioning what to do with him and decided he could stay, Sin had spent most mornings waiting around to be told what to do. When that hadn't come, he'd gone back to what he'd always done.

And he'd brought the Mortuus sisters a man, dragged through the street at three in the morning with blood running down his temple. Sin had done that to him, taken a rock and smashed him in the head. It'd always been the easiest way to get the sisters their organ donors. Everyone knew who he was, if he was seen helping a bleeding patient to the hospital, it meant nothing.

They were angry with him for it, he'd been beaten for it.

Beat for doing the only thing he'd done for the last five years. He still didn't quite get it, he only knew he wasn't needed anymore.

And that had somehow stung.

If he wasn't needed by the Mortuus family, there was no one who needed him at all. So he held a knife to a blind boy's throat at six-fifty in the evening on a Monday, sweat dripping down the back of his neck as he tried to figure out what to do from there.

It's the hand on his wrist that woke him up, fingers wrapped gently around his pulse but they might as well have been as tight as a vice. No one ever touched him like that, not without the intent of hurting him.

The kid really was too soft, too weak for the arena. For a moment, Sin dug his blade in deeper, until he could feel the kid swallowing. His skin was pale, his body lacking strength.

And he thought about the deer that was a god to him for a brief while, why a creature so gentle had appeared so powerful to him. Maybe he hadn't coveted the deer for its strength but for its existence in a cold wasteland like twelve.

That something so fragile could be allowed to survive there was a miracle to him.

Sin stared into eyes that didn't see him and slowly loosened his grip on the knife until it fell to the floor between them with a thud.