running on empty :: saylor/fridae

[rook]

fridae drummond

mars, the god of war, pretending so serene
he's keeping his hands clean
while i make war on this war machine

The hardest thing in the world is to live in it.

The brightly lit studio flooring of the training centre has me feeling like I'm on stage. Cameras and Capitolites watch on as we find our feet, exploring the different stations and workshops, twenty-four bright eyed children ready to go to war.

Bruised faced and carrying a swollen eye, I drag myself from station to station, none of it captivating me, the desire to learn new skills exorcised from my body. It all just seems so pointless, and yet at the same time I know some of it could save my life.

Overwhelmed by the rapture of it all, I take deep breaths and walk to familiar ground - gym equipment, and make it my home. My lungs take in big gulps of air, still salty and coarse from drowning not quite to death less than a week ago. I've not recovered. I feel weak.

If I'm weak then I'll die.

I perform four shaky sets of pushups, my own body weight feeling like a thousand tons against my thin wrists. I used to be good at this. I used to have more strength about me. I wonder if part of me did drown in the marina that night, if something in my body has locked itself away.

Armed guards stand post on the edges of the room, and my eyes scan them as I rest between sets, sweat dripping from my brow. Cameras are pointing eagle-eyed from the ceiling and below them, various instructors making sure Tributes are carefully following routine and order.

After a short rest I progress to the chin up bar, wondering if it's slightly too high for all 5'6 of me. With a short hop I'm able to reach up and grip the bar with both hands, and although my palms are sweaty, the grip is good, and I'm able to start pulling my body weight upwards until my chin is level with the bar.

I feel deadweight, like a corpse, but I drag that corpse up towards the bar again and again, because I know I need to fight that fighter again. I know I need the little Drummond girl to come back to me. I need her to add a bit of chaos back into my stride, because right now I feel empty.

And I need to feel alive, because if I don't then I soon won't be.

a careful chosen word, designed to hurt
but will it stir some new philosophy?
retreat or be defeated, baby

lyrics: mars the god of war by the beths

[[nyte]]

s a y l o r .

"so it goes
my summer rose
cut and thrown away"

I'm trying to shake the feeling that I'm already dead. Walking through storm clouds, thoughts catching upon their static. I know what's coming over the horizon and the only way I can think to fight it is closing my eyes. Is it pathetic to cling to hope or is that all I have left?

I've grown up watching heroes and villains, fairy tales so far out of reach that I never learned to fear them. We can't reach through television screens, in spite of knowing better I told myself I was safe. All selfish greed and self-satisfaction, seventeen years and seventeen names until mine and each one of them stopped being a person the minute the escort called out to them. There's no such thing as retribution, but this must be something close.

I'd give anything to know ignorance again.

But here I am, desperately wanting to live and having no idea how to. I'm real, but not, eyes unfocused in an attempt to spare me from all the things I'd rather not know. Cameras and mirrors and tributes that see everything I never learned to hide. Holding myself because that's the only comfort I have left, breaths still shaking though we've settled in a delightful purgatory.

We're safe but it sure doesn't feel like it.

I come from hunters, but I always despised feeling like a predator. There's something unbearable about the cruelty of looking upon gentle, beautiful things and seeing only weakness. Now, I'm surrounded by much of the same.

I've always been desperate to prove nature wrong, rebelling against what everyone tells me should be. That must be why she's caught my eye, first from it's corner until I'm all but enamored. She's caked in sweat and suffering, fighting against the wind when it's obvious she'll have to bend. Sooner or later, she'll lose.

Again and again, I watch as this strange girl chooses later.

I'm too selfish to know her name, so lost in condemning myself that my companions faces amount to little more than the monsters that haunt brand new nightmares. And I resent her a bit, just for being that much stronger than I.

But I'm always rebelling against nature, so I run towards her instead of away. "Room for one more?" It sounds nervous, I wasn't really in the habit of conversation back home. I've got plenty to offer, at least, after all I gave up ages ago. "I've heard it's easier when you're not alone."

I don't know that, of course, but I hope.

elegant

[rook]

fridae drummond

mars, the god of war, pretending so serene
he's keeping his hands clean
while i make war on this war machine

The second hardest thing in the world is that everyone else lives in it too.

He approaches me, not timidly but there is a certain reservation about him. His face is pretty and his eyes are curious, and when he speaks it's genuine, there's no undertones to it - just honest and simple.

I stare back with vacant determination, focusing on one more pull-up, one more desperate effort to raise my chin above the bar, before my arms can no longer bare the weight of my body anymore, and I drop to my feet. Wiping the sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand, wincing as the salt stings in my swollen eye. I stand blinking at the stranger, and as I catch my breath I realise that he's not a stranger at all. He's a Tribute.

"Be my guest." I breathe, hands on hips as my thundering heart begins to slow, "Saylor, right?"

He's the District 10 boy, I saw him on the television on the train ride over. He looked a lot scruffier on television, and smaller too - in real life he's more, well, real. I can see into the whites of his eyes, and suddenly all judgements I had made of him when I saw his district's reaping footage have dissolved. I know nothing about this boy, and from what I can tell it seems like he just wants some company.

I can't begrudge him that, now can I?

I mean, he doesn't look the type to be into lifting weights - he's mouse-like, and even smaller than I am. A real fish out of water if ever I've seen one. I try to mask a playful smile.

I move to the leg press machine, sitting on the padded chair and placing the balls of my feet against the metal plate. I change the weight to something more appropriate to a girl as small as me, and start a few light reps to get my quads warmed up.

"Don't lift more than you can handle, Saylor." I warn him as I start some heavier reps and leave him to devise a workout of his own.

a careful chosen word, designed to hurt
but will it stir some new philosophy?
retreat or be defeated, baby

lyrics: mars the god of war by the beths

[[nyte]]

s a y l o r .

"so it goes
my summer rose
cut and thrown away"

It's not bravery, but something close. Her eyes are glazed with exhaustion, like that could obscure the blue flames blazing within. More than enough to wound but I'm so cold that I revel in the way she lets me take up space beside her. Not drawn into her orbit but allowed to exist within it.

If I met her outside the Capitol, would she still resemble a bad omen? I'm memorizing faces, wondering if her's will be the last I'll ever see. What weapon might she wield when she tears out my throat? Will she wear regret or relief? I've got so many questions and answers to none of them, but I still hope she'll at least remember this insignificant little moment when we were just as damned but a lot less afraid.

"Saylor, yeah." Heat floods my cheeks, heavy with guilt at the way she says my name. She's from the Distrct before mine, I'm certain enough of that. "I'm not quite as good with names, sorry 'bout that." Mumbled at her feet, fingers digging into the back of my neck to give me something sharp to focus on. Simple conversation is suffocating, people are less predictable than livestock.

Something tells me that'd be a shitty explanation, so I bite my tongue.

Then she smiles at me and it's strange how I feel like that gives me permission to smile back. It splits my lips, too much teeth around the way I hiccup out a nervous laugh. She accommodates my company like it's the most natural thing in the world, like she didn't even have to think twice about what to say to me.

I feel a bit foolish for thinking she wouldn't.

Lonely is the worst thing you can be this close to the end.

"I can do it!" A reflexive lie, grandstanding just like my father taught me. Like pretending to be strong will keep me alive, all bad habits I can't quite shake. I bite my tongue, concentrating on keeping my grip on the metal bar though my palms have started sweating.

Silence is heavier I remember as I pull myself up over the bar three times before I lose my grip and my breath, with my back flat on the mat and very much wishing it could swallow me whole. I can only hope her expectations were so low I still managed to exceed them.

I cover my face with my hands and it makes me feel a little safer.

"I don't think I know how to be strong." I admit through the gaps in my fingers.

elegant

[rook]

fridae drummond

mars, the god of war, pretending so serene
he's keeping his hands clean
while i make war on this war machine

He smiles an awkward smile, spluttering out a small laugh in the process, and I think it might be the most genuine thing I've seen in here. There's no falseness to this kid, no façade that he seems to be hiding behind, or using to influence others in the way that some might. No, he's just an ordinary guy from what I can tell, and that's been pretty hard to come by so far.

He's not good with names, and so I hold back mine for the time being, letting him focus on his workout regime and which machines to use first without any more distraction. I continue to use the leg press, now pushing the weight out with both feet, then retracting one foot and letting the other take the set weight on it's own, and then eccentrically loading the other leg, putting stress on my tendon and lower quad. When it reaches burning point, I place my spare foot back on the plate and push it out again, and repeat.

After a few repetitions, I pause for a minute's rest, watching as Saylor takes his best shot at the chin up bar. His arms are scrawny and his shoulders small, so this should be interesting - he is skinny and doesn't carry much body weight, so we'll see how he does.

Needless to say, it ends with him flat on his back after barely a couple of repetitions. I look around to see if anyone was watching. It's not good to appear weak like that, any Careers who'd have seen him just now would surely be licking their lips at the thought of charging him down in the arena.

I don't tell him that, because I don't want him to be disheartened.

"Good effort. Doing chin-ups is one of the hardest exercises you can do." I smile, remembering when I first started trying to work on my body three or four years ago. I could barely do seven press ups without giving up and lying face down on the carpet. I'm not sure Saylor doing a few weights now is really going to do much for him, in all honesty.

"There's many ways to be strong, dude." I move my stuff away from the leg press machine and leave it free for him to use.

"I'm Fridae, by the way. Fridae Drummond." I wink as I pass him and head for the free weights nearby.

a careful chosen word, designed to hurt
but will it stir some new philosophy?
retreat or be defeated, baby

lyrics: mars the god of war by the beths