w.w.k.d? {fridae/sin}

[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

I lie in bed with the air conditioning gently blowing against my face. Outside of my window the stars watch down on me, the same stars that I could see from Nine, carrying the same lonely light a million miles across the darkness. I feel oddly at peace here, led still on the linen sheets that smell so quaintly of home, staring into the black sky and beyond.

A heaviness overcomes me. My arms ache from my upper body training, and due to a rushed cooldown my legs are tight and sore. The breeze persuades my eyes to close, and before I know it, I am drifting, drifting, drifting.

Why didn't you just do as you were told?

I'm drowning again, Sykes' rough hands firmly gripping the collar of my shirt and thrusting me under the waves, salt forcing it's way into my eyes and down my lungs. I scream, but I'm voiceless, my mouth open, gaping into the abyss.

It burns inside of me, and when I can take no more, and my throat fills with coarse water, and the world around me turns black, my arms stop thrashing, and my eyes just stare. Sykes' hands release me, and my body, cold and dead, sinks to the bottom of the marina.

A corpse stares back at me, twenty-five years dead but still as fresh as the day the blade left his chest and he fell into the ashen earth.

You will die the same way.

I wake suddenly, with that feeling that you've fallen a thousand feet and hit your bed with a gut-wrenching thud.

"Motherfucker."

I roll out from under the sheets to place my sweating feet against the cold marble floor, and I breathe. I try to ground myself by looking around the room, identifying what's real and what lingers from my night terror. As it happens, this reality isn't much better.

I put on some clothes to cover up and leave my sleeping quarters. I explain to the guard on duty where I'm going and he permits me passage into the hallway beyond. The building is massive, excessive for twenty-four Tributes. The long passageways and staircases make for good walking mileage, and I have a lot on my mind.

I wander it seems for nearly an hour, my eyes vacant and my feet leading the way. I think about my parents, and what they'd think were they alive. Maybe Ken is judging me, rewatching footage of when I volunteered and wondering what the hell I was thinking? My mind drifts to Sykes, and if he was angry that he couldn't get his grubby hands on me once the deadline passed, and if Higgs had been enraged at what I did, or just pleased that one more loose end was about to be cut.

I find a vending machine and I stare at the various cans, packets, and boxes illuminated inside, and I begin to imagine all the different ways that I could die next week.

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

[gamemaker kelsier]

S I N .

When we all fall asleep, where do we go?

He liked to cup the coins in his hands and slide them back and forth, he enjoyed the sound of the jingling metal.

Sin had held money before, don't think otherwise.

District Twelve, though poor, still had money. When Eirlys would send Sin on errands, she'd give him the exact amount that he needed to exchange for whatever it was he was picking it up. The money was fine, the little coins never having meant much to Sin. He knew that each coin could be exchanged for different amounts of things but it wasn't something he'd thought about before. His sisters kept him fed and when his clothing became too poor, he'd trade one of his trinkets to a vendor for a new shirt.

Nico had told Sin to hold his hand out earlier in the week. So he'd held them both out, palms down, hands curled into fists so that it'd hurt less when punishment came. While he didn't know what he'd done to deserve a lashing, Sin had never been one to complain.

But Nico had only gently taken one hand, turned it over and pressed coins into his palm. "To get a snack," he'd said. Vending machines were placed throughout the Training Centre.

No one had ever given Sin money with the intention of him spending it on himself before. Come to think of it, no one had given him anything before without some form of payment. Not even the token that he wore around his neck had been a gift, he'd taken it.

So he decided to keep the little bit of change for forever.

Two days later, he recognized that it would be useless in the arena. There'd be no vending machines there. Chances of survival seemed slim, in the end, Sin was smaller than most of the other tributes reaped. He was younger too, roughly. It was hard to say. He'd started paying notice to his age at new years. He didn't know when his birthday was or what year he'd been born.

None of it had ever really mattered until here, where everyone was measuring themselves against each other.

Sin was still awake when the forest that had been on loop on his bedroom wall turned off from inactivity at two in the morning. He rolled out slowly from beneath the bed from to click the buttons that Nico had shown him to get it back. The coins hit each other and then slipped out of his pocket onto the carpet.

Five minutes later he was padding down the hallway, barefoot and cupping the coins in his hands. He'd seen a snack machine two floors down. The stairway was quiet, his footsteps echoed and he forgot how much he loved to be alive in the night when everyone else was dead asleep.

It was late enough that he wasn't expecting to run into anyone else but when he exited the elevator and turned the corner, there was a girl stood in front of the glow of the machine.

He hair touched the small of her back and Sin closed his hand over the coins, their merry jingle silenced. He stopped beside her, eyes on the various treats within. Sin didn't recognize any of them. He didn't know how many he could afford, or how to even obtain them. There was no one to trade the coin with, just a little slot above a keypad.

He opened his palm flat, and held it up in front of the machine, waiting for something to happen.

[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

My eyes are heavy, the dull light of the vendor bleeds into my retina, a hideous buzzing in my ear. With my hand pressed against the plastic shield I stare menacingly at the various snacks, drinks, and sweets locked inside. I'm exhausted, yet I cannot sleep. I'm in pain, and yet I am numb. I'm hurtling towards my inevitable death at a thousand miles an hour, each precious second that I have left is slipping away from me, and yet my bare feet are planted on this velvet carpet and I am perfectly still, completely static, and the world is silent, and me with it.

It's driving me insane.

This dull pain behind my eyes, this unrelenting fatigue, it's the only thing I can feel right now. It's the only thing that's reminding me that I am alive, that I am sane, that it's normal for me to be unable to process this in a healthy way.

Something traces lightly over the base of my spine and I shiver, and turn, and there's a boy there.

"Fuck!" I jump out of my skin.

It's the boy from Twelve. I didn't even hear him coming, and this place is dead silent. If this were the arena and he had a knife, I'd be coughing up blood right now.

"You shouldn't sneak up on people like that!" I snap, folding my arms and suddenly feeling a lot more awake.

He says nothing, he just stares at me and makes me feel like I'm speaking another language. Realisation hits me like a slap across the forehead as I remember what my escort had told me about the district twelve male: he's a mute. He's a mute and I'm an idiot. I relax my shoulders and make my demeanour less intense.

He holds out coins to the machine and stares at it like it's an alien piece of technology, which for someone from Twelve it probably might as well be. I should probably help him. Probably. I don't want to be condescending or assume that someone with his condition is incapable of buying food from a vending machine, but it really does seem like he doesn't know what he's supposed to do here.

"Here, uh, point to which one you want." I tell him. I guess that's the best way to do it.

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