Writer Games | Masquerade of Martyrs & Family Ties

Task Seven: The Flood /SF - Ashley Fission [2]

The cold droplets of  rain continued to fall from the sky around Ashley, splattering his face  and forming lakes around his feet as he forced himself to trudge  forward. The moonlight shone down with an intensity he had never  experienced before, it's silver ribbon of light reflecting in the  collected water and penetrating through the otherwise smothering  darkness of the night around him.

Ashley was on his own.

He trembled slightly  with every step, the chilling night tempting him into the shelter of the  dark, dripping trees with their death-like branches reaching out to  stroke him. Instead, Ashley continued to move forward through the water  that was threatening to block his path. Every single lake seemed to talk  to him, replying with a warped reflection of his own face until Ashley  was certain that he could see himself almost a thousand times over. Even  though he was alone, someone seemed to continually watch him.

For just a moment,  Ashley allowed himself to stop. The rain continued to fall around him,  every small collection of water seeming to merge together to form what  seemed to be an ocean. It showed no sign of relenting but, as Ashley  watched his own reflection in the water beneath his feet, he could see  that the rain was beginning to wash away the blood, dirt and tear stains  that had taken to adorning his face. With every second he allowed the  rain to fall on him, he began to look more and more like he had done  back in District Thirteen, before the Reaping had even happened and  before everything he had ever taken for granted had been ripped from him  in a single cruel act of the Game-Makers.

Ashley had never really  payed much attention to his own reflection before. As he watched himself  in the water, illuminated by the harsh starlight, the only thing he  could see was a face that he had grown so used to seeing on someone  else: Aries.

As he recognised his  brother in the rippling lakes around him, Ashley tore his eyes away and  looked back to the trees he was walking through. He refused to let  himself remember, finally working through a way to make the pain deaden  within his mind. If he could just forget entirely, ignore the fact that  Aries had ever existed, he could snatch a few hours of sleep that was  not haunted by nightmares. If he pretended he had always been an only  child, Ashley was content enough to keep on fighting.

It was almost impossible to forget entirely.

If Ashley ever closed  his eyes, his mind always tried to seek solace in a happy memory that  always seemed to involve Aries. If he allowed any amount of hope to  overtake him, he could not stop imagining ways to make everything seem  more bearable. If he let his guard down for even a moment, Ashley was  certain that he could almost see his brother walking alongside him.

Except, Aries was dead.

Keeping his eye line  away from any reflections, Ashley continued to move forward. He forced  himself to stop pretending, moving through the tree branches in the hope  of finding somewhere to escape the unrelenting rain. The darkness of  the night seemed almost endless, the silhouettes of the bare trees  seeming to pin Ashley to a single point in the arena. Their branches  seemed to scratch at his face, drawing him into their cold grasp if he  tried to stop for even just another second.

He had hoped that,  eventually, the sun would have risen and changed the arena into a  completely different world. In the rain, the ground beneath him had once  carefully reflected the starlight into misty lanterns but the waters  continued to climb and now the surface reflected nothing, only drawing  in light and swallowing it forever.

Ashley refused to stop,  distracting himself by forcing his way through the water that overtook  his ankles, then his knees and finally his waist. It continued to grow,  the rain showing no sign of stopping and the night seeming eternal. He  longed to keep moving, to forget everything, but he knew the Game-Makers  were cold enough to not stop until the water had covered him  completely, smothering him silently and dragging him to a watery death.

That would have been the easiest way of forgetting, but Ashley had a promise to keep.

Instead of moving  forward, he moved up. Although the trees had once seemed something to  avoid, they now offered safety as Ashley clambered through their  dripping boughs and to the highest point he was willing to risk. From  that vantage point, the moonlight was once again able to penetrate  through the layer of heavy cloud and find it's harsh beams becoming  misty in the ocean that was beginning to form beneath Ashley. Up in the  branches of the tree, there was nothing to block or distract him from  the haunting memories and reflections.

In a way, Ashley was glad.

Under the cover of  night, the world was different. It seemed more foreboding and far more  threatening than anything adorned with a sparkling sunbeam, but it was  also able to hide any secrets you wanted to keep. With the moon  obscuring everything from anyone who was trying to watch, Ashley would  have even allowed himself to cry.

He did not cry; that  time had passed a few days prior to the flood. Instead, he finally  allowed himself to remember everything about Aries that he had tried his  hardest to forget. In the starlight, he could pretend that his twin was  perched on a branch next to him and no one would ever know. Providing  the moon was in the sky, Aries could still be alive.

Once the sun came up,  those sort of childish dreams would be snatched from him and Ashley  would be left alone once more. The arena would seem like torture once  more, only a reminder of the death and bloodshed that was still to come  in order to crown a Victor.

Part of Ashley still  wondered if an escape would make him even happier than simply  remembering, but he knew that the only escape from the arena would be  death. Even then, he was still tempted. It would be so easy but, at the  same time, it would be a failure.

Death was still a  comforting thought to him, however. If death was an escape, then it  would make you happy. By that logic, Aries was happy and that was all  that Ashley wanted at that moment.

He hoped it was a happiness that he would never know.