i. diamond teeth
WHEN APHRODITE KRASNOVA was a kid, there was this song that her older brother used to sing all the time.
It talked about a road that was long and a brother that had to be carried on it. Whoever wrote it said that the brother wasn't heavy. That he was just that. His brother. Just his brother. And the line repeated again and again ━━ He ain't heavy. He's my brother. There was something about the way her older brother's voice hugged each syllable, proclaimed them to the world, catching in the back of his throat, that made her own throat tight. Making it hard to move. Hard to swallow.
There was another time when her older brother played with his lighter. They stood under a lamppost. In the following week, he'd be reaped for the 63rd Hunger Games. He'd be running as fast as his legs could take him in an endless maze. But right then and there, the summer was too young to have a name, so they stood there.
June was oozing into July like blood. They didn't know that they stood at childhood's edge. Aphrodite wanted her mom to like her. She wanted her mom to like her the same way her mom liked her brother. Another summer drowned at the bottom of the river, another summer spent with red stained lips and the smell of tart sleep and of burning wires. Aphrodite sort of wanted to bite her teeth into life and suck on the marrow, but she swallowed cherry pits instead.
She would make her mom like her tomorrow. She would be a good daughter tomorrow. She would get it right.
"Doesn't it bother you?" Aphrodite asked that golden afternoon, every breath from the hills so full of life that it seemed whoever respired it, though dying, might revive. "The way mom is?"
He put his back against the wet lamppost and played with his lighter. "Does anybody feel good about their parents?"
Dragonflies shimmered in the afterglow. There was clover and jasmine and aster in the grass. Bird-song drifting, willows hushing, and the smell of the damp earth. The wind murmured a secret and her older brother murmured his back.
He sang that song again: He ain't heavy. He's my brother.
That was 5 years ago.
Her brother doesn't sing anymore. Not since he came back from his own games.
Now a canon fires in the distance. Splintering the sticky darkness. Shattering childhood's stained-glass house. The arena is her coffin, the apocalypse-scorched ground her bones. The girl who volunteered is never coming home.
No, Aphrodite's childhood is at an end. This is where cataclysm begins. With eyes full of ghosts and teeth stained with blood. That moment when a tribute becomes a Victor.
Demolition rips the Gamemaker's world apart.
On the first day, there had been only darkness.
Nothing but pitch black.
The only light has come from the blinding cornucopia. A false sun.
For days, Aphrodite had drowned in numb, senseless disbelief. Left to wander the woods alone, starving, dehydrated, stumbling around blind after betraying the Career pack. Brutally wounded by the District 1 boy. Left to die.
Only they failed to take into account that Aphrodite is her mother's daughter. A legacy tribute by her brother and their mother before him; bitterness has made Aphrodite cruel. She is angry because of her mother.
She can hold a grudge like it is a hand.
Now, at world's end, there are 2 tributes left. The finale of the 68th Hunger Games sees an act of thunderous earthquakes and raging wild fires. The black forests had split themselves in halve and unlucky tributes were left to fall to their deaths. Outdoing themselves, the Gamemaker's have created an apocalypse.
Everything is falling to ash. All that is left is the blazing cornucopia, pale in the bleeding fires, and even then the earth is beginning to crack. This is the end.
This is the final act of the 68th Hunger Games ━━ the audience expects a show.
And who is Aphrodite to deny them?
"You killed River."
Aphrodite's fingers dance dangerously across her knife's blade. She cocks her head carelessly.
"Who?" Aphrodite's voice is a soft, seductive purr. Just like her mom's.
Barely a few feet away from her is the District 4 girl. Nori. Like a wolf in a cave, she stalks across the ridged top of the cornucopia, a path without relent, rigid, her fear bristling, almost frenzied, seized with a frustrated terror. Her eyes are hungry for blood and hungry for death. A sacrilegious anger carved into her face.
"Don't act like you didn't know his name," Nori snarls. "You killed him on the first day!"
She's talking about the District 4 boy. She must be. Aphrodite really didn't know his name.
She also, frankly, doesn't give a fuck.
Oops!
Aphrodite pouts condescendingly. "Oh, sweetie, he never even had a chance - "
In two bounds, Nori's closed the distance between them. She moves quickly. Too quickly. Landing two punches to Aphrodite's face, she strikes her in the nose, and Aphrodite's bone gives a startling crack! Pain shoots through her. Staggering back with a surprised cry, Aphrodite lifts her hands as if she's going to stab Nori, and this is what the other girl braces herself for. Then Aphrodite's swinging downwards, swiping Nori's legs out right from underneath her. Grounded, Nori takes the chance to kick in Aphrodite's kneecaps, and Aphrodite falls. Nori's sword catches her in the forehead.
It slices just above Aphrodite's right eyebrow, opening a gash that sends a stream of ruby running down her face, gushing into her eye, blinding her, filling her mouth with the sharp metallic taste of her own blood. Aphrodite flails desperately for her knife. Grips it. But her fingers are too slippery with blood. She knows as soon as it leaves her hands that her knife will miss. When it does, Nori is slamming into her, knocking her flat on her back, pinning her shoulder to the ground with her knees.
"My mentor told me to watch out for you. Said you're a Krasnova, like that should've scared me."
Not shocking. Everyone knows, even District 12, of the Krasnova legacy. There's a rumor in one of the districts that her mom, Hera, will chop up your guts and give them to Snow! Which is bullshit. Not that she'll chop up your guts - that she'll give them to President Snow. That would never do. Hera Krasnova does not bow. Not to mention the fact that her older brother had gone on a killing spree in his own games. . . Morals seem to be the least of the Krasnova's concerns.
Anyways! Most of the tributes refused to talk to Aphrodite in training, like there was an unsaid rule or something. And yet here's this stupid District 4 girl, acting as if she can, like, kill Aphrodite.
What a fucking idiot.
(It's almost funny, really.)
Nori takes her sword. It is jagged blade. For a moment, she surveys Aphrodite's face, tilting it from side to side, like she's deciding exactly what pattern to carve into it. Aphrodite works up a mouthful of blood and saliva and spits it right into her face.
Flushing ruby red, Nori grabs the hair on top of Aphrodite's head and slams it to the ground.
"I'll kill you just like I killed that pathetic boy," Nori sneers. "The District 2 boy, whatever the fuck his name was."
This is getting pretty embarrassing for Nori.
Thunder shakes the whole arena. There, in the ashen sky, is a fiery streak, like a sunset burning too close, too bright. Everything is bleeding red.
"I heard what the District 1 girl said to you, about wanting to see the sunrise," Nori taunts her. "What was her name again - Silk? She'll never see the sun rise again and neither will you."
This District 4 girl is seriously over-dramatic. Aphrodite, lose to her? As if!
There's always been warmth deep within in Aphrodite, a soft ruby prickle sometimes, a crackling ember, lingering, never quite snuffed out, but there were many, many times, even before the games, when it would just spark. And it hisses, ruby-hot, spit like roasting coals, and whatever it is that had incensed her, an unjust word, a sneer, a jarring hand, would flash across her ribs like matchsticks and the flicker would become flame and the flames would leap and. . . Aphrodite would be ablaze.
She gets it from her brother, she thinks. He gets it from their mom.
They all become incandescent with anger.
Aphrodite cannot stop it, slow the inferno, cannot rationalize it; it'll always start as an irritated wick, then it will erupt inside her heart, that ice-black glacier in her chest, and then swell, scorch clean through her ribs, devouring until she is shaking with heat. Vision blurred. Seeing red, some have called it, but they are dead wrong. No, Aphrodite sees blue, like hazy gas shimmering before her eyes, passion-fierce, the piercing blue sky above the Victors Village. Untamable. Sharp. Directionless. Utterly consuming. Because blue fire always burns brightest.
This mention of the District 2 boy, of Romulus Beckett, of her older brother's friend, it rips whatever's left of her heart at the seams. Romulus wasn't much, but he was from home.
And Silk. . .
I want to see the sun again. Aphrodite can still hear Silk's words as she stumbled around in meaningless arcs. Bleeding. Dying. I want to see my little sister and I want to see the sun rise one more time.
There is only ever 1 Victor. Aphrodite knew from the start that her friendship with Silk was going to end in flames.
Still. Silk hadn't bothered with the Careers either, and when Aphrodite had been left to die, Silk saved her life. Even though Silk volunteered for the games, she said what she really wanted to do was become a Doctor, but her family couldn't afford it. Her little sister was sick, too. Her little sister was so sick that Silk volunteered so they could afford medicine.
(Now she's dead and, soon, her little sister probably will be, too.)
Now Aphrodite is is incoherent with rage. Divine with anger.
No way in hell is she losing to this girl.
"Everyone's wrong about your family," Nori hisses. "You aren't royalty or gods. You're all human. You're all monsters."
Aphrodite already knows.
Cruel Aphrodite smirks. "You talk too much."
It's time to cut the bullshit ━━ Aphrodite Krasnova is not a bullshitter.
She tears the dagger she has sheathed to the thigh of her cargo pants and drives it through Nori's gut. She's rewarded with a pleasing shriek of pain. Twisting it harshly, Aphrodite rips it out as crudely as possible only to lash out again, slashing Nori across her thigh.
Nori screams again, clutching at her wounds, soaked with blood.
There is no cannon. No end. No Victor.
Not yet.
Nori writhes again and Aphrodite goes utterly still. A soundless scream wells up in her throat.
For a heartbeat, Nori looks like Silk.
No more than a heartbeat. Then Nori's back to herself, bleeding, dying, just like everything else in this hallowed arena, but she doesn't look like a monster. She looks like a kid.
"You're going to burn out, Two!" Nori's face is twisted with anguish and her entire body is seizing. "You're going to burn out, you're - "
God, people are excruciatingly annoying! Aphrodite doesn't really have the patience to watch this girl bleed out. Doesn't she know better than to keep a Krasnova waiting? Apparently not.
So Aphrodite slashes her throat.
There is a beat.
And then ━━
"Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to present the Victor of the sixty-eighth Hunger Games - Aphrodite Krasnova!"
Numb and heavy, Aphrodite does not even try to stand. Blood roars in her ears.
Blood clots in her throat, too, like knives that stick between ribs. Inside of her, there are sobs she can't explain. They linger on the brink of her as if they are outside, they cannot reach her, and they cannot be cried.
Her chest is concaving in on her. Thunderous applause from the Capitol that they play live, over the speakers, echoes, bouncing in the darkness. Before it is swallowed up by the apocalyptic fires. Just like all things. Just like her whole life.
What follows is a nauseating blur.
Aphrodite isn't quite sure how she ends up on the hovercraft. All she knows is one heartbeat she's in the arena, next she's in a white, sterile room with broad windows that show they're in the clouds.
A woman in pristine white offers her a beverage.
When Aphrodite blinks uncomprehendingly, the nice lady puts a crystal glass in her hands. Icy cold, filled with orange juice, a straw with a frilly pink umbrella. How wrong it looks in her filthy hands. Dirt-caked nails. Dried blood under her fingertips. How wrong it is to hold something so clean and pretty after something so brutally and horrifically ugly.
She doesn't know what else to do, so she lets it fall, watches it shatter.
When they land, Aphrodite can barely walk by herself. She's still covered in blood. There's an ungodly pain in her leg, and she thinks it might be broken.
There is a flash of dark hair. First she thinks it's her brother, coming to rescue her. It's not.
It's her mom.
Bile rises in Aphrodite's throat. Hera Krasnova is a mess of gorgeous chaos and rage, all dark, all war, and she stalks towards Aphrodite like a lioness.
And when her mom slaps her, Aphrodite sees the sun.
Aphrodite's soul is sunburnt. She cannot breathe. Her mom has the kind of anger all mom's do. Loud and terrible. It lingers for an eternity. Stomach full of blood, head full of blood, Aphrodite sways there, and whatever gods there are watch idly as the last of her childhood is murdered.
All around, Peacekeepers and Doctors are screaming. Everyone is screaming. Aphrodite is utterly still.
"You should have died in that arena!" Hera snarls.
Helplessly, Aphrodite stares back at her mom. Like any unloved thing, she doesn't feel real when she's not being touched.
It's not so bad, to feel something again.
Even if it hurts.
"Do not cry," Hera hisses. "You will not cry, do you understand?"
Starting to shake, Aphrodite nods.
This is not enough. Hera seizes Aphrodite's cheeks with her talon-like acrylic nails, squeezing, drawing blood.
"I said," Hera leans down so that they are not even an inch apart. "Do - you - understand?"
"Yes, yes!" Aphrodite cries out, wishing her mom would let go. She does not.
"You will not embarrass me the same way your brother has!" Hera is seething with anger. "These people will want perfection from you. They expect it. They crave it."
"OK!" Aphrodite chokes out.
"You will go out there, and you will be everything they want you to be," Hera orders. "You will be funny. You will be bold. You will be beautiful. You will be my daughter. You will be perfect."
"OK - OK!"
"You are a girl of marble. You will not break."
Someone wrestles her mom away from her ━━ Aphrodite does not notice nor care, blind to everything but the pain. Her fingers tremble as they reach up to touch her cheek only to come back hot and sticky. Everything is red. Red, red, red.
She is drowning in the color when a needle jabs her from behind.
She hits the floor with a loud crack! Darkness fades in and out of her vision, eyelids weighing a ton as they rake across the world. Her head lolls limply to face the sky.
The red sun is rising.
‿̩͙‿ ༺ ♰ ༻ ‿̩͙‿
ive rewritten this chapter so many times, but i think im finally content w it.
originally i planned to write aphrodite's games, but that felt like overkill to me. maybe one day ill come back and change my mind, but for now i think the last bit of it is impactful enough. the final act gets the message across.
so. aphrodite's basically a cunt w raging anger/mommy issues! i plan on making her realistic, which means she won't always make good decisions, and sometimes she'll do some fucked up shit. so uhhh be ready for that, and try not to judge her too hard. her life is pretty shit.
also i cannot WAIT to write icarus. they are going to be the funniest fucking siblings im so excited!!!!
nori when aphrodite wins and she doesn't:
2.5k words