A/N: This is the Semi-Final task, which is famously known as the reflection task. Here, we were supposed to use the song from the tribute-form and base the landscape of the tribute's mind, on that song. Mine being "Battle Cry" from Imagine Dragons, earned my task the title, 'My Battle Cry'. I'm not gonna say it was easy. I actually deleted an entire draft before I ended up with the task below. It was harder than I thought and it challenged me regarding thinking abstractly. If it is good enough, it can give me a bye to finals, if not, I am up for votes about whether or not I will make it.
"Just one more time before I go, I'll let you know
That all this time I've been afraid wouldn't let it show
Nobody can save me now, no...
Nobody can save me now"
My insides are about to force themselves out. I swear seeing that arrow penetrate that boy's skull and have Jem's lifeless eyes aimed at me from the other side just...it stirred something up in me. I am just exhausted. I can't do this anymore. I've said it so many times, but I always find a way to survive. What's the point? Why can't I just let destiny have its way with me and die?
It's instinct, I suppose. I keep running. I keep surviving. I don't know for much longer I can do that though. For every second that passes, my knees are turning weaker. For every breath I take, my chest burns a little more. All my life it's been that way, but right now, I wonder what the actual point is. I have never really thought of myself as a strong character...at least not strong enough for this.
I lean more and more against the walls as my running turns into limping, and then fast walking. I'm doing everything I can just to get away from that stage-set where I found myself at a completely different arrangement than the actual Arena. That's where I found myself at a battlefield, which for some reason had some familiarity to it. My entire life has been at a battlefield. I have never really been living. I have just fought to survive.
I stop. I can't keep running. For once, I have run out of whatever strength my legs have as I gasp for air. I see this disturbing red stain on my clothing and it immediately makes me gulp loudly. My breath turns shaky as I slide down the wall and end up on the floor. I try to catch my breath as my chest go up and down, up and...down. My entire body is finally at its breaking point. This is not out of fear though...no, if only fear could describe it.
I turn my head back and forth a couple of times. I see nobody. I am in the middle of a hallway stretching out equally long in both directions and I have no escape route. My breaths are echoing through the hallways. Someone must be hearing me. I'm not that quiet. You know, I am actually begging someone to just hear it and get me out of this...just kill me so I can get out of this existence that I call a life.
I place my bow down on my lap and manage to calm down. It is then that I hear this sound of something coming through the vents. I breathe it in before I even manage to find out where it's coming from. Please, let this kill me. Please end this miserable existence of mine. I don't care anymore. I just want to get out of this. I have nobody fighting for me so why should I keep fighting to win? Why should I when all I will be is more of a ghost than I already am?
It doesn't suffocate me though. The gas, it only makes me dizzy and after a while nauseas. It's just the last brink of what it takes before I throw up on national television. District 2 must be so disappointed in me now. I can't imagine the faces...I actually can, but I don't care. That's not even the first thing to come to mind when I open my eyes again.
There's nothing new in the terrain. The hallways are just the same, but it's a little more...crowded. My breath turns shaky and I go into my defensive mode right away as I pull an arrow and put it on my bowstring. I am surrounded by tributes. The ones on my left are the ones that intimidate me the most. They are holding weapons. Their grips are tightening around them as I aim the arrow at them.
The ones on the right...they have this grey shade covering them. I see Jem among the faces and I have to swallow even harder. I had him killed, twice...the second time it was me directly because he was about to kill me. Some of my other allies are there too, allies that I got separated from and never saw again until I heard their cannons.
They all look the way they did when they died. Some are covered in blood, others have their necks deformed and their heads in an unnatural position. Jem, he has my arrow through his chest, and the boy from the stage-set...his head is covered with rivers of blood all over his head because of the arrow I shot into his chin and that reappeared on the top of his skull.
Just the memory of it was enough to stir me up the first time, seeing it now just makes it all worse...my hands are shaking badly as I fail to hold on to the arrow. It drops to the ground. On my left, the other six are throwing insults at me. Normally I wouldn't be able to take it, but...looking into the eyes of the dead is somehow just far worse than any words any of those tributes could throw at me.
I have survived...for this long, into the top seven of these Games. I have survived with the use of my bow and arrow, props and my allies to an extent. Let me not forget my forever loyal ally in the shadows. I look at the ones in grey, and wonder loudly to myself:
"What are you...why are you here? You're all...dead..." I gulp several times as I say that. The ones that are still alive are starting to get aggressive. They're swinging their 'toys' as I just look down on the arrow I just dropped. It dawns upon me: they're all coming after me. They are all getting ready to kill me. They're too many. I can't take them all at once. I can't!
Here's the ironic part though, I already have. For my entire live, I have been fighting against everything and everyone. I've been fighting against the attention at the Academy, I have been fighting to avoid people looking or talking at me, I have been fighting against becoming a career tribute who is maniacally in love with killing...in most of them I have failed. I may not love killing, but like the rest of my predecessors, I kill, because that's what I'm good at.
Now I have become something I do not want to be. I can't stop this. No matter how much I want to stop the killer that I have become, it's already done. I already am a killer...a vicious one at that if you look at some of the tributes I have killed. It's just...there's no way out of this. There's no way out of the identity that I'm slowly taking on.
As this rising feeling of hopelessness rises inside my chest, so does the tributes around me. For some reason, they are growing into big giants and the walls rise to the point where I don't see the top of it anymore. It just mirrors the increasing pulse inside my chest, my throat turning dry like a desert as I keep my normal human size. My entire body goes into this mode of panic.
The point of collapse is near. I am a complete mess. Everything and everybody is just going against me while I'm just...me. I drop to my knees and my bow...well, I've dropped that one some time ago without even noticing. My first instinct is covering my ears. The voices...they are returning from the back of my head, in the shape of the clone that I encountered earlier in the Games:
"You're not good enough, Shadow. How are you going to win when no sponsor would be stupid enough to sponsor you? How are you going to get by without any allies? And let us not forget, how are you going to win while hiding in the shadows? You're a coward. You are and you always have been. Bow and arrow? That's not a Career's weapon, it's a coward's weapon!
What? Did you think I was only in the back of your head? Who do you think is actually telling you this? As far as my knowledge go, I'm just a reflection of you..."
My body will not stop shaking. That voice, I can see her in my head, the clone...but she proves a point. That clone was a clone of me and there are no such thing such as foreign voices in my head, they're all mine. All this time, I've been fighting myself. Hiding in the shadows won't take me away from the voices...from the real enemy which is me. How can I fight an enemy that I cannot physically see?
Everything around me, the tributes and the walls, they just keep on growing while I still remain the same, turning to this minion in the middle of all this. I keep shaking. I can't take this no more. This is all too much. At least in their regular sizes, they don't seem that impossible to handle.
"Just stop...stop, I can't fight this. I'm not that strong..." I let out to myself as the arrowhead on my necklace suddenly hangs loose and completely catches my attention. The way it just sways back and forth as I keep my eyes on it before I take off my necklace. My hand is shaking, fragile even, but the arrowhead keeps shining as if nothing's ever touched it before. It almost feels like it's telling me to stand straight.
"Just because you prefer things from a distance, doesn't make you weak. It takes strength and intellect to know your physical limitations. There aren't many people that can say they do, least of all in this district and District 1. That is why, if you get reaped, you will win. You don't have to say much to know what needs to be done to survive, because that's what you have been doing up till now. Even if you come down to only having your own bare hands...you can use them in your own way."
Sometimes all I have is myself. The words come back to me as I look at this arrowhead which many people just think is an unimportant object...to me, it's so much more. It's a token of who I am, of what I know. The Master Instructor in Archery gave this to me, because even when I didn't think so, he knew how to get to me. Every lesson he gave me, was somehow just embedded into this token that I carry around my neck every day.
"Stars are only visible in darkness
Fear is ever-changing and evolving
And I, I feel poisoned inside
And I, I feel so alive"
Creating a distance, coping with things one at the time has always been my strategy, my way of surviving. That has been my way of battling through challenges all my life. People don't get close to me, I don't say much and Panem learned that from my interviews, not even my allies heard me say a single word...and yet, the environment never fails to read my body language.
After a while, I clench my fist around the arrowhead. I try to get it together by wiping off the tears from my cheeks and rise to my feet. 'Sometimes all I have is myself'...right now, all I have is my voice. The voice that nobody has ever heard before, least of all in the volume that I turn to when I scream. My chest is burning and I still keep going. My throat is turning soar, but I still keep going until I am all out of emotions, all out of helplessness.
"Nobody can save me now, the king is crowned
It's do or die
Nobody can save me now, the only sound is the battle cry
Is the battle cry, is the battle cry
Nobody can save me now, it's do or die"
Everything around me starts to shrink, the louder my voice, the faster they shrink. Once I stop, I have to catch my breath. I have never turned to this 'weapon' before. I manage to grab my bow and the arrow that I dropped only a few minutes ago. The tributes in grey disappear as I turn towards the ones that are left. They are tightening their grips on their weapons. I place my arrow on the string and pull it back.
My chest is still going rapidly up and down. That is usually the case when I have been running and running, but this time, it's for a whole different reason. For once it's about a cry for battle, a cry to point out that I am ready and that I am done being afraid of what might or might not be. It's about making a point:
"I was homeless at three and brought up in a shelter, but I was accepted at the Career Academy at 10...I have survived without any family or friend in my life since I was three. Why am I telling you that? Because if you think that it makes me even the slightest bit weaker than the rest of you, you are dead wrong. I would not be alive if that was the case..."
I pull the arrow back, close my eyes and take that deep breath like the Master Instructor of Archery taught me. "Become the arrow, just breathe...and let it fly." The moment I open my eyes however, everything is back to normal. As in there is not a single soul in front of me. I saw them so clearly a second ago, but now they're gone. I look around me and there's not a single sign of anybody having been here in the last couple of minutes.
The gas...of course, it was a trick. Now the entire nation has heard everything that I have held back for the entire Games. For some reason, it doesn't scare me. If one thing, it makes me relieved that the entire nation knows my story...my true story as a survivor of life, not a life of training. I will not give up. I'm not going to give that satisfaction to my enemies and my insecurity.
I locate one of the cameras against the wall, heavily zoomed in on me. A weak smile actually penetrates my usual façade as I aim my arrow at it. I look dead into it because I know there are people on the other side, one particular person, who is watching me. I want that person to hear this...
"That...was my battle cry."