The bruise on Mia Circuit's neck ceases to fade.
Purplish-blue contusions scatter across the Victors face, swirling from the bottom of her chin down to the top of her collarbones. The swell of her neck is prominent, showing the damage that has been done. Her voice is slowly returning back to normal, the rasp deteriorating the more her vocal cords rest.
The stylists leave the ugly bruise as it is on purpose. They leave it to show what Roma's hands could do. They leave it to show the monster she really is, and the crowd gets to see it live. The crowd is allowed to hate Roma more and more.
Roma has her own clump of bruises, but they've decided to cover them up. She doesn't deserve pity as Mia does. She doesn't deserve any of this attention. She doesn't deserve the other half of the Victors crown.
"I'll always have a heart for District Twelve..."
Mia was performing her well-prepared speech, taking her time as the audience beams at the true survivor. District Twelve was never known for smiling at the Victors, but Roma spots a few grins amongst the crowd, and the unsettling feeling in her stomach hits her again.
She clenches her fists tightly until her nails dig into the palm of her hand, but she barely notices. The only thing she is really aware of is the sound of her heart throbbing against the cage of her chest. It's not until she looks into the trans, that she's aware she's been biting her lip so badly it's bleeding. A few stares turn to Roma and murmurs arise, staring at the blood running down her lip. Roma quick wipes it off, leaving the blood to dry on her fingers.
Kade lived here.
While his voice is gone, she still thinks of him. She almost misses his voice in her head, and Anika's, and Grainne's, but they are all truly gone. They vanished after Roma's hands wrapped around Mia's throat, but she knows she didn't do her duty. She knows she's failed all the dead.
"Kade seemed like a wonderful young man..."
"He was actually twenty-three."
The crowd falls silent at Roma's words, even more silent than the quietness they've been giving Mia.
Roma clears her throat and looks at Mia. "Kade was twenty-three, and you're only twenty-two. So, he's older than you-not a young man in your eyes."
Mia scolds back at her. She hasn't spoken to her since the end of the Games before Roma tried to kill her. The entire crowd mumbles to one another, nudging shoulders and holding glares. It was not Roma's turn to speak, nor did the crowd want her to speak anyways.
Roma shifts her weight onto her right leg, the paper in her hand crumbling with her sweat. People always told her she'd feel better if she put her feelings on paper, so she did. But she always knew deep down inside, neither the ink in her pen or the stencil in her pencil are strong enough to handle the words she wants to write.
The paper was there for guidance. The paper was there for Roma to fiddle with, but there was no way Roma could express her thoughts through the paper only. There was so much to say about Kade- but would she say it? Would his District allow her to say it?
"Thank you for your understanding of the need for survival. I wish your District well."
Mia folds her paper neatly in half as few people clap. Heads turn and eyes narrow towards Roma. Behind them, the sun begins to set. The sun peeks through a hazy screen of clouds, painting the sky an elaborate mix of bloodied reds and vibrant oranges, intertwined with the smoky greys that permeated this skyward canvas.
Roma takes a breath as the crowd waits impatiently, not letting Roma receive the honor a Victor should hold.
"I think I was better off dead."
This wasn't on her paper; she hasn't even unfolded it yet. The crowd tilts their heads, wanting to be angry but maybe, maybe, having to force it.
"In my first Games, I had an ally named Anika Diaspura."
They don't care. They don't care. They don't care.
"I considered us friends."
As her word spill, she feels Anika standing next to her. Her presence is back. She feels, she hears,everything about Anika.
"Friend come to me with an open heart; come with feet that bleed. Friend come with a mind nor in future or past; come nestle your soul in the now. Friend come neither asking nor giving; come and let us be. Friend trust that I will be your safe harbor; come to one who sees. You were my friend Roma. But we were allies too."
"But we were allies too. And in the Arena, everyone is trying to survive."
Roma can feel Anika's hand on her shoulder. "If your guilt tears at your heart, rips at your insides, you are already forgiven. You've forgiven me. What makes you think Kade won't forgive you? Come sit and belong."
"Anika killed me in my sleep. And I have the chance to come to life again and forgive her."
"They're not going to believe that," Anika says, "explain more. Tell them."
"Grainne was my ally. I believed we were friends. She was the one who chose to save Kade Ruan."
"They're listening. Go on."
"I pushed Grainne to her death. Some say it was persuasion, some say it was by choice. I don't believe either of them. I was convinced that it was for the better. Convinced by Anika."
She sees Mia's eye-roll from her peripheral vision, but she goes on anyhow.
"It was just Kade and me then. It was Kade and me for a while. He was hard to read. He was hard to understand where he came from."
He came from here. The slums of District Twelve, or maybe the high class here- she didn't know.
"We-"
"We were lost children. We wanted to be found. So we decided to play hide and seek." Anika speaks.
"We were just lost kids," Roma copies Anika's words. "We just wanted to go home. Kade said the devil had a hold of him. I didn't know what that meant, but I tried to relate to it with my own life."
"Keep doing him justice."
"He no longer feared death, only where would he go. He said he had sinned so much; he would understand if the Lord sent him to the pits of hell for the things he had done, or so he told him. Or would God forgive him because he knows his heart, knows he was just another innocent soul that allows himself to be persuaded by wrong things?"
Roma can't tell what the audience thinks. They stand there, resting their gazes on her as she speaks nonsense words.
"I-I think I miss him."
The responses are a mixture of emotions. Fake smiles. Real pity. Pure hatred. Roma opens her crumpled paper and clears her throat.
"I wrote what I was feeling about him. I think it's a poem, but it's just- something I thought I could say."
The sun was escaping. The sunset threatening to dip behind the horizon, firstly cascading a prim bombardment of colors that were flung over the sky with terrible alacrity. The receding blue and oranges battled the blackness pushing it away with arms. It shone on the lake below shining its deep depths. The radiant glow scintillated and beamed: the legacy of the sun. The sun omniscient omnipotent left hanging in the crisp air it floated downwards like a deflated balloon.
"You're still ten feet under, resting peacefully but I-I am not. Sometimes I look up at the sky at night and pretend your light never died. You're still shining brightly as ever but I-I feel my breath dissever. Sometimes I run to your resting place and cry my tears upon the ground. Hoping they will water the grass that grows around. But-but instead they kill it with their pain. I've whispered a thousand words; cried a million tears. Oh my, friend, I-I just want you to know- I think I miss you so."
Silence. A silence that screams with her sins. It is unnatural, void, refusing to be filled to prolong her suffering. She had made her big declaration of appreciation for Kade, the grand speech she had been rehearsing in her mind and now the silence lay on her skin like a poison. It seeped into her blood and paralyzed her brain, her pupils became dilated and there was a tremor in her hands. The crowd did not react.
She refuses to look away from the unforgiving crowd, even as her lips tremble and her shoulders heave with emotion, unwilling to back down. Her dark lashes brim heavy with tears; her hands clench into shaking fists, in a desperate battle against the grief. A lone tear traces down her cheek, and just like that, the floodgates opened. She wept, tears streaming from her deep green eyes, loud, heaving sobs tearing from her throat, and still, she did not look away. Not until the sobs drive Roma to her knees did her determined gaze fall.
When Kade's passing hits her again, she cries with more violence than anyone. Not to have him right there was a form of torture to her soul. She didn't break quietly, it was like every atom of her being screamed in unison, traumatized that she should exist without him. When the wracking sobs passed she cried in such a desolate way that no-one could bear to listen for long. She had gone from gregarious to hanging by a thread, a transformation no-one knew how to reverse.
The crowd shifted from foot to foot, uncomfortable. Anika sighs.
"Roma. Stand up."
"I can't," Roma replies to Anika, but she isn't truly there. It's only her and the people who hate her most. Anika was only a memory. So was Grainne. And Kade...
"You look weak. Stand up and finish. You failed me once- don't do it to me twice."
Roma shakes her head, releases the lasting tears packed in her eyes. She stands up, letting her paper fall and flow away in the slight wind. She doesn't bother to grab it.
"I think I am better off dead. I know it now."
Why isn't Kade here? Why was Anika back? None of it makes sense. When Roma choked Mia, the voices disappeared. Anika was back now; she didn't finish her duty. She didn't do what Anika wanted her to do. What does Kade want?
"You are better off that way. We already know that."
Everyone's gaze turns to Mia. She speaks with confidence, reassuring the crowd with her bold words.
"You tried to kill me after we were announced, Victors. You tried to kill me. You wanted to." Mia sneers.
If the shouts were visible they'd be reaching over the air, strangling the life from Roma. As the words got more bitter it would be possible to see why she gasped for breath. The crowd rose from their slumber, yelling and screaming for the death of Roma Thorne.
"I have a family to raise, and she tried to kill me!"
Roma stands to watch the line where heaven touches the earth. Her wide eyes witness the resounding glowing collision. Sparks light the sky and blood pour, as the glory of paradise, descends further behind the seam of the world. Roma feels small as she glances over her shoulder and sees her shadow slowly shrinking towards her feet. She looks back to the line, only a few bright streaks remaining to signal heaven's passing. The sun has set. It is time to submerge herself into the darkness.
Blackness came in her mind with such completeness it obliterated the memory of the day that had just been. With the thick cloud above no relief came from either the moon or stars. It was the kind of blackness that could throw a mind into free-fall if only one more sense were to be removed. It's where Kade and Roma belong.
"Kade Ruan was my ally. He was destined to die. He was my good friend. He was to be only for my sacrifice. He was the devil that kept me safe."
A voice rings through the speakers before any more damage can be done. "A round of applause for your Victors: Mia Circuit and Roma Thorne!"
There is no applause. There is anger. There is rebellion. There is death tugging on their sleeves.
Before anyone can react, Mia is jumping on Roma, throwing a thrustful punch at Roma's jawline. Some of the crowd cheers. Some continue to shout. Some leave.
Roma pushes Mia off with a couple of fingers to her bruised neck, and Mia cries out as she falls back, attempting to stand up before Roma can pounce. But Roma has Anika by her side.
It's two against one, you idiot. And Roma hurdlers over to kill the Victor again.
She's tugged back by peacekeepers before any true damage can be done. Mia begins to cry and Roma begins to scream.
She is broken now, shattered really, robbed early of the glue necessary to put her soul back together. Her heart, poorly stapled shut, is beating hard but without purpose, her skin stretching across her aching muscles like a worn canvas. She is desperate. Desperate for a memory, good, warm, welcoming, one she could smile too. It's difficult to remember her smile, soft but contagious, it stains her lips like blood, the same blood she could taste as she bit her tongue hard to keep from screaming. But no one had seen her smile. Nobody could put Roma back together except for the dead.
I need the one who killed me. I need the ones I killed. Roma begs, practically on her knees, as she cries for Anika and Grainne and Kade and all the other voices to come back to her.
The peacekeepers drag Roma inside, dropping her onto the cement. They wait for Roma to recoil- to stand up and fight back, but she stays perfectly still. A smile plasters her face as Anika backs away to give room.
She feels his presence, and Roma gasps as she feels his strong, calloused hand grip her shoulder.
"You're mind is twisted, Thorne." Kade scoffs, a hinge of tease to his soft tone.
And the echoes of past voices return.