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surya-mirga · 3 years ago

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one for the victor

Wars have been fought for princesses, but not this time. Not for you.

Because you do not wear the dainty crown of a girl born into royalty.

Your crown has always been adorned in the rhinestones you stained with blood and called rubies.

They come for you at midnight.

Surya was uneasy after the 126th Hunger Games drew to a close. She found herself falling asleep too easily, and with little desire to attend the event she was invited to. It was peak party season in the Capitol, but she excused herself with an uncharacteristic quietness on a train back to Eight. It was just her, several suitcases, and several bottles of wine.

In Eight she slept with only her tarot cards. She tended to her garden, and researched the best flowers for the climate for the coming fall. She tried her hand at new makeup techniques she wouldn’t dare to try if she were to go out in public in the Capitol. It would look too messy at her own hand. But on a trip to the square in Eight, she was still the most adorned, most beautiful woman in sight.

She had sponsors who owned factories come to dine and stay for just one night. She had the mayor over for dinner a few times. But she was finding that company wasn’t as constantly appealing as it used to be. She did not rise with the sun, and she completely forgot to wear makeup the last two times she went to the square.

She’d found some bursts of motivation and joy in decorating her home, the one granted to her for her efforts in the arena. What a dark arena it was. It felt like she was back there sometimes, even in the middle of the day. It had to be that the dark skies were chasing her somehow. She fell asleep during the day when she was not really tired, but there seemed to be little else to do. It never stopped her from noting that it was certainly time to go to bed.

The mayor’s wife dared to say she looked tired at their last dinner. Surya smiled, and ignored the way it felt like the skin under her eyes folded in on itself under the weight of the criticism, the reality of her tiredness. She pointed to a new wrought iron wine rack in the dining room. She asked the mayor’s wife if she wanted another bottle of wine, or if she wanted instead to touch the newly hung, curled up whip on the wall.

“Is that...?”

“Yes.”

It was not. Surya didn’t think she’d ever get her hands on the whip she’d used in her arena. If anything, it deserved to go to the Fitch family to burn and curse her. Maybe that was what had happened. Maybe there was something wrong with her energy not because of her own doing, but because someone else had figured out a way to manipulate it. Maybe it was an enemy. That made it so much more complicated. Staring at the whip after the mayor’s family left, she found her list of enemies was alarmingly long.

She grabbed a bottle from the wine rack, and poured it out to the top of her glass. She didn’t have the energy to remove her makeup, but she managed to change into her nightgown only because it was so hot. She emptied the glass and left it on her vanity, but took the bottle with her to bed.

The first thing she tasted when she woke up was the sticky, sweet aftertaste of red wine. Then dirt, and skin. A hand clamped over her mouth and nose, turning her from groggy to alert in a blink. She could hear crashing downstairs, could hear heaving breathing as the weight of a body knelt over her, but she couldn’t see anything yet. It was still too dark. She started to struggle, but the attacker above was stronger, or maybe just more prepared. She felt something cold on her neck and immediately froze. Her body twitched as something cold and sharp was dragged across the skin. It hurt enough to bring tears to her eyes, and she could feel the blood start to drip, but it was a flesh wound. It would not kill her.

Amateurs.

She curled her lips against the attacker’s hand before they could realize their mistake in the dark, and sank her teeth into their finger until every lingering taste in her mouth was replaced with blood. The attacker quickly pushed off her. She heard something fall in the dark. Not the knife. The bottle. The bottle of wine. She placed one hand to her neck to add pressure and reached around until her hands found the bottom of the bottle. She could hear the other person scrambling in the dark, too, and someone was heading up the stairs.

Her eyes were adjusting. She used both hands to hold the bottle by the neck and smash it over the first assailant’s head. The bottle slipped from her hand soon after, but not before a piece of it lodged in her palm. She tore the glass out, grunting against pain. She held the little bit of glass out as the person came at her again, aiming for their stomach until the moonlight through the window showed her a better option. Their eyes were actually a beautiful blue, made only more appealing in the shine of the moon. She lifted her hand and stabbed the broken piece of glass in his right eye. It was not enough to stop him, and she was still tackled.

He hadn’t stabbed her. The knife was somewhere in here. She hadn’t heard it, so it must’ve hit the carpet.

She pushed both forearms up to try to keep the man away. She hacked up some phlegm and saliva to mix with the blood still in her mouth, then spit at him. He spit right back, sending blood from his eye all over her face. Surya snapped her teeth repeatedly and crunched up to sink her teeth into the man’s shoulder this time. The shock was what she needed, not the damage. He rolled off, and she quickly turned over. The other set of footsteps were in the hallway now. She crawled around on the carpet, hands moving rapidly back and forth until she felt the knife underneath her. The blade was still slippery where there were droplets of her own blood on the end. The handle was still warm from the man’s grip.

There was a new shadow in the room now. Her eyes were adjusted enough to see them better, to see that there was something different about this attacker. They were smaller, but the weapon in their hand was blockier. A gun! A gun! A gun!

Surya grabbed the wine glass from the vanity and threw it at the new intruder’s face. She followed it, diving low at them. There was the distinct sound of a gunshot, then another. Surya froze, breathing hard with palms and knees digging into the woman on the ground now. She waited for the pain to set in. Nothing. She’d missed. There was a sudden crash as her vanity mirror toppled over, and she could see only feathers remained of the pillow where she’d been resting her head. What ugly, ugly weapons.

She stabbed the knife through the woman’s wrist first, and she released the gun with a sickening spasm. She managed to release it and get the knife through the woman’s throat before the man shoved Surya off. Her back and legs were aching, her neck was throbbing under the cut, but she could still move. She still could see where she was going. Twisting herself free from his weakened grasp, Surya took off. She raced down the stairs, slipping on the last few steps. She ended up curled up on the rug at the bottom, gasping for air. She didn’t want to move. She wanted to stay there, to go back to sleep, to wake up and suffer with the stiffness and the pain in the morning. But there was movement at the top of the stairs, and through strands of sweat-dampened hair clinging to her face, she saw that her fight was not over.

On hands and knees, Surya crawled into her kitchen. She used the handle of the fridge to pull herself up and opened up several draws until she realized what she was looking for - the knives - were right in front of her in a block on the counter. There was blood and sweat all over her hands, but she managed to use both to get a grip on the largest knife at the back of the block. She held it out in front of her as the man entered her kitchen. He took a few steps closer, but paused when the knife glinted off a patio light that was left on. They started to circle each other, and Surya’s hands began to ache from her tight grip on the knife. Her hand was bleeding even more now from the pressure of her tensed muscles. Her ankle had twisted on the fall down the stairs, and each small step she took was met with an involuntary twitch and bend of her knee.

Just when she thought she might be stuck in this purgatory forever, the man lunged at her. One eye was totally gone, and his balance was off. He came at her side instead. She did not dare close her eyes as she brought the knife down on his neck. She was knocked back by the force, sending bottles of wine slipping off the new rack to crash around her. A painting and her whip fell off the wall. The moon provided her enough light to see the blood pooling around the man’s head on the floor next to her. It reached her hands resting next to her, but she did not move them. She needed a moment of stillness, just a moment.

Slowly, she moved onto all fours again. She wiped her hands on the carpet, and flinched as her fresh wound was dragged over more broken glass. She used one of her dining room chairs to lift herself up. The only sound in the house now, after all the chaos, were her bare feet and her breathing. She walked to her front door that was wide open, with a busted doorknob. There was no safety in staying there.

Surya returned to her dining room to retrieve her whip. Limping, breathing harshly, with a torn up nightgown, and covered in blood from her lips down, she walked out of the Village. She followed the now familiar path that brought her to the square, where it’d been increasingly more dangerous to visit. Her journey took three times as long as it normally did. By the first hints of dawn, she made it. Outside the Justice Building was a defense line of Peacekeepers and soldiers she’d come to learn were from District Thirteen.

She did not ask for help. When soldiers approached with questions about her injuries, she waved them off. They cautioned her to stay back, but she had nowhere further to go. There was a space in the line of defenders, and she positioned herself there, unfurling the whip at her side.

It did not matter what her crown was made of.

No one took it from her.

#th:self #self-para #para #126 #126 at home #one for the victor #tw:blood #tw:violence #tw:death #tw:eye trauma

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