Tirelessly walking, eyes a burden of bruised glass, Ashre left where he was sitting for a more comfortable place. Which, in hindsight, was anywhere, but the backstage of the show in which he was about to appear. He hadn't made contact with either Gazette or Thalia and, frankly, he didn't feel the need to. For once, the boy thought of himself and left to free himself of suffocating air, suffocating thoughts.
Leaving.
He was leaving.
When had Liliana fallen?
Was it before, or after, he was broken forever?
Was it before, or after, Keon's anthem played?
Ashre had to raise his hands to cover a blinding light, shielding his eyes, but also aiding them in depicting the nearing figure. His eyes were stained red as the blood that had been shed, no innocence within him to smile at the taller person.
"Come with me, Victor. You've won. It's over."
He tightened his grip on a small rock in his hand. Its grey surface reflected little light, causing the rocky edges to diminish to waves of murkiness. It almost looked painted. It was no perfect circle, but with the rough edges it had, perfect was an impossibility.
But where had the boy gotten the rock?
Beneath him, uncomfortably pricking, there was a rock. Above him, a sky of passing pictures. So many deaths occurred and with every one, Ashre questioned his existence a bit more.
Then, he saw Keon.
His mouth fell open, and for a moment there was disbelief. Following suit was a youthful rage; he wanted to throw weak punches and throw things across large rooms. He felt an urge to tear apart cameras in trees and fountains and building walls. Weakness came next. He felt his entire body collapse in favor of the wooded ground.
After, after, after...
After confusion, anger, and frailty, there was despair.
But even more so, there was a rock underneath him, stabbing his thigh, reminding him he could still feel. Reminding him he was still alive. There sure was an itching depression, but there was no sensation of numbness.
"Ashre Relicks, everybody!" From the hall he was in, Ashre heard Candice's voice announce him. He was supposed to be walking onto the stage at that exact moment, but his palms were shaky. His forehead was sweating and his eyes were threatening tears. He wasn't ready.
Then, with the pull of a guard and a cringing stature, the boy was thrown on, left to the audience like meat to a pack of wolves. Left to Candice like, well, a small boy to a woman who knows nothing about his pain.
"Sit down, Ashre. We have much to discuss," she said, motioning to the chair across from herself. He complied, with nothing else to do. The chair was soft against the parts of his skin that were showing. He refused to look her in the eyes. He remembered her all too clearly. Her manipulation.
"Starting with something we are all a little confused on," she began, pulling the audience in with her pronoun uses, "Lacey Anthis."
The name made Ashre's neck almost snap with an instantaneous movement. His glossed eyes followed Candice's hairline, but never met her eyes. The boy's heart leapt like a warm-up of mysterious and pained action.
"What about her?" Ashre asked the woman. Her face contorted in a wicked sense of surprise, and she almost gave in to the pang of guilt in her chest. Ashre was not the only one who remembered their private interview; she remembers it clearly. The vivid couple of minutes that Candice looks back on with spite. She would have never guessed the boy before her would survive the bloodshed of the Games.
