There was light. It was warm and it cast a glare out of the sky as birds began circling from above. They flew overhead and disappeared into the horizon as the last bars of sunlight moved across the floor inch by inch before shadows took their place. Time seemed to be frozen and every sound, every noise was amplified as if God himself had wanted this moment to be burned into his mind. His shoulders were tense, his hands loose and sweaty while the ax weighed him down to the point he thought it would crush his bones the longer he held onto it. There was a pain in his legs, a tenseness that threatened to have him bolt but he resisted the urge. He kept going. Kept following.
The girl was scared. He knew she was. The sound of her dragging her body across the road was an ugly one and if he listened closely enough, he thought he could hear her heart beating out of her chest. It was fast yet steady, beating in an urgent cadence that had him on edge. The longer he listened, the sooner he realized it was his own heart beating inside his head. American was nervous. Little quakes of anxiety had his hands shaking and his thoughts racing faster than he could keep up with. But this was part of the game and in this game, both of them were scared. The only rule was that the first one to flinch lost and he wasn't going to lose. No, this time he was the hunter, not the prey—the lion and not the lamb. And lions didn't flinch. They killed.
As Procellae Lunaweather let out a sharp grunt from heaving her body away from him, he quickly moved in on her. He was soon standing over her, his shadow blocking the sun from her eyes and she let out a startled scream. Her eyes were wide and panicked, the amber coloring filled with an electricity and static that stung him. His throat became tight and for a second he just stared. Blood was oozing from the wound on her head, dyeing the side of her cheek crimson red. There was a moment of unspoken communication and she was shaking her head, her lips quivering and her gaze darting from place to place before she found herself trapped by him yet again. He'd wanted to say something but his throat wasn't working and he couldn't think of what to say. Surrendering himself to silence, he lifted the ax and she flinched. For a split second, their eyes locked as the blade came down and they appeared to him brown, melted warm in the light like Aspen's—she wasn't there—and they were sad yet so full of rage. The Games had broken her like they did Aspen, but she wasn't there, and he killed her.
No, he'd done worse. He'd broken her and Aspen wasn't there.
She really wasn't.
A moment of silence and reality came crashing back like it always did. Everything hurt and his thoughts were cloudy and confused like white noise in his head that never ended. He'd been in and out of it for the past few hours, and each time he came awake, he really wished he hadn't. The pain in his abdomen was intense and the aching in his chest was even worse. There was a bitter taste in his mouth that was like drinking acid and it seared the back of his throat, making it difficult to swallow. His whole body was feeling the exhaustion, the pain, and he was certain his ally wasn't doing any better.
His arm was draped across Upton's shoulders, and a quick glance at him and he looked as though he would collapse at any second. Each step of his was uneven from American's weight leaning against him and American tried to walk on his own but he couldn't take more than a few steps without needing to stop from the pain that crashed through him whenever he tried. Upton had done his best to help but the stitching of the wound was sloppy, and the bleeding hadn't stopped long enough for him to properly clean it. He was going to die soon. He knew it but he wasn't sure if his angel of death did. Maybe deep down they both knew, just neither of them were saying anything about it because that was easiest. Easier to deny that he was now on borrowed time and if another tribute didn't kill him first, infection would. Death seemed inevitable but then American didn't think he minded. It was deserved, earned even. Death would be liberating and he was tired of thinking, tired of remembering, tired of hearing the same voice saying the same things in his head over and over. It played on like a broken record and it never stopped. Not once. It'd been like this the whole Games, only this time it was louder and harder to ignore. He knew he killed Aspen. Hadn't he? He'd killed Aspen with the ax by his own hand.
