Creatures of habit were often preyed upon by the cold, moist chill of death. It came as a whiff of decaying paint and ripe fertilizer that cut through the air with ethereal movements. No hoes, no scythes, nothing to harvest or sow. The farm had gone and the farmers had left to spend the little money they earned on cheap brandy and cheaper woman. The chill of death wound through the world and yet life was never that simple. It was a shitpit of death and Sepia wanted to taste it all.

Brown eyes opened to a brown room of death. Each drip of water came and soaked the ground as crystalites of rain splattered the rocks below. A floor of wood welcomed it as it came out, wet and cold against the sole body there. Ungraceful she sat, not believing in life but pleading for the whisper of death that would overtake her.

The chair underneath her scratched at her body with painful splinters. Sepia. Tied to a chair. If only she had the will to laugh at her stupidity. Will had left her with the inability to see and trapped in the place she'd hoped to find solace in. Sepia had wanted water and it dripped inches from her restrained body.

Wheezing, she tried to ignore the stitch in her throat that crawled upwards like a jumping wolf spider. This is the drink of failure. Failure tasted like powdered shit. Fukshnutam herself couldn't fix what Sepia had broken. Nothing could.

Grass grew from the walls--equal in the green of life and the candied yellow of sudden doom. Despair had struck, leaving them unable to fix anything. The chill swept through and summoned within it the deepest levels of hell and every demon that came with it. She could have spent every second of the next year just watching the dead and yet to die mix, each strand showing new growth despite the infestation of moss that threatened to takeover all.

Instead, she swept her eyes away to the lights that danced across the corner of the room. Though little could be seen, the possibilities of death were endless. Before, Sepia had been certain she'd never decline a chance at life. Now, she just wasn't certain of anything.

What's life, Sepia asked herself. It wasn't a question she could answer. The strong girl from before had broken and all it took was hands. Had she not been in her state, Sepia would've laughed at it. She'd say, "Hands? Ha! Like hands could hurt anyone. That's weak. What a cockywuss."

But this simply wasn't her. It didn't take a genius, or even Adam Markaine, to figure out things had changed. Hands had stole her life--the same hands that once lived and fought for their lives. Everyone killed for themselves and no one else, for what was selflessness? The arena was a game that no one could win. A crown just showed who was ahead.

The sun didn't shine upon those unworthy and it was amazing it went anywhere. Sepia couldn't breathe. Each breath was drinking in pure whisky and it burnt her throat, scorching all remains of her until there was nothing left. Burnt air destroyed her until nothing was left. The dead had become her and she the dead. All that existed was no more, collapsing into a day with more sun than life.

In the dead, in the midst of damp deadness and a soul that had given up, was sound emancipating from the distance. Tunnels collapsed into tunnels and Sepia didn't have the strength to explore and find the noise. If it killed her she would die and that was all. She'd taken hit after hit without struggle and then...it was all gone. Strength sapped. Soul drained. Surrender of herself was the only thing separating her from death.

Again came the noise.

It was a pinprick of loud in a haystack of silence. It was a footstep in a hollow hallway. It was arrogance in the arena.

A girl.

The footsteps were definitely female--something in their cocky swag held something that Sepia knew well. Sepia left her eyes on the moist grass with their barest bit of light that streamed from where the ground had almost entirely opened. Hands had come and hands had left but that's all they were. Hands. Hands destroyed me, she thought. Even her thoughts were quiet, subdued...lost.

Loudness held a vacancy that only silence could fill. It ate away at the soul until only the body was left alive to scream at the living. Like rocks filling the void they laughed at what was left.

Metaphor gave birth to sound that mimicked it. Laughter.

Sepia heard her voice before a word was even spoken. Brash. Cold. Undeniable. The girl was a winner. A ghost of arena future.

"Pathetic is such a humane condition," she said. Her voice was almost posh. Sepia despised every word that left her lips and she had yet to even see the woman. "Pathetic is giving in to the destructive nature of failure. Oh, how the strong break so heavily. God, I've been waiting. Waiting and waiting and now it's all mine. This arena is mine. This victory is mine. And you...you're nothing."

I'm still here, Sepia thought. Weak thoughts faded back into the mist of mind they'd come from. She wasn't there.

"Why are you here?" Sepia asked, her voice failing to reach its normal strength.

Another laugh. Shorter. Brasher. Ready for the kill, she went in with words of iron against a rusted will. "I'm here to give you someone to talk to," she said, taking steps in the darkness. Her outline was a silhouette against the blackness of dark and she stepped out in glory. Black boots kissed her ankles, leading up a tall figure in a red cloak. "I'm here as an ambassador for death."

No questions came from the one with blood and mud coating her outfit. Sepia didn't even have her knife anymore. Ugliness was a condition of mind and she'd become it. The hottest girl in the arena, reduced to nothing, simply looked up at the red stained beauty whose face melted in with shadows from a perfect cloak.

"There's only a few questions I have, then I'll leave you to it. Are you ready?" Her niceness, contrasting with the petty sounding voice, made Sepia want to puke.

No answer made for better silence and so none was given. The cold, frog fucker would have to suffer that and Sepia knew she was the one cogswallowing her own shit. Shackled, bound. Constricted by chains and a red hooded questioner.

"Not talking? Oh, that's fine. You'll speak up soon enough. Everyone does."

Crackles sizzled through the air, snapping her bones like electricity. "You know, those idiots in Panem never ask the real questions," she said, her voice musing as she paced back and forth. Dark played tricks on Sepia and she could've sworn that magic had become dark and swamped her with darkness. "Why should you win? What makes you special? What's your sad, heartbroken story? Ha!"

Sepia winced as a whip came mere inches from her face. What, did she steal from Quionna? The quips came and went like the wind. Thoughts and personality circled but Sepia couldn't tell what was real. On her body she could still feel their hands gripping her sides and tugging down her spine. Screams echoed in the distant realms of her mind. Promises of pain did little to scare her. Rock broke inch by inch and despite herself becoming lost sediment she was still solid and whole.

"Why are you a loner?"

With no answer came another whip, this one across her thighs. It struck bruised skin and red welts grew from it. Pain and stars went hand in hand. Sepia ignored all.

"What are you hiding?"

Still no answer. Teeth gritted, breath stilled, Sepia looked up at her with stoic indifference. A torturer could do little that hadn't been done to her before. On her back was the thin remains of pale scats leftover from the years past. Peacekeepers had broken her once before and yet this weak, scrawny red woman still attempted. It was cute in a desperate way and Sepia gave her two points for caring and half a flying fuck.

"What are you hiding?"

Another hit. Heat crawled up her skin and dug into the flesh with putrid love. Grunts escaped in a gasp but no words would accompany it.

"What are you hiding?!"

This one struck across her check and Sepia spat fury at the world and screamed. Words hit the window as sound became light and her world burst into color. Screams of agony and construction became lies that trapped her anger and turned it into a word, solitary in it's strength. Nothing, the word was.

Her reality was rapid chaos that danced upon the stars. Sepia, always one for the real, couldn't tell what was and was not. She hid nothing. Secrets were secrets. Thoughts were thoughts. What could make the two the same?

Red did not agree.

"Tell me!" Her voice rose in shrillity as she dropped the whip and straddled Sepia's lap. Hands once again gripped her--going straight for the throat, crushing down as gasps left her mouth. "What makes you so afraid of others?" The light from above showed shadows on her face that dripped in evil and a sneer of rude. "Tell me, you peacekeeper whore!"

It was a slap and a scoff.

Words.

All it ever took was words to destroy even the strongest nations. Sepia was a mass of strength, beauty, words and determination and yet a sentence could tear it all to parts that couldn't connect. Puzzle pieces that whispered confusion and terror, like vultures that crept among the flowers to the beautiful dying.

"Peacekeeper whore."

"A little piece of trash."

That was mama, that was Sepia, that was every girl in District Eleven. All became peacekeeper girls when food ran short and rationed shorter. Men got away with it but never them. Agony at night became laughter in the morning, torture that toughened those who didn't cry themselves to sleep. Tears were for the weak. Sepia had told herself that a thousand times and yet it never seemed to stick.

"Sepia joined the ranks last night."

It was a lie.

"God, I'd pay for that."

"Bag up, she's peacekeeper trash now."

They were lying.

Sepia gritted her teething said nothing, furiously picking the fruit of the ground. No one was untouched. It became all as their words continued. Her skin still leaped as the peacekeepers watched over, their presence looming and overcoming. Every second was another game to them as they eyed her, knowing that she couldn't fight back.

"Own up," Red threatened. Nails dug in deeper and brown flesh became white as blood swelled just below the surface, unable to move. Lungs stopped working. Ice stretched through her and melted her bones. It was the flesh of monsters inside her. Hands, crawling over her, touching her, going inside. Places that before had been sacred broken, touched, allowed the torture of it.

"Sepia's quiet, guess she's still working through it."

"Always hardest the first time."

It was all a lie.

A lie.

Sepia closed her eyes.

Eyed opened. Rust clogged her veins as she gasped. I'm weak. Unable to think, to breathe, she gripped up and couldn't move her fingers. I'm dying. Laughter was bright yellow as the light flooded in and Red's grip fell soft. I'm alive. Air, sweet air, was a relief and a torture. Or am I?

"Can't even admit it? Look at you, not even giving any fucks. Little miss no secrets. Oh, what a fucking liar. Okay, one more question for my lovely bitch."

Silence and loudness came hand in hand into her ears. 

"What did it take to break a strong little girl like you? Just hands, or did something make you realize how pathetically human you are?"

With a snap, Red threw a punch at Sepia. As blood pooled inside her mouth there was no returning. A cord had been struck and lightning flashed inside her mind. Pain, that awful yet wonderful feeling, awoke the part of her previously lost.

The past is the past. I broke then, but I am not broken now. As she thought a laugh escaped her and she spit into Red's face. "Fucking bitch," she said, "if you think I'm broken you lost a cord down there in that swamp you call a cunt."

Chains hurt. Every inch of her throbbed and yet, with a rejuvenated energy Sepia swung herself up and turned--grinning through the blood as the chair hit Red and broke. With every splintering crack of wood Sepia's pain lessened until she felt nothing but electric energy coursing through her. A bubble of work started and she rode it out, wiggling out of the chains as Red cursed and snapped off the second half of chair. She bent to reach a hammer and Sepia kicked up, her foot round kicking the woman in the face.

As her hood fell so did she. Cries of pain escaped her and Sepia laughed.

"Baby! You think a little pain can hurt me? I'm unstoppable, you wimpy Panem scum." She knelt down, defying the pain she felt for the ability to gloat. I'm too good. It almost felt easy. One second she was down, the next up again. Her mood shifted, yet it didn't feel half as sudden as it was. A buildup grew within her each second, that cocky attitude growing as she realized no one was going to beat her.

Death did not scare her anymore.

I've got nothing to lose, so why give up? Her thoughts collided into one another, an abundance of motion. Seconds were hours as she grabbed Red by the hands, smirking with confidence. "You think you'll win, but you aren't anything. I've faced worse than you. Hope you like it down in the flames."

Red spat up and swung her hips upwards until her bony side hit Sepia and forced the stronger girl up. With her momentary distraction, she grabbed the hammer and swung. Blinding. Fuck. Fuck! Light and dark gave way to metal as Sepia crashed into a pipe behind her--snapping it open and piercing her side in it. Water and blood mixed like tequila, burning the atmosphere and her body. Screaming, she kicked out blindly, missing all. In the chaos Red ran out, her body swaying back and forth until she'd opened the door and ran out.

Sunlight streamed in, shedding literal light upon the situation as Sepia pulled herself out. Blood fell but she ignored it. It was momentary and there was better things to do. Beside her, clear water gushed out. She bent down, biting her tongue not to cry, and drank until all the rough inside her throat had drowned.

Red had escaped. Her footsteps were bloody, wet, but clear. As Sepia knelt by the busted pipe a smile grazed her face. It was fast, sharp, like a rock skidding across a pond, and as it settled in she could feel herself loosening up.

For a moment, Sepia had become weak.

She'd become like everyone else: Weak, slow, crybabies that couldn't do anything. But her pain wasn't some hidden trauma. Pain was water to the crops of life. It was blistering heat that made corn grow tall and strong. It was something to be feared and something to be adored. Walking the line between it was fine, but Sepia was finer.

I ain't falling again, she told herself. This is the fucking end. I going home. Ain't no breaking this beauty no more. No, no, suga pie, I am A O.K. God, did it feel good to chuckle. As she laughed, more water drizzled down her cheeks. It coated her body but she didn't give a shit. Cold was like pain as it slid down and she relished it.

Nothing was better than giving in to the destruction of pain. Sepia had felt it before and she'd feel it again. No one escaped it. Pity, that sickly sweet darling, could leave her be. She was a shitpit without a window and she was a fighter. Pain wouldn't stop her. It could only push her on, further into the day. Soon, the end would be upon her.

"I'm gonna win," she whispered. Her wrists rubbed sore with every movement but that was momentary. Past that was the cool, refreshing water that rushed down her throat. It was dirty. It was loose. It had been stepped upon and broken up, but so had she. And with every sip her strength improved.

"You were right about one thing," Sepia muttered, "I don't give a fuck anymore. I'll win and that's it. Death's a cocksucking product of life, so why would I be afraid?"