breathe;

millworker, ballerino, rebel.

[sashatoille]

2 edgy 4 u ▲ melee ▼ sasha & open

Sasha’s eye was immediately drawn not to clunky clubs or dirty survival stations, but to the clean and shining blades at the melee station. Now he stood, blank of face and blank of mind, facing a dummy with the same traits. Light from the window streamed in, casting reflections like stars off the edge of the sword he held in his hand, and he followed their dance with his eyes, head tilted slightly to one side as he tipped the weapon about to make the stars swing around.

“Are you gonna stare the other person to death? Hit them, will you?”

For a moment, he cast her a look like a teenager would when a parent embarrassed them in front of their friends, but then he looked back at the blade. It was so elegant. Far too beautiful for a bringer of death. From what little he had learned in school, Sasha had learned that some people gave names to their swords, in old, old times.

Its name is Dancer.

Unaware of his own unoriginality, Sasha let a ghost of a smile edge onto his lips. He held ‘Dancer’ loosely in his lazy grip, and shut his eyes. Then, raising himself up onto his toes, he performed a sort of pirouette, swinging the blade gracefully into the neck of the dummy.

Where it left a very slight indentation in the shoulder, before dropping from his grip with a most unelegant clash.

“Style over substance, kid,” the trainer said, a smirk playing in her voice. “Try again, and actually keep your eyes open this time. Even with twig arms, you should still be able to get more power behind the sword.”

“Mmm.” 

Disguising his annoyance with the woman as best he could - Mother always taught me to be polite - Sasha retrieved ‘Dancer’, and was about to move in for a second attack when he heard footsteps behind him and spun around once more, almost driving his sword into the neck of the other tribute instead of the dummy. No apology left his pressed-shut lips, though, and a moment of silence passed before he suddenly seemed to realise that it was expected of him to actually say something. When he finally spoke, his voice was a slow, soft mumble.

“Um... would you like to train here, or...?”

[sashatoille]

pda  ▲ train ▼ os

Sasha Toille has coughed his lungs up on live television and even he can see it’s not a good start.

The girl, the child, rushes away from him as soon as he boards the train, and he hasn’t got the willpower to rush after her. They will both be dead soon. It is no use pretending otherwise. She couldn’t lift a dagger and he can’t even breathe. District Eight sure got lucky this year.

He’s quietly impressed, as much as he ever is, by the extravagant elegance of the train. Chandeliers like icicles hang from the ceiling, the kind of beauty that, in the grey world of Eight, is only seen in picturebooks and on television.

Sasha saves up these glimpses of beauty, he had since he was little. A flower, a snowstorm, a ribbon blowing in the wind, he catalogs these images and saves them up for when the world is too dull, too dark, too monochrome.

It is real. Beauty is real. There is more to life than the paving slabs of an uninspired mind.

And now he is here, in the midst of it. Beauty feels as though it is a tangible thing. He rises onto the tips of his toes and raises an arm to try and touch the glass chandelier, before pausing.

 In the corner, his mentor and Escort stand, very close to one another. Carnation the picture of earnestness, Maximus an image of bittersweet submission.  Her small hands reach out and touch his neck gently and he shivers, eyes closed.

"Carnation I... I can't..." He seems as if he is about to resist, but her hand moves up to caress his face and he sighs, melting into her touch. "I... I can't breathe straight..."

"Um." Sasha says.

The pair whip around to where the small boy stands, staring blankly at them from behind huge glasses, standing forward on tiptoes as if he's trying to fly. Carnation Wells steps forward, trying to pretend nothing happened.

"Are you feeling better now, Sasha?”

Sasha is uncomfortable with public displays of affection. He has never once considered himself in love, or even close to it. Aesthetic beauty he appreciates. But love, to him, is just a bunch of people touching each other all over and pretending to understand the endless complexities of each other’s minds. They will never be one. There will always be secrets. Love, however pure in intent, always makes him feel dirty. And there is something explicitly wrong with this romance. Still, he offers his mentor a polite and thoroughly forced smile.

“Yes, thank you. Much better. Just... a little hungry.”

As he says it, he rests his limp hands on his concave stomach while it makes a noise of protest. It is a noise that he is used to ignoring, but the smell of food wafting through the train is too great for him to resist. Carnation, undeterred by his lack of openness, lets out a pleasant laugh and gestures for Maximus and Sasha to follow her into a room laden with more food than he has ever seen before. The tables seem to creak under the weight of it. Despite himself, he lets out a grin, a flash of teeth showing from behind normally pursed lips.

Carnation piles her plate high with bright fruits, in every colour of the rainbow, and seems to revel in their sweetness, catching stray droplets of juice elegantly with a pink catlike tongue. Maximus, as ever, overeats, and spends the rest of the meal sprawled in his chair fighting between his desire to sleep and his desire to watch his nymphlike lover. And Sasha, to both of their vague disappointment, eats a rather meager amount, sticking to familiar foods like breads and broths and meats. Both Mentor and Escort alike are unimpressed with their decidedly bland tribute, but they are too busy looking at each other to care, much.

Maximus reaches out lazily to brush a seed away from Carnation’s lips.

Sasha sits and waits for some kind of advice.

Carnation giggles sweetly and brushes Maximus’s lank hair away from his brow.

Sasha sits and wonders if they even got the memo that they’re supposed to be helping him.

Maximus catches Carnation’s hand and presses it to his lips.

Sasha sighs, rolls his eyes, and quietly quits the room, unsure if they even noticed his departure. On the way out, he picks up a small batch of prettily shaped cookies, and plays with the ribbon between his fingers. Then, when he passes the door of Edison, of the child, he places the bag on the floor just outside. Because despite it all, Sasha Toille is sickeningly sentimental at heart. And she is tiny. And she missed dinner. And she will be dead soon.

And then he goes into his room, and uses what space there is to dance until the train pulls up into the Capitol.

[sashatoille]

behold ▲ reaping ▼ os

His Reaping outfit is tailored hand-me-downs and borrowed bits and bobs and one or two possessions of his own.

Sasha surveys himself in the reflection cast in a puddle on the floor of the square with a vague interest. It feels odd for him to see his own body. Often he forgets he has a physical form, and that he’s not just an idea, a series of movements, a pale hand waving through the air and painful toes in pointe shoes.

There is a new Escort, a man, but Sasha doesn’t care about him. He just wants to get this all over and done with. His feet ache to dance, ache to get out of his heavy black work boots.

Two more years, just two more years, and it will be over and he will be safe.

The Escort, Maximus, seems unsure of himself. In a high voice he stumbles over his words, blushes, and starts again, all the while his eyes darting to where the mayor, mentor and other people sit. Eventually he manages to get the words out, but they’re still half-swallowed like pills.

“Um… ladies first…”

A trembling hand, decorated with an ornate wedding ring, dives into the glass bowl. There is silence, a communal intake of breath. Maximus unfolds the paper, clumsily, turns it the other way up.

“E-Ed… Edison Mills?

Sasha doesn’t recognise the name, so he doesn’t care. That is, until he sees her, and shock and even a little rage pierce his ragdoll form.

She cannot be older than thirteen. She is a child. Sasha feels young, second youngest (now middle) of the Toille pack, but the girl whose name has been called is barely older than Hattie. Hattie, the baby, who still giggles wildly at flashes of light on the walls and at tickling and at immature jokes.

This child is being sent away to the slaughter.

It feels wrong, wrong, wrong, but he has little time to think of it. The Escort shuffles to the male bowl. As he breathes in shakily, his hand hovers over the names. Sasha has been through this many times before, so he just zones out, as normal, gazing at the smoke as it dissolves into the air from the factory chimneys.

Sasha Toille.

“Hm?”

He looks down, looks down to see hundreds of pairs of eyes, all fixed on him. There are a few whispers, but mostly silence. Sasha is not popular. He is not at school, an average worker, and far from talkative. He is only known for his dancing, and it’s a novelty - nobody is that desperate to keep it.

“Oh.”

He walks slowly, silently, raised on the balls of his feet, movements feline as he makes his way through the crowd and up, up, to the podium. They’re careful steps, as though he is doing his best not to wake someone up. Perhaps it’s force of habit of living with siblings and sneaking out to dance - but he lives life as he walks, as though it were someone else’s and he was only living it by mistake. He must be careful not to break it. It is a precious, borrowed thing. Habitually quiet, habitually cautious, he is trying his best to be brave like Callie, but the balance of the two traits feels odd on his shoulders. Hattie is crying somewhere in the audience, but he doesn’t turn. He doesn’t stop. He walks up to the podium, and mounts the steps.

Up on the stage, he smiles at the young girl in front of him, but it does not reach his eyes. He has no flame behind his eyes but for when he’s dancing, and when he smiles it is a purely cosmetic procedure. He is not unhappy. He feels nothing.

He feels grey upon grey upon grey.

And then the familiar burning sensation begins in his chest, and he casts a look out to the audience. It’s almost a look of terror. He doesn’t want them to see him like this. But there’s no suppressing the red. It’s a fire, and his skinny body is made of kindling.

He whips out his handkerchief (grey, formerly white), and presses it to his lips, when the coughs start. Even the Escort is silent, shocked by the loudness, the relentlessness. He holds the handkerchief down, politely, attempting to suppress the painful movements, but even Sasha’s calm face is contorted. His smooth skin is flushed red.

It takes a minute, perhaps two, for the coughing to subside, but it feels like longer. Tears fork off into country roads down his cheeks. He wheezes, removes the handkerchief from his mouth, slides it back into his pocket, and stands steadfast.

A little girl and a chronically ill dancer.

Behold your warriors, District Eight.

[sashatoille]

sasha toille's reaping attire

[sashatoille]

fear ▲ night before ▼ os

The sun sets late on the night before, and Sasha Toille is dancing.

Night should, by all normal standards, have started two hours ago - and yet the warm glow clings to the sky and refuses to leave. Perhaps it is as unwilling for tomorrow to come as all the children of Eight. Nineteen-year-olds are celebrating and twelve-year-olds are weeping, and Sasha Toille is dancing.

He has his own theory about the lingering sun. It is a spotlight, poised to guide him through his movements and illuminate his performance. Today has been a good day, one where his lungs have obeyed and pastel colour has seeped into his world instead of harsh reds, and if he dances he can forget about tomorrow. At the moment, Sasha is the only Toille child eligible for the Reaping. Hattie is just ten, and Flaxe is nineteen, currently at a party with others who are safe from the Games.

Sasha hinself has always felt a sort of distance from the Games. Nobody he has been close to has ever been Reaped, possibly because he has been close to nobody. Callie was a fighter against the Games, though. It was one of her driving forces of hate and of steely determination to win against the Capitol.

Callie was a fighter.

Sasha is just a dancer.

But the sun cannot hang on forever, and soon the warmth of the sun is replaced by the pallid light of the moon. There is no point in dancing in the dark.

The sun sets late on the night before, and Sasha Toille stops dancing, so the fear comes flooding in.

[sashatoille]

Carnation Wells - 20 years old - Victor of the 52nd Annual Hunger Games

Sweet carnations… bold flowers, but they bloom only for a time. They are a reminder of the fragility of life, of how fleeting it is. Carnations push through longer than most flowers, but their wilting is inevitable. They are tempting to pick, but once you do, you have already set their death sentence. 

One such Carnation was the youngest in the Wells clan, and all throughout her childhood she bloomed consistently. Carnation’s skill with needlework was second only to her passion for living. Whatever she did, she threw herself into it - and so, with a smile and a laugh, she enjoyed everything about her life, and loved to work as much as she loved to play, because she could make the work feel like play. In fact, the biggest of her flaws was a certain naivety, and an overly romantic tendency. It made it all the more unfair, then, when Carnation was plucked from her stem and destined to wither so early.

Aged seventeen and the baby of the family, Carnation was the only Wells child of Reaping age for the 52nd Hunger Games. They were a lucky family - seven children, and not one of them had been Reaped. Until, that is, a perfectly manicured hand extracted the pale slip of paper that had, printed on it in clear writing, Carnation Wells. She did not cry in public, nor even when saying goodbye to her family - they did enough of that themselves. It was only when she had met the weak, paranoid male and been shown to the solitude of her train compartment that she broke down, the tears that had so rarely been shed streaking her pristine skin.

Carnation was a sensation in the Capitol. She did not have the bloodthirsty appeal of the Careers, but her beauty and charisma charms many from the moment she stepped in her chariot, her long dark hair flowing freely with the loose golden chiffon of her costume. She dazzled in the interview, and trained with the effervescent energy that she applied to all things. By the time she ascended into the arena, Carnation was a favourite, despite her relative weakness. 

To cut a long short, Carnation won her Game not through any particular skill of hers, but through the intervention of others. Her partner, thinking himself in love with her, protected her from the Bloodbath and sheltered her until he was killed finding food. From then on, Sponsors became her allies. Receiving items like crossbows and a full cooked meal every day, Carnation barely had to get her hands dirty to win. Still, the memory of the six people she had killed haunted her as she was taken back to the Capitol. But finally it was over, right?

Wrong. Those who had so kindly helped her had not, in fact, done it expecting nothing in return. Carnation was too much of a pretty thing to pass up - so she was passed around, from person to person, unable to protest as she owed many of them her life. Sometimes she thought no life would be better than this.

And then he came. Her Max. He didn’t want her for her body, he said, (though he must have done at first to come there at all), and he took her hand, the first gentle physical contact she had had in a year. He was twice her age, and a married Capitol official, but there was a softness and a kindness to him that made her fall in love.

Max made sure that she didn’t have to see any more men, made sure that she wanted for nothing. He saw her as often as he could, and she could feel that he loved her, that he was the only one who could truly love her as she was now. He held her when she cried, when she saw images of teenagers choking on their own blood. She cut off her hair for him, her long gorgeous hair that had been her most desired feature.

Carnation has no idea that Maximus Dearheart will be the Escort this year, the year that she is Mentor. She has no idea that they have been found out, that this will be a public test to see if the high profile official really is being blatantly unfaithful to his wife. She has no idea how badly she may hurt her lovers’ career.

What she does know is that she’s pregnant. And that while thinking of how her own child will survive in this harsh world, she’ll have to think of how to get the child of another out of the arena. Carnation has had enough of death. She would much rather deal in life.

[sashatoille]

Maximus Ajax Dearheart - 40 years old - Escort for District Eight

Maximus Dearheart was lucky to have had everything in life served up to him on a plate, otherwise in the brutal world of Panem he would never have made it past twenty. Small, simple-minded and gullible, he hung around with the bullies at school just because he wasn’t sure he wanted to confront them. This was a pattern repeated throughout his adult life. It wasn’t his fault that his friends did the things they did, even if he never spoke up against them.

He lived well, but then all the Dearhearts did. Married to a woman just as rich and even more powerful, Maximus had a high-profile job as a government official and a huge house. When he mentioned to family and friends with characteristic good-natured confusion that he did not, in fact, love the woman, he was met only with friendly laughter.

“Max, please! You only have to see her at home! You want other women? You can have whoever you want!”

Maximus laughed along with them, but even he could see the flaws in the statement. Still, he went along with his friends every now and then and joined in the ‘fun’. If his wife ever found out, everybody knew she would find a way to ruin him, so his friends made sure to coach the blabbermouth on ways to hide their underground doings. And, for a while, it worked. Max and his wife had two children, and both rose in the ranks. In fact, life may have carried on as it was, had he not made the acquaintance of Carnation.

Now, Maximus fancied himself in love with every girl he slept with, but Carnation was different. She was so out of place, so innocent, so broken. He wanted to protect he. He, unlike his friends, didn’t even want to sleep with her. He would have been perfectly content just looking at her all night, taking in her youth and beauty. Had he been the sort to conceal his feelings, things might have gone differently but, Max being Max, he told her this. Carnation stared. Since her victory, she had never met a man who had been interested in more than her body, and she turned this flawed and pretty pathetic man into a hero in her eyes.

They fell in love, despite a twenty year age gap.

In his defense, Max genuinely loved her. Aside from his wife, he saw no woman other than Carnation after meeting her, and spent thousands on making sure she was comfortable, well clothed, and with everything she could desire. She, in turn, saw no other men, and cut off her gorgeous hair as a gesture of true love. Maximus was, for a time, blissfully happy.

And then his wife discovered.

The white envelope didn’t look too threatening, and nor did the message inside, informing him that he was to be the Escort of District Eight for the 55th Annual Hunger Games. But Maximus was not in the media, not the kind of person who was normally selected. He knew that this was his wife’s doing, or even the President’s. High-profile officials were not allowed affairs with young Victors - or, at least, they had to conceal them better.

And even to Max, the true message of the letter was clear.

“Let’s see how you handle this without ruining your whole career.”

[sashatoille]

d i s t r i c t e i g h t {x}

[sashatoille]

sorrow ▲ oneshot ▼ astrology

A magpie lands on the ground in front of me.

I remember my mother talking about magpies. “One for sorrow, two for joy. Three for a girl, four for a boy.” She’d recite, and if she saw only one bird she’d cross her blue eyes so that her vision doubled and she’d call out, “Joy!”, and we all laughed at her childish face and at her superstition. Callie in particular was cynical about such things, even as a child. She snorted when mother spoke of astrology and the Zodiac.

“How could that be even remotely true?” she’d say, not maliciously, but stubbornly. “It makes no sense.”

“Typical Capricorn,” was our mother’s response.

Myself? I’m conflicted. I’ve always wanted nothing more than to be loyal to Callie’s beliefs, but I find it easy to have something to define people by. They certainly work for our family, as if the stars were made just for us.

Callie, the Capricorn, ambitious but stubborn.

Flaxe, the Virgo, reliable but worrisome.

Hattie, the Sagittarius, optimistic but careless.

And me, the Aquarius, creative but apathetic.

It almost makes me believe the signs. I think I do believe the signs. But there is only one magpie. I frown, staring at the thing. It’s out of place in such an industrial town. As out of place as pink pointe shoes on cobbled streets.

I lunge at it.

The bird is fast, but I am faster. Faster than the smoke dissipating from factory chimneys, faster than rain smashing on slate roofs. In an instant, my hands are cupped around the soft pied feathers of the magpie.

One for sorrow.

I wait patiently, wait for another bird to join its companion. I wait for joy. I wait for joy. I hold the bird gently in my hands and wait for joy.

It does not come.

One for sorrow.

[grrlhood]

ASTROLOGY AESTHETICS | aquarius

aquarius are not demonstrative in affection, but feel very deeply. they are usually high-strung, and their nerves are generally overwrought. these people often lose control and then say or do things that they bitterly regret later. they are generally very active for the public good, and often give all they have to relieve the distress of others. they are good thinkers, and are very successful when it comes to debate and argument, and difficult to convince.

credit to cheap-glitter for helping me find pictures !

[sashatoille]

colours ▲ oneshot ▼ q&a

My world is grey upon grey upon grey. 

I count the shades, but they all slide into one. Wind and rain. Rain and wind. Gravel and brick and slate. Dark plumes of grey smoke billow from grey chimneys into a grey sky. Even the air smells grey - smoggy, cloying, thick. I am sick of grey.

I prefer it, though, to the sudden bursts of colour. I live as though underwater, but every so often I am yanked to the surface above my monochrome world. My chest burns, and breath evades me. I struggle. My muted world is, for a moment, full of fire and burning, blinding reds. Then as the pain subsides, so does the colour. Life is grey again, and I am almost glad of it. It is a choice between searing pain and a slow smothering, and I, unlike Callie, am a coward.

When I am thoroughly tired of black and white and red and grey, I take matters into my own hands. I am an artist, my canvas cobbled streets and greyscale pavements. For a while, for just a little while, I see pinks and blues and yellows, a fruit salad for the eyes and for the mind, and I breathe deeply and all is well. But my lungs are not my friends. They protest. The red overpowers all, and then I am too weak for anything but grey upon grey upon grey.

[sashatoille]

Although he spoke too much and was perhaps a bit too friendly for his own good, he was never rude. Which was weird, because it is a generally acknowledged truth that children are assholes. {x}

[sashatoille]

How would you describe yourself? {x}

[sashatoille]

What is something that you miss dearly?

My sister had eight fingers, and she tapped them on the table when she spoke, bitten nails drumming a rhythmic octet. It was the right hand that the digits had been stolen from by the mill machinery, but her dominant hand was her left: the one she used to scrawl out messages of revolution on fliers and on walls. “At least God gave me one blessing,” she said, and she smiled across the room at me, across to where I sat bored with the meeting, my feet dangling from the chair and aching to dance.

My sister had eight fingers, and they dove up and dove down like sparrows as she sewed pale pink shoes with pale pink thread. “Can you imagine,” she said as she smiled across at me, “Who this fabric might have been for if I’d not taken it? Probably underwear for some snotty Capitol woman. Lord, Sasha! We’ve probably deprived some poor rich lady of her lovely silky panties.” And I laughed, a rare thing unfamiliar in my throat, and I watched the needle fly as my feet dangled from the chair and ached to dance.

My sister had eight fingers, and they clung tightly to the wooden block in the square, revealing the terror that her face would not. “I am guilty,” she said, and she smiled at me across the paving stones, “of nothing more than justice and compassion for my fellow humans. There are others. Remove one head, and three more will take its place.” And she was still smiling when her neck took three blows to sever, and she was still smiling when it tumbled to the ground, and she was still smiling when the Peacekeeper held it in the air like a warning shot.

And I sat down on the floor because my feet ached from standing too long. 

[rachelofcharles-blog]

[kynodontas]

[acrimsontrial-blog]

Sasha Toille ✧ District 8 ✧ Age: 16 ✧ FC: Pascal Grob ✧ Follow

Sasha is described as spacey, quiet, professional, loyal, and passionate.

Weapon of Choice: Dancing.

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