wilder morningstar ; capitol

"Would you like a cup of tea?" Marcella Morningstar asks around a kind smile.

Her lips leave a scarlet stain on a gold-painted rim. Fingers, long and thin, cradle the chipped porcelain like it's something precious. She holds the warmth close to her chest, smiling long and thin, before turning her gaze toward the cityscape below.

There's a cup sat opposite of her, freshly poured. Wilder watches the breeze play with the steam curling off its surface as he catches his breath. His legs burn from the effort of sprinting up three stories in a matter of minutes. He braces a hand against the stairwell's railing, stumbling a few steps forward to get a better look at his mother through the hanging ivy of the rooftop garden.

Tears carve a shadowy path down her cheeks, mascara smeared where she failed to wipe them away. She holds herself with the same rigid posture as she does when the cameras are rolling, moving with practiced elegance as she takes another sip.

"Father said-"

"Your drink will get cold." She interrupts and Wilder takes his seat, suitably chastened. He recognizes the tea set as the one they'd painted together, over five summers ago now. His own clumsy splotches of blue paint defined by his mother's careful hand. Amber liquid shimmers within, smelling pleasantly floral. It tastes much of the same.

Her shoulders relax a bit.

"Are you okay?" He reaches out across the table. She makes no move to return the gesture, but he keeps his hand there for a while longer.

"Do you remember your eleventh birthday?" The words are fragile, wavering in her throat.

Wilder nods, it was only a couple years ago after all. His knee still aches when the weather changes, though the bones had long since healed.

He also remembers gluing together a dozen invitations and sending them off to his friends, none of who showed up when the day came. So his mother had taken his hand and raced up the great green hill behind Father's office building. They had a haphazard picnic and took turns rolling into the daisy patches. It was a good day, even if it ended when he hit a rock on the way down and broke his leg in two places.

Sure it hurt, but he hadn't been scared until his mother started screaming.

"It was nice." He tells her, trying to smile bright enough to see it reflected in her expression. That always worked before. It feels a little juvenile, but he hates the days when his mother is made of broken glass.

"I realized then how things would have to end." She finished her cup, and it rattles loudly against its saucer in her shaking grasp. The beds of her nails have gone stark white, and now that her lipstick has worn away he can see the bluish tinge around her mouth. "I'm only sorry it took all this nonsense to give me the courage."

Wilder takes another nervous sip. It's bitter. "You're acting strange." He whispers, cold now that the sun has set in earnest. "It's scaring me."

She jerks across the table, silverware clatters onto the pavement. Thunder shakes below them.

With clumsy motions she threads her fingers through Wilder's, "Don't be scared, Starling, this isn't scary. It's good. So good." Her eyes flutter as she rests her cheek on her forearm, gazing up at Wilder with open adoration. "And you are so good, I love you so much. We are better than this wretched place." In spite of the rosy blush painted on her cheeks, there's no color left in her face. "They wont have us now."

There are pins and needles in his tongue, he didn't realize how tired he was.

He stares at the place his mother's hand sits in his, grip slack. He doesn't dare look further than that, her eyes are still open.

"Wilder!" The thunder gets louder. A dozen sets of feet pounding against metal and concrete. "Did you drink any?" His father's hands are on his shoulders, the closest he's ever come to an embrace.

"Help Mom." He tries to say, "I think she's sick."

---

His dreams never go further than that. Onto the lengthy recovery that followed ingesting two times the lethal dose of whatever poison his mother had steeped alongside chamomile and lemon.
The memories are distant and fuzzy along the edges - he can go days at a time without thinking of his mother or the shadows he saw in her eyes.

Those are good days.

Father's business flourished, feeding off the decaying corpse of their tragedy. Her movies became collectors items, followed by a flood of articles about a promising young actress' fall from grace. Wilder himself became a novelty, something to sneak pictures of when he was walking home from school.

His face grew around the masks he learned to wear; there's no telling where skin ends and plastic begins after so long. Wilder fills the cracks with molten gold, and it's pretty enough that no one minds the gaps. He's come to despise most people.

He lives on borrowed time now, far longer than he was meant to.

And on the bad days, when the shadows are all he can think about.

He wonders if she was right.