I'm Asking Why...?! [Lia/Mace]

for what it's worth, I always aim to please
but I nearly died

Turns out the sore spot in his side wasn't a stitch from herding cows. It was from having dogs with brains the size of peanuts. Day in and day out they barked at every gorram thing other than the massive beasts they ought to be herding. On and on without a single thought in their head. Well, maybe one. They worked pretty hard for scrap but that meant taking food from his siblings. But then, if he didn't keep the cows in line and grazing, they wouldn't have anything to slaughter and bring to market, and then they would all really starve.

It was the sort of puzzle that had no business being in Mace's mind. He turned it over to Cygnus and found his brother abnormally distracted. Too many ideas, probably. At any rate, the dogs weren't getting better by thinking about it, so Mace decided he ought to re-train them, proper-like. It wasn't easy. Even training puppies was tough work and trying to break a dog of old habits... well that was some sort of saying, wasn't it? He praised and punished, doled out bits of jerky and kicks to the ribs. Whatever he felt like that day. Still they behaved like pampered lap dogs instead of proper shepherds.

And then one of them took off like a bat out of the Capitol, and Mace had hit his limit. If they weren't going to work, fine. He knew some people desperate enough to trade for dog meat. Mace slung his cattle prod over his shoulder, slid the whip down into his palm. With all the dust the cattle kicked up he couldn't follow where the mangy rascal had gone, but it was stupid enough to come back. He could wait for it, but there was no waiting for this sort of anger. It came, and it would leave him entirely too soon.

And it was practically the only thing that reminded him he was alive any more.

Mace stalked until the edge of the cloud, the moo's deafening. As he came out of the dust, he felt lead in his boots. He'd seen her before, oh so many times, but usually in the woods, and usually not looking quite so distant and suspicious. She never talked, though. He wasn't ready for that. Mace gripped his whip a little tighter, turned his gaze to the earth. "Go away." Sometimes that worked. Mostly, it didn't and eventually he woke up.

for what it's worth, I always aim to please
but I nearly died

You must be Mace. That didn't exactly sound like the way the conversation normally went, but then his dreams didn't go the way dreams really ought to. Not any more. They went to strange, vivid places that he had no name for, had no context for. And if he couldn't explain something to himself, there wasn't any hope for it. Mace wasn't exactly verbose, and he couldn't draw worth a damn. No, his nightmares were entirely his own, and at the same time so foreign he could not understand them.

But this he understood a little too well, and felt the heat of the sun on his reddened hands, the grit in his eyes, his teeth. It also just didn't make sense that the Larae of his mind would refer to herself so distantly. As if she didn't know where they were. As if she could forget her grave. Mace swallowed the dust of the day, felt it stick in his throat. He looked at the ground at her feet, because looking at a ghost made him feel like he had died, too.

"Fine, yeah, you came here every day. Go back..." And he'd been about to say 'home' except he was worried that for her that might be to the Arena. The thought punched him, made his fists ball up, forced his eyes to her. She was as always had been - lean and sharp and a little dangerous. Beautiful, maybe that too, although he hadn't really thought in such a term before. Attractive was more like it. There was something else, in the cant of her eyes, all the right colors and shape, none of the right intention. Because those eyes didn't know him.

Immediately Mace snapped together, his shoulders rolling back, knees bending. A fighter's pose. "Who are you?" He spat at the facestealer.

for what it's worth, I always aim to please
but I nearly died

He blinked slowly at her, the long slow fall of realization. A sister? That seemed impossible. Larae hadn't mentioned a sister... but then she hadn't talked about her family at all until that one day in the Mayor's house. Mace felt his muscles tense, brace against the memory. It usually came back to him at night, just as he was about to fall asleep. That's how the nightmares started, when Larae left the room. But if she'd had a sister, why she was so worried about her mother?

Of course Mace didn't voice any of these questions. He just stared her down, and felt a little grateful that she was at least as uncomfortable as he. He flexed his hand against the whip, felt the strength and gravity in it center him. What was he doing, talking to the sister of a dead girl? He didn't know her, and he didn't want to know her - just as he'd never wanted to know Larae. And yet there he was, reaching forward.

The chain felt lighter in his hand, no doubt because now it was clean. It pooled in his palm, flashing for a second in the sunlight before he closed his fist around it. He knew what this meant, maybe more so than most. After all, he'd been the one to keep it, to hold its tiny power, before Larae took it and died with it. He looked again to Lia, with that thought burning his dead eyes. He couldn't visit Larae at a grave, but at least now he would have a place, a thing, by which to remember her.

"Out of the question," he echoed, the words rolling into him. And then, "out of the question!? Your sister was being sent to her execution and you had something better to do!" The words burst out of his gut, foamed at his mouth as he stepped towards Lia until their breaths intermingled. "What the hell else could be so important?"