If You're Sinking Like a Stone. {Clover}

She sits with her legs crossed, her hair ruffled and splayed out behind her, her mouth poised in a perfect pout. She hasn't smiled in weeks. Delicate hands reach out to slay dragons and end up tugging daisies loosely from the dirt. Nessie Libertine has not cried, not once, not since the day she saw her sister fall. Through the window she watches Fitz lunge towards the tiny girl. Mahlah is not so different from Nessie - a wry, twisted glance crumbles away to nothing as she is taken down. Twenty-two all gone, and only one more unfortunate to go before somebody comes home. The child decides that if Fitz ever dares show his face at the Libertine shop again he will regret ever having tried. She is a girl who firmly believes that if one is destined to fail, trying is but an injustice to oneself. Better man have fallen that Fitz Ripley. She would never admit it, not to anybody, but Nessie trusted him when he had vowed to do his very best to bring her sister home. And he had failed in his task and then had the nerve to kill in order to get home himself. "Give up, Fitz." Her words are a hoarse whisper - her voice a tool she has not found use for in the days since her eldest sister's death. She watches the Goravich boy strike. The daisies crumple between her fingertips, their petals flaking away. They hide themselves amongst the grass. She watches the Games through the window, because she prefers not the luxury of the fire. Ashes to ashes, Nessie. She wants him to die. She wants the boy who failed his one simple task - to bring the girl who's soul she kept safe - back to her. She watches, expressionless, as he too loses the Game. Nobody is coming home today.Suddenly Nessie is not entirely sure that dying is the correct price for the boy to pay. He is, after all, just a boy on a mission. She curls her legs to her chest and watches closely, abandoning her flowers and instead clutching her locket with shaking hands. In truth she doesn't know if Penelope's soul lies inside. Does burning a photograph kill the soul within? She doesn't know, but the tiny child thinks that perhaps it is best not to think about such things. Losing oneself in thought usually ends in catastrophe. For Pen it ended everything.

Her bare feet sink into the sand just a little as she crosses the shoreline. The tide is even, in and out, in and out, not knowing nor caring that Penelope and Fitz are dead. The sea is like that - even when blood spills endlessly into it's depths, it doesn't change. Doesn't blink no matter how many bodies crawl to the shore to utter their very last words. The ocean is magnificent and it cares not for casualties or sorrows or her sister or the boy who was practically her brother. Nessie looks to the uneven line where the sky meets the sea and hopes that the water that washes up at her feet is the same as the water in the arena. The sea her sister owned. Because if Penelope Libertine was not the ocean and the birds and the sand and the foam that floats away despite the tide, then who was she? Just a deluded, unstable little girl who was tumbling out of control? Nessie would never believe anything close. In truth, the girl had always idolised her sister. The only member of the family who could make Nessie feel as though perhaps she wan't quite so crazy as the others made out. In a world of uncertainties, Penelope is the only constant, the only soothing word. From her, Nessie never had to run. The sea beckons, it calls, however the child wades no deeper than the shoreline. Like the others, she learned to swim when she was young, but her place was never really in the water. To her, the sea felt dangerous. It was a place of hidden monsters that you never saw, a place of soldiers souls and pirate ships. It was a place that stole lives from the innocent. To Nessie, it was nothing more than something Penelope had loved. She ached as she looked over it. For a girl who needs nobody, Nessie is doing a terrible job of not needing her sister.

The tide is coming in and Nessie takes a hesitant step back. In a way she wants to be swept out to sea, because then she might see Penelope again. But Pen wanted her to hold on. When it was too hard and everything hurt and the fear got too much the girl would make it a little bit better. Nessie didn't always have to run away. Now, of course, she had no choice. Cold feet pound against the soft sand, and it slips away as she attempts to hold her footing. Nessie Libertine is doing what she has always done, and now there is nobody to hold her back. This time, when she flees, nobody calls her name and nobody cares that by the time night falls, she will likely still be hiding somewhere. She doesn't cry when people are watching.] When she is all alone, it is a completely different story. The cave is always empty, except today it is not. A hollow voice sounds from the inside, but Nessie does not turn away. "Jude?" she whispers, speaking for the first time in what seems like eternity. This is the brother of the boy she cursed, someone Nessie has always looked up to in awe. And yet when she looks at him, her eyes are dark. Hollow. Empty orbs of broken dreams and goodbyes that didn't take quite as long as they might of. Ashes, photographs, writing on the walls of her cave. She bites her lip, feeling as though she is intruding upon something personal and yet far too stubborn to leave the boy in her cave. "You saw, then? You saw the end?" She doesn't mention how she wanted him to die anyway, just another person she once cared about falling to the ground. With that, the tiny child picks up the chalk that lays by her feet and raises it to the wall. She writes in one fluid motion, a word that had been present in her mind forever. Her first word, her last. Penelope.

Nessie Libertine remembers hiding. Fingers shaking, neck twisting backward, red hair falling in a blanket over her tiny features. Just a game, little-girl Libertine. Only pretend. The words she uttered to herself over and over fell silent, because perhaps now he was coming for her. Not a monster, just Jude. Hardly daring to breathe, the child concentrated on the way the waves rocked the boat ever so gently, as though attempting to lull her to sleep. She refused - nightmares can't hurt you while you're wide awake. The child turned, already restless. Impatient from the beginning."Ready or not, here I come." She gasped, and then held her breath until her face went pale. Determination ran through her veins, because she was Nessie Libertine, and she was going to win hide and seek. It was cold at sea - late autumn far more biting and bitter than any other the small girl knew. It didn't mean she was going to give up. Clinging to herself tightly, tugging at the material of her dress, she waited. Waited for him to come, waited for him to not come. After a while, Nessie forgot what she was waiting for.

Moments before she had been chasing a boy, four years older than herself, across the boats. Hopping from one to the other, feeling them sway beneath her bare feet. Cold metal, high-pitched laughter, a sea to themselves. Balancing on the ropes that tied the fishing vessels to the dock, dipping toes in the freezing water. Jude Ripley had won, of course. Longer legs and years of experience marked him faster than her, quick and slight as she was for a girl of almost five. She remembers the way his hand reached out to pull her along, because he would never let her get lost. Being lost, of course, is what Nessie Libertine has always done best. So she hid, listening to him count, wondering how many years it will be before she too can count all the way to one hundred without using her fingers. Her scarlet hair left red marks on her cheeks, but she refused to move. And then the boat started to float away, slowly at first, but then the motor kicked in and suddenly they were moving, out to sea. For a girl who liked to lose herself, she was quick to her feet. The child stood on the deck, fingers twitching and eyes wide. Mama never told her what to do if she was hiding in a boat and then it started to drive away and you weren't supposed to be aboard to begin with. Mama never said. Even then, Nessie was quite used to doing things herself.

Alone, she stood tall, clenched her fists and let her curls fly out in the wind. A single tear rolled down her cheek, because as much as the child wanted to escape, she also wanted to be free, and suddenly the ocean that completely surrounded her was dangerous and scary and dark. "...Jude," she sobbed helplessly. And then, "Help me! Jude!" And then he was running toward her, because he was her friend and he was going to save her. Jumping so quickly from boat to boat, the boy stopped short all at once. He stopped, because that was where the wood ran out and the ocean began. Nessie looked at him, pleading. Even now, she remembers his words. "Jump, Ness." That was what he called her. She could have jumped. If she had leaped overboard at that seconds, she would have landed in his arms. Safe, home. But she didn't jump. Nessie Libertine looked at him, staring without words, great green eyes terrified. Please, save me. (Save yourself!) She hesitated, just for a second, and the moment slipped away and the boat lurched forward and the precious moment they had was gone. Together, they eyed the freezing water. When you are a child, every ordeal is dramatic and filled with possibility. To them, Nessie was being stolen away, never to return to her home. The purr of the engine faltered, and she jumped. The cold of the water never left her heart.

Nessie Libertine remembers drowning. Water filling her lungs, weak arms thrown out and dragging uselessly against the sea. She would swear she felt the constant thudding of her heart stop, just for a moment, as the lacy fingers of almost-winter crept around her. They held her, and she closed her eyes and stopped fighting and just stopped. Hands grasped her limbs, clawing at her clothing and heaving her limp body back onto a docked boat, clambering up after her. They lay together, curled on the deck, letting the faint sunlight leech back into their blood. Hair dripping, clothes torn and soaked, the ocean seeping into their very bones. After a very long time, Jude spoke. "You know, Ness, you've never said a word to me before." The girl remembers nodding, blinking at him through teary eyes. (She doesn't talk, much.) Little Nessie managed a weak smile, and then, "I needed you." She crumpled up her nose, closed her eyes, and held on tight to the boy who had just, perhaps, saved her life. She didn't thank him, she didn't need to. That was the first and last time Nessie Libertine lost a game of hide and seek.

She does not meet the boy's eye when he stands in the cave - her cave - many years later. He answers her question dutifully, and she knows that it must have hurt him far more than it hurt her to see them die. She loved Penelope, yes, and Fitz was always kind of there, but it had always been Jude's job to protect Fitz, to care for everyone. The boy who pulled her from the water when she was four and he was eight, the boy who somehow managed to keep his brothers safe and well. All at once, he had failed. Nessie watched, ran away and hid. Jude loved. It's an awful lot harder to stop loving than it is to stop hiding. Dropping the chalk, he looks at her. "Did you hear me talking to m- to anyone?" What he means is did you hear me talking to myself, Ness? Jude Ripley means, shake your head and pretend like we're not both going crazy. The words are simply a plea to go on pretending like everything is okay. Obediently, Nessie shakes her head, smirking just a little. She ignores him. "I come here a lot." The girl pulls her shoes from her feet, frowns, and throws each of them at the wall. So calm and yet so filled with anger. One flies aimlessly out of the opening in the cave, and the other falls somewhere in the shadows, never to be found. Not that she cared. "Thank you, Jude. For saving me." The girl isn't entirely sure if she is accusing him of not doing enough to save Penelope or still remembering the feel of the salt burning her lungs, the desperate grasping at the water that slipped from her grip. Nessie Libertine remembers hiding.