As If Death Itself Was Undone // [Kire]

I haven't dyed my hair in nearly two months. Once more I'm my natural shade of blonde and once more people immediately recognize me for who I'm not. "Siren Baitwell!" they call, reaching for me to see if I'm real. I am real, but she's not. My flesh is solid when they grab my wrist or shoulder, my body gives off heat when they're near me. I live and breathe as they do.

She doesn't.

Today had been overwhelming, almost as though everyone on the street had been waiting to see me, to see the not-dead girl Siren Baitwell. No matter what I say or do, no matter how different I try to make myself, they still only see her. I had to run away from it for a while, somewhere where people would leave me in peace - or at least not stare at me and shout a name that is not mine. There was a place that I would retreat to, a place few bothered to go to because it wasn't the fancy and flashy clubs that lined Style Street. Sitting on the edge of the Capitol, it was its own world. Everything to do with the place was based off of the districts, which was a good portion of the reason why it was nearly always empty. In all honesty I didn't know how it had managed to stay open - there was almost never anyone inside - but I was glad that it did.

It was my sanctuary.

Even on my way to bar I was confronted by the gullible and the clueless. By this time I should have told everyone in the entirety of Panem who I was not - that person being Siren Baitwell. We happened to look alike, and suddenly everyone takes that to mean I must be her. True, I am nearly identical to the late District four female tribute, but that was where the similarities ended - or so I told myself. I could never match up to her, and I didn't want to try. After all of this secondhand fame I was tired of being the name on everybody's lips, even if it wasn't really my name they were speaking.

The bar was blissfully silent.

I got a quiet nod from the bartender, who immediately started getting together my usual drink. For a moment I shut my eyes and let the noiselessness fill my ears and head and body. Feeling calmer and more peaceful, I made my way to my usual spot next to the fire. It was particularly necessary, especially at this time of year, but the homeliness of it was was attracted me to sit there. The bartender brought over my cocktail, setting it down on the little table nestled between the chairs. "Your Sea Breeze, Iraen." I smiled at him, placing the money on the table to pay for it but he waved it away. "You look like you've been heckled all day, no need for me to add to it. It's on the house." He walked away before I could say a word in protest, so I gave in and returned the money to my wallet.

It wasn't until I took a sip from my drink, and set it down again, that I noticed there was someone else sitting by the fire.

There's a sound like someone's strangled a cat and my head whips around from gazing after the barman. Sitting in the chair beside me is a man, hands pressed into his eyes as though to keep them from falling out of his head. I was waiting for that moment - it could be any time now - when he would pull his hands away and make some stupid claim that I was Siren Baitwell. This had happened enough times for me to know the outcome, but never here. I suppose it was bound to happen eventually, I come here so often and everyone knows her face.

Sometimes I wish that I could have had any other face, that I might go and get some surgery to hide her nose, change her cheekbones, mold her chin. Instead I don't, I simply let myself become overwhelmed with the endless flood of people that called me by the wrong name. Her name is like a tide that has grabbed me and dragged me away from shore. Where I once stood solidly on land I was now being yanked by an undertow until I was lost at sea. I could almost taste the muddy water and hear the thunderous rain, could almost feel the burning in my lungs and see the rugged sky. It was all I could do to keep from gasping and choking on a memory that wasn't even mine.

Across from me there's a spluttering noise and I wonder if he might be sharing my thoughts. First I share someone's face, and then someone's mind. Was there nothing of me that was my own? His face is still covered by his large-palmed, long-fingered hands, much more elegant than mine. Siren's had seemed so much more graceful than mine do, even though side by side they would have been the same. The man doesn't seem to realize the blood that has leaked from his thumb to leave a red patch on his cheek. The tip of his thumb was starting to be stained red, but even with what little I understood about the human body I could see that it was a minor wound.

I don't know if I should take another sip from my drink or not. On one hand, I could use the little bit of inhibition, but on the other, the colour from the fruit juices made the cocktail a colour rather similar to the blood smear on the man's face. I can smell the coppery tang and suddenly I'm having trouble breathing, as though something is stuck in my chest.

I decide to take that sip.

Setting the drink down, I turn to look at the man once more. His face is still hidden, but his sleeves now cover his hands. When I shift in my chair it makes a small creaking sound. I can't help but try to figure out who this man might be. His hair is a dark brown and styled short, he's lanky like a baby giraffe and I would have to guess he was one hell of a height when he stood up. Familiar. Almost too familiar. A name, a face, just at the edge of my mind but I can't grasp it. I keep looking at him, waiting for the moment he drops his hands so that I can see if I really know him or not.

My cocktail calls my name again and I respond.

As I put down the drink I see the man shift. His hands grind his eyes as though to wipe everything away, everything that he's seen and would see. Apparently it doesn't work on me because a moment later he's staring at me through his fingers and I glimpse pale eyes. Something shocks through me but I still can't place his name, or anything about him. As his hands drop we both stare at each other for some time in silence, trying to figure the other out. A name is there, it's on the tip of my tongue and his face is one I know, and know well. I've seen him before, again and again on television and on billboards.

That's it, his name i- "You aren’t.. real."

"Oh for the love of..." My voice trails away, and so do my thoughts on his name until I look at his eyes again. They're puffy and red but there's still a look to them that drags the name from the back of my throat. "Colgate." It's not a question. I know who he is, after seeing his face all over everything for an entire year, and then the continuous commercials for Soap Brand Soap, it had only been a matter of getting a good look at him in order to place who he was. As for me, well it seemed like he had made the same mistake as everyone else.

"I'm bloody real." I snatch up my glass with a bit too much energy and only avoid spilling on myself with a quick - and undignified - slurp of the liquid off of the side of the glass. No, I am not the elegant Ms Baitwell, despite the rest of the world not realizing that. "But I'm not her."

I was waiting for the denial. They always refused to believe that I wasn't Siren and so each time I told them the truth they would argue with me. As though I wouldn't know who I really was. Perhaps I don't. This man, this victor, is different though. He's lost for what to do or say and I see him jump when I say his name. A flash of contempt zinged through my nerves and I fight the sneer that wants to leap onto my face. How could someone so lost have ever found his way to victory.

Not that I'm much better off.

He's leaning forward, closer to me but not intentionally. His head is dipped away from me and I realize how much he doesn't want to look at me. Odd, normally people always want to stare, to see if I were really her. They always thought I was, no matter what I did or said. I suppose they wanted to believe in the magic, that the Capitol had enough power to return the dead to life. Perhaps they had always thought the Games were all an act, an elaborate play, and the actors were kept after in some lavish palace. Fools. There's no way to hide hundreds of people who were supposed to be dead from the populous. Though, the rumors surrounding some of the avoxes, and then with my own appearance, there could be grounds for that suspicion.

That doesn't make me Siren Baitwell though.

I see his eyelashes flicker down to hide those pale - and somehow quite startling - eyes of his. Some part of me was glad for the moment of relief. There was something about looking into his eyes that sent a shock through me, setting me on high alert and making me overly aware of myself. Was that because he had lived through so much? Could I feel some remnant of that fear-filled existence in his gaze? People have said that eyes are the windows to the soul. It sounds like poetic rubbish to me, but perhaps there was more truth in that saying than I gave credit for.

The moment is broken as his hand grasps a glass I hadn't noticed before. His long fingers wrap around the drink and bring it to his lips in a movement that held so much control. Apparently he didn't have as much control over the sip he was taking, because I heard his loud swallows as he took a long pull from the glass.

His eyes are on me again.

I feel a shudder starting to crawl up my spine but I do my best to hide it. There's something in the way he's looking at me that makes me feel like I'm missing some important bit of knowledge. There's some disconnect and I don't know what it is. He sets the glass down without taking his eyes off of me. "Who are you, then?" My lips twitch - at least someone finally accepts me at my word.

There's a knife in his hand all of a sudden and the shiver in my spine is back.

Only he's not threatening me with it, or at least not blatantly, but instead twisting it between his fingers. "How do you look so much like her?" I would like the answer to that myself, and about to tell him so I was interrupted by the storm that rolled into his eyes. He seemed to bristle like some beast and stared me down like he was about to charge me. "Are you doing this to hurt me?"

The accusation, something I've heard a few times before but never like this, causes me to forget the knife in his hands. "Now why the fuck would I do that?!" My hands are gripping the arms of the chair so my knuckles turn white. I'm not sure if it's anger or fear. "And why the fuck does it matter to you that I look like Si-" for the first time in my life I choke on her name - "like her." The last two words lack some of my conviction, brought down by my sudden insecurity. "What did she matter to you, she wasn't even your district."

Then I remember the bubbles.

I fall silent, looking at him steadily as my anger drains away. Colgate, known by most as Soap until his victory, had been well known for his bubble-blowing antics in the 66th. I only now put together that piece of knowledge with the moment that Siren had received a bottle of bubble solution. Without thinking, a small smile pulls at my lips.

"Bubble boy..." The name tugs my mouth into a bigger smile, but there's a pressure pulling the tips down again. In that nickname is a lot of joy and a lot of sadness, and somehow I know it beyond what I had seen on the television. I could almost see it in his eyes. Connection, love, and loss, all summarized into two words.

I'm silent for a long time as I try to remember how to breathe properly again, trying to get rid of the sudden weight that filled the air. My eyes can't hold steady on his face for very long before I'm overwhelmed and turning my head away to get a grip on myself.

"I'm Cordelia Iraen Eaglebrooke." Finally I bring myself to look into those eyes, once again feeling the sharp zing race through each nerve. "I don't know why I look like her." I still can't say her name, and it shames me. The words are blocked behind the bulk of her name and life, jammed in my throat so tight that I can't swallow.

"They've called me her name ever since..." He knows, and I know, so there's no need to say it. My fingers curl into fists and I press them into the arms of the chair. Normally I am so able to tell the world her name, and tell them that there is no way I could be here because I'm alive and she... well she isn't. This invisible hand around my throat, stopping me from saying those very words, was beginning to choke me - and I was beginning to get frustrated. "But I'm not her, I'm not her, fuck it all."

Every time I had compared myself to her. Every time I had wished I could be as strong or as brave or as fierce as she was. I couldn't be her because I could never match up. "Sorry to disappoint you." The raw edge in my voice might pass for a harsher sarcasm than I had used, but I doubted it. I have to hide my face behind my glass to keep him from seeing the angry tears in my eyes.

I hope the second round's on the house too.

And the third.

The flash on uncertainty on his face gave me a strange sense of victory, and of guilt. He's lacking for words and I have too many. What little liquor I had drunk had gone straight to my tongue it seemed, unlocking and locking topics never changed before.

When I meet his eyes it's like we both felt that jolt leap up our spines.

His eyes are studying, narrowed slightly as he seemed to analyze everything about me. I felt like I was under a microscope, flattened between two glass slides. The image of an all white room rises up behind my eyes until I blink it away to find that he's still staring at me, almost transfixed. The moment we break eye contact to hide ourselves from the other is a relief that allows me a chance to breathe. It's short lived and once again I'm zapped by his gaze as it returns to me. "I’m sorry," in the pause we both take a breath and he places the knife on the table between us. It feels like an offering of peace, and still a veiled a threat. I'm not sure which one concerns me more. "For, you know, all the questions. It’s not.."

I have no idea what's going to come out of his mouth yet. Whatever I may have thought when he first spoke, it had been completely wrong. I guess we were both finding out that first impressions aren't always right. "It’s not like I talk ‘bout her a lot, and it’s weird for me. But she did kinda matter, and that’s why this isn’t easy, seeing your face. This is.." I nearly jump as he starts speaking again. As his words begin to flow I realize that the liquid inhibition has gripped his tongue too and is beginning to tug an unheard confession from him. Both of us were saying more than we had ever intended tonight.

"I don’t know, I guess I just.. I cared about her, you know?" I shrugged one shoulder, barely moving. I could understand. "I mean.. I had a crush, it was stupid, and I thought she was gonna make things better. But she died, and now you look just like her.. and I don’t know. I don't know. I messed up." Even if I had wanted to interrupt him there was no opportunity. It was a stream of words that sprayed us with icy truth, drenching us in the past. Unthinking, I went to reach out and touch him but changed my mind midway through and gripped my glass instead. What little was left flowed down my throat to add to the humming at the back of my eyes.

I glanced at the bartender and caught him giving us interested looks. It seemed that he knew who both of us were and had been silently trying to guess where this conversation might go. I casually tipped the glass to show that it was empty and he gave me a smile before going about making me another. My gaze returned to the man before me. Those few seconds had bought me a chance to think, but my mind was still rather blank.

"I-" is all I manage before a fresh drink is placed before me and the empty glass removed. I tried again, "It's not stupid." I couldn't figure out what more to say, but I knew that was the truth. Whatever he thought, caring for another person wasn't stupid. "Sometimes you just need someone, no matter who they are. Just someone to share with, experiences and thoughts and life as a whole." I don't know where I'm going with this but, since I wasn't daring to hug or comfort him with a touch like I instinctively wanted to, it was better than nothing. Silence would leave us sitting here in awkwardness for a long time. Best to fill that gap.

"Sometimes family isn't enough."

Now I didn't know whether I was talking about him or myself. My parents were loving, but now that I was viewed as an adult they had grown more distant. As it was, there were things I could never share with them - like my obsession with a girl who looked exactly like me. She's the one thing we have in common, maybe that's why... why we were now suddenly so free with our words and our thoughts when any other time we'd have kept them locked away and worn our other face.

I feel more like myself than I ever have before.

There's a small pinching in his brows that places a seed of guilt in my gut. As I speak I see something click with him and he nods. I watch his long fingers make circles over his temples, the depressions in his skin swirling with the movement. His brows ease a bit, but the guilt is still nestled into my stomach like a child. With each passing second it begins to grow and slowly it will become a living, breathing thing. I didn't think it would take nine months, though.

The smile that finally lifts the edges of his mouth is so forced that I can feel the strain from where I sit. Inside my womb, the child named Guilt shifts. His eyes drop and the buzzing in my veins lessens a bit, so I take another sip of my drink. "You’re right about that." He's talking to his thumb, though I know he means the words for me. " I wasn’t really.. in the best shape back then, and I needed someone who understood, and my family has never done a very good job of it. I always feel like they expect me to be different than I am, you know, and that just makes things worse." I can't tell whether it's getting easier for him to talk, or if he simply can't stop himself. "And with.. with Siren, she needed someone too. Going into the Games is fucking terrifying."

I had no words for that. How could I understand something I had only seen on television, had only watched from a distance. The memory of adrenaline filled responses and the flash of flying fire arrived in my head but were banished almost instantly. Those weren't my memories, only the thought of someone else's trials. I could never understand.

He's silent for a while, and I'm not willing to break this lapse of conversation. I want to find something peaceful in this silence but I can't. Instead, I just watch him. The silence might not be calming, but there was something about his movements that eased me. Guilt kicks, a small force pressing outward in the first sign of desperation to escape its entrapment. The pinching between his eyebrows has come back, though I'm not sure if he notices the change. His large hand closes around his glass and brings it to his lips. I try to settle my unwanted burden with another sip from my glass, though it is more like a gulp.

Our glasses clink down at the same time, but I don't make any reaction to it. I simply watch his face. There's something more in this silence, it's laden and I can feel it just about to break. "You sound like you’ve had to deal with this kinda stuff before. Well not.. I mean not problems from the Games, but you know." His voice is the thunder in the distance, beginning its long roll in the moment before the storm. I still had some time to get inside, but the dry warmth wasn't calling me.

I wanted to feel the rain.

"Perhaps not exactly, but I understand what you mean." My parents love me, and they support me, but there's something in the way that they look at me that tells me that somehow they don't really know me. "They see me as a perfect daughter, going on to grow into a well-off woman with a typical Capitol job and life." For the first time since he had started to speak I looked away, not at anyone or anything but just away. I couldn't bear the notion that I might disappoint my parents, but when I knew in my heart that their vision of me was wrong, how could I not? "In trying to make me more of an adult they pulled away."

My eyes lowered, pulled by invisible man with invisible strings. The false child rooted in my body grew restless, feeding from the feelings itching through my blood. "I feel less restrained. I like it, this separation." Slowly the invisible man tugged my shoulders up. "It's like a freedom, and though I miss their closeness at times I want the liberty more." Now my eyes flicked up, but only far enough to rest on his hands. A killer's hands.

Funny how they looked so gentle.

I see the small shifts in his body, the subtle signs of his preparation to flee. Had something I said scared him, or could he simply not bear to see Siren's face over someone else's soul? Then slowly it eases away and the minute adjustments work in reverse so once more he sits, intent on the conversation. What had changed his mind? I couldn't tell from his eyes, or his face, as both of those were simply filled with a quiet thoughtfulness. That fades away soon enough, too, to be replaced with a distant expression. Was he daydreaming now, or perhaps losing interest in the conversation?

My words seem to draw him back again, for he's suddenly looking actually at me again. I'm tingling in my spine and in my fingers, my blood humming solemnly in my veins. I can't tell if it's the reaction to his gaze anymore, or if I'm simply drunk. I can't begin to think about how his mind might be wandering, or to where, but off it goes again because once more his eyes become unfocused and I'm still there but he doesn't quite see me. He hears me, though, I know he still does. My eyes are on his elegant hands and I just stare at them for a while, studying how they're folded and how the knuckles are bent at so many different angles. I lose track of the rest of him in that moment, my mind doing its own wandering.

His voice makes me jump and the tingling now spreads up my arms and back. "Nah, chin up. Freedom’s something to celebrate." Unintentionally, I lift my chin just in the act of looking into his face. When a crooked grin breaks out onto his face I mirror it without thought. Somehow, just the act of smiling made me feel better about everything. "Like today, it’s nice to be here, away from all the mentoring stuff I’ve gotta do. And I’m happy I’m not at home with my family fretting over me all the time, like I know they do." There's a small flicker in those pale eyes of his but I ignore it in favour of believing his tone. Right now, I didn't want to think of anything that was wrong in the world, only the good.

The rumble of rain was drawing nearer and I wanted to reach my hands up to touch the incoming clouds. They were still in the distance, but drawing ever closer. Rain was always a comfort to me, the sound and the feeling. The entire world felt like it was enclosed in a blanket of falling water and I wanted to lay there, wrapped in its folds for all of eternity. Hopefully this storm would bring me that same peace.

I could feel the static build in the air as his gained intensity, looking at me so closely that I thought that the rain may as well have already plastered my dress to my figure. It seemed like he could see ever inch of me, read every thought, and yet it was as though he had no idea he could because "And what about.. about needing someone?" Once more his voice brought the sound of rolling thunder, and I smiled - both from his words, and from the promise of rain and bliss. I leaned forward, desperately wanting to reach out to him. If I couldn't do through my body, maybe my words would suffice.

"I don't really have anyone." I sit in this pause, still debating with myself about whether the touch of his hand was worth going against the manners I was taught, and the tiny voice in my head that chanted he's a murderer murderer murderer, he's a murderer murderer murderer, count the bodies five, murderer murderer murderer murderer murderer. "No one sees past her face." I don't mean to put so much emphasis on the word 'her' but the bitterness and anguish that I tried to hide had been set free by the buzzing behind my eyes.

The desperation overtook me, throwing what reserve I had clung to so stubbornly these past few minutes completely out of Panem. My hand clasped lightly over top of one long-fingered hand, waiting to feel him pull away, waiting to see the disgust in face. In the Capitol, to touch someone was to know them, and I barely knew this man.

Yet, somehow, it felt like I had known him for a long time.

"It's lonely being someone else."

For a second his smile drops some, and I have to fight to keep mine from fading. In a moment, though, he has the big grin back. Somehow it's not the same, like he's forcing it, and I feel a twist in my gut that I can't put a name to. His eyes bore into mine and I start to feel as though the world is fading from around me. The sound of thunder is still in the distance, but closer closer. It will be here soon, and then I can let the rain wash away the worst of me, as it's done a million times before.

As I speak I see him shift forward, drawn closer in either interest or sympathy. A flicker of something crosses his eyes until I reach out. When my hand touches his he doesn't pull away, doesn't look at me like I've suddenly grown a snake for an arm, and he doesn't leave. Internally I feel a warmth, and I want to sigh in relief but I don't. Beneath my hand, his shifts. For a moment I wonder if he's going to pull away and my stomach clenches but then I feel his fingertips brush my palm and a shiver crawls up my back. It's so difficult to hold myself still that I'm sure he can feel the shudder through our linked fingers. We sit there, holding hands and looking into each other's face, and I can hear the storm broiling right above us now. There's still time before the rain begins to fall but I want it to fall now.

"I mean, I don’t know a whole lot about what it’s like to be someone else, but I understand the lonely part." Thunder rolls above me and I want to laugh with joy. A storm, a lightning storm, full of sparking energy was just about to break and I wanted to dance as the falling drops splashed to ground. "And I wish you didn’t have to deal with that. I’m sorry if I made it worse." The lightning is about to flash, the electricity in the air is like a held breath. Any moment now, any moment. My eyes are on his face, looking into his eyes, tracing his cheekbones, glancing over his lips, snapping back to his eyes. I can't breathe for the crackling tension surrounding me. The hair on the back of my neck is standing up.

And I wait.

And it comes. F L A S H

The bar is lit by the plasma, casting long shadows and silhouetting the bartender like he's suddenly devoid of definition and colour."I don’t want you to feel bad at all." He squeezes my hand as the lighting strikes and I jump. The pull on my hand is enough to keep me in place and I grin broadly at the man I had met an hour ago, but known for a lifetime. "I can never feel bad when it rains. Come on, let's see!" I'm gripping his hand tight, keeping him with me through sheer force of excitement. Standing, I pull him towards the window. He's a much larger person than I, so should he not come along there's no way I can physically force him. Still, by power of will alone I would get him to stand at the window with me as the rain rolled past.

I stared at the downpour, feeling the cleansing effects even from here. I turned to face him again, staring up into his face that was suddenly so much farther away. While I couldn't sober up with the rain pouring down an inch from my face, and the two servings of alcohol probably was another factor, I did want to address his sentiment. "You didn't make it worse." It was my turn to squeeze his hand. "You know I'm not her, and you know you know it." With my free hand I reached up and poked him in the chest, right over his heart - which was just a bit below my eye-level. "You know it here." For emphasis, I jabbed him again.

"That is what makes you different from everyone else I've ever met."

Overtaken by the crackle in the air, the alcohol, or some combination of the two, I moved so I was standing right next to him. After a breath to grip my courage, what little wasn't already gifted to me by booze, I leaned against him. Afraid of what I might see on his face - and being at a rather awkward angle to see it at all - I simply stared out the window.

I'm sure I had a grin bigger than a Cheshire cat on my face.