city of bones | {the chronicles of dane}
Feb 2, 2016 17:19:47 GMT -5
Post by hesper hart 🐺 d9f on Feb 2, 2016 17:19:47 GMT -5
PART _______ ONE |
The arrival to the Captiol also meant the arrival of the world's worst hangover, it turned out. Blue was banging on his door bright and early that morning, about an hour before sunrise.
"We'll be there soon! Up! he shouted.
Blue, frankly, was getting harder to look at as the years went on. He got older, but different parts of his body got newer. His skin was stretched too tightly in some places, and not tightly enough in others. His hair was a shade of electric blue, and he wore clothes that couldn't have been comfortable in the least. He also wore colored contacts, and kept asking Dane (over and over again,) if he was wearing colored contacts as well.
"No," he had said every time. "I was born like this. It's called heterochromia iridis." Blue would just nod and slap some strangely colored piece of meat onto his plate, then, as if he hadn't heard Dane at all, would say something like, "I didn't even know District Ten could afford things like colored contacts!"
He was right, of course: they couldn't.
His head throbbed with every beat of his heart, and he answered the door in only his briefs.
"Any chance you could get me something for a headache?" he groaned to Blue's overly plastic smile. "Certainly!" he said, turning on his heels and stomping away. Dane rolled his eyes and made it a point to close the door as quietly as possible, since noise was apparently only going to make things worse.
Sure enough, almost an hour later, Dane stood in the dining car with Noelia, Saffron, Mace, Mace's arsenal of children, and, unfortunately, Blue, and Blue clapped his hands together. "Best to finish up now! We're arriving!"
Dane wiped cookie crumbs from his face. (If he only had a week left to eat, he was going to fill it with as many sweets as possible.) He climbed up to the window, squinting under the harsh sunlight and...
"Wow."
Buildings so tall he couldn't see the tops of them were in perfect lines, running along the tracks. People wearing different obnoxious colors walked every which way, all of them laughing like there was syrup stuck in their throats to one another. A few took notice of the train and genuine emotion replaced fake masks. They would excitedly waves, try to keep up with it, despite the fact that it was going over 300 miles an hour, and then they'd be gone.
When the train finally came to a stop, though, he could hear them cheering outside the train.
"Show time!" Blue said, the same syrupy tone that seemed ever present in the Capitol.
Dane looked over to Mace and Saffron, who seemed mostly unbothered by the cheering. "Is this serious?" The answer: it was.
The doors opened and people went wild. Suits of white held every other color back from pummeling us to shreds. Mace and Saffron took pens and pads from people and signed their names on them, smiling politely here and there, posing for pictures every now and again.
People were going absolutely insane over the children. Dane hardly even knew them and he had an overwhelming urge to push them behind him and tell everyone to back off. Kieran seemed to be in his element, though, smiling for pictures and laughing at jokes he didn't even hear completely. Dane noticed he never strayed too far away from Mace or Saffron, either.
Good.
Eventually, he got the idea and started doing what the rest were doing. His signature was mostly just the letters "D" and "A" with straight lines behind them, but people seemed pleased enough.
The constant flashing of cameras was definitely not helping his hangover, but the pills Blue had brought him had helped to numb it to dull roar, which was better than nothing.
Blue stood in front of the doors at the far end, laughing like he had yet another mouth full of syrup, and clapping his hands together to get their attention.
"Time to move on, everyone!" he called. He had to repeat himself about four times before the others gathered. Kieran was particularly stubborn about taking his time. Dane, on the other hand, had practically sprinted to Blue's side.
Blue's crazy, he could handle. A thousand Blues's crazy? Absolutely not.
At last, they all gathered, turned and did their final waves, and the doors closed behind them with a final click.
