I'm Looking to the Sky to Save me // [Ren/Shelby VT]

She'd been looking for a complication, her entire life.

That was the sort of legacy you inherited from the Rushes. Velocity had made her peace by causing chaos; she'd found beauty in the breakdown. Adrenaline had found peace in order, the careful organization of all life's pieces. She had known City lived when everyone had referred to her as a ghost; she had known she lived on beyond the bloody arena, speaking through her journals. She knew as she believed.

So today, confronted with the new Victor of District Eight, paraded into town with the other fallen families, she understood. She ignored her chores and her stint at the local grocery store. Instead she stood before the slim mirror, dent curling iron in hand and made her curls obey. When that was accomplished, she thrifted through her mother's closet, and then her cousin's, and at last, the closet tomb that had belonged to Velocity Rush.

She emerged feeling more like her departed sister than herself.

She marched through town, blank eyes and vacuous smile affixed. Were it not for her skyscraper legs and her heavy brunette curls, she could have been Velocity on a good day. She didn't speak; no one cared to hear her. She found her place in the crowd and listened to the perfunctory speech. It meant nothing. All the while City's words beat against her, shards of glass against the radiance of the sun.

They bought me everything,
but saved nothing for me.


and then somewhere along the way
I found something to replace your love.

She queued, followed, said the right things. And suddenly she was in front of her, mind as blank at her expression. Adrenaline reached into her thoroughly searched purse. "So," she said, applying a fresh coat of baby pink lip gloss. She never once made eye contact with Shelby Leviane; hell, she never once looked up from her makeup kit. "Why the hell did you get to live and my sister had to die?"