Broken Clocks [Anarcha/Glamour/Leon]

“You don’t know what it’s like to fight,” he spits out those words like the bitterness is overbearing on his tongue, and I watch from the ground beneath as he begins to laugh. He grows taller with the darkness that melts across his face, distorted and now altogether unrecognizable. I try and push myself up but my hands won’t gain traction, can’t manage to follow my simple instructions of get the fuck out and soon he looms over me and Peridot, me and the diamond-in-the-rough boy, me and my only remaining brother, and Wednesdae continues to grow. His menacing laughter booms through the bleakness of Tartarus. The wind is strong but his roars blow the wind back home, frightened by his might, and he steps closer to my brother, closer to my protector, closer to my star, and I want nothing more than to scream out and stop it but nothing escapes the prison of my lips, shut tight and unwavering against me. “You don’t know what it’s like to feel.” For a moment I am Peridot Myler, cracked diamond, still perfect through imperfections, untouched, a reflection of all I know. I am the shell Wednesdae thinks I am. The air is sour around us, and again I am Aria, the contents of the shell, the crab seeking shelter, together whole but destined to be apart and alone. Wednesdae turns to me and lunges, a streak through his blurring face that must be a smile as he brings his sword down and I am defenseless in its warpath. His monstrous head peels away layers before me in the seconds it takes for him to attack, the broken clock of his still ticking out of time, these few seconds hanging on for their last breaths of life. What’s left of him when Learna Libertine’s broadsword tears into my flesh is bone, nothing but bone, and his skeletal grin finally drags the sound from the pits of my soul, there in Tartarus, and as my eyes open wide, unblinking and sore, I see the heads of Cerberus rise from his shadow.

I let myself blink after a minute of straining to see through translucent pools. What is flushed from my eyes creeps down my cheeks. Unfamiliar. Chilling. Moonlight washes the room in the warmth of white. The stark walls are clean and clear and empty. The way I like my mind. A time when that was achievable seems like another life. An eon that slipped through the cracks of the earth, slid between my fingers and dissipated into the nothingness everything else becomes. A sense of peace dances around my bed, not quite partnering with me. Taunting like Wednesdae has so many nights before. Never tangling for more than a quick two-step that I crave to sneak into a waltz, to hijack her motions and meld into her pirouettes. Extended legs and lofty leaps entrance me. Something so close yet never truly there, a pipe dream if ever there were. Eighteen years of dreams, all variations of the same sequence of events. Eighteen years of watching the demons I released into the world, demons that never would have crawled out of the trenches where they idled in children’s souls if not for me, that were never laid to rest, that continue to haunt and to smolder in my heart and bear down on my chest, that thrive on the absence of life. The dancer folds over and vanishes. Everything leaves eventually.

Sentimentality comes with age, I’m told. I disagree with most general public assertions, but I find it hard to combat the truth of that with anything but examples of my increased wistfulness. My ever-growing yearning for a yesterday that cannot return from its grave. A time when I retreated to my penthouse with nothing but power lapping at my heels instead of the rats of my rage, of my rotting heart, nipping at each other, ripping apart their own siblings to have their piece of Anarcha Bentley, their piece of a woman long since tired of enduring this vapid shitshow of existing. I am tired.

Vita mutatur, non tollitur. Life is changed, not taken.

I can’t help but feel mine was taken, like who I am was plucked up like the corpse of a Tribute, gathered with no care whatsoever by a giant metal claw in the sky, snatched and destroyed. It suits me to go through this, and I deserve it, for putting those two dozen through it, for sending claws down to drag bodies away from their death place, for disturbing their absolution of peace; and now I long for everything I stole, everything I stripped them.

Life is easier in black and white. Easier when boundaries are set and everything has its order. When everything makes perfect sense and morality is a foreign concept. Gray’s a different story. A different author - an angry, benevolent one with a penchant for putting her characters through hell three times over. That author fucking hates me, and she’s made sure I know. Scenes added, scribbled along the binding, just to unleash a storm that rivals my transgressions. My lines cut, leaving me speechless. Defenseless. My best weapon incapacitated without warning. I don’t know how to live with the world in gray. I’m supposed to be tough as nails. I am reputed as such, anyway, and I’ve maintained the ideation. But with each passing year I find myself bent. I find the hammer never strikes head on. That it keeps chipping away at the wood around me, mashing my edges and twisting me into the most uncomfortable angles. The brunt of the swings never hits me the way I expect. I am the dancer, but my peace cannot be realized. I dance to stay alive; I do not dance to live.

Gray world dulls me. Keeps the oxygen from my flame. I haven’t really danced in ages. Not since Glamour Kinkade spent his waking hours wrapped tight around my body like the unforgivable sin of spandex. And if anyone could pull off that nasty synthetic elastiblend it would be him. He who can be human and Gamemaker in tandem, who can play god and fear him, revere him. What a sad story mine is, to pine for the lover I set free, to hold highly the man who once esteemed me. His fire kept the gray from smothering me, and I was above it, was above his considerations and his time and his passion. Now my back has buckled from the weight of the world, from the gravity of existence forcing me down to kiss its feet. And I know he could have protected me.

Now he protects His Victor, not Ours. Ours hides in my head instead of taking on his responsibilities, and I don’t blame him. I’d choose to haunt me for eternity, too. Rooting for his crowning meant a death sentence for everyone else around him, and how is that anything you wish on anyone? Glamour has always been so capable of appearing both weak and powerful, fearful and mighty. He tries to mask it with his confidence and his joie de vivre, but his vulnerabilities are tenfold and they always have been. I’ve managed to waver from one extreme to the other. The scales tipped in favor of anyone-but-me. From trembling at my name to confusing it with a pop star’s. From the life everyone dreamed of to stuck living in a nightmare. I am the unknown. I am the siren atop her cliffs, untouched on the outskirts of the wine dark sea. I am waiting for my time to return, and it’s been too long to give up now. Something’s gotta change. Vita mutatur and all.

It’s just reaching dawn when I throw my legs out of bed. The city sleeps on, but the day doesn’t start without me. I’m still Anarcha Fucking Bentley. I run the world.

News updates begin coming through as I tilt the first bottle of the day over, filling my glass to a reasonable centimeter below the rim. There’s a new cat breed that makes your hair grow thicker. I sip my champagne and flip to the next headline with a flick of my hand. The new Tributes have arrived at the Training Center. Interesting. My eyes linger on the hologram projecting in my kitchen, watching the replay of so many death sentences, celebrated and heralded as celebrities. Across the Capitol, there will be parades and parties, an endless assortment of festivities for these kids who will never see any of this again. Some call them lucky for being allowed inside the Capitol at all. Some call them lucky for an easy way out. I call them hopeless. I, too, am hopeless. I am tired. I am confused.

Leaning on my golden piano, I flip to the next headline, hoping for something not about the Hunger Games. For something that won’t dredge up more unwanted emotions. To my chagrin, a far too familiar face appears from the light. He’s looking dead at me, a specter after the remnants of my soul, and the audio comes out as mush. His face is inches from mine, so close that I could reach out and smudge his eyeliner, ruffle his hair and touch his fucking face. I want to tell him it will be okay. I want to protect him the way I refused of him. Glamour’s hologram quickly turns into someone else. Someone more put-together. My gut sinks, and I know Snow wouldn’t do this without consequences. The words still miss my ears, loitering by the lobes, catching the 5:30 train out of town and never coming back, but it doesn’t matter. I know what’s going on. That headline fades into the next: the newest fashion trend is neon duct tape. Glad I missed that one. I wave off my Pixie, and the projection ends.

I have to help him. The words won’t leave my mind, keep buzzing in and out of focus, a bee returning for more pollen. I have to help him. I am not a helper. I do not build. I do not create. I am destruction. I wreak havoc wherever I go. My name inspires rebellion, brings about war. But today I am not that cherry bomb. Today I am proving something to Wednesdae Drummond. Proving I do know how to feel, and I most definitely came ready to fight. I feel. I feel. I feel.

I feel my hands push the doors away, feel my head pass under the frame as my feet lift me into the training center. I feel the rush of nostalgia, of adrenaline that shoots me like a cannon, knocks me from my ship and into the rough waters of the sea. I am here. I am where I never should have been again. I am tossed in the waves, and I am marching my way right up to where I knew he would be. His face before me is not a projection, but I don’t smudge his liner. I know my voice will stir him. “It seems like you need me back, pup.” I breathe in. “So, I’ll be doing the honors.” A second or two passes and my heart works overtime, pumping enough blood to fill up the bloodbank and all its fountains. My knees are locked, my fingertips ice. I hide it well enough.

“At your wedding.”