neon lights, focus filtered | stella x teddy x mack
Nov 3, 2018 15:23:21 GMT -5
Post by alex 🐺 on Nov 3, 2018 15:23:21 GMT -5
s t e l l a ;
Shapes filtered across the screen, a torrent of red, gold, black, blue. Blood and sequins. Diamonds and skin. Carnage and couture.
Her second year of this and she was used to it by now. Well, that was a lie. The slow unmaking of each tribute dancing in the images and it was only just the second day dawning. The slow unmaking of Stella and the ways that she bit to the bone her fellow tributes. The white steel of promise striking hard against the porcelain skin of her enemies and she would never be used to that.
She ached as she carved her name into the history books, dragging the bodies of Euley, Aeson, and Raven behind her. Looking for ways to escape. If she ever planted a garden it would be full of poison. All poison. Deadly nightshade and carnivorous plants. She hoped she could spare Ex from her plague, but the older blonde remained steadfast at her side. An anchor. Stella prayed she would never drag her down.
The leather armchair was warm and her arms were across her chest, her legs across the arms of the chair, crossed at the heel that wore black heels. Her pants were crafted with care, the black satin stripe darker on the black fabric of the dress slacks. Perfectly tailored, as Ex had advised. No girlfriend of hers would be caught dead in the Capitol without the proper dress. Without the proper armor. And it seemed all Stella wore these days was black clothing. A perpetual mourning for her tributes. For her charges. For her mistakes and her failures. For their lives and for their deaths. Pre-empted but present. A thin black tank sat across her torso, a white blazer thrown on another couch as the wall to wall televisions filled the silence. Filled the storm within the seventeen-year-olds brain. The neon lights struck her with such intensity as her nails dug into her arms. She couldn't take her eyes of the screen.
It would never get easier and she would never not worry about them all. District Twelve tributes or not, she worried about all of them. She was them and they were her. Torn asunder and taken from their homes, their lives in parallel if only for this moment.
The boy from Six who had a laugh in his private training session. The girls from Five and Seven who had a spark of something, something more in the Games. Call it lust. Call it bloodlust. It was written across their interactions and she craved more from them. Call it karma, but her penance, her sacrifice was surviving. Her sacrifice was living to see these horrors year in and year out. And she would honor them all.
A pollution of sound and she was glued to each screen. Twenty-four different shots on twenty-four different screens and she agonized over them all. Blazing sky and endless horizon and the blood they wore across their uniforms could be Stella’s. It was, at one moment in time. She hovered on the edge of shattering. This Quell would break her. The twist, whatever it was, was coming and that was why she was here. She could see it before the hammer dropped. Before the other shoe fell. She would figure out the Twist before anyone else would.
And she would send up a signal? What could she actually do that she wasn’t already doing? Nothing. She could do nothing. Everything was expected of her. Nothing was expected of her.
The door behind her opened and the sanctuary of the old, book-lined study was broken, but she did not have to turn around to know who had entered. Once the door closed, she spoke, eyes now watching Carter and his alliance.
“We can’t save them, can we?” Her voice rising above the commentators, scratchy from the lack of use. She had been in this room for too long.
She knew it was him, and her question begged for comfort. Teddy would know. Teddy would have something, anything to offer to assuage her heart. To calm her fears. He speaks the language they both understand, caught in two words, both running from things they can’t see and things they can't unsee.
