from winter to summer then winter again ❅ penelope & denali

Last year, it was too much to bear — the idea of coming back to this room, of looking another dead girl in the face as they stared back, knowing they wouldn't be like her. Sky Bison was not brought back to life before being sent home to her family... in a shitty pine shipping crate that probably gave anyone who touched it splinters. There were probably dead flies and packing peanuts stuck in her wounds. Maybe it was too much for anyone to bring themselves to clean her up the way Seville had bent over Zion's corpse with tweezers and cotton swabs, the same way she would have done again for Denali.

It was guilt that brought Denali here the first time and it was worse with Raven, the emotion twined with rage, horrified frustration, and an inability to understand each other. She looked so much like her sister Dove, who had been Zion's district partner. It's easier to think about it all this year than it was the year before. As that realization crosses her mind she has to stop and actively hope it isn't because she was proven right that it was stupid and horrible for Raven to volunteer. She died. Sky died. Denali died, but —

This year the Lyons name does not echo through the crowd. This year Lex is ineligible and Denali doesn't have to sprint home to bang her head against the wall while calling Mackenzie's phone, desperately hoping for someone to answer. Shamelessly hoping that someone is Lex. Safe. Not on a train. Her voice pressed close enough to her ear that closing her eyes feels like being together on the widow's walk again. This year the name Marcet isn't recognizable the way Elsu and Bison were. This year Denali doesn't have an excuse not to visit the justice building after the reaping and despite all the ways things aren't as bad as they have been before, she still distrustfully avoids making eye contact with the peacekeepers outside. If she did, she might see her reflection in their visors, judging herself for last year's selfish no-show.

If only she had looked up before entering that room then she'd have also seen them all smirking and taken it as a warning.

"Denali Lyons," she's called out before the door has even closed behind her, "aren't you an interesting little thing?" There's a click as the lock falls into place, but her fingers linger on the handle, wary. The other girl's tone is casual in a way that she recognizes. This is the voice of her mother when they invite politicians to the house for dinner, when she pretends to drink more than she actually does, tricking them into thinking her judgement might be impaired for the evening's business dealings when the ones actually being taken advantage of are them. "I assume you're here to offer your advice —" The truth is she doesn't know why she's here. She lost. She burned alive, slow and agonizing, as the cameras forgot about her before her cannon had even fired. There are better people for giving advice. "— or to give your condolences."

When she visited Francisco, she had offered to tell him what dying was like because if she could go back in time and change one thing it would be to have been prepared for that. Lethe and Patricia didn't tell her because they don't know. No one else told her because they don't know. Knowing might have been enough to cause her to dodge Annie's knives instead of brazenly running into them, believing she could survive based on willpower alone. Or maybe knowing would have caused her to falter her aim in the duel with Lex so that she could selfishly be the one to die in the arms of kindness, instead of choking to death on the smoke of her own burning skin and hair.

"Should I even listen to a corpse?" Penelope Marcet leans back casually in her chair as the question flings itself down Denali's throat and attempts to strangle her from the inside. "If I were a suspicious woman, I would be afraid of you." Woman. The word fills the room like an accusation. Despite the easygoing posture and tone of indifference, the implications are merciless. Denali is a little thing. Denali is a child's corpse. Denali is not worth fearing, much less respecting. "You're warm, but you're dead. You're always going to be dead." It catches her so off-guard that Penelope reaching out to run a finger down Denali's arm doesn't register until the sudden touch wrenches her stomach in two and lashes the pieces back together in a savage knot of violation.

"Better than being a cold bitch," Denali spits back, jerking her arm up and away so fast that her clenched fist knocks the underside of Penelope's jaw as she pulls the arm protectively against her chest. Sucking in a breath through her teeth, her eyes are wild and her brow furrowed as her mind tries to catch up and process exactly what's happening here. Clasping a tense hand over the place where the other girl's thumb grazed her arm, it takes a moment to swallow down the bile that still rises automatically. Even after all this time these arms don't feel like her own. The skin may have colored slightly so that the difference isn't as apparent, but it's still... off. There's a faint and sparse scattering of freckles, but it's nothing at all like the dense clusters smattered across her cheeks and shoulders. The scars may have faded a bit, but the seams at her elbows are still as thick and puckered as cords pulled too tightly beneath the surface. They're the wrong scars. She misses the self-inflicted scratch marks of her own frustrations and self-doubt and the little crescent moons that dotted her palms. She misses the way she could look down and see every struggle she'd ever felt and overcome instead of a strange smoothness she distrusts.

"I definitely didn't come here to be insulted and patronized by some childish mean-girl trying to make herself feel all grown up by telling other people to feel small." This is the first reaping since her own that Denali has worked up the courage to wear a sleeveless dress, knowing the cameras would pan the crowd for her and Minx — patched up reminders of things both equally possible and impossible; knowing it would cut from them to Lethe's face, forever resentful that they aren't her own resurrected family. It hasn't been long since she finally admitted that she'd been hiding her unsettling lack of scars even from herself. It's only because she doesn't want to flinch anymore when Lex touches her that she's come this far, but this... this is too much. Maybe she doesn't know exactly why she came here, but it certainly wasn't to have the worst parts of herself poked and prodded all over again as if she's the tribute in this room. "It's good that you don't have an issue with touching people without their permission. You're simply going to adore the Capitol. Maybe you'll get lucky," a wry snort of forced laughter flares her nostrils at the twisted idea of good fortune and Denali finally drops her arms back to her sides. Blood gleams quietly on the place that Penelope's thumb brushed her, four bright red marks where Denali's fingernails dug in to tear the feeling out. Glancing down, it's as if she can see the frustration escaping out the small wounds. She smiles dryly and fixes her gaze back on the girl unlucky enough to be reaped three years too late. "Maybe they'll even like you back."