our future plays tricks on us, huh { lex + lenox | jb }

When Lex says something that she means, no matter how well she immediately undercuts the sentiment, the agonizing silence that follows stretches on to infinity. Half a second spans several lifetimes while she dies a handful of little deaths anticipating the reaction.

Slowly, a drop of sap rolling out of a spile and down with gravity, Lenox echoes her: "It's not my fault."

She's surprised to hear it. Lex Lionel would never have the courage to try out having a new kind of feeling in front of a stranger, and figured the same went for most people. Even though words are flat and lack conviction, like this is an exercise in rote repetition and the vocabulary is all brand new, the effort is commendable. Half a lifetime of practiced guilt was never going to be undone by a pep talk. Lex knows well enough that forgiving yourself takes work.

"It's not my fault." Lenox shakes her head, like the effort of absolution is too much for her. It's fair that it is.

It seems like enough of a stopping point that Lex wonders if she should head home before she makes things worse, or if she should backtrack and emphasize that Lenox LaChance does not deserve the things that are going to happen to her, so it catches her by surprise to hear the question: "How do you do it, Lex" — the only thing ahead of Lenox that Lex is qualified to advise on is die — "how do you live?"

It's a hell of a question.

Hands still in her pockets, she offers Lenox a deep shrug. "My heart keeps pumping blood," she reflexively quips, "and that seems to be enough to keep me moving."

It's as honest an answer as any, even if it isn't a real one. Lex has never thought much about how she lives before; she just does.

Minute by minute. Hour to hour. One day at a time - that's a stupid cliche. It's also not accurate. Month to month. Trip to trip.

She counts. She waits. She rises before the sun and spends the day on a long hike, or she sleeps til noon and turns balusters until noon the next day.

She bikes to Mackenzie's house for dinner once a month, and mostly stopped conjuring up excuses as to why she can't babysit, and mostly stopped threatening to teach the kid how to saw.

It's been eight months since she last spiked her tape measure into the shop floor over a board she cut a quarter inch too short.

Burl spends more and more time napping instead of hunting mice, but Arthur has made no moves to evict the cat from the woodshop, despite her clear breach of the terms of their business agreement.

She's gotten faster at building coffins, even though efficiency has never been the point.

A year ago, with her head on Denali's shoulder, she watched the little boy that she'd once seen apologize to the lifeless tribute whose skull he'd just split go home with a crown on his, and didn't make a single remark about how if one person she killed could win the second time around, obviously it would've been a breeze for Lex.

A chair she made won an award. It was a good chair.

She spends her workdays hewing fir timbers for other people's houses and the rest of the time in intricate daydream drafting imaginary blueprints for one of their own, every detail accounted for down to the frame pins (white oak, 3/4", obviously) except for the minor one where, even after all these years with Denali, logistics makes it too excruciating to discuss their future except in the most formless abstract.

Still, every time she pays a visit to District Five, she's embraced like the Lyonses haven't seen her in years, and when she gets back home her dad occasionally alludes to missing her.

Her favorite tree down across the river loses its leaves each winter but otherwise stays put exactly where she left it.

She lives like that, she guesses. She's not sure how it's different.

"Well," she decides, brow furrowed as she tries to figure out how best to explain what she means. "I live well."

It wasn't on purpose, but it wasn't an accident either. There was no obligation to have a nice life attached to the Gamemakers' strange gift and curious curse, and at this point there's no telling if her life would've been better or worse had her name never been pulled out of the glass bowl that year. She's turned it over enough times in her head; she doesn't bother to wonder anymore.

"I have good people. I like what I do. Every year I get older and more boring." She cracks a grin at that, hoping it doesn't sound too much like a boast given the present company. "Things still suck sometimes. But when I'm happy —" She recalls that conversation with Denali, the first real one, where she'd asked Lex not to go back and just be sad and drunk about it if she'd killed her. She thinks of Quest telling the pair of them don't waste it as the light flicked out of her eyes. "— it's like I get to do it on behalf of everyone else."