name like an elegy / lena + andal

She can tell he's smiling just by the way his voice lilts. She wishes she couldn't. That he wouldn't. She wishes he'd stop with his puppy-dog eyes, or that'd he be angry with her, or more monstrous, so then she'd have a real justification for why she wants to snap at him so badly.

But he's just her brother, as earnest as he was before he left.

"They sure ain’t keen on asking.” Andal says, nudging her over and making himself comfortable.

Lena feels so small next to Andal. Always has. It used to make her huff and puff and she remembers stuffing her shoes with old newspaper on the first day of ninth grade because he'd had a sudden growth spurt over the summer and she was so damned jealous.

Maybe that's why she gets such a sick sense of relief from being able to twist the knife like this. She pushes and pushes and pushes and he's still genuine. It's unfathomable. She doesn't know how someone can share her blood and not feel that constant thrum of electricity that flows through it. It should be there. He should feel it. He should care about what happens to the family when he's gone because Lena's been doing it enough for the both of them.

Andal's carefreeness has always been foreign to her - she's never been able to afford something like that.

"You should ask for a refund." She picks at her nails and stares at one of the wind chimes hanging off the porch, "I'm not kiddin', Andal, you look weird, those docs ain't what they're cracked up to be."

And it unsettles her so damned bad. The brother she grew up with left, and someone else came home in his place. She can still feel her shock from when she saw that first broadcast. Andal was on screen with a brand new face and the big conspiracy started whispering through the family - that he actually had died and the Capitol replaced him.

Lena believed it. Right up until he stepped off the train and squinted across the platform at them. She knew the way he walked and the way he talked, and the Games might have changed his face, but it couldn't have changed that.

"Of course it's neater than before." Her proficiency is never the thing that's been disputed. She's capable. She's more than capable. Somehow it hurts even more when that's recognized. Everyone knows she can run this place, yet she's still here on the porch steps, regulated to dish duty.

"Go to the Capitol." Andal says, and Lena turns her face away so he can't see her expression.

"And let everything fall apart here? None of you would last a week." She tries to play it off as a joke, but it falls flat between them. "A degree ain't gonna change anything, s'just a pretty pipe dream."

Then she reigns it in a little, feeling him out, searching for a better reason to stay and fight and sink her teeth in, "You should be worried about yourself, got victor ticked off the list, what's next? The limelight's probably missing you."

Andal avoids her question like it's a damn sport.

He never used to be the podium shoe-in he is now. He wasn't the blue ribbon, gold star, Ma-puts-all-your-trophies-on-the-mantle kind of kid - none of them were.

They were born in pools of diesel fuel with rusted wire veins and as they got older and taller and started to raise Hell, the Good Lord had the common sense and decency to look away.

When track day rolled around each spring, it was the one time that the Searleys huddled together to figure out how discreetly they'd be able to trip up the fastest kid in each grade. Lena remembers being the worst kind of spitfire, being told she couldn't compete with the boys in sixth grade and then outrunning both Louie Mastings and Kent Ole through sheer spite.

But now.

But now, little silver boy, little victory ode, Andal's got more wins under his belt than any of them.

He can fix any problem, he can do anything. He'll buy Ma a whole damn new store, just because he can. Just because Lena's throwing another fit and they've gotta put a band-aid over it until she calms down again.

She scoffs.

The worst part is that Andal doesn't even do it on purpose. She knows he's not really cruel, she knows that. He can't help being earnest the same way she can't help being wrathful.

But now.

But still.

Maybe the problem is that she's just fundamentally insecure. She's still a kid with a towering brother who no one is allowed to snap at but her. She still wants that blue ribbon even though she has no mantle to put it on. And then Andal goes and sticks this idea in her head. He's got it dangling there on a string, she was just stupid enough to glance at it.

Lena keeps looking away from him, tracing a notch in the fence post to hide the way it's slowly, traitorously, growing on her.

"You really think I could?"

Because if he's making fun of her, she'll deck him, doesn't matter that he's a victor now, doesn't matter that he's part wolf or whatever, she'll do it.

She's affectionately harsh, deflection over deflection, at least they'll never say she's not layered - "I doubt you were in there thinking about sending me to school."

That's not what you nearly died for.