for crown and ruin / sumner & clover

for crown and ruin / sumner & clover Mar 21, 2023 13:27:02 GMT -5

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Post by gamemaker 🍒 maryn hale on Mar 21, 2023 13:27:02 GMT -5

♟ S U M N E R ♟

Clover turned eighteen a week ago — and for those seven days, I've felt the cold breath of time against the back of my neck. A winter wind, a premonition, a brother and a sister and one singular, golden thread of fate shared between them. It stings like ice, frost on the cuts over my knuckles, a wound that goes on for eternity. I have less than a year before I catch up with him again — our inevitable, unending game of hide and seek; less than a year before the contract we signed all those years ago in the orphanage must be fulfilled.

We must volunteer for the Games, and we must bring honor to the de Vere name.

Only he and I know the consequences of the choice that we made. But what overwhelms me, what conjures dark storms in my eyes each time I look at him, is that I'm not sure either of us has truly come to terms with what is destined to happen. Next reaping, regardless of our say, Clover has to go into the arena and face the terrors that await him there. Alone. And I know his leaving means my following; always, I am the moon to his earth. Where he is stable, I am spiraling. To me, this is not weakness. To know all things, one must know calamities, too.

But I know there is a reason that I tread in the wake of him; Clover charging, Sumner calculating. It terrifies me to consider a world where I will have to confront the absence of him. Even standing in a void, I would call out his name. And I know, somewhere in the tapestry of the universe, that our souls were always destined to meet in this way; like comets scorching, a streak of light and then, stardust burning in the atmosphere. If there will be anything left of either of us when all is said and done, I cannot say. But to suffer together has always been our penance.

We're in the midst of our morning sparring when I turn on my heel, dark hair cutting like a knife through the air — twirling my very real daggers with my fingers before returning them to my belt. Death, I would like to believe, can be evaded as easily as sheathing a blade. "I'll go with you." I say the words more abruptly than I intend, so I take a moment to glance down at my shoes and collect my thoughts. It's not like me to be so reckless, to speak with my heart and not my brain. But I am awash with emotions I have yet to confront, and I don't know how to face the challenges in my life without him there alongside me.

"Instead of you volunteering next games, and me after, I could volunteer with you." I think of two vagabonds squaring off against the entire world; and I know we will always be at war, and I know nothing we could ever do will change this. "You and I both know what we're capable of together. We'd keep each other safe." But that's not the question — not the fear. There can only be one victor, and between the two of us, we need two crowns. I would uproot this nation if they ever tried to make me choose between having him or gold.

And yet here we are at the precipice.

"Clover, I can't just sit here in this house and watch you fight for your life through a television screen. The idea of it horrifies me."

All of my visions

are slowly becoming nightmares

and nothing more.

✾

for crown and ruin / sumner & clover Mar 26, 2023 17:02:05 GMT -5

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Post by pogue on Mar 26, 2023 17:02:05 GMT -5

C L O V E R

His birthday is celebrated in shadowy presence and the reminder of the longest promise he has yet to uphold, a glass with scotch poured slow with a heavy hand, the world bent and distorted in the waves of amber liquid. It goes down easy, partially because he welcomes the burn and partially because Sumner and himself had drunk half the bottle years ago and cut the rest with water, staring into the empty night until sleep had taken them.

He sits, forlorn and wondering, on the edge of eighteen years old and thinks of what they have done together, what he will have to do in the future, what he will leave behind if he does not succeed. Their father reminds him of it later that night, behind closed door and shifted lock that he knows his sister will be listening through, staring into the face of a man whose only semblance of a relationship was built on a contract signed in scarlet promise and expectation, heavy crown and glory for the de Vere name.

It's a double-edged sword, both ends rusted and bloody. He can't bring himself to hate him, yet it feels almost treacherous to find comfort in knowing he'll never need to love him, either.

There's a deep wound left that bleeds fast and heals slow, dragged across his chest and ending directly over his heart. It's why he has spent every night since tracing the veins of cracks that run across the ceiling of his bedroom, blue eyes wavering housing ice and storm, mind balancing heavy on the edge of sleep. It's the first time in his life he's been fearful to lay his head against the pillow, as sleep gives way to the darkness and the darkness gives way to nightmares of what he will have to become, cold sweats and gasps and waking up in the dead of the night with breath caught deep in his chest.

He wanders around his room like a specter, as if he is already a ghost amongst the living, avoiding the creaking floorboard in the middle to make no noise, though he suspects Sumner knows what is going on already anyways. After all, they have always been able to write their lines and read between them too, shared hearts and shared thoughts and trauma forged with intertwined fingertips. To the world they are obsidian stone, to each other they are nothing but glass, staring into the other's heart just to make sure it is still beating.

On the worst nights he has hovered with fingertips over the handle, as if to open pandora's box and release the demons that press sharpened claws into his shoulders. He doesn't dare do it, though, can't bring himself to place his own fear on the steps of Sumner's door. After all, his countdown is also hers, she will have to hear his name and remember his voice, watch his death or his survival and live with the burden until her turn inevitably comes. She will be in his shadow no matter how cold it is, whether it is drowned in red or carved in gold, a fate he can't help but know to be worse.

The brother in him, the protector, hates himself for being so selfish.

The boy in him, the innocent, just feels afraid.

There are bags under his eyes that sit heavy in the fluorescent lighting as they spar, early morning sun beaming through the sunroof and carving reminders into their skin, another morning and another day closer, sunlight that once felt refreshing now sinful. He wipes sweat from his brow as he steps backward and adjusts his stance, quickly returning his free hand back to the welcoming cold of the axe handle. It's become an extension of his own existence at this point, more weapon than human, more deadly than a boy his age should ever be. Muscles tense as Sumner sheathes her blades, anticipating what comes next. She has always been the calculating one, the cunning, a counterpart to the way he charges with some sick fusion of brutality and grace, like a crashing wave desperate to crush whatever remains underneath it.

"I'll go with you."

Her words take expectations and tear them limb from limb, flip them upside down and bleed them out, and his own body reacts even before his mind does, breath in throat and eyes widened, white-knuckling the hilt of his blade until he reminds himself to relax again. Sumner catches herself in the wake of her own suddenness, eyes dropping to the ground but Clover's gaze does not break as much as it may waver, blue eyes shaking softly in a mix of contempt and confusion. Because this is not how their interactions are meant to go, she is not the one to charge recklessly into the outcome as he does, she ponders her words and calculates their impact far more than he ever has.

It's why they work so well together, Achilles' heel and Achilles' heart.

Even now he feels words dance heavy on the edge of his lips, No, the urgency to stop his sister before she can step foot into a grave six feet down and growing deeper by the day, but he knows to do so would be to meet crashing wave with crashing wave, to tear each other apart, to start a war and finish it all at once. He bites back the words and tastes their venom as Sumner continues.

"Instead of you volunteering next games, and me after, I could volunteer with you."

No-

"You and I both know what we're capable of together. We'd keep each other safe."

No-

It's the only word that runs through his mind, over and over again on the edge of watching himself fall apart in front of her, keeping himself together but only barely. Her next words are dagger to gut and twisted in firm grasp, and he feels his own form, muscles tensed and knuckles white, suddenly snap.

"Clover, I can't just sit here in this house and watch you fight for your life through a television screen. The idea of it horrifies me."

It becomes his turn for faltered gaze, tracing the lines of the training mats and feeling a bead of sweat carve its path on his cheek as he ponders the words, the hurt. Sumner is the moon to his rocky shores, her voice can bring roaring waves high into the air just to watch themselves crash, or they can pull away the waters and reveal only coarse sand below, shifting and screaming in the moonlight until the water covers them once more.

She has seen the worst and the best of him ten times over, and he has seen hers too. It's what makes all of this so much more painful, to know that they burn together and choke on the smoke of their ruin, holding the embers of their remains tight to chest and swallowing the pain that comes with it.

The silence is poison, it drips and crawls between them and laces itself into their veins, shared death.

"And then what?" He finally speaks after what feels like an eternity shared, "We go in there. We fight, we protect each other until the end... and then what?" Rhetorical, he looks up to her as he finishes the sentence and revels in the betrayal of his voice, wavering and on the edge of cracking even though he so desperately attempts to hold himself together.

He would tear himself apart limb from limb before he raised a blade to her, before he'd make her bleed. The thought of it picks at his heart and severs heartstrings.

Deep breath, heavy sigh, he lets go of the weapon he has claimed as his own and moves forward in the wake of its metallic scream as it hits the ground, closing the short distance between them before hesitantly raising a palm and placing it onto the shoulder of his sister, his moon, the only person he has ever trusted and shares her visions and her nightmares. Emotions have never been his strong suit, brute and destruction laced into his namesake, but now he stands on the edge of the shore and feels the waters take him.

It is the first time either of them has confronted what is to come since his birthday, and even as he feels his heartbeat laced into the palm on her shoulder he tears himself thin with the guilt of realization, that he's forced her to feel this on her own when it should have been his burden to bear. I'm sorry dances on his lips, but his eyes tell it clearly as he looks to her once more. "I don't want to go in there, Sumner."

Voice wavering, broken, it's his turn to speak without warning and with heavy conscience.

"I don't want to become that, whatever it takes to win. I don't want to do it alone. And I don't want to leave you here just to sit there... just to watch me become that."

Poison, laced into the words as he breaks his gaze, pulls it back.

Tightens his grasp. "But you can't be in there with me. You can't do what you just proposed. I would rather step off that pedestal before the Bloodbath even begins than have to fight you, Sumner."

So foolish, playing the part of the protector, as if either of them could ever be helped.

He pulls his grip back and feels raggedy breath run through his lungs, sitting in the wake of his own emotions as if it is betrayal.

"I could make it home." And he could, he knows this. But the unsureness of his own mortality reminds him harshly that so many like him haven't made it back, it's why he adjusts his expectations and guilt as he continues.

So foolish, playing the innocent, as if either of them could truly be saved.

"If I do well enough, and you don't volunteer the next Games...", it's the only reprieve he has clung to since his birthday, the thought of their Father unable to do anything but simmer on his own, the thought of Sumner choosing to live her life because she deserves to, whether he is there to share it with her or not.

And he knows it's treason as he suggests it, looks to her with a trailing sentence but a shared thought. Of gaming the system, of betraying a promise, of at least one of them making it out of this alive. His eyes tell a story, poetic as he looks back to the person he loves as a sister-

please.