half sick of shadows | {spencer/camila}

I will never forgive. The thought runs through her mind like a bullet; girl on the warpath, class president out for a ride on her rollerblades. She remembers being thirteen and being told to her face that people wanted to force her to go into the Games, willing to abuse a Quell twist just for the sake of abusing her. She can remember that trauma as vividly as being reaped only six months ago, the sound of people booing all around her when Bellamy Bravina volunteered to take her place. At the time, she looked at him like he was something of a guardian angel.

Now, there are days when she wonders if she would have been better off refusing his mercy. The bullying has never gotten any better, despite her best efforts to combat it. She puts on her armor every morning, ties up her hair neatly and paints her eyelids, eats a healthy breakfast and even does some light reading before catching the school bus. All her life, she has taught herself how to hold control over herself and her surroundings. She pours so much into herself that sometimes it overflows, and she just can't help providing for others. It's simply her charitable nature.

Or so she thought. A long time ago a girl made a choice to sharpen her teeth to fight back at the people out to get her, and now in the present, there is a girl who has become so sharp that no one can stand to touch her. Let alone be around her. She doesn't know when she developed into this girl; no longer the nerd being picked on, the pious bookworm whose only friends were the other goody two-shoes, but now a monster in her own right.

No one called her the night everything fell apart. And she couldn't blame them. She got so sucked up in her campaign that she lost sight of her values; she had her gun aimed at friend and foe alike in the name of pulling herself higher on the ladder. Silly as it might be, she used to think that getting to the top would mean never feeling small again.

But the highest objects can always be toppled over, and anything that is lucky enough to brush its fingertips across the sky can be unlucky enough to come crashing down. Beauty and intelligence are powerful allies, but they give no immunity. It doesn't matter what brand of clothing she wears, how highly she scored on her marks, what teachers hold her in the highest regard. In the name of putting up a fight she put herself at odds with the whole world. Wicked things, Camila has always known, come in three.

Lovely, lethal, lonely.

All she can stand to do lately is remain inside her own head, lost within her thoughts and her regrets, pinned under her ceaseless ambition, the way that she wants everything there is to want — the way that everyone else in this town wants her to have nothing. Maybe it's the melancholy that fucks her up, or maybe vision problems are just a whole separate issue she needs to add to the steadily rising list. She hears a young man's oof! as she knocks the air out of him, toppling to the ground on her skates and spinning out for good measure. She lands with a thud and a strangled sound of her own, groaning for a good few seconds before pulling herself up on her hands and knees, steadying her breath and blowing leaves out of her bangs. When the boy clears his throat and speaks, her cheeks flush furiously red.

"Oh, goodness!" Spencer Salem's honey warm tenor greets her ears, sounding almost sincere. Her eyebrow quirks at that, a little surprised that he even knows how to string a sentence together without expletives. She sees him for what he is, one of the main bullies behind her torment, but she will admit that his involvement has always paled in comparison to the likes of Leo and Ripley, which she has returned by mainly focusing her hatred on the latter two over him, as well. Maybe at some point in time there was a little nerdy girl who wanted the cutest boy in school to ask her to the sock hop, but the only person left alive to tell that memory has no intentions of digging it up from the past. Let it stay buried.

"I saw that fall from my-" she braces herself, waits to hear all about what a pathetic klutz she is, how he had surely been filming the exact moment she ate dirt, "-um, my birdwatching bench!" Now, both of her eyebrows are furrowed in confusion, but she can't really find any reason in the current situation to lash out at him. Heckling her is one thing, but admitting a dorky habit... it humanizes him in a way that kind of humanizes her, too. "Are you okay?" The blush on her cheeks is still visible, but she hopes he'll just chalk it up to the stress of the situation, tucking a dark strand of hair behind her ear and dusting off her skirt. She glances down at the scuffs on her rollerblades, and she frowns.

"Well, I can't say the same for my ego, but I'll manage." She considers just nodding a farewell and speeding off right then and there, muttering a quick sorry for bumping into him, but there is a pulling in her that reaches out to him, wraps around the possibility and basks in the way he holds her gaze without laughing in her face, pointing out her faults. Embarrassing as it all might be, seeing Spencer Salem in this light is quite the rare sight. Like seeing a painted bunting soar overhead in the springtime, once in a lifetime.

"Are you actually interested in birds?" She tries not to sound judgmental for once, going so far as to offer a small smile. Maybe the more she talks, the less likely he'll be able to notice the sound of her beating heart. "My dad actually has a lot of birdwatching books in his study. I used to love looking at the pictures when I was little." Again, there's that voice within herself that considers if the time has come to turn and go, but she finds herself rooted in place. Staring into those chocolate eyes, warm on the edges like cinnamon, feeling seen by a boy who used to make her feel so invisible.

"Um, I'm sure he wouldn't mind at all if I lent some of them to you. If you're seriously into the hobby."