we can't be friends [m v r v l v a v m]

m a r g u e r i t e

Me and my truth, we sit in silence
Baby girl, it's just me and you
'Cause I don't wanna argue, but I don't wanna bite
My tongue, yeah, I think I'd rather die
You got me misunderstood, but at least I look this good

When Ines held her hand, Maggie closed her eyes.

For five long days, she’d been kept steady against the undertow that threatened to drown her and any chance she could have at survival.

That had been her whole life, really.

To have to show vulnerability would mean she’d have to trust, and to believe, that the people around her wouldn’t just abandon her. What in her whole life had ever prepared her for such a thing? A mother who, when presented with a new life, a little girl who marveled at how she’d put beads in her hair, who tugged at her skirt and giggled at the voices she’d made reading stories at night, could not find the strength to stay?

A father who, when the world had told him he had to be enough, worked himself to death? In a district where so few went hungry, and so many had true wealth unseen beyond anywhere save one or the capitol, and he had to stretch stew with flour or had them sleeping in a bus station when they didn’t have enough to pay for a roof over their heads. Whether he’d wanted to be there for Maggie, the world had let him die.

And that had been life – underneath the cruel hand of a place that turned from child soldiers to child gladiators – to give in to hope was to become a fool.

She’d squeezed Ines’s hand, tight.

Marguerite had not turned to cruelty, even when it could’ve been so much easier. She cocooned herself against any such hatred at all by seeing life matter-of-factly. She had to live, and others would die. One woman couldn’t change the world. And one person could never upend a hundred years of hatred.

There was no reason, then, to perpetuate the pain or suffering. It would always exist when people chose the same life they’d always had.

She could calculate what would save her. She could spend her strength on staying alive, rather than living in fear of what she would become. And that meant not wasting it on what other said or did around her.

The stars brought the face of the girl who’d been blow apart by lightning. Then another career – the same one who’d seemed to value taunting over anything else. She didn’t recognize the other two, but at her count, that left ten others.

“Let’s get up at sunrise. Maybe we’ll have a little time to talk?” Marguerite offered to break the stillness of the fold. “There’s some things I wanted to ask you.”

But there could be no sunrise for Marguerite Harvard.

No moment when she could risk showing off scars. To try to break her rules, finally, and to see not what, but just who Ines was.

The heat had melted away the arena, and it shed its skin with a terrible crack. For no sooner had Maggie awoken to the wet and the cold, the flood, and chaos of the avalanche, she’d been forced over the rocks and to the sands of the beaches.

“Ines?!” Her voice carried echoes through the wearying mist and sand.

Marguerite staggered across the sludge at the mouth of the beach and drew her glaive. She hadn’t forgotten where she was, and that the gamemakers wanted nothing more than to bring about the destruction of anyone that remained.

She couldn’t protect Ines, then, and would have to hope whatever strength she’d built over the last five days would carry her through. She wanted to say she had faith, but wondered now if Ines was made of steel or porcelain.

Of the crowd that had gathered, Maggie had her reasons to strike each of them.

Marceline had murdered Azure in the bloodbath. It’d be reasonable to take her down now, avenge Azure, and come out looking a hero. Except five days had felt an eternity. She scarcely remembered Azure and her heart didn’t beat for vengeance.

Axyl offered to stand with her the day prior. They hadn’t been allies, but she couldn’t say that they were enemies.

The boy from nine was a mystery to her. She didn’t trust her chances with him yet as she hadn’t seen what he could do.

And then here was the empty-headed boy who’d been a fool in the mines. Lionel had somehow survived to day six, and she had to give him credit for that. But of all the remaining people on that beach, somehow, she imagined her odds might’ve been best against someone who might’ve confused his right from his left.

“Five.” Maggie turn back on her left foot and lifted her glaive. “Why don’t we get this started?”