the greatest pretender (flo/august, day 3)

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florentine, d4b ❁
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the greatest pretender (flo/august, day 3) Oct 31, 2024 14:55:14 GMT -5

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Post by florentine, d4b ❁ on Oct 31, 2024 14:55:14 GMT -5

i told myself that i wouldn't go looking for august vance tonight, but i am a liar all the way through to my core.

it was the wave, i tell myself, that changed my mind. the rush of the water, filling my mouth, my ears, my whole mind; i would not have heard, if a siren had sounded to indicate the end of his story. i would not know. it is curiosity, then, more than anything else, that snatches me away from the sleeping bodies of eulalie and andromache to wander alone along the shoreline. part of me wants to scream into the darkness, address the swell with my loudest voice and demand to know if that was all it had, if it got what it wanted from me.

i wander the rockpools, exposed in the moonlight. it is a risk, i know, to put myself in plain sight in this way - but all i can think is that if august can see me, he will come, and then i will know for sure. if he is dead, then all the better for it, because then it will be easier to finish this the way i started it. my mother always did say that boys are just a distraction from what really matters. it wasn't what she meant when she said it, but i pick up a shell and toss it out to sea, imagining her face there instead of the inky black.

if he arrives, i decide, i will tell him i don't want to see him again. it is what is best for both of us, i decide - if we disappear, go back to our alliances, walk in opposite directions and hope never to cross paths again. it will be better, if when the sound of the cannons finally rains down upon us, he is nowhere to be seen. that way, when i die, i can believe whatever the fuck i want to.

when i see him on the shoreline, my good intentions shatter easily, fine-spun glass in pieces on the floor. my body closes the distance between us without consulting the wiser parts of me, and i throw my arms around him in relief. the thousand images that haunted my mind today - of august's ragdoll body spayed out on the rocks somewhere, a wrecked ship, or sunken and swollen on the seabed floor - evaporate, replaced with the certainty of his living, breathing form. when i touch him, he is the most solid thing i have ever felt; i feel his heartbeat through his skin, a broken promise.

you're late, again, i say, although this time my voice is hollow. i thought-- i do not share what i thought, but from the way i am holding him, i think that surely he knows. i let go, reluctantly, allowing the space between us to open up again.

_[DARS]

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the greatest pretender (flo/august, day 3) Nov 1, 2024 14:02:02 GMT -5

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Post by august vance d7b [Bella] on Nov 1, 2024 14:02:02 GMT -5

August

In the final days before my death, I think I’m becoming someone else. Not Woodland Elf August, but a different, third person, someone bruised up and guarded and far more untrustworthy.

It’s why, for the third time, I slip away from Thompson and Tsiuri. As I leave them behind, walking the grey-blue wrinkle of shoreline as the last few whispers of the sunset stain it pink, I try to count the remaining reasons why the two of them should trust me. Each time, my inner critic provides a correction.

Because I fought beside them (and missed every shot).

Because I held onto them when the storm tried to wash them out to sea (and you clung to them to save your own skin).

Because still, I wouldn’t hurt them (but you leave them vulnerable at night).

I’m not completely oblivious. Suspicion simmers between us in the quiet moments, making everything feel more delicate. Thompson has taken to looking at me with a kind of jaded, reluctant angst. Call me paranoid, but every time our eyes meet, I feel like it’s only a few more days before that look turns into open disgust, or worse.

And Tsiuri. I know she’s disappointed in me without her saying a single word about it. It’s a tilt of the eyebrow, narrowing of the lips, a look she gives me like I’ve suddenly become a ghost that could disappear at the blink of an eye. I try not to think about how good she is at reading peopl, and what that means for me.

The worst part is that I don’t even have to ask what I did wrong. Guilt has grown on me like a second skin– it fits so well that I’m starting to forget what it felt like in the one that I was born in.

Today, when the waves dragged me under and chilled me to the bone, I still felt the lingering warmth of Florentine’s lips. The image of her face close to mine burned in my mind even as I grasped for my allies’ sleeves for safety. When the surf turned my arms and legs into rubber, I couldn’t help but picture that same face turning blue, cheeks bloated with water, ripped away from the beach and tossed back out into the middle of the ocean where even the cannons wouldn’t have known to sound for her. Led there, maybe, by my suggestion that we meet on the beach.

When her shape appears against the shore, I break into a run.

I hold her close; our clothes are still damp, but her body radiates warmth; her arms around my neck anchor me back to the present. ”you’re late,” she tells me weakly; it makes me laugh it’s so absurd to mention time; we’re alive, we found each other again. I press my nose into the crown of her head, and the memory of yesterday comes back to me in a giddy rush of life.

”I thought–”

I hold her tighter, no room for could-have-beens, heavy like stones. When she pulls away, I smile defiantly, winding up something to dismiss her worry. I just want to bask in this feeling of being alive together.

”What? I’m not a bad swimmer; you’d be surprised.”

All my life, I’d wanted to see the ocean. Now I only want to be warm again. The sopping wet clothes suck the heat from my skin, leaving it wrinkled and sore. Florentine’s warm reception has made me greedy; I want to pull her in again, but at the same, I feel conscious of making a misstep, because ripred knows I’m good at it.

So I plop my rusty bucket, then myself, into the sand and reach for her hand, her slender fingers cool against mine.

”Do you mind if we skip chess this time?” I ask quietly, the tiniest crack in my voice betraying my shyness. I don’t want her to think I hadn’t enjoyed it.

”yeah, sure. i’d only beat you again anyway.”

I huff a tiny puff of a laugh, smiling at the memory of the last game’s ending.

In a moment of shared quiet, we watch the waves, dark shadows against the moon. I scoot closer, muster up the courage to put my arm around her, resting my cheek against her head. I think to myself that this was the perfect scene I had imagined yesterday, if only we could have skipped the traumatic part in between. But I’ll take it.

”Are you still with them? Andromache and Eulalie?” I ask, the question’s sound rumbling between us. It sounds harsh out loud, like an accusation, although I hadn’t meant it to be one. "Tsiuri, Thompson, and I managed to pull each other out unscathed today. But I feel like things between us are sort of… thinning. It’s nothing they’ve said, just a feeling.” I pause, thinking. ”Then again, maybe it’s just me.”

Last Edit: Nov 1, 2024 14:06:10 GMT -5 by august vance d7b [Bella]

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the greatest pretender (flo/august, day 3) Nov 1, 2024 14:45:01 GMT -5

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Post by florentine, d4b ❁ on Nov 1, 2024 14:45:01 GMT -5

he looks at me strangely; usually, i am good at reading people, but i cannot quite make out the intention behind his eyes.

what? i'm not a bad swimmer; you'd be surprised. he is more robust today than yesterday - he has not disintegrated into a sobbing mess, not yet - it seems that the waves, or our unexpected reunion, has made him cheery. he is bold, too. he reaches for me across the sand, and holds my hand in his own. i decide that he does not know that i stole from him, yesterday, in the heat of my confusion - a haphazard attempt to cement my mistakes as something well-articulated. i imagine the audience watching, believing that i am playing games with august vance, destroying him little by little.

do you mind if we skip chess this time? he says. this makes me laugh, too, the idea of a board game in place of real strategic training suddenly hilarious; we are too close to the heat of the fire, there is not enough time left to learn new plays, anyway. it was a half-baked idea, inspired, admittedly, by an unsettling need to see august again.

yeah, sure. i'd only beat you again, anyway, i concede, immodestly.

he grows braver, bolstered by my reference to yesterday. i feel his arm on my shoulder, and bristle a little beneath it, unable to stop thinking about the eyes on us now, and what they might be thinking. i have made myself into this terrible contradiction, drawn myself as the villain, playing pretend to hurt this sweet boy. i know that nobody will be on my side, because they do not know my true intentions, cannot see beneath the tangle of lies i have created. i am beginning to lose track of them myself, the to-and-fro between sinking into august's body, letting myself melt against him, and remaining rigid and unfeeling. i'd better take something else of his to make myself feel better, tuck my guilt into my seashell-embroidered bag and run.

he interrupts my self-obsessed spiral: are you still with them? andromache and eulalie? he asks, and i turn to look at him, surprised. tsiuri, thompson and i managed to pull each other out unscathed today. but i feel like things between us are sort of... thinning. it's nothing they've said, just a feeling. he pauses, thoughtful. then again, maybe it's just me.

i had not expected him to broach this topic, to press back against the status quo. i thought we had outlined our dynamic clearly in the sand - me, playing my part as the good little career girl with a secret underdog on the side, and him, fighting his own battle out there, hanging on by the skin of his teeth. we are not destined to have more than clandestine meetings, stolen kisses and broken promises. something strange has gotten into him, tonight.

"we can't just run away together, if that's what you're thinking," i say. maybe he is drunk on the sunset and survival and the hand of a pretty, if-bloodied, girl in his own. "we've all got jobs to do, august. yours is with them."

i look up at him, trying to offer an encouraging smile to soften my stern words. "you need to keep going. you can't rely on me to be there."

i pull my hand out from beneath his fingers, creating a vacuum of space the whole word might disappear into. i lift my arm to touch his face, but as i do i knock my bag, which topples sideways. from it, rolls august's helmet, cold hard evidence of my treason. it comes to a stop like an exclamation point, underlining my words. you can't trust me, august, it's what i've been trying to tell you the whole time, i want to say, but instead i just lift my chin to meet his eye, which is the only thing harder than avoiding it.

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the greatest pretender (flo/august, day 3) Nov 2, 2024 0:50:15 GMT -5

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Post by august vance d7b [Bella] on Nov 2, 2024 0:50:15 GMT -5

August

”we can’t just run away together, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Her candidness sends a little shock through me; she articulates something that I hadn’t outright thought yet, or dared to, maybe. The kind of image that you have to stop thinking about as soon as it occurs, or else you feel like you’ll be cursed. I exhale a half-embarrassed laugh, looking down at our entangled fingers.

”we’ve all got jobs to do, august. yours is with them.”

There are two realities that I wish could exist at the same time: me with Tsiuri and Thompson, the three of us keeping each other safe. And me with Florentine. Doing… I don’t know what, exactly. Being alive together a little longer. A split-screen fantasy that plays through my mind in the sparse moments when everything is quiet. Neither side will overtake the other, because neither, in the end, can actually exist.

As if mirroring my thoughts, Florentine says, ”you need to keep going. you can’t rely on me to be there.”

I catch myself shaking my head ever so slightly as she raises her eyes to meet mine, though I am disagreeing with no one. My heartbeat steadies as her gentle smile soothes my creeping worry. She slips her fingers out of my grasp, leaning towards me, her hand glides toward my cheek, and in my chest there’s a sudden aching rumble, a drumroll for the moment I’m anticipating–she’ll kiss me again, and there will be no need for words, just our bodies battling the creeping cold of our damp clothes, a warmth so precious it could bring tears to our eyes.

Her elbow knocks over her bag, and I’m about to laugh about it, so that we can continue with whatever was about to happen, but then I see my helmet.

It feels like I’ve gone back to this morning, slapped in the face with another cold wave. My spine stiffens up, I draw away from her.

Florentine’s eyes flash white, almost defiant, I think.

Defying who?

”You took my helmet?” I ask, though it’s not really a question, my mind is only rifling back through the pages, looking for a way to make it make sense. I’m coming up blank. Mentally, I revise, in one more degree of separation, she took my helmet.

”Why?” I whisper, though we are alone.

I watch as her mouth tenses, opens, pauses before the words form, closes, opens again, each second of delayed explanation is agony.

”i took it because I wanted to show you how easy it was. you’ve got to stop hiding beneath armour, august, and start facing the real world.”

I have already started to stand, brushing the sand off my arms. How quickly my mind begins to create distance between us; all of a sudden I’m unable to sit so close to her, I have to pace around–at least then my feet can match the tempo of my reeling thoughts.

”I’ve been trying to tell you—”

”Really, Florentine? The real world? You don’t think I understand how real this is?” I bristle at the echo of my own voice as it bounces off a rock, and my head whips around to be sure, but we are alone. I look back at Florentine, exasperated.

”Is that really what I look like to you? Like I’m in denial? A–a little boy hiding behind a fairy-dust helmet?” I gesture pointedly at the helmet on the ground. ”What do you think I’ve been doing this whole time, just—just frolicking in the fucking forest and waiting for everyone else to kill each other? I have been facing the real world! But my attitude isn’t going to help protect my skull, is it?”

I pull back my sopping wet hair to point out the purple-red gash on my head from where the storm had thrown me against a rock; it stings as the salt creeps in again. Paranoia, the old sleeping hag, wraps her cold fingers around my heart again. Being from Four, had Florentine read the signs in the weather? Had she known the storm would come? Did she hope the sea would finish me off so I didn’t have to die by the hands of someone else here?

Out of breath, I watch her face for a sign, my tired eyes searching hers for some kind of explanation. She offers nothing except, perhaps even more infuriating, the barest outline of a knowing smile. A chasm opens up where answers should be, and I make another sorry attempt to fill it with words.

”You know what the worst part is, Florentine? I would have given it to you, if you asked me. Is there something else you want from this stupid bucket?” My boot smashes into the rusty metal, its contents skittering into the sand. The frog hops away, visibly bothered. ”Take it! Whatever you want! Yeah, of course, I want to survive! But I would have been happy to be the reason you lived another day.”

My rant screeches to a halt as my rambling thoughts catch up to everything I’ve confessed to her, and I stand there, at a loss for words, looking back at her, thinking, Because you reminded me that I want to be alive, too. For me, not for them.

Florentine must know that I’ve run out of steam; I feel like she is watching me with an almost pity-laden caution, like I’m a wounded animal who’s finally decided to stop thrashing around in my net.

”You still don’t get it, do you? That’s not the point, August, it’s the furthest thing from it. I don’t want your stuff, that’s not what this is about.”

When she approaches me, I’m distracted by the strange look that crosses over her face suddenly, erasing the smile that was there as she listened to me. Her eyes seem to say something unreachable; but it’s gone in a flash, and she smiles at me again.

”thank you, for showing me that. i know it wasn’t fair, but life isn’t fair. and now I’m sure you’ll be okay.”

Quiet expands between us, leaving just the soft hush of the water smoothing out the sand. I am frozen stiff, tongue-tied at yet another of her riddles.

Then, as her lips brush softly against mine, I lay down my arms to wrap new ones around her, gentle as a new day.