I Said My Goodbyes [VT/10/Open]
Dec 24, 2011 1:05:47 GMT -5
Post by Baby Wessex d9b [earthling] on Dec 24, 2011 1:05:47 GMT -5
for what it's worth, I have a slow disease that sucked me dry... I always aim to please
but I nearly died
He could not recall so many things. What was life like without ice? It was needles and surgeons who worried over the shallow cut at his abdomen. It was an aircraft that smelled of peroxide and was washed in the same color as the arena. That was a comfort, as he slid beneath the waves of morphling. He hadn't even protested, although he'd long avoided the temptation of drugs. It didn't matter. Nothing, not a thing at all, mattered, except for maybe the curiosity of fire on water. It was all he thought about, during the long thaw. The orange flame carried him from death to the Capitol, from one side to the other.
Mace awoke in a sterile room, his body whole but somehow different. There was only a slender line across his stomach, no wider than a pencil would draw. His knee moved, bent, turned better than it ever had. The surgeon who came in explained that he had lost a few toenails to frostbite and that his pneumonia had been eradicated in the last four days. Four days? Mace looked at the floor, then his toes. There were three that had an opalescent nail, something so Capitol, so not him.
He heaved up nothing but morphling fumes, and they put him under again.
It had gone like that, on and off for time, although as it turns out it wasn't much more - the Capitol couldn't afford to have their Victor sequestered. The presentation ceremony had been a blur of fists (mostly his own), and strange people and snake eyes.
Off he went on a sleek train, his styling team at his side. One day, or night, or morning, his head stylist (whose name he could never remember), came into his compartment and closed the door, which was unusual. Sometime in the endless half-night that he walked he had taken one of the needles and jammed it into the arm of the doctor. It was reflex, instinct, and he would make no apologies for it. Since then, though, his door had remained permanently opened.
Except for the stylist, and he wondered what sort of power she really held, given that she was styling such a lowly district. He looked at her though, held her gaze as she went over the things she had brought him, things she had stolen. He took only one, made her keep the rest, or burn them, or put them in ice. It seemed things could die and disappear so many ways.
Mace put the leather over his shoulders, breathed deeply. It was like home, and also like his friend. Musky, but also quiet and confident. It was familiar when hardly anything could ever be again. The jacket was there when the shivering started again, despite the warmth of the train and the autumn all around. The shaking took him, seized him and dragged him back to the snow. He clutched the jacket, tried to remember what brotherhood meant, and succumbed to the next needle jab.
He'd only been awake a few hours when his stylist came back and informed him they would be arriving in Ten, and he would need to be prepared. She took the jacket, laid in on a chair as they tore at his new flesh, buffed and polished him, hid what he had fought and killed to earn. They put him in tweed and linen, single clothes that almost looked right, except that the stitching was metallic, the weave too intricate. It scratched against his skin, and even though it pressed the Capitol clothes closer, Mace slipped back into the leather jacket before they pulled up at the station. His stylist pursed her lips, but said nothing, which worked for Mace. He still had no words.
The Mayor's house - Marcelline's childhood home - finally brought some things into focus. He was going to have to wave, to listen again. And he might even have to speak. As his stylist gripped his arm, urged him to stay calm as they stood behind the doors, Mace finally lifted his gaze, and it was no longer the dead, foreign thing it had been all his life. It was hollow. It was not lifeless, but empty, a thing that had been filled. There were no tears, no joy, no agony. He was only a shell as he stepped out onto the stage, stared dumbly at the crowd of his peers, family, district. This was not home. It couldn't be. Something was missing.
His brothers. His sisters. Mace put the heel of his hand to his forehead, spread his fingers wide to hold his temples. But he could not hold himself together. A tremor started in his finger tips as he remembered himself, curled his hand into a fist and brought it down to his side.
But he would not be able to hide the shaking for long.
banner credit: jurate
lyrics:placebo for what it's worth
lyrics:placebo for what it's worth