grass is greener [[on the other side]] Indi&Ivy

It's funny how I can be telling myself the same words over and over again and I still don't feel any better - yet when Indi says them I feel safer than I could ever be. Now I can feel her eyes on mine, yet I am too ashamed of myself to look up and meet them with my own. Our eyes are the same dark orbs with the same terrible pasts and worthless futures. But look past the eyes and the history and the regrets and the fears and you see why she deserves everything and I deserve nothing. If anybody could see into my mind they would understand why I am such an awful person, and Indi is so perfect. She would risk everything for me, she appreciates every moment we spend together and every second we are free. She is a good person. She loves me and she cares and she protects me; what have I ever done for her? Only something which ruined our bond, maybe forever, and took away all those moments she loved the most. The feeling of my dark hair beneath her touch, the sound of our voices singing in unison. Our mind working together to weave a story of better places. Now she is content, not greedy like me. I see in her eyes that she is genuinely happy not to be trapped in the warehouse anymore, yet I am so ungrateful. I dream, now, of being completely free of restrains. I don't want to be trapped in the District, in Panem, as her twin or anyones sister. I want to be my own person and to be free. It's too much to ask.

That is why I am the terrible twin, the one with nothing to lean back on. I owe the world so much, for I have been dealt a lucky hand. I have Indi, after all. I owe her in the very least, because she tries so hard. She is perfect and I could never have asked for more. That is the problem - I don't deserve her. I don't deserve any of this at all. Not the rain, not the tree shielding me. Not my sister giving me that look that I know means why are you still so sad? I get the sense that if she could throw herself in front of a train to make me happy, she would. And that too is what I am afraid of. Is that what I want? No. I love Indi. But I hate owing her something I can never give back. I resolve, right now, to talk to her. To struggle to come up with some words to console her and make her feel as though we can be close again after all, not distanced at all.

She looks up at me and speaks, smiling faintly and briefly. "It's not like the warehouse at all, is it? We can actually see the rain, and feel it." I think back to all those years spent never knowing what rain looked like or felt like. I could hear it, hammering down on the tin roof, and smell it in the air. I used to love rain, the way it came from nowhere, trickling underneath the walls and flooding the place a couple of times a year. That made us closer. I'd never say it, but I used to enjoy the way that the routine of it, every six months or so, brought us together. Shovelling together, giggling. Giving up and climbing onto the bad. Dangling our feet in the water and imagining we where on a boat, floating away. "We're together, Ivy. You should smile."

She's right. She's so right I have to choke back tears. I should smile, because I have everything I ever wanted. Because we are together. But what if that's not what I want. I have spent every second of my life so far with Indi, we know everything about each other. Maybe I want to be alone for once. It takes me a moment before I remember what I am doing. Talking. Bonding. Getting to know Indi again.

I smile, faintly, for a second. "You're right, Indi. You always are. I should be smiling, after all, we are together. Do you -" I pause, not wanting to ruin the tender and fragile moment. The rain continues to thunder down, oblivious to my hesitation. Talking"Do you ever wonder what life would be like if there was only one of us? If we didn't have each other?"

( B E F R E E L I L B I R D )

Credit to Lalia for the general template idea (again), Python for help with the plottage and Indi. Face-claim is Lucy Hale.

I look into my sisters eyes and it breaks my heart. Before I even know what she is going to say, I know. Not the words she will speak - they are a mystery to me - but the look in her eyes. I know that look, I know it well. It is a look of puzzlement and of questions, the kind of look she gives me in those moments when she can see the startling differences in our identical lives. Those times when she realised I've been sitting there thinking while she has been blankly staring at the wall - the moments like this when it hits her that although she might be happy, her sister could be sad. One of those moments when she notices our differences - fine as they are. I don't like to see her eyes like that, so questioning, as though she isn't really sure who I am if I'm not her. I smile, as though trying to reassure her. I don't know what words are going to come from her lips, but I can only guess that she is marvelling at how I could have thought about it when her mind has steered itself away from the daunting topic. To her, I am everything. That is why I am so guilty of wanting more than her.

"To be honest, no, I haven't. I just can't imagine life without you. We were born as twins and we will always be twins. If you think about it, if there were only one of us then that one would still be trapped in dads warehouse." I watch as Indi's face - my face - hesitates. Neither of us like the fact that he is our father as well as our captor and abuser, but that is the way it is. She wants to hide away from the fact that he was the man who made us, but I don't. It is what it is. It doesn't make her anything like him; she is the most different person to that terrible man than anybody could ever be. I am the selfish one. The one that sent my father to be avoxed, that stole a key and ran away. The one who ruined our relationship. I am to blame, and I must fix it. I know Indi enjoys talking. I prefer to be quiet, to observe and to watch her and learn from that. I can see her face change and know the thoughts crossing her mind - but I wish I couldn't. That's what scares me. That the fact that I can tell when she is lying means that she can do the same with me. We don't know each other as well as we did, but surely we are the same people. We went through so much.

"Anyway, Ivy, why would you think about something like that?"

I gulp. This was exactly what I had been fearing; my sister highlighting how we are different and in that way how she is better than me.

"I think about a lot of things, Indi. I think about what my life would have been like if you weren't there to protect me an stick up for me and guide me. I think about what would have happened if he hadn't have struck out and made me angry enough to take the key and run. What if I hadn't found a Peacekeeper? I'm scared of what I might have done. I could have run away in that moment and been free - truly free - but I didn't. And you where what kept me. If you were never of born and it was just me, I would have killed myself long ago I am sure. What keeps people breathing when they don't have you?"

I lean my head against my sister shoulder. I never talk, not even to her. Usually she knows what I want to say. This time, however, I'm making an effort, so that she feels needed and wanted the way she used to. So she isn't afraid that I'm slipping away. I'm clinging onto her because in a way I don't want to let go, ever, because of everything she has given me. I want her to know that I love her and that I care, so I speak. A whole freaking nine sentences at once - a world record for the quiet twin who has never ever needed to speak for herself. I am trying so very hard, but only because I love Indi. What if I didn't, though? Where would I be?

( B E F R E E L I L B I R D )

Credit to Lalia for the general template idea (again), Python for help with the plottage and Indi. Face-claim is Lucy Hale.

I can't help but feel as though I shouldn't have said anything at all, now, as I was the rain fall down. It doesn't falter at all, although I could swear I feel my heart stop as though time has frozen completely. Only the heavy drumming of the droplets of water. From the ocean. From Four. Here now, slamming into the ground and running into puddles and pools. Soon, the sun will shine again. Me and Indi will return home, feeling very different to when we arrived. I don't yet know whether this feeling will be better or worse, not yet. The sun will shine down and soak up the rain and the air will carry it back out of the district in the breeze. I wish I was rain. Submerged in others just like me, all identical, every single one exactly the same, accepting, with the same past and future and present. I could travel, I could see the whole of Panem. It wouldn't matter that I was greedy or ungrateful or a worthless monster, because I would be free and alone and together and one. I don't know what I want, to be quite honest. I want everything. I want nothing. I am no more content than I am lost, and no more afraid than I am secure. Simply Ivy. Shadow.

My past still haunts me. My sister has moved on and I can't work out how, or why. We went through every single moment together. We are the same. A mirror, with the same experiences. So why, when nothing at all about our existence is different, have we become so distant? What lets her find happiness and be grateful when I am left restless and upset? Every time I close my eyes I see the very warehouse which I lived in for ten years. The place I never saw out of. Home. When I left, I was almost afraid to. After all, the outside world was big and scary. Inside was constant and secure and always the same.


"You shouldn’t dwell on the past so much, Ivy.”

I know this. Even before my sister opens her lips - mirrors of my own cherry-red ones - I shouldn't dwell on the years spent trapped in the warehouse. They are gone, yet not forgotten in my crazed mind. I should leave them alone - lock them away the moment my father was sent away and I became safe - but I can't. I simply cannot hide that, shy away from what made me. It's who I am and how I grew up. That was my home. My father. It hurts to think that this will always be with me, hiding in my mind. Behind my eyelids, always lurking. Yet somehow, despite everything and all the suffering it caused, I'd never take away all those years. Indigo and me, just being. Trapped, but safe.

"It’s only going to hurt you.”

Hurt me? It's ripped a hole in my mother life. Not mine, oh no. It is my life. My father didn't steal my teenage years, my senior prom, my final reaping. He didn't steal birthdays or christmases from me. You can't take something somebody never had, so he stole nothing from me. I never had a mother who was untouched and untarnished and strong. I never knew a sister who wasn't trapped and lost and my own personal protector, so nobody stole from me a sister who was pure and well. And me. I was never normal. Never truly stable. I didn't know the life I was missing. So I was fine. No pain. No loss. Now, however, I can see the world. I see what I missed, all those years. I see what I am missing now.

”A will to live keeps people breathing.”

No. I know my sister is saying it, but it doesn't make it true. Because it is not a will to live that keeps me breathing. It is my sister, it is Indigo. And we are drifting away from each other, no longer confined between the very same four walls. I worry that I will loose her, and loose the breath streaming in my lungs and my veins. A tear rolls down my cheek.

”It’s human instinct to live, Ivy, and I know you’re lying about that. You wouldn’t kill yourself. If I never existed, you would feel no misery at my loss. But you would have mom.”

Mother. An empty shell. She was strong for us, stronger than most could ever be, but it didn't stop her breaking inside once she knew we where safe. She didn't want us. She loves us so very much, but I know it breaks her heart to look at us and see her kidnapper staring back at her, the same features woven into our faces, the same expressions in our eyes. Mother was stability, but once we were freed, all those things that she lost, all the memories taken and replaced with damp, sour walls, they caught up with her and she tumbled away. Without my sister, I wouldn't be here. I would have left this world so long ago, because what kind of a life would be worth living all alone?

”None of that is the point, though. What’s important is what’s happening now. We’re both here, both alive, and both free. You shouldn’t think about things like this. Think about what’s happening now. The past isn’t important anymore.”

She's wrong, so very wrong. My sister is always the one with the words to comfort me, but today everything is jarring, like a jigsaw piece that doesn't fit. I love Indi with every single cell in my body, yet what if we don't fit? Two pieces of one picture so identical they don't both belong in the same puzzle. The past is so very important, because it is everything. I wouldn't be who I am without my past. If I had been freed as a baby and lived happily-ever-after, never knowing of the terrible events leading to my birth, I wouldn't be me. That would be some other girl, some other Ivy, with her own Indigo and her own mother living happily. She would live and laugh and dream. She wouldn't yearn for freedom - she would yearn for simple things, like not being reaped. She would smile. She would dream when she closed her eyes, of pretty, happy things. She is not me.

"I know," I say, looking into my sister eyes to show her that every word I spoke was for her, to her, the truth. "We're both here and alive. But I'm not free. I'm trapped, Indi. I'm trapped in my nightmares, still. Because the past shaped who I am and it continues to haunt me to this day. How do you cope? Tell me how you cope and I struggle inside."


Why can't I be the strong one for once? Why am I the one breaking down into tears and crying in the rain, and having her for sure about to hug me tight and tell me everything is going to be okay. Why can't I be the happy one, the stable one, the comforting and secure one?

Because I deserve every single terrible moment, that is why. Indi doesn't.

( B E F R E E L I L B I R D )

Credit to Lalia for the general template idea (again), Python for help with the plottage and Indi. Face-claim is Lucy Hale.

This is not going the way I wanted it to go, not at all.
Indi is speaking, her voice smooth and comforting as always, yet she is not saying the right words. I don't know what I want her to say, but it is certainly not this. I guess I want her to hold me and to tell me that everything will be okay. Not tell me that this is okay, because I know that it is all wrong.

I look into my sisters eyes, pretending to soak up her words. All I am really seeing is my own eyes, glassy and afraid, reflected in her own. All I can hear is the rain hammering down on the pavements and the grass around us, not her words. I don't want to be told that everything I am feeling is wrong. I want her to understand, to make it better. I want her to believe in me like she once did, when I was the one holding the key that could lead us to freedom, or could lead us to more terrible beatings and abuse.

Did I make the right choice, really?

"Indigo?" I say, after she is finished saying the words I know she has said. I never call her Indigo, not ever. Always Indi. My Indi. My stability, my support. My backbone when I am too tired to hold myself up against prying eyes. "Are you happy?"

Before she can reply, I touch her cheek and make her look right into my eyes, the ones which I know are dead and deflated, yet surely the same as hers. We are, after all, mirrors. How can it be that she never saw this? Did she really believe my show of happiness for this long? "Tell the truth, Indigo. Deep down, beneath everything, are you really happy?"

In don't mean what we always used to say; that one of us could only be happy if the other was, because I know this is not true. We have grown apart a little. It is good for us, in a way. I want to be me. I want to think for myself and feel for myself and stand up for myself. But losing Indi would be like losing myself. Maybe I already have.

I want her to speak words that are the truth, yet I don't know yet whether I want her to say yes or no. It's selfish, cruel, even, to want her to be miserable just because I am, but it hurts me to think she can be happy when I am so low, when I know I could never be that way if she where the one sitting in the shelter of a tree, breaking slowly inside. Burning up. Eating myself from the inside out. Soon, all there will be is a shell. I bite my lip. I don't want Indi to be as broken and hurt as I am, but I can't understand how she could go through everything I have been through and still be okay.

( B E F R E E L I L B I R D )

Credit to Lalia for the general template idea (again), Python for help with the plottage and Indi. Face-claim is Lucy Hale.

Who is this girl sitting before me, and why can I not mirror her? All I ever wanted was to be as good as my sister. As positive as my sister. As strong as her, as calm and poised and perfect. To tell stories so well. To sing the notes I couldn't reach. Every waking moment I wished to be as good as her - to be able to give her the light she gave me daily. When she braided my hair. When she sang to me. When she weaved me tales and played games with me and dreamed for me. I wanted to be as brave as my sister. I wanted to be the one she needed, relied on, looked up to, rather than the other way around. Only because I she didn't need me to hold her back.

And then I stole the key. Stood up for her, for my mother. Got us out, put our father in jail. Did all kinds of terrible, terrible things. Trekked through the old forests in the rain. Paused for breath in an old hunting shack. Fought my way to the Peacekeepers. I saved her life - I gave her life. And now I no longer owe her. So what else is there for me? I got my dream - I am the hero. But it's not fair. She should be the hero. If only because she held me tight and rocked me when she needed rocking herself. She is the one who let me have the tattered old mattress while she waited on the cold stone floor. The one who gave me part of her food and water rations because I always was the smaller twin, the one who needed it more. Even from the day we were born, mother says, she didn't cry. She says it is as if she knew I was the sick one. The young one. The one who needed the attention. So she waited, not crying, while I screamed so loud it was almost as if I were trying to make somebody hear me and come to our aid.

It didn't work, of course. So my sister gave up the little she had so I could be happy. Yet here I am, with everything I ever asked for. And sad. A tear rolling down my cheek. How is this fair? I know I don't deserve to be happy, not at all, but Indi does. And how could she be happy, truly happy, when I am sad? My world breaks every time she so much as frowns.

I look at my sister and see the pain in her eyes. I put that there. That is my fault. That yearning, that broken heart I see. Because of me. I broke that heart.

I look at her, tears streaming one after another like relentless rain down my cheeks. Making treks on my pale skin. Finding their way onto my lap, where the fall, heavy and damp.

"I am.” I look at her, and her words do not fool me. I can see her heartbreak beneath her smiles. How can anyone be truly happy having seen the terrible things we saw? ”At least..I thought I was. I can’t be happy now, though, because you’re not happy. Why can‘t you be happy?”

I thought my heart was broken before, but if it was it is shattered now. At first I cannot think of the words to reply. Why can't I be happy? Why? Why can't I let myself free? Why am I still being punished? I know I have done things that I cannot forgive myself for, but when I see the look in my sisters eyes, so different from my own, I cannot think why I ever did them. Maybe I should never have stolen the key. Maybe I should have stayed there, forever, in the warehouse. Letting him beat us and hurt mama in ways I cannot bare to think of. Maybe then Indi would be more happy, because I wouldn't need to be punished. I wouldn't be the monster I am now.

The question she has asked makes my blood run cold, and for a moment all I can do is stare at her and think. Think about what a terrible person I am, wanting so much when I already have everything. I have a home. A sister. A mother. Grandparents. Space to move my legs, food on the table. A future ahead of me. All things I never really had before, and I have now. Yet it's still not enough.

"What can I do, Ivy?" There is a yearning in her voice I have never heard before, as though she would do anything to make me whole again. The truth is that I was never whole. I wasn't broken - I was just never together to begin with. "What can I do to make you happy?"

I look at my twin, and wipe a tear away with my sleeve. My mind begins to retreat, to drift away with the wind and the rain as it so often does when it is cornered. As though it doesn't want me to know what it really feels. I force it to stay, to think. To find the perfect words. Words to make my sister smile again. There are none.

"Oh Indi. You know all I ever wanted was for you to be happy? For you to have everything you ever wanted, and more?" I look at her so fiercely, as though it is the most important thing in the world that she understands this. "I never wanted to hurt you. Never."

I am avoiding answering her question, because I do not know the answer. What can she do to make me happy? She cannot change what has been done anymore than I can.

When I finally speak, my throat is raw with the effort of trying not to burst into uncontrollable sobbing. "I don't know Indi. I really don't know. I just wanted you to be happy, because if you were happy, I was happy. And then I wanted to be happy, too. I want to go back, Indi. I want to go back to when none of this," I gestured around myself, into the rain. "To when none of this mattered."

And I fall into my sisters arms, crying like the clueless child I am.


( B E F R E E L I L B I R D )

Credit to Lalia for the general template idea (again), Python for help with the plottage and Indi. Face-claim is Lucy Hale.

How could I have done this? What monster am I, what monster have I become? What kind of person breaks their sisters heart, ruins their happiness all at once, and then forces her to pity them all at once? How is it fair that I am the one sitting here crying, and she is still the one being so strong for me? Isn't this the way it has always been? Isn't this the reason why I am so upset and unhappy to begin with? Because it breaks my heart to see this girl holding back her tears and letting herself fall apart to make me happy, when I have never done the same for her.

Just once, I want to be the one of is who fixes it. I want to hold her tight while she cries and play with her hair. I want to whisper words into her ear that will make her smile again. I want to be the sister she has always been to me, and I can't. This is why I hate myself.

For a moment I let the rain distract me, it's heavy rhythm on the sidewalk comforting. The air is filled with the wetness that smells so strongly of thunder and I pull away from my sister to look around myself. It is growing slowly darker, the light fading like life draining from a soldiors eyes. I glanced around, trying to look anywhere but at my sisters dark almond eyes, mirrors of mine yet so different. So confused and alone and worried. A worry she doesn't have to feel. A worry I can stop right now, laugh right off and smile. I could, if I tried. But I'm not.

Some people say that things change them. Traumatic experiences marring with their perfect lives make them different. For me, it is the other way around. A perfect life marred with my traumatic experience and it changed me. I was born into that terror and it was all I knew. This perfection is only making me want more, because now I know that when something doesn't seem quite perfect, it can be made so much better. With that in mind, how could anyone ever be satisfied with District Nine?

”I was perfectly fine until now, Ivy. I was happy. I was living in the world I always dreamed of. Couldn’t you sense it?”

Apparently the answer to that is my sister. Only she could be happy here, truly happy. At first I am confused, and then her words sink in and I am taken aback. I couldn't sense it. Me, who at least could always pride herself in knowing exactly what her sister thought, now cannot even do that. What use am I here, when all I do is make others feel so much worse than they already do, when all I want to do is make it better?

”We can’t go back. We can’t change the past. This is who we are, and this is where we live. And if you’re not happy…”

I brace myself, ready for a rant that I know I deserve. On why I should be happy. On all the things we have. Of the house, the garden, the jobs, the family. The smiles, the laughter, the food, the necklaces that hand around each of our necks to remind us of that past that will always be a part of us. A part of me. Maybe even more than simply a part.

And then Indi does what she always does. Says exactly what I needed, even though I didn't know I needed it. Doesn't take me into her arms where I would feel helpless, yet says the one thing that I really, really need to hear. And I fall apart.

”…Well, we can always change the present.”


There is nothing I can say in return to this, so I stand up, shaking, and step out from the shelter of the tree and into the rain.
There, I fall apart completely, tears streaming down my face washed away at once by the cool, steady stream of water from the clouds.

( B E F R E E L I L B I R D )

Credit to Lalia for the general template idea (again), Python for help with the plottage and Indi. Face-claim is Lucy Hale.