Addicted to a Certain Kind of Sadness {Mara}

for what it's worth, I have a slow disease that sucked me dry... I always aim to please
but I nearly died

He thought of Aranica often since their sojourn in the Capitol. So often that he had marked the change, the intensity of his focus from the dead to the living. He was used to thinking solely about women; before the fifty-ninth he'd obsessed over Larae, and then Verronica. After it had been Alexander Phoebe - Phoebe Alexander, and he'd carried her daily, willingly, hopefully and hopelessly. He'd grown comfortable with her ghost, the way one does with someone after a lifetime of living together. He knew so little about Alexander, but he stretched each bit, spun it out as thin as a spider's web.

It wasn't like that with Aranica. Whenever he wanted more, he could go to the vids, pull up her days in the Arena or any of the interviews before or since. And even though he had hours and days more time of Ara, it wasn't enough, not even close, because it was all manufactured. He'd studiously avoided all of the videos himself, but he could see the veneer, the Capitol's glaze that made everything a little smoother than it really was. The Capitol's Ara certainly wasn't the girl he'd slept with on the plush couch, hands in her hair, around her neck, gripping her thighs.

He regretted only that the night had been blurry from the beers. He'd expected to feel other things, but there was nothing but the desire to see her again and do better, prove that he was more than some drunk avoiding the morning. He'd called a few times, right after the Games had ended, when it was easy and obvious to talk about them and the tributes they had lost. But he'd stopped, and he couldn't remember why. It wasn't like he had more pressing issues. Whicker just didn't demand that much attention.

And he was still fairly sure he wasn't in love with Aranica, which was its own kind of relief. He still felt entirely mixed up over Verronica, and could hardly imagine dealing with anyone else taking up residence in his chest. But still, he wondered about Aranica Petros, and wanted more than anything to see her again. So when the summons from the President came to report to District One, he had not asked when or why, he had only asked if other Victors would be there. Elon had packed for him, promised once again to attend to his old horse, and seen Mace onto the train. He'd watched his little brother's long face fade into the dirty haze of Ten as he sped towards the disaster in One - a disaster that meant absolutely nothing to him. He spent the train ride in a near coma, sleeping deeply for the first time in years. A handler from the Capitol woke him and showed him to a styling compartment, where part of his old team made him look like the boy who had gone into the icy arena.

Shaved and dressed, Mace emerged into the shaken mountain world. He felt much the way he had on the plate, and took the same course of action. Mace counted out sixty seconds on the platform, even as his team urged him forward. He used the minute to deconstruct the scene, to try to understand how the world had gotten so jagged. But it was futile; there was no explanation for something so pointless disastrous.

Unless Snow had orchestrated it, as a distraction between Games.

Mace's flat lips pressed together as Peacekeepers cleared a lane for him. He was not so loved as he had been; that honor belonged to someone else now. Still, he was young, and in his flared lapel suit, he looked like more than he was. He tugged at the collar as he wound his way through the crowds and dust and stone. They lead him into the Mayor's house, or the remnants of it, and into another large building which had somehow miraculously survived the tremors. While there were fewer people inside it was by no means empty. He wondered how Ara - who, like him, preferred to keep to himself - felt about half of Panem being in one tiny district square.

He was deposited in a room which had once been a library and now had entirely too much clutter to be anything other than a storage unit. Mace didn't stay there long after his styling team left. He had no interest in sitting on his ass until Snow wanted his face on the television. He wandered. It was the superior nature of his nose that led him to the kitchen where his presence produced only a small flurry before the staff went back to preparing meals for thousands of people. He picked among the offerings, munched on dried turkey as he slipped outside into a hallway just big enough for two people.

And found exactly the person he'd wanted to see. "Ara," he said, surprised, and not quite in the way he had that night before he'd covered her lips. A twitch of his lips upward, not quite enough to reveal teeth before he shoved the rest of the turkey into his mouth and then wrapped his arms around her. He hadn't planned to hug her - and it felt more friendly than anything, but it also felt right. He stood there a moment before he realized that he must smell like meat, and how that much disgust her.

When he pulled away, Mace made sure to wipe his hands on the sides of his black slacks. "So, I found you." Because it was painfully obvious to him that he'd been looking. And now that he was seeing, there was something different about Ara. He reached forward, put his thumb to the dimple in her chin, his fingers curling beneath it. His brow furrowed, darkening his ghost-eyes. "You look good," he said finally, focusing on the bright pink of her cheeks, the glow of her skin.