The Moth's Dance {Luke}

She’s happy to get lost in the moment, pretending like there is only this; heart pressed against heart, anchored and safe, moths dancing around them as though carried on the wind, the smell of him real and earthy but something in the embrace more like a dream. She’s happy to pretend they are the only two people in the world- just for the moment. But it never lasts; there has always been something deep within the bones of the Tansy kids, lurking deep in the blood of how they’re made that marks them out for constant sorrow. Sometimes at night, safe in the knowledge that their parents are asleep and they are swathed in a heavy eiderdown of secrets Tallow lies panting and sticky with sweat in her brother’s arms, head against the slowing rise and fall of his chest, wondering Why him?, Why me? If there is an answer hiding in the ether, it never makes itself known. They’ll never just let us be, will they?

When Scutcher dips his head to rest his nose in the crook of her neck, scrape lips and teeth at the papery thin skin and nerves there she sighs, tips her head up a little and sees, over her brother’s shoulder, the figure watching them from the roof of the pavilion. She’s meant to leap away immediately, skittish as a startled rabbit- but Tallow’s instinct is always to hold on to him tighter when she’s frightened, when she senses danger, to protect him, seeking out his protection. “Someone’s watching,” she breathes out through a panicked hiss, balling a fist into his shirt, pulling tight like she can’t ever hold him close enough to her. It’s just a dance, no harm in a dance. But there’s no harm in any of it; no harm in a kiss or hands skittering across her bare thighs, no harm in them parting as he shunts her up into his arms, back pressed into a wall. There’s no real harm in it at all but it doesn’t stop it from being the most stupid, reckless and dangerous thing she’s ever done. It’s not normal , is it, for love affairs to potentially have a body count? This is anything but normal.

Praying though, that it won’t come to that again, she peers over his shoulder as Scutcher turns around too, hoping that if she can’t make out the features of the figure, can’t recognise who it is then they won’t either. In the dark, it is a little hard to see, but Scutcher’s eyes are better than hers, more accustomed to working in gloomy weather and dank pig huts, “It’s Naif Malloc,” he says, raising one hand to wave. Seriously. Tallow lays her own over his arm and lowers it, staring up at Naif. It’s lucky that it’s only him, nothing he hasn’t seen before and worse- but a curl of anger still courses through her. The boy has only been in District Ten a little while and somehow he’s still spoiling everything. Passing her in the dressing room at the pageant, trailing after Elias in town, he's there and she see's him and he knows.

“Well you’re just everywhere and nowhere aint ya, kid? How long you been up there?” Tallow snipes bitterly, moving closer to the edge where he’s sitting. But he hasn’t told anyone, she’s pretty sure of that- otherwise something would have happened and perhaps she shouldn’t be sniping so. It looks nice up there on the roof, under the stars properly and not in some dark nook. The moon is a narrowed crescent tonight, curved like a thin smile set onto its side Finding the wooden lattice that Naif must have, she starts to climb it, stopping when Scutcher follows her putting his arms around her waist. “You wanna go up?” he asks, her fingers play idly with his but she can’t forget Naif watching.

“I climb better than you do,” Tallow teases, but he lifts her anyway, so she can stick her foot in the square gaps in the woodwork and pull herself easily onto the roof. “Fucking leave that,” she calls down harshly as Scutcher goes to retrieve his nameplate from its place. He shakes his head, mumbling about someone stealing it, so Tallow has to simply ignore it. Leaning down, they lock wrists and she helps him up too, like when they were kids, having climbing races up the tallest trees in the yard of their old house. He’s all exuberance, but far too clumsy with his feet and Tallow is competitive- has to win first before she thinks about going back to help him. But she does help him eventually, locking hands and telling him the best place to plant his step until they find a solid protruding branch, edge out to the bottom of it and let their feet dangle into the blank air. It makes Scutcher nervous, to think of the fall, but Tallow finds it exhilarating, smiling through the gaps in her little sharp shark’s teeth. “If you fell you’d bweak ewey bone in your body I weckon,” she pips in a voice high as a bell, lisping around her exposed gums. “I don’t wowwy won’t let you though. I aint ewer gonna let nothin’ bad happen to you- you’re my browwer.” They play house a lot too, with old tin pots and pans their mother puts aside for them, clanking around- there has to be a Momma and a Daddy, obviously so they pretend to be married-and Tallow uses a sack cloth for a pinny, the very model of a shrewish wife ordering Scutcher to sit at an imaginary table, and eat the imaginary food she’s been making. When their dad gets sick and their mom spends all her time tending to him, it feels like their playing house again- only this time, the game is less fun, trying to keep everything together, worrying over the fact that their dinners really do become imaginary when all the money runs out.

And maybe they should have grown out of it, seen the place where the games end and real life starts before giving their childish love this dangerously adult edge. Just don’t ask her to stop, because she can’t give up loving him like this anymore than she can stand on her tiptoes and cup one of the stars in her hand like a fragile moth. “Did you see Tallow win the beauty pageant?” Scutcher smiles, stepping gingerly over to sit nearer Naif, laying Noreen Lexington down on his side like she’s there too. She’s always fucking there and she’s between them on the roof, so Tallow can’t sit all that close to him. Not that she should- not in front of Naif and all, but the fact that the nameplate can makes her want to all that much more.

“He was there so I think he probably saw,” she sniffs, drawing her knees into her chest. “I don’t suppose you got nothin’ to drink. Never mind, I do,” a hand vanishes into her skirt, up to her thighs where a hip flask is tucked, pulling off the stopper and drinking the industrial strength paint stripper held within. Scutcher sits back on his hands and lets out a satisfied hum, looking out over the fair; the stalls being packed up, some people leaving, some staying to dance under the tent. The day was warm, but the night is getting colder, thinning the air and plunging the world into a strange frigidity, Tallow wraps her arms around herself as the goose pimples begin to appear on her legs so Scutcher sets the nameplate aside, shuffles closer to her and wraps an arm around her. Not here, she should be saying, pulling away, but she settles her head into her brother’s chest. This is…this is something platonic ,right? This is normal? It’s hard to remember what’s okay and what isn’t when she wants all of it, all of him, everything and anything she can keep clutched close.

“I…” she starts quietly, looking at Naif from her place nestled into Scutcher, “we…we sure are…”the words don’t want to come out- that’s definitely her pride and the fact she so rarely says anything nice so open and honestly that she isn’t quite sure how to do it. Tallow is aware that she should probably say something along the lines of, I’m sorry I tried to kill you- but it might spoil the mood a bit, dredge up the memory for the other boy a bit too much and make him angry. “Well…thank you….for not dropping us in the shit, you know. For not tellin’ no one about…that night.”

Below they are whooping and cheering for one of those dances that involve a lot of partners swapping, and people dancing through arches of people. “I aint ashamed, though,” she adds quickly, looking away from Naif as she addresses him, staring wide eyed at Scutcher, so he can follow, so he can understand. Which is just as well because Tallow doesn’t think she can look at Naif, this is private stuff and talking about it feels like she’s ripping open, peeling back layers of skin and muscle to reveal oozing, soft organs. “It’s nobody’s damn business but mine and Scutcher’s but…I know what people would say if they knew; I aint a adult, legally speakin- he’s older and stronger and…different…the kinda different that some people don’t take kindly to- I know I don’t have to tell you what that’s like. They’d think he was forcin' me or somethin’. My daddy would for sure.”

“But I,” Scutcher looks worried for a minute. “I aint…am I?”

“No, never. No. Of course you aint, you know you aint,” she whispers quickly, a hand on his face gentle and fleeting like a sigh. She wants to kiss his worry and hurt away so badly that it hurts her too, but she can’t right now. Not here up on the roof in front of Naif. So she makes do with a soft smile that vanishes without a trace when she turns back to the boy from district six.

“Do you do shit like this back home?” she asks waving disdainfully across the fair as below a drunk staggers out with a group of friends from the barn dance, tripping over his farmers boots and making his friends all roar with laughter. “We aint good at much- but we know how to get drunk. Fuck,” she laughs breathily, “I bet you’ve found that out already, staying with Elias and all.”

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Peering closely, Tallow still can’t see Naif Malloc clearly enough. It isn’t because the light is dim; the warm glow of the dancing below streams through the gaps in the roof construction while the stars- burning through the cold infinity of space- light up the sky above them and she can see his features well enough. While he has a damn sight more colour in his cheeks than Tallow remembered from that night in the barn, he still has an ethereal luminescence that seems to set him apart from anyone she’s ever seen in district ten- they are always earthy and solid, while this kid feels strangely fleeting as though he isn’t really present. His delicate, bony body, is fragile like the wings of a moth, like the cornstalks the field, a long way off manhood. He’s still young, still growing but Tallow can’t help but think of plants growing away from the light, scraggly and sickly looking if they don’t simply die altogether. She can make out what he looks like, but in all of that Tallow still doesn’t see him. Who are you? she wants to turn to him and demand, now that he has a glimpse into the hidden parts of her, tucked away close and in the dark, usually cupped carefully and held tightly in the palm of Scutcher’s hand. His outburst makes her wonder, the way he forcefully tells Tallow to fuck what everyone else thinks- ha, if only I could. If only it was just us and no one else- makes it seem as though he cares what happens to them, but that can’t be true. No one cares about Tallow and Scutcher but them. But she can’t figure out what else it would mean.

She tries to imagine up his life in district six, someplace grey- he said, with no open spaces, no endless stretching fields like green and golden oceans reaching out far and away into the horizon. Tallow doesn’t blame it on a lack of imagination; it’s just that she’s struggling to picture it when district ten is the only thing she knows. Just like the way she’s blinking now when Naif asks her what they call their dancing, not aware that there should be a word for it- it’s just dancing isn’t it? The way that it’s always been done, the way that her parents would have danced too- if they ever did dance- long before she was even born. “I dunno,”she has to shrug, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, “Everybody just does it this way…I dunno if it’s called anythin’ really?” Tallow looks up at Scutcher checking if he might know- he probably doesn’t, but there are always moments when he surprises her. Ask him multiplication and he’ll do it well enough, ask him the cutlets of meat on a pig and he’ll tell you right off the bat without even thinking and he knows the Latin names for flowers after reading them on the back of seed packets.

She’s six when she has the ‘talk’ with her parents, remembers she must have been that age because it’s right before her father gets sick, so close to the time that the illness could have been a shadow lurking in the kitchen waiting to envelope the whole world. Tallow’s in trouble for making Scutcher fill his pockets with caramel candies at the general store because they didn’t have enough money for as much as she wants, has learnt that it’s remarkably easy to get him to do what she wants without much fuss already. Scutcher did it, is the first word that topples out her mouth like the little traitor that she used to be back then. A sigh, Yes, but that aint the point is it Tallow. Scutcher didn’t get the idea by himself. He did, you don’t know. You wasn’t there. They tell her that he’s different, but Tallow already knows that, that he doesn’t understand things and won’t ever be able to cope by himself- which Tallow doesn’t quite believe. You have to be big girl Tallow and look after your brother, they tell her. He needs you. It’s their momma’s fault really she thinks then with those incredibly high standards that a six year old girl will always impose on her mother and later just because of her ineffectuality. Scutcher got sick and momma thought it was just a rash and a fever at first, didn’t want to spend money calling out a healer when she was saving up for a new stove. Never got that stove in the end, though, had to relent when he got worse and by then the fever was already in his brain. He needed her and she let him down, but Tallow isn’t like that, isn’t some pathetic whisper of a woman slowly becoming part of the walls in their house.

Shrugging distractedly, he’s eyes fixed rather pointedly at a spot on Naif’s hand for some reason, Scutcher doesn’t have a name for the dancing either- but they might not be the best people to ask; the Tansys have never been the dancin’ type after all. She doesn’t think about what would have happened to them if her mother had cared more about her son than a new stove- not this, something inside is telling her-it’s done now and it is what it is. Perhaps for the best, she’s cold and their father is worse and perhaps the cruelty in them has to be burned out with viruses chewing away at the synapses of their brains. Is that how it works, sacrificing being clever to be good?Tallow looks at Naif’s hand too, out of curiosity but sees nothing. They are small and soft, a little coarser now after a few weeks hard labour but she call still make out the last traces of district six on them. Perhaps that’s what keeps Scutcher’s eyes drawn to them so, his mouth falling open the way it does when he doesn’t keep himself in check. It is a foreign thing to see here- though Tallow isn’t exactly the most rough and ready type of girl in the district she’d be willing to bet everything they have (next to fucking nothing) that she’s still done more work in a year than Naif Malloc ever has.

“Elias is… well… He takes care of me,” says Naif evasively and Tallow snorts to herself. Elias Poers takes care a lot of things, but the only person he takes care of is himself. “Really?” There’s a sceptical tilt of her head, but if that’s what he thinks, that’s what he thinks, “Worked out for the best I brought him to ya then. I mean…have you thought about what you’re gonna do…just…in general?” You’ve got what so many people here dream about, she thinks, away from your district- you don’t never have to worry about being reaped. You’ve got your freedom. Tallow doesn’t think she’ll ever leave like that, wouldn’t risk it, not if she took Scutcher with her. He’d miss his pigs and she would miss…well, she has a place here at least- as shitty as it can be. “I can’t imagine you’d wanna stay with us…how did you put it… hicks, for much longer.”

Tallow feels Scutcher shift a little, and then everything moves quickly, “Scutcher, no!” she calls as he darts forwards to grab at Naif’s hand. “Where did you get this?” he’s demanding, something desperate in his eyes. “WHO GAVE IT TO YOU?” Tallow has no idea what he’s talking about, reaches forwards to gently take hold of his wrist. “Noodle?” But he’s still just staring at Naif.
“Where did he get what, Scutcher?”

“Where did you get it?”

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It must take the patience of a saint to live in a world where no one spoke your language properly, nothing was ever clear and Tallow is often surprised that these outbursts don't happen more often. Being an excitable child, puberty and stress had not shaped him or spoiled his constancy and the instances have always been few and far between. The last indication of a breaking point, a boy backed into a corner with no way out. There have been more since Noreen, Tallow marks carefully, but she won't‘call him off like a dog’, won't make excuses for her brother when he doesn't need to be excused. Not when someone yells and called him names that they have no right to. He is allowed to be, the same as any man, responsible for his actions and allowed to see them through.

And it's only because the shouting was upsetting him, this business getting them nowhere that Tallow intercedes, throwing her arms around Scutcher’s shoulders and pulling him towards her chest. “IT AINT YOURS, IT AINT HIS, IT’S HERS,” he insists, still lurching for the ring as Tallow does her best to soothe him with small hushing noises. He is stronger but Tallow holds fast until slowly, like a mouse being eaten alive by a snake he begins to grow a little limp. “Push him again and I’ll cut you,” Tallow says sharply to Naif, her hand in Scutcher’s hair, toying with his curls the way one soothes the fur on an animal. “Call him somethin’ like that again and I’ll put out your tongue.”

“What do you think aint his, Noodle?” she begins quietly, cupping his face in both hands.

“The ring,” he says quickly, eyes flickering away from her and never once straying from Naif’s hand like a dog eyeing a rabbit it wants to make his meal. “It’s Noreen’s ring. I know it anywhere. He’s got her ring! Snatched right off her body Tallow…I know it….she was wearing it when she died, it’s hers!”

Tallow moves before she knew what was happening. A great pain rips through her heart, the way that it always does when she hears the way that he says her name. Tallow buries it down, keeps it hidden away deep inside of her as is her way with most things, most of her feelings, all of her love- but not her anger. And Tallow can't keep the pain down for forever, not in a few short moments when she forgets herself. The stinging sound of flesh against flesh alerts her to what she's done long after she’s done it, Scutcher’s face turned to one side, reddening as he looks at her with sadness all over his face. Tallow gasps, feeling tears prick her eyes as though she's the one who’s been slapped.

“Scutcher,” she shakes her head as though trying to tell him in that one gesture that she's more sorry than she’s ever been in her life. He flinches away a little and Tallow feels a knife in her chest. “I didn’t…do you..”

“It is Noreen’s ring,” he insists, looking at her with those sad, heavy lidded eyes before turning away with a soft sigh towards Naif to continue speaking as though he hadn’t been slapped by her. “It’s Noreen’s ring and I know it is. She took it into the games with her, I watched it all. You can tell because it’s homemade…her….her….husband, did it for her.”

Through her tears, Tallow’s eyes grow hard. He doesnt care at all,does he? Tallow has just hit him in the face, one thing they had promised they would never do to each other, never ever let harm come to the other by their own hand. She’d behaved just like their father, broken everything that they were and all he could do was give her a sad look and go back to harping on about Noreen fucking Lexington’s fucking ring. She didn’t love you, Tallow wantes to scream on the wind, to the whole of district ten though the whole of district ten knows it but him. Not the way that I do, with my whole body, every inch of my heart and all the dark corners of my mind. There are men who would kill to have me love them like that, I could seduce this whole fucking district if I wanted to and I have the crown to prove it. But for some reason I only want you, only you will ever do for me. And still this…the secrets and the shadows and Noreen Fucking Lexington…it isn’t enough. It won’t ever be enough will it?

And it’s ruining my life.

“Oh why don’t you just fuck off!” she yells suddenly, face set, trembling with rage, moths careening around her hair making her look quite deranged. Now he turns around, now he sees her the way that he's always supposed to see her even if no one else ever did. Scutcher thinks shes talking to Naif, doesn’t move, only blinks at her because he doesn't understand. Of course he doesn’t fucking understand. Tallow looks down at the nameplate, still resting between them and grasps it in her hands, picking it up. With every piece of strength she has, Tallow drews back her arms and sends the nameplate hurtling into the air and across the fair.

“No,” Scutcher lurches forwards hand out stretched as though he can somehow catch the nameplate on its trajectory towards the ground. But he can no more reach it than he can the stars, turning round to look at her, demanding what she was doing, taking a step towards her with his arms out. She can't rationalise it though, only begins to laugh a little, in a high cruel voice, “Better go find that before someone steals it. Everyone wants Noreen Fucking Lexington don’t they?”

That’s got him panicked, Tallow can see it in his eyes but he chews his lip, “Tallow are you…”

“Fuck off,” she shrieks. So he doesn’t have to make a decision between her and Noreen, because fuck knows he’ll never have to. Noreen’s dead and Tallow daren’t ask him because she’s scared shitless of the answer,“ fuck off, fuck off,” over and over again because she’s tired and she can’t look at him.

“But Noreen’s ring—“

“Fuck off!” she launches her fist at his chest but he stops her, surprisingly quickly, surprisingly gentle in the way he catches her hand in her palm like catching a moth. Part of her wants to punch him in the face, part of her wants to kiss him roughly, close the frigid distance and fuck him right here on the roof while the other just wants to cry, to be held and to be loved. But he leaves instead, shoulders hunched up, looking at her sadly one more time as he slinks off the roof. Maybe not her, maybe it’s that fucking ring.

Tallow doesn’t think she’s breathing any more, sits back down heavily onto the roof because the world is spinning underneath her. At first she thinks she’s going to cry and for one second it sounds like she is crying, as a single choked, loud sob escapes her throat. But the strength and the hardness in her core pulls it back in, like the rock sucking back a volcano and she simply rubs her knees, shivering in the cold and looking out into the stars. “Enjoy the show?” she says quietly to Naif. “You can fuck off too. Everything was just fine before you came alone.”

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ooc: I'm sorry/incredibly embarrassed by this piece of crap post, Pukey. But at least its finished <33

Naif hovers around her like a crow circling carrion, tucking his knees into his chest, lurking like a shadow. Out East, where the Tansy family came from and the land was overworked, empty and drier than it was here, the farmers were a superstitious bunch. Because what else had they got to blame and to pin their hopes on but some abstract idea of routine offered up to the gods of good or bad luck? If you add caraway seeds to animal feed it’s supposed to stop them from wandering, when you plough up a black snake or a turtle shell that means good luck all year but if you carry a hoe into the house your whole family is cursed. Tallow thinks it’s all bullshit, but she can’t help thinking that Naif is a bad omen for something- right from the first night when he presented himself like a ghostly apparition of a boy they’d never met who’d died a long way away. When you spend so long being afraid of someone, hating them for some make-believe splinter you imagine they’ve slotted into your life it’s easy to forget that they are real. But Tallow looks over, see’s him with his head on his chin talking about fireflies and she realises that he’s blood and bone and grief. He’s a real person and in the light of the fireflies he’s also strikingly familiar.

“He was… he just understood things better than people give him credit for…”

[/i]Tallow didn’t know Cyrus, but for what she saw on a screen, but she knows what Naif means in an instant. Scutcher doesn’t know shit, flashes in her mind for a moment, born of the fire of her anger, but that isn’t being fair. He knows her for all of her careful defences, deviousness and cruelty- barriers that are impregnable to the rest of the world it’s a boy that they laugh at and call retard that slips so easily through and in return she knows him too, the way that Naif knew his brother.

“It’s like having a secret aint it?” she whispers into her arm. “No one else sees it, so it’s just yours. And I don’t mean…just fucking. I mean everything, all the things that make him him- hidden away from everyone else.” His smile, which never comes all that easily, the rare burst of laughter like the song of a mocking jay. His sense of responsibility and honour and pig headed fucking stubbornness. The way he touches me, timid and gentle as a spider’s web turning surer when he gets wrapped up in it, the look on his face when he comes… “Sometimes you wish that other people would pay attention, but others….you can’t stand the thought of someone else ever getting to see it. Because it wouldn’t be yours anymore.” [/color]

The honesty burns her throat, makes her stomach turn knots so she has to negate it somehow with a little laugh, “Or some shit like that,” rolling a cigarette and slotting it between her teeth. It tastes strange, too heavy and smoky making her feel nauseous but she draws in the smoke and wants it anyway, offering her cigarettes in a battered tin compact with a mirror on the lid towards Naif. Below Scutcher will have slunk off into the fair to go find Noreen’s name plate. She knows him and she knows how single minded that her brother can be- he’ll look for that name plate for a hundred years if it takes that long to find it.

“Scutcher’s in love with Noreen Lexington- the one in an alliance with your brother. That’s why he let you go that night in the pig shed, that’s what all that with the ring was about,” she explains bitterly, more to a firefly beside her face than to the boy beside her. She knows that he isn’t like her, that he’s got room enough inside of him to love more than one person for more than a few fleeting seconds; the life cycle of a moth, but she doesn’t have many things and she doesn’t like to share what she does. “You can keep the ring; she didn’t see him the way I did. Stupid bitch had no idea. But she’s dead now so I won.”

But it didn’t feel much like winning right now. Just like with the pageant, riding around like a fool, being made the face of fucking spam the winning always came with a price. Here it was watching Scutcher mourn for a woman that wasn’t her for an eternity, until she became this perfect idea of a girl, all her flaws burning with her bones while the good memories persisted like a dream while Tallow had to be real, and angry and sad and stinking. Here, winning meant looking over their shoulders, walking to a room and feeling like everyone was whispering and everyone knew. And it would never go away, because she’d never stop loving him- so winning meant holing up from the rest of the world for forever, birthing mutilated babies with no heads that they had to bury in the backyard.

She’d won; give her a crown and a sash.

Naif probably thought she was a monster, she probably was. But fuck it, she didn’t have a choice. She’d tried to fight it, honestly she had. Tallow is thirteen again on the night before her second reaping. She’s had a bath before bed, the hair on her shoulders is still wet and she can’t sleep because Scutcher is sixteen and he’s taken out more tesserae than anyone should so she slips out of bed and across the hall to go talk to him. Through the chink in the door she can see him- it’s getting dark but he has a candle and it makes everything in the room have this warm yellow glow as though it’s been dipped into the sun or illuminated by a thousand fireflies. He’s undressing because Mom makes him take baths on reaping days too (practically the only bath all year he consents to), the tub with her old tepid bathwater besides him. Tallow holds her breath, making sure to stand in the shadows- not wanting Scutcher to see her.

But she wants to see him. And she does, the memory of it still as vivid now as it was that day. He’s wearing a grey flannel shirt with a grey vest underneath, brown dungaree pants and white briefs. The last thing he takes off is his socks, shivering because the night air is cold and one candle isn’t enough to warm a room. There are bruises stretching along the side of his ribs like the keys of a xylophone, welt marks and an angry red gash bisecting his spine visible when he turns around to get the soap. From her place in the dark she notices the hairs on his chest but it’s not like Daddy’s, not like other, older men, it’s thin and she can hardly see it at all but it gets darker and thicker around his belly button. A line of hair. Moths gravitate towards the candle in the room and Tallow follows the line of hair down.She follows it and she feels…she doesn’t know…she just feels and she’s afraid.

Some people are fireflies; they make the light that pierces the darkness while others are just the moths circling it.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” she says quickly, remembering herself and what she said about Noreen, speaking ill of the dead in the presence of someone intimately acquainted with the dead. “Doesn’t mean I don’t mean it. But Scutcher was right, your brother did seem good. I won’t pretend to know shit about your feelings right now, because you don’t know shit about me either.”[/color][/blockquote][/size][/justify]

Eyes flickering towards naïf, Tallow sees that he is crying. Even though he is dwelling, presumably, on some past pain; memories of his dead brother, dredging up his grief, it’s hard for her not to be reviled at his weakness. On the day that Noreen died she’d seen her brother sob in their father’s arms and she’d tolerated that- when the wounds were still new and fresh, but this is just picking at scabs and sobbing in front of a stranger. Scutcher wouldn’t do that, Tallow certainly wouldn’t and in the moment she feels uncomfortable- as though staring at something incredibly intimate. Maybe how he felt when he’d seen them in the pig house. It was as though right now, Naif has stripped naked in front of her instead. She doesn’t try to soothe him, doesn’t lift a hand or anything that people with a better sense of sympathy might have done, simply takes another drag of her cigarette and tries to look away, embarrassed. To give him time to get a grip on himself.

That doesn’t happen though, and he speaks instead. “I loved him so much Tallow—he loved me too… I f—ked him, he f—ked me… we just… we loved each other, and they didn’t know… no one ever… no one ever stopped me… and he was so beautiful, and sweet, and gentle and—oh ripred—I just… I just didn’t ever want to let anyone else…”Shut up,

[/i]she wants to snap at first, it isn’t funny. But the way he speaks, what he’s saying and the way that his tears fall makes Tallow realise that this isn’t a joke. She’s always told herself that they can’t be the only ones, that across district lines and maybe within theirs (which might explain the godawful looking children on the farm a few miles down) there were others who felt the same strange, unwelcome but not unwanted stirrings for their siblings. It never lessens the shame, never makes what they had any less special but it was meant to be a comfort. Tallow just never thought she’d be on a roof, at a barn dance, sitting next to someone like her.

But it’s different, comes a whisper from inside of her. Cyrus volunteered didn’t he? She remembered it from the pre-game footage and his interview. Cyrus had worn an understated but classic blue tuxedo and all the time he’d had a brother at home, waiting for him, loving him. Scutcher would never do that; he’d never leave Tallow and she’d never leave him- not by choice, not if all the fates and the elements conspired against them because Tallow would never let it happen. Now she has him, she won’t ever let go.

A flicker of a firefly in the corner of her eye and Tallow is back, all of a sudden , in the smokeroom. She and Scutcher have had a fight, anotherone because Noreen Lexington has just been reaped and she’s bitter by how much it’s hurting him, brimming over with all the want she feels, arguing all the time, running herself ragged like a bitch in heat. So they fight and it goes the way of all of their fights; Tallow hurts him because she knows the perfect ways to do so- hurting people is her special talent, she’s been blessed with it like youth or beauty- and now she feels guilty. I’m going to be nicer, more understanding,she tells herself firmly as she pushes open the door. Everything else is fucked and so should never ever turn on each other like that. The Tansy kids against the world.

And her world crumbles around her. There, struggling and swinging from a length of rope is her brother. His face is an ugly swollen puce as his legs and his arms shake feebly. Tallow doesn’t have time to scream, to stand with her eyes wide and her mouth hanging open in horror as she can pinpoint the exact second when the cracks in her heart start to form but she does anyway. And then, in an instant, as his legs and arms stop shaking and she can see all the life and his smile, which never comes all that easily, and the rare burst of laughter like the song of a mocking jay draining out of him Tallow runs and grabs him by the legs, trying to push him up, to release the tension and let him breathe. She isn’t strong enough and every part of her is shaking, she wants to sob and scream for help but she knows no one will come- no one ever comes for the Tansy kids so it’s just them against the world. And more than half of the time that means Tallow is basically on her own anyway. On her own as she kicks up the milking stool that lies beneath his feet and tries to stand him on it. On her own as she grabs a knife in shaking hands, getting up on the milking stool, clutching him close and oh fuck, oh fuck it doesn’t look like he’s breathingand she cant see a flicker in his eye lids either, so thin and delicate like pressed flowers. Tallow cuts him down and tries to hold him in her arms, but he slumps like a sack of rocks and they both topple to the ground. And in the moment before he chokes and sputters back into life, Tallow might as well just lie down dead with him.

Because they’re one. He bleeds, she bleeds. He comes, she comes. He dies, she dies.

“You’re so stupid, stupid, stupid,” she keeps muttering as she holds him close and though he still swears blindly that it was an accident, Tallow can’t believe him. He’d tried to leave her once, maybe they werent so different from Naif and Cyrus, but Tallow hadn’t let him and he’d never come that close again. Never ever.

“For how long?” she’s about to ask Naif, for want of anything else to say, but he’ll know as well as she does that the question is irrelevant. If its fifty years, or a single kiss yesterday afternoon, between people like Naif and Tallow the answer will always be our entire lives. Did Naif and Cyrus climb the tallest tree in their yard (did district six even have trees or yards) and look down at the entire world, isolated, elevated and together? Did Naif ever see Cyrus in the bath or cuddle up real close to him at night only to feel a morning’s involuntary stirring pressed into his leg and want him so badly and so often that it felt like a constant stomach ache?

She doesn’t ask or seek an answer, pulling up her dress again and taking another sip from the flask before offering this to him instead of the cigarettes. Because they are kin now, tied by their abominations which run almost as deep as their blood, hell, their abominations are their blood. He won’t tell anyone, comes the slow realisation and despite the heavy sadness in the air, shadowy and strange- it’s hard not to grin a little. Gotcha, Naif. I win. I always win.

“Sometimes I think it would’ve been better for both of us if you’d just slit my throat…”

Tallow sighs, takes a swig of her drink and- almost shyly- shifts closer to Naif. Like a kingfisher catching a minnow, she darts forwards and presses a kiss against the very corner of his mouth. “Sometimes I wish I’d done it too. All the time actually,” she whispers, still close enough that her hair might tickle his cheek. “But I don’t anymore. And you won’t either…in time.” She smiles at him, not quite the sly, affected smile she saves for her prey but not quite the smile with genuine softness that Scutcher gets. It is something in between, something new.

“A word of advice, Naif; this district’s fucked. But there are….parts…that aint shit, if you look properly. If that aint enough for you…you should leave, or ten will fuck you up.” [/color][/blockquote][/size][/justify]