There Isn't What There Was. {South}

It'll be two years tomorrow. Two years since Avon Lightwood died, well a little past. Two years since Lucy. Two years since the earthquake, two years since I've been with Riley Lightwood. Two years that we've been together and become like clockwork. It's been two years since that night in the house, hidden away beneath a crushed house that has since been rebuilt. Two years since everything turned upside down. Two years since I've been not been alone. Two years since I've watched a family rebuild it's self, integrating me like a piece of wool into the scarf they've knit. Two years since I've written in this dusty old leather journal that I promised I'd write daily in. There, that's my type of promise, one I'll say, but never do. Except one, because it's been two years and a few months since I've had a drink. It's been two years since I've felt a tiny kicking come from inside me, two years since I've felt completely right. The rightness I have now, it isn't full. Not since Lucy, I don't think ever again. I felt right once, and that was a present. Only a short while, the time when I had Lucy, and I had Riley. That Christmas when I was with the Lightwoods, and Avon was sitting so stern faced in the corner, a smile tugging at her lips. It's been two years. So why does it feel like yesterday.

-Fenn.

She sits there quietly, a pen tap, tap, tapping against the polished wood desk, legs crossed in her thin little pencil skirt. her hair is falling just so to hide her eyes if one were to look at her from the doorway, but if one looks, they can see blank chocolate eyes, staring out into space, little white teeth holding a bottom lip in a death grip. Fresh ink is on the open page in front of her, inside a leather bound book. The pages near the front are older, and written in the more delicate hand of another girl, another woman. The more recent writing is from a girl with a confident script, a bolder style of writing. the outside looks so dull, and finished. Short bangs over top of the eyes, and long brown hair, golden cream slipped into the folds of the strands like strokes from a paint brush. Everything about her is clear cut, down to the sharpness of her black pumps, and the crisp whiteness of her blazer. She's Fenn Klardie, a Capitol starlet and never below notice. She's mingled with them all.

Klaus Goravich was the most recent, the winner of the sixty-first games. She met him at his crowning ceremony, at the after party that he was obviously so uncomfortable at. She had been uncomfortable too. She didn't take as much joy in parties as she used. She knew how to smile, and move her mouth to form words. She didn't know how to be happy. She wasn't sure how it worked when she didn't let someone take her by the hand and lead her off to a dark room. She didn't know what to do when there was no one to undress her, no one that she wanted to undress her rather than Riley Lightwood. Later that night she'd think about him, but he'd be in District One, and she'd be in the Capitol. She was lonely, surrounded by a people that didn't know what it was to watch someone you loved die. So she found Klaus hidden behind a curtain in the main ballroom, and in that quiet space, held a quiet conversation., he was nice, but he cried. she didn't. she didn't know how to cry anymore, she had cried herself out. She was afraid that she couldn't cry anymore. He said that once he thought he couldn't either, but now he couldn't stop. Fenn had very much like Klaus Goravich, and had told him so. He had cried about that. He was nice to her, and sad. A broken thing.

No one ever asked her what it had been like, that night, that long night underneath her house. how she coped with it, if the wee thing had ever been alive, or simply dead. They told her it had been a miracle that she had her at all, that she was supposed to be barren. Well he giveth and he taketh away. He did both to Fenn, giving her a taste of happiness before taking, to tell her what it might be like. A brief blip in a life of gray twilight. She hadn't expected to be so sad about it, always calling it a parasite whenever she spoke of the life growing inside of her. She hadn't been okay though, she still wasn't. they said it took more muscles to frown than to smile, but everything took more than she thought she could give. With that night, she almost gave up on her promise. Everything was too gray, she needed it to go away.

"Fenn? Fenn! love, what's wrong?" She wanted to answer him, to tell him, but everything was sudden pain. everything was wrong. She hadn't noticed at first, the absent of movement, the hollowness to the weight that had been growing inside her. She couldn't say, could only gasp as she fell back and screamed, a terrible ache growing from within her and reverberating outwards in streams of molten red. Gaining words, she could only say then, "She's coming! She's coming! Ri, she's coming right now!" they were in darkness but for a few emergency candles and a flashlight, but the baby was coming just then, as if she couldn't take it anymore. She was coming whether they were ready for her or not. She was coming. It was too early, she wasn't due yet, this was wrong. This was wrong!

She shuddered slightly, the tapping of the pen stopping abruptly as a tiny black cat, that hadn't been a kitten for a while, landed on her lap with a soft thud. her hand automatically began petting the little thing, the book still open in front of her. Tentatively, she flipped the page to a blank one, knowing that Riley should be there soon. There were candles on the table, and an ice bucket with a sparkling cider in it beside the table. The beginnings of a meal were laid out, Fenn was slowly learning how to cook well. Tonight she scoured her father's cook book for a recipe. She came from a long line of women who could not in fact, cook. her mother had been just as hopeless. But tonight she made Riley spaghetti, using a Klardie recipe. Riley was due soon, but she opened to that new page all the same, and began to write.

Tomorrow we are going to our daughter's grave. It would be her second birthday. We will bring her flowers, and Riley will bring his guitar. We will spend the day at her grave and have a picnic. We will sing to her, and tell her about our lives, and about how much we would have loved to watch her grow. Then we will go to Avon's grave, and we will sing to her as well. riley said that she had a beautiful voice, but she hadn't sung for years, not since their father had passed. I think that I would have loved to hear her voice, she was already so beautiful, I think it would have been lovely. Sometimes I think I write in this journal for Lucy, a girl that would have grown up with chocolate brown eyes, and curly hair. A girl with a smile like her father's and hopefully not a nose like mine. Sometimes I think I'm writing this for Avon, a dead girl I never quite knew as much as I would have liked to. Sometimes I think I am writing in this for Riley, so that when I die, he'll have something to know me better by, as if he doesn't actually know me enough.

After Lucy passed, I wanted to die. They called it postpartum depression. I think it was giving birth to a baby girl that was already dead because I fell down the stairs, and got too afraid. She could have lived if I hadn't fallen down those dumb stairs. Riley wanted to die too I think. he didn't cut, he was a good boy. He made a promise with me, that he wouldn't cut if I didn't drink. I didn't drink, if he cut, he lied. but when he climbed into the hospital bed beside me, I didn't feel any scars on those long, lanky arms that passed around me. Not new ones anyway. his skin was a canvas in tatters. Something precious, but broken. Me too, I am his precious and broken thing. My scars are internal, and his slice him through.

They say that the pain gets less, the longer it's been. For me it seems to intensify with every passing moment of everyday. I don't think I can stand it much longer. I am lucky I have Riley to keep me sane, to keep me from drinking again. If I didn't have him, I know I would be lost again in other's beds, and all the swirling covers that never seemed to stop. I don't wnat that again, to lose whole weeks, to forget my parents names, to hate myself so much. I don't want to disappear again. I don't know how I won't. I am afraid for myself. I wonder about Lucy a lot. I wonder about Avon. I hope they're together.

- Fenn

The key turns in the lock.

"Oh...Oh God, Fenn...." There is an inky silence to the blackness, a thickness to the air. Sweat plasters her forehead, and she's still trying to remember how to breath. The pain isn't lessening, and there is still a wetness that won't go away. She don't hear any crying. There should be crying, she know. But there isn't. She don't need Bridge or Ri to say anything, Fenn already knows. She isn't alive, she knew before she went into labour, a tiny thing that had been kicking moments before, she wasn't know. She wasn't breathing, and Fenn was bleeding. She was dead, Fenn knew. "Let me hold her."

"Fenn, she's..."

"LET ME HOLD HER, I'M HER MOTHER."

She was a tiny thing, born too quickly. Her little eyes were still squeezed tightly shut. She's swaddled in a blanket, her pink skin is still warm to the touch. She's incredible. There are little wisps of hairs on the top of her head, she has thick hair, like Fenn's. Her fingers and toes are so small. She kisses each one, and then the top of her head. There is muttering in the background, it isn't important. "She's still bleeding." Fenn is tired from her ordeal, and content to hold her baby. She's sleepy, she shuts her eyes slowly, slowly, holding her baby girl tight to her chest, and she lets herself drift away. She doesn't open her eyes when Riley asks her to, she's far too tired. Even when he begs, Fenn decides to slip away quietly with her baby, into sleep. She prefers it, besides, then he and Bridgit can finally have some alone time. It would be nice, she thinks, before Sleep takes her, and Death watches with great solemnity.

Quickly, she stands, Suspenders unceremoniously dumped out of her lap. Shutting the journal with a soft slap, she takes it and stuffs it back into it's place beside a poetry journal and the screen play to one of her movies. As the door opens, she turns on her heel, a movie star smile playing across her lips as she dashes into the hallway, launching herself at the figure in the door frame.