the {irony} of choking on a lifesaver :: kolt

It’s getting late, and I
Cannot seem to find my way home tonight
Feels like I am falling down a rabbit hole
Falling for forever,
Wonderfully wandering alone

The ambiance in the room thickens, slowly, like a witch is stirring a cauldron. She is, isn't she? She always has. She was something bright and shining, but instead of clinging to her light, I stamped it out, afraid of the way it shone. Our kind isn't meant for the light. I told her that one night, told her how we were bred for the night. We worked best in the night, remained unseen, a flicker here, a flicker there. Just enough to do what had to be done. They never should have let me near her. Never should have let me near any of them. As I watch her fight the Cerberus, cold gaze flicking across the screen, it occurs to me for the umpteenth time that I am the one that put her there. The old me almost feels pride for a split second. She looks like a goddess. A goddess immersed in blood. My cousins know it. I can almost hear the rise and fall of their chests as they watch their sister fight for her life. My cousin, my true sister. I put her there.

They almost seem immune to it. None of us make a sound as we watch, gazes fixed to the screen. None of us show a flicker of a smile at her success or a frown at her failures. I guess we're too afraid. Afraid to show favour to Death and Life. Not when one has already been lost. They tell me she's been wild, since I left. Since they lost Siberia. Where I had always been the god whispering in her ear, Siberia had been two feet planted firmly on the ground. Although she did her duties, she had never believed she did them for a divine purpose, nor for a divine right. Killing had been a hunger. Maybe killing was simply a hunger for all of us. I asked myself that once before, only once. Before I left my home, before I met Colt. I had laughed the idea off, the idea that I was simply a mad man with some plants. What I did, I did for the good of humanity. Now I'm not so sure.

I squirm slightly, long limbs unfolding beneath me as I move from my position on the carpet. When I came today, they had all already been on the couch. When I leave they will all be on the couch. I put them there. I put them there just as much as I put Kiera in the games. I don't mean to play these games of God anymore but I cannot help it. Everything is falling into it's place around me, reminiscent of the way a tomb will smell when being opened after a long sleep. The taste of the air in here is worse. Death has touched here. Of course it has, and it will touch here again. But I cannot think like that. I do anyway.

I watch as Kiera kills the Cerberus, blood spraying in a lovely arc across the backdrop of the arena. I can't help thinking that the blood isn't altogether real, when I know it is. My eyes stay on her, watching to see if she is hurt. She is fine, nothing bad. Her beauty in the smirk she bares is astounding, like a punch to the stomach, when all I can think of is what she will look like in a casket. I can't stop seeing that image. It feels like everyday I come closer and closer to the realization that she could die, and there is nothing I can do. I'm so much closer to her than where I was in District Thirteen, but it's useless. There's nothing I can do. I cannot protect her, not from here.

The scene cuts to other tributes, and other fights. In no time, it always feels like the time between glimpses of her goes too fast. It always seems like the next time I'll see her she'll be dead. When it cuts back to her, she's holding another tribute in her arms, and this isn't something I want to see. A good tactic, to seduce a fellow tribute, but still not something I want to see. So without a word, I stand up and slip on my coat, a long affair with a tweed scarf Colt insisted I wear. He's worried for my health, says I don't eat enough. He says I'm becomign a stick as if I wasn't a stick before. I don't understand how he can expect me to have much of an appetite with her in the arena and me here, useless.

I'm angry, yet my face betrays nothing. Fucking scared, but I'm not short of breath. I feel akin to a machine. If you listen closely, you can hear the sound of oil moving through my veins, and the thrum of an electric heart. I run on a charger, that I go home to everynight and keeps me sane for at least a little while. But I can't go home right now. I feel it in me, the hunger, the need. If it was something I could just push away, I would in two seconds. But I can't, I'm not that strong. Before Colt, I didn't even know I was weak. But he showed me, with his stubborn tenacity, that I have shortcomings. I am no god, no savior to the human race. Just as he makes me feel more, breaks things that I didn't know were bent, he saps my strength. He has pointed out to me, in his oh so eloquent phrasing, that I am human.

And I want to go home to him now, I do. To smell the sunshine on his lips, because he is always warm. I want to tell him again and again, that I love him. Although he's told me he believes me now, there is still an aching uncertainty somewhere below my rib cage that questions that. He's never been a good liar. If I hold on tight enough he can't fly away from me, my hopeless wanderer. I feel like I've always belonged to him, that I only ever want to. If he should go, I would be left without my charger, my means of survival. With everything falling down around me, being torn to pieces, I have him. But when did I become so reliant? When I fell.

My feet take me to a dimly lit bar, smoke drifting around the room, circling each light bulb in the chipped lamps like a halo. It's not one I've frequented before, even if it was, no one would recognize me. I've changed too much. My fingers slide into my pocket in excitement, deftly wrapping themselves around a vile. They're so ready to play this game again. To hear the sound of death behind me, to look into the eyes of the person I'm about to relieve and know that Death is coming for them. I left that behind. When I ran from District One, I left that. I found a new addiction, a different vice. My belief shattered, I wasn't a god, just a boy. But I want to kill again, to know tha tI am ridding the world of one more evil. To know that a child might sigh in relief to know that their tormentor won't be coming back.

I slide onto an empty stool beside an older woman, and she smiles coyly at me. I return the smile with a soft smirk. IO can't be doing this, I am. I go through the motions, I talk to her, she talks back. Tells me about a husband at home, and a little one. How she hates going home to both of them. I could fix that. Could make it so she won't ever see her home again, I am capable of that. For a moment, that old familiar, righteous rage flairs up into my chest. I want to avenge the little one who's missing their mother. The little one that might have to clean the puke out of her hair when she goes home wasted. Her life sits in my hands. For just a moment, I feel the way that I did before. Before everything changed. I feel powerful, all knowing, and like a god. My hand slips back into my pocket. I clutch the vial. I smile. When she looks away, I slip something into her drink. Not her last drink. I can't kill her. Not now. I can't. I can only make her think twice about drinking again, by lieu of some terrible stomach cramps.

I need a relief from this pain, this nightmare. I leave the bar. Everything the woman said to me a haze of words, like smoke. I don't care about what any of them say, what anyone wants from me. I feel like a drug addict, one that needs his scent on my skin, and to hold his body against mine own, to caress that jaw line. I walk faster, hurrying back across the district to an old house with red shutters that hasn't been home for a long time. Not since my mother died and left me alone. How could you do that to me? How could you leave me? Mother? Mother? I shudder as cold wind buffets my body, leaking through the coat and turning my bones to ice.

When I walk in the door, there's coffee on the ground and Colt is blushing. He's wearing a sweater, god I love that, how soft he is. I didn't realize there was tension in my throat, in every single fucking muscle until I saw his form in my living room. He's so sturdy, everything I'm not. He complains about my height but I like the way I can almost tuck him under my chin because it feels like I'm fitting a puzzle piece to mine. When he wraps his arms around me, he's careful, and I kiss him lightly on the nose, and push my cold autumn hands up under his sweater. It stirs a yelp of protest as my fingers skim across his sweater warmed skin, but I ignore it and only pull him closer.

I wait patiently for him to form his sentences, knowing that sometimes he appreciates the help, but also knowing that sometimes he hates it. I always have to feel it out, to see if it's going to be one of his bad days, or one of his good ones. Today is a not so good one, each word stilted and sought after with growing annoyance. Running one hand down a toned abdomen, his muscles are so hot, I stoop and let my head rest on his shoulder. At his question, my mouth opens and closes in the normal response, "I'm fine." I almost taste his shift as he doesn't believe me. That is of no import though, he knows not to squirrel away at it. I stiffen, standing slowly as he begins to pull away from me, don't, you're mine. Wondering if maybe he saw me today when he went to go get coffee, saw me ducking into that old place. His face doesn't tell me and Colt is an open book, so I doubt it. The possibility stings.

Smiling softly, I watch as he lifts the towel and drops it on the coffee, always so clipped in movement, but carried by his own kind of grace. He doesn't understand how utterly beautiful I find him. He looks at me, almost wounded, like I've poked fun at him by telling him he's beautiful. I wish he'd just believe me. When he trips, I grab him and pull him up until he's safe in my arms again. It used to be a reflex that made me do that, the very first time I met him. I thought he was an idiot. Now it's almost something more. It isn't a reflex because when I grab him, when I keep him from hitting the ground, it's as if I'm moving my hand up to stop myself from hitting wooden floorboards. I feel that rush of fear, like my head is about to hit dirt. But it's never me falling, only him.

"Your mom, um... she's, uh... she was really pretty. She looks nice. What was she like?"

Automatically, I glance at the photo on the shelf. Every time I've looked at that photo, all I can see is her, dead, tears still on her face, slipping down pale cheeks and ruby lips. "She was beautiful. She was my mother. You know how I play the piano? She's the one who made me want to. When she played, it was like everything fell away and all that was left was the sound of the song. She could make the sun come out, just by asking. She would read me to sleep, and we'd go for walks. The kitchen would always be warm with something or other in the oven. She smiled a lot, laughed, like you. She would have loved you, Colt. I know it." I had lifted the photo off the shelf without realizing it, and with a slow frown, I place it back, one arm still wrapped around Colt. Whenever he's near I can't seem to let him go for long, my lifeline. "She's dead now. Let's not talk about it, okay?"

What would my head be like
If not for my shoulders
Or without your smile
May it never leave you, to sleep in the stone,
May we stay lost on our way home

word count: 2279
song: C'mon by p!atd + FUN.
notes: wifecharacter swap!