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So Wake Me Up // [ Opal/Mace ]
Dec 18, 2013 21:55:58 GMT -5
Post by Baby Wessex d9b [earthling] on Dec 18, 2013 21:55:58 GMT -5
for what it's worth, I have a slow disease that sucked me dry... I always aim to please
but I nearly died
Not since the 61st had Mace watched the Games so closely. He hadn’t needed to; fully half of his tributes perished in the Bloodbath, and abysmally few made it past the rest of the Day One. He’d been all too glad to say goodbye to the Scary Motherfucker, even if it made him a failure. Again. The 65th marked ten tributes he had mentored, eight of them already in their graves. So he watched. Day after day, not just the recaps, but whenever he could. He ignored the other victors at meals, spent very little time with Kieran or Juliet, and held fast to Julian in the nights, when he should have been sleeping.
But there was no dream better and no nightmare worse than watching his tributes march through the arena. He didn’t say anything to avoid jinxing it, but it was incredible – improbable – that both of his tributes would survive so long. On the morning of the third day both were still alive. For the first time in days, he slept. He paid dearly for it. It was Olive’s sobbing that woke him, her plaintive, “but it’s about time we deserve the spotlight,” haunting him. “We deserve shit,” he’d said, before slamming the bedroom door in her face.
Days had passed since then, with sleep dogging his every step. He couldn’t think, except to lift a fork to his mouth, to put one hand around Julian’s waist. He watched and he drifted, his soul in the arena. The 65th would be a long eight days, and many of them deceptively quiet. Saffron all but disappeared in the middle, the commentary focusing instead on flashier tributes, like Iago and Jim. He wanted to scream at the anchors, to demand that they show Saffron every minute. But he said nothing, because all of it would be ruined if he did.
The night of the sixth day, he felt a sickness in his throat. He coughed through dinner and excused himself early. He set up camp on the couch, not wanting to infect Julian. The grey drone of the television became his moonlight, his sunlight, his only light. He holed up under blankets, shivering, as Saffron took days of damage in one fight. Years of damage. He thought of Heron and Opal and shuddered. Why was it always the girls that got hacked to bits? He’d walked out of the arena with hardly a scratch on him, just a terrible case of pneumonia that never left his lungs.
The morning of the eighth day, he roused himself. After mentoring so many times, he had started to be able to predict the structure of a finale. It would be quick; neither of the remaining tributes wanted to linger, to bask in their glory. Lacking a mentor from Four to talk to, Mace wandered the training center, his grey eyes dead to the world. In the last twenty-four hours he’d had more requests for interviews than he had in years. He didn’t even decline them; he simply did not speak. And when the whispers from escorts and stylists overwhelmed him, he turned to the only place that was both loud and silent at once: the nursery.
Kieran greeted him at the door, tugging him over to pile of dolls. It took Mace a moment to realize that they were tributes, piled high in what appeared to be a forest arena. The sickness tightened in his throat. “I’ll just be over here, buddy.” But Kieran had already returned to his game, which seemed to also include poking Eden whenever she looked away. Mace backed to the far wall, next to a fence that separated the babies from the toddlers. Juliet sat just opposite him, a mangled stuffed rabbit in her arms. He looked down at her, and saw Clarity so clearly it made him ache. He folded at the knees, and still separated by the fence, spoke to his daughter. “Are you taking good care of Mr. Bunny? He looks a little hungry.”
He smiled as he passed her a plastic bottle. The expression exacerbated the feeling in his throat, and so he dropped it. Kneeling, watching Juliet, a flicker of movement caught his attention. He hadn’t noticed it before, but from that angle, he could see into the minder’s office. And of course, there was a television. He’d planned to wait until lunch, to shut out everyone until he found Julian, but there it was. There she was. Bloody and severed, broken and alone. All alone.
The sickness welled up, pouring out of his eyes. Mace dropped his head to his knees, big silent tears rolling down his cheeks. He heard the creak of the door opening, and couldn’t even bring himself to stop.
banner credit: jurate
lyrics:placebo for what it's worth
lyrics:placebo for what it's worth
