revelations | stella x carter

s t e l l a ; 

The last cannon had fired and Bette Sublino had fallen to the girl from District Four. A newly crowned Victor had emerged. Her name muttered on the lips of all in the Capitol, her face adorning posters and banners. She would be immortalized in souvenirs, trinkets, outfits, baby names.

For the next year, at the very least. All castles were temporary castles. All crowns were temporary crowns. It did Stella well to remember that, even if she was blinded by glitter and rubies, champagne and cigarettes, and a certain blonde Capitolite. The lesson was best learned quickly, lest the guilt eat you alive. You only had to stand in the spotlight for one year before your crown was given to another of the damned. You could slink away into the shadows, fade into relative obscurity. You could choose anything. 

Stella’s anger at the Gamemakers’ so-called mercy, the twist for the 80th Games, had subsided to a dull ache in her chest, but the young blonde could not be sure that the ache was more from the loss of Alejandro and Finley two years previous, or the fact that she had yet again said goodbye to the love of her life. A smirk rather than tears, a smile rather than a grimace, a quick kiss, and she had walked away from Ex for the millionth time, the train idling at the station to take them far away from here.

She had grasped Teddy’s arm as an anchor when the twist was revealed, her breath coming in gasps. Mickey was not far away from them, his arms grabbing Teddy and Stella. Afraid if the bond was broken that they would all fall together. Curses dripping from her lips over the lives lost in the two previous Games, curses she dare not speak.

Names long forgotten by others, but carried with them every day, stitched in her words, movements, and thoughts as if they were stitched in the lining of her dress. The mercy of the Capitol to bring back twenty-three but leaving thousands lost in the Arenas that littered the landscape. The memories of lost allies and adversaries a harder pill to swallow than the strongest of alcohols. Their quiet screams louder than the loudest clap of thunder.

They were alive. They were alive and safe and free to return home, eligible to be reaped once more. What a sick fucking joke. This was worse than killing them. This was worse than death.

No one had died and no had really won, either. Their wounds healed, their bodies intact, their memories haunting them for years to come. Maybe death would have given them an out. A sacrifice for the horrors committed in the name of going home and yet they had all lived. Brandishing steel, leather, and wood in the name of home and family turning to ash in their mouths the moment they breathed the first breath of their second lives.

They were killers and the killed. Hunters and the hunted. They were monsters. They were teenagers. They were innocence and wrath wrapped in finery and glittering in silver only to be shuttled back to destitution and poverty after having a taste of a life that would never be theirs. They were goodness and evil, angels and demons, broken and remade in the image of the Capitol. Property of President Snow. Altruism had no home here, mercy had no meaning. It was control. 

Washing down the revulsion with champagne, Ex glanced at Stella over the top of her glass, a wink betraying her mask. The younger blonde had schooled her features, thanking the Capitol with a toast for the twist to end all twists, but she knew that Ex was faring no better. She hadn’t yet been able to figure out the twist. Her anger manifesting later in the comfort of Stella’s penthouse, safe away from prying eyes and open ears. The older blonde had held Stella while she cried on the floor in a heap, angry sobs making their way out of her throat like knives, catching and cutting.

Perhaps the annals of history will say that she had done her duty, that she had whored herself out to the right people for the right price to bring her Tributes home, but the Quell was the quell for a reason and next year would no doubt see a return to the normal business of the Games. Stella would return, a shepherd of souls with Aranica and Arbor by her side. The twist had given everyone hope. Hope wielded like a knife in the gut of Panem. Hope spreading like a pandemic, person to person. There was no hope here. 

Hope breeds eternal misery, isn’t that how the quote goes?

Stella drops to the plush leather couch in the District Twelve train-car, eyes cast toward the ceiling as the melancholy threatened to take over. A heavy sigh and she is back on her feet. Pacing, her boots clicking loudly across the black and white tiles. She knaws on the skin of her lip, words failing her now just as they had failed her thousands of times before. Her final dance with Raven Sayer filtering through her brain like a song stuck on repeat.

(“There’s so much I’m destined to do, Stella. We are both in each other's way but the path in front of us has space for only one god. Who is it going to be? I’d much rather it be me.”

“Keep swinging, Raven. I’ll take you down with me if I have to. I don’t want to be a god. I don’t want to be immortal - molded in marble and stitched on tapestries to hang in the Capitol. I want to be a fragile human. I want to dance. I want to run through the forest again. I want a choice in it all. And I choose living today.”

“You don't have a choice, Stella. If they want you to be a god, then a god you will be. There's no lesser of two evils here, it's just pure evil. When I die, tell my family to cremate me – so that my body won’t be laid in surrender like them. Bathe me in rosewater, purify my hands, purify me.”)

Purify me, purify me.

Purify me, he asked of the sinner who took his final breath. Purify me, he asked of the girl who thought herself an innocent, bathed in golden light. The gold was tarnished now - gold heart transformed and built from fire and stones, swallowing stars and extinguishing the sun, a despot of decay with a derelict crown. Not a miracle, but created by blood, bones, and stardust, her heart beating so loud that it drowns the scream that erupts from her lips.

Ripred, she needed a drink. Hearing the door slam open as she moved behind the bar, crouching low to grab two tumblers and a bottle of Scotch. She straighens up, making eye contact with him, pouring three fingers of the amber liquid into one glass and then into the other.

He would drink with her or he wouldn’t, it was his choice. That’s what was different now - he had a choice. Carter Laws and Hellion Mo were alive. They had not gone through this alone. They were alive, whole, and not altogether unscathed. Raising a glass and swallowing back anger, sadness, fury, passion, she breathes out hope. The damn feeling was contagious and would be the death of her, but perhaps not in this moment. 

“To you, Carter. If there is any celebration to be had, let’s drink to you. And Hell, if the girl wishes to grace us with her presence.”