weather seems strange [Aya]

new

« Prev
1
Next »

WT
Retired Staff

2,134 POSTS
Pronouns: they
last seen Sept 10, 2021 1:50:54 GMT -5

time, gender, furbies, and other things that don't exist

weather seems strange [Aya] Jun 9, 2019 23:36:35 GMT -5

Post by WT on Jun 9, 2019 23:36:35 GMT -5

"If this isn't about the train or the Opening Ceremonies, I don't want to hear it."

"Don't you worry about that, Aranica, Iairus already—"

"It's the fucking Hunger Games, I'm worrying." As always, Bellezze huffs softly at the swear; for once, you refuse to acknowledge her. "Red needs you on her side."

Because I'd like to say I'm trying, Belle, you fail not to hear in that, but I still feel bad about Ocean and that doesn't mean I—

You deliberately lengthen your stride.

"She has me!" The clack of Bellezze's shoes speeds up as she matches your pace. They don't mean anything by their chatter—shoes never do—but you wrinkle your nose to keep yourself from barking at them, too. "But I want to talk to—"

"I said I didn't want to hear it," you snap across her. "I'm not in the mood and I sure as hell don't have the time, okay?" You would never dream of using that kind of phrasing on camera, or in front of the Peacekeepers on the other side of the stage door. Bellezze could weaponize that in a breath; she'd barely have to do the work herself, only quote it to the right people and wait for someone to interpret it as even Petros doesn't think Twelve can last this year. You wouldn't say it now either, even with furious panic as the only thing holding you upright—even with the steady, focused hum of your rock unable to drown out the nonsensical and useless and frankly insulting ring of your fault your fault your fault or the echo of silence broken by wood on wood and a soft, strangled sound that fell unbidden out of your chest—if you didn't know she would never do that. Which you do, the same way that you know yourself well enough to recognize when you're using her as a convenient target, and know her well enough to not feel guilty for it. "Do your job, Bellezze." The door to the little Justice Building room you're assigned—confined to—as a temporary office creaks, more in surprise than protest, as you wrench it open with unnecessary force. "That's what you care about."

"Ara," she says, seriously enough that the lack of her usual chirp startles you into pausing. She steps forward, not quite joining you in the threshold; you tense, your hand still lingering on the doorknob, but turn toward her for the first time since you left the stage. "I care about what—who—you care about. You know that, right?" She rests a hand against your face the way she used to when you were little and crying: lightly over your cheekbone, pausing once to flick back an errant strand of hair with easy, tender familiarity. "You're the little sister I never had."

What do you know about family you never got to have? you bite back. In 55 she was young for a stylist—an adult unquestioned in your child's eyes, but one only barely in the eyes of the law, and painfully young when you reexamine your memories. After all these years she knows you in almost mortifyingly intimate detail, better in some ways than Arbor, the only other person left who has known you just as long. Bellezze never had to search for her parents' and grandparents' names, but she loves you as genuinely as she loves anyone.

She has meant every word she's ever said to you, including the blatant lies.

"What if Dru went home, Belle?" you ask, all the fire gone from your voice even as your right hand curls around the doorknob so tightly that you feel bone grind against wood. "Would you be trying to dote on Heron right now?" Your heart, impossibly, finds a piece of itself still at rest enough to hurt when it twists. (I miss her too, your rock murmurs, and you shake your head minutely because Heron is fine. She already had her turn in front of the firing squad, and she doesn't have—she's fine.) "Do you even get why I'm—" Of course she doesn't. "Would you give a single shit about any of them, if I didn't?"

She hesitates. "That's not what I said."

Always gingerly poised on the edge of self-awareness, your Bellezze. "I know you would remember me, a little," you say. "First tribute. But Arbor was never your charge. Cedar isn't." Kieran wouldn't have been. Nico, Carter. Any of dozens of names you're not even sure she remembers.

"Ara. Please."

You rest your hand—the left one, half piece of you and half costume, the one that feels only the muted impression of her skin under yours—over her fingers and say, "You were always more like my mother than my sister."

She flinches physically, and she doesn't protest when you close the door in her face.

---

The year after Stella won, you did what you could to subtly take heat off of her: misdirecting reporters, mostly, so that she would have time to eat or sleep or breathe once in a while, and offering her a hand with the first rounds of labyrinthine paperwork. You'd already meant to do as much for Nico this year, unsure whether he would actually want the help but remembering the whirlwind hell of your own first year too keenly to not try; now you all but bodily throw yourself in front of every microphone you can. You can't catch them all, know you probably shouldn't actually try although you would if Arbor asked—whatever you have to say about grief voyeurs behind closed doors, they're useful, dammit, and sponsorship is already shaping up to be more of a problem than usual this year—but in your helplessness to stop this, the only thing you can think to do is guard any shred of time the Capitol hasn't already stolen from Arbor and Cedar.

(That, or wring Cricket Antoinette's neck, but that would cause more problems than it solved.)

You can't think of this as an end, exactly; you never do. Anything is possible, you always say at galas and interviews, quoting your own thirty-year-old statistics to prove a point when you need to. But you know the odds, can taste them every time you say Cedar's name, every time you say Red's, every time you inhale and taste Training Center air filtered to within an inch of its life. You know how the Capitol works.

Tell me I'm wrong, Arbor murmured in your kitchen months and months ago, and all you'd been able to give him was, just as quietly, I wish I could.

All the bits of stability you've learned to depend on feel slanted this year, and you can't say how much of that is real and how much of it is just you. You hug Mace shakily, offer Teddy the warmest smile you can muster, and hope they'll understand if you seem distant this year; you don't want to act, not to them. Not to friends. Bellezze steers clear; you can't complain, don't have the energy to think about what you'll say to her when you see each other next and both of you refuse to apologize, but your face does something that makes Ambroos ask whether you're okay when he drops an umbrella off in her stead. Sometimes it almost, almost feels normal to see Cedar in these hallways again, the way it felt the first time you coincidentally crossed paths with Arbor in the middle of the day again last year, the way it still feels normal to catch yourself looking for Kieran sometimes—then your brain catches up to your eyes, and you bite your lip against that wounded sound you made at the Reaping, still bubbling somewhere down in your chest.

(Red is a good kid—determined, unashamed, dedicated to her family. You won't do her the discourtesy of failing to learn these things, or of failing to say she's got spirit, you know, and Seam kids know how to survive, as many times as someone will listen to you say it. If she dies, you will mourn her. But you can't do her the discourtesy of lying, either.

You really do still feel bad about Ocean.)

Even staring sightlessly at the corner of the city outside your bedroom window, day clothes on but arm tossed on the table, seems like less than the routine you've let it become over the years. Your rock doesn't even try to convince you to sleep, only anchors you against the waves of distant traffic noise as you lose track of time and tell yourself that counts as rest.

The knock startles both of you. Not Bellezze?

Not her knock, you confirm, not that you would have expected her anyway. I don't know—oh, yes I do. And despite everything, as you open the door to Cedar you feel the slightest tug of a smile; somewhere in the doorframe bounces a months-old reflection of another night, you blinking in bleary confusion and Arbor on your doorstep where you'd half-expected Carter or perhaps Isabel.

You can't tell Cedar to come in and pet a rabbit while you start the kettle, so you step out and hug him, automatically rising to your toes so you can wrap your arm around his shoulder properly.

When did you get so tall? you don't ask. When did all you kids grow up on us, how the hell did we get here? You don't cling, no matter how much you want to, as though holding on could leash time to this spot. As though you have ever, in your life, had the power to protect anyone.

"Do you want to come in," you ask instead as you pull back to look at him and settle back onto your heels, "or walk and talk?"

Title from "Rocks" by Loquat (the weather seems strange / the fleeting days change / I'm in an old cage [...] I'd like a guarantee).

'the way we lived' in stylized text, with 'character directory' as a subtitle underneath

banner by Dars! <3

aya
Administrator

6,261 POSTS
last seen Sept 15, 2024 22:06:23 GMT -5

"GUNNERRRRR~"

weather seems strange [Aya] Jun 14, 2019 0:05:43 GMT -5

Post by aya on Jun 14, 2019 0:05:43 GMT -5

[attr="class","cedarPostWidth"]

rylan, california's rotten
dress light blue to be forgotten
eat your pearls on sunday morning
keep your conversations boring

Sleep is harder and harder to come by as his time in the Capitol winds down. Nights here used to look like: hours spent wide-eyed, examining the ceiling until he's sure he could draw it from memory if asked, occasionally drifting off and waking in the same position, unsure if he'd really slept at all. Now he can't even force himself to lie still. He sits on the edge of his bed. He paces. He stares out the window. He sits cross-legged on the chair in the corner of the room. He sits cross-legged on the floor.

Like everything else, it's hopeless.

His head swims in circles, counterclockwise, like the beta in the bowl. Time ticks forward. Cedar and the fish remain in place, until at last the stillness becomes too much for the boy to bear. He stands, shaky-kneed as his low-grade panic rises with him.

The District Twelve suite is quiet, empty. Dark, too, save for the slivers of light peeking out from under other bedroom doors. The illuminated confessions of mutual insomnia are comforting. The light makes it easier to forget to feel like he's being selfish with other people's time. He just... he needs the company now. Everyone else has the time to sleep later. (He knows they won't. At least, not for awhile. But he won't, either, and that seems fair.)

Still, he knocks lightly — in case the illumination is a lie — and is greeted with a slim smile and a big hug. As comforting as it's been to have his dad with him here in the Capitol, Cedar is grateful that he has Aranica Petros to lean on, too. Though he and Arbor are their own family unit — and despite uncles and aunts, despite older cousins, despite a warmhearted grandfather — and though there have been times when they've seen less of each other — Aranica has always been the closest thing he's had to a second parent.

"Do you want to come in," (A grateful smile parts his lips, despite the way he feels incapable of doing anything at all. The waterfall of his heart churns against the sharp rocks at the bottom, and all that remains is a spray of mist that doesn't catch the light.) "or walk and talk?"

Unable to articulate a response through the trembling in his chest, he enters, places himself in the chair in the corner of the bedroom, tucks his knees up to his chest. Curling himself up small feels safer, somehow. Maybe if he can shrink himself beyond notice — maybe if everything goes counterclockwise — they'll mistake him for the boy he was the last time he was here. Bright. Beaming. Beneath the notice of the Reaping.

With a deep breath, he opens his mouth, then closes it. He studies the place where the dresser meets the floor — the way that the rug creases beneath the weight of it, the way that cruft has gathered at the edges. He feels guilty — only a little — for coming here to talk with his dad right down the hall. But even now, this close to the end, there are some things that he just can't share with the man who raised him.

As comfortable as he is talking about his inevitable fate during the day, like monsters and gremlins and nightmares, in the dead of night it evolves from myth to reality. And so his voice hitches when he admits, plainly, "I don't want to die."

rylan — the national

[newclass=".cedarPostWidth"]width:460px;[/newclass]

{characters}

certified kindergartener
stranded in "beach" "city"
leader of the crystal gems

WT
Retired Staff

2,134 POSTS
Pronouns: they
last seen Sept 10, 2021 1:50:54 GMT -5

time, gender, furbies, and other things that don't exist

weather seems strange [Aya] Jun 14, 2019 6:22:09 GMT -5

Post by WT on Jun 14, 2019 6:22:09 GMT -5

On the border between the glow from your room and the gloomy suite beyond, Cedar's smile looks as fuzzy around the edges as yours felt. You take that as an answer and let him pass without comment, easing the door shut behind him as gently as you can, as though the noise of the latch could shatter something irreparable. Across the doorway you catch a glimpse of light withdrawing from the suite—the sitting room entrance on one side, the foyer, the gleaming elevator doors—before the room plunges into a darkness you could never close the door fast enough to see.

Inside, both smiles gone, you follow Cedar's lead; he claims the chair and you slide an unlit lamp to one side so you can settle onto the end table between him and the still-made bed, not crowding him but near enough to reach one another if you lean. For a long moment, he simply takes in the room—minimally if at all different from his, you assume, but you think of the conversations you've dragged yourself through by staring at Liddy and Sycamore as though you've never seen them before and firmly refuse to press, even when his first attempt at speaking fizzles into empty breath. You focus on the rhythm of your own breathing instead, hoping the illusion of calm might coax out some shade of the real thing.

At last, still not entire steady, he says, "I don't want to die."

Something in your stomach lurches; something vaguely traitorous in your chest eases. You barely forgive yourself for so much as having the capacity for relief anymore, let alone letting it twine seamlessly with heartache at the catch in his words and the way he's tucking his long limbs protectively around himself—except he took the stage with such composure, back in Twelve, that it frightened you. Trying to die and not trying to survive are not, in your experience, terribly different.

On impulse you lift Anani's old silver chain from around your neck and lean forward to loop the necklace over Cedar's head—a bit of a stretch one-handed, height of the table notwithstanding, but then the years of practice have done you more good in some things than in others. If you muss a few curls in the process, there are no stylists here to complain, and by now—after Kieran, Vibeke, Rune, Cedar himself—it's second nature to give his hair a perfunctory fluff anyway.

As you do the acorn begins to hum, tuneless and slow and so far on the edge of your awareness that you almost miss it. You wouldn't have done that if you expected it to object, but you didn't expect this, either; you only meant to offer a comforting weight, perhaps something to hold. Force of habit, you suppose, or perhaps a simple yearning to reach out, even knowing that it might not work. Probably won't work.

Cedar didn't come here for advice, but you can offer little for reassurance that he hasn't already heard, and even less that's true. He knows the District Twelve team—more of the District Twelve team than is, however little you like to think about it, strictly fair—will be working to help him from the other side of the Arena, but he traveled here with the living evidence of how rarely that work actually means anything. He knows that long odds are not impossible odds, but he knows that they are nevertheless long. He knows that he shouldn't have to face this at all, for all the good that should has done the last eight decades of tributes.

(Another few years—but that type of thought is part of the trap, isn't it? Vibeke is twelve this year without a tessera to her name, safe as she could be, exactly as safe as you were when your name was drawn. Kieran's name will never go on those slips again, but you still weigh him into every decision you make with the shop, every what if this is the deal they catch? The Games are only one weapon; there are as many ways to kill someone as there are ideas that should be true but aren't.)

He knows that you love him. He knows that Arbor loves him.

He knows that death is not impossible, or painless, or easy.

"I know," you settle on, speaking no louder than Cedar did. Even at their dimmest setting the Capitol fluorescents overhead glare, and between his drifting gaze and your anxious heart neither of you sits quite at rest, but you can't shake the sense of fragility from when you closed the door. If anything, it's stronger—as though the thing that would break with the nighttime stillness is you, or Cedar, or one of the precious branching paths into his uncertain future. "And I promise that's a good thing, but I know it doesn't feel like it."