bank on the funeral — nico & mars.
Oct 18, 2019 23:37:57 GMT -5
Post by tick 12a / calla on Oct 18, 2019 23:37:57 GMT -5
It's sometime just past noon when Enyo crashes into the room like a tempest storm.
She's changed her wig since I last saw her, into a shimmering red thing that falls past her waist and twirls around her as she paces across the floor. It burns like fire, fitting, because she's always been explosive, a burning star with a kind of blood that flows like magma.
"Talos, that fucking prick." She spits out, kicking her stilettos off violently towards Edesia. "Spending all his fucking money betting on those careers, spending all of my cut."
I've only ever met Talos once, a self-proclaimed business man who reeks of tequila and fake tans, but I know he's one of her biggest investors. He practically keeps the ring going, supplying Avoxes and sending their bodies away.
I heard once that he gets off on watching us fight and that's why he spends so much paying people off, covering up his dirty little secret.
I think it's just that he's as twisted as the rest of them.
Before she starts burning a rut into the marble, Enyo stops in the middle of the room. I can feel the heat radiating off of her, can hear how she sounds out of breath, like she ran the whole way here in her state.
There's a moment that feels like the calm before the storm, a collective holding of breath before she's taking three purposeful steps, crossing the threshold and using all of her strength to upend the dining table. The silverware goes clanging against tile, the red wine Edesia had set out earlier spills and crashes against the white walls.
"That fucking prick." Enyo says again and I'm starting to wonder if she knows any other curses.
She starts up again, eyes wild and practically heaving, "And that little lower district alliance, they have the potential to be competition and it's obvious Thorne's supporting them. And fuck, he's still fresh enough to be the Capitol's darling, that kind of influence-" She trails off manically, muttering to herself while Edesia scurries away to clean up the mess.
I still stand at attention, watching Enyo pull at the roots of her new hair.
I found her last night, or maybe it was early morning, rewatching the bloodbath highlights on one of the low couches, an empty chardonnay bottle laying broken at her feet.
She's always had a soft spot for the careers, not enough to make her gamble all of her money away, but when Nico Thorne's band of misfits had gone after the boy from One she screamed so loud that I thought someone had broken in.
That's why I'm her favourite, she said, she's never had an Avox barge into the room with a kitchen knife just because there was a loud noise. She's never had someone stand guard outside her door when the drugs that keep her awake make her crash into bannisters and bang her fists against the windows.
The other two Avoxes in her penthouse, Edesia and Aion, they take care of everything else, all the trivial matters. They speak in hands and avoid my gaze and I only ever tried to interact with them once, back when I was still new. Enyo had caught me staring at them and the way they were communicating. She told me that I wouldn't be needing that. That I was special.
I had never learnt how to read or write in Nine. I was born from rot and rancidness in the slums of a district that never had the heart to call me son. I didn't need words or gestures or a tongue. All I needed were two fists and her orders.
"They would've killed you, you know." She told me on my first day, when I was more wild and less feral, "They probably should've. You're too dangerous." And then she smiled, thin and wicked and red, "But, lucky for you, I happen to like dangerous."
She started me off in the ring. Maybe she didn't believe the peacekeepers when they told her I'd taken two of them out and made it almost halfway across the neighbourhood before the rest caught up. Either way, it was child's play. She put a shaking little Avox boy across from me, no older than twelve, and I can see now that he was one of Talos's. Still, his tears tasted like salt spray and his bones snapped like twigs.
I rubbed his blood into my eyes so that all I could see was red and Enyo smiled again, named me Mars and let me stay.
That night my brother crept in through the window and tried to slit my throat, tried to cover my eyes so all the colour was gone. Marcus, he called me, war boy, and even without a tongue I could still scream.
But that isn't as much of a problem these days. I haven't seen my brother in a long time.
"You." Enyo suddenly snaps her fingers, venom in her gaze, and I can feel my spine straighten one vertebrae at a time, "Mars."
There's a beast in my heart, something insatiable, and she trips over the area rug to grab me by the chin.
"Do something about Thorne, hell, kill him if you have to. Make it look like an accident, make it look like he did it himself, I don't care what you do, just do something." She lets everything out in a rush, exhales shakily, "I'll take care of the rest. We'll be fine."
What she's asking from me is suicide, but it isn't the first time, and if she has her way, it won't be the last. I knew all along that she was insane, from the very moment she decided she wanted a murderer to keep and display in her home. But I think it's why I haven't smothered her in her sleep and taken off yet. It's one of my favourite things about her.
She makes me feel less alone.
(The beast gets louder.)
She makes me feel normal.
But now she's frazzled in a way I've never seen her, and the incredulity must show on my face because she lets go and scoffs, "He's easy enough to find, just try the nearest bar and if he isn't there, go to the next one. The more time we leave for him to gather sponsors means the more money we lose."
I don't know how many debts she's paid off or how many she still has left after doing this for so long. But I don't think I need to know.
It must be serious to send me after a fucking Victor.
But being a Victor doesn't equal being formidable. It just means that they were lucky, that they could outlast twenty-three other malnourished children in a controlled environment. I've spent three and a half years in the Capitol, enough for a lifetime, and there are stains on my soul that already will never come out.
I remember dangling a reporter off of his building after he had threatened to write an unsavoury story about Enyo and her hobbies, waited until his mascara was running red before I let him fall. When someone refused to pay up after a hefty night of gambling, I was the one that put on a mask and smashed her fingers with a metal mallet one by one.
I went with Enyo to gala once and had to pretend to be the docile shadow, a speck of dust that followed her around until we were finally alone and someone tried to grab her ass. My fist hit his temple before hers did and I don't know why, but it felt like a victory.
I've been walking on makeshift shivs since day one. The ones I whittled down from old bones and sheets of copper, rusted over until there's no metal left underneath all that red.
But there are always replacements.
The Capitol sells dozens of different games memorabilia, costumes and tokens, mutt figures, replica weapons for children to play fight with. I remember when Enyo bought a whole set of finale weapons for her niece, a small sickly thing who wanted to smear makeup over her brother's face instead of stab it. I don't know where most of those weapons ended up, but the knife from the 81st is warm and heavy in my palm.
It's a replica of the one Francisco Bloom died with, the one Diana Sayer tried to win with. The original blade, sitting somewhere deep in the Capitol museum, destroyed Thorne twice.
It's a thing of tragedy.
I guess it will be again.
Because being found dead with a carbon copy of your lover's weapon in your throat is more believable than bleeding out from a paring knife.
It's also harder to connect to foul play.
And I know if I'm caught Enyo won't do anything. I may be her pet, her glorified lapdog, but that's all I am, still a thing of flesh and bone and blood. There's no room for love in her heart, just the thrill of the idea, the adrenaline, the same feeling that comes with a splash of red on marble tiles. If I lost my value she wouldn't hesitate to put me down.
We're both the same.
That's why this all works so well.
But sometimes the darkness hurts my eyes, and even in the Capitol, there are dusky alleys and dangerous streets. There are still places where Victors shouldn't wander at night.
It takes almost two hours for Nico Thorne to haunt by.
I wonder if it reminds him of home.
I remember his victory tour two years ago, remember his parade and how you couldn't walk down a single street without seeing his face plastered everywhere. The whole household watched the finale together and I remember Enyo spitting at the screen when she realized another tribute from Twelve was going to win.
But this is not that same boy.
This is a hollowed out skin, something that life has already crawled it's way out of. This is a ghost story that came to life and decided to stay living for two years too long.
This will be easy, I think.
I stopped closing my eyes before the leap a long time ago, let my forehead rest against the brick to try to soothe the pounding rush there. I learnt that there's a difference between the conscious and the unconscious.
It's both that guide me now, a higher calling, a voice that sounds suspiciously like Enyo's and a feeling that tastes like ash.
My mind feels like metal on metal, rust on rust.
I wonder if that means I'm about to die.
Thorne is taller than I expected, but it's not the end of the world. There's a beat of a moth's wing and a shadow, a stillness that comes to the air and makes me think of being sixteen all over again. The world tilts sideways and I'm falling with it, pressing flowers to his neck from the gloom of an alleyway, pulling him backwards into the dark.
He doesn't lurch away, doesn't fight, and how fucking easy, my heart crows, how easy it is for the mighty to fall.
But there is a rising part of me, some foreign place in my mind I had tried to seal away, a splintering dam that Enyo had taken a wrecking ball to. I don't know how to live without pain, how to function without the feeling of a dying pulse against my fingertips. I don't know how not to fight.
So when Nico Thorne doesn't even flinch, it baits something inside of me. Instead of getting it over with and running back to Enyo like a good dog, I push at his shoulder, spin him around and shove him against the brick of the alley, press the knife harder against his throat.
He has seen so much red, knows the film that falls over dead eyes. I think I want him to show me first.
They should've killed you, Enyo told me a long time ago, and I think she was right.
