intermission || katelyn & beck training center
Jun 2, 2020 15:51:54 GMT -5
Post by ᴥ on Jun 2, 2020 15:51:54 GMT -5
b e c k .
"when the lights come down,
got an empty crown"
Once upon a time, he'd found the Capitol devastatingly beautiful. Long before his first story ended and he was just a boy not unlike a sparrow, proud to have slipped from between the bars of his cage. He'd looked upon this landscape of incomprehensible wealth and thought it a garden of eden. He thought he'd found freedom.
It was safe to say he'd learned his lesson since then. All that's left of his childish delusion is a synthetic floral scent seems to cling to the atmosphere, stinging his sinuses and managing to worsen the headache that has been building right behind his eyes since arrival. Beck Hailsham had once again found himself at the heart of glitz and gore and very much wanted to go home.
The Training Center didn't look any different this side of the Games and he feels almost foolish for thinking it might. The tribute's faces still look like his, all soft edges and stolen youth.
He'd spent the ride over doing what he does best: puffing out his chest and spitting lies so certain he almost believes them. (Me and Anatalia are careers, yeah? At the very least you're starting with a leg up on the lower districts!) His smile had been bright, meant to mask the guilt that came with just how relieved he was to be sitting shoulder to shoulder with strangers. His old friends were safe, though he didn't know if they still bore the weight of the Hailsham name. Arie Krigel was safe, he wouldn't have to come home to Leon stinking of his daughter's flesh and blood.
It's an exhausting act, one he's struggling to keep up while lagging behind Anatalia and offering an occasional quip to lighten the mood. Strangers or not, he still wants to bring them home and that fucking sucks. Every time he catches a stay gaze it breaks him down a little more. It's a miracle he's managed to keep his smile in place and it's sickening just how fast it fades after they've turned away.
Dominic Merluccius, it's hard not to see himself mirrored in the boy. A different face, a different name but a similar resignation to the inevitable. Perdita Leto, who had saved Arie. There's something unsettling about her, he's worried about what might have inspired this particular act of heroism. It takes guts to volunteer over a household name or merely a blatant disregard for your own well-being.
He'd saved a boy too, hadn't he? Beck Hailsham certainly wasn't a saint, so just what did that make her?
As hard as he tries to forget their names he finds them etched in the empty space between his ears. Even when the tributes, his tributes, are out of sight they infect him like an illness that burns bone deep. Every idle thought becomes filled with Dominic and Perdita.
Should he be doing more?
Are twenty-five names much heavier than twenty-three?
A few days have passed since training began in earnest and Beck finds himself in the training rooms more often than not, offering to hold bags of sand as tributes try to cram a lifetime into their last moments. Watching them makes him sick to his stomach, a rolling unease that's become almost unbearable. That's why he does it. He doesn't want to become complacent, let his fear turn him into another one of the pawns he's seen strewn about this chess board.
Beck's going to save Perdita and Dominic. One of them has to come home.
(but you don't really believe that, do you?)
He feels his skin go cold and clammy, vertigo replacing the blood rushing in his ears as he staggers back under the weight of a well-placed kick. "Take over, will you?" He shoves a cloth-lined target into a trainer's hand, ignoring the confused protest that follows as he claps a hand over his mouth and quickly storms out of the room.
(are you ready for two more funerals, Beck Hailsham?)
He thought he was a good liar.
Now he knows he was wrong.
