in one-wolf open sleighs — sled race (1)
Oct 31, 2020 14:22:44 GMT -5
Post by gunner, d9 ₊⊹ 👹 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ. on Oct 31, 2020 14:22:44 GMT -5
you are somebody's baby
some mother held you near
no, it's not important,
they're just pretty words, my dear
some mother held you near
no, it's not important,
they're just pretty words, my dear
Luke’s heart feels as though it has become the frozen lake they saw.
Everything in him is ice and snow, frost trellised over rib-bones and garlanded to his sinews like the bows they’d found near the lake. He feels colder inside than outside and that is a little worrying because, swearing by Beck Hailsham’s perfect face, it was bone-shatteringly cold. If the gamemakers wanted, Luke knows they could freeze all of them over with one careless flick of a switch. He imagines them all trapped in a giant snow-globe, and he imagines gazing at said snow-globe as hoarfrost blooms in flowery patterns across the glass before it covers everything.
But, that’s only something his head has made up.
Luke may not be well-versed in the games but it wouldn’t be a games if all tributes perishes all at once. A random, popsicled corpse would have to be selected and brought back to life for those sort of games to have a victor. Imagine freezing over and then waking up to news that you were the shiny new victor, joining the ranks of Beck. Although it isn’t funny, a chuckle escapes him.
The igloo is empty. Piper has gone wandering and, from the looks of it, she needed it. Anari ...
His heart twists.
“Fuck,” Luke mutters under his breath because he’s planned to skirt around that memory, act as if it didn’t happen, as if Anari’s chest wasn’t crushed under that boy’s weapon. But, Luke Hailsham has never been a master at hiding things. If anything, he was a master at baring everything. His jealousy at Beck? That was poured into the hug they shared. His feelings for Wade? They were a spill of ink on a white canvas. His resentment for Wade? That got him here in this arena. He wears his heart on his sleeve like it’s a shiny brooch and it isn’t good, he knows that, but he can’t stop. He can’t ever stop.
And now Anari’s gone, but his face is embossed in his thoughts and he can’t make it go away. It’s there, in his memories, glowing right next to all the other faces of the other friends he’d lost and he’d lost a lot. For a boy who should be akin to loss, the pain that it brings to his chest doesn’t hurt less. In fact, it hurts even more. All the old wounds he’s thought were healed now reopens themselves. Luke Hailsham is less boy and more bruise: a sprawling, galaxy-purple, bruise.
When Piper’s footsteps – he knows they’re hers because of how loud they are – patter close, Luke hastily wipes at his own cheeks and proves his own suspicious right: he’d been crying. The tears were ice-cold to touch. “Saw anything?” he asks, takes her silence as a 'no', and musters up the strength to smile at her when she curls up next to him. They don’t speak, not until Anari’s face etches itself in the stars and then disappear, leaving them under the dancing lights.
Then: “I am going to kill Shy Aubergine. I am going to kill them both.”
“You know, someone killed Shy once.” He knows why the boy looked familiar now. Shy Aubergine, one of the zombie tributes, Anatalia’s games. His blue eyes look at Piper. “But, hey, second time can be the charm.”
Obscenely dark joke, man.
“I’ll kill him a billion times if i have to.”
“Just a billion times? Feels like we could do more.” Obscenely darker. He laughs.
“Good.”
“Good.”
It is then that the warmth of the blanket truly sinks into Luke’s bones, somewhat nursing the aches there. He takes one last look at the ghost lights dancing overhead before his eyelids shut and sleep takes him.
No elaborate dreams come, except for one that shows the smile on Anari’s face as Luke tended to his broken leg.
—
It’s a terrible, terrible cold that wakes him up shivering and he opens his eyes to a world cloaked in white. The first thing Luke does wrap his arms around himself. Some point during the night, wind had ransacked their igloo, leaving them exposed for a period of time that could only be faintly measured from how cold he felt.
Everything was snowflakes. He finds Piper with a series of yells and lots of reaching around.
“Hold on!” He cries out because the snow is a howl in his ears. He tries not to dwell about the fact that it sounds hauntingly akin to a wolf’s bray as his arm loops around Piper and they begin trudging through the snow-globe world. It’s step by lumbered step, with Luke praying to any higher powers that they do not get lost, but with his luck? Fuck.
They march on, squinting against the white, Luke’s teeth clattering all the way. He isn’t sure if it’s the cold worming into his thoughts and making them all haywire now but he begins to see faces in the moving river of snow around them: Wade with his smile, Jane in a dance, Beck grinning, Bell jutting out her chin. Moments of Luke’s life, snow-globes of teenagehood and tragedy, ever present but forever gone.
Then, like a miracle, the wind halts, the curtains of snow seem to part, and he sees a dark shape in the distance. As the world clears again, Luke’s stomach sinks.
Tributes cluster together near the cornucopia, and he can see that they're standing on the crux of the hill it is on. Everywhere else looks faraway, as if the hill has suddenly grown overnight, which isn’t impossible. He is halfway into pondering about an exit route, a way to weave through all of these tributes unscathed, when he notices the sign—‘No violence. Or else.’—and frowns.
What is this? The answer to his question forms in his head the moment he looks down at the sled he’s brought. “It’s a race,” he whispers in Piper’s ear once the bells begin to chime, already leaping onto his sled. He sees his tribute partner but cannot even trade words because his eyes land on Shy and his ally and dark spots dancing in his eyes. Another look is exchanged with Piper as Luke grumbles, shaking his head, “not now. Too many fucking people. We’re getting out of here first.”
Eyeing the hill-slope, Luke’s heart rises to his throat but he swallows it down adamantly. They could do this, he and Piper.
Just for one day, Luke Hailsham makes it his mission to not lose anyone he cares about as he takes up the reins of the sled and streaks down. His “fuck-fuck-fuck!” gets lost in the wind.
there is no distraction
that can make me disappear
no, there's nothing that won't remind you
i will always be right here
lyrics: chelsea by phoebe bridgers
that can make me disappear
no, there's nothing that won't remind you
i will always be right here
lyrics: chelsea by phoebe bridgers
❆ luke goes dashing! ❆
0vG8jdId7h1-25
+1 movement
0vG8jdId7h1-25
+1 movement
[/a]
