first day back | aurora&flynn

a u r o r a .


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There was a new bruise on my chin, purples and blues flowered into a dirty looking brown. Mum had been worried and frustrated when I stumbled home last night, cradling a jaw that should have hurt, but didn't. "Aurora," she had said my name in a way that reminded me of my teacher, defeated and frustrated as they said my name for the fifth time within the last few hours. "What- why?"

She had pulled me onto the couch, moving into the kitchen to pull out a bag of frozen peas that had been dubbed mine from the amount of times I came home cradling new injuries. "Why do you keep doing this?" I could see the bags under her eyes, the thin worry lines that webbed from the corner of her eyes, her lips. I new each line had formed for me, that the bags were a results of her constant worry over her troublesome daughter.

"I just wanted to feel it." I whispered, taking the bag of peas from her hand and placing them against my jaw. "Even if it was just something small." Mum had then taken a seat beside me, wrapping an arm around my shoulders she tucked me into her side. I should try harder to not make her worry. But I knew I wouldn't because I would spend my whole life trying to feel it, trying to feel the pain barrier that alerted my body that I had pushed it to far. And I think she knew, as much as I did, that that would be my undoing.

"I just wished that you wouldn't." Then she had bid me goodnight, escaping to her room, unable to hear as I whispered "me too."

The bell rings loudly when Flynn Garner takes the empty seat beside me. Before the last few months I would not have known the boys name, just another boy wandering the halls of the school yard. But as now everyone in the district, in the whole of Panem knew who Flynn Garner was. The victor of the 87th hunger games.

The class continues to fill and I angle myself so that I faced him, my chin resting on the palm of my hand as I stared him down, more intensely than those around us. I had not expected to see the victor back at school. I don't think any of us had. I had had the impression that he may have thought that he was superior to the rest of us, after all he would have enough money that he would have no need for a job. No need to pay bills in a home paid for by the Capitol.

Finally he turns his gaze to mine, a snappy what thrown at me. My eyes narrow ever so slightly as I slip my chin from my palm resting my forearm against the desk, the other on the back of my chair. My lips are pulled back into a nasty grin as I look him from head to toe. His clothes looked new, his hair combed neatly. "Well, look who decided to show his face. Flynn Garner. Oh, wait, sorry am I to address you as Victor? Or would you prefer your highness? I'm not sure, you seemed to have forgotten the tiara that they gave you at the end of the games."

a u r o r a .


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The words are harsh considering the hell he had just been through. I don't think there was much kindest in returning home from an event such as that. After what he had seen, what he had to do, who he had to become, how heavy was the crown that he wore? I wondered if he had nightmares, if the faces of those who died for him and the ones he killed, haunted him.

I take a moment to examine his face more closely. Where an ear should have been was a nasty scar, I wondered if it had hurt when it had been taken from him. Did he scream? Cry? I would not have. I never did when it came to pain. I could be tortured, blades buried into my skin, dragged across bone, and I would not even whimper, not one peep. I might throw up, the site of my ear laying bloodied and shredded at my feet. It seemed that Flynn Garner had not accepted the offer of a brand new ear, courtesy of the Capitol.

”Just Flynn. I don’t see what the problem is with me being back at school…and the tiara is in a glass cabinet.” Spinning in his chair he turns to face me fully, brown eyes carefully examine my face, most likely taking in the bruises that littered it. I often forget that my face is covered in marks, but I watch as his eyes dance from one bruise to the next. ”And what do I call you? Purple and Blue?"

"Aurora."

"What happened to your face?”

I pause for a moment, pulling my hair back into a low pony tail. "Picked a fight with the wrong person." Last night had been tricky. Usually the fights I picked where with kids my age, or a year or too older. I had mistaken the boy from last night for someone else. I had thought he was Merlin from History, the buff butchers boy kid. But it had turned out to be one of the kids close to finishing school. He had not approved when I had called him an asshat before kicking him in the right ass cheek with as much power as I could. His eyes had watered and his friends had laughed.

Thats when he had turned on me, a fist as large as my head, swiftly catching my chin. I had seen stars as I stumbled, "you're not Merlin," I had hissed, frowning up at him with annoyance. He had then kicked me in the stomach before gathering his friends and running off into the night.

"What happened to your face, Just Flynn?" I ask, nodding towards his ear- or lack of ear to be more accurate.

a u r o r a .


*   *   *

My own words are shot back at me, and my eyes travel from the scar bak to his eyes. I had a few scares of my own, the palm of my right hand held a reminder of the time mum had caught me, burning flame pressed against my flesh. Unconsciously the fingers of my right hand brush over the uneven flesh. Had Mum not stopped me the scar might have been a lot worse. Other small scars littered my arms, a particular nasty one disfigured the flesh of my knee from when I had been running around the district and tripped over a rock, my knee smashing into an exposed, pointed brick. They told me I had been lucky not to shatter the patella.

”You don’t seem the type to be getting into fights, you don’t seem strong enough…” My grin drops immediately, my arms crossing defensively across my chest. What the hell was that supposed to mean? Not strong enough. I wanted to punch in in the nose, my fists balling into fight fists under my armpits. If we had of been out in the yard, I might have just shoved him. Show him just how strong I was.

"Whats that supposed to mean," I challenge, pouting my lips. "I bet I could kick your butt." Could I though? Flynn had just returned home from the hunger games, he had killed kids- most of them a lot older and bigger and stronger than me. He didn't look like much, a lot like myself I guess, but he had proven to the district, to the whole of Panem, that he was anything but weak.

But I don't back down, my brows knitting together, my eyes narrowing. Mum always told me that I was a stubborn girl. Apparently I was a lot like my dad in that way. "You know that kid in English? That big one who was in a the year above us? Yeah, I kicked him right in the balls last night." I don't mention that he was the reason behind the large bruise on my chin, or why I had woke up with the skin on my stomach a deep blue-ish purple.

I pause, my shoulders relaxing ever so slightly as my head tilts to the side slightly in question, "I mean you don't look like someone who would be a victor, and yet you sit there with your tiara tucked away into a glass cabinet and a missing ear."