death of a dream [Cass:vt]
Nov 14, 2016 23:39:10 GMT -5
Post by matt colekay d9a [arx] on Nov 14, 2016 23:39:10 GMT -5
JUSTICE FRAY
"oh we grow old but
never learn to say goodbye."
She was always like a queen in my eyes. Strong, poised, generous, beautiful. She was an idol, the person that everyone in District 1 wanted to become. She was distant of course—like a god is to her people—but so ever-present in my daily routine that it took forcible beatings for me to ever see her as anything less than perfect. I think somewhere deep down she has always been perfect in my mind. Of course that's impossible. No one is perfect. We all have our flaws. But she--
She lets go of me and I know I shouldn't be the one with an aching feeling in my chest and a weakness in knees, but it's there. Watching her struggle for words, seeing the tears spring to her eyes, see her fall to her knees in front of her late husband's grave—
Shit.
I take a step forward, hand extended, reaching for her as if I actually have the tools to fix this. I stop, staring at the back of her head in the hopes that I'll find an answer there. But nothing comes. Only the smallest of sobs that rack her body tell me that she's breathing. I'm frozen, suspended like a puppet above her—hopeless.
I was eight when she became a victor. I was still just a boy. Innocent and starry-eyed with dreams bigger than some stupid crown of death. Since I was born to the day Peridot Myler came home, Topaz Ross was all I knew.
("You'll be like her someday. We'll make you into someone like her.")
I was young. I never wanted to be like Topaz Ross. But my family told me that's what I wanted. So I stood in line to shake her hand and waited patiently for her interviews to be broadcast and I said everything I knew my parents wanted me to say. Everything that I thought would get them to say--
("We love you, Justice.")
It never worked that way. Even now that I've got the crown and the title they always wanted, it's not like that. But I tried for years to impress them. I did everything they asked, made an effort to become the perfect Career they so deeply wanted to mold me and my siblings into, I literally won the fucking Hunger Games, and not once have they been proud.
Maybe that was the appeal of Opal. Even then, even at just eight years old I knew that I was exactly like her. The way her family stood next to her, looked at her. The way she held herself, the way she spoke. I could feel it. I was just a little boy, but I knew. And I knew my parents hated it, but for the very first time in my entire life I didn't play pretend for them.
I'd take the long way home from school past Victor's Village in the hopes that I might see her. I'd watch every interview and stand in awe whenever she spoke. I even started my own little secret garden in the back of our house in the hopes that pennies would grow into copper leaf roses that I could give to her.
She was an idea. A dream. But just like Scout Krigel, that idea—that perfect dream—died. My parents beat that out of me as soon as they could. Opal Shore wasn't a hero, and she isn't the victor they wanted me to look like or become. By the time she had changed her name to Earnest I'd been shoved into the mold so neatly that I didn't acknowledge her existence again until I spoke to her on the train.
But looking at her now-- maybe dreams don't ever really die. Maybe they just change. Maybe they just soar ahead, waiting patiently for us to catch up.
She turns to look at me, looping her arm through mine. And despite the slight tinge of red in her eyes and her cheeks, she still manages to look--
“Are you ready to go?”
She's still all beauty, grace, and love. I feel it in the way she grips my arm, in teh way she holds her gaze steadily to mine, in the way her eyes are filled with something so close to pure hope that I choke on my own words.
The corner of my mouth twitches upwards with the smallest of smiles—the closest my pride will let me get to an apology. I nod, slide my hand over her's where it sits on my arm. And I let her take the first steps away from Potato's grave.
And I know I should leave it there, let the silence just finish out this journey. But the words sort of fumble off my lips without warning, my mind and thoughts whirling around at a million miles an hour.
"What's it like?" I say, staring into the horizon, running my thumb unconciously over her fingers.
"Being in love? Falling in--"
And the words get stuck because I can't believe I don't know the answer for myself. It's all I've ever really wanted and yet I don't know the answer. Will I know? Will it hit me like a bus or is it so slow that I won't know until the dream is running away from me again? What's it feel like? Does it have a smell, a taste? Is there a color that perfectly encapsulates it? What is it?
"Falling--"
Why do they call it, 'falling' in love? Is it all by accident? Is it clumsy and uncoordinated? Does it pull you in like gravity? Does it hurt? Or is the point to fall in the hopes that someone will be there to catch you?
"What's it like?"