Summer's End [Vasco/Celeste]
Feb 11, 2022 1:31:08 GMT -5
Post by marguerite harvard d2a (zori) on Feb 11, 2022 1:31:08 GMT -5
v a s c o
It's a sad song
We keep singing even so
It's an old song
It's an old tale from way back when
And we're gonna sing it again and again
Crossing the hall is wading across the river’s ice at wintertime. I’m numb by the time I reach the opposing door, hand heavy on the brass knob.
Where the rest had focused on Kareem and his sentencing, I’d trained my eyes on Celeste. She’d had the same opportunity to pick someone to take her place, and she’d been bold enough to choose herself. It should have cheered me, standing at the edge of her door. Except she’s still got a train waiting to take her to the capitol, with all the terror of the coming weeks to weigh her down.
Why had she done it?
Was that even fair to ask her now, would it matter to know? She needed someone to help her get her affairs in order, not to be hounded about the truth. That could live and die in the dirt of eleven. Let the rest of us speculate on what grew out of the earth from what remained.
And still I couldn’t help but hear my heart pounding like a snare to know what waited behind this door. Kareem had been condemned to his fate and at the mercy of his past. But Celeste was free to make her own path, had already determined that eleven could not hold her. What had turned her away from the comfort of home to take a risk that might return her in a pine box?
I pulled the door closed behind me, soft enough that the click of the lock barely rang out across the room. I cleared my throat to break the silence, though I hardly broke more than a whisper. Maybe it was always harder to see the young women in that I couldn’t help but think of Raquel, Sofia, or Yani.
“Miss Brere,” I started with my hands clasped in front of me, “I’m Mayor Izar. Is it all right if I come and talk with you for a little while? I wanted to check in on you.”