i wish to know the fatal flaw / romily & mackenzie {92nd}

[gamemaker 🍒 maryn hale]

^{/ that makes you long to be magnificently cursed /}

❃  romily sorokin   ❃
senior district seven escort

It's your second reaping, your second trip back to the home you fled from, your second time calling out one death sentence after the other — a series of unfortunate events always leading to this same moment. The train is closing in on the Capitol / on the grand stage where two more children will be asked to perform their dying moments for an adoring audience. Your skin crawls like you're covered in fire ants, in actual flames, a shackle on your heart and your spirit where they can't subdue your wrists. At all times, you will always be the woman caught between two different worlds, relinquishing all rights to belong in either.

To both parties, you are the enemy.

On one side you are the escort who damns the innocent, and on the other you are the District Seven rat who dared to sneak her way into high society. You perform your duties to the best of your abilities because you have always given every part of yourself to any challenge in your way / because this is your punishment, the simple reminder that you will always be lesser than your peers. So, yes, only hours away from arriving to the home you so desperately dreamed of having, you feel an anxiety attack set in.

It hits just as suddenly as the last one, an all-consuming, bravado-breaking force that consumes you when all the lights have dimmed and everyone else should be sleeping. You're wearing an oversized flannel shirt, brown waves falling loosely over your shoulders, chest rising up and down in quiet panic, when you open the sliding door and step out into the fresh air. The first thing you see are the trees, the glow of the moon hanging overhead, and then you see the tendrils of smoke wafting into your view and nearly bolt for the fire extinguisher.

But it's just Mackenzie Pryce, victor of the Seventy-Ninth, sitting in his lonesome with a joint clutched between his fingers. In all your experiences with him, you have always strived to be professional. Every bit the guiding figure that someone in your role is expected to be. Then you glance down at yourself, at the night unfolding around the both of you and the secrets it vows to keep. He doesn't look like the brooding heartthrob all the magazines make him out to be. You could almost mistake yourself for two normal people crossing paths on a train.

"Mind if I join you?" They'd fire you if they found out / but what does a witch already tied to the stake have to lose? You chance fate and offer a smile.

[admin dars]

(  macknzie pryce   )

Mackenzie Pryce's biggest secret is that he doesn't know what to do.

He knows what sometimes works, sure, same as the rest of them: attending the banquets, schmoozing the officials, marketing the storylines. It's all a formality, that's the truth, and the people will always get what they want. Unless. Right? That's what his real job is every year: the unless. Expanding upon it, lengthening it, nurturing it, doing everything humanly possible to preserve it.

Mackenzie was a poverty-ridden bastard from a middle district juggling a career enemy-turned-ally on one hand and a child old who trusted him in the other when he was in the games. Winning wasn't ever something that was meant for someone like him. Unless he did something crazy- performed some kind of miracle. He will never forget the moments after he buried his bade to its hilt in Neela's chest, how he'd felt her heart's muscles struggling to contract around the blade he pierced into it, failing. He remembers the moment of realizing he'd have to claim Dove's life to preserve his own. He remembers the dread when his feet wouldn't carry him away from Belladonna after. And he remembers the moment when he could have died like all those lives he claimed, and like the five before him who Akira successfully killed. He remembers when he killed Akira instead.

He knew how to survive, because it was always senseless violence and he always happened to be the bigger guy. But his strategy outside of that? The games that must be played between the lines? He hasn't figured them out. And its been over a decade now, with hopeful kid after hopeful kid coming in and thinking they'll be the next him, and damn it if he wants them to be right every time. Damn him for knowing how evil that is and wanting it anyway, only for them to die every single time.

He waits for the lights to switch off in the dining cars and then makes his way back, back, all the way to the caboose of the train, takes a seat on a couch smothered in green pillows, pulls out a joint, and begins smoking with only the passing trees to keep him company for quite some time, until he hears the door to the car sliding open. He must admit, he's shocked to find Romily of all people walking through. She's never as strict about deadlines and sleep schedules and call times as Jacquelyn, but part of him still half-expects her to scold him for being up.

Instead, she asks to partake. Color him surprised.

"Course."

He passes it to her without restraint, a curious eyebrow quirked and waiting to see if she'll know what to do.

"I've just been... I dunno, sulking out here for a while." Some conversation happening outside of his head was a welcome offer he'd gladly accept.

"How about you? Couldn't sleep?"

[gamemaker 🍒 maryn hale]

^{/ that makes you long to be magnificently cursed /}

❃  romily sorokin   ❃
senior district seven escort

"Course."

His lack of hesitation to accept her company surprises her, half-expecting him to deny her request and ask to keep this brief moment of peace to himself. No cameras, no pressing questions, only the trees rushing by and their quiet, fleeting familiarity. The thing is, even if he had chosen to be cold, she wouldn't blame him. She knows the way she feels after watching children murder each other in the Games year in and year out — and if fate were crueler to her, and she had been one of those unlucky few to live through the nightmare and deal with the consequences, she thinks that maybe she'd just want to disappear forever.

Mackenzie Pryce sits tangibly in front of her, no more a being of mythos than simply a man extending his hand to her, two fingers gently grasping a joint. She offers a small smile as she takes it from him, and for the quick flash of a memory, she's back in a makeshift campground sitting around a massive bonfire. Murphy's talking her through all the steps to handle her weed, and Amber keeps her eyes the forest's edge, speaking a wordless language she knows now she'll never get the chance to learn. The woods had never felt as alive as they did after that first hit.

She pulls the smoke into her mouth, and then she inhales deeply, heat traveling into her chest. It always surprises her to learn where her footsteps then have lead her to now. This isn't the dream she had been manifesting in her youth, but it's the closest thing to it that she'll ever be allowed to pursue. Even if it means being a grim reaper of sorts, she would take wearing this skin over the girl who so restlessly wanted to escape the four walls that contained her. The victor sitting across from her speaks earnestly, and she exhales to make room for the laugh that escapes. "How about you? Couldn't sleep?"

"I was sulking inside, actually. That tends to be my routine when I've run out of busywork for the day." She leans forward after taking a quick, second puff, returning the joint to his hand. As if it were an exchange, she grabs one of the green throw pillows to clutch close to her chest. She arches her neck backwards, breathing out and watching the tendrils reach for the caboose ceiling, and then disperse. "What flavor is that? It's smooth." Talking to him feels natural, and as he smokes, she finds herself easing into the moment.

"If you ask me, I'm convinced sleep is a social construct. It never comes easy."