painless, a needle in a doll / pietro+florentine

[clover ❁]

florentine. 

i am feeling pretty good, wrapped up in a dress i 'borrowed' from last night's entertainment's sister. i won't be returning it. i hope i never see either of their stupid, coddled faces again. i like the dress, though. it swaddles me, like i am a restless infant, and, by significantly restraining my movement, it can make me calm. i think it's working. it could be that, or the joint i am halfway through. 

i made sure to have breakfast before i left. there is not much point in sleeping with rich fools if you do not take advantage of the pancakes. sometimes its a toss up - generally, you have to dawdle around, and make small-talk with their unsufferable, smothering mothers, but a part of me gets a kick out of that, too, if i'm in the right mood. mostly, they adore me, if they can get the image of me sucking on their sons--

something interrupts my train of thought. on the other side of the river, there is a figure that i think i recognise. it's difficult to be sure, because i haven't seen pietro in a long, long time. i stop dead and stare; this, i realise, is not particularly cool, or chill, but i suspect that he can see through that shit anyway, so sometimes i don't bother with it. i don't think i could stop myself if i wanted to.

there is a surge of excitement in my throat; he is safe. he is alive. i was starting to think he was rotting in a ditch somewhere. it wouldn't be the first time of the kids ended up that way, and nothing about pietro made me confident he wouldn't join them. but it really, really is him. he looks about the same as always.

in the bright light of my realisation, the relief is replaced, rapidly, with anger. if, indeed, he is alive and well - then where the hell has he been? 

i shout across the water before i can stop myself. "hey!" i wave my hands to ensure that i have caught his attention. the stolen jewellery on my wrist jangles as i do. he's lucky we are separated by a narrow body of water; i'd punch in his smug little face if he was closer.

"where the fuck have you been?" 

i can't think of any reasonable explanations. 

[✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ]

k i - t a e .

"took a little journey
to the unknown and
I've come back changed,
i can feel it in my bones."

I got home from the hospital two weeks ago. The doctor said it was time, that she'd done all she could for my body and my brain would fill in the blanks later when it was ready to. I smiled, said thanks, all polite like I was raised to be. I don't tell her that when it's quiet in my room at night, it feels like I can hear ticking sounds from my stomach, I don't think she'd have let me go if I did.

There's an accusation stuck in the back of my throat though, a secret that my body knows even if my mind doesn't remember, you did this to me.

My sister was waiting at the train station for me. She was taller than I remember but, "You shrunk," she'd said, tone gruff. I didn't know it was possible to do that. I'm pretty sure I'm meant to still be growing.

At first I feel so out of place that it hurts. Then one morning I wake up and I'm just in my bedroom, the alarm making bird sounds at six in the morning to tell me that it's time for my first training block. Nostalgia battles with this deeply ingrained knowledge that it's the same sound I hear every day.

And I feel unbalanced, like I've been on the ocean too long and I haven't gotten my land legs back yet.

I go for walks in the afternoon to get the lay of the land back. My house sits hazy in my mind, tall walls built all around the property because one of my great uncles didn't want anyone copying our training techniques. The neighbours always thought it was to keep everyone out, but really, they kept me in, I wasn't allowed to leave them until my first reaping.

Sometimes I still get a little flighty if I haven't been able to go out in a while.

The back of my neck prickles.

"Hey!"

I look up on reflex, but I don't know the girl standing across the canal from me. She's waving her arms over her head in my direction though. I swivel on one heel, checking over my shoulder for the person that she must be actually trying to talk to but there's no one there.

"Where the fuck have you been?"

I turn back to look at her. She looks like she kind of wants to kill me, which would be scarier if I wasn't so used to being looked at like that.

"Me?" I shout back after a moment, hooking a thumb at my chest. The question's kind of stupid. There really is no one else here, but I have to buy myself some time. I feel like I should know her, long hair like moonlight, decorated like a Christmas tree.

"Hospital!" I yell.

Then I point at her and I yell brightly, "Where the fuck have you been?" because I am very polite.

[clover ❁]

florentine. 

now that i think about it, i do think i overheard somebody mention his name. it was a week or so ago - we were in the tunnels, talking shit and musing on possible acts of covert rebellion. i overheard it. i'm usually listening to conversations that aren't much of my business, and this was no exception. it was some street rat kid, all bravado and tobacco and misplaced masculinity. i didn't believe him for a second, thought he was just making up fanciful stories to get attention. i certainly wasn't going to give him mine, absolutely wasn't going to grace him with the time of day required to press him for details. and yet -

pietro stands on the far bank of the river, real as anything. 

"me?" he says, like i might be talking to somebody behind him. there is nobody there. "hospital!" he shouts, as though that single word does much of anything to explain what has happened. the anger in my stomach twists and turns but does not fizzle out, not yet. there are plenty of reasons for hospitalisation for which rage is justified. i shelve mine, ready to clasp onto it if i need it. 

"where the fuck have you been?" he responds. i do not appreciate his humour, not today. 

since he has been gone, i haven't been far. just up and down and back and forth through the same city, along the same rivers and canals. i have slept beneath the same trees and boatsheds, or in the beds of a good handful of strangers, each of which was different, but each of which was all the same to me. i have attended eight parties, tried on four different names, and told countless lies. 

between the last time i saw pietro and today, i have been many different people, but unfortunately i am still the same old florentine he left behind, and i have nothing to show for it. luckily, i doubt he would have expected anything more from me. 

i think of the day at the academy with era, the night on the beach with adam. i think of waking up on the cold sand, heaving up sour liquor stolen from unconscious revellers. i shudder at the memory. 

"i've been looking for you!" i shout accusingly, although it is not entirely true. it is not quite a lie, either - sometimes i thought i saw him in the shadows beneath a bridge, or in a crowd of unfamiliar faces, and turned my head back to see.

when my mother was alive, she seemed to think that manners were an important factor in getting what you want. taking her advice for a change, i smooth my face out into a mask of concern (surely appropriate here) and offer something else to the boy on the far side of the water: "what the fuck happened?" 

and, then, gathering every ounce of empathy i possess, "are you okay?" 

i slip off both my shoes and abandon them on the shore, hitch up my dress and wade into the water until it reaches my knees. i am closer now; we will not need to shout to be heard.