Clock Ticks Life Away // [VT/11/Open]

[Gamemaker Lauren Kinkade]

for what it's worth, I have a slow disease that sucked me dry... I always aim to please
but I nearly died

It was the end, the last stop of the victory tour. In little more than a day he'd be back in Ten, but not home. Mace had thought about that through the night, instead of taking the morphling left at his bed side and slipping away. There were things that needed sorting, and he was running out of time - always running out of time. He had passed the night fairly well though, without needing more than a few cups of coffee. The caffeine agitated his tremors, but his styling team wouldn't let him on stage without something to soothe them, anyhow. He just hoped he wouldn't face plant onto the stage.

That would not do Denver justice.

He needed to start thinking less about the dead. That much was perfectly clear. He could not live focused on the part of him knelt in the snow, in vigil to the atrocities committed. Mace wasn't ready to deny that part of himself, but he couldn't be so indulgent either, not when he got back to Ten. He was tired of the guilt, and more, he had a feeling the animals wouldn't respond to him in such a distracted state. Not that he planned to return to his cows. No. It was time for someone else to herd them now, whomever had taken over in his absence. Marcelline, perhaps. He might even buy her a horse to make it worth her time.

But he would not live in the northern community home. He had a house now, and finally he began to wonder about it, to imagine the size and the land and the ease with which he could carry those twenty-three souls. He just had two more to bear and then he would be done.

His styling team found him in the dining car, chugging one last mug of the delicious black, bitter stuff. He would miss it, but maybe he could afford to buy the grains. He thought about coffee - and only coffee - while his styling team tore him apart, twisted his flesh until he looked like the cowboy Victor Panem had come to expect. And when it was just a few minutes to show time, the lead stylist said not at word at all as she slid the needle into his sore vein. Mace clamped his right hand down over the soft interior of his elbow, found his place in the lineup, and relaxed. The cloying sensation moved from his heart outward until he found himself seated on the stage, staring numbly at the Mayor as he spoke with eloquence and gusto about the two tributes from Eleven.

Mace had only known one, but he had been his brother. He craned his neck, fixing his posture, to see the families assembled. He'd never even once wondered about Denver's history - or Aesop's or Sawyer's for that matter. And now that he had a piece of Alexander's, he wanted more. Phoebe. Her name was like a bell, something distant that called to him. Now he knew, for certain, that there was more to the others, just as there was more to him than the soulbearer, the Victor from Ten. He'd have his chance, after the pomp and public part of the tour was over.

Mace shifted in his seat restlessly, ready, oh so ready, to meet the Samuels, to know Denver, to go home to a place he'd never been. Finally he seemed to be on the same schedule as time, and he couldn't wait for the next thing to happen.

banner credit: jurate
lyrics:placebo for what it's worth

[Deleted]

Main: 95CFB7
Speech: F04155
Thought: F2F26F
Other: FFF7BD

You shudder in your place on the platform, isolated and so, so alone, the only person to represent a life that should never have been lost in the face of what seems like a huge amount of people that sit a few yards away in support of Elise.You and Denver had been the only family that each other had left, and now, you realize, it's just you. You, the lone survivor of fires and Games and every injustice the world has to offer, and something deep-seated and bitter in the center of your chest screams unfairness because you were never the strong one, you have no right to be sitting in this chair with a beating heart and round orbs of slate-blue that take in too many wrong things to fathom. If anyone in the collective of departed souls that writhe in your shadow deserves to breathe and laugh and live again, it would be Denver. Denver, who could light up a room with his smile, who carried you all the way home when you fell out of a tree in the orchards and broke your leg, who could capture feelings in a photo and make them tangible in a way that no one had ever seen. For the umpteenth time you find yourself wishing that you could forget again, go back to the blank slate with no past and a limitless future that you were before, but the steady thrumming of grief in every fiber of your being and the eyes you can feel crawling on your skin from all around keep you tethered to a world you no longer wish to be a part of.

A world that is too big for you to face alone.

Mace Emberstatt isn't as formidable in real life as he had been on the screen with a weapon in his hand - a weapon that he turned against his "brothers" and yours in a drugged haze, dancer, you must never forget that. He bears the blame of blood on his hands even if he didn't strike the killing blow - somehow more docile than you would have expected as the entire district goes through the motions it always had, commending the lost souls to the glory of Panem and applauding the triumphant winner of a game too deadly to be defined as entertainment.

You make no motion to bring your hands together, eyes just as flat and dead as his are when your gazes lock across the crowd.

The ceremony drags on agonizingly, a million rehearsed words that resonate in the hollow cavern of your chest and condolences from the crowd that mean less than nothing. There's only one person you want an apology from, and even on the slim chance that you get it you're more than aware that it won't make everything okay. Nothing is okay and it never will be again, not as long as the person who was full of more life than anyone you've ever known lies cold in the ground, your other half cruelly and eternally severed from your side to leave you as a broken, lost thing incapable of functioning normally.

There was a time when you could smile. When you could laugh and sing and dance like the world was ending. When it didn't feel like you were a hollow echo of yourself moving through the crowd with none of the inherent grace that seems to have left you in the wake of a numbing grief so heavy that there is no room in your body for anything else. There was a time when you were a real girl, but now you can only see yourself as a shell of who you used to be, a puppet with cut strings driven forward only by a mission that needs to see an end. And as you finally make your way over to the tall form with broad shoulders and Capitol-enhanced beauty, you can't help but wonder what will become of you after the storm has passed and you're left with nothing to hold on to. "Hi."

The voice that leaves you is nowhere close to your own, a flat, lifeless monotone that falls over your lips with no hint that you can feel anything besides a heavy weariness that never seems to leave and a tightly-caged anger at the injustice of the world that you can never unleash for fear it will consume the rest of you. Something pulls at your cut strings and extends your puppet hand in his direction, eyes never leaving his as the back of your mind registers how the blankness in your gazes is so similar even through the clashing shades of ice and cornflower blue. It's not comforting, exactly, but more reassuring than nothing as you begin to wonder if maybe you aren't alone in feeling so empty. "I'm Lydia. Denver's twin sister."

Or at least I used to be. I don't know who I am anymore.

[Gamemaker Lauren Kinkade]

for what it's worth, I have a slow disease that sucked me dry... I always aim to please
but I nearly died

He was almost bouncing by the time the ceremonial part drew to a close. There was something riveting about the coffee, something that woke him up, shook him loose. He wanted more, but he couldn't find a polite way to ask to go back to the train, and he seriously doubted Eleven had access to the stuff, if Ten did not. But he wanted another taste of bitter, another hit of adrenaline before meeting the families. It wasn't meant to be. He stood, jittery, outstretched hands guiding him and there, some grabbing his own palm to shake it, lifeless though it was.

Until one girl approached. He could only think one thing the entire time she spoke - yes, yes you are Denver's twin. Because there was no mistake the eyes, the shape and color of them, the softness around the edges. She was not the same, but she was similar. A paregmenon. Two things with the same base but a different meaning, and she was clearly a different person altogether.

But then, grief can change a person, warp them beyond recognition. He tried not to hold it against her that she was not as charismatic or charming as Denver, and utterly failed in that pursuit. All he could see what she wasn't. She did not engage him, did not inspire him to start an alliance. But then, he had been looking for brothers, and in the end had followed a sister. Maybe he should have just accepted that part of himself in the first place, and saved them all some trouble.

Maybe then Denver would be standing here with her, with Lydia, and not him.

It all left him at an impasse. It seemed almost rude to agree that she was indeed his twin - she knew that, he knew that, probably all of Panem knew that. But what to say? Mace tucked his hands behind his back, to hide the trembles, which the caffeine had irritated, and also because she had not offered a hand to him. Who could blame her? He brought her no comfort, no wise words, but he realized he did have something.

With a flick of his wrist he had it in his hand. A bit of leather, just a piece of Denver's necklace, that he kept tied around his belt. It was an old knot he'd used, one for ranching that kept the cows close but could be released if they decided to trample. He looked down at it, looked at Lydia, and then pinched it, dangled it in front of her. "I don't know who else to give this to, Lydia. I think you'd know better than I would..." and that felt pitiful, to say so little, because he had been Denver's ally, because he was sorry the boy had died.

Mace folded his lips, pressed them together and then looked to his side. He might have speaking to his other neighbor, but he just couldn't look into Lydia's eyes any longer. "Denver always reminded me of my own brother. I won't forget."

banner credit: jurate
lyrics:placebo for what it's worth