the raven; lalia [csw]

[phunke!]

ooc; character swap week!

the streets are all
v i o l e n t
with murderous excitement
the hunter and the prey are dancing
e v e r y d a y

Once, Napolean Bloom had been asked if he ever turned his swag off. Sure, sure, young Calliope was probably being sarcastic. Not that her ever-tooting sarcasm train could ever derail his breathtaking sincerity.

"Swag," the nearly-not-teenage boy had replied, "don't have an off switch."

But Napolean Bloom was beginning to thing he'd been wrong. In fact, he was beginning to know he'd been wrong; swag had, in fact, several off switches. One: the underside of his defiant jaw, now throbbing and the cause of blood lazily leaving the corner of his mouth from a bitten tongue. Two: his stomach, his stomach; Napolean groaned and rocked onto his side with one hand on the stomach, as if that would ease the pain. Three: the fingers on his left hand (potentially broken). Four: his right eye, held shut tight to keep the pain fairies out (not, Poe later inferred, a terribly effective strategy). Five: his ribcage - definitely, definitely an off switch. And six: his nose. The only one of the bunch that was, with absolute certainty, broken.
He couldn't stand it, Napolean absolutely couldn't. His ever-grinning visage had been wrecked, the smile punched right out. Switches are meant to be delicately flicked off, not punched through and kicked and stomped on like a piece of garbage. He knew why they'd done it, and some part of him couldn't blame them, but most other parts of him - namely, his nose, ribcage, et cetera, weren't having much difficulty.

"...Better run, Napolean Bloom!"
That was what he remembered so that was what he preserved, along with a few other snippets of the minutes before this happened including: the feel of his feet never failing to fly him down the streets and alleyways he knew too well; the musical ebb and flow of people's voices; a man whom he remembered nothing about except that he'd had an awful lot of ugly, messy stubble that sort of failed to climax at a half-assed goatee.
Poe's thoughts were as jumbled as his memories; he kept thinking about half-assed goatees and his sick pimpin' 'stache and Calliope's voice. "Better run," he attempted to mutter to himself (it ended up sounding more like "ettuh nnnn") before clenching his jaws tight to ease the pain in his stomach which made his jaws hurt and ow ow ow ow ow this was so far below the threshold of okay things.

Napolean had it figured out. Well, okay, he had approximately one and a half things figured out. One, that his body'd essentially been stashed like a plastic bag full of contraband pot in the back of an alley. A half, that he should just wait there until someone found him. This was only half of a thing because it was basically a terrible plan (not that he had any choice to the contrary) seeing as he was liable to be found by Peacekeepers who'd been looking for an excuse to get at his hide for must've been years now. But half-things didn't concern Napolean Bloom too terribly right now; he'd even made peace with the memory of that dumb goatee.
"Better run," he mumbled again. Somewhere, clocks ticked and bells chimed and the space-time continuum chugged along. Now there was something without an off switch.

that waltzing jibberish
where intake becomes
o u t l a n d i s h
i'm in a bad way
every passing day

[L△LIA]

( C A L L I O P E L O R N E B L O O M )





Will you tell yourself
"You all must be what you'll be"
Who's to say who is who
And what is what
If you simply don't agree

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You remember learning about the five stages of grief and because your mind belonged to science in those days, you nodded along and wrote them down for future reference. For tests, not real life, you told yourself. By that time you were certain you had already experienced all of the tragedy that the world had plotted out for you. Your mother was dead and you had cried and screamed and bargained and moped your way into acceptance. Maybe it was too easy for you to find your footing in the world after that — although it never felt anything like easy in those days.

Napoleon and Aesop were there to tuck you in at night, smiling with a reassuring insistence that the corners of your own mouth couldn't deny. Deep down you knew it was all for your sake, but you told yourself it was still genuine, that their grins didn't really revolve around you. Perhaps you were half right on both fronts; one brother's smile was always inspired by you and the other's — Well, Napoleon could only ever spare so much of himself for another person, even his family. That has never been more clear to you than over the course of the past year, as you suddenly shoved all those textbooks and notes away, hating the way you were being made into the subject instead of a scientific spectator.

Aesop's funeral was nothing like your mother's. There was no crowd of friends and neighbors offering sympathy or condolences; it was just you, Napoleon, and your father. (As hateful as the thought was, you were actually surprised that Poe came. You were convinced the whole affair would be a little too real for his morphling dependent mind.) There was no silk-lined casket to guard his body within his grave, just the nondescript wooden box the Capitol sent him home in. No one could bear to open it. The three of you had already seen, along with the rest of Panem, how still and bloody and the opposite of Aesop his body had become. Despite the nearly overwhelming urge to pry those boards apart and wrap your arms around your brother for the last time, you knew there was nothing in that box for you anymore. It was as good as empty and for the longest time, so were you.

You told yourself it hadn't really happened. There was no body in that box, no, the television had lied about his death. However, there was no escaping the truth and the denial left you much more quickly than it had after your mother's passing, replaced with an anger so intense you sometimes wonder how you used to think bad grades or broken promises were upsetting. The intensity of the emotion alone was enough to make you question everything you had ever been taught about grief. This was more than a voice in the back of your head griping about how unfair Aesop's death was. Instead, this was a voice that howled out with hatred for everything: the brother that refused to volunteer to save him, the District that was relieved to see him gone, the Capitol that sentenced him to death, his fellow tributes who — oh, there is no shortage of reasons for you to hate the ones who literally stained their hands with Aesop's blood.

You can't quite pin down when you entered this stage of grief, but after this morning, you doubt you'll be ending your impassioned performance any time soon. After Poe's request for you to pilfer a few pills from the factory, there was no scream wild enough to give a proper voice to your rage and while hurling eggs and stones around brought you a simple kind of satisfaction, you have by no means forgiven him. Any evidence of calm in you is surely shallow and false, a guise for the far more vicious truth.

Still, when you ran across that simple-minded drug buddy of his on your way back home — although you do not know your brother's friends well, you know them far more than you'd like to — and his mumblings about Poe and that sketch sitch gone south of the strut, man and runnin' thataway, lousy with the no good and none of the uppers to make it proper... you realized you're not the only one who was looking to vent some anger on your brother today. Now, when you took off in the direction of that rumored back alley, maybe you were just picking up the chase on your elusive target or maybe you still give at least half a damn about his lousy soul.

It's not until you witness the aftermath someone else has beat you to beating into him that you really begin to have a difficult time sorting out your own intentions. He's looking a little too much like your last memory of Aesop and the only thing you can think is how he's not supposed to die unless I'm the one who kills him and I ought to kill him dead for letting someone else try. Picking up a rock laying near your feet, you throw it not quite as hard as you threw the stones at the tree earlier, but still hard enough to hurt, aiming for his arm and hitting his knee. There's enough of a reaction to assure you that he is, in fact, not quite dead yet. So you exhale with a huff and respond to the situation they only way that actually feels appropriate: "Dumbass."

Now, time will come to claim you
And it will have its way
Don't make mistakes and don't regret
Don't waste the time that is left
And then do it all with a goddamn smile

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