don't say a word {nino&caly} jb!blitz

[✨ zozo.]

CALYPSO LETO

"here at last, dear friends,
on the shores of the sea
comes the end .

do not weep;
for not all tears are an evil."
- j. r. r. tolkein, the return of the king.

"Say it back. Say it back!"

I can't, I can't, I can't.

There's a thundering in my throat and if I were to linger by the door any longer the whole world would hear my storm. So I run, away from him and my silent confessions that I daren't string into words. (The last time I ran through these halls I was chasing a criminal. This time, I'm chasing myself - a law-breaking, rule-bending, stupid girl who got what she deserves.) Confessions drum in my head to the beat of my feet against the floor and how could I not say it back?

Because I am a coward. I can tell all the truths in the world but that one, that one could never be uttered. It never will be. Not above the surface, anyway. But I never could speak the real truth, could I? Hiding away Tags and Thea's commotions before anyone could lay eyes upon them. Throwing my sister aside as I hunted her lover down, away from the shower of bullets that would soon follow her to her death. Actions speak louder than words, but he didn't know that. He does not act, he paints and speaks and loves. He loves me, and I could not say it back. What a stupid, stupid girl I am, falling in love with a criminal. (The tattletale spilt raw heartbreak and bitter justice through the oceans of her home and yet she could not admit three little words? What a stupid, selfish girl.) I could not lie, and I could not tell the truth.

I cannot stay standing either, so I sink to the floor and utter the most honest truth I've ever spoken through songs of an aching heart.

listen.

[L△LIA]

( N I N O R I P L E Y )

Odds are, I'll never get to know Eye Saw. At least, I'll probably never know his favorite color or where he lives or what he'd want to do with his life if he were staying in District Four and continuing to grow up with the rest of us. Instead I'll learn a lot of other things about him like how good he is at blind revenge and wielding a knife... how he dies. These aren't things I want to know, but it's not like I have a choice. I just have to be thankful I'm learning them about a relative stranger and not my last remaining brother. I'm selfish enough for that thought to almost make it okay.

Last year, I tried not to be curious. During Ewe Saw's fights in the Arena they would cut away to his older brother's reactions now and then for dramatic effect — that's the first time I paid attention to Eye. If I'd seen him before then, I couldn't say, and when that time came I looked away until I couldn't stand it anymore. I didn't want to see the face of a guy watching his little brother die, especially not when it felt so sickeningly familiar. Eventually I couldn't help wondering if that's what I looked like, if the muscles of my face contorted the same way for Fitz and Noah, if the difference between his brother and mine counted for anything at all, or if Eye Saw and I were really just the same person and another one of my brothers was dying on that television screen all over again. Eye and I, despite the way things sound, aren't the same person though. Everyone I know who has gone into the Games has died and me? I'm a survivor. Now that we've met, he's a goner and —

Huddled on the floor a little further down the hall is a girl who's more like me than Eye will ever be. Someone who didn't know better might see a body that had collapsed in on itself with that kind of defeat and mistaken her for dead, but I know she's not... there's probably just a part of her that wishes she could be. "If you curl over with your shoulders a little more instead of your neck, it's easier to breathe while you cry. Then you can scream and sob at the same time." Without invitation, I plop down on the ground next to her and lean back against the wall before glancing over. "You look like you're an angry crier. I am too." Earlier, when she tore out of Eye's visiting room, I could have told you what she looked like without even having seen her face. Regardless of tears or favorite colors, I already know her. She's the one who's being left behind — the one who's the most like me — and maybe that's something I do know how to make okay.

[✨ zozo.]

CALYPSO LETO

"here at last, dear friends,
on the shores of the sea
comes the end.

do not weep;
for not all tears are an evil."
- j. r. r. tolkein, the return of the king.

Everything crashes so loudly against my ears that I almost don't hear him speak. So silent in his approach that I flinch at the sound of his voice (in a split second I let myself be childish, even though I really should stop doing that, and think that is is him, that he's come back for me and it's all just a terrible misunderstanding and we can go back to our silent love) and attempt to wipe away my liquidized anguish and any tell-tale signs that I am weak.

"If you curl over with your shoulders a little more instead of your neck, it's easier to breathe while you cry. Then you can scream and sob at the same time." He's an expert at this, I presume. But I'm too furious at the world to take his advice so I scoff at him through what sounds awfully like a sob - probably here to gloat. (Teleported back, I hear Eye's words ringing through my ears into a parallel universe where I can relive our moments a hundred times over and still not hurt. "What do you want. Come to gloat?" And I sigh back, "No. You don't want to hear that, do you?") The memory hurts, like being hurled onto jagged rocks by a storming current over and over again and the tide ripping open my veins. "You look like you're an angry crier. I am too."

He's not here to gloat. But I don't want to hear that - I don't want to hear anything except him and I, Eye and me. Waves of missing him have past, but tsunami tides still spill from my eyes (I was never strong enough to hold them back but my hands still shake with sheer effort regardless) and as he sits next to me I pull back, threatened and angry and horrified all at once. "Who... what..."

A bitter laugh bubbles through a hiccup and at last, I can find my words. "Like you know," I heave, "Like you care." My head hits the wall and all I can taste on my tongue is fire. (You can drown me a thousand times over, but my words will either dwindle away to ash and smoke or cause chaos that would make Hell tremble with fear.)

"Don't pretend to care."

listen.

[L△LIA]

( N I N O R I P L E Y )



i am what i am
a natural disaster
and I can't understand
what I'm after

"I have —" There are a few stuttering seconds of inappropriately amused disbelief in my own voice as I pull it from the front pocket of my rumpled suit jacket and hold it out to her. "— a hankie." It's white with floral embroidery in one corner below a monogram of someone else's initials. This morning as we were getting ready to leave, Jude folded it neatly and tucked it into my suit with a badly concealed twitch of laughter in the corner of his smile. I forget what the joke he made was, because the joke itself wasn't actually what was funny about all of it, and I let him get away with teasing me. It felt like riding piggyback the night after the Libertine's masquerade all over, one of those moments where my big brother is really there again and I'm so inexplicably happy about it that I don't care about anything else, even if it means I leave the house sporting a floral hankie in my pocket. "Blow your nose or rip it to shreds or throw it back in my face. I bet all of those things would make you feel just a little bit better right now, even if you don't want to admit it."

If she doesn't recognize me yet, then I'm not going to tell her. Not now, anyway. The name Ripley isn't going to make anyone who cares for Eye Saw feel better about the godawful suckerpunch to the face life has just smacked them upside the head with today. I won't deny her the relief of screaming herself hoarse at me or beating her fists against my chest in rage or anything else that might bring her some peace, but I owe it to Eye for anything like that to happen a little further away from the peacekeepers standing just around the corner. There's no need to get his girlfriend or beloved cousin or whoever this girl is arrested because Jude Ripley's little brother can't accept that he's probably not the best person in the world to attempt to comfort her right now.

So okay. I might be the worst person for the job in a lot of ways, but I'm not pretending anything, even if I can't tell her that without making this about me when it's not. It's true that I might not care in the way she means — appreciating Jude's life being saved isn't necessarily the same as appreciating the person who played hero — and I know it's unfair that I get to keep the person I love while she loses hers. It's just that I get it. I understand all the ways everything is fucking terrible right now and there aren't a lot of other people who can say that — basically I am the only option. My sincere apologies for holding a monopoly on murdered loved ones, publicly televised misery, and self-pity over blood that wasn't shed from my own body. I wish somebody else could take my place too. "I'll make you a deal — there's this girl I know who swears deals are good for fixing everything. You take this," the little white flag of peace in my hand flutters as I shake it, "and I'll take whatever punishment you think is appropriate for being a guy who's bad at caring and knowing things." Besides, I've got a hankie. That's got to count for something.

[✨ zozo.]

calypso leto

I forgot how exhausting crying was. Perhaps that's why Perdita rarely rises from her bed, drained to the core. Tears might in fact be our energy, what drives us to be alive - and when being alive gets too much we must shed them or we'll explode. Perhaps. But there's an anchor in my chest that's weighing me to the floor and I feel like I'll never rise again. (I wonder if tears ever run out. If you ever just ache, empty and dried clean. I guess I'll find out sooner or later.)

He's flapping a hankerchief in my face and I didn't realise until now that not just old people carry those around these days. Maybe he's an old soul, wise beyond his years. There's an itching in me to take in his wisdom and pour out my life story, but just because he (I can't bear to think his name) has sacrificed himself for a stranger doesn't mean that I will. It's a colour of defeat, a signal to say I have given up, that I will break, that I will let the devils in the ocean win.

I laugh. Because I am the devil of the seas, the one that rises, the one that calls everyone else out but herself and drags them back down to hell. And I shan't be defeated completely - not today. Not ever.

"I'll make you a deal," he says, as if I weren't wishing him away with looks that kill. (Why I am so terribly awful to people who are nothing but nice to me, I do not know. Perhaps that's why I let the currents carry me to him. I could not be with anyone but - it simply would not work.) "You take this and I'll take whatever punishment you think is appropriate for being a guy who's bad at caring and knowing things."

With a strike of my hand I snatch it away, and for some reason I find myself hurtling to the surface of what I once was, the Calypso Leto that everyone was so fond of screaming to be let our of her cage. "Your punishment," I snarl as I get to my feet and tower over him, "can be to never speak to me. Ever."

Send them away with words, that's the tattletale's duty. (Or in his case, with none at all.)

[L△LIA]

( N I N O R I P L E Y )



she's looking through
the wrong end of her telescope
turn it around
turn it around

The only thing this girl says she wants from me is silence and that's too bad, because she's going to get a lot more than that, even if she doesn't know it yet. All my life I've been taught to find loopholes in the law — forgetting to inform the local peacekeepers of our parents deaths so we wouldn't be hauled in to the community home and robbing dead men who no longer care for their earthly possessions. Despite my bouts of self-loathing, I think there are plenty of people who do worse things than Jude and I. That questionable moral code of mine, however, is the same line of reason that makes me agree to her request with a shrug and an amused smirk. She's clever and if I were someone who played by her rules then this might be something of a triumph for her. The problem is that I'm about to willfully ignore the subtext of her terms — an obvious demand for me to leave her alone completely — and simply follow the technicalities of it.

Pulling myself to my feet, I can't help the hushed chuckle of incredulity that thrums through me as I walk a few yards further down the hall and duck into the first empty room I can find. It takes less than a minute of rummaging in desk drawers to find what I'm looking for and then I'm right back to where I came from, reclaiming my seat on the ground beside her. Immediately, I gather my knees into my chest and huddle up secretively. There's never any fun in spoiling a good surprise and there's no denying that I feel just a tiny bit of satisfaction in outsmarting a girl who clearly thinks she has me bested. The suspense only lasts for a moment before ending with a sticky note stuck to her arm: You're not the first person to try to shut me up. A second technicolor square of paper is immediately attached to the toe of her shoe: I grew up with three brothers. Clinging to her knee for a pathetic two and a half seconds, the third slip (We can play this game if you want.) flutters to the ground as I reach over and press the last one to the middle of her forehead. But I ALWAYS win. Settling back against the wall, I flip the pencil absently between my fingers and wait for the inevitable repercussions to my stunt. I won't speak a word, but I'm not going anywhere.

[✨ zozo.]

calypso leto.
People that pull my strings and push my buttons either end up dead or damn close to it. This kid is teetering over the edge of both even if he doesn't know it. Why I don't just get up and leave beats me, maybe I'm too tired to do anything but glower. Maybe, deep down, I enjoy the company. I think so, because when he gets up and walks away I feel both a sense of relief and as lonely as ever. Echoes can only provide so much before they fade out forever.

Say it back, say it back, say it...

My lips stay firmly shut and I burrow myself back down into a hole of self-hatred.

As I feel touch against my skin I flinch, caught off guard once again by this feverishly persistent stranger. Pencil-laced words are stuck all over my body and usually I'd smirk at his cleverness and bite back with something even sharper but he hasn't said a thing and neither have I. Ripping the pieces of paper from my skin I seethe at his grin and read the words inscribed to me. You're not the first person to try to shut me up. I grew up with three brothers. The last ones ring the longest: (We can play this game if you want.) But I always win.

Feverish hands collect the stupid little pieces of paper together and I rip them into strips, a multi-coloured confetti of my anger. (I always win my games too, but they involve destruction and deceit and opening my mouth. They'll think I've lost today and maybe I have, but I'm not going down without a fight.) If this is his game then he's playing dangerously, dancing with fire. After a reflection of myself I've come to the conclusion that I tend to surround myself with these types of people anyway, but isolation is the only form of wall that I need right now. Scattering the strips against the floor I twirl them around with my fingers, constructing a message of my very own. G, and then O, and the rest follow suit.

GO AWAY.

[L△LIA]

( N I N O R I P L E Y )



i'm living like a silent movie
shut your mouth and see
straight through me

I know I'm pissing her off and I might feel bad about it, except making her annoyed with me is probably the only truly decent thing I can do for her right now. Maybe she doesn't realize it, but for the few seconds she's thinking about what a weirdo I am or how much she wishes I'd go jump off a cliff — for just that small moment in time — she's not thinking about Eye Saw or how there's around a ninety-six percent chance he's about to die. I'm no whiz with numbers, but goddamnit all, this is math I know. She's also not thinking about how, if he loses this thing, she's going to be right there watching it in full-blown technicolor closeups as his body is ripped limb from limb and devoured by a herd of blood-hungry mutts. Despite the miles between them, her face may only be a few inches from the screen as it happens and she will never feel as close to or as far from him as she will right then and there, helpless and full of the kind of wicked hatred that will never manage to hurt anyone as much as it hurts her, no matter how she tries to lash out. For as much as today aches with despair, in the weeks to come she's going to think back and wish she had a distraction like me around.

Except she won't have to wish for anything, because I'm going to be there. Even if I hadn't made a promise to Eye, I'd still be right here, saying and doing all these same things. That promise just means that even if she fights back and manages to piss me off in return, I'll have that much more of an incentive not to give up on her and simply walk away. I have every reason to be doing this — that promise to Eye, a debt of gratitude for Jude's life, a gorgeous girl who deserves for the guy who loves her to prove that he knows how to be a good man, and me. What it comes down to is that I've got to see Calypso, who reminds me so much of myself, survive so that I know I can keep on living too. I can't keep do nothing but losing people; it's about time I find a few.

Scribbling one last message for her, I press another sticky note onto the ground next to the torn remnants of my others. See you tomorrow. If she wants me to go away, then I will. There's nothing else I can do for her right now anyway and if I make her too angry then I have a feeling she'll avoid me forever, so I pull myself to my feet, wave with all the enthusiasm I can muster in a situation like this, and just... walk away. After all, no matter what day it is, my last name is still going to be Ripley, so there's plenty of time for her to genuinely hate me. No need to rush it.