♛ second heir to the throne - marina & klaus

[florentine, d4b ❁]

[presto]

klaus goravich
twenty one
district three

[/presto]

---

OH, FOR EVERY KING THAT DIED

---

Last year, I spent a night in this hospital, a smile on my lips. Jamarion and Sephera had their baby girl - it was flawless and perfect. I was brimming with fear, of course. When my Mama gave birth twenty-two years ago within these walls, she never left. But I watched as the new parent's eyes lit up and suddenly the halls didn't seem so suffocating. The smell of bleach stopped clutching my throat and tasted clean, and the never-ending footsteps on the tiles sounded not like a countdown, but an applause. I left hand in hand with Lyana, my fingertips shaking but the grin never fading from my lips. Today, however, my frown is perpetual, my eyes tired and heavy. I passed a mirror not long ago while pacing the staircase - the dark circles under my eyes are those of a man who has not slept an hour in three long days. This reflection did not look like me. I barely recognized the pained and ancient face that stared right into my eyes: someone who has worried constantly for seventy two hours, watched over a frantic sister for many of them and eaten only pieces of stale bread between cups of weak tea. I am a prisoner of this hospital. For now, at least. Once the baby is born, I have been told, it will be passed into my hands and I will be free to walk from the doors with an arrival I never knew to await. Because, as the doctors say, Marina is not good enough for that tiny life. They're right, I suppose. The words they use to describe it, however - unstable, unpredictable, self-destructive - these words make my sister seem like a wild animal that they cannot control. They frown at her, glancing down from their scrawled notes, making observations on her every movement. I scowl at them and plead, "It's not as bad as you think, she's alright, she's just had a rough time. She'll be okay in a couple of days. I'm sure." This isn't true. I'm not sure. In fact, buried deep in my heart is the knowledge that my sister will likely never be strong enough to hold that child in her arms and know she is quite capable of caring for both it and herself all at once. I nodded and signed the form, determined to care for the baby just as I care for Daisy, even though it wasn't my plan. After all, I always wanted a house filled with children who would never be lonely, never be unhappy. (In truth it is the fear of the blood in the infant's veins that is making my pulse race a little faster. I know that you cannot be born a villain, and that time and experience makes a person bad. The situation, after all, is the difference between a soldier and a murderer. Even so, it aches to think that the child will be comprised of my sweet sister and the man who stole away her innocence and made her believe that she was the monster.) I am drumming my fingers on the information desk for no good reason - (the old man who was working there yesterday made for good conversation) - when a nurse rushes toward me with a clipboard tucked under his arm. "Mr. Goravich!" he says, and I flinch. I hear those words as my father's name. All at once I can taste blood in my mouth, and panic is readily biting at my heels. I do not correct her, but instead demand to know if Marina is alright. Looking fearful, the nurse shakes her head. "She's alright, but her waters have broken. She's coming along very quickly, sir, if you'd like to come this way." I do not need to be told twice. My shoes squeak as I turn corner after corner, weaving my way through the maze into the core of the hospital. I pass wards full of the sick and dying, and thank Ripred that I am moving away from them, toward the place where life begins. There is only one happy place in a hospital, and that is my destination. Only, when I arrive on the threshold, my sister is not smiling.

THEY WOULD CROWN ANOTHER

[cass]

M A R I N A G O R A V I C H

The last time I was in a hospital Lyana Goravich was by my side, I remember, clearly the way she looked at me once she found out the news, I remember the way her eyes widened, the way the sympathy and understanding sparked those warm eyes of hers. I remember how I wanted to run away, my secrets being spilled, my life being torn apart as they told her the reason I was insane, the reason I was stupid, reckless and irresponsible. I’d known for a long time, and it was funny how the condition hadn’t become me, I had become it and gone far worse, years of torment, bullying and pain did that to a person. And without knowing, from the beginning what was truly the reason behind the madness and thinking I’d pulled at it, until my very being consisted of everything they hated of me – everything they expected. The tantrums, screaming, hitting and physical abuse. It had started with one small problem; slowly morphing into something else, because that was what I had willed, it had been better making it into a big giant mess, making them think I was getting worse and worse. That way I could pretend that I wasn’t some kind of animal being slowly destroyed, but rather the king of this problem, the one who was in control.

I wasn’t, however, in control. As of right now I was in incredible pain. A form of pain I had never, ever felt before. It began in the very centre of my being, and spread out through my entire body. I’m not sure when I gave up, I’m not sure when I stopped caring that day, I think it was when the doctors placed a sheet of paper before me and told me to sign it. They said it was for my own good, that the child that had been forced upon me would be given to someone else. Silly little girl I was didn’t hesitate to sign, my fingers shaky, my head spinning. The thing within me wasn’t something I wanted, I had not wanted this, I wanted it dead, I wanted it gone and away.

(You want to die, don’t you? Yes, yes I do. I’m so tired of this existence; I’m so tired of this pain, misery and suffering. Klaus couldn’t even help me, instead he brought me here. Here where the doctors tied my wrists down and stared at me with cold, condescending eyes, where they sneered and glared. They all hated me; they all despised my very being, just as I did.)

He walks into the room I’m in. The doctors fear that the frail, weak girl on the bed may do herself harm, so they have tied my wrists down to the bars, but the pain that tears itself through my body is enough to make me want to cry. It is enough to tell me do not run. I haven’t spoken a word for four days. The glance I through the young victor is cold, pain-filled and pleading. Kill me, it says, save me, they plead. Help. Help. Help. They cry. But he doesn’t do a thing. And this time as my body convulses I scream, I have nothing left to lose.

I’ve lost it all.

template by chelsey

[florentine, d4b ❁]

[presto]

klaus goravich
twenty one
district three

[/presto]

---

OH, FOR EVERY KING THAT DIED

---

Marina is afraid of the child within her. She is terrified both of the nameless baby fighting to be born and the little girl she's keeping trapped there. At seven, I read the tale of Peter Pan. Refusing to grow up is only an option for those who live within stories - my sister cannot grasp, cannot handle, that there is no choosing to be an adult. We are twenty-one years old and tossed out into the world, and yet she's curled and sobbing and fighting time with every inch of herself. Part of me understands this fear. Part of me resents it, for the world grabbed me and thrust me into a world of responsibility long ago. No amount of digging in your heels can change this. I want to reach out to her and promise her this, but I have made enough promises. (They're empty, aren't they? How can I suggest to her that things will get better when she's so incapable of a smile? What if her mind is all darkness, after all? What do I know about pain?) The broken and torn sister before me is not a person I am capable of caring for. No amount of home cooked dinners and tissues and Get Well Soon card will mend her. Fetching her glasses of orange juice and bringing flowers to her door will be no use, and she seems to wince at my touch. I can, however, offer the child what it needs. (Babies are so simple. They are smiles and warm milk and talcum powder and testing the bath water with your fingertip. People who have seen more than their nurseries begin to crack around the edges.) I take a seat beside Marina, and wish I could put my faith in a higher power. My fingertips drum against my knee, and with every wave of pain that grips her, I frown. She does not deserve this, not at all. A wicked, wicked man forced this upon her. As I stand there, watching in a haze of slow time as nurses and doctors rush around the room and monitors beep obnoxiously. In this second, I would give almost anything to make all of this go away. The room smells like sweat and pain. Like a thirteen year old who cut her wrist and lied about her scars, a seventeen year old who cried all night, an eighteen year old who fought with people who weren't there, and a twenty year old who could not fight off the ones that were. Reality fades in and out, and the world pulses in fluorescent light. It could be minutes or hours. All I know is that many things in this world that cannot be forgiven. And then the world starts again with a cry that grips my heart and doesn't let go. I stand all at once, my head filling with a dizzy mist. A tiny red creature wails as though the future depends on her cry. No longer would I take anything away. My breathing quickens, and there is an irregularity bursting in my heart that manages not to worry me. Voices are disjointed and broken, but my eyes are locked upon the child. "Marina! You did it. It's all over now," I whisper to her. "She's a girl. She's beautiful, Marina." The nurses take the baby away, so far that I cannot hear her screams. I wonder if she has her father's eyes.

THEY WOULD CROWN ANOTHER

[cass]

M A R I N A G O R A V I C H

They’d never in a million years understand what I have gone through. Not even Klaus, not even though boy who had killed and murdered to survive could understand the torment I have suffered. And, quite simply, it is because none of them have the claws digging into their soul, none of them have the darkness, that ever so sweetly calls my name and tempts me, every single day, to join it in the darkness. It asks me, with gifts, and pleas of peace and comfort to allow it to take control and do what it will with my body. The doctors called it insanity. And I don’t believe any of them have that knocking at the back of their mind a constant presence, something that you just had to open the door to let it flood in and take control. What would happen if I opened it right this moment? In all honesty I can’t answer that question. Maybe I want to know, maybe I want this pain and misery and suffering to be buried beneath a layer of cushions. Insanity would bury it behind darkness and I wouldn’t have to continue pretending to be something I am not.

Just let it take control.

But I can't, fight, fight fight. Why must I continue to fight my entire life. Why? What did I do to deserve this. Fight. And I do.

I scream.

I feel so incredibly weak to be screaming, but I can’t stop it and the pain it isn’t even that bad. It truly doesn’t even measure up to the kind of agony I had felt within my life. I did not scream because of pain, I screamed because of the foul touch this world had embedded before me. Because I was a disease, a sickness, a plague that was meant to suffer forever and ever and I was unsure if even death would separate me from my pain.

When was the last time I smiled?

Four years ago. Four long long years ago was the last time I smiled. I can remember that fond moment, seeing Reeve McFallen spin around and yell at me for throwing a rock at him ,and then all at once he would smile at me and I’d grab his hand and he would listen to what I said. And… And and and I’d smile. I’d smile because for a day I did not suffer, for one single day I did not hurt, ache or cry.

This time when I scream something breaks within me. And all at once I want to grab the pillow I lean on and I want to suffocate myself. But I am too weak to do even that. Instead I am met with my brother’s cries, his whispers more of a slap. And the screams of a child created from agony fade from the room. I roll over, my body attempting to defy even that one movement, but I’m stubborn, oh so very stubborn -- stubborn girl my entire life, it's why I still feel pain and think, it is why I am still human and not a creature of fear and fright. So I turn, away from Klaus.

And I cry.

template by chelsey

[florentine, d4b ❁]

[presto]

klaus goravich
twenty one
district three

[/presto]

---

OH, FOR EVERY KING THAT DIED

---

They make me wait three hours before they let me hold her. I spend each second of this time pacing the room, turning tight circles within the confines of a prison disguised as a medical facility. Marina is my cellmate, and yet she is sure to ignore my frantic pleas, each of them disguised as announcements. During this time I come to understand the extent of her sickness. It reaches deep down below her skin and grips dirty fingernails into her bones, sinking terrible teeth into her flesh and her mind. Even with the baby gone and the events of the last year behind her, it holds on. And it's stronger than she is, stronger than I. There are no windows here. One door. Fifty-eight floor tiles, spaced with cement the colour of despair. One bed. Two plastic chairs. A monitor that beats in time with my own heart despite being hooked up to another human being. (It is as though me and my sister are mirrors, still multiples of one another in the way we were the day we were born. Now, though, we are a universe apart and I doubt anything can ever bring us together again.) By the time the nurse arrives with the incubator, the wheels making marks on the ground, I have resorted to counting the lines on my hands. I wonder which one is the life line. The darkness spilling from my heart in the form of endless, fearful steps and frenzied numbers spills from my lips in an unintelligible plea. "Please, tell me she's okay? Is the baby alright?" The doctors look at me, three men with raised eyebrows and bored expressions that never seem to lift. I try again, slowing my words in a desperate attempt to be heard. "Is the baby alright?" Understanding falls into place in their eyes, and yet they do not nod or smile at me. Instead, they glance at one another uncertainly, as though I am as dangerous as the Capitol expects. "Tell me!" I demand, and they relent. "Mother and child are going to survive. The infant is premature, however, and will need special care for a month at the very least. Miss Goravich is fairing a little worse - her healing process is going to be long and difficult." After the word survive, the pulse returns to my veins. (Because that's all we ever needed, wasn't it, to survive? Haven't we all been survivors, right from the start? As long as we're all still breathing, we're the lucky ones? Right?) My next question quiet and hesitant. "Can I hold her?" Soon, the child has taken her place in my arms, a piece of a puzzle I didn't know was missing. She is tiny, smaller than I can remember Daisy ever being, with crimson cheeks and scarlet fists. Perfect isn't a large enough word to describe a little girl so small.  "Penelope," I say.  Marina wants Melina next, after our mother.  And so the next day, I walk out of the hospital, sleepless and smiling, ready to greet Daisy with a grin and a story and the name, Penelope Melina Goravich. As I arrive on the doorstep, the phone is ringing. "Mr. Goravich - we're calling to inform you that Miss Saffron Lowe has gone missing from District Eight late this afternoon. If you have any information on her whereabouts, please let us know." Instead of getting some well-earned sleep, I get my coat.

THEY WOULD CROWN ANOTHER