weight of living | cilla + sol

[cass]

cilla rowe

Father was demanding her presence at the hospital; he had commanded that she attend to her mother’s needs for the day. It was, after all, required that her two children visit her and keep her company and listen to her as she forced upon them everything she wanted. A long continuous string of demands that were to be met, of rules that should never be broken and achievements that had to be made. Cilla Rowe had nothing to show her mother this time, not a single darn thing. All she had was a thin white scar that ran up the length of her forearm, a gift left by that boy she had met in that sparring match -- where she had been defeated (the other wound had, oddly enough, decided that it would heal up correctly and leave no clue that it had been there before).

She could hardly parade it around; it was a mark of defeat not triumph. Her mother despised defeat, if her daughter could not prevail in a stupid training fight then what hope did she have in the real thing. There wasn’t even an opportunity to take comfort in the harsh words to come. Her brother was forbidden from seeing her mother, the woman believing that until her son stopped acting like a two year old having a tantrum he was not worthy to be her son at all. So it was to be that she went alone. It felt odd, like part of her was being torn away and left to rot in some place foreign.

Watching her brother silently plead with her father was painful to see. But not even the peacekeepers of Panem would change his mind. She wished he would, the pitiful sight of her brother pleading without words, but with actions and looks alone was enough to break her heart. Even though he knew the cruel, blunt words of his mother’s tongue awaited him he still wanted to see her. As much as she despised her own mother and the trap she had fallen into she could not escape either. Because she loved her in the end and love was an awful thing. She had succumbed to the spider’s venom and she was wrapped up in its webs, just waiting to be taken, just waiting to be destroyed. Love destroyed, that’s why she found hate so much easier to feel.

She loved little, felt nothing more and hate almost just as much.

The halls of the hospital held ghosts, they moved with an ache, each step seemed to take far more effort then what it should have required. And she watched them, eyes grazing over each of them, uncertain if she should offer them a hand, wondering if she should just pass by and forget that they even existed. She was not a ghost, unlike them she was filled with life, she suffered, she felt pain and she lived, these people seemed to feel nothing, but the tormented future that awaited them. Her mother had not yet reached that point. Guilt weighed heavily in her stomach, deep down she was hardly thankful of that fact.

Today her dark brown hair was tied back, a pink ribbon holding it in place; it was a pale shade that matched her attire. A dress that reached the middle of her thighs and stockings that were the palest of pinks, if you didn’t know they were pink you’d have assumed they were white. Her hands gripped the edge of the dress tightly and she detached one, hesitant for a brief moment about what was going to happen after she walked into that room, she sighed inwardly, knowing there was no escape. Her knuckles tapped against the sterile white door, and it echoed in the halls around her, it was louder then she liked.

Her heart beat sped up, as it always did when she saw her mother. Cilla never knew what to expect, was there going to be venom, or love?

”Come in,” the voice said and she did, breath catching in her throat as she slipped into the room.

”Hello mother.” She offered the woman in the bed a tense smile, moving to stand by the corner, but never did she once touch the bed or anything in the room. The lady smiled at her daughter, the corner of her eyes crinkling. She had been pretty once, but now she was little more then a faded mark, starving in the shadows, just waiting for death. Her limbs were frail, face pale and deathly white. Her hair used to fall around her face, but now it barely remained glued to her scalp. Cilla couldn’t even remember what her mother looked like before she became ill. It had been such a long time since some resemblance of normality was in her life. ”Cilla, my daughter, my only child, come come si-“

Oh.

”Mother why?“ she asked, tone sharp, but pleading, ”why must you pretend that Ossin does not exist?” She moved forwards, sitting down on the edge of the bed, eye wide. She grabbed her mother’s hand, clutching it in her tone; it hurt so much when her mother spoke like this. ”He’s real, he’s very much real and he’s hurting so much. Stop it, please.” There was something she had never liked about begging, but when she looked at her mother and then thought of her brother, of his teary eyes, of those round, pleading eyes she couldn’t stop. She needed her family back together; she needed them to love one another.

”Please-“

”Enough.” Her words were cut off. Even in her frail form she was cruel, she was unforgiving. Her mother’s eyes were cold, they were black and filled with anger, they did not flicker with a fire, but rather burned with coldness that stole the words from Cilla’s mouth and left her feel afraid. She tore her hand out of Cilla’s and glared at her daughter and Cilla was reminded that this was the woman with the heart of ice, the woman that wanted her daughter to fight and die for a few minutes of hopeless glory. And suddenly she felt sick.

”He is not my son. My son is dead, my son does not exist, and he is nothing to me. And you will end up just like him if you keep this up. Do you understand?” The walls crumbled and she couldn’t fight, she was like a tamed dog, she did what her mother said, she didn’t argue. Cilla nodded her head once; she felt like a damned coward, she felt defeated, she felt hopeless. She didn’t have the courage to fight for her brother, because she couldn’t face the consequences. Fucking coward.

”That’s my girl.” Her mother smiled, and that was when Cilla broke. Her heart ached and tears filled her eyes. She was out of the room before she knew it, and she ran, through the halls, and away from it all.

That’s what cowards did right? They ran.

[gamemaker kelsier]

S O L

His hair was new this week.

It was crisp at the ends, the hair fried from all the bleach that his mother had applied to it. His mother didn't know what to do with him anymore, she didn't know how to speak to him because he never spoke to her. He didn't tell her about his life anymore, he didn't laugh anymore. It was like he had gone away but was still there. She'd knock on his door at the earlier hours in the morning, unable to sleep because she knew that he would be laying there in the dark, eyes fixated on the ceiling.

She didn't know what to say to him to make it better. When he was younger, it was fine to stick a band aid on his wounds and kiss it better but now the wound was stuck inside somewhere and she couldn't reach it with her magic kisses. So she sat him down in a kitchen chair and played with his hair, changing it to anything she pleased, just as she always had because he had never minded before being her guinea pig. He might have shaken her off once or twice or moaned about his hair being pink. He used to sit in the chair and tell her stories, make her laugh.

Now he simply sat there, silent, hands in his lap, still as she worked. She tried to fill up time with chatter but he never responded to a word she said. He was vacant, all the time. I heard you made a friend the other week she might say but she'd never add the question mark because she knew he wouldn't answer.

He had a vague idea of how it made his mother feel. The pain in his chest was overpowering, it was like someone was sitting on him, getting heavier and heavier everyday. He struggled to breath around the weight. He had to concentrate on the effort of it, he couldn't multitask and pay attention to his mother at the same time. He didn't care what his mother had to say, how she was feeling because he didn't even notice. he couldn't see the way that his emotional state was tearing not only himself but his parents apart.

People think that the opposite of love is hate. They are wrong.

It couldn't be said that Sol hated his mother because it wouldn't be true. He was simply indifferent. It was like taking the easy way out, the safe option. He didn't have to feel or even think. All he had to do was not say one word or even look his parents in the eye and it broke their hearts in ten different places. He didn't mean to do this. He was just weak.

I miss you she had whispered at twenty-six minutes after three that morning, sitting across from him with a cup of tea cupped between shaking hands while he had studied the kitchen wall, ignoring the foils in his hair.

He had passed his father on his way to work at ten thirty on the same day. They hadn't even looked at each other. Or at least Sol hadn't noticed him. His father's eyes had studied the seemingly fine appearance of the boy he had once proudly called his son but couldn't anymore because there was no son there. Hello Sol he had said as he passed him by but he had not gotten any response, not that he had expected one. His son had not spoken for weeks and weeks.

Sol sat in the main room of the morgue, watching the seconds tick by on the wall clock. It was oddly soothing to watch the constant ticking. It was safe. He knew that time would always move forward. He couldn't lose it because it was always chasing him no matter how fast he ran.

There was a body in the cupboard and he could hear it's nails attacking the walls of it's cage. It was insistent, in it's scratching as if it could claw it's way back into life. Luna hadn't been like that she had been still and cold and dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dea- he wanted to burn it. Right now, this very moment. Time had run out for it. He had been too slow. He couldn't though. It wasn't for burning. This body was going to be buried in the dirt and made to rot in a wooden shell. Bugs would sneak in and eat out his eyeballs.

He was glad that he had burned Luna's body. He didn't want anyone to eat her eyeballs out of her skull and he didn't want to think of what her face might look like skinless but now he was already thinking about it and it was too late. At this point flesh would have still clung to her bones in patches and in places. Her fingers would be knobbly and freezing cold and maybe there would be maggots living beneath the fragile stability of her melting muscles.

He shuddered.

He was about to do something, to move, to seek another stability to focus on when there came a rushing from nowhere. Bloodless legs were making their way into the room followed by a skirt and then a torsos and then a neck and then a face and then hair and then the scent of apples an-

oh.

It was that girl that he had sliced open and bruised the other day, however long ago that was. He wasn't sure how time passed anymore because he was always busy not paying attention to how it was spent. He watched, indifference painted across a visage that held the curiosity behind it. She wasn't meant to be here because this place wasn't for citizens but for workers only and she shouldn't be here.

She rushed in too quickly for him to object and turned to face the door, slamming it shut and turning the key in the lock. Maybe she had come here to murder him and exact revenge for the beating he had given her. He could smell the scent of apples and it made his stomach rumble. He hadn't eaten anything since....when. Sometime. Time had moved on too quickly while he wasn't looking.

He watched her back shudder as she breathed. It was quiet but for the breathes she took from the air, cutting into his own oxygen supply just by being here. He didn't know why she was here, he wasn't inclined to ask. His chin was resting on top of his knees and his whole frame was perched on a tall stool, watching the girl from behind. He didn't know her name, it had never seemed important to ask her what it was. It still wasn't. He watched her back muscles, fixated on the stability there.

B u t a l l
my tears
have been
u s e d u p

[cass]

cilla rowe

It wasn’t that she was afraid of being a coward, cowards were everywhere, and at some point in everyone’s life you ended up being one. It was the fact that she chose to be a coward because of such a stupid reason. If she were fighting for her life she would not back down, there would be ne fear in her movements, just certainty and grace. Fighting was so much simpler, there was nothing to be afraid of because you had to trust in your own skills and when you did that nothing could stop you. But this? You couldn’t trust in someone else to give you what you needed, they could snatch it away in a split second, leaving your gaping wounds to fester and rot. It was what it felt like, loving her mother, like a blade was pressed against your stomach and as soon as you lost it she’d tear you open, and you’d have to scream for her help and love to stop the bleeding, because your hands were bound behind your back and you could not move. She’d manipulated her children so much that the thought of not having her love was like dying. It was any wonder Cilla despised love.

When it came to losing her mother’s love – a mother she often despised, she broke. Was it because she needed it? Cilla had always believed that love was the worst thing of all and she detested it as much as she never tried to feel it, but her mother had dug herself into her skin and turned her into this idolizing idiot that couldn’t survive without her praise and love. So in turn when that attention, when those needs were threatened she broke.

You often had no choice in the matter and in the end being a coward was all you had left. It was the fact that she felt so numb to it all, the fact that her heart tightened and her chest ached at the thought of being treated the way her brother did, so she did not even hesitate to act as selfish as she had. And then after all of it, she’d feel the pain, she’d not look at her brother for a week, she’d not speak to him until he dove into her skin and dragged her out of it all. Then it was harder, because she had to look him in the eye and tell him she had tried, even though he knew the answer his eyes would get hopefully, even though he knew that you had shut yourself complete off he’d still think ‘maybe she had said yes’, but she hadn’t.

Cilla would then have to watch as her brother rumpled all over again, their exchange a silent one, but his sobs weren’t. He was bleeding, he was losing his fight to that wound, there was rot and an infection and sooner or later it was going to kill him. The worst part was the fact that her brother knew how to fix it, he knew how to make it all better, but his body wouldn’t let him, his mind was so broken that without the friend he’d created he’d probably go even more insane and then mother would never accept him back. She’d disown him and father would through him out of this house without a second glance.

She didn’t know where she was going, these halls were all unfamiliar, she climbed down a flight of stars, jogged up a ramp, she turned left and right and left two more times. There were tears and she fought back a sob, pressing her hands to her lips to silence any sound that might escape. When she couldn’t hold it back anymore she ran into a room, spinning and slamming the door shut. A lock was attached and she didn’t hesitate to lock herself in, knowing it was only a matter of time before father was they’re looking for her. Maybe he’d hit her, she wasn’t sure, but she knew she was scared.

She knew hiding would make it worse in the end, her father would just get angrier and the chance that he might hit her would become greater. Mother didn’t like him hitting her, but she never complained. She seemed to agree that discipline was best taught through pain.

Pressing her forehead against the wood she tried her best to stop the sobs, she squeezed her eyes shut tightly, and cupped her hands even more tightly over her mouth. Her shoulders shook, and she wasn’t sure how long she stood there, silently fighting the ache in her chest. It was the oddest of sounds that brought her back to the real world. It was a low rumble – well she wasn’t even sure if she could describe it as such it sounded like –

He was there, she had turned, a hand sliding from her mouth, the other hovering just under her chin – a chin that had slipped open as she stared in shock at the boy – whose name she didn’t even know. Cilla didn’t even attempt to wipe the tears away, her face was going to be red no matter what she did, her eyes were going to be puffy for a few minutes and she was under no illusion that this guy was stupid. It was obvious she had been crying. Ripred’s sake why was she thinking about this? She hadn’t even begun to question why the boy was sitting in this room, at a hospital.

”Hi…” She began, a lame attempt at conversation. She stared at him, his hair was whiter then it had been last time, she was sure it wasn’t real, who even had white hair? Old people? Well he wasn’t old enough to have natural white hair so it had to be fake. ”Come here often?” She asks, the smallest of grins slipping onto her face. He still had those same dead eyes, that same face that looked as though it had seen a lot of pain. Her gaze moved to his hands, and she wondered if they had healed yet.

”I’m Cilla, by the way.” Not that it mattered at all.

[gamemaker kelsier]

S O L

She was crying.

He used to do that when he was little, before he grew up into a man and crying became for wimps. It was alright to cry when he was little because all little kids are allowed to, it's the rules. A man can't cry though, not if he wants to appear capable and strong. A man cannot cry because it makes the woman afraid. That's something his dad liked to say a lot. His dad didn't cry, not even the time that he had broken his wrist in the door or when Sol's mother had stopped being pregnant only five months in. It's because Sol's dad had learnt that crying wasn't for men from his father and his father before him. So Sol didn't cry either. Not the time he had cut himself badly at training, not the time the hope of a baby sister had been lost and not the time he had taken a sword and stabbed his girlfriend through the heart. Men don't cry.

Sol didn't know know that there was an ache in the back of the throat when women cried. It was like his tongue felt sorrow at the girl's and was curling into the back of his mouth where a huge lump was forming. He knew what to do with that though. He swallowed it down and watched her shoulders shake. They were slender. She didn't look less feminine in a dress but somehow more powerful. It was different seeing her in a dress rather than her training gear, not like she was a different person but like he was looking at her from a different direction.

Hearing her sobs made him feel tense. He scrunched up his hands and wrapped them tighter around his knees as if she would never notice him at all if he made himself smaller. His palms were white with scars, still tender in some places where they were still scabbed over. He kept picking at the scabs and they kept bleeding fresh. There was dried blood beneath his nails.

He didn't know what to do with someone who was crying. When Luna had cried, only once in the entire time he'd known her, he had held her tightly against himself and she had gotten snot all over his shoulder. Her body had heaved as if it was trying to expel everything from within itself and he had pressed his lips to her forehead, trying to comfort her. He didn't know what to do with this girl because she wasn't Luna and also he didn't think that she even knew someone else was in the room with her. He waited.

When she turned around her face was streaked with the stains that salt water left behind on skin. There was redness all around her eyes and the bottom lashes on her left eye had a drip of water clinging to them. Her hands were raised, as if to protect and hide the damage that the water had done to her, to hide the evidence. He decided that he liked the front of the dress even better because the colour was more interesting than it was in the back.

She says hi and there is a pause as if she is still waiting for the name that he has nearly forgotten himself. She asks if he comes here often and he is perplexed. Of course he does, it is his job to come here often. A grin begins. It is slow, starting from the right corner quirking upwards and followed by the rest of her mouth after, the crookedness of her happiness evident in the slow rise of her lips.

He opens his mouth slowly, words forming on his lips, shaping them. No sound comes out. He wasn't expecting any to. Sometimes it's not even that he doesn't want to speak it's more like he can't. His lips are locked by one terrible secret that overrides anything and everything he might say. He doesn't tell her his name or why he's here. He only looks down to the stark whiteness of his uniform, the clear, plastic apron that holds the pockets for the tools of his trade.

Carefully, he unfolds his legs and reaches underneath the table beside him, dragging out the second stool with a loud screech across the spotless tiles that cover the floor of the room. He leaves it where it is, beside his own. He doesn't offer the seat to her, not caring very much whether she takes it or not. He is a robot on autopilot, he'd pull a chair out for any girl that happened along. It's just that this one smells of apples and he put a band aid on her arm once.

The morgue was silent except for the two of them and now that the door was locked it was unlikely that anyone might walk in on the two of them sitting there, not that anyone came fro a visit very often. In the first couple months after Luna's disappearance, his coworkers had often appeared at all hours with a cup of tea and tried to start a conversation with him. They'd given up after awhile, when he just sat there and wouldn't respond to them.

He was sort of like the vacuum in the closet, dormant until a body was given to him to care for. He did his duty and nothing more, unable to fraternize anymore because he was so locked up in his own head, unable to get out. Sadness was heavy over him, covering him from head to toe like the white sheets they placed over the bodies before they burned them.

Slowly, he rested his chin on his knees once again, placing his hands on either side of him, the palms pressing into the wood of the stool so that she might ignore them this time.

B u t a l l
my tears
have been
u s e d u p

[cass]

cilla rowe

She felt like he was the one that need the comforting, not her. There was this glow in his eyes that made her own heart ache for him. They seemed devoid of life, as though there had once been something so strong and beautiful in them and then all at once it had been snatched away. He didn’t seem like the kind of boy that had always been like this; he must have been someone else once, before, a brother, a son, and a partner. She’d been someone different long before her mother had become ill, the person she had been then – strong, in dependent, unbreakable – was gone now, faded to ashes as her mother had burned her down and away.

Once she had been strong-willed enough to stand up against her mother, she had been smart enough to evade her fathers hands, but now it seemed that it had all been beaten out of her until she was this wrecked mess of a girl. Wiping the tears away in one quick movement she looked at the boy once more, staring at him. There was this defeated set to his shoulders, each of his movements seemed robotic, as though they had been programmed in and he could do nothing, but follow them.

It was hardly surprising in the least when she received no response to, in turn, to the things she had said. She could remember their fight as if it had happened yesterday, there had been something important about it, something so beautiful about the way he moved that she could remember it as clearly as if it were happening right now. Although she had not believed the boy would take her up on her offer to talk, or just well train with her if that was what he wanted. She had simply made the offer, knowing that she’d probably like the same done for her, simply because it showed that someone did care and that was all she wanted. It was why she let her mother walk all over her, it was why she didn’t stand and fight and it was why she didn’t cry out when her father hit her. All of that were the few signs that she got that they cared about her at all.

Then he opens his mouth and she leans forwards waiting to hear what he has to say. And it is if as though he knows what he wants to say, but he simply can’t. Cilla isn’t disappointed when he closes his mouth; in fact it makes her feel determined in some way to hear his voice. She wants to know what he sounds like, what his name is and she is ever so curious.

He looks downwards and her eyes follow his gaze. Her grin broadens as she sees the crisp white uniform, and the clear apron with an assortment of tools. It was unusual for her to miss such important details, but she had been completely and utterly focused on this boy’s face, rather then what he was wearing. He was just far too interesting for Cilla to resist. She liked what she didn’t know and she yearned to learn things that seemed to be a challenge and this boy looked like a challenge – he was certainly a challenge in a fight, and the prospect of fighting him again seemed irresistible

”Oh, so you work at the morgue,” she said, she peered curiously at the room around her. She had never met anyone who had worked in a morgue before. She was curious as to what they did. There were all sorts of things in here, it sounded like a rather interesting place to work. She had no fear of the dead, although she feared the dying, particularly her mother. But those that were already dead could not hurt you, and people who had no ability to hurt others seemed like good people to hang out with.

The chair that she was offered was exactly the same as his own; they clashed with the uniform and the sterile whiteness of the room. It was curiosity that got her to head towards the seat offered. It seemed everything was white – including the boys hair, the only thing that wasn’t white about him was the darkness that seemed to pulse within him. As she moved to sit beside him she liked to think she was a splash of colour amongst it all, brown hair, pink dress, just a little bit more colour.

”I think working here would be pretty cool.” She smiles softly at him, although he probably can’t see it, he is looking down once more. Staring into space, lost in a void of time and pain. She doesn't like seeing anyone like that, it reminds her of her brother hen he pleads and begs, when he hears the answer. He gets quiet and it gets scary because he'll sit in one spot for house, not moving, not doing anything. He won't talk or listen, he's just like a lifeless doll. This boy is like that as well. Her smile falters, ”I mean that because dead things don’t talk, and they can’t hurt you anymore.” Although the scars and marks they leave burn far more brightly. When her mother dies it’ll hurt, and Cilla will probably hurt more then when her mother was alive, because those scars will go deeper and deeper, she’ll rip herself apart with guilt and self-loathing, because in the end she won’t be able to please her mother, she won’t be able to fulfill her dying wish.

It was curiosity and need that had her ask, ”so, are there any dead bodies that I could look at?” She isn’t quiet sure why she is asking that. But she needs a distraction and a one-sided conversation isn’t all that distracting. Besides, maybe if she gets him up and moving he’ll reveal some more about himself. There are secrets to be found in the simplest of things.

[gamemaker kelsier]

S O L

People really seem to enjoy saying that again and again and again that the dead could do no more damage simply because they were dead but that was the biggest lie that Sol had ever heard in the entirety of his existence. To think that the pain stopped and faded with the death of the person giving it was a childish thought. He knows first hand through his job and through experience that dead men do tell tales and so many that it was somehow always overwhelming.

The dead never leaved you alone, being dead only seemed to make their shouting louder, their colours more vivid than before even. Death turned the object of admiration into what they might have been instead of showing the one remembering what they were at the pint of death. Memory spun their hair into golden locks and their foot steps into butterfly kisses. Memory made them as beautiful as remembered and then some, it payed attention to the hands, the callouses, the odd joints where the fingers had been broken, the pinky that always moved into place with a click because she'd broken her finger in the third grade and it had never healed properly, the shortness of her nails, the wide variations of colours she'd paint them, the skin around the nail bed that she'd pick away when she got stressed, what she'd do with those hands, how they'd hold a weapon, how she would run them along his skin and hold him so tightly at night, how they felt when he wrapped his hands around her's, ho-

He scraped his nails along the underside of the wooden stool, gritting his teeth slightly as blood welled beneath his nail bed and his skin was torn under the pressure of it.

The problem was that dead things do talk, more than any mortal ever could hope to, a constant stream of whispering sometimes overlapped into his ears bringing him agony and torment and sorrow all at once. The dead do talk, showing the way they were killed through the dry and empty gashes on their body, telling about where they'd been through the scent that clung to their hair and clothing. The spit left on their lips by someone else telling exactly where they'd been and who with.

Luna had smelled of fresh spring grass, her lips had been numb, bland, cold, stained with the spit of a boy, her skin pale and thoroughly cried on, a giant gash in her chest where her heart once weakly pumped blood.

He'd never been the same since.

It wasn't just that the dead could still very much hurt you but the dead could kill too, slowly murdering with the sharpness of the memory of them alone, no weapons were needed other than the lash of their tongue, the pleading look in the memory of their eyes. Sol was a living product of this slow death, unable to care much about anything anymore other than the fact that Luna no longer existed and it was all because of him.

He wanted to laugh about the hope in her voice, telling him that freedom from pain came at death and he knew that was a lie and a half, unless it meant that his pain might be gone with his own death. He didn't believe in Ripred, never had and certainly didn't after Luna got cancer, even if she had always been a firm believer. The only reason he hadn't ended his own pain yet was because he was a coward who was too afraid to find out that there really was nothing next.

He might have laughed if he could remember to.

Instead, he lifted his newly bloodied fingertips up to his face to examine them almost absentmindedly. There was a half crescent of blood under each nail, he'd dug into the soft wood of the stool top so hard. It stung of course but it was a good kind of sting, a 'you're still feeling pain and therefore you must not be dead' kind of sting. His fingers would be fine but he would have to wear gloves.

Everything that Sol bothered doing was always meticulous, a tribute to the careful boy he had always been before. He found that if he focused hard enough on the few simple tasks he performed he could ignore the thudding pain beneath his rib cage for a moment or two, forget that he was burning alive at the stem. He pulled a fresh pair of latex gloves from his tool belt and pulled each one on, beginning with his left hand and pulling it tight until he thought maybe his fingertips would poke through. Then he moved onto his right hand and did the same and he remembered how to breath properly again as he performed the exaggerated movements.

Slipping off the stool, he slunk across the room and ran his hands along the drawers of bodies that the morgue held which were fewer than usual because it was only a Sunday morning. He could hear the freshest body, scratching away still, nails digging into the metal and pulling bits of it away in curls beneath the fingertips. He shuddered, twisting the key on that one, making sure the body could not escape. He still wanted to burn it but he wasn't allowed and that made him upset. He liked to burn bodies, to make them disappear. He just wanted to set them free.

His hand landed finally on a drawer holding a body that had been there a day or two. It was a sad case this one, a boy who's father had hated him because he'd wanted a daughter so he'd beat him within an inch of his life every day. One day the boy decided to run away and he had tried to but he had not made it far, his father had set up bear traps in the woods around his house. He had been caught and shot at, like a wild animal by his own father.

He pulled the drawer open, walking backwards to support the sudden weight change, knowing that the body on the metal was smaller than most. The evidence of his death was in the fact that half of his left leg was missing, the end of it a bloody ruin, not to mention the three bullet holes in his stomach. Still, in rest and death he managed to look peaceful, a boy that had finally done what he'd been trying to do all along, escape.

N o g r a v e c a n
hold my body down
I'll crawl home
t o h e r

[cass]

cilla rowe

He moves off the chair after having gazed at his fingers and she is curious as to why he gazed at them with an almost absent-minded intensity – as though he knew what he was seeing, but at the same time he didn’t. There was a light in his gaze, but also nothing, there was just this blackness— before slipping and moving away and towards a set of draws. She remembered when they had fought the way his body had ignited with passion and concentration, it was such a vast contrast to what she saw now. She liked that look, though, it reminded her of a dream, where you’d sit there and gaze at what was around you, but you’d never really notice it and then in one moment of knowing suddenly everything around you would brighten and you could see it all. There was no longer fog shrouding your vision, but instead clear and unobstructed clarity.

Those moments of purity were slipping away from her; she found that she only felt them in the most dire of situations, when she was moving through the house trying to avoid her dad, or when she was in the training centre hands wrapped around a weapon. Other then moments of energy, moments that sent her heart racing a million miles per hour she was a lifeless doll, she saw but she did not see.

So it was odd that the two times she had met this boy she had seen the world around her, she had observed with clearness and precision. The world had blurred itself out, sounds had not disappeared, instead it all seemed to increase and her heart fluttered in her chest, a caged bird beating against her ribs begging to be set free. There was something endlessly intriguing about the way he moved, about the way he looked and acted. He seemed devoid of life, but at times like when they had fought the world seemed to sped up and his life was something more then a pain filled terror (well, that was how she viewed it, he clearly was in pain and she simply assumed that anyone in any amount of pain wanted to escape it). There was just something about those robotic movements that caught her attention, there was a story beneath it all, there was a terrible tale to be told and this boy was awfully bad at hiding it.

He was like a broken doll, seems spilling from the edges for the world to see, whereas she, on the other hand was a china doll. She kept everything inside her the picture of perfection, but if you looked close enough you could see the cracks, but you only saw them for a fraction of a second before she stuck some plaster on it and mended it as best as she could. He was all open pain and hard edges, he was clearly broken and she highly doubted any short amount of time would mend it. But unlike him she was fragile you didn’t have to pull her apart bit by bit to break her all you had to do was drop her and she’d shatter and she was creeping closer and closer to the edge of the shelf. It wouldn’t be long before her father simply swept her away and she was flying through the air and falling to pieces on the ground.

She followed him, slipping off of the stool to stand by his side as the draw was pulled out. Her eyes briefly glanced in his direction, some part of her had thought that perhaps this would bring some spark of life to his otherwise emotionless face, but she saw nothing. So she quickly turned her attention to what was in front of her and she gasped. Before her lay a little boy, half a leg missing, and three holes in his stomach. After her initial shock she saw more of the story in front of her and her stomach twisted and her heart thrummed painfully in her chest. Bruises lined his skin, cuts and graze told a story she knew to well. It was the bruises beneath his eyes and the split lip that reminded her the most of what she had ran away from not ten minutes ago. Without thinking she took a step backwards, hand moving to her own face, feeling the sting and the burn of her father’s hit, knowing that the bruise on that boy’s face was an echo of what she also received. She felt the pain of a split lip, of the bitter taste of blood, of running and crying and begging her father to stop.

She felt his hands on her throat, the tightening, the way she struggled for air, the way his fingers left perfect impressions on her skin as they bruised the following day. She felt the boy’s fear, knowing all to well what he must have gone through. Was she going to end up like that one day? She tore her eyes away from his lifeless body, bile rising up in the back of her throat, she squeezed her eyes shut tightly, heart an echo of her terror. Her veins felt like lead, and even though they felt so heavy she could feel her body shaking. Hands clenched tightly by her sides, heart racing and breathing shallow and fear, oh so much fear as she fought back the images of her father.

Swallowing stiffly she turned away from the body, forcing her body to take in more oxygen, forcing her hands to move, forcing her body to react. For a moment she was lost in her memories and then there was reality and then there was remembering what she had ran from. Father would hurt her tonight, she knew it, and mother was no longer home to provide any form of protection whatsoever.

I mean that because dead things don’t talk, and they can’t hurt you anymore.

Liar.

Liar, liar, liar.

When mother died the scars on her body would be ripped apart and father would be there and he would be sad and angry and he’d have no one stopping him from hurting her. Mother wouldn’t be able to tell him that was enough. In fact he’d have free reign to do as he pleased, he’d be able to force his will upon them and hurt them and humiliate them and do whatever he wanted to get what they both had wanted. He’d have no reason to stop at sleeping her, that hadn’t gotten him much, he’d be able to torture Cilla to try and get results. ”Oh Ripred. Oh ripred.” Panic flooded her veins and suddenly breathing was impossible and she was choking on her own air.

And he’d have mother’s memories and wishes and he’d hurt her and yell at her and he’d scream at her brother. Then he’d hurt them some more and she couldn’t see an end, she couldn’t see any reason for him to let them go and be by themselves, she couldn’t see her father walking away and forgetting. When her mother died she was going to hurt even more and she was going to be thrown to the sharks. She pictured her mother lying on that draw, she pictured her father, she saw his looks and she saw the anger and the rage and the need to make his dead wife happy.

She saw his hands and she saw her blood.

She wanted to throw up.

Her legs buckled and she slid to the floor, trying her best to force air into her lungs and send those stars away from her blackening vision. Then all at once the air slipped through and into her lungs and she was a broken china doll once more, staring at the ground as though the world no longer interested her.

[gamemaker kelsier]

S O L

He did not mean to give her pain. He'd only wanted to make her understand that just because death comes along to take your hand it does not mean that the pain is over. The pain is never over. It latches itself to your skin and burrows so deep into your rib cage that becoming free of it is impossible without killing yourself for it. He knows that one day his life will end in tears and it will be sooner rather than later. He isn't strong enough to keep battling this parasite known as sorrow and he is vaguely aware of that.

Just waking up in the morning shouldn't be so painful but it is and where he might be strong in some things, he's been emotionally unbalanced his whole life. His mother used to say that he was sensitive and his father loved that in him, he said that it was important to be sensitive if one wanted to be a man. A man had to be strong, he had to be able to protect what he promised to, but he also had to be able to control his own emotions and Sol failed in those last two. He is not the man his father had wanted him to be. It seems that his best ability is hurting others.

He stays staring at the boy's body for a moment or two, eyes working up and down the chilled flesh, taking in every gash, every bruise. Cilla, the girl beside him slowly breaks down and he listens, familiar to the way it should sound. He feels the fabric of her dress brush against his arm as she turns away and the feeling of the fabric is exactly how he expected, slightly rough but soft, worn from a number of wears. nothing is new here, not even in District Two. The dress is lovely but worn, tired, like him and her.

Her shoulders are thin and they shake as her hands raise to cover her face as if she can go back to being five years old, pretending that nothing has happened, pretending it will all go away if she cannot see it. The problem with becoming an adult is that it won't go away, it will never go away and one is forced to bare witness whether they like it or not. A dull note of surprise sparks in the back of his brain, he didn't take her for one who would not like the sight of a dead body, especially when she had asked to see one herself. Her hair escapes her bun in little wisps and he could reach out to tuck one behind her ear but his hands are on the drawer door, relaxed over the top.

As she bends her head he notices a beauty mark or a freckle, light brown and barely there on her neck just under her hairline. He saves the memory of that for later, so that he knows it's there. It's important to know that the freckle is there, he doesn't know why it's so important but it is. His eyes roam her bare skin for more freckles but she wears long sleeves and he can't see anything because she is turned away from him and her chest is heaving and he wonders if she is crying.

He slides the drawer shut, feeling it lock with a click underneath his careful touch. He isn't good at comforting, he can't even comfort himself. He does not know why she is so upset, most likely by the state of the body he chose to show her. He showed her that one because he figured she was not afraid to see a body so mutilated, no one in their generation truly could be. Maybe he should have showed her the old lady who currently lived in drawer six. She had peacefully passed away in her sleep after murdering her daughter.

He heard it as she slid to the floor, the quiet sound her patent shoes made as they slid across the linoleum. Her hands were beside her, spread out as if they were drowning and her head was bent forward.

He took his gloves off finger by finger, watching intently as the latex slowly rolled off of his skin. He had always enjoyed the chalky feeling his hands had after wearing the gloves. Most people hated it because the latex made them sweaty but his own hands were not naturally clammy and he found ti rather bearable. He walked over to the rubbish bin beside the work counter and dropped them in, dead in the center so that they fell over top of a browning banana peel nearly perfectly. Then he untied his work apron, the silver tools in it clinking together as they were shifted about. They were sanitized and washed with loving care already, he didn't have to clean them again. He hung the apron on the peg that had his name beside the work station.

Slowly, as if approaching a rabid animal he approached the still figure of the girl, Cilla who had never been anything but vibrant and alive, trying to seep into the inkiness of Sol himself. He did not know what to do because his own vacant stare was little comfort to the girl who was so intently studying the tiles on the floor. He thought of what his mother might do. She would make a her a cuppa and then try to cut her hair for her because that's what she did as comforting. Somehow he didn't think cutting her hair right now would be welcome.

Slowly, he got down on his knees in front of her, nearly as close as they had been the other week when he had been ready to snap her neck clean in two. Uncertainly, he raised his hands, not really able to remember what he was meant to do with them but willing to try anyway. He remembered Luna. He couldn't comfort her the same way. He wasn't made for this. Why was he trying.

Hesitantly, slowly, he leaned forward and wrapped his arms around her, pausing slightly at the unfamiliar contact before he found that there was a soft 'shhhushhhhing' noise emerging from betwixt his lips. The scent of her was sharper now, the apples crisp in the air. Her stability was more fragile than he had thought. He was lost now, the ticking of the clock lost to his ears. He could only hear her breathing and himself.

N o g r a v e c a n
hold my body down
I'll crawl home
t o h e r

[cass]

cilla rowe

Amazingly it took only a short amount of time for Cilla Rowe to become aware of his presence on the ground beside her. It was surprise that stole her attention and tugged her away from the dark thoughts that had resided in her mind, which had dragged her down and onto the ground.it, generally, become an intense battle of her willpower, of her ability to pull herself out of the pain and move forwards. The struggle took time, it depended on her parents, it depended on her brother, it depended on herself. And putting all those factors together she generally suffered in her thoughts, thinking about it all, trying to find a solution that did not exist. Although times like this were rare she tried her best to fight them off before they came, she fought with smiles and vibrant grins, she fought with laughs and childish teases. She fought them away by pretending they did not exist in the first place, but this time she was someone she did not know and she didn’t know how to fix it.

Normally it required a little bit more effort, but the fact that this boy had even wasted a glance on her surprised her, especially seeing as all his looks had been devoid of all emotion. He was an empty doll, with nothing inside as though his movement were already recorded and he was simply meant to play them out as people wished. For a brief moment Cilla couldn’t remember why she had decided to sit on the floor, or why she was staring at the tiles, or why there was this boy beside her. But that was all she needed to grasp some resemblance of normality, a rope to begin the climb upwards. She became very aware of his presence, though, of the way he moved, of the fact that he seemed to have to think every single one of his movements through.

She became aware of the fact that the last time they had been this close his hands had been tight on that staff, the pressure of the weapon digging into her throat. He could have killed her, but she had spun around in, as much as it hurt, and he had moved away. Now this time he did not move away, instead he moved forwards and he stretched his arms out. Her breath caught in her throat and her eyes widened as his arms moved around her and he hugged her.

It was stiff, it was wrong and it felt incredibly weird, he felt out of place as though he actually didn’t know how to hug someone, but Cilla couldn’t say anything, hell she could hardly tell that the hug was weird, she couldn’t remember the last time someone had hugged her. Her father’s embraces were stinging slaps across the face, her brother’s were sharp words telling her to leave him alone and her mother’s were daggers dipped in poison. No, this was something entirely different, this was what she had felt as a little child nestled in her mother’s arms before she turned into a snake. This was the thing she missed, the attention she sought. This was a hug.

And with his embrace there was a sound, a sort of soft sound and she assumed it was supposed to be soothing, and she felt its touch, and her heart beat steadied and her breathing eased. Closing her eyes for a brief moment she simply breathed in the situation, his arms that were warm – so warm in contrast to the layers of dead around them, so strong compared to the fragile decaying bodies and so different to the last time they had had been near her. They weren’t fighting this time, there wasn’t tension and power and adrenaline, there was her on the ground a mess, and him on his knees with his arms around her.

”I’m okay.” She mumbled, she knew that all of this was probably something he wouldn’t normally do, hell the entire motion of comforting someone was probably something he hadn’t thought about since whatever happened to him. She was gathering that something bad must had happened, he wasn’t some immobile animal, he understood human emotions, he understood that she was upset, that she distant and dead, he knew that hugging was comforting, so he must have been something or someone before this. He was human, after all. She disentangled herself from his arms, offering him a smile, some of her previous colour shining in her eyes once more.

”Sometimes you’ve just got to force yourself to be happy.” She said, her eyes remained on him, staring at his crisp uniform, staring at the boy before her. She wish she could put a name to that face of his, but aside from that sound he had made he had spoken nothing, his actions spoke as much as the emptiness that was his voice. Gathering herself she stood, dress falling around her legs with the movement, swaying to the momentum. Her hair framed her face as she tilted it forwards to look at him once more.

This time her smile wasn’t forced happiness, it was genuine, it was real. ”Here, let me help you up.” She said, stretching out one slender arm and offering him an open hand. Callouses lined the skin, each and every one of them a mark of her hard work, each and every one of them a mark of her weapon of choice, from the one that sat on her fingers to her palm, from the ones that showed where the drawstring sat to where her dual katana kissed her skin. They were like his hands, in a sense, built from hard work, pain and suffering. But Cilla was sure that they were also completely different.

They were two entirely different people, after all. Two different people fighting two different wars.

[gamemaker kelsier]

S O L

The entanglement of arms is like a spider's web and he's a fly that willingly became entrapped. People don't write stories about suicidal flies like him because it's not something they think about. They don't wonder how the fly became trapped in the first place, how it was stupid enough to fly into the web of the spider that was waiting. They don't ask how the fly didn't see the trap that was purposefully laid just for it's wings to become caught. Falling in love is being a fly, going blindly forward, moving happily into it's own death.

He could say the web in front of him, the tendrils of the one he was still trying to escape from hanging off of his limbs, residue of the ghost he still clung to. He pulled his hands back, itching to wrap them around himself, wondering what it felt like to be wrapped in his own embrace. He didn't know what it felt like to receive a hug from himself. He had never asked Luna if he was good at it and she had never told him. He wondered what it was like being wrapped in the arms of a living corpse.

She tells him that sometimes one has to force themselves to be happy and he tries it for the briefest of moments, struggling to force it upon himself. It's like holding an empty gun up to the side of his head and pulling the trigger, there's no force behind it. The fire is out, it has been for ages. He clicks and clicks, finger pressing down again and again but there is no ringing shot, no burst of happiness, nothing. He doesn't know how to force himself to be happy, the emotion is no longer in stock inside of his brain, he's out of bullets. It isn't from lack of trying.

Maybe if he could remember what happiness was it would be easier.

He shuts his eyes, obediently attempting to force himself to be happy. Emptiness is what lives in abundance in the darkness of his head, when he shuts his eyes he only sees more of it. He concentrates, searching for the happiness that needs to be forced out of hiding. His eyebrows narrow with the effort and he clenches his hands into fists where they rest in his lap, searching for the happiness that both this girl and his mother are certain that can be inside of him.

Her head turns and her braid twists in response before he can stop it and she's smiling at him, a laugh tugging at the corners of her lips. It's Luna, standing right in front of him, if he reached out he could touch her and pull her into his arms, he could wrap himself up in her scent and recall for years the way she smelled after the intensity of training, how her eyes gleamed when she's come at him with a new move. He recalled the way her hands felt as she'd grab his wrists, holding him back so that he couldn't make it in to attack, how he'd shove against her force and they'd end up on the floor, entangled and her lips would move down to his neck and she'd fill him full of venom and wrap him p, saving him for later.

He opened his eyes and looked up at Cilla, taking the proffered hand in his and letting her pull him up off of the floor. Her hands were not soft and smooth like his mother's but tough and stained with the same intensity that his hands were. They were the hands of someone who held weapons for a living, someone who not only held them but knew how to use them. For a moment he held on, standing there in silence, concentrating on the feel of her hand against his. Then, quietly, he let go and stepped backwards.

Her eyes were no longer empty, filled up somehow again. He wondered how she did that, where she got her fuel, how it was renewable.

He gazed down at the tiles in front of his feet, as mute as before, less electric now that she seemed alright again. It was as if the activity of trying to comfort her had drained him worse than any training session. Maybe it had. He could find the pattern of Luna's freckles in the tiles in front of him and connect the dots there to form lips, a nose, the curve of her eyes. With his defenses down, she had invaded again and he watched as blood pooled on the ground, dripping from the heart of the girl he had loved. It pooled at his feet and he stood in the inky stickiness, eyes fixated on the flow of it.

Cilla's presence in the room was forgotten, Luna was all encompassing, silently demanding his attention in death even more so than she had in life.

N o g r a v e c a n
hold my body down
I'll crawl home
t o h e r

[cass]

cilla rowe

He’s an odd one, she decides as she continues to watch him.

And this notion doesn’t really slip into her mind as an idea of him until now. Not before when he was fighting her, not when he was sitting on the ground, not when he slapped a band-aid on her arm. Not from the moment she realised he simply didn’t want to speak, but when he grabbed her hand and pulled himself up it was like he tried to take her advice. It was like for a moment he put everything he had into trying to be happy. She saw it from the way his hands clenched, from the way this energy just seemed to roll off of him. It was nice to see, because it made Cilla realise that beneath it all, beneath this sad exterior was a lively person, was someone with soul and life and a will to live.

It was just hidden behind a wall.

It was when he failed to look up and offer her a smile that she decided that, yes; he was pretty damn weird even by her standards. Surely his family must be completely different to hers then? Someone like him couldn’t be the product of abuse, so she was curious to know more about him, but his muteness was going to make it difficult no matter what – that being the least of her worries, his totally inability to respond to the world was a little bit more problematic.

But these thoughts were hesitant, she could hardly talk, she herself was exceptionally weird. Hadn’t she been the one to charge in with a staff – a weapon she was hardly familiar with – and strike at him? Hadn’t she been the one to run in here break down and ask to see dead bodies? She could hardly talk, but he had done none of those things, instead he had remained as this impassive thing, coming to life for a few moments before retreating back into his shell.

The fight and the energy slipped away as quickly as it had come and she saw the tension leave his shoulders and his gaze remained on the tiles before him. It was glued to a fixed spot and for a moment she wondered what on Earth he must be seeing. He was looking at something she could not see, he was in some memory she did not know and she was unwilling to break it. She knew what it was like to suffer from things like this; she knew what it was like to see things you didn’t like. So she knew that those eyes were watching something horrible, something that was probably the cause of everything that he had become.

Cilla stared at him for only a moment longer, a delicate smile, hinting at a knowing look crossed her features. He would not see that smile; in fact he would not notice her as she left. But she knew that it was time she left, she had stayed to long. And even though the idea of going outside and back out there scared her she couldn’t hide down here forever. The longer she remained hidden away the angrier her father would get, therefore the crueller he would be. So it was both fear and acceptance that drove her to step forwards, and gently touch his shoulder, like some sentimental farewell. It was fear that made her turn and slip out of the room, shutting the door softly behind her.

It was fear that had her moving, because oddly enough running was far scarier then facing her father’s wrath. He’d find her if she ran, he always did and she was scared of what he’d do if she waited any longer. So in the end she returned back to the person she always was: a coward. This way the pain would be less and maybe tomorrow night she’d be able to sleep, she doubted she’d get any tonight. But that was the way it went and she was in no position to try and run away from it or change it, she didn’t have the strength to fight him or the will to even try.

She was a scared little girl trying to fight a war she had no hope of winning and behind her was a boy fighting and looking just as much the loser as she did. Two peas in the same pod and yet she was turning her back on him, and she hated her reasoning for it, she hated the fact that part of her truly believed that this was what would help him and the other part of her new it was because she couldn’t bare to stand the consequences of waiting any longer.

Her father would strike her again and again and he’d beat her and she’d have this guilt gnawing at her stomach, but it wouldn’t be as bad as if she’d chosen to stay.

Oh Cilla, you’re just a coward, aren’t you?

[gamemaker kelsier]

S O L

Somehow he cannot bear the thought of living anymore. The idea of going to sleep and waking up in the morning to repeat the same everyday actions makes his stomach sink. The weight of living has turned him into something crooked long before his time and he is broken by it, he is destroyed.

He emerges from the haze of memories nearly an hour after Cilla left, glancing up as a new body for the morgue is rolled into the room and left there, clip board resting on top of the subject's sternum, just waiting for the marking of his pen and he wonders how long ago Cilla left and if she said anything and if she was alright.

Carefully, Sol walks over to the peg that has his name on it and unhooks the apron he put there what feels like only minutes ago. It sags into itself, tools clinking together as he shifts the pristine white fabric. It only has a slight weight to it, the tools themselves not too heavy but in some ways it is entire career in the pockets of an apron and he wonders about that, whether he is needed or not for the job that he has, or if anyone with an apron like his could come in and do it instead.

He puts a fresh pair of gloves on, going through the same motions he has gone through hundreds of times with such interested patience that one might forget his age. He's like a three year old with dead fly, pulling on each separate finger like the child mentioned plucking the legs and wings off of the dead bug. There's only so much of a space of time that he can fill before he has to get back to the task at hand. It isn't that he doesn't like his job, or that he has a problem with dead bodies, he just knows who's under the sheet in front of him before he's even began.

He wants to put off the moment of discovery for as long as he possibly can.

He picks the clipboard up anyway to read the information on the patient, pulling back the sheet with one gloved hand as he does so, revealing the pale white face of the girl he knew would be under these sheets. He can't help wondering when he started getting nightmares in the daytime as he looks at the dead lips of the girl he once loved, who's ashes are definitely in his closet. Her hair is cropped, a disarray from when she cut off her braid all those months ago, she's been 'missing' for so long now, it's nearly been a year but every single time the body of a teenage girl comes in it's always, always Luna, without fail.

He documents her body and notices the differences this time, how this time she dies of a lung disease instead of cancer and a blade to the heart, how this time her freckles are only on the tops of her shoulders and not all over, how this time her nails are clean and long instead of bitten to the quick. This isn't Luna laying on this gurney in front of him, the body he documents belongs to someone else entirely but it is Luna all at the same time. It's always Luna, every single body, every voice, every step, it's always Luna.

She's dead and he can't let her go.

He writes the cause of death down in neat little printing after he's cut the body open and examined her thoroughly. He is very careful to not get any blood on the sheet because the nurses hated the blood and so did he. He liked his work to be neat, he liked his life to be neat but it wasn't. Nothing ever was.

Before he slid the girl's body into one of the drawers he kissed her forehead and told her goodnight.

He stood in the center of the room, wondering about whether or not he should go home or if he should just climb into a drawer and sleep there for the night, with the dead for his neighbors. Something about the thought of doing so sent shivers down his spine, it would be comforting. They wouldn't look at him and they would be quiet. they would be dead and they would stay dead. He wished sometimes that Luna would stay dead too.

She was waiting for him, the ghost of her was, out in the hall. She had promised to follow him home and gift him another sleepless night where she cried and cried and cried and he drowned in her tears and then the sun would rise.

He turned off the lights before he left for the night.

N o g r a v e c a n
hold my body down
I'll crawl home
t o h e r