promised me :: [dars] :: the world

[eulalie blake 1a 🍒 tris]

BETTE

CHAUTIN

When I was a child, I could run away from it all.

I would dash away from the fickle fingers of fate, away from the boy who promised me the world and offered so much more, and to the doorstep of my cousins' home. No one would judge me, and no one could hate me, for I was just a child - a stubborn, selfish, idiotic little child.

Tiger and I would build forts with pillows and thick blankets as children. Artemis and Ariadne would slumber while we giggled beneath the veil of our very innocence, making shadow-puppets with our frail hands and crafting scary stories with our delicate lips.

"You and Dustyn are really cute together," Tiger would say eventually, her wild curls framing her mischievous face. "Are you ever going to give him a chance?" she'd go on, causing me to laugh and shove against her with a shake of my head.

"No, no. I don't like him like that, Tig!" I would squeal, a laugh dripping from my lips as to mask the lie. Tiger would roll her eyes, whacking me with a pillow, before a smirk would begin to dance upon her lips.

"What if I wanted to be with him?" she would question, and serious or not, I'd find my features tensing. I'd run a hand through my personal raging sea of gold, and with a smile and an adjustment of my composure, I'd laugh.

"Don't push it, Tig."

---

Childhood fades.

It truly does, and this I swear. Because I can't escape it anymore, I can't hide from my mistakes or run from my fears. The world's tired of me. The game's over and I'm a fucking loser. I was the master, the leader, the childish girl who had the whole world in her fucking hands - now I'm a joke, a joker. No one wants me, no one needs me.

I'm falling apart. 

Dustyn hasn't spoken to me since the reaping, and as much as I try to analyze and calculate everything within my head, I can't blame him. I messed up, and it's my own fault. I took a piece of his offer of the world, but in return, I gave him nothing. 

It's my fault, my fault, my fault -  I've fucked everything up.

And, as if I haven't already hit the ground, I've just taken another hammer to the heart. Tiger's head tumbles off of her shoulders in the moment the boy from Eleven charges with his blade. My sisters scream, Mama and Daddy gasp, but I only shiver as a chill creeps up my spine.

That's one less friend, that's one less anchor.

I'm the first to bolt up from my seat, and though the logical answer would be to dash off to my room and lock myself away, I find myself exiting my house on charging feet. It's windy, and the sky is dark. My hair blows around my face, the wind singing a song with lyrics that are laced with poison.

I'm panting by the time I reach Dustyn's house, just a short walk away, and it takes every ounce of courage within my being to unlatch his gate and trudge to the grassy area below his bedroom window. 

He doesn't want you, y'know? Get away, get away, get away - voices scream within my head.

I watch as images of him leaving me alone in the forest mix in with flashes of Tiger's head tumbling onto the dry ground, and swooping down and picking up a pebble, I muster every ounce of childhood courage that I have left within me. I sling it with all my might, watching as it collides with his window, as his light flickers on.

I can't stop, and before I know it, I'm slinging pebble after pebble after fucking pebble -  "Dustyn, please? Please?! I can't do this alone," I shriek, and I fall to my knees as harsher images flow into my mind. Not images of being abandoned or images of death, but images of a girl playing with a boy using wooden swords and images of two cousins laughing away the darkness of the  corrupted world that they live in.

(I'm Bette Chautin, and I should be the girl getting prepared for her funeral - Tiger should be craving Dustyn's arms, not me. I wish I was dead.)

I'm Bette Chautin, I've fucked up and I've shattered and I've lost it all - and I need you right now, o' boy who promised me the world.

 

X

 

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

DUSTYN

CHASE

She was dead.

She was dead, she was dead, she was D E A D dead, and she was gone forever.

He remembered all the times she would tag along with Bette and himself, all the times they played in fictional arenas, all of them slaying invisible foes and always being the last three standing. But Tiger was always the winner. Every time, every single game, she won.

So why did she lose the only time it really mattered?

He saw it on the television in his room. Before it happened, everything had been going so perfectly, the careers making a game of the lower districts like the ones they played as children, then he blinked. Just one time, and there was no drawing a line between life and death, there was no time for her to escape, because she was dead in the time that it took for a single blink. Just one hit, and she was no longer a person, but an empty body.

She was probably being cleaned up in the Capitol now, only to be shipped back to Two where everyone would attend a funeral and talk about how loved she was, and how unfair life had been to her, and a bunch of bullshit, because she wanted this opportunity. They all did. He had begged them to look past the games, all of his friends, but it was the one thing they were raised to love more than themselves.

He laid in his bed, wishing Bette would come storming in and jump on him like she always did, wishing he could take back the words he spat at her the day in the woods. He hadn't meant it. He could never, never hate Bette. He realized that the only thing he hated was that she was probably right in saying they would destroy each other, their love a ticking time bomb that would eventually go off and then they would both only be left with pain.

But she never came. Her door never swung open, he smile never graced his baby blue eyes, so he stayed in his room and waited, waited, waited for a moment he eventually began to accept wasn't going to come.

Then there was a noise at his window. Far too hard to be an animal banging into the clean glass, far precise to be a tree branch. Another sound, and another, and he found himself too curious not to see what the source was. He flicked his bedroom light on (lately the light had been giving him headaches,) and then walked over to his window.

The sight of her was more than he could handle, especially the crumbled, teary, broken state she was currently in as the blonde hair he loved so much fell into glossy eyes and her bottom lip trembled.

He had pictured a much, much better reunion after the fight, perhaps some emotions, but definitely not this. But then again, he had not expected to see one of his closest friends decapitated, either. He swallowed back he knot that was causing his eyes to cloud over with tears, and rubbed his face as a wake up call. "Bette? Are you okay?" Even as he asked, he knew the question wasn't necessary. Of course she wasn't okay! How could she be okay?

"Hold on, I'm coming down,"

 

X