water damage ☔ francelva

[Deleted]

frances ;

Wringing my wrists I sit cross legged on the ground, a few of us sitting around a television like it's a religious cult; shit. 

How'd it get so bad? 

I don't know these girls. I don't know them or care about them and I thought I could actually get over this shit, I thought I could let Jasmine go and I thought I could actually fucking care about myself and Lucy was the first one that grabbed my hand back. I don't blame them, I'm a cunt and all but I just. I thought it was different for a good day, Elvaina tried to help me and everything. 

(Breathe girl,) it'll be okay. 

It's gotta be. 

("Uuuuh, hey, Lucrez- Lucy. Yeah") 

("Holy shit Frances,") 

I don't know why I cared, why she cared. Why Elvaina cared to begin with, I don't know, but I guess I never have huh. It's been six days when she got in and she's done okay, at least when it comes to not being fuckin' dead. The only one from our district died, Stevie something, and he seemed to matter to her on some level which is. Strange. Thought she didn't like drug dealers, or maybe she just didn't like me. Each day has been a sort of blur. Just like it was last year, and the year before that and I pull the sweater ends around my fists. 

("Maybe, just maybe, you can actually seem like you care for once.")

Shit, I don't wanna feel like this, my stomach in my throat and tasting every beat of my heart; ("what the fuck do you think I'm here for?") My hands clenched in my grey sweater and I wipe the red of my eyes, sitting cross legged on the wooden floor - I don't want to lose her and I know she doesn't care about me but it still fucking sucks. 

It's a different type of pain then losing Jasmine. She's still circulating out there somewhere, my baby sister ginger hair and freckled skin and my love is still out searching for her but Lucy. I know where she is, and I know I won't get her back. Every second of the day I can check where she is, and I still can't talk to her, interact with her. A translation of her cold shoulder through a television screen, I'm fucked.

How do I always get here - Elvaina sits on the couch, eyes focused on the screen and I truly thought I was getting better because of her. That she actually was gonna help me and I feel so fucking stupid. The district eight guy holds Lucy's soul in a sword's length, ”Tell me Machaon, is it worth it? Is it really worth it?”
I grimaced at the first cut in her skin, but when haven't I. It's numbing. He slices her ear and I almost wanna laugh, as if she ever listened. But when did I either. 

("I don't know frances, reminding me how fucking stupid I am? because I already know, but thanks.")

This shouldn't be numbing. I never caught up in the other years, with Jeq and Amerika. There wasn't anything to care about, I didn't feel guilty or sad or angry, I just felt Frances. I felt lonely and I painted over grey areas of my walls while my sisters died and kept dying and I didn't care and here the fuck I am for once. I hold my own hand, Lucy's blood running down her jawline. 

("I'm really fucking trying here lucy,"

"It doesn't feel like it.")

I watched every day, not every moment I could. Just whenever I had time to spare. Lucy and I we never really liked each other, and I know this, and I watched as she cradled Percy and when her ally killed the inbred one in the feast, and it's weird actually putting effort into keeping up with somebody you care about dying. My hand wrapped under blankets at summer nights hoping the gods let her live one more day, it's crazy. It feels exactly like Jasmine all over again. 

It feels exactly like I fucked up again.  

("Why don't you just go.") 

Fuck. 

Why don't you just go, I should've done something different. I clench my fists again, biting my nails into sweater fabric, fuck. My knuckles still stinging from contact of them and her nose, ("FUCK YOU,") it echoed in the room, a peacekeeper opened the door and escorted me out and I left. And she fucking hates me and I asked for it in a way. 

And it burns. Tears boiling and choking and I don't want to fucking feel like this, I cough into my palm - ”Where do you think home is?”

”I’m not sure. All I know is that it is anywhere but here,”
and I hope she thought of me. And at the same time I kinda hope she didn't, because hell if I could choose I wouldn't be here right now. "FUCK YEAH," her sword glides between the joint of his knee cap and his thigh and I let out a victory screech for my dying sister, she can do this, "she can-,"

"I probably deserved that,"

And he still breathed on the hell crag's floor, bloody and dirty and "fuck," oh fuck. Oh fucking hell, no no no no, "no," a gasp of adopted sisters and the water damage of one more fucking funeral. One more death and one more empty room, it all flashes by in a single second and she hates me, Lucy hates me and I killed her and I fucking watched her die and she died hating me and

I didn't hate Lucy, I didn't. I hold my hands and my shaking eyes and stinging knuckles, she's dead, and I remembered why I never cared about Jeq or Amerika or Lucy or Elvaina or anybody but myself. A ginger head and freckled cheeks and two pair of emerald eyes and a man sits us down, a brown leather chair and young kids - we didn't fucking know. "Jasmine and Frances Eckhart, I regret to inform you both of the passing of your parents." 

I can't keep doing this, Elvaina, I can't keep- Elvaina. I watch her peel herself from the leather couch and "Elvaina," Elvaina no, I need her. I can't lose Jasmine again, I can't keep going through this shit, "Elvaina, wait!" Fuck. 

It was supposed to be better than this. 

I was supposed to be better than this. 

table inspired by rook

[я𝑜𝓈𝑒]

ELVAINA ECKHART

♫

a rapid bolt will rend the clouds apart

We do not regain the things we lose. It is something I learned long ago.

I hardly cry anymore, despite the constant, gaping hole that seems to burn wider and wider every day. This pain is not the kind to weep over, not anymore. It is an agony far too deep to be pushed out by tears. I used to cry all the time — I cried and I cried and I cried until my lungs shriveled up and the air choked me as if it was tar. I cried until I learned that tears amount to nothing, that even if I spilled an ocean from eyes, it would not bring my sisters back. I cried until there was nothing left.

And now? And now I look at myself in the mirror, bruise-like shadows under my empty, empty eyes, and wonder why, until I remember that cruelty is without reason. Why did I lose my sisters? Not because I deserved it, not because they did. But because death, cruelty, is a random force that does not discriminate between those who are deserving and those who are not.

For no reason, no reason at all, my family was chosen. And now I lay with a broken body, tired, hollow — a shell — wishing that it could end somehow. Sometimes I feel like a walking, breathing void, a black hole expanding into nothing. And sometimes I get so used to the knife in my heart twisting and twisting and twisting and the heavy weight pulling my body to the floor that it numbs me and it's like I feel nothing at all.

It would be bliss, to be devoid of anything, to not feel as if I am walking on a tightrope, slowly teetering off the edge of suicidal. I would rather be heartless, feel nothing at all, than suffer any longer.

I've forgotten what day it is — the fifth or sixteenth maybe, a Monday or a Friday. Days blur into one another like a mess of one of Rey's oil paintings, and time is just a minor detail, like the background noise of a television full of static. Days weeks months, they are all the same to me, blurred into the back of mind.

I don't know how long Lucy has been gone. I just know that it hurts.

"Where do you think home is?" Machaon Amador asks her before tearing open her flesh once more with his blade. But my sister does not scream as the blood spills, sputters from the wound horrendously, though the impact nearly sends her knees breaking into the stone floor.

"I'm not sure. All I know is that it is anywhere but here."

And that is it. That is when I know it is over. Her breaths have been reduced to shallow gasps as her desperate grip on the earth slowly slips away from her and pools onto the rock beneath her. My gaze is glued to her eyes, searching for something, anything in them.

There is only death.

That is all there has ever been, for as long as I can remember. My parents are gone, though maybe it's better that they are. They were cold-blooded killers, breaking skulls with bullets and then kissing over their bloody victory. Elettra and I have found only skeletons of their memory — we will never really have them.

Jequirity is gone. She was the first go go. One swift movement of Daria's blade across her neck and she was gone, one blur of crimson and she was gone. Just. Like. That. Cut like a fragile thread.

And then it was Amerika. And now it is Lucy's turn.

Death.

That is all there is.

I refuse to look at the television screen when she falls. But when the cannon fires —

BOOM! —

I know that it is final. And though I knew, from the moment she said those words — "I volunteer!" — that is was over, somehow the sound of the cannon just pours salt in the wound Lucrezia opened up, makes her sentence more final.

Because now there is no hope.

(Was there ever?)

Because now she is really coming home.
In a box.

Moments after the cannon fires, I am frozen in my seat, my sisters all around me. I feel some of their eyes burning into my skin, probably wondering how fragile little Elvaina will react, staring at me like I'm a ticking time bomb. (Because I am, I really really am.)

One I'm getting up, two I'm on my feet and my knees are trembling beneath the weight of the world, three I can't fucking think straight, four why am I still alive? ("Elvaina!") five I'm running up the stairs ("Elvaina, wait!") six I can't breathe seven my eyes are staring out the window of my room, searching for my sisters somewhere in the stars but the sky is dark and it's cold and I'm alone eight death would be easier, wouldn't it? nine I'd rather feel nothing at all than feel like this ten I —

I whip around to face Frances, her hair ruffled from following me up the stairs and down the corridor. There are no tears in my eyes when I look at her — I've grown too hollow to cry. I haven't cried since — my wrists seems to sting at the thought — no, I should forget about that. My body almost has.

Half of me wants to say nothing; the other half wants to scream until the house shakes from the magnitude of my voice.

So I find a compromise.

"I don't know what you think you would find here," I tell her. There is nothing but death in me, in my room — my eyes flicker to the pieces of the smashed violin I have yet to clean up. Frances should know by now that you can't fix something that isn't broken. I'm not broken, I'm just a hollowed out shell of someone so far from who I was before that the old Elvaina hardly a memory in my head. She is more of a distant idea, slowly crumbling in my mind like everything else.

i tell you this. i want it all to hurt