Broken Clocks [Anarcha/Glamour/Leon]

[cameron]

a n a r c h a

“You don’t know what it’s like to fight,” he spits out those words like the bitterness is overbearing on his tongue, and I watch from the ground beneath as he begins to laugh. He grows taller with the darkness that melts across his face, distorted and now altogether unrecognizable. I try and push myself up but my hands won’t gain traction, can’t manage to follow my simple instructions of get the fuck out and soon he looms over me and Peridot, me and the diamond-in-the-rough boy, me and my only remaining brother, and Wednesdae continues to grow. His menacing laughter booms through the bleakness of Tartarus. The wind is strong but his roars blow the wind back home, frightened by his might, and he steps closer to my brother, closer to my protector, closer to my star, and I want nothing more than to scream out and stop it but nothing escapes the prison of my lips, shut tight and unwavering against me. “You don’t know what it’s like to feel.” For a moment I am Peridot Myler, cracked diamond, still perfect through imperfections, untouched, a reflection of all I know. I am the shell Wednesdae thinks I am. The air is sour around us, and again I am Aria, the contents of the shell, the crab seeking shelter, together whole but destined to be apart and alone. Wednesdae turns to me and lunges, a streak through his blurring face that must be a smile as he brings his sword down and I am defenseless in its warpath. His monstrous head peels away layers before me in the seconds it takes for him to attack, the broken clock of his still ticking out of time, these few seconds hanging on for their last breaths of life. What’s left of him when Learna Libertine’s broadsword tears into my flesh is bone, nothing but bone, and his skeletal grin finally drags the sound from the pits of my soul, there in Tartarus, and as my eyes open wide, unblinking and sore, I see the heads of Cerberus rise from his shadow.

I let myself blink after a minute of straining to see through translucent pools. What is flushed from my eyes creeps down my cheeks. Unfamiliar. Chilling. Moonlight washes the room in the warmth of white. The stark walls are clean and clear and empty. The way I like my mind. A time when that was achievable seems like another life. An eon that slipped through the cracks of the earth, slid between my fingers and dissipated into the nothingness everything else becomes. A sense of peace dances around my bed, not quite partnering with me. Taunting like Wednesdae has so many nights before. Never tangling for more than a quick two-step that I crave to sneak into a waltz, to hijack her motions and meld into her pirouettes. Extended legs and lofty leaps entrance me. Something so close yet never truly there, a pipe dream if ever there were. Eighteen years of dreams, all variations of the same sequence of events. Eighteen years of watching the demons I released into the world, demons that never would have crawled out of the trenches where they idled in children’s souls if not for me, that were never laid to rest, that continue to haunt and to smolder in my heart and bear down on my chest, that thrive on the absence of life. The dancer folds over and vanishes. Everything leaves eventually.

Sentimentality comes with age, I’m told. I disagree with most general public assertions, but I find it hard to combat the truth of that with anything but examples of my increased wistfulness. My ever-growing yearning for a yesterday that cannot return from its grave. A time when I retreated to my penthouse with nothing but power lapping at my heels instead of the rats of my rage, of my rotting heart, nipping at each other, ripping apart their own siblings to have their piece of Anarcha Bentley, their piece of a woman long since tired of enduring this vapid shitshow of existing. I am tired.

Vita mutatur, non tollitur. Life is changed, not taken.

I can’t help but feel mine was taken, like who I am was plucked up like the corpse of a Tribute, gathered with no care whatsoever by a giant metal claw in the sky, snatched and destroyed. It suits me to go through this, and I deserve it, for putting those two dozen through it, for sending claws down to drag bodies away from their death place, for disturbing their absolution of peace; and now I long for everything I stole, everything I stripped them.

Life is easier in black and white. Easier when boundaries are set and everything has its order. When everything makes perfect sense and morality is a foreign concept. Gray’s a different story. A different author - an angry, benevolent one with a penchant for putting her characters through hell three times over. That author fucking hates me, and she’s made sure I know. Scenes added, scribbled along the binding, just to unleash a storm that rivals my transgressions. My lines cut, leaving me speechless. Defenseless. My best weapon incapacitated without warning. I don’t know how to live with the world in gray. I’m supposed to be tough as nails. I am reputed as such, anyway, and I’ve maintained the ideation. But with each passing year I find myself bent. I find the hammer never strikes head on. That it keeps chipping away at the wood around me, mashing my edges and twisting me into the most uncomfortable angles. The brunt of the swings never hits me the way I expect. I am the dancer, but my peace cannot be realized. I dance to stay alive; I do not dance to live.

Gray world dulls me. Keeps the oxygen from my flame. I haven’t really danced in ages. Not since Glamour Kinkade spent his waking hours wrapped tight around my body like the unforgivable sin of spandex. And if anyone could pull off that nasty synthetic elastiblend it would be him. He who can be human and Gamemaker in tandem, who can play god and fear him, revere him. What a sad story mine is, to pine for the lover I set free, to hold highly the man who once esteemed me. His fire kept the gray from smothering me, and I was above it, was above his considerations and his time and his passion. Now my back has buckled from the weight of the world, from the gravity of existence forcing me down to kiss its feet. And I know he could have protected me.

Now he protects His Victor, not Ours. Ours hides in my head instead of taking on his responsibilities, and I don’t blame him. I’d choose to haunt me for eternity, too. Rooting for his crowning meant a death sentence for everyone else around him, and how is that anything you wish on anyone? Glamour has always been so capable of appearing both weak and powerful, fearful and mighty. He tries to mask it with his confidence and his joie de vivre, but his vulnerabilities are tenfold and they always have been. I’ve managed to waver from one extreme to the other. The scales tipped in favor of anyone-but-me. From trembling at my name to confusing it with a pop star’s. From the life everyone dreamed of to stuck living in a nightmare. I am the unknown. I am the siren atop her cliffs, untouched on the outskirts of the wine dark sea. I am waiting for my time to return, and it’s been too long to give up now. Something’s gotta change. Vita mutatur and all.

It’s just reaching dawn when I throw my legs out of bed. The city sleeps on, but the day doesn’t start without me. I’m still Anarcha Fucking Bentley. I run the world.

News updates begin coming through as I tilt the first bottle of the day over, filling my glass to a reasonable centimeter below the rim. There’s a new cat breed that makes your hair grow thicker. I sip my champagne and flip to the next headline with a flick of my hand. The new Tributes have arrived at the Training Center. Interesting. My eyes linger on the hologram projecting in my kitchen, watching the replay of so many death sentences, celebrated and heralded as celebrities. Across the Capitol, there will be parades and parties, an endless assortment of festivities for these kids who will never see any of this again. Some call them lucky for being allowed inside the Capitol at all. Some call them lucky for an easy way out. I call them hopeless. I, too, am hopeless. I am tired. I am confused.

Leaning on my golden piano, I flip to the next headline, hoping for something not about the Hunger Games. For something that won’t dredge up more unwanted emotions. To my chagrin, a far too familiar face appears from the light. He’s looking dead at me, a specter after the remnants of my soul, and the audio comes out as mush. His face is inches from mine, so close that I could reach out and smudge his eyeliner, ruffle his hair and touch his fucking face. I want to tell him it will be okay. I want to protect him the way I refused of him. Glamour’s hologram quickly turns into someone else. Someone more put-together. My gut sinks, and I know Snow wouldn’t do this without consequences. The words still miss my ears, loitering by the lobes, catching the 5:30 train out of town and never coming back, but it doesn’t matter. I know what’s going on. That headline fades into the next: the newest fashion trend is neon duct tape. Glad I missed that one. I wave off my Pixie, and the projection ends.

I have to help him. The words won’t leave my mind, keep buzzing in and out of focus, a bee returning for more pollen. I have to help him. I am not a helper. I do not build. I do not create. I am destruction. I wreak havoc wherever I go. My name inspires rebellion, brings about war. But today I am not that cherry bomb. Today I am proving something to Wednesdae Drummond. Proving I do know how to feel, and I most definitely came ready to fight. I feel. I feel. I feel.

I feel my hands push the doors away, feel my head pass under the frame as my feet lift me into the training center. I feel the rush of nostalgia, of adrenaline that shoots me like a cannon, knocks me from my ship and into the rough waters of the sea. I am here. I am where I never should have been again. I am tossed in the waves, and I am marching my way right up to where I knew he would be. His face before me is not a projection, but I don’t smudge his liner. I know my voice will stir him. “It seems like you need me back, pup.” I breathe in. “So, I’ll be doing the honors.” A second or two passes and my heart works overtime, pumping enough blood to fill up the bloodbank and all its fountains. My knees are locked, my fingertips ice. I hide it well enough.

“At your wedding.”

ooc: Baby Wessex d9b [earthling] анзие (Anz)

[Baby Wessex d9b [earthling]]

[googlefont="Roboto Slab: 400;"]

if we don’t fuck this whole thing up

One would expect nothing could surprise Glamour Kinkade any more. Not after his upbringing. Not after his variously successful stints at Gamemaking. Not after being cast out of society for years. Not after falling in love with forbidden fruit. Maybe that was the source of his weakness: he perpetually believed everything would work out in his favor, and thus rarely anticipated the twists of life.

So when his Penthouse door opened, admitting someone who had the proper credentials, he thought only to be annoyed. Surely it was some junior Gamemaker, come to pull him back to work - after he'd explicitly taken this evening off. This last evening of peace before what was sure to be the greatest test of his life. If he didn't get everything about this Quell perfect, that was it. No more Gamemaking. No more high society accolades, no more hefty paycheck. He would be forced into early retirement, and then what good would he be to anyone - most especially to Leon?

So it was not without cognition of his own selfishness that he hurried along their nuptials. The sooner he tied himself to Leon forever, the sooner he could breathe easier. Not even the President could tear asunder something as spiritual as marriage.

He hoped.

Glamour stood in his expansive closet, turning this way and that, admiring his figure in the mirror. The white suit fit perfectly, but somehow wasn't perfect. Was it too plain? Too traditional? "I hate it," he groused to Leon before turning to an avox. "I guess you'd better bring whoever that is back here."

He adjusted his cuffs down. No, too stuffy that way. He folded them back, looked up into the mirror and found his gaze clashing with Anarcha Fucking Bentley's. “It seems like you need me back, pup. So, I’ll be doing the honors. At your wedding.”

"How did you - " he began to ask to the reflection, and then his jaw locked up. There's something he's supposed to say, before just spouting off like that to his mistress. No. Not his. Not his for a very long time. His arms went limp at his sides as he slowly turned. "Nevermind. We weren't really planning to have guests."

He paused, trying to find some strength in his backbone. Anarcha, who had always undone him. Anarcha, who knew just how to dominate, how to make everything - sex, life, the Games - interesting. Anarcha, who had become something of a ghost in the last decade, and even more legendary in her own absence. He sighed. "But as always, you need no invitation. Just promise me you aren't going to recount any embarrassing stories. What do you think, lover?"

Glamour shifted his gaze hesitantly from her to Leon, eyebrows drawing together. "Shall we get married tonight?"

guaranteed, i can blow your mind
-dua lipa-

[анзие (Anz)]

[googlefont="Carrois Gothic SC:400;"]

come on someone take off your mask

Leon goes through the motions of dolling up that day, his mind only half on the soft suits in varying shades of pale blue that Jizav had privately sent him despite the hours of work a Games requires. Any reasoning behind Glamour's insistence at hurrying along the ceremony is lost on him; the most he can comprehend is simply that their engagement has been drawn out for years now -- three, maybe four. It isn't a surprise, if he considers the timeline.

How things have changed since that day -- his mind, once a twisting, hissing nest of poisonous snakes, now purrs in the presence of his careful lover. Leon's since settled into the role of Glamour's betrothed, as half of a pair. He's come to expect variations on the question of date and time and place at every social gathering. He knows they want to know.

It's why he wants the real thing to be quiet. He wants none watching but the overseer who would bind them into lawful marriage, who ties the knot around their wrists and would witness their softly spoken vows, who would decree them one. In marriage, they would not only be half of a pair, but half of a whole.

Then, and only then, the circus may come and Leon can withstand the overblown revelry.

Even so, the timing feels... strange. Leon has one eye on Wander Sibley and Anatalia Morrisen and the other barely taking in the faint shimmer on his robins egg suit jacket as he fidgets with the cufflinks. And he barely has time to see his lover, either: Glamour's restored position as Gamemaker has him running between tasks and problems and tributes. Even the addition of Veper Azrael does not seem to have given Glamour a break; it seemed almost that Glamour's availability has become even less.

But it was something he'd known would happen, when Glamour had come home pale as a ghost and a determined set to his mouth to tell him that the President had bestowed him an honor. Vague words of congratulations had crumbled away to ash in Leon's mouth, and he'd simply drawn Glamour in and refused to let go.

His softened gaze turns on G now, and the man commands his attention like few had done before. Leon quirks a smile at his grumbling, crossing over to fastidiously straighten his collar. "You look beautiful, as always," he tells Glamour, leaning in to peck the tip of his nose. "Stop complaining. I like this one."

Any distractions he can afford to give are blown out the window with Anarcha's entrance, and Leon stiffens imperceptibly. His former mistress walks with the purpose he knows her for, her shoulders thrown back and the promise of discipline in the cool expression on her face. 

He looks away, then, an immediate reaction to her proximity. Glamour's ramrod straight back doesn't quite escape his notice, even as he struggles against his own response (his right knee buckles, an invitation to gracefully fall on his knees and display the long curve of his back that Anarcha had appreciated in their time together -- but he straightens out and just tries not to look). His hands flutter a bit uselessly by Glamour's sleeve, and he busies himself with neatening up the fold even if it needed none. 

There's a pregnant silence in which his name lingers hopefully in the air, and Leon drags his gaze up to meet Glamour's. His lover's expression is hesitant. "What do you think, lover?" Glamour asks, and Leon feels his brows draw together in a moment of brief concern before G continues, "Shall we get married tonight?"

Tonight? Leon wants to say, his gaze darting towards Anarcha, whose regality has not dimmed an inch. He half-expects her to tell him to play her a song, but when she remains silent he meets Glamour's eyes. "I," he starts, and these words cling to the edge of his tongue: I'm not sure or I think we shouldn't, we're both so busy or I do. 

Leon swallows and closes his false hand around Glamour's wrist, bringing it up to his cheek even as Leon rests his real one against the side of G's face. He turns his face into Glamour's palm, breathing softly as he waits for words to come until he realizes he can't speak because he feels like he's about to cry. "I think," he says, muffled and catching awkwardly on a laugh and-- oh. 

He wants to.

Raw and honest, with tears catching against his lashes before they can pool in his lover's hand, Leon tells him, "I think I would marry you anywhere, at any time."

я готов отвечать

[cameron]

a n a r c h a

The boys in the closet meet my presence with a quiet hesitance that is, for a moment, off-putting, but quickly yields to understanding. Locking eyes with the reflection of a ghost would be jarring for anyone, and I cannot expect Glamour - or even Leon, for that matter - to be prepared for such reawakenings. My eyes stay steady in the mirror, for I am Anarcha. That should be enough. The sweat and blood I’ve poured into him, the sweat and blood I’ve pulled out, both speak toward my level of dedication to the cause. But as they begin to mull it over the words flip to static, a nagging buzz in the back of my skull, rumbling down my neck. In this static comes a heartache I’ve never known. A twisting pain that makes my insides scream like boiling water in a tea pot. There is silence as Glamour’s lips touch, his eyes rolling towards his livelihood, and without interruption the static grows.

Jealousy is beyond my reach of familiarity. Jewels hang from my wrist like unmelting icicles. My closet is a three story ballroom with a fully functioning dermatologically trained android built into the wall. I can wink twice for a hot tub to open up in the floor in any room in my tower. But the kettle still sings its siren song inside, the steam rising to my scalp. I can’t believe this is what I’ve been reduced to, but I am jealous. Ivy adorns my body, my envy as green and invasive as kudzu, and I want to scream like the tea pot.

But the jealousy is not for Glamour, or Leon, as I originally thought. It’s a tidal wave of the world sucking me in before the crash, an overwhelming feeling of something missing that is leaving me a wreck in its absence. They say the stars in the night sky are dead, long gone. What’s left is the memory of them, a reminder of their existence still shining through the dark. My star has burst, too, and is fading faster than I can control. I can feel my light dimming, the hands of my clock speeding up to race through the seconds and minutes and hours and days of - of what, exactly? My time is spent predominantly alone, and the more I’m without contact the farther I drift into the cosmos, my remains splintering off into different corners of the universe. I am stardust, inside and out.

I don’t notice Leon’s stutters. I am too intoxicated by my own self-reflection, drunk off the spiraling twister of my mind shifting my landscape. I hear the off-beat ticking of Wednesdae Drummond’s stopwatch in the distance, filling the silence, but I know it’s in my head. Leon gets a thought out with coherence, praise be, and the spotlight is back on me. I am unprepared.

With a deep breath, I blink myself out of my own natural disaster, trying to pull the scraps of stardust together for one last hurrah. It will take melding, but now is not the time to think of me. I’ve been lucky enough for decades to focus on nothing but the wonders of Anarcha Bentley, the benevolent and all-powerful, the star. Now is not the time to break. Now is not the time to let tears fall. I don’t know for certain that they agreed to my proposal, but if I am to believe I am held together for the time being, I have to believe these two still have faith in their goddess. Glamour hasn’t aged a day in eighteen years, which has to be attributed to his daily prayers in my name; and Leon looks like the same young stud who was crowned so many years ago. Who I crowned, too. I didn’t have to listen to know they said yes. I am back.

“Very well, my boys.” I look them both up and down, inhaling as I speak to broaden my shoulders. My power needs to be noticeable. I can’t worry my pet on his special day. A hand slides down Leon’s back, lingering in the curve of his spine, and I look directly into Glamour’s eyes. “Meet me at my tower whenever you two are ready.” I wink, only once to assure no hot tubs rise from the floor, and retrieve my hand from Leon. As I walk away, the kettle boils over and one scalding, razor-sharp tear etches its full life cycle, birth to death, into my cheek.




ooc: partial usage/reference to LUCKY by Britney Spears