neon lights, focus filtered | stella x teddy x mack

[alex 🐺]

s t e l l a ; 

Shapes filtered across the screen, a torrent of red, gold, black, blue. Blood and sequins. Diamonds and skin. Carnage and couture.

Her second year of this and she was used to it by now. Well, that was a lie. The slow unmaking of each tribute dancing in the images and it was only just the second day dawning. The slow unmaking of Stella and the ways that she bit to the bone her fellow tributes. The white steel of promise striking hard against the porcelain skin of her enemies and she would never be used to that.

She ached as she carved her name into the history books, dragging the bodies of Euley, Aeson, and Raven behind her. Looking for ways to escape. If she ever planted a garden it would be full of poison. All poison. Deadly nightshade and carnivorous plants. She hoped she could spare Ex from her plague, but the older blonde remained steadfast at her side. An anchor. Stella prayed she would never drag her down. 

The leather armchair was warm and her arms were across her chest, her legs across the arms of the chair, crossed at the heel that wore black heels. Her pants were crafted with care, the black satin stripe darker on the black fabric of the dress slacks. Perfectly tailored, as Ex had advised. No girlfriend of hers would be caught dead in the Capitol without the proper dress. Without the proper armor. And it seemed all Stella wore these days was black clothing. A perpetual mourning for her tributes. For her charges. For her mistakes and her failures. For their lives and for their deaths. Pre-empted but present. A thin black tank sat across her torso, a white blazer thrown on another couch as the wall to wall televisions filled the silence. Filled the storm within the seventeen-year-olds brain. The neon lights struck her with such intensity as her nails dug into her arms. She couldn't take her eyes of the screen. 

It would never get easier and she would never not worry about them all. District Twelve tributes or not, she worried about all of them. She was them and they were her. Torn asunder and taken from their homes, their lives in parallel if only for this moment.

The boy from Six who had a laugh in his private training session. The girls from Five and Seven who had a spark of something, something more in the Games. Call it lust. Call it bloodlust. It was written across their interactions and she craved more from them. Call it karma, but her penance, her sacrifice was surviving. Her sacrifice was living to see these horrors year in and year out. And she would honor them all. 

A pollution of sound and she was glued to each screen. Twenty-four different shots on twenty-four different screens and she agonized over them all. Blazing sky and endless horizon and the blood they wore across their uniforms could be Stella’s. It was, at one moment in time. She hovered on the edge of shattering. This Quell would break her. The twist, whatever it was, was coming and that was why she was here. She could see it before the hammer dropped. Before the other shoe fell. She would figure out the Twist before anyone else would.

And she would send up a signal? What could she actually do that she wasn’t already doing? Nothing. She could do nothing. Everything was expected of her. Nothing was expected of her.

The door behind her opened and the sanctuary of the old, book-lined study was broken, but she did not have to turn around to know who had entered. Once the door closed, she spoke, eyes now watching Carter and his alliance. 

“We can’t save them, can we?” Her voice rising above the commentators, scratchy from the lack of use. She had been in this room for too long.

She knew it was him, and her question begged for comfort. Teddy would know. Teddy would have something, anything to offer to assuage her heart. To calm her fears. He speaks the language they both understand, caught in two words, both running from things they can’t see and things they can't unsee.

[Tom]

☾

Parson Cham will be the death of him.

Whether it be from his lack of care for basic human decency or the fact that he couldn't stop thinking of the way he wanted to cry into his bed like a teenager again at the sight of his friend. God, how he wished Jacob Choo could be here with him and not in some alley way getting higher than the night's sky. Ree Fer's words flash upon his vision as he shoves it down with his lack of sleep and the bottle of expensive wine that Star had declared to be the best in all of Panem. Best or worst, anything would work for him. If Parson escapes that arena, he'll be locked away in Victor's Village until he learns what human decency is again. Didn't his mother teach him manners and not to send a jar of piss to someone else.

Exhaustion forms on him in the form of darkening circles under his eyes. Star told him to sleep hours ago, but he's not quitting on them. If there's one thing he knew, his workaholic-like drive to help them was still strong, despite the words of Star telling him that she's never seen him work this hard. Almost forgetting every boundary that he had set with Stella Blakesley and the way of sponsorship, until he remembered last minute not to step on toes once more. Despite it being personal, he couldn't break the rules or the ones who will put him back together. Doesn't need anymore supports to leave him alone in this world again.

A grip on the bottle tightens as he hesitates moving once more. The twist is still hanging in the air like a fog of uncertainty among them. Everyone is as restless as he is and Glamour sits on a throne of mystery still, but Teddy can't say anything. Victors were meant to know their place here, despite being idols, they were nothing more than pieces of a game. Moving along with no purpose now besides to say their catchphrases over and over and sell things to the capitol. The only good thing that they get to do is try and better their districts and the children who are sent to fight. A sigh falls from his lips as he pushes down the hall once more glaring to a avox drifting around the corner waiting for orders.

As the oldest of the two, he had been the one to reach out to Mackenzie about bearing through the next day together. Not that he didn't think they could survive it without him, but he needed them just as much as they needed him. Something in him wanted the comfort of people who wouldn't leave him to drown in alcohol like everyone else did. Though, the therapists in Six would say that he didn't reach out enough to be spared. Victor of the year and all, yet he still is broken apart despite the mask he put on in front of his interviewer. A sigh from his lips as he pushes through the door.

The sight of the book-lined study feels cramped, but also warmer than the living are on the sixth floor where Star has gotten to the point of hiding the remote to the screen from him. Eyes take in Stella who seems comfortable enough to let him walk in unannounced into the room without jumping. Despite the lies that the therapists in six tell, one thing has always been true. Each victor struggles with their own version of trauma in different ways. Stella is beautiful like always, ever the elegant friend with outfits that he assumes the new girlfriend he's seen rumors about picked out for her. Silence as he smiles to her before she speaks without glancing at him. Carter Laws is on the screen and he can already feel the worry for her.

"We can’t save them, can we?"

Save them. The frown comes quick as memories of Zeke, Ansel, Faline and even the dreaded Aeson come to his mind. Saving them had been his goal, but he never was close enough to save them. Saving lives was all he ever did before the games, but now he couldn't save a single life from death. Not one in his past three years of being a victor. A sigh from his lips as he places the bottle of unopened expensive wine on the arm table next to Stella's chair. Victors and victims. Born from the same flesh.

Sitting onto the arm of Stella's chair as he watches the screen with a gentle care as he lets himself pause for a moment to think of what he could say to her. Something comforting, but all of it is failing, instead he just waits until his mind decides on something. If Lux had been in his spot, she would have said something rude like Wander and Anatalia would ruin her tributes. Too much of a heart would be their undoing, but he holds his breath on that. Every victor he's met has some sort of heart, even the unlikely with images that were created. Justice Fray even had a heart despite being the heartbreaker of the capitol. A frown pulls on his face as he lets himself talk.

"They have to choose to save themselves before we can even try saving them."

Eyes glancing to the screen as the announcers excitedly talk about all of the tributes. Parson flashes for a moment and he can feel his stomach rise, but he doesn't let it show as he looks to Stella, leaning down and hugging her gently before backing off and finding his seat in the chair across from her. Words upon his lips once more.

"Besides if I knew the way to save them, I would have done it by now."

A pause as he opens the wine and pours himself a glass, eyes glancing to her.

"How about a glass?"

[alex 🐺]

s t e l l a ; 

Familiarity is borne of out of the shedding of blood and the sharing of secrets and Stella and Teddy have done both. Friendships forged in death are never one-sided. Forty-six other lives hang between them, haunting, and yet they share with each other the pain and the penance. Poison to those around them and poison to themselves. 

His steps are muted and Stella does not have to glance behind her, away from the screens because she can’t yet tear her eyes away, to know that he has been forgoing sleep as well. She sucks in her bottom lip, her teeth finding their way to the ever-worn bit of skin on the inside of her mouth. Lipstick smudged where it was once perfect and she would have to reapply before stepping out and back to Ex’s apartment when the night was over. If she could bear it in her to tear herself away from them. The screens creating a rainbow blur of technicolor, her focus waning before falling once more on Carter. 

"They have to choose to save themselves before we can even try saving them."

Nails digging half-moons into her arms, Teddy sits on the arm of her chair and she finally glances at him, her head raised in a nod of acknowledgment. The older of the two, his words are gospel to her ears. A north star, helios guiding her home whenever her mind strays towards the darkness. He grasps her shoulder in a hug and she leans her head into his chest - inhaling his scent as she would do to her father when she was younger.

Her father, an image unbidden but rushing to the surface. They never told you that you would lose yourself and everyone else when you returned from the Games. She sinks her teeth into her lip once more at the memory of an unmarked grave and an empty cabin. Returning home to nothing and no one. Richer than she ever thought possible - her dream of a studio collapsing in ashes. The studio was built and the dancers had come, but District Twelve felt as foreign as any other place now. She couldn't bear to stay in her family home and the journey to Victor's Village was an easy one, but even that house lay abandoned more often than not. 

She relied not on the well-wishes of others. One thousand nights high up on the mountain and she taught herself the value of ichor in her mouth, blood on her hands, steel rain caught in her hair and brandished in her hands. Her heart was heavy - cooper turned green with rust and being here, witnessing these Games year after year, trying to remake the wheel and save them in an attempt to save herself seemed to be the only path for her that made sense. With Ex by her side, her words whispered late at night when Stella woke in a panic, chest heaving and drenched in sweat even though she had lost herself in an avalanche those years ago -

“Stella, Stell, you’re okay. Shhh, babe. Its just me. It’s just us. You’re safe with me.”

- she no longer felt fragmented. She no longer felt like her ribcage would split open, despite the constant threat of heartbreak weaving through every single thought she had of her.

"Besides if I knew the way to save them, I would have done it by now."

A wry chuckle breaks Stella’s lips at Teddy’s words as he moves away from her, offering a glass of wine and she can do nothing to refuse him. The blood-red liquid swirling in the glass with a low ”Cheers” escaping Stella’s lips.

They sit in silence - these two souls, lost and lonely angels watching over their charges, dark curtains falling between them as the chaos swelled to a fever pitch. Words did not need to be spoken - the world in which they destroyed and remade every day in their minds differed. Hers an icy wasteland, his a fiery inferno and their wars raged on without sound, internal call to arms and internal retreats played out from sun up to sun down as goodness and evil plagued to tear them asunder. 

“I talked to Mickey. He should be here soon, actually.” A pause, the wine tasting like smoke in her mouth. “I figured why not suffer together?”

A genuine laugh and Stella licks her lips, the wine and blood mixing in a not unpleasurable way.

“It feels different this year. Not just because of the Quell. It’s - I can’t explain it.”