Slow it Down, 'Cause I Can't Breathe {Aranica/Jayne}

[kap]

slow it down
'cause I can't breathe

Nico was an absolute jerk to me when I first tried to speak to him after boarding the train in District Twelve, and I was still rather heated over it all. Now, though, I was finally alone, given some time to cool down, away from Nico, and away from everyone. At least, I thought that it was away from everyone. I wasn't ready to talk to more people, as I just feared that I'd be impolite. That was something that I'd never feared before. Usually, I just feared that maybe I was being too polite to someone in any given situation. Now, it had turned into the opposite.

Already, I was becoming a pawn. The Capitol would want me to start to turn into someone I wasn't, and that's exactly what was happening. I'd been away from District Twelve for less than a day, and things were going downhill already. I wasn't ready for what else was to come. I wasn't prepared for any of it. Right now, I was more scared of how the Games would change me than whether or not I would survive them. I didn't want to become a different person than I always had been, but at this point in time, it was inevitable. Jayne Ashbrook-Laws was starting to transform into someone new.

---

Sitting on one of the plush sofas on the train, I hadn't had the stomach to eat anything since I'd gotten there, and therefore, all I did was sit and wait, hoping we'd be at the Capitol soon so that I could get through the beginning of the end of all of this horror that I was bound to have to experience. Carter had told me a little bit of how terrible it all was, and now I was going to be dealing with it myself. I wasn't ready for any of this, but I figured that I may as well get started with it all, no matter how terrified I really was of what was to come.

---

After sitting there for about ten minutes by myself, I had mostly calmed down, but was still a bit on edge when someone walked in the room. I wasn't ready for whatever lecture the individual may decide to give me. That was when I realized, however, that I knew who this person was. I'd never met her before, but the entirety of District Twelve surely knew her face and her name, even if many of us weren't born yet when she won the Games.

Aranica Petros, victor of the 55th Annual Hunger Games, was now in the same train car as me. I looked at her, my face still bright red from crying after the stressful situation I'd had with Nico. I had tried to calm myself down, and for the most part, I had managed to do so, but the physical effects of it all were still present. My jaw was still clenched a little bit, too, as were my fists, but I eased myself into relaxation, at least a little bit, when Aranica entered the room.

"Miss Petros..." I said, not sure what else to say and trailing off a little bit in the process of speaking. "I hope you're not mad at me... I don't know if you heard what happened between Nico and I... I'm sorry."

I was nervous. Being lectured by a victor was certainly not something on my bucket list. It was something that scared me, and I already had too many fears coming into reality. I didn't want this one to join them, even if it likely wasn't as bad of a reality as the other things I'd be facing soon enough.

---

610 words
WT

so much noise
that I can't see

lyrics and thread title: "Escape" by Megan Nicole

[WT]

Aranica laughs to herself, soft and humorless, in the silence. For all her terror of the wrong person walking in and all her relief at seeing him out safely, the door has barely clicked shut behind Carter before she wants to throw herself through and drag him back—wants to find some way to stow him away safely so he and Jayne don't have to say goodbye; wants better yet to jam the train before it can leave as though that would do anything but make the Peacekeepers hold their guns a little tighter, wants to turn back the clock entirely and do something that will fix this.

Only one person will walk out of this Arena. She wants it to be Jayne, but she wants it to be Nico; she already, without knowing their names, wants it to be any of twenty-two children she's never met. (Hoping she doesn't know their names; she can't set aside the roiling horror of knowing that the list could still read Enzo, that the Theft twins and Carmen and the duo from Two will stay on the block for years to come, that even without Carter a baker's dozen hang somewhere between safety and—)

Only one.

You'll do your best, her rock murmurs, with a vague but insistent tumult of impressions behind you. Before it fades she finds the soft warmth that means Aranica and the brightness somewhere at the back of her not-vision that she's learning to associate with Carter, and a twin pair of yet-indistinct sensations that must indicate Nico and Jayne, all sliding through the feeling not unlike sand between her fingers that sometimes means humans and sometimes means us. You always do.

The Eighty-First Hunger Games have begun. Aranica leans her forehead against the cold wood of the door, right hand over her rock and left hand draped loosely over the handle, and buries the part of her that cries somewhere small and dark and safe beneath the sand that only exists in her rock's voice.

---

It's not the aftermath of tears that pulls Aranica up short as she steps between train cars; if she stops to think about it, she's more surprised that she doesn't meet most tributes red-faced and puffy-eyed. It's that Jayne is there at all, alone on a couch in an empty room, instead of grabbing a meal while she can or tucked away in the privacy of her own car. To her relief, Jayne's posture loosens a little at the sight of her; even so, for a moment Aranica can only blink at the questions rattling around her brain like pebbles: whether Jayne has already talked to Stella, whether she prefers to talk about crying or pretend it never happened, whether she's had a chance to eat anything yet.

"Miss Petros..." Jayne says, only to trail off.

It's enough to startle Aranica back into motion. She offers a brief, apologetic smile as she steps the rest of the way into the compartment and slides the door shut behind her. "Aranica is fine, if you like." After all this time, a miss directed at anyone but Ms. Cherise still rings strangely in her ears. She can't complain that it makes her feel old, the way she fakes a laugh about when Bellezze and prospective sponsors at parties expect commiseration; even at her most despondent, age never feels like anything but a privilege. (One gifted or one stolen; a privilege, nevertheless.) But growing up, she never had much cause to stand on ceremony, and it always feels in poor taste to ask anyone to waste time on it on the way to the Arena.

"I hope you're not mad at me," Jayne continues, still sounding uncertain. "I don't know if you heard what happened between Nico and I..." Aranica shakes her head, perplexed, as she settles herself gently on the next cushion over from Jayne. The couch is a plush, velvety thing, halfway threatening to swallow Aranica whole without so much as trying. From the look of her, it offers as little comfort to Jayne as to Aranica. "I'm sorry."

That's not promising, but it doesn't necessarily sound catastrophic. Aranica takes a slow breath, not quite letting it become a sigh, as she scans Jayne's face again. "I didn't, and I won't make you tell me about it if you don't want to. But if it helps to hear, I won't be upset." She pauses, tilts her head a fraction, and shakes it once, slowly. "Well—I won't be thrilled if you've been trading blows, but I doubt I'll be mad at you. You're not required to like each other, promise. My District partner wasn't my biggest fan, either." Her rock hums gently at that, even as she reaches to rest a hand over it; despite knowing that he kept to himself intentionally, it always aches a little to remember that she knows Kale Forrest better from screens than from the dinner table they shared for days. In the end they may have rubbed each other wrong no matter what—she was over-cheerful but intimidated by his glower; he was vengeful to people she can only assume he found less annoying than her—but it's impossible not to wish that they had met under some better circumstance. "And... well, I think it's safe to say no one here is at their best right now."

[kap]

slow it down
'cause I can't breathe

It felt strange to me when Aranica Petros requested to be called by her first name rather than Miss Petros, but I listened to her request, regardless. Back home, I was always told to refer to adults in a respectful manner, using 'miss' or 'mister' when I referred to them in conversation. Perhaps that's why Aranica didn't like it; it made her feel like an adult. She probably didn't want to be reminded of how long ago it had been since she was in the Games. She'd won when I wasn't even born yet. Maybe that made her feel old. It seemed rude of me, in my opinion, to do something that would make Aranica feel uncomfortable, such as, in this situation, making her seem or feel old.

I nodded in response to her saying that I could call her Aranica. When I had asked the victor if she'd heard what happened between Nico and I, she had said she wouldn't be upset, but then shook her head slowly before continuing.

"Well—I won't be thrilled if you've been trading blows, but I doubt I'll be mad at you. You're not required to like each other, promise. My District partner wasn't my biggest fan, either." She told me this and I nodded in response. It had actually surprised me a bit to hear that Aranica may not have gotten on well with her District partner. To me, it seemed like most people would have liked Aranica. Then again, I'd never watched her Games, as I feared to go back and watch the replays of children murdering each other in the arena, even if it was years and years in the past.

"And... well, I think it's safe to say no one here is at their best right now." When Aranica said this, I completely agreed, once again, nodding in response to her statement that she had decided to make in the moment.

"It's just really tough right now. I'd just felt so much relief when Carter came home that, well... it hadn't crossed my mind that it could be me this time," I told her. "It didn't help that shortly after I got on the train, I tried to make peace with Nico, ya know, be on good terms with him," I said, "and he just rejected it in the rudest way that he could."

I looked at Aranica with fear in my eyes of the thoughts that were crossing through my mind.

"I'm just scared that he'll make it a priority to kill me first, now, and it's all my fault for trying to talk to him."

---

431 words
WT

so much noise
that I can't see

lyrics and thread title: "Escape" by Megan Nicole

[WT]

"I know," Aranica says softly. She'll never know—she will never know, and that museum exhibit can fuck off—how much Anani shielded her from his own feelings those last few weeks, but she still remembers the sound of his name nearly knocking her off the stage. Relief and hope are powerful things in more ways than one. There's no need to burden Jayne with it right now, but sometimes—more often every year—she wonders how random those drawings really are. "None of you should have to be here, but your family's already been through more than anyone should be able to ask you for. I'm so sorry, Jayne."

Her description still tells Aranica little about what actually happened when she met Nico, but the fear in her eyes is real. She nods slowly, twisting her rock absently with one hand, as Jayne finishes, "I'm just scared that he'll make it a priority to kill me first, now, and it's all my fault for trying to talk to him."

"I'd like to tell you not to worry about that, but I haven't met Nico yet. I don't know what he wants to do." Maybe Jayne is right, and he's nursing a vendetta against her; maybe Jayne said something harsh she's not admitting to, and he feels as slighted as she does; maybe he mouthed off out of stress, and wishes he hadn't. "What I can say honestly is that his choices aren't on you. And I can tell both of you—and this is a callous way to talk about it, I'm sorry, but the way that Capitolites look at tributes, it's bad for sponsorship if you fight each other too early." Two halves of Aranica watched Carter and Hellion fight in the Bloodbath last year: the one who ran a hand through her hair again and again until Bellezze caught it, her heart bleeding and her eyes burning from trying not to blink, and the one who watched from three steps outside her own body, a pen steady in her hand, already drafting what to say in the interviews later that day. She'd been furious enough at the way the media spun that string of District Six fights; she can't imagine fielding the fallout for the survivor every time. In some ways, this entire ordeal is as cruel a game outside the Arena as inside. "If things are still bad between you in a few days, you should probably just avoid each other, for both your sakes. You never know what might change, though. I'd say give it a little time, focus on other things for now. Speaking of—" She tilts her head and lets go of her rock to rest her arms lightly in her lap. "Have you eaten since the Reaping?" Not that Aranica has, but frankly, Aranica isn't the one who's about to need the calories.