stutter | carter & aranica blitz

[Tom]

"Larceny Theft"

The echoing sound of his name still rings in his head. A stutter of emotions crackling in his chest, burning like the wounds that came from his chest and ear. The sharp ache of something attuned to worry settling in his skin. The feeling of guilt heavy on his chest as he knew Cedar Halt wouldn't be coming back the same person or a dead man. Lingering in the home of Aranica Petros as if the rabbits will protect him from the heaviness of his throat or the chance his father gave him.

"Go, Carter. Go see your friend. He needs you more than we do right now."

As if it were that simple, to let himself disappear on a train in the shadow of being a mayor's son sent to discuss mayoral things with other mayors. Not like he didn't know what his father was doing, but this didn't feel right, but for whatever reason. And yet, he can feel the way his heart is beating and the restlessness of no sleep forming in his body. The way he can hear Lars and Auto only having one another to deal with everything. The phone lingers in front of him, almost an ache to call the one person he needed to tell of the plan.

The plan to go and help Larceny Theft in the only way he knew.

The Eightieth was behind them, but the cracks still form underneath their skin. The scars still linger upon their skin, Carter's feeling heavier and heavier with every day. Every heartbeat, just another reminder that he didn't deserve to be here, but he tries for everyone else's sake. Cedar Halt should have taken his spot. Everything would be better that way. Forget about Carter Laws. Burn a legacy down and let Arbor Halt have something good for once.

The call rings in his ears before it connects to the capitol, where someone is on the other side. His voice cuts in, barely with an edge of urgency in his voice.

"U-Uh is-is A-Aranica there?"

[WT]

"What."

It's not a question, or rather it's not one question, folded into a stare as flat as Aranica's tone: what do you want, don't you think I'm busy, why do you think I want to see you.

Bellezze rises to none of them, smiling with a strain behind the geniality that Aranica wouldn't spot without years of practice. Between them she offers a phone, cordless and sleek as an olive leaf, worth easily a dozen of the one Aranica is privileged to have sitting at home. "Carter Laws," she says brightly, "transferred off the Twelve suite line."

Aranica reaches out before she realizes what she's doing, but she doesn't stop when her brain catches up to her fingers. They both know she's not busy, by the standards of any other first-day afternoon—plastered to screens, yes; snippets of the usual interviews, interrupted by a strangled but fond laugh at Cedar joking about his finger on the public channel or a feed changing just in time to catch Red saying we should have each other’s back, the first good news in days that feel like years; but there's no frantic rush of signatures this year, nothing she can do now that she can't do in ten or thirty minutes. "Is that allo—" She shakes her head sharply. If someone with the power to cut off that call wanted to, no string Bellezze could pull would be enough to transfer it. More likely someone in an office half a mile away is recording it for whatever drama they can squeeze out of it like blood, which might be enough to tell Bellezze she's busy anyway, except that Carter wouldn't call for nothing. "I'll—that's—thanks."

As she takes the phone Bellezze catches her fingers just long enough to squeeze—as though a favor changes anything, as though she cares about Carter—about anyone—any more genuinely than she did two weeks or two years ago. Aranica falters for a moment, mouth frozen open, before she turns away without squeezing back.

"Carter?" she asks as she juggles phone and clipboard and umbrella to open the door to an empty training room. Neither his voice nor the buzz of a hanging line answers her; her breath catches—did you give up on waiting, who found you, what's happening—until it occurs to her to fumble for the button labeled Hold. "Carter," she tries again, closing the door behind her with one bare heel and not bothering to turn on a light. "I'm—is everything okay in Twelve? Are you okay?"

[Tom]

"Carter?"

Aranica sounds as worried as his own building up towards a boy who he was meant to have the back of. A rushed tone of something as if he had bothered her in the process of dealing with Cedar Halt's survival of bloodbath. He had watched with baited breath knowing the boy didn't deserve to be there, especially when he gets to live in District Twelve with Cedar Halt's father. Ripred, he wished it could have been him and at the same time the selfishness of life fills him with a gratefulness, unheard of in most people. Monster. Self centered brat. The names come back as he can hear Aranica repeat his name once more.

"Carter," He holds the phone tighter to his good ear, trying to listen intently. "I'm—is everything okay in Twelve? Are you okay?" Twelve. Broken apart with the strife of a victor kid in the games. His own father having hugged him a little tighter, hoping that would have kept him standing still in the crowd of possible names in a glass bowl of paper. Jack having grabbed his hand and pull him back with the whisper of you can't. Truth was he could have. He could have given Aranica, Arbor, and Stella the biggest gift he could have given, but he let his own heart take over and stopped.

Frozen solid with the fear of a beast in his ear and the spear of Maxwell in his heart.

"Y-yeah, I'm fine, mostly." A moment to let the words on his lips catch up with his brain, the process feeling like minutes, but actually was only seconds. "Just worried about Arbor and all. Twelve is fine... uh that's not why I called though." A silence fills him as he raises his other hand to grasp lightly at his chest where his scars were. Remembering the fear of death weighted on his chest, until his heart exploded with a burst of red.

"I-I want to see Larceny. W-Would that be okay?"

[WT]

After years of using one regularly, Aranica still never expects the way a person's voice sounds the first time she hears them over the phone: not quite echoing, not quite buzzing, but never entirely clear. The voice that answers her is unmistakably Carter all the same; softly, soundlessly, she lets out a breath she hadn't meant to hold. "Y-yeah, I'm fine, mostly." That both melts tension from her chest and raises her eyebrows faintly, but Carter goes on before she has a chance to say she's glad or press the mostly. "Just worried about Arbor and all. Twelve is fine... uh that's not why I called though."

Aranica sits as he speaks, lets folded at an angle in front of her, so she can set the umbrella and clipboard by her side and spin her rock absentmindedly. Her knee-jerk response—me too—sits bitten back in her throat; she knows the futility of deciding how to feel too well to tell him not to worry, either, but sometimes she wishes Carter would give his own well-being the same dedication as everyone else's. (Her rock gives her a faint impression of critical, faintly concerned smugness, to which she offers the sound of a firmly closing door.) Looking out for the adults around them is the least of what Panem's children shouldn't have to do; that doesn't change the fact that it shouldn't be their responsibility. "We're all still upright here," she says instead. "What is it?"

"I-I want to see Larceny. W-Would that be okay?"

For the first time in what feels like months, she smiles without thinking about it. The kids from the Eightieth deserve more than phone lines and clandestine letters carried by a handful of Words. "You don't need to ask me. But I'll be glad if you go." If they were having this conversation in person, she'd ask what reason he has lined up to offer the Permit Office; here, still keenly aware that anyone could be listening to this call, she decides not to risk it. Getting to One had taken more work than Aranica had quite expected, and with decades of the Games behind her she had expected a fair bit. Hopefully that had more to do with the eye the Capitol keeps on Victors than anything else, but Carter isn't exactly Twelve's lowest-profile citizen, either; better not to give anyone an excuse to call foul. "I'm sure he will, too. Let me know if you need testimonials or anything for the paperwork, okay?"