between ashes and roses | stella + ex

[alex 🐺]

s t e l l a 

Stella was pacing, the only sound in the penthouse the staccato of her stilettos across the tiled floor. Her makeup was perfect, or rather, it had been perfect but she was sure that she had chewed the blood-red lipstick off of her lips hours ago, waiting for Ex to get home. The dress trailed after her steps like a train, long and flowing. It was a deep navy blue, the color of the night sky with pinpricks of diamonds weaved into the fabric, the subtle shimmer catching the light and reflecting in the vases of flowers that she had displayed around the living room. Hundreds and thousands of flowers glowing in the wan light. The bee, out of his home in the corner, buzzed quickly around the ceiling, conscious of Stella’s nervous energy.

Should she sit? Should she stand? Should she stretch out on the couch, arms open wide in an attempt to look casual? If she was being honest, she was probably going to throw up, which the stylists would hate, even more than they hated the bags under her eyes, the way she always bit her fingernails to the quick, and the way she never, ever sat still, even after years in their chairs.

Because she might have survived a frozen wasteland, she might have murdered some innocent (and not so innocent) souls to return to a home that she didn’t even recognize, she might have sold her soul to every single sponsor in hopes of bringing home her charges, but nothing, nothing could compare to the thought (to the terror) of asking Ex to spend the rest of her life with her.

The ring felt heavy in her hand and she smacked the stone against her palm, studying it. She had picked it out, found the perfect jeweler with the perfect vision and paid the perfectly ridiculous sum of money and had hidden it away for months. It didn’t feel right, not yet at least.

Because how do you tell someone that she’s your heart and your home, that you don’t know yourself without her by your side, that she brought you back from the brink of disaster with a well-placed quip and a smirk that sparkled like diamonds?

How do you tell her that when she found you, when she assembled the shattered pieces of you somehow, when you feel the guilt crashing down like an oppressive heat, when you feel the rage like a wave rushing towards you that will one day tear you asunder, when you’re ready to run and hide, or maybe just jump, that her face is the only thing you see?

How do you tell her that words drip from her lips like honeysuckle and you want to drink them all up and never stop?

How do you tell her that you’re a killer, you always will be but that your heart and soul beats only for her?

Something had shifted in Stella, losing Juliet and Angel, that made her want to jump, to leap. To fall headfirst into Ex. Countless coffins and only three had come home safe and she couldn't bear another year away from Ex.

So arrangements were made, people were called, dresses were found, flowers were ordered from florists all over the Capitol, the champagne had been popped and was fizzling on the dining room table and all that was missing was the blonde Capitolite.

“Think she’ll say yes?” Stella asks the bee, who had flitted to her shoulder for a moment before flying off. “Yeah, you and me both, buddy. At least there’s alcohol?”

The door rattled and Stella paused, whipping around as quickly as she could in four-inch heels, nearly falling flat on her face. Should she kneel? Could she even kneel in this godforsaken dress?

“Hi,” she breathed, eyes sparkling as Ex opened the door.

[Baby Wessex d9b [earthling]]

EX OH VDW

Another evening during the Games, another opportunity to get the scoop on which Capitolites wanted to sleep with the tributes. Other people referred to the evening galas as "fundraisers" and "sponsorship events", but Ex recognized them for exactly what they were: auction houses filled with the rich and lusty. As the Games dwindled, the liquor flowed and checkbooks opened ever deeper.

She loved to see it.

She'd lingered over the extravagant price-per-plate meal, touching a flute to her shimmery lips every few minutes but careful not to imbibe. As other flutes emptied, she didn't wait for the servers to tilt the champagne bottles. She simply grabbed them by the glass neck. When the wife of a obscenely wealthy news magnet protested, Ex pouted. "It isn't like they can just pop the cork back in, now can they?" She asked, her polished Capitol accent all innocence.

She hid the empty bottles underneath her chair as the woman sloppily bragged that they'd bet a good sum of money on the Hailsham boy, long before Crest had turned into a disappointment - long enough ago that the odds were still good. The rich got richer, and all Beck Hailsham would have to show for it was a care package, soaked by the rain.

Ex poured her another glass.

By nine o'clock the dinner was wrapping up, the live band blaring, people stumbling to the dance floor. She might have been able to squeeze another tidbit here or there, but it wasn't worth her time. She tucked her coded notes away, locked her phone, and slipped the server who had delivered bottle after bottle a hefty tip.

In the back of the limousine, the lights of the city playing over the dark windows, Ex sighed. She very conciously released Ex Oh Van Der Woodsen, reviled and exalted gossip wrangler, and breathed in Ex, beloved of Stella Blakesley, the single most extraordinary person she'd ever met - capable of surviving both the arena and life in the Capitol, and though both gave her pains, it seemed she resented neither. A wonder.

By the time Ex slipped her key into the door lock, she'd found her smile again. She shifted her clutch to her left hand, ready to grab Stella with her right. "Oh, honey!" She chimed, pushing the door aside. "I'm home!"

“Hi,” Stella breathed.

And she looked absolutely devastating.

Ex came to a halt, her black heels giving one solid click. An undyed brow beneath her mop of blonde hair arched skyward. She knew they did not have plans; their calendars had been in sync for years as they navigated the sticky red tape of a relationship between a Capitolite and a lower district Victor. And she never forgot plans, intentions, bits of conversations. It's why she was so very good at her job.

So this was something else.

A mystery.

Bubbles of nerves and hope raced up her spine. "You are gorgeous," she said, braving another step, and then paused. Gorgeous, but stiff. Her eyebrow came down slowly as Ex willed herself to patience. People wanted to tell their stories; one had only to afford them time.

And she wanted to know every story Stella would share with her. Every single one.

[alex 🐺]

s t e l l a 

“Oh, honey! I’m home.” The words wash over Stella but they’re muted, as if the volume had been turned down far too low. The only noise she can hear, apart from her own beating heart, a torrent of hammering that she is sure is reverberating through her body, is the bee tittering around above their heads. To Stella, it sounds like helicopter blades, but no, that wasn’t right. It sounded like the hovercraft that dragged her away off of the snowy peak.

Maybe she actually was going to be sick.

"You are gorgeous," Ex begins slowly but she’s cautious and Stella can’t blame her. Ex’s mind is working quickly, thinking through dates and times like a machine because this wasn’t accounted for, this wasn’t on the schedule.

Oh, hell, this was a bad idea.

“You’re not so looking bad yourself, ” Stella chokes out, a smile breaking across her face because her heart still caught in her chest, seeing Ex, watching her step into a room and command all of the attention with a well-placed eyebrow raise and a fluttering of her gorgeous eyelashes.

Stella holds the ring behind her back with her left hand as she crosses the room to kiss Ex properly. She tastes the champagne on Ex’s lips and breathes in the flavor, the heady rush of kissing Ex still so strong after years. She hoped the feeling would never go away.

Stella would have fallen, right then and there, her heart stuttering in her chest if she hadn’t touched a hand to Ex’s chest, if she hadn’t felt Ex’s heart underneath her palm. It beat smooth and sure and Ex watches her with patient eyes.

Stella laughs and it rings hollow in her ears. “I actually -”

“I had the driver text me when you left the event because I needed some time to figure out exactly what I wanted to say to you. Words come easily to you and I've never been very good at this kind of thing.”

A hand reaches up to rub the back of her neck because this ill-conceived plan was going from bad to worse and she could barely form a sentence.

“I just -” The sentence again dies on her lips and her eyes flicker to the ceiling. She’s invading Ex’s space and she knows she should say something more than half-formed statements but the love that had flashed in Ex’s eyes as she approached seemed to have been swallowed away by something else.

She looks wary, a variable she couldn’t account for because their lives were synchronized down the to the last second and this was surely an aberration, but the Capitolite made no movements to leave, her chest rising and falling in a dress that Stella wished she could tear off of her and speak truths with her hands, with her lips.

Stella’s heart stutters in her chest and she feels weightless. Floating as she watches Ex, flashes of their lives together playing through her mind. Her fingers burn, actually burn and tingle from where she yearns to reach out to Ex, but she drops to a knee instead, holding out the ring, eyes sparkling. 

“I’m a girl from a crumbling cabin in the woods who dreamed that one day she would be able to have enough food on the table to feed her father. I never thought that I would have been reaped, that I would have lived, and that I would have the honor of being by your side."

"I’ve seen avalanches, fire that burns everything in its path, and nothing, absolutely nothing could ever compare to the first time I saw you, Ex,” Stella pauses, her voice catching in her throat.

Her heart beats a rhythm of Ex, Ex, Ex because while she knows what she feels deep inside, the words have never been there.

All Stella can see are flashes of light, dancing colors and the sound of the waves ebbing and flowing (or maybe that was just her heart).

She can feel the pull to Ex, a pull she would let tug her to the ends of the earth again and again. Magnetic and other-worldly and this will end so badly is ringing in her ears but she wants to throw all caution to the wind and say the words she needs to say.

“You saved me. Hundreds of times and you probably weren’t even aware that was what you were doing,” she laughs derisively, swallowing down tears.

“I - I can’t give you anything that you don’t already have, but I promise you, if you let me, I will stand by your side every single day and support you in all that you do with all of the love that I have in me."


"Some part of me died on that mountain, and I will never be whole again, but this mosaic heart that I carry inside of my chest is yours.”

“Will you marry me?”

[Baby Wessex d9b [earthling]]

EX OH VDW

Stella smiled and Ex let her eyebrows drop a centimeter. “You’re not so looking bad yourself.” She mimed a kiss to her lover. There was something between them, beyond the hot coil that perpetually burned. A space held, mystery filling the emptiness until it became solid. She could almost reach out and touch the thing between them, if only she could name it.

But then Stella is kissing her and that mystery - the love, devotion, passion the District Twelve Victor has always reserved for her - is far more tantalizing. She lifts her hands to gentle edges of Stella Blakesley's face, fingers not quite cupping her jawline as Stella's hand lies on her chest. “I actually,” she begins, at the precipice of a waterfall.

The words fall in a rush, a deluge of feeling and history and intention. Ex is the rocks, worn smooth over the years, basking in the beauty and power of the water. There comes a point where their heartbeats twine, Ex's in her ribcage beneath Stella's palm, and Stella's in her neck beneath Ex's palm. She has let her hands relax a bit, bookending Stella's thin neck, as though to hold her up, hold her steady.

Then, suddenly, she is on one knee.

And there is no more mysterious space between them.

Ex Oh Van Der Woodsen knows.

She looks aside for a split second, just to identify the discarded clutch. It's on a sideboard, still in arm's reach.

Words cascade from Stella until they come to a sudden halt: “will you marry me?”

Ex Oh melts, every ligament relaxing, her knees and hips barely holding her upright. She wants to collapse into Stella's arms, into a weepy mess, but she knows such a serious question and such a great mystery deserves more. For a moment, relaxed, fingers combing back Stella's fluffy locks, she looks serene. Completely at ease, completely in the moment with the woman she loves.

"I promise I'm going to answer you," she says, very quietly, the promise filling up her whole mouth.

Then, Ex's infamous energy comes back with a vengeance.

She sighs, great and heaving, her legs starting to vibrate. "But Stella," she drawls, like the Victor had left a towel on the floor or a dirty dish in the sink. She reaches for the abandoned clutch with one delicate hand. The other she wraps around Stella's, effectively hiding the ring from view.

She can not do this with any further distractions.

So, as they have so often done for each other over the years, Ex switches roles. With Stella kneeled, blinking, Ex cedes the role of rock and becomes the waterfall. "There's so much more to be said. Not about me - although we can definitely keep talking about me later," she winks. "But about you, my brave, beautiful lover."

She fiddles, one-handed, with the clasp to her clutch. It is maddeningly unforgiving.

"You once claimed the darkness for your own," she went on, despite her struggle. Ex took great care to look deeply into Stella's eyes. "And I've borne witness to that burden, ever since the 78th. But Stella, you are so much more than that shadow. You are the light that defines the edges, the corona that crowns the black. You are more than all the stars in the sky."

For maybe in the first time in her life, her voice fails her. It is choked with the depth of her love, but also the truth of her words. There is no one in all of Panem who burns more brightly than Stella - than her Stella.

"I count every one of those stars that I am so lucky to love you, know you, cherish and honor you. And I - oh, reaping curse it, can you help me?"

A few tears sneak past her waterproof mascara as they both laugh. Ex shakes the confounded clutch for good measure, and waits until her fingers and Stella's move as one to finally free the clasp from its lock. The contents fall to the ground: her identification, a charge card, a few breath mints, and one heavy piece of metal and gem that pings, bounces, and rolls right into Stella's knee.

And then Ex is there, kneeling too, one hand scooping up the fallen ring and the other revealing the one Stella had presented her, moments before.

She does the same now, tears running freely, holding the ring she'd selected aloft. "Stella, I will marry you, with all of my heart. Will you have me, too?"

[alex 🐺]

s t e l l a 

When Ex places her hands on either side of Stella’s face, holding her, bracing her, her anchor once more before she dives into the deep end, Stella nearly loses her nerve. She’s drowning in the dizzying scent of Ex’s perfume, her mouth dry as she feels electricity coursing through her body. She can’t move away, couldn't even if she wanted to, and she finds her face closer to Ex, their noses nearly touching as they breathe the same air, Ex's heart so sure and true. The memory, the taste, the feeling of Ex is the only coherent thought in her mind and god, it would be so easy to close the distance and forget this whole proposal business.

But she can’t forget about it.

Like a weed growing in her mind, it had taken root last year, growing until it overwhelmed everything, shoving her heart and lungs to the side, because the idea of being with Ex was everything and the idea of giving her heart to her was a devil’s bargain that she would make over and over again.

Stella knew communication was never one of her strong suits. Ex did all the talking while Stella was content to nod and smile, tongue against teeth as they lied and lied to pry sponsor money away from the rich in hopes of giving the tributes a blanket, a knife, a medkit that could mean the difference between life and death. After the games, after everything, she never had to explain herself, her choices or her actions to anyone. A carte blanche was given to each victor and they stood unapologetic in their destruction. 

She had crafted a persona, brick by impenetrable brick, of a girl wrapped in shadows, known by all but never intimately, everyone kept an arm’s length away. Aranica, Teddy, Arbor - they all let her grieve alone, grieve for who she once was, who she would never be again, grieve for a future stolen and stamped with the seal of the Capitol. They allowed her that space to turn inwards, as they all had.

And then she had met Ex and something about her made all of those feelings, those desires to keep everyone out, to keep the armor intact and the walls miles high, completely and totally irrelevant.

Like a word she couldn’t translate, a dance step that stood out of reach, she craved a deeper knowledge of the Capitolite, away from the cameras, away from expectations. When she finally got her chance, when they shared dinner together, Stella saw the brilliant woman, mind quicker than a flash of lightning, strategy and sexuality oozing out of her pores. To say that she had been struck by Ex from the first moment she had met her would have been far closer to the truth than a lie. There was something magnetic about her, after all. Everyone knew it.

The pull Stella had felt from day one had only grown stronger and when she thought of the word marriage, when she envisioned a forever, she had rebelled against the gravity of it all, the friction she knew would rub her raw and leave her senseless, but as the months and years passed by, as their orbits moved closer together, Stella had grown tired of fighting whatever it was that had led her to that conclusion.

So she jumped, headfirst off of a cliff.

The proposal falls out of her lips like a deluge and its uncoordinated and graceless and so not the way she had practiced in front of a mirror and with Teddy and her voice cracks, actually cracks and breaks as she breathes the last four words, the consonants and vowels a jumbled mess.

She waits, ten excruciating heartbeats where her knee threatens to give out and her heart threatens to burst out of her chest, before Ex replies in her terribly frustrating and altogether Ex way, "I promise I'm going to answer you, but Stella," and the but breaks her heart just a bit, her outstretched hands falling before Ex grips her hand in her own and Stella feels the vice around her heart unclench, if only slightly.

She’s fumbling with her purse and Stella can’t help but tear her eyes away from Ex’s - blue swirling orbs that she found herself lost in more times than she could count. They sparkled with amber in the morning, with emerald at night, but Stella's own eyes find their way back to Ex's. 

"There's so much more to be said, Ex continues and Stella’s mouth is dry. “Not about me - although we can definitely keep talking about me later. But about you, my brave, beautiful lover."

Stella wants to weep, her heart in her throat because this was sounding so much like a yes, even though those three simple letters had yet to leave Ex’s mouth in the shape of the word that Stella knew she needed to hear.

Ex paints pictures with her words, words to describe Stella that she doesn’t deserve, that she has never deserved, but warmth fills her chest as Ex continues speaking, blue eyes so bright and sparkling with unshed tears that Stella reaches up to flick away with her thumb.

She was darkness, she knew she was, but her light came from Ex, who saw her - scars and blackness manifesting in a supernova that threatened to tear her asunder after she returned, but Ex’s pull, the gravity of her personality, her heart, and her love brought Stella back and would always bring her back.

"I count every one of those stars that I am so lucky to love you, know you, cherish and honor you. And I - oh, reaping curse it, can you help me?"

They’re both laughing and crying now, tears spilling free, and Stella drops the ring as she reaches to help Ex and it’s a total mess but somehow, Ex had to upstage her at her own proposal because another ring that is terribly gorgeous and perfect falls to the ground.

Ex recovers first because Stella nearly faints at the sight of it and they’re both kneeling in gowns that cost more than the entire gross domestic product of the lower districts combined, but her words wash over the younger blonde as she chokes out a watery laugh because nothing phased Ex, ever, and she seems so out of sorts but still so damn beautiful.

"Stella, I will marry you, with all of my heart. Will you have me, too?"

Stella answers her with her lips. She inhales slowly, her heart racing, hands shaking from holding back for so long, and closes the distance between them. She means for it to be a gentle kiss, to convey all the things she could never put into words, to stand in place of all the promises she would make over and over again as she grabs Ex’s face, thumbs on her cheek.

But as soon as her lips touch Ex’s, the sparks between them turn into a firestorm, raging and burning and bright, crackling through the air, and Stella loses herself, if only for a moment, conscious that two questions hang in the air between them.

“Yes,” she says simply, pulling away from Ex to lean her forehead against the older blonde’s.

“You know my answer will always be yes when it comes to you, my love.”