rumbles on the horizon [Hopes & +1s] the eyes of argos

[d6a georgie cham 🍓🐢 frankel]

Pop!

And there goes the first of many champagne bottles to be opened today. A house filled to the brim of people and surprisingly most of their names end in Hope, a funeral has not brought them altogether but a celebration of Pierre getting a little bit older. The big five – zero. It honestly frightens Pierre whenever he thinks about it, it really is all downhill from here, he just hopes this middle-aged madness is kind to him. The mid life crisis is already creeping up, the first evidence being inviting all of his family into his house.

”Who wants the first glass?” Pierre announces as he begins to fill the dozens of champagne chutes with the heavy bottle in his hand. Everyone lingers in the mayor’s dining room and so far, no drama has unfolded…yet. Pierre reluctantly allowed plus ones and seeing the dregs that have been dragged from the streets of Eight into his home makes him regret it. He is already waiting for the bomb to drop and cause the nice annual family drama.

Pierre carries two glasses in his hand, heading into the direction of his youngest sister. ”It is great to finally have us altogether.” Pierre says as he offers Birdie a glass. ”I wonder if it will stay this calm with a few more glasses down every…” There is a rumble through the house and it is not caused by a domestic. Every glass shakes in the room, and silence falls onto Pierre’s guests as thundering vibrates through the house.

Pierre is quick out of the front door, eyes on the horizon around the mayor’s estate. A whole cloud of dust falls from the sky that must have caused a lot of damage. He looks around, trying to catch anyone wandering the street ”What is going on?” Pierre paces up and down his front lawn, the elections are so close. A building collapse cannot be on the table when he promised a rejuvenation to the infrastructure. ”I am sorry everyone but I need to find out what has happened. Does anyone want to come with me?”

[thompson harvard - d2b - arc]

{ preston hope }

The old fucker's birthday was today. Great.

Listen, I've tried to get myself over my father. I really have. I've tried so damn hard. I have no reason to be mad at him anymore- it's useless to hold onto something that he pursued himself. He had no correlation to the government killing my sisters. His daughters. His blood, my friends. The four chambers of my heart that all died, yet somehow, my chambers still live without their presence. The fire in which burned a home in their death regenerated the life in those chambers. The cold brick walls of the detention center colored them red. Filled them with the air taken from the lungs of those who died in my young and innocent anger. That was a long time ago, and somehow I've yet to get over it. We're working, I'm working on it.

The party had already started lightly buzzing - just a family gathering, which felt like the entire damn district at an extent. Not to mention that this is basically the first time the entire family is meeting my family. It's not like I don't want them to meet, but I'm just... embarrassed. I don't know. After so much trauma happening to my direct family people only know me as the fire boy or the boy who lost all 3 of his sisters to the Games. For so long that was my identity and it felt wrong to break away from that. I couldn't bother lighting up the other path of the cave that led to this family. My wife. My kids.

Paris and I met three years ago; she and Pierre saw face to face around four times. And then Lotus happened. She's our firstborn. Nile came after that. Lotus is now 2, Nile is 1. I sent Pierre a letter in the mail with a picture of both when they were born. I wouldn't mind having more children, admittedly. I love them, I love Paris. Admittedly, it might be a self-inflicted thing. I don't want my children to possibly ever feel as long as I did. I hated that feeling. I don't want anyone to feel that.

Anyway. Party. The old cunt was 50 now, which seems wild to me. I seemed to have got there just as they popped the champagne. First note; keep Lotus away from things that are shiny. She will most definitely want to touch it and most definitely will knock it over at the process. "”Who wants the first glass?” I glanced around at the rest of the Hope crew, and admittedly, that sounds real fucking nice given the crowd we have.

"It is great to finally have us altogether." A quick glance down to make sure Nile or Lotus hadn't run away from us yet; yep, we're good. It did seem weird to be together finally. For them to be here. This is my life now. I felt so paranoid about what the general reaction to my clan would be, since Pierre and Abandon were the only two to really get told of it from me. ”I wonder if it will stay this calm with a few more glasses down every…" A rumble was heard throughout the room and a light vibration the ground, causing my father to stop talking. My first instinct was to cover Nile's ears. The kid had really sensitive ears and I know damn well we will get a siren from that boy if anything too loud filled them. Paris was taking care of Lotus, so my only care was my boy at the time. I trust Paris had a good hand on Lotus at the time.

Dad rushed out the door upon the sound to look at what happened. Slowly following behind to make sure Nile didn't get lost behind the crowd of Hopes looking to find the source of this vibration in the earth. Dust is noticeably falling from the sky which causes me to hover inside the doorway. I wasn't sure what that dust was from or who caused it, but if it's anything close to dangerous I'm keeping near the shelter. Pierre was pacing back and forth muttering to himself about what had just happened. He then lifts his voice a bit higher to something which I can hear from my distance finally. "I am sorry everyone but I need to find out what has happened. Does anyone want to come with me?”

Does this man like putting his relatives in danger? Jesus fuck.

He didn't cause their death, you idiot.

Yeah, and he isn't going to cause my son's. He already knows what it's like to ruin his son's life anyway.

[goat]

She had been in the middle of arguing with Leland when it happened.

He had not been invited to the party. This was her brother’s birthday party, and she had not invited him, because they were not speaking. She had no idea how he had found out about it, just that she saw him hovering by the food table shortly after it had started. It wasn’t like she had wanted to be there in the first place. Pierre had roped her into it, and she didn’t want to be a dick, and now she was here, stuffed into a dress she hadn’t worn in years, unwashed hair piled on top of her head in a silly imitation of a bun.

The family had filtered into the fancy mayoral house with no more than a few words spoken toward her. Preston was there, Pierre’s last remaining child. He had a wife and children now. Crazy. Birdie watched the babies toddle around and couldn’t help the pangs she felt in her chest. There was a part of her that missed being a mom, but she knew she could never be one again.

Suffice to say, Leland was not making things any better.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” she whispered, her words harsh but the volume low so she wouldn’t interrupt the rest of the party. “I don’t want to see you right now. No, no I said—”

Pierre handed her a glass. She didn’t know when he’d made his way over there, but she plastered the fakest smile on her face and took the glass. “Thank you,” she said, the words dripping with artificial sugar.

He left, and she turned back to Leland, anything saccharine wiped off her face. “You need to leave.”

As they exchanged quiet shouts, the building began to shake. Birdie lurched forward, her glass tumbling from her hand and shattering on the floor, and she grabbed the edge of the table to keep from falling. She thought, somebody’s finally gotten sick enough of my brother’s shit to bomb the place, and then she laughed to herself, and then she thought, oh god, if I die, these are the worst last thoughts in the entire world.

The shaking stopped as quickly as it began. The house was still intact, but through the frosted window, she could see the remnants of what looked like a building collapse, a thick cloud of smoke and dust billowing up into the air. Fuck. That looked bad. Pierre was already out the door, the doting mayor ready to dive in. Birdie shook her head, unclenched her hands from the polished table, and went to grab her coat. She wasn’t the mayor. She didn’t have to deal with this, so she wasn’t going to.

As she descended the front steps, tugging her coat on, she saw Pierre pacing back and forth on the grass. “I am sorry everyone but I need to find out what has happened,” he said, addressing the family members that had gathered behind him. “Does anyone want to come with me?”

“No, Pierre,” she told him, trying to seem tough, but her voice shook around the edges. “I don’t want to go with you. I’m going to go home and see my cat.”

She breezed past him and started her long walk home.

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

Leland Durrow

I’d seen the invitation when I’d slept over at Birdie’s a few weeks ago. It was the night I’d blown her back out, or – well, the morning, when I’d gotten up and left without a word. I’d been getting my jacket from the coat tree when I’d see the half-opened letter from Pierre.

King of District Eight himself having a birthday party to celebrate the fact that he was old as hell.

You know I couldn’t quite think of a single time when he’d ever been nice to me? Known him close to twenty years and I think I’d remember if he’d once said, we’re lucky to have you here. Even after all I went through with Damaris, and the ups and catastrophic downs with Birdie, I got the feeling that half her family was happy to forget I existed after we put my daughter in the ground.

They say you find your families later in life, but all I got was cold stares and disappointed sighs form these folks. Not that Birdie hadn’t gone and poisoned them all the second that we fell out. Except who was the one that showed up to take Damaris now and again? Who was the one that remembered your birthday almost every other year, Birdie? Who was the man that was willing to care you’d broken your arm, that thought about how you fell apart again and again? Huh, Birdie?

So yeah, I thought about coming here and getting my shrimp fucking cocktail, and drinking some of the champagne, rocking the boat, and setting off a few fireworks when night set in (or whatever bullshit rich people did to celebrate someone’s fiftieth… but fireworks felt like the sort of thing Pierre would go for). And maybe I’d get a bit of dancing in, I’d see Pierre’s hot wife, the one with great tits for her age, laugh at Blackston out on that dance floor, give some liquor to the boys and smoke some cigarettes out on a balcony.

A good night that I deserved, for all the shit that I’d gone through.

Of course, even when I’d gotten settled picking at finger sandwiches and my third tumbler of gin and tonic, Birdie blew in like a typhoon ready to rip me a new one.

‘What the fuck are you doing here?’

“What the hell does it look like? I’m eating,” I shot back.

‘I don’t want to see you right now. No, no I said—‘

Here we go.

Everything had to be her way. It was so predictable, the way she pent everything up in her chest until it twisted up so much that her head was ready to pop right off. Attacking me for what had happened between me and that fucking dick from eleven – who started it, by the way – but no, Birdie blamed me for that. And for everything else that had ever gone wrong in her life, too.

“You think I came to see you, sweetie? You know how much I love Pierre. Glad to see you haven’t stopped being selfish,” A part of it was fun. The dance back and forth between us. Because she could be mean, and I got to be an ass right back to her. It used to hurt a lot more, the fighting. But now it just feels like sport, being able to tangle with Birdie. One that didn’t have so much a winner as two people struggling to walk away after. “By the way, did you fuck him, after he took you home?”

‘You need to leave.’

“You don’t get to take me out of everything, Birdie. You can’t just cut me out of the family tree because she… “ I stopped short. I swallowed down the rest of my drink and belched. “You know what? No. You’re causing a scene.”

It’s almost as the universe read the cue that it had to top Birdie somehow. When she slipped forward and dropped her drink, I thought she was up to some new kind of dramatics, but the rumbling kept up and I moved to grab onto a part of the table to secure myself. I guess I probably should’ve thought of Birdie then but she didn’t slip so – she turned out fine. Well, fine as she could’ve been.

That’s when we all gaped out at the window at the smoke, the fire, the oh-my-fucking-god sort of, someone’s done something. Which meant bad news, either peacekeepers or people in the streets. And based on the way Pierre seemed to be handling his own birthday party, I don’t know if I wanted to be out after dark. Eight had a way of turning on its head when things like this happened.

“Can you fucking believe this, Birb?” I looked back from the window to where she’d been standing, and saw her already bee-lining for the door.

I could’ve stayed with the rest of them, maybe stuffed my pockets with a few more of those little sandwiches. And a part of me was glad she was leaving everyone else to throw herself back into whatever hole she’d dug. She tried so hard to make herself unlovable, pretty soon she was going to wind up buried under all of it.

But then she said something about going home to the damn cat.

It was one of those moments where you look around, and you think – we’ll remember this. The way the glasses had scattered across the hardwood. The way one minute it’d been music and drinks, people passing trays of food and Pierre making a speech. The next a new world, one where we looked out at all that smoke and thought, maybe not then but soon after, things aren’t going to be the same after this.

And I don’t want it to be the last thing that I said to Birdie was harsh as it was. Or that I’d not taken the chance to get to the bottom of why I’d gone and punched the guy from Eleven in the face. Because I didn’t want her with someone else, even if I hadn’t tried hard enough to be with her.

“Birdie, come on, hey, wait up a minute, would you?” I called out, throwing on my jacket and rushing out with her. “Great party Pierre, real swell, hope this works out for you. You’re old as fuck now!”

[kap]

"With everything on the line
Watch the world ignite"

~

My family has always been dysfunctional, but I've always tried my best to get along with them. Besides, I certainly don't get along well with people outside of my family, so I might as well find some group of people that I don't completely hate. Uncle Pierre's fiftieth birthday celebration should have been the perfect excuse for some family bonding. It should have been but how could it really be, when, upon arriving at the party, I could already see the disgust and frustration on the faces of some of the people there.

Regardless, I came in cheerily.

"Happy fiftieth, Uncle Pierre!" I said, a smile written upon my face. I then took a seat.

My uncle started to pour drinks, and when he offered the first, I was thoroughly tempted to speak up and ask for it, but I knew that wouldn't be allowed. I was one of the younger ones here, and I doubted that he wanted to give me champagne. He'd probably heard stories of how I get when I have a little bit of alcohol, after all. I'm quite the lightweight. Therefore, I kept quiet, and it turned out to probably be a good thing that I did just that.

Before anyone could argue any further, a rumble could be heard, and it threw me off guard. Clearly, it had done the same to Pierre, but Birdie didn't miss a beat when Pierre asked if anyone wanted to go with him. Sass and all, she walked out the door, Leland following after her.

Judging the crowd, it didn't seem like anyone was up to going with my dear uncle to find out just what had happened, and I was a combination of nervous and excited. Perhaps that's why I spoke up. I knew it was an emergency, so that excitement portion of things shouldn't have been there, but it was. The nervousness was there, too, though, and I suppose that's much more reasonable, and to be expected.

"I'll go with you," I told him. My hands were shaking, but I put them below the table to hide them from view so he wouldn't notice.

I didn't know what I was getting myself into. I was an eighteen-year-old girl, potentially walking to my demise with my uncle. I just hoped that we were ready for it, whatever this ended up being.

~

word count: xxx
lyrics: "Revolution" by UNSECRET ft. Ruelle