tell me why {Cyro/Arabella}

[k!ah]

a r a b e l l a .

If I hold onto the memories and use them to guide me
Will you be right here beside me
Everything I know is behind me
I'm starting a new life
I just don't want to say goodbye

Arabella couldn't sleep. Her mind was still buzzing from the days events. Her conversation with Katelyn, combined with the copious amounts of sugar, had her wandering around the sleeping quarters for her district. The apartment was quiet, the sun had long gone down and all she could hear was the gentle hummers' of electricity. It was an unfamiliar sound for her. She was used to hearing the sounds of the wilderness, the wind as it howl past her house, dancing between the trees. Or the gentle chatter of her parents as they whispered goodnight to each other, before getting caught up in a conversation that would end with them laughing, then shushing themselves as they feared they might disturb their sleeping daughter. She might not hear that again.

Shaking her head she moves deeper into the apartment, her feet carrying her to one of the room length windows. She had never seen anything like it. When she imagined the capitol, she had imagined it to be grand. To leave a real lasting impression, but once arriving she had realised that she had dreamed to small. She had never imagined to see building so tall that she had to tip her head all the way back in an attempt to see the top. Or that the streets would be so colourful, so lively. Filled with music, dancing and entertainment.

Maybe in another life time she could have been apart of it. Maybe she would have been one of the people who danced around the streets, a voice that should have belonged to an angel, blessing the audience around her.

Maybe in another time where the Districts didn't exist.

Maybe in another reality where The Hunger Games, were simply a reality completion about people who stuffed their faces with such delicacys that the Capitol offers. She would watch that something like that, Arabella decided. She would have volunteered for something like that.

Volunteered.

Cyro had volunteered.

But he hadn't volunteered for an eating competition. No, he had volunteered for death.

"Daddy! Daddy!"

The image of the struggling boy flashes in her mind. Of the tears that streaked his cheeks. Of the pain on Cyro's face. The child was his. Arabella was sure of that. Anger beings to pulse through her, as she tried to understand why he would do such a thing, why he would abandon his child. Was he after glory? Was that it? Did he want to bring home the crown? Did he simply not care for him? No. He cared. His heart broke as he walked away from the child. She had seen enough people walk away from their children to be able to tell the different. To see the tell tales. She could see that he loved the kid.

So why?

A frustrated growl escapes her lips as she whirls around, her eyes narrowing in on the door that had his name so elegantly printed on it. Cyro Krane. She needed to know why. She needed to understand why. She would have given anything to have known her parents. She would have given anything to have known that they loved her. To have remembered what they looked like. What they smelled like. Did they have her smile? Did she have her mother eyes? Her fathers nose? She didn't know. She would never know. And there was a very high chance that the child he left behind would have the same questions. He would forever have that hole in it were his father should have been. Watching him grow into a young man. Then an old man. Watching him fall in love, get married, have kids.

But he had volunteered.

He had volunteered to punch that hole in that kids heart himself.

She doesn't even knock before she flings the door open. She doesn't even realise that tears had begin too well in her eyes, "How could you?!" She yells, angry tears spilling down her cheeks.

[Tom]

It's the floor length windows and bustling lights that keeps him up.

No matter what anyone asked, that would be what he told them. Not the way he bare skin touches the bed and feels so alone, so swallowed up by the feeling of fabric surrounding him and the lack of a routine now. No Xander to put to bed. No work to go to tomorrow. No life to be had for now. Instead, he lays there staring up at the ceiling counting every metaphorical panel as if it were the chances of his survival, despite knowing that his odds were lowered just based on the district he was born into. The capitol didn't like him. Lights bright along the skyline, colors bright and clean, almost too polished for a home making him sick to his stomach at the fake feeling of the capitol. Glittering and shining like it's meant to impress them as if it were meant to give them a taste and make them want more.

Cyro Krane would never want the white walls and sign of power with every avox servant he's passed. Sometimes he wonders what they'd done in order to earn the loss. His father could be in the building, missing tongue and lost fire behind his eyes. A very possible idea being in the training center and capitol, but he preferred the worst of ideas. The idea of his father dead, no longer breathing to give him the bruising of his skin and his heart. It's louder in the capitol; where sounds seem to cave in walls, build up trenches, and make them afraid. Afraid of everything new, loud, and pristine in a way Eleven never would be.

Except, Cyro Krane wasn't afraid. No, he wasn't afraid of the capitol's wealth or their show of power. He's seen all of their privilege in the streets of Eleven, where Peacekeepers push citizens on the ground and question workers if they're stealing from the harvests. Cyro's been questioned many times when he'd work and every time he told them no, yet he was still held back, detained from his son because in Eleven, they were just bodies to work on the capitol's farms. It's frustrating in a way, but it's not enough to make him afraid of their authority.

There's a burning in his chest about being in these fabrics, pretending he's apart of all of this. They had taken him and removed the dirt, made him shine in the way the capitol wanted him to. Arabella and him had both been cleaned up in their eyes. Became pieces in the Capitol's game to be presented in such a fashion where human beings were no longer human beings, but animals to be sold. A chill runs down his back as he prays for his son to never go through something like this. Never be shown the horrors of Panem, but he would be one day and all he hoped was Xander learned to survive in this world without harm.

It's then when the door flings open, with the sight of Arabella Shirley standing in his room that makes him feel exhausted finally. Tears flowing down her eyes as he stares for a moment, knowing the same anger in her voice and face. The same anger he used towards his father when enough was enough. It's the words that catch him off guard. "How could you?!" The words don't click. What has he ever done to someone like Arabella Shirley? Peering over the fabrics, finally standing up letting them fall, in nothing more than a pair of loose shorts and underwear, he stares with curious, but apathetic eyes.

"What did I do?"

It's the truth, he's not sure what he's done to Arabella Shirley. It could be about how he's been not the nicest of people or the anger he showed on the train. She could be asking how he ignored her during the train and focused on himself. She could be asking him how he could be so cold or so brutal to her. She could be asking about how could he leave his son behind. Arabella Shirley didn't know him. She wouldn't know him completely and he had been fine with that, but she had stormed in here like she owned the place. No warning, no knock, nothing but anger and tears and he didn't blame her. Cyro Krane knew what it was like to burn with that anger, hell he still burned with it most of the time.

"Don't cry, I'm sure whatever I did isn't worth the tears."

[k!ah]

a r a b e l l a .

If I hold onto the memories and use them to guide me
Will you be right here beside me
Everything I know is behind me
I'm starting a new life
I just don't want to say goodbye

"What did I do?"

What did he do?

"What did you do?" Arabella asks, angrily wiping away the tears that had managed to leak down her face. "Well, I don't know," she grumbles as she stalks up to him, so that she was face to face with him, her eyes burning into his. "Maybe it was the fact that you volunteered for the games! No, wait, that's not what has gotten me so mad. Let me think, let me think." She taps a hand to her chin, crossing the other across her chest as she fakes confusion. "Ah, I have it!" She gasps, as though she had just answered the question that they had all been waiting for. She is so mad that she barely notices that he is standing before her in nothing but shorts.

In the next breath her face falls, void of any sign of amusement. "You," she prods him on his bare chest with a finger, "are a father." She prods him again. "and you, left that child behind." Arabella's arms were crossed against her chest again, her eyes burning into his, "you just volunteered to die. To leave that child with no father."

No father. Just like her. She couldn't understand, couldn't comprehend why he would do it. It was like she had this puzzle in front of her, but there was a missing piece. The hole where it should slip in taunting her as she frantically searched for the piece, but to no avail she just kept failing. Like it had been tossed in the bin, teasing her, frustration wrapping its hand around her neck, choking her.

Suddenly her fierce bravo drops, her eyes softening. "You must have your reasons. But- but no matter how many ways I look at it. No matter how many excuses I try to make for you... I... I can't figure it out." Taking a step away from him, as she fights the fresh tears that threaten to fill her eyes. The tears were no longer angry one, but sad ones as she fights off memories of herself staring at the orphanage gate. Waiting. She had been told that they had died, but she had been too young to really understand what that meant.

So she had waited.

Hours.

Days.

Months.

Years.

Is that what his son would do? Stare out the window waiting for a father to return who would not. How long would he wait? Would he wait years? Maybe he would have family around him to help him through it, to help him understand why his father never came back. Arabella never had family to hold her, to carry the weight of her tears on their shoulders. No, she was left alone, crying in the corner as she waited.

"Do you know that kid will find himself wondering when dad will be coming home. He will wait, cause he won't understand. No matter how many time the people around him explain that he won't be come back. He will still wait, cause he won't believe them, cause he won't be able to comprehend why. Why he would not come back. Cause dad loved him right? So why." The tears run down her cheeks now, her breathing becoming uneven.

"He will wonder when he will get his next hug. Feel his father wrap his arms around his him on cold nights. Hear him say 'I love you'" Her voice is breaking, she is shaking her head. Her mind traveling back to the times she craved to feel the warmth of her parents bodies as they wrap her securely in their arms. To hear the beating of her mothers heart as she pressed an ear against her chest. She desperately wished she could remember her mothers and fathers voice as they whispered 'I love you' in her ear.

Mostly so that she could know, know that they had loved her. That she was loved.

"How will he really know that you love him," she sniffles, wiping her forearm across her face, "if you're not there to tell him?"