you're not here // calla

[gamemaker kelsier]

w o l f g a n g .

"And if a broken home is on the shelf
You know what we should ask ourselves
Were we ever happy acting in a family role"

Never really wanted to see Lysander like that you know, bloody, face all big on the screens in the square. It's much too close for comfort, I can see her goddamn zits. Even from my spot against a wall, it's like, ridiculous. She's a saint now too, little miss Lysander, gave up the drink for her allies and surviving or something like that but couldn't even give it up for the little brother that loved her HA.

God I hate Lys, so much that it burns a hole in my stomach or maybe that's just the cigarette eating up my lungs, not really sure. Mizz Angelica from the dollar shop is giving me an angry glare though, yeah I know how she feels about cigarettes, "Yeah Mizz Angie, I know, I know," I yell with a wave and stub it out beneath my boot.

But then when she turns her attention back to the screen I light up another. Stupid old lady can't tell me wha- "Okay, OKAY Mizz Angie," I yell and stub out cigarette number two on the wall before slipping it into my pocket. She's gesturing at the little kids sitting on the fountain in front of me and looks like a flappy old hen. It's fine, they're all gonna end up dying from black lung anyway if the games don't get 'em.

"Hag," I mutter and move down the wall, trailing a hand along behind me as Lysander stares at her ally floating face down in the water. She only cares about him because he's all interesting and dead I guess. I know Lysander Mae, so fucking well and she doesn't care about anyone but herself, it's laughable watching her up there on the screen, pretending to care about someone else.

If she cares about someone else, cares about anyone, that just means she never cared about me or if she did, then she left me alone in this shitty little district. She left me alone and didn't care that I was hurting the whole time too. I don't know which one I'd rather it be, her leaving me by choice or not even thinking about me.

Maybe not thinking about me, makes it easier to not care about her dying in front of me every day.

I hide behind the fountain out of Mizz Angie's view and light my cigarette again. The smoke feels good somehow like maybe I've chosen the poison himself this time instead of just waiting for someone else to disappoint me. They're really milking Lysander's mourning scene on the television and the small crowd gathered in Five's square is eating it up. I won't lie, she's a pretty good actress, even makes tears prickle in the back of my eyes when I see that expression on her face.

Maybe because she looks so alive like that, so switched on, more than I've seen her in the past year at least. I'll never admit it to anyone ever probably, but God, ------------- redacted.

Sorry, got a little mushy there, you didn't need to see that.

I lie down on the ledge of the marble fountain and blow smoke at the sky. It curls up above my head in little whisps and my skin tingles a bit from cold. If Lysander were here I wouldn't even have anything to say to her. No actually, maybe I'd flip her off, I dunno. She didn't have anything to say to me in the end, they just took her and I didn't go to the Justice Building to say goodbye.

Okay, I'm lying, I did. I didn't go in though. Just in through the front door and down the hall a bit and I stopped outside of her door and when they asked me if I wanted to go in, I said no. I was so angry.

I'm still angry I guess.

Lysander starts speaking and her voice echoes through the loudspeakers in the square, "Sometimes it's okay to be broken. You can put yourself back together better than you were before."

Kinda wonder what bullshit fairy tale she got that from because it wasn't okay for me that she was broken, not at all. My sister left me when I needed her, not when she volunteered but a year ago. She left me, broke in half and I hate her for it so much I wish she were here so I could kill her myself.

And up there she looks like a martyr and a saint, it's just me that knows her for the coward she is, just me alone.

"Fuck Lysander lives," I mutter into the end of my cigarette.

[tick 12a / calla]

C A E L U M

One of the guys we're holding for the week made a run it for this morning and I managed to tail him for about five blocks before he caught on and started sprinting. And, fuck, that's when it got messy as hell. My lungs can't take that kind of endurance so I tried to cut him off through the alleys, kinda weaved my way through everything until I could get close enough to stomp down on the back of his knee.

Except Dad said he wanted this one brought back alive, hinted that he was worth shit, but I really didn't feel like trying to lug him back across the district over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes. So yeah, maybe I watched the back of his head bob in front of me and imagined how easy it would be to put a bullet through it instead. I knew I could come up with an excuse easy enough. These parts of Five are dangerous, even for a convict like him, and really there's no telling what could happen out here.

Maybe I weighed the pros and cons while I followed him down a narrow street, thought about how pissed Dad would be if we lost just one. Maybe I got bored of it so I pulled the browning out my waistband and shot him anyways. And if I did do that, even though I didn't, you're probably wondering where the body would be, right?

But see, listen pal, we've got friends in all sorts of places. You wouldn't even be able to find it even if you tried.

I'm not saying there is a body out there. I'm just saying that I absolutely didn't kill him, so you probably shouldn't go looking.

Ignore the blood on my shoes. It's unrelated.

Nosebleeds, am I right?

Anyways, there's something about not-shooting someone that just gets my hands shaking, you know? I've got a jackrabbit pulse and a switchblade in my shoe and it feels like there's this big part of my brain that soaks it all up and keeps it in there for a good long while. It takes the mind off of other shit, useless shit. I guess I should ask someone if Lysander's kicked it yet.

There's a shortcut back to the office that goes straight through the square, so I might as well. I don't really care if Lys comes back or not. She's my sister yeah, but we weren't close. And I'm the oldest now that she's not around, all officially now and not just because she got up and left last year. I still don't really know where the fuck she ran off to, between one blink and the next she was sitting at the dinner table before Hazel died and then she was up there on that stage like an idiot.

I hope she knows that if she does come back, she's not getting shit from me. She may get a crown, but I'll have an empire. Even though she was first born, I was first chosen, and that makes all the difference. She's not a threat anymore.

Wolf's a different story.

Because Mom and Dad already had me, and I was getting better. They didn't need another one.

They didn't even know I was sick yet when he was born, they couldn't have, but I know that while I was tossing and turning and screaming on the second floor, Dad was grooming Wolf to take my place, I know he was.

No one thought I'd make but I did. So I don't really see a use for the kid anymore.

I'm halfway back to where I started, just starting to step through the square when I spot the familiar little shit disturber and hear sirens go off in my head. Looking at him sets my teeth on edge. Thinking about him kinda makes my skin crawl. I haven't seem him in ages and I swear it's just because I've been busy. I've got people to see and places to be and I don't have the time to get rid of my faulty replacement quite yet.

Suddenly I can't quite remember what I came here for and I'm striding over to grab the cigarette from between his fingers. There's a split second where I just look at him, sirens getting louder, and I use the sole of my bloodied boot (nosebleed, remember?) to kick him in the side, watch him tumble into the fountain and splutter in the shallow water. God he's fucking annoying.

I take his spot and kick my feet up, take a drag of his cig and grimace at the taste because "The fuck kinda cheap shit is this?"

I toss it in the water after him and watch the ember fizzle out. I've got a stash of premium shit back at home, all sorts of goodies that I get straight from the suppliers because I always call first dibs on the new shipments. I guess Wolf ain't so special after all.

I squint up at the screen while he finds his bearings and see Lysander still very much alive, very much breathing. Huh. Guess the Maes are harder to kill than we all thought. Or maybe not? I dunno, maybe it's just bad luck. Because Hazel died didn't she? And Wolf's somehow still here against all odds.

Speaking of, "Wolf, what are you doing?" I stretch my legs out on the ledge and act all exasperated, turn my head lazily and make a face when I see the water drip from his hair, "Get the fuck out of the fountain, it's not a public pool."

[gamemaker kelsier]

w o l f g a n g .

"And if a broken home is on the shelf
You know what we should ask ourselves
Were we ever happy acting in a family role"

Shut your eyes for two seconds and no one's left to watch your back. I guess I thought I'd be safe enough in the middle of the square in broad daylight, guess I was wrong. I don't even need to see whose boot is in my side, I know it's his.

Fingers empty, still collapsed around the shape of my missing cigarette, I roll into the water fountain. My side is aching from my older brother's boot and I can't even catch a breath first before I'm facedown in the water and scrambling for purchase in a slimy fountain. I bet they cleaned it once like ten years back and then never again because my knees hit a film of slime with a resounding thud. The water isn't deep enough for me to actually do anything but get bruised.

Guess it's my lucky goddamn day, huh, two sibling sightings in one go, that hardly ever happens and there's water in my nose and I feel it between my pants and my skin and it's horrible, clammy and day-ruining. Kind of like Caelum.

Why the fuck couldn't I have had at least one normal sibling?

I sit there and watch Caelum smoke my shitty cigarette. Water drips down my face and I wipe it away slowly, it smells like piss water. The screen across the square flicks back to the tribute floating face up in the water, goddamn, they're milking the shit out of that death, huh? There's nothing special about being dead in the water, that's what we've been for forever, everyone in this stupid family. Shit, that sounds like me agreeing with Lysander and I don't. She's a coward.

At least she's not Caelum though.

He flicks my cigarette into the fountain and you know what? I give up, I don't even want to smoke anymore, that's two cigarettes wasted and I'm not made of money. I'm just the second-born son and my allowance is 'whatever I can steal without getting caught'. Parent of the year award goes to my dad, give it up for that guy.

But we can't all be Caelum, the favourite who gets to do whatever he pleases. While dad brought me to work every day of my last few summers so I could stamp envelopes and staple closed various bags of contraband, Caelum got to stay home and fuck around. I swear I was born just to be my family's little bitch boy and Caelum is the king of treating me like one.

I swear he's actually trying to kill me, not that I know what I did to deserve it, pretty sure it's just another level of Mae insanity that Caelum inherited and I somehow skipped.

Anyway, he's laying on the rim of the fountain in the exact spot I just was, looking smug as shit. Caelum's got this kind of face where you just look at it and you want to punch him, dunno why. Come to think of it, I don't actually know how someone hasn't shot Caelum yet. He's incredibly shootable.

"Wolf, what are you doing?" says my brother and I just know a snide little remark is coming next because he's so damn good at those and I hate him double for it. Usually, I just don't fuck with him because Caelum's two years older than me and dangerous but today, Lysander is alive still and I don't know whether that makes me happy or angry and I think it might be a little bit of both.

The longer it takes her to die the more it's gonna hurt when she finally does.

"Get the fuck out of the fountain, it's not a public pool."

Ah fuck, he just had to do it and normally I would, I'd just back down because I don't want to fight Caelum. Maybe a small part of me loves and fears my older brother just as much as I hate him, I don't know. This time I do though because you know what? It's a Tuesday or something and my sister decided to kill herself last week, treat yourself.

"Water's great, Cae," I say with a grin and I pull my stupid older brother by his foot into the fountain with me, "Come on in!"

Maybe me pushing my knee into his chest to hold him down under the water is playing dirty but fuck it, I'm a Mae right? We're trash and we fight like it.

"You owe me a cigarette you fuckhead."

[tick 12a / calla]

C A E L U M

I watch Wolf flounder in the water like it's Ratmas morning and try to remember what I came here for in the first place. I dunno why messing with him gives me that warm fuzzy feeling but it does, just like the bite of a recoil, it's always there. It's an easy constant.

And my trigger finger is itching as I sit there and lean back because god it'd be so fucking easy to just shoot him if we weren’t smack dab in the middle of the square. Because I'm not sure if I could get away with that one. Not sure I care, though. I know that he's small enough to hold down and just watch drown but there's bits of glass in my blood and a crowd still standing twenty paces away.

"Water’s great, Cae." He says, and I stretch my arms up over my head, pop my shoulder joint in and out easy peasy, “Oh yeah, I bet. Sure looks refreshing.”

But then the sky is shifting above me and the back of my head hits the lip of the fountain as I'm pulled down and away, stars shooting through my vision while the water floods into my mouth and through my nose and feels like liquid fire making its way through my system. I lie there for what feels like only a split second, stunned from the sudden change in pressure and the dull ache in my head before I realize that the little shit pulled me into the water.

I recoil immediately and try to sit back up but there's a weight on my chest and I can see the murky outline of Wolf's face above me, taste the copper that's slowly making it's way up through my throat and I try to take a breath but there's nothing there except a liquid and a bitterness and I can feel myself choke on the kind of panic that likes to thaw the frail nerve endings under my skin.

That little fucker's heavier than I gave him credit for, or maybe it's just the sudden shock, or the empty spaces in my veins where the water seeps in or the way I can feel my back start to twinge, from the base of my skull all the way down to my tailbone.

I've built up this great big image of someone untouchable, something kingly. But pain is so familiar, as scalding as a mother's caress, and it sinks back into my bones like an old friend. I can feel the burn of cigarette smoke and chlorine singe the inside of my lungs and it's that same feeling that eats away at the loose little thread I keep tied around my self-control.

An icy sort of clarity runs through me and I'm nine years old again, helpless and hurting and so fucking weak that I could barely make it up the stairs on my own. Suddenly I'm ten and Dad is taking Wolf to work and I'm watching them leave through the kitchen window, Adeline calling my name because when she tried to give me my medication that morning I'd run and hid under the dinette. Suddenly I'm twelve and her blood is staining my face and Mom's gun is still smoking.

There's a whole moment where I can't breathe and it's enough to make my head sway and my vision tunnel and between one second and the next my hands scrabble against Wolf's knee, grabbing whatever I can reach and shoving it out to the side until something pops under my fingers and I can feel his weight shift away.

I shoot up out of the water and cough up all the shit I took in, grimacing at the way the water coats my teeth and leaves a film behind. Half of my body feels light and the other half feels heavy enough that I think I tip over a little before I can manage to straighten my spine back out. A dozen little droplets fall from the way my body shakes.

"Don't-" I can hear Adeline shushing the way my breath shudders and I can feel the scrape of a needle against my skin, again and again and again until it bruises and everything's all numb again, "Don't fuckin' touch me, brat."

I glare at him through a film of red and hiss at him through a mouthful of cotton but I don't know if I'm really looking at him or not because he's curled in on himself and my vision is still swimming, head still pounding loud enough to drown out the sound of the screens behind him.

"I'll put you in the ground so fast." I spit out, and my heartbeat stutters and skips and starts up again erratically, "So fuckin' fast."

[gamemaker kelsier]

w o l f g a n g .

"And if a broken home is on the shelf
You know what we should ask ourselves
Were we ever happy acting in a family role"

Since when am I strong enough to hold Caelum down? It's always been him sitting on me, him pushing a pillow aganst my face, him kicking my ass but this time, I hold my own. Maybe it's because I got him by surprise, like, maybe he didn't think I'd have the balls to fight back. I did though, I mean, I do. Caelum's gotta learn that at some point, I have teeth.

He struggles beneath my knee in the water but I don't let him up because I don't know what the fuck I'm gonna do when that happens. He's still stronger than me and I was lucky to catch him by surprise. My only hope of survival is probably making a run for it but even then, Cae knows where I live, so what the fuck?

I didn't think this one through. I feel a little bit like a puppy that's surprised it's finally managed to catch the squirrel and now has no idea what to do. My brain struggles to work, it's so empty. I have to think of something fast though, Caelum is struggling beneath me already and his hands are on my leg, pushing and pushing and-

Oh.

Oh shit.

My knee gives out from his force but the wrong way and I watch as my kneecap relocates itself to the side. There's an audible popping sound like someone's opened a bottle of champagne inside of my head, then a sudden burst of pain that shoots through my knee, up my leg and all over my whole body. A scream erupts from my lips and I forget about Caelum, all of my brainpower consumed by the horrible pain in my knee. My hands wrap around my thigh and I squeeze tight as if to redirect the agony I feel to somewhere else.

Oh god, I'm probably never gonna walk again, Caelum's one step closer to killing me and I'm never gonna walk again.

I curl up around my leg in the fountain water, fingers weakly massaging the flesh of my thigh near my knee again and again as if it's going to help. Pain burns through me in little pieces and my vision spots over like a ruined piece of film. Tears form in the corners of my eyes, and I don't want to cry in front of my brother but I might, it hurts so bad.

"I hate you," I mutter, back against the rim of the fountain now. I made him bleed, good. "I hate you, I hate you, I hate you," I say it again, a soft mantra as a sob forms in the back of my throat. I don't even know who I'm saying that to anymore, Lys or Cae, could be either. One left me and the other wants me dead and both things hurt more than I'll ever admit.

He threatens me, says he has a grave waiting for me but I was just sitting there. I wasn't even doing anything.

"Go away," I tell him even as tears start falling down my cheeks from pain, "Leave me alone!"

I scream it at him, "What the fuck did I ever do to you, huh?! What the fuck, Cae, go away!" The whole square can hear me, maybe even a few streets down but I don't care, this is Five, no one cares.