return to sender || beck day nine reaction

[[nyte]]

He sits with his head in his hands breathing slow in an attempt to keep from breathing at all. There's needles in his lungs, screams escape through clenched teeth in a soft hiss. He's hurting, but he can't pinpoint where it comes from. Maybe everywhere? It's all in his head, the way his heart bleeds into his throat and spills through lips drawn into a thin line. Fighting back a wretch. The world's gone bitter and black and even if the sun were to rise it'd be for nothing. Everything is so wrong that it can never be right again. He's so certain this is endless that he can't bring himself to remember it will stop.

It always does. In a few minute's time he'll look back on this little boy curled up in a luxury sofa, scared of nothing and think him pathetic. These episodes are merely one of the many side-effects of victory, something he should have learned to deal with in the year he's been gone. It's hard when his body remembers so vividly how it felt to be dying.

At the very least he knows to break down in quiet, convenient places.

It ends in a stilted decrescendo, the dregs of the aftermath fading in time for the Anthem to blare through every television screen across the country. It's almost enough to drag him back into his cage and he's left squeezing his good knee until the pain gives him something solid to focus on. Something, anything, to remind him that shadows are not as invincible as they seem.

Day Nine has arrived. He suspects it's her that has left him in such a state. He's watched himself face down Walter Blake upon a bridge made of bone and bark a thousand times. He never let himself forget that desperate feeling. He'd been willing to do anything just to see the other side of paradise no matter how desolate he knew it would be. Something was better than nothing. On Day Nine, one year ago, he'd dared to hope it marked the moment things got better.

Day Nine, present day, Perdita and Dominic are still alive. He's kind of angry about it. Pushing past the point of exhaustion wasn't anything new but he hadn't wanted to care for them like he's come to. Dominic was naive, Perdita was insolent. They were odd little strangers who he'd been saddled with entertaining for an uncomfortably long train ride just like he and Noel had been to Anatalia the year before.

He'd offered them empty encouragement, lied about what it was like in the arena and dredged up his old career training in an attempt to make them feel like they had the upper hand. Beck wasn't their friend, he wasn't their keeper. He didn't owe them anything.

Day Nine, present day, Perdita and Dominic are still alive and Beck dares to hope this means he'll meet one of them again.

He doesn't blame Perdita for playing the game. There is no honor among patchwork murderers, no righteous way to bring your blade down upon someone who's sins weigh as much as yours. Her fight with JJ had been nasty. Visceral in the way they tore into each other with teeth as well as weapons. How kind of her, Beck had thought, to give the Capitol such an easy villain.

On screen she is intoxicating, a sheen of poison dried upon an apple's skin. Sweet until it's bitter, coating your tongue and stitching your throat shut. It might be that she's chosen this, it might be that it's a mask to hide what withers within. It might be that this is all she's ever known, that this is who Perdita Leto was before the games had taken hold. Beck doesn't know her well enough to guess.

He sees a survivor in her eyes. So strong he envies her. Nothing he did helped Perdita get to this point, she was destined.

"Look at me, Kahinta. I win."

There's a skull engraved into the back of the compact mirror he buys her. Made of heavy metal, painted silver and engraved in gold.

On the other hand, Dominic is easy to like. Beck had thought that the moment he'd met him. He'd always seemed like a good kid and that terrified him. There's a thousand ways to ruin good kids and at least a thousand more in the arena. He's bright enough to be a beacon, magnetic enough to draw eyes. Beck didn't want to watch him twist himself up into knots. Become a gnarled, bitter thing that was unrecognizable. It's funny, really, just how severely Beck had underestimated him.

He must be incredibly stubborn or made up of stronger stuff than any tribute Beck's ever seen because Dominic is still radiant. The light is duller, pulsing slowly in tune with a broken heart, but no less blinding. He hasn't given up, that's obvious.

He'd smiled when he saw Dominic scrawl those defiant words in a heavy hand.

I did not die here.

He fell in love so certainly. It hurts to watch but it's not like it can unearth old memories. Beck never laid Sophie to rest. He hadn't known what he meant when he told her he loved her, only that it wasn't any kind of love he'd known before. It's lasting, however, he carries it with him now and he'll carry her until the end.

So he doesn't feel too bad for thinking Dominic is a bit of a fool. He makes for good company.

He buys him a silver charm bracelet with one half of a broken heart straining against its chain.

These frivolous gifts may never reach the tributes - his tributes. He knows better than to think he might even see one of the little trinkets again.

He sends them anyway,
because he hopes he will.