what would angels think // syren & lore

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l o r r a i n e

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Just eat my goddamn eyeballs already, I hate meeting new people. Scratch that, I hate meeting these new people. It makes me feel poor, being surrounded by so much emotional baggage. Everything's got this film of depression on it. I can swipe my finger across any shelf or weapon or cafeteria vegan tofu burger and it'll stain my hands grey and brown. 

But that's where she comes in. 

Isn't it hilarious how things work out? Here I am, in the shining peak of glamour and beauty, everything I've ever wanted to be around -- and here she is. Red hair still and every stern look, I can't remember her name but damn do I remember that face. I noticed her in the reaping videos, Shelby left them on and I dozed back and forth through listening to them. Her name isn't called, she throws herself on that stage just like me and Syd and I wonder what it's like to feel like a martyr. 

Dying for someone else, how heroic. I did it for free! No baggage, no care; it's easier to convince my reckless actions that I was always going to be here. Kind of like destiny, except it didn't choose me, I made it choose me, y'know? It can work like that for girls like me. I've spent my first day bedazzling my training outfit and fixing the broken mirror on my token; we all have priorities. 

I have the rest of my week to figure it out, let me feel pretty for one last day. It's to help with first impressions, or second impressions -- I remind myself this when I finally get that bitch one on one. She's at the plants station finding lunch while I'm at the camouflage station trying to mix a passable skin tone out of brownie mix, corn starch and clay, we all have our hobbies. I'm almost half tempted not to leave, like somebody will poison my foundation the second I walk away -- it's like I'm back in the detention center. 

"Hey, Red!" I'm fixing my collar as I walk over to her, swatches and swabs lining my left arm, "find anything interesting yet? You've been at this station a while," must have learned something I haven't. Half of me hopes she isn't the same girl, just so that way I can lie easier to her.

Long distance relationships have never been my forte.  

[я𝑜𝓈𝑒]

( syren steele )

"Hey, Red!"

She turns her head away from the medicinal plants she had been studying and looks up at the girl from Eight. Syren didn't even notice that she was approaching her. She'll have to get better about being more self-aware if she's going to survive. Had this been in the Arena, she might already be dead by now.

Syren can't recall the name from the Reaping, but she remembers that this girl was a volunteer. For what reason, she doesn't know.

She's wearing a bedazzled training suit, a sight that would have made Syren grin with amusement if she weren't so weighed down by her impending death.

There is something familiar about the girl from Eight, though Syren can't quite place her finger on what it is. She's sure it's just deja vu from watching the footage of all the Reapings.

"I was just brushing up on my knowledge," Syren replies. She keeps her usual monotone, cool and crisp. "It's been a while since I took botany in school."

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l o r r a i n e

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Sometimes, I wonder what it'd be like if I were born in a higher district. If I were a girl from four, or three, or even just six -- there are so many opportunities that I couldn't imagine the feeling. Eight has textiles, we have dresses and skirts and blouses and khakis for girls who aren't me, and I am a seamstress instead of a model. A factory girl instead of an actress; woe is me, right? 

How bitter am I allowed to be, realistically speaking. I look at Red, or Silk, and I don't feel sisterhood, I just feel robbed of what I could have been. Daughter of a legacy name, never having to gloss her own lips, and the closest thing I have is a faint memory of cherry on my lips and "still have plans to go to the College, yeah?" I don't know her like that, just assuming. 

Just how people are in six. 

It's the only thing available, something that makes work worth it, and if I never see the Gaultier Haus again, at least I know I made my own happiness. One girl visits me in the Justice Building and I can pretend it's enough, as I'm looking at Red look at plants -- fuck. Ugh, fuck, I told myself I'd get over all the melodrama. 

The whole point of this is to celebrate my own fuckin' death. It's the last leg, dude, I can't spend this being lame, "it might still be there by the time you get back." I feel like I'm waving my hands in front of her eyes, trying to remember the girl this might be -- I think I fucked her once. Right? The 85th came along and opened up long distance work, Alex and I went to six and I got to imagine what it was like to be a girl in six. Skyscrapers and medicine cabinets, tiny little student apartments. 

The taste of her lips. 

Either way, she can be my little nurse. I'm a sucker for red heads.