broken hearts of { gold } // silk & ridley

[Stare]

There were a select few, Ridley had learned over the years, who truly thought there was glory in the Games.

They believed that blood could be washed right off the crown, that broken bones could be mended and lost limbs replaced. Her eyes flickered down briefly to the gold glint of her hand as she made her way through train cars, heartbeat and breathing both surprisingly steady given the fact that the reaping had unleashed a hurricane within her. Emmett had believed there was some sort of honor to be earned at the tip of a tribute's blade. So had Bell. But when the curtain was lifted and you were left with wounds gaping like gruesome scarlet grins, lies could only take you so far.

Death in the Games was not soft and beautiful, as much as the screens tried to make it so. It was not sighing final breaths through barely parted lips. It was not pale clean skin and ruby red rivulets. It was not whispers of peace. Death was angry and painful and ravaging. It was a girl who hadn't been ready to leave, a betrayed friend who hadn't lived long enough to forgive. It was a boy's clammy skin as hotstickydarksomething pooled out of what was left of his body. It was a warrior's shuddering denial when she tried to stand again and again and again before finally collapsing into the fear of what came after she couldn't fight anymore. If there was any justice in the world, Ridley's own death would be the most agonizing, the most horrific of them all.

She supposed she was lucky, then, that there wasn't any.

But there were worse things. Ridley felt that fact keenly when she finally found Silk and forced her mind to slow and steady as she approached, setting a steaming mug of chamomile in front of her. When she spoke her tone was as level as a knife's edge. "I wasted too much time on feelings last time." No need to clarify what last time was. "Better to jump right to the point. Do you want to win, or do you want it to be quick?"

And this, this was her punishment, the hell to pay for her own survival. Not going into the Arena once and dying, but going in over and over and over again to protect a family that would never love her back.

[esther kim d3 {lance}]

If Coach Deluxe was familiar territory with an unfamiliar person, Ridley Le Roux is a complete inverse entirely. Your cousin from a branch of the family who had adapted to the bloodline instead of being born into it, yet one who had proven her mettle time and time again even before she'd been thrust into the arena and forced to kill three people to survive.

A shame that few amongst your family fail to see that. One regret you do have if you die is that you'll no longer be there to hold those that you can in line.

But regardless, it's been years since the two of you truly had a one on one sitdown. Never a fixture of your mother's mansion even before the Games, Ridley has since kept to herself for the most part - her own house in the victor's village, the Capitol during the summer, and who knows where else. What your cousin does in her free time isn't really your business.

But there's a familiarity and an understanding on her face when she enters - carrying a steaming hot mug of tea that both fits and seems foreign to her persona - that stirs dormant memories in your psyche - the same well-sculpted face with high cheekbones, the same long brown hair, and even though it seems that there is weight in the lines and scars etched into your cousin's body, it's the same woman underneath.

"I wasted too much time on feelings last time." Even the same sharp, succinct manner of speaking. "Better to jump right to the point."

Are you here to win, or to die?

And you respond with a smile, one that you always used to reassure each and every one of your younger siblings back home - kind, understanding, empathetic. "It wouldn't have been a waste," you respond, almost soothingly. "Emmett always did respond better in the language of emotions, even if he wouldn't admit it."

Even now, thinking of your little brother sends a pang through your chest that still stings even to this day.

"But you're right, feelings aren't really my forte like they were his." An understatement if you've ever spoken one - in the line of work you were being groomed for, emotions always, always, made life more difficult. "I'm here to win this, whatever the cost might be."

A pound of flesh, a liter of blood, even another stain on your soul - nothing would be something you haven't already done before.

"So, dear cousin," and here you look Ridley right in the eye, reassuring smile still on your face. "How would you advice I go about doing that?"

[Stare]

"It wouldn't have been a waste. Emmett always did respond better in the language of emotions, even if he wouldn't admit it."

Ridley bit her tongue against a quick retort to Silk's ready answer, her almost soothing tone. Emmett's voice clawed its way out of the part of her mind where she tried to hide dark and unwanted things, shredding apart the comfort. This is what I want. The words of a corpse haunted her every day.

"But you're right, feelings aren't really my forte like they were his. I'm here to win this, whatever the cost might be. So, dear cousin, how would you advise I go about doing that?"

For one fleeting moment Ridley wasn't on the train anymore but drawn back, abruptly, into a dream she'd had just the other night. Her nightmares had become strange lately, wrapping themselves in the finest tones of sunlight and warmest memories. In this one she'd been curled near a crackling fire on a winter evening, Pax seated across from her, just like they had once done to pass the long hours of darkness.

"Mom," she'd said, her voice very small. "What do you do, when faced with the end?"

Her mother's response had been level, monotonous, like she was reading from a script. "I've been told that one should beg forgiveness for one's sins."

You've been told? Don't you know? Aren't you gone? Ridley's jaw had tightened. "And what if one's sins are unforgivable?"

Her mother's gaze had flickered up, the briefest hint of recognition etched into the line between her eyebrows. "Then one should beg for mercy."

Back on the train Ridley's ribs felt like they were folding into her lungs. When she spoke, her words were steady and slow. "You have no idea what the cost is."

But how could she? Ridley certainly hadn't, in spite of a childhood spent with a face turned toward a screen full of bloodshed. She sighed, running her thumb absently over the smooth gold surface of her opposite hand. Some wounds, she supposed, would simply fester until she died. "I told Emmett and now I'm telling you - you have to know what you're fighting for, and it has to be enough." She listed her head ever so slightly, golden eyes narrowing. "When you've failed to keep your friends alive and you're bleeding out in the Arena and all you want is for the pain to end, what's going to drag you forward?"

[esther kim d3 {lance}]

There's a hardness to Ridley that wasn't there before. No need to elaborate on before what - if there's any two people that know exactly as to that which is being referred, it is the two sitting across from each other on a speeding train, twin gazes broken only by rising steam.

And it reflects in her words - even as she speaks in a tone that is soft and steady instead of accusatory, there's no denying the weight in the words "You have no idea what the cost is." No denying the truth.

You're far from a paragon of virtue yourself, harboring secrets of varying levels of need-to-know. Some extend to the bloodline. Some, solely to yourself and your mother. Some that will die forever with you.

But in that moment, you believe Ridley - know that watching something take place and committing the very act yourself are two very, very different things - and even if you have experience, there was always a purpose. A reason. A vendetta.

What is the cost when the only reason is survival?

"I told Emmett and now I'm telling you - you have to know what you're fighting for, and it has to be enough." And that has never been in doubt, not once, not until this very moment - but that reason falls in the middle tier of secrets, the one where the need-to-know basis begins at Eurydice Le Roux and ends at Silk Le Roux. No one else can know - not Harper until it's his time, not your aunts and uncles, not even Ridley, the only lion that has proven her fangs in a generation and a half. So you think - there's practical, but what's not practical? What's genuine, not pre-scripted, coming from the heart instead of the head?

Too often, you find tributes that try ruling with one over the other, letting emotion or logic be the sole guide in their path to victory. But the victors - the victors always have a healthy amount of both. You cannot let the desire to win burn out your humanity, just like you can't let the heart bleeding all over your sleeve rob you of your common sense.

"When you've failed to keep your friends alive and you're bleeding out in the Arena and all you want is for the pain to end, what's going to drag you forward?"

And you think, genuinely think, silence falling between you as the rhythm of the train remains as the constant. A common ground, the anchor of not only head but heart as well-

"Myself," you decide after a moment, any sense of a smile replaced only with the grim expression of cold, brutal reality. "Everyone always says that there's someone else they're fighting for, some reason to live, but at the end of the day, only the very strongest bond would survive the brink of death like that." You pause, thinking. "The family would be devastated, I'm sure, but it survived losing Emmett. It survived almost losing you. I'm sure it could survive losing me, as well."

You think of stories of individuals selflessly putting themselves in danger to save others - a mother to rescue her children, an older sibling taking the punishment for a younger - and deduce that none of that would be possible in a Games. There's no way your mother can protect you, nor vice versa. There's no younger brother to take care of, only sweet-loving Coach Deluxe. No bond formed in two, three weeks can possibly justify throwing your own life away for.

So what does that leave you?

"At the end of the day, the only person that you can truly rely in the arena is yourself, right?" You look your cousin in the eye. "Even your friends and allies must all die in the end if you want to live in those conditions."

[Stare]

"They must die," Ridley agreed, though there was a hollow note upon which every word was carefully balanced. She could feel the ghost of a river sweeping about her shins, see streaks of blood in the water, hear her own screams ripping out of her throat like she'd been the one who'd been torn to pieces. "But your fate, should you pursue it, will be far worse. You must learn to live with their ghosts."

All Victors were haunted. All thrones were blood and bones that had been gilded over.

But advice was perhaps not what Silk Le Roux needed in that moment. The young lioness certainly seemed more ready to enter that Arena than Ridley had been, prepared to bare her soul to the tortures that awaited her and cling to it like a lifeline. Ridley, in contrast, had gone in determined to uphold the family name. She would scheme like a Le Roux, fight like a Le Roux, die like a Le Roux.

Only she hadn't died, and recently she'd begun to wonder more and more if that was the moment when she'd truly failed the Le Rouxes

The family would be devastated, I'm sure, but it survived losing Emmett. It survived almost losing you.

"It's noble of you to think of the family but fight for yourself." Ridley inspected her golden fingers like she would painted nails, watching her reflection twist and warp on the polished surface. Occasionally she wondered what Minerva had done with her real hand. Sold it? Burned it? Kept it preserved and on display somewhere? "I did everything that I could for Emmett. There are some things that simply can't be bought."

Fate. Time. Ridley's gaze drifted to the scars where gold met flesh. Last goodbyes. "But I must admit, Silk, there are some things that I think can be bought. A name on a slip of paper, for example." My name. Ridley kept her tone casual even as her heartbeat quickened. She danced around the accusation but never quite touched it, simply leaving it as a seed to plant itself and grow. "Which is why the most important advice, cousin, is this: Do not place crowns where they do not belong. Crowns of admiration, crowns of love, crowns of power... don't be distracted by them. The only crown that matters is the one you win for yourself."