Echo (07/22/14)
Sometimes they have good days. Sometimes they have bad days. Everyday is another day they survive.
Foreword:
Ahhhh...
well...let me set this up a bit.
I'm in the middle of writing a Hunger Games drama where the tributes from the 74th HG (aka Cato, Clove, Rue,, Foxface etc) die...but are revived by the capitol for reasons initially unknown to them. They are brought back to life to live in a paradise of sorts where they live in a haunted haven of controlled "peace".
Eventually they discover their being used by the capitol to help fight in the war against the rebels. Then they end of trading sides to fight with the rebels, blah blah blahhh, people fight, people die, everyone gets emotionally damaged, blah blah blahhhhh...
In the end when the war is won they all choose as a group to never reintroduce themselves back into the modern world, never reveal their involvement in helping defeat the capitol, and to pretty much go back to their gilded prison to live the remainder of their days in the place they all somehow now call home.
5 years later, and after much deliberation, a guilty Rue decides to bust their cover to the one and only Katniss: who is shocked not only to see a very much alive eighteen year old Rue at her doorstep, but to find out just how much the now living tributes have seemed to change...and drastically at that. Unfortunately, someone catches whiff of the surviving tributes and their hideaway and well...all hell breaks loose.
This drabble is set somewhere in the in between of Rue revealing their "living status" to Katniss and the end of the war. Somewhere around the 4th or 5th year after the war. And yes, it's angsty because coming back from the dead to work for the very people that killed you in a game of death itself is, well, pretty damn scaring. So...anywho...yeah, here we go.
Rue: 18
Cato: 22
Oh and YES...Rue is with Cato =P
Don't like, don't read.
Echo
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Sometimes she has good days.
She rises somewhere in between the sun sleeping and the moon yawning and heads with a purpose towards their small garden out back. She works and works until her palms are numb. Her clever fingers knotting and twisting themselves into the rich soil, pulling at stems and prodding at petals. There's nothing that puts a smile on her face quite like the one that demurely glows on her face when she's planted new seeds ~ new life, new hope into a world that for her, used to have none.
He can always tell when she's had a day in the garden. Her natural fallow tone skinned is bronzed into a warm caramel with a hint of cream and no matter how many times or ways she washes her hands, there's a bit of dirt stubbornly embedded under her nails that doesn't rinse away for days. She throws her wild dark curls into a messy bun atop her head, steals an old ripped shirt of his that she has to tie twice to keep from falling off, and puts on a pair of overalls she just had to have on their last brief capitol espionage. It's a funny sight to see once she all geared up and ready to go. He'd like to imagine she looked like this ~ this relaxed, this in her element, this at home ~ when she use to mind the fields years back when she was just a little girl in District 11.
But he knows better than that.
She doesn't wear shoes. They're too confining. She likes the feeling of the soil wiggling between her toes too much. Likes the feeling of being connected to the earth. It grounds her, holds her steady in a place she feels safe. And when she can feel the slight pull of bad...bad days starting to reel her in she closes her eyes, digs her soles into the ground, holds her breath, and squeezes her toes together to root her back home again.
Sometimes he helps her. Sometimes he merely stands by and watches. But he is always around, hovering and keeping tabs on her like a worried parent. There's been multiple occasions when she's called him out on it, even going as far as to call him "mother hen". That's okay. He's been called far worse, callous, honest, vile, truthful, hurtful things. He thinks he can handle a jab at his overprotective behavior, a behavior he didn't even know he was capable of distributing to another human being.
Nevertheless he watches her. He knows all too well the familiar shadow of the darkness that haunts them both; so he doesn't leave her side just in case the soil beneath her feet isn't enough to bring her back to reality. Just in case he has to reach out and grab and fight and pull her back home himself.
Just like she would do for him.
He has his good days too.
He wakes up from a dreamless sleep ~ because only nightmares or nothing at all are what he sees when he closes his eyes at night ~ and he'll roll over and pull her petite body so close, so tight that she believes he trying to pull her into his very soul.
He thinks she may be right.
He inhales the scent of calliopes and vanilla and cinnamon and all the things that are so very her and imprints them into his memories like it's a whole new experience all over again. Then he peppers kisses from the shell of her ear to the nape of her neck to the curve of her collarbone, tickling her just enough to prompt her to turn around and bite his nose in retaliation.
"Leave me alone" she mutters half asleep. He can hear the smile in her weak command.
"Never" he responds as he presses his lips to her forehead.
He grins as she reverberates his words against his skin.
When they pull themselves from bed they dress and go for a run around the gilded prison that is their home. Taking the scenic routes, breaking off into the wooded areas, hiking through the trails. He races her up a hill and across a couple of fields. He's torn somewhere between pride and irritation when her tiny self actually beats him on more than one occasion.
As they reach the familiar cobblestone path that leads them back home they fall into an easy stroll, side by side, and intertwine hands and fingers like second-nature. For him these days are perfect. Because she keeps him grounded. She keeps his thoughts on the 'now' and not 'then'. She reminds him that they can be different people than the killers they were forced to become to survive all those years ago.
And as she smiles up at him like he's the most important person in the world, he can't thank her enough for that.
Sometimes she has bad days.
He wakes up in the middle of the night to a chill breeze and her standing on the bedroom balcony; arms wrapped around herself, overlooking the horizon yet staring into nothing ~ staring into her past.
He doesn't think for a second that she'll jump but the sight just makes him...uneasy. He can almost see the memories playing out in front on her face...Them learning they were revived to fight in the name of the capitol only to die right over again, her hanging by a thread from the treetops as capitol solders forced her to climb her way up to the top, her broken heart as she watch the assassination of her grandfather on air after Katniss's speech of forgiveness dedicated to her...They're swarming her, filling her vision, clouding her consciousness and he immediately finds himself grabbing her hand and pulling her away from the ledge and eventually back inside with him.
She never cries. She did all her crying years ago when she first was revived, much like everyone else. Even them her tears were silent and empty, almost robotic as if her body was reacting how it should to such a traumatic series of events. She just didn't have it in her to cry anymore, she supposes.
But she does become eerily silent.
And her fingers twitch and twist into soil that isn't there.
And as she fists into nothing but thin air he knows she is fighting an endless battle of what's real and what is not.
His bad days are always the worst.
A true terror.
Though surprisingly he has them much less than her, when they come: they come head on. Like a squall in the middle of the most tranquil night.
They are abrupt. Brash. Loud. A temper tantrum that your forced to simply wait out until the end.
He likes the God Ares himself as he storms around, his already intimating size of 6'3 seeming too small a number for him in his madness. Broken things are everywhere from pictures to furniture to dishes to whatever miscellaneous item dare crosses his path of fury.
There is swearing and threats of revenge and unadulterated anger to a man who's been dead and gone for well over 4 years. But his pain is so real, fresh, and raw it's almost a sin to think it happened any less that a few yesterdays ago.
It's chaos: both in his head and all around him.
And yet, there she is with her quiet faith. Waiting it out like a champ. Sitting nearby with a book in her hand, or a spatula in her grip, or sometimes his boxing gloves to head him in the direction of the punching bag out back because God know he needs to just let it out.
There is no fear in her disposition, just calm acceptance and the patience that could put a veteran mother of three boys to shame. And when its all said and done, and he comes off his high of pure rage and aggression; he finds her waiting for him, encircles her waist within his broad arms, lays his head into her lap, and breathes.
Just breathes.
In and out.
Slowly coming back to earth, slowly coming back to himself.
She runs her long fingers through his brazen blonde locks and hums a little tune from years back that they both know, one from the bloody haze that was the Arena, one that she was never quite able to let go of.
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I've been dying to get this out of my system =) So glad I finally diddddd! I'm pretty particular to crackships. But these two have somehow become one of my faves =) CatoxRue FTW
YUP. Sorry NOT sorry
Also, I was inspired by the song Echo by Helen Jane Long (Which I do not own) for this entire drabble. Listen to it while you read, it'll make it even better =)