So, I have decided to take part in the Caesar's Palace Color Challenge! 15 one-shots, 15 prompts; Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple, Pink, Brown, Black, White, Gray, Bronze, Silver, Gold and Rainbow. Do it all and you become Victor of the Color Challenge. It's really interesting, check it out!
I've planned out all the prompts and this is my second-Rainbow: bluesky. (It's meant to be uncapitalised.) I've wanted to do a Mrs. Everdeen oneshot forever, and this is my crack at it. Feel free to check out my other Caesar's Palace oneshots as well: Never Forget and The Fifth Stage. Enjoy!
Kara x
bluesky
"Help…me…"
Normally, she'd do just that, but the brisk, seemingly so emotionless nurse knows full well that any promises she makes won't be kept. Aurelia Everdeen just stares helplessly into the eyes of this little girl, then wishes she hadn't. A lone gas lamp shattering on the thatched floor had morphed into a terrifying world of wicked orange tongues that left choking smoke and hopeless ash and destroyed lives in its wake.
A tragic accident, they'd said, but that's life and you have to move on.
Well, this girl's life is about to end; she'll have no chance of moving on, even in the miracle that she does survive, from her black and charred skin from the inferno, her disfigured face that is somehow still so pure and innocent and holds those slightly singed eyes that remind her of…
She doesn't want to think about whom those bluesky eyes remind her of.
A heart-wrenching whimper escapes the child's twisted lips, and normally it wouldn't have the slightest effect but the insignificant noise slices through Dr. Everdeen's hardened heart, because it's not just the eyes, it's the voice too and that eleven-year-old girl, dying in an ash-stained hospital bed, has managed to dredge up memories that had stayed locked down for too long for Dr. Everdeen to allow them the light of day again…
"Tell Papa…I'm sorry…about the fire…" a tiny, reedy voice stutters out, the agony of every word flashing across that ashen face. She coughs and a monitor starts occasionally beeping.
That's like her too; being concerned for everyone else's welfare but her own. Even in her last seconds before the blaze destroyed her body and my soul, she was thinking of others…her enemies…no. They weren't her enemies. They were innocent children, just like she was. Innocent children that died.
She's ripped out of torturous thought by a red light twinkling in her blank stare, then an urgent alarm, and all hell breaks loose.
The world becomes a blur of erratic beeping and red lights flashing and the girl with the bluesky eyes and soft cries slowly fading away and Mrs Everdeen knows she needs to stay with Prim-wait, who's Prim? She means Bluesky-but instead she gives in to the screams in her heart that ring in her ears and she leaves Bluesky behind, abandons her just like before, coward, coward, COWARD! Echoing as she hurtles out of the ward and the alarms go dead.
The doctor envies that girl so much. Morphling can drug you into a semblance of peace, but the only true peace is in death, and she tried to go there because she didn't belong here any more but everyone would prise the knives away and send her to an unresponsive therapist who probably knew less than she did about psychotherapy.
But they wouldn't let her just end it, simple, kind euthanasia for someone who's dead already, because they're cruel, so she acted her part and went to therapy and told the therapist made-up secrets because God knows the true ones will never see light again, and finally the act stopped and strangely, she didn't really want to pick up the knife like before, knowing it would start a whole new pain cycle that nobody deserves.
They say she's in remission from clinical depression. Not cured; not rid of, just 'in remission' which Katniss' mother knows better than anyone is just a medical way of saying 'we'll just see how it goes'. How could she ever be cured? She's lost…so much. Of course, Katniss has lost more, but then again Katniss was always the strong one, and Dr. Everdeen was always the woman with the blank stare…
"Aurelia?" A concerned colleague barges unintentionally in to her angry stupor of grief, but Katniss' mother tries to refrain from hitting her. "What do you want us…to do with…the body? All the next of kin were killed in the blaze, including the father who was her only legal guardian."
It takes only a second to find the perfect answer.
"Wait 'till there's a blue sky, then scatter her ashes in the sea. And make sure there's a rainbow. Prim likes rainbows."
She's barely registered what she's said before a wave of fresh agony slams into her as she realises who Bluesky reminded her of…and as soon as the name flits across her vision she's knocked into a world of black and red and pain.
Prim…
It takes every ounce of her remaining sense and vague sanity to refrain from just gulping down the rubbing alcohol in the back of the medicine cabinet; she settles for simple sleeping pills to allow her into her semblance of peace again. Some would call it 'falling off the wagon'; she calls it 'progress'. At least her first thought wasn't the windowsill…and scarlet life staining the District Four road below. That was always her first thought whenever the flashbacks came ghosting into her life; they'd had to padlock all the windows and hide the keys.
She has an overwhelming urge to call Katniss and then realises how incredibly idiotic that is. Katniss already resents her for being weak-she is, it's true-and the last thing her beloved but decidedly unstable daughter needs is more burden. The young woman with the dark braid that she loves with all her heart doesn't deserve that; Peeta doesn't deserve that, and Rue Night and Finnick Lock Hawthorn don't deserve even a taste of their grandparents' and parents' pain.
"Prim," she cries softly, "Prim, I'm so sorry…for everything, for not being there, for not saving you…but please, if you're okay, give me a sign…just please, give me a sign that you're okay, and that Bluesky's safe too…or I think I'll go mad…"
She wouldn't have believed what happened next if she hadn't seen it with Prim's perfect replica bluesky eyes.
A full rainbow, every colour distinguishable from the next by a thin ribbon of pure light, arcs across the bluesky, and in every colour, she thinks she can see someone, here or gone, in every brilliant shard of reflecting light. Mesmerized by this spectacle, thoughts whirr around her mind like a peaceful tornado.
The red's definitely Katniss; both sides to red are as both sides to Katniss-the anger and bloodshed and pain, definitely, but also love and determination, and fire that can both burn and restore.
Orange is Peeta, but not a bright orange, a soft sunset orange that counters yet compliments the burning red, tones it down but keeps it blazing brightly. Funny, I was always rooting for Gale…but I don't blame him for cutting ties. It can be a release from the pain that wakes you up screaming.
Yellow? Little Rue Night and Finnick Lock Hawthorn are yellow, symbolising Peeta's dandelion and the new beginning. Their names are of a patchwork past, with friends lost but never forgotten (she wonders how Katniss got Peeta to agree to the Hawthorn part, then realises he never would've refused), and bittersweet memories…but the girl with the long black braid and dancing blue eyes, and the boy with sunlight curls and thoughtful smoke eyes, they're new, and ready to weave a new patchwork of lives that will hopefully be much brighter and happier than the last one.
Green is always Gale. Green was where Gale belonged; a forest spirit at heart, always. There are rumours that he ran off into the woods with a brown-skinned nymph from an isolated forest tribe. She hopes so; that way, at least one of us is happy.
Blue is Bluesky and her guardian angel, Prim. Everything comes back to blue as everything comes back to healing, restoring water. Even the rainbow always comes back to blue. And one day Aurelia Everdeen will come back to blue, but she doesn't think of that day so wistfully anymore. It's strange. Different. But good. Always good.
And the indigo and the violet, it hits her, are herself; dark, stormy, troubled and unstable is the indigo, soft and vulnerable is the violet; but with the right influence of a little more blue or a little more red in her life, these troubled purples can be as beautiful as any other. And right now, she needs the red, because her beautiful younger daughter has just given her all the blue she could ever need.
Aurelia Everdeen smiles wanly at the signal, clear as bluesky rainbows, and sends a silent thank-you to whatever higher authority exists outside Panem for letting Prim's last message filter through the clouds.
I love you, Prim, but I think I'll wait a while before I join you in the bluesky, is that OK? I have some business to take care of.
Without pausing this time, she walks briskly to the telephone and dials Katniss' number.
She knows it off by heart.