Written for the Caesar's Palace monthly oneshot challenge. The song lyrics below are the prompt for this month's challenge.
"You see her when you close your eyes;
Maybe one day you'll understand why;
Everything you touch surely dies"
-from 'Let Her Go' by Passenger
Tears soaked the sisters' faces as they sat in the the justice building after the reaping. "Mira, I'm so sorry!" Maysilee sobbed.
"No, I'm sorry," she managed.
"I'll try to win, I will. I'll try to come back," Maysilee whispered, squeezing Mirabel's hands.
They held each other tightly until the peacekeepers pried Mirabel away, kicking and screaming. No sixteen-year-old could ever be prepared to let go of her sister.
Why did she have to leave? How could you let her go?
The day her sister was killed was also the day that Mirabel lost her reflection.
Starting at that moment, the wavy golden hair and bright green eyes that she saw in her reflection were not her own. They were Maysilee's. Her own reflection was all she had left of her best friend.
The only thing that prevented Mirabel from forgetting completely that the image in the mirror wasn't actually her twin was the absence of Maysilee's bright smile, the signature sly smirk that meant she was up to no good. Just thinking about her smile, a steak knife was driven into her heart, her lungs, and her soul.
She had been so helpless as her sister was devoured, piece by piece of bloody flesh being torn from bone, the dark crimson of her blood a contrast to the light green of the grass beneath her.
Pink had been her favorite color, but it was no longer. The image of blood stains tainting magenta feathers would never be erased from her mind.
Mirabel often wore her sister's clothes because, as she looked in the mirror, it wasn't her that she'd see. As the image in the mirror's chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm, it was as if Maysilee was alive again.
She found herself staring more and more at her reflection, sometimes for hours at a time. Time seemed meaningless as she watched her sister, hours falling away like autumn leaves, crumpled on the ground. She began to count the leaves that were left on the tree before it was completely bare.
As Maysilee's remains were paraded through the district in a tightly sealed box, Mirabel's world shattered all over again because it was real. The small bit of hope that it had all been some kind of elaborate hoax had been stolen from her, once and for all.
Kneeling by her sister's grave, she wished they'd taken her instead.
Mirabel was haunted. Her sister would visit her at night. She would come close to her ear and whisper to her, secrets as well as questions.
Why didn't you take my place, Mira? Did you not love me?
You know, you had more life experience than me, I was never even kissed.
How could you be so selfish?
I always had a crush on the Hawthorne boy, but I never told because you wouldn't approve of a boy from the Seam.
Are you too scared to join me?
She knew that Maysilee was kind-hearted and would never be so cruel, but she still woke up crying, curled in a shivering ball underneath the sheets.
A week after the games had ended, a visitor appeared at her door. "I'm sorry," he'd said, his dark eyes wet with tears, "I'm sorry for what they did to her." Mirabel shut the door in his face.
The second time he visited was when her closest friend was murdered, his girlfriend. Again, his first words to her were, "I'm sorry," and, this time, she let him in.
Why did everything she touched have to die?
He blamed himself and she blamed herself and they comforted each other with her father's liquor, then each other's hands and lips. Legs and arms intertwined, it wasn't love in any form of the word, but a means of forgetting, if even for a moment. She knew that as his hands wandered her body and their sweat intermingled, he pretended she was another, the only girl he really wanted underneath him, but she didn't care. She didn't love him, either, but the drink had made her mind foggy.
She fought back the feeling that she was betraying her friend, but didn't she just break everything anyway? She would've broken her heart eventually.
Mirabel was a puzzle in which the pieces had fit together perfectly when Maysilee was around. Now, with her sister gone as well as her best friend, too many pieces were missing. She hoped she'd find them tucked away somewhere, beneath a rug or between the sofa cushions, but she knew, deep down, that she'd never recover them; somehow, she didn't want to.
A photograph remained on Mirabel's dresser, of the twins when they were young, laughing as they played in the grass, hair wild and smiles uninhibited.
Sometimes she caught herself staring at the photo, unable to distinguish between the two girls.
She watched her sister grow up in the mirror, first losing the softness of youth, then becoming less taut as age threatened to crumble her features.
On her wedding day, dressed in all white, Mirabel began to cry upon seeing her reflection in the mirror. Her sister looked so beautiful in her wedding dress.
It pained her to think, though, that Maysilee would never have married a man for his wealth, to protect their children from needing tesserae so that she wouldn't have to watch her daughter die. Maysilee wouldn't have been so selfish. When Maysilee had died, she'd still believed in love.
She saw Maysilee so much in her young daughter; she saw her in the child's eyes, her blonde curls, and the sprinkle of freckles on her nose and cheeks. Anyone else would conclude that Madge looked just like her mother, but Mirabel knew better; Madge was no one but Maysilee.
She called her daughter the name meaning "pearl" because she was a lovely surprise in the midst of everything awful; she was sunshine in a storm, but it didn't fix anything, really. Her daughter could never truly replace her sister.
Mirabel could feel herself deteriorating. The headaches began to take her, becoming longer and more painful every time. Memories would consume her for hours at a time, scenes of candy pink birds intermingled with ones in which twins played together, happy and young.
As her world exploded, she watched her sister die all over again in the form of her daughter and she realized that she couldn't protect anyone, not even herself. Everyone she cared about died.
She'd finally see her sister again.
I'm not really sure how I feel about this, but I really wanted to explore Mrs. Undersee's character a bit, since it's not something I've seen often. I feel like I strayed from my normal writing style, so I apologize if this is terrible.