"I didn't know you got another girlfriend already?"
Gryffon whipped his head around, eyes wide and glaring at the small figure that made up his mother. What? "I can't get another of what I've never had," he replied sharply, watching her as she reached forward and placed the magazine onto the coffee table. Of course she was reading the horrid thing.
Couldn't she do as everyone else and ignore them? "Oh, but what about that nice girl from One, Gryffon? And the sweetheart with the short hair - Mable or something?"
"Maple. No, neither of them were my girlfriends."
"Ah, but it makes sense, see? Redhead for a redhead? She's very pretty, looks like that lovely girl from Eight . . . Last year's winner? What's her name again?"
Gryffon stare at the woman disbelievingly. First of all, hadn't she read the paper? Second of all, was she deaf or just choosing to ignore him? And what was with her thin smile? Forcing some sort of expression around him for once? Amazing. She even managed more than just a word or two. What a surprise. "I really don't even like - "
"But it says here you took her out to dinner! That was a very nice thing to do! I never saw anything about that with the other girls, Gryffon. Think this one's more important?"
Dear lord, help him. The man let out a slow sigh and ran a hand through his hair, biting his lip. Breathe, Gryffon. Don't snap at her. "Woman." Too late. "Are you listening to me?"
"Gryffon, answer my ques - "
"Are you listening to me?" He raised a brow at her, lips pursed and pupils narrowed angrily. Now was certainly not the time for her to be telling him what he should and shouldn't do and whether or not he should respect his mother. She had been nothing to him until after he won - and he had not won for her, no. He won for Stephen and Andie, in the end, whether or not he liked that. She had absolutely no business being there. All she did was cook and take up space, anyway. And if anything, he could always get Annabelle to sustain them.
Pulchra was just contaminating the air in the house. But Gryffon was nice enough to leave her mute and otiose body there. Now she had to play by his rules just like she had his father. Lucky her he was a lot more accepting than Alick had been.
"Answer my question, you useless piece of shit, answer it." Slowly she nodded, staring at him with a faltering grin as her dark eyes clouded over. "Fantastic," Gryffon started, tilting his head to the side with a smirk. "Now, since you're listening, you can repeat after me. 'I will not bug Gryffon with the useless shit the assholes of the press write in their stupid magazines.'"
Another minute of blank staring and Gryffon took a step forward, his need for a drink and food forgotten. "Repeat after me, 'Mommy'," he growled, practically spitting out the affectionate word. "I know you have a tongue in that mouth of yours, use it for more than just licking your own ass. Speak up or I'll damn well cut it off right now and you can go serve the Capitol." Every syllable was harsher than the last, and the more he looked at her, the more his heart quickened and the more he cursed.
"Gryffon, I will not - "
"Uh-uh," he interrupted, straightening his head and rolling his shoulders back. "Not the words. Scissors are just in the other room, you know. Go on." And by the twitch of her lip, Gryffon figured she was still trying to believe he was bluffing. Oh, if only he was. But it's not like she could know that it was the little things that annoyed him most. The nicknames, the supposed bonds he was making with the other Victors and Capitolites. If he read it himself in a magazine, like he had before, he wouldn't be as annoyed. Gryffon was used to it, it wasn't strange to read. He really didn't even care.
But the fact he asked for it to stop being said, stop being insisted and forced on him, and she continued just to make some inane conversation . . . Well, that was what annoyed him, not the topic of the chatter.
"Please, Gryffon, don't be so irr - "
"If you're going to finish that sentence with 'irrational', I suggest you shut your mouth." Irrational was her sudden talkativeness. Irrational was him allowing her to stay there. Irrational was her pretending she couldn't hear him. Bitch. Gryffon saw her swallow, as if collecting the lost word back into her mouth before forcing it down in one large gulp.
Good to see she wasn't entirely stupid. Not as airheaded as a Capitolite who would have either shitted themselves or laughed their head off by then. "Where's Stephen?"
"Work," she croaked out, looking back down at her hands crossed over her lap. "Andie and Stephen both are, Gryffon. They get up at dawn - "
"Oh, I thought I was mistaken. Don't know why you think you get a free pass to just sit around here. You should go with them - "
Ding!
Gryffon grimaced at the sound of the doorbell and had to push back a groan. It was way too early for visitors. He pivoted toward the door and when it opened, Gryffon had to keep himself from slamming the door right back closed again. Annabelle's sleepy, disheveled self stood there, covering her yawning mouth with the back of her hand. "'Morning, Gryffon," she sighed, removing her hand to wave at Pulchra who was barely visible behind Gryffon's broad form. "Think I can steal you away for a little while?"
"Please do," he grumbled, stepping right past the older Victor. Not that Annabelle's company was much better than his mother's, but at least he could hold a conversation with her when needed. Fucking Pulchra just acted like a half witted, half deaf baby.
He heard the door click closed when he was about half way across the clearing, and Annabelle's slippered feet padded after him. "Have breakfast yet?" Gryffon shook his head at her question. He had only been up an hour, and it was actually pretty late considering his early risings at six in the morning. It was already eight. Annabelle bounded ahead of him and nudged her front door open.
"Amazing, usually that's not the case," she replied with another yawn, turning toward the kitchen. "Make yourself at home. You know how things work here." The man rolled his eyes and watched her form disappear around a corner before he shrugged his sweater off. He hung it in the closet just by the entrance and slipped his hands into his pockets, following after her. The living room was surprisingly squeaky clean and everything perfectly arranged, quite unlike how it usually was with clothes and plates and cups lazily strewn here and there, similar to his own house yet he had two children in there to make the mess. She didn't.
"Have visitors lately, Anna?" Gryffon turned a slight corner just off the living room and ended up in a rather large kitchen space with a dining table in the center with a sink, microwave, oven, and such all along a wall counter. The woman shook her head as her fingers made their way through her short black locks.
"Tired of staring at everything all over the place. Months accumulate shit, kid," she explained. "Might as well keep things neat so when I get back from jobs I'm not clambering over mountains of stuff." Gryffon leaned against the wall, staring at her incredulously, trying to make out her groggy tone. In the Capitol, when she worked with him that first year, and when she mentored him, Annabelle had never looked so tired and didn't seem like the type of person to be getting up at any time after ten, even with her being up by seven effortlessly everyday. Apparently he was wrong.
It was strange to see, but oddly relaxing. Maybe there wasn't going to be any immediate lecture with her in that state, which made him a lot more willing to stay there. "Waffles, Gryffon?"
"You won't poison me?"
Annabelle glanced up at him, completely unamused by his attempt at a joke. "You should know by now where I keep it all. If I reach for a poison, you can easily stop me, anyway." Crushed mixes of plants had been collected in small little jars and put away in her cabinets. For the longest time Gryffon didn't trust her food in fear she wanted to get rid of him as much as he once had. But he was still alive, and now he didn't mind too much anymore. "Go ahead and sit if you're not going to make yourself useful. You're taller than you know and your presence is a mental block, believe it or not."
He complied with a simple roll of his eyes and pulled back a chair before settling down. Annabelle served her coffee in a mug, half of it being filled with the black liquid and the other half with milk. She placed Gryffon's black serving in front of him before going back to hers and placing it into the microwave to heat up a little more. "No sweetener, right?"
"Right."
"Certainly explains your personality, I swear," Annabelle sighed as she moved to grab the ingredients for the food. Instead of watching her, Gryffon stared at the microwave, concentrating solely on the humming of the thing as it spun. Any moment now, he expected it to overheat and explode, sending coffee splattering all over the room, as well and bits and pieces of his former mentor.
But no such thing happened, of course. At the end of a minute, Annabelle simply pressed the button to open the microwave, causing Gryffon to wince, before she retrieved her drink. "Stop daydreaming and answer me." He blinked back up at her, raising a brow in question as she sprinkled in a couple of teaspoons of Capitol-made sweetener. "Jesus, Gryffon." Annabelle let out a sigh and dropped the spoon into the sink before going back to mixing the dough. "Work going well?"
"I guess. Went to the Capitol more times than I wish I had to this year and it's only August," Gryffon groaned. "Had to go in place of Chester a couple of times. Don't know why I'm the go-to guy after him. Most of it I bullshit and the rest is done by the other two guys."
"You're a Victor, Gryffon. Good or not at your job, you're wanted," she answered slowly, pouring the mix into the waffle maker. "It's a good thing."
"I really don't like the Capitol enough to want to practically live there like you do." He shook his head. She answered him with a shrug and finished her kitchen duties in silence, placing a plate with a waffle each over the pair of placemats on the table before putting out syrup, butter, jelly, and whatever else she had there.
A couple of sips into her coffee, Annabelle motioned toward him with the mug. "You could be like Trace and have to sell your body, constantly traveling around, or being confined to a select few in the Capitol anyway." He scoffed at that and shook his head. Going around having sex with people didn't sound like such a bad idea. He wasn't like Trace, didn't have a kid to take care of, he didn't have to care. "And you'd attract people of all genders . . . " That changed things entirely. "You really can't complain about what you have to do, Gryffon. After what you did in your Games and your Tour? If you ask me, you came out as one of the luckiest and most privileged Victors. I can't imagine what drug clouded Snow's judgement to let you off so easy."
The sound of the water running echoed into his head in a soothing rhythm. They hadn't spoken much over their food, which had left Gryffon's mind abuzz with what she had said. Luckiest? Most privileged? He was bored. He never had anything to do. And he couldn't just travel around nilly willy playing wannabe prostitute because his district was overly guarded, even for work purposes.
Snow knew very well Gryffon wanted out of the district, knew that he wanted to do something worthwhile. All the president was doing was punishing him with measly little tasks that did nothing to ease his restless person. Snow knew what he was doing. Gryffon couldn't believe his name had just been picked out to be one of the 'lucky' Victors. It just didn't make sense to him.
"The hell is this?" The plate in his hands fell into the watery and bubbly sink, splashing a few droplets up at him. Only Annabelle to snap at him in the worst of times.
"I don't have eyes in the back of my head." He ran his hands under the water to get rid of the sticky feeling of the soap and dried them before looking toward the woman who sat at the table, a collection of old and new magazines and newspapers spread out about her. Oh fuck, not her too . . . "What?"
"You skipped out on Vailsier to go seduce the Eight girl?"
Gryffon half laughed, half scoffed, practically choking on air. Seduce the 8 girl? She was kidding, right? Though her glare told him otherwise and he had to bite his lip to keep from full-on laughing. "All we did was hang out for two days and an evening. Didn't even touch her."
"This isn't . . . " Annabelle let out a sharp sigh and shook her head. "Diamanté, then Maple, now her? This publicity isn't going to get you anywhere, you know."
"You're forgetting Gilese, that cute little waitress at that bar," he quipped, crossing his arms over his chest. God oh god, that glare of hers was amusing, especially when her hair was still a mess of curls hanging about her face and everything about her screamed 'I am not a morning person, don't look at me'. "Where do you think I want to go with the two days I spent 'seducing' her? I literally didn't do anything to her other than push her into a fountain," Gryffon droned. "She's not my type, anyway, and just as stupid as the other three. That too hard to understand?" Annabelle didn't answer, but instead got up and pushed the paper into his chest, letting it go there for him to catch. The headline loudly advertised their 'blooming relationship', and even questioned Emily's motives, and how she was easily moving on from Liam's death by getting with Gryffon.
Oh god, no.
"This is revolting," he deadpanned. "Honestly. What the fuck? You know I would never go for this shit."
"Gryffon," Annabelle stared, rolling her eyes, "You've gone for every pretty face, and better yet, they're all fashion related. They'll begin to think you have some sort of false beauty fetish, for Christ's sake."
A tattoo artist, a Capitol stylist, a fancy bartender's daughter, and a model. Made sense for her to think that. But at least the tabloid focused on Emily's emotional recovery and not so much his own ideals. There wasn't much they knew of him, anyway, and not like they could make anything convincing up. They had just about used every lie they could in previous articles. "In any case, my 'relationships' have never lasted long. My breakup with Maple was rather dramatic, too, how can you forget that? 'Only hours after getting together the happy couple has their first fight that causes the beautiful Maple to storm out'. Groan," he chuckled, "She just got excited and went to get something at her house. Came back minutes after."
Annabelle pushed her hands into her hair, shoving the dark locks from her eyes. Shaking her head, she thrust a hand out and tapped his shoulder, pushing his aside. "I don't care, Gryffon. Keep reading it." The command almost made him laugh; instead, he tossed the magazine back onto the table and raised a brow at her. Annabelle tossed a quick glance at him as she started the water back up to finish washing the dishes. "Gryffon - she's nuts."
Emily was crazy, but Dia wasn't? The little girl who was stupid enough to get 'married' in the arena was crazier the the sadistic bitch who volunteered into the Games purposely to kill her brother? What?
"You literally have not protested to me talking to any other girl before. I don't see what the big deal with this one is."
"She's as bad as you, Gryffon! Peeled a girl? Beheaded another in a crumbling city? You mutilated tributes in wonderland, she did so in hell. You two need to stay far away from each other," Annabelle rampaged in that quiet, deep, lilted voice of hers. Her annoyance at them hanging out with each other only made Gryffon want to invite the redhead over, irritate Annabelle even more.
The man shrugged and looked down at the older woman, his lip curling into a smirk. He caught her eyes when they flickered back up at him, and with an indignant huff, she looked back down. "Maybe we've each breathed in enough loopy gas to stand each other, I think that just means 'it was meant to be'," he chimed in a mock Capitol accent, scoffing at the end. "You and Phox both sound like you hate the girl."
"Yes, Gryffon! That champagne you sent her was already a bad idea, and I thought she'd die after that, but - uhg." Annabelle turned the water off and dried her hands, turning to face him again. "Gryffon, I don't want anyone to come knocking on your door bothering you about your duties. If I can't trust you to go to work and not ditch, I'm going to make all of your clients go through Chester first, and he'll send you the ones he thinks would be worthwhile for you to do."
That sounded like a horrible idea. Chester would send him so many more than he accepted per year and he would never be able to - no, wait. Ditching with Emily was just a one-time thing, anyway. He had no real excuse. Gryffon shook his head at Annabelle, first an indication that she could trust him, but then the smirk reappeared.
"I know you're just jealous, Anna, dear. Don't worry," he mused, placing a kiss over her head, a teasing gesture. She pushed back on his shoulders, her face not the least bit amused or flushed, just visibly aggravated. "You have my attention for the rest of the day. What do you want from me?"
She stared at him for a moment, first blankly, then disbelievingly. Rolling her eyes, Annabelle pointed out of the kitchen toward the living room. "Go make notes on the houses you've done and what you did to them. Write down the date and how long it took, their numbers, addresses, and how they agreed to pay you, the I'll figure out what to do with you." Gryffon let out an exaggerated sigh and turned around, practically dragging his feet out of the tiled room. Of course it'd be more business. They couldn't go for a walk or wrestle or just sit out on the porch doing nothing. Paperwork was already a shitty pastime, but for him to have to write down everything he did since his last noting . . . That was torture.
However, it proved not to be such a big task being he had only gone to the Capitol maybe five or six times since his last recorded date, and two of the visits had been for the same person who wanted to add onto their property after a majority of it was already done. Vailsier's barely counted as a visit, but he put the man's name down anyway. Gryffon had show up for a day only, and the guy had been so pissed he sent Gryffon away. Which really wasn't a problem considering he could just wander about for the rest of that day before going home the next, which would have been the day he left anyway. Vailsier had only saved him from working.
Gryffon glanced upward from the little book when Annabelle's feet pattered down the stairs, newly fitted boots clopping over the wood. She zipped up the light leather vest and glanced down at him. "Done yet?" Gryffon shrugged and glanced back down into the pages. Yeah, he was done. There was nothing to report about Valisier. He hadn't been paid in any form, so it didn't matter if all he wrote down was the man's name. "Great." Annabelle pulled the notebook from Gryffon's hands and tossed it onto the coffee table. "Let's go."
She turned on the balls of her feet and headed into the kitchen as Gryffon stood up, and came back with a small bouquet of white flowers which she pushed into his chest for him to hold. "The fuck is this for?" But he received no answer. Instead, Annabelle just stood by the door with her arms crossed, waiting for him. They stared at each other for a few moments before Gryffon groaned and with a roll of his eyes, dragged his feet out of the house with the older Victor following. Silently, she pushed ahead of him and walked out of Victor's Village.
At first, Gryffon could only imagine she was leading him into the orchards, but they passed the entrance to that and only followed the fence that would eventually lead to the entrance of the cropping areas and graveyard. And Gryffon couldn't believe Annabelle would bother him with flowers if they were just going to go and help with the planting.
Holy fucking shit . . . "What's your problem?"
"You've come to visit her maybe twice since you won, and once was for the funeral that you ditched before they even lowered her body," Annabelle explained in her own little way. "You placing flowers over her grave is the least you owe her." His heart skipped a beat as his fingers tightened over the stems of the flowers he had been given. The least he owed her? She must have been mistaken. Annabelle certainly knew that the one who was buried that day was not the one that had physically died. It was the children that had been sacrificed weeks earlier, the pair of friends that worked against each other by working together - those two were the ones to be buried . . .
"I'm not going to talk to a slab of stone."
"Then you can stare at it like you do everything else." Gryffon gritted his teeth at her words, but found himself following her around the tattered ground that would take them to the section of the graveyard that was reserved for the tributes of past Games. They were given the more fancy headstone, complete with their Games and age.
For example,
R.I.P.
Jay wright
Died nobly in the 64th Hunger Games at age 14
Gryffon could see those indentations from a mile away, even as he glared down at his feet blankly, trying his hardest to ignore the grave. Even as they stopped right in front of it, Gryffon couldn't bring himself to look up. It was just a stone in the ground over a box of a child's body that had been beheaded then crudely sewn back together and dressed in the white and blue of her reaping outfit and set up like she was asleep simply for the sake of the adoptive family that would supposedly want to see their daughter peaceful . . .
He sucked in a breath through his nose and glanced up at Annabelle who blankly looked at him, probably judging his avoidance more than she would have if he acknowledged the girl's grave. But how could he? The girl had abandoned him before it had even started . . . And he didn't know. Annabelle hadn't told him . . . Gryffon had sliced the girl's head off and cared and now didn't know if he should allow the memory to numb him or make him crumble.
His best friend . . . Closest friend - the first one he had ever really had without expecting to do something for her to gain her trust! She had never asked anything of him . . . And he provided some help, offered it, wanted to get her out alive, she couldn't take the time to trust him. So fuck her, right? The bitch deserved to die, right? She broke her promise long before he broke his own.
"Those boys are mean . . . " her breathless gasp whispered into his ear, but with a grin, Gryffon smirked down at her and nudged her shoulder with his own.
"Yeah, but we got each other's back! They can't hurt us."
She had giggled, her hand searching for his before she gripped his fingers and pulled them up to their feet. "Totally. I promise if you promise."
"I promise."
Gryffon tilted his head and slowly brought his eyes to the number of his Games. Five years. Five years and he hadn't come more than once out of obligation. Five years and he still couldn't face even her name in fear of the guilt. Maybe staying home with his mother would have been better. It'd have saved him from feeling this overwhelming choking in his throat. "You shouldn't have gotten in the way . . . You should have stayed out of it entirely."
His eyes bore a hole into the six and four, to the point that he could see the numbers being dug further into the stone. Gryffon fidgeted idly, shifting aside when he heard something rustle beside him, but Annabelle stood a good seven feet away.
"I tried . . . I told you . . . "
"Nothing. That's what you told me." The response was automatic and apparently silent. Gryffon didn't hear the words leave his mouth.
"I couldn't trust you . . . I told you I couldn't trust you! And you promised - oh you promised I'd live, and you lied!" The sound of betrayal in her tone, or what he thought to be her tone, cut him open. It was the same desperation he had heard time and time again when she criticized his need to volunteer. It was the same anger she spoke with when his excuse to go in suddenly revolved around helping her survive. God . . . But he hadn't lied. He didn't mean to lie to her, he never had. She was the one pretty face he never had the courage to openly lie to.
His gaze drifted toward the word 'nobly' and he couldn't help but smile bitterly. Yes, she died a very noble death. She had almost begged to him on her knees when he advanced. What a silly word to use for her. "It's your fault we both died that day, you know that," he mumbled under his breath.
"Except I'm the one in the ground, aren't I . . ? You did that to me."
"You should've just left me in the tunnels if you were so worried about that, Jay. You're the one who let me go in, it never had to happen. You could've stopped it all. And now we're all suffering because of you."
"You, Gryff."
"Don't call me that."
"Gryffon, don't kill the flowers please." He almost jumped at Annabelle's voice, but when he looked at her, Gryffon saw the smug smile she was trying to hide, which made him furrow his brows.
He let go of his death grip around the stems and let them drop at his feet. The dumb bitch . . . She had no business caring about bringing him to his dead sister's grave. "Why not? They're just stupid flowers for a stupid girl anyway." Gryffon moved his foot and deliberately stepped on the plant, twisting in place to pivot before glancing over his shoulder. "Can we go?" She rolled her eyes but motioned with her hand.
"Lead the way, Gryffon."
