A/N: Thank you all so much for the continued support of this story, every single review means the world to me and I love you all endlessly!
For anyone not following me on Instagram, I've been uploading a series of "Swanwhite Encyclopedia" posts with more information on the universe and characters that didn't necessarily fit into the text itself (with aesthetics and maps and tribute ID cards hehe) so check out tricia_pevensie if you're interested in that! They will be collected along with fic trailers and other content in my Swanwhite highlight!
Happy reading~
xXx
CHAPTER SEVEN
Golden sunlight filtered through a rooftop garden several stories away across the street, streaking down through glittering glass buildings into wide avenues and parks below, and dappling Lucy's tear-stained cheeks as if mocking her, clashing with the despair churning black in her veins.
Her eyes had long since burned dry, embarrassment and despair staining white silk and stinging cold in the breeze against her neck, emptiness replacing the swirling sea in her gut, bare legs dangling between railing rods over the open air.
It shouldn't have been possible to feel so hollow in such a beautiful place, as if she were the only dark smudge against a bright cityscape, but she couldn't survive, not without sponsors, and who would sponsor her now?
Best case scenario, most of the gamemakers hadn't been paying attention. But some of them had. And tonight the whole city—the city she'd so dreamed of entrancing, the city that had belonged to her for one single instant under glowing street lights—would know just how badly she'd failed.
They would know the pathetic orphan girl in mud-stained cotton; a tragedy, a pity, a show.
Would it really have been so bad for this daydream to last a little bit longer?
The breeze tickled her bare feet and she pressed her forehead to the cool metal of the railing, gripping the bars with both hands, nails still rounded and polished from the Opening Ceremony. She'd taken special care to keep them nice throughout training, and only one or two had chipped from building traps and starting fires. Not that any of that work mattered now.
Nothing mattered now.
Behind her came a soft rap on the glass door, and she sighed.
Couldn't Digory mind his own business?
But when she wiped her face and glanced over her shoulder, it wasn't Digory in the doorway.
It was Caspian.
She sucked in a sharp breath and spun back around quick as lightning, pulling the loose collar of her flowing top to dab at her eyes, her jaw, her neck, impossibly rich fabric sliding over her face, but it was no use, the damage already irreparable.
"Mind some company?"
No taunt laced his tone, none of the exploitative edge she so instinctively expected. He made no mention of her appearance.
Lucy shrugged.
He slipped out and shut the door, much more gently than she'd done a few hours ago, and stepped over to lean his elbows against the railing, gazing down into the streets where cars ran like brightly colored toys eight stories below.
"Long way down," he murmured after a few minutes.
"It doesn't work," she rasped, and cleared her throat.
Caspian glanced at her.
She picked up one of her discarded boots and turned it over, black leather singed, littered with random scorch marks. "There's a force field about three feet down."
"Ah." He looked into the air below again, squinting a little as if trying to see it.
She'd caught the shimmering field once or twice, or at least, she thought she had: ripples in the air, faint swirling colors like bubbles in soap.
"I suppose they think they're very clever."
"Maybe they just want to see how many will try it," muttered Lucy.
Of course, she hadn't actually jumped, she'd had the presence of mind to throw her shoe first, and it had only bounced right back up with a fizzing snap of electricity.
Still, in a moment desperation she'd briefly considered throwing herself over anyway, just to see what would happen to a person, but the Capitol would undoubtedly have accounted for that possibility too, and she'd cooled down enough by now to see what a stupid idea it was.
Not that it was exactly a foreign one. She'd wondered plenty of times in Eight whether it wouldn't just be easier to die, but something had always kept her going. The stories, the forest, Marjorie.
The universe just seemed intent on laughing at her now.
"I talked to Polly and Digory," said Caspian, and Lucy furrowed her brow.
Talked to them? About what? About me?
"They don't think what I did will cause any problems, so… that's good, I guess."
What he did? Had his assessment gone wrong too?
But then it all rushed back at once, Edmund, the Training Center, as if she could have forgotten, thunderous venom flooding through her veins as that dangerous glare flashed again in her head like a poisonous promise, one that could melt the flesh from her bones if it caught her.
She stole a glance up at him, dark eyes watching distant cars, or perhaps watching for the forcefield, as if that other creature had never existed. But even this Caspian wasn't quite the one she knew. Absent, lost in some other world, his words lingering as if he hadn't even meant to speak them aloud, and at the same time like she was the only other person alive.
She had no right to pry into his life, they were strangers, and competitors at that. But they'd been functionally living together for the better part of a week, and privacy hardly seemed a formality of importance when she wouldn't live to see the next one.
"What did you mean?" she breathed. "About Jadis? How do you know about her?"
The balcony fell so quiet she almost thought he'd stopped breathing. A statue, frozen to the railing as distant city noises wafted up from the street.
But when at last he spoke, no matter how softly, she heard every syllable.
"She killed my father."
Lucy's eyes snapped up. Her brain stuttered. "But only kids can compete in the—"
"Eighteen."
She blinked.
"He was eighteen. And my mother was seventeen, if you were wondering."
"Oh, no, I didn't mean it like—"
"I know."
He turned away from the city to meet her eyes, something unreadable swimming behind black glass, almost as if gauging her reaction, searching her eyes for something, just like that first night under a starless sky.
"They were quite the scandal, apparently." He breathed a mirthless laugh and sank to the ground beside her, leaning back against the railing. "At least, that's what my uncle said, but he never liked either of them in the first place, so I really wouldn't know."
Lucy watched as he clasped his hands above his knees and stared at his own interlacing fingers, any question she might have asked now caught in her throat as she tried to wrap her mind around what he was telling her.
This was not at all what she'd been expecting.
"I don't remember him," said Caspian without prompting. "Not really. He was reaped when I was a baby, and my mother never talked about him afterward. Not even when she was dying."
Lucy opened her mouth to say something, to say she was sorry, but Caspian interrupted without looking up.
"Don't. Please. I don't want your pity."
"I wasn't going to—" But she was. She shook her head and almost apologized again before catching herself. "I… I never saw you at the orphanage."
"Oh, no, we couldn't have a Telmar in the orphanage. People would talk, you know. More than they already did." Mocking disdain dripped from his voice; and there it was, the Telmar name, the single greatest symbol of wealth in the district and he spoke it like a curse.
"My uncle took me in when I was seven. Out of pride, of course, not duty. He hated my father and never let me forget it."
"Why?"
Caspian shook his head. "I don't know. They were brothers, my father was older. For all I know it was some inheritance spat, but Miraz always talked like he'd done him some great wrong." Absently, he fingered a scar on his wrist, voice low but unhesitating. "We fought a lot. Or I should say, he got angry a lot. And one day when I was eight he snapped and sat me down to watch my father's Games."
Lucy glanced at him when he fell silent, dark eyes staring hard at his hands, jaw tight, brow furrowed.
His father's Games.
"And... Jadis?" Lucy voiced hesitantly.
Caspian drew a deep breath, let it out, and nodded. "She was... evil. Not like the careers. They were cruel, but she was something… worse. She liked torturing the other tributes. Especially the younger ones. Twelve year olds."
Lucy thought of little Gael, tying knots and beaming when she got one right, holding it up to show the instructor like a school art project. Small, fragile, innocent. Her insides went cold at the thought of someone hurting a girl like that, and enjoying it.
"My father was trying to protect his district partner when Jadis got him."
Lucy didn't like the way he said got him.
"He probably could have gotten away, but her sponsors sent her some kind of crystal spear to incapacitate the older, stronger tributes. She didn't kill them with it, though. That would have been too quick, too easy." A horrible silence stretched between them before he said "She gouged his eyes out. With her bare hands."
Lucy's stomach turned.
Not at the imagery, not at the unspeakable evil of such an act. She'd seen the Games, she'd seen death, she'd seen bodies. She'd stolen from a corpse before it even went cold, pocketing the knife now abandoned in her attic crate.
No. It was the child, a boy who should have been too young to understand, a boy already too well acquainted with death, exposed all over again. It was those big black eyes in a much younger face, staring at that screen, maybe trying to look away, maybe fixated, unable to move. It was the cruelty of a man who should have cared that made the bile rise in her throat.
"I'm sorry," she breathed, unable to stop herself, and Caspian shook his head.
She wanted to put a hand on his shoulder, to say something, but what could she say? Even sitting three feet apart a chasm gaped between them.
"Why are you telling me all this?"
Caspian smiled wearily. "You're the one who asked."
"Well, yes, but I mean..."
He shrugged. "It's just as well you hear it now. The whole country will know tomorrow."
"What? Why?"
"Polly and I decided to use it in my interview. Or, well, some of it. They'll find out eventually, so it's better for sponsors to hear it from me first."
Lucy's heart sank.
Of course even this would give him the advantage. She should have known he would be prepared for the interviews. In the most twisted way imaginable, it was great material.
"And I guess… I just wanted to see if I could say it." The slightest tremble broke his low, steady voice, and guilt crashed through Lucy for everything she'd just thought.
How must it feel? To be as old as your parents ever were?
"So that's what you and Polly have been talking about," she murmured.
"She's been telling me about him. She was his mentor, too."
The last pieces fell into place, the conversation at their first dinner on the train. That was how Polly had known his father. "She said he was a good man."
Caspian nodded. "I always knew he was. That's the only reason Miraz would hate him so much." He gave an almost imperceptible smirk. "If Miraz knew I'd learn so much about him by coming here, he might not have gone to the trouble of orchestrating it."
"What? Your uncle got you reaped?"
Caspian cocked his head in an offhanded gesture. "Course. He's the only one who hates me enough to bother. At least, I think so." His lips twisted into what might have been a smile in any other setting. "You're the only one who knows that part, though. You and… well, Drin."
His voice dropped off again, and Lucy raised an eyebrow in silent question.
"Drinian. My roommate. Er, friend. Best friend," he amended awkwardly. This part wasn't rehearsed. "He knows. But he knows everything, so…"
The empty silence that followed cut even deeper than the first.
Hollow nausea flooded back into her gut, the dread that Caspian's presence had momentarily eclipsed settling in around her even thicker than before.
She fixed her eyes on her hands, picking at clear polish. And then, almost without meaning to, though it hardly mattered now, very quietly, she said "My best friend sent me here."
Caspian snapped up to look at her.
She glanced at him, but the genuine surprise in his eyes made her heart skip a beat, penetrating and vulnerable like a shock of lightning through her core, and she looked away as if she'd seen something she wasn't supposed to.
The weight of his gaze still rested on her, thick, suffocating, waiting for her to continue.
And at last she cracked, everything inside her bubbling up as a dry, choked laugh. "Some friend, huh?"
Caspian said nothing, and Lucy shook her head.
"It wasn't just her, but… it shouldn't have been her, you know? There should have been at least one person who… I thought she was different, I thought— because I would never—"
She couldn't say it, didn't know how to say it, all jumbled up and pouring out at once, insides trembling, hands trembling. She slammed her palm into the railing in frustration but Caspian didn't budge.
"I just…" She closed her eyes, let out a long, low breath, and refilled her lungs. "Marjorie, that's her name. She's…"
Shy. Delicate. Sweet. Innocent. Beautiful.
"Pathetic. She's a coward. I'm only here because I defended her, and I…"
I miss her.
"It's so stupid."
None of it made any sense, but when she glanced up again, Caspian's eyes still met hers evenly, no longer filled with mysteries, only a resigned kind of tiredness.
"I suppose we both have someone to spite with our survival," he said, a half-hearted, exhausted smile tugging at his mouth.
But the flame that had ignited in her chest just a few days ago sputtered to ash.
She pursed her lips and looked away, voice no more than a breath when she spoke again. "I don't think that's going to happen. Not for me, anyway."
The hushed bustle of the streets drifted up to them again.
"I don't suppose there's a point in asking if things went badly," said Caspian softly.
Lucy drew a shuddering sigh and shook her head, blinking against the heat that pressed fresh into her eyes. "I messed up."
They sat in silence as the afternoon sun reddened and sank behind the buildings, sending the city into an otherworldly glow. And she imagined, if only for a moment, that they could go on like this forever, forgotten on a ledge overlooking paradise. Two kids, not tributes, just orphans, insignificant. The world had never cared before, so why should it care now?
"It's beautiful here," she murmured.
"Like a fairy tale?" he asked, and she forced a slight smile.
"Yeah. Only it's real."
Caspian leaned back against the railing and gazed up at the sky as shades of pink and purple saturated brilliant blue. "I don't remember sunsets looking like this at home."
Maybe it was the clean city, or the glass buildings reflecting every hint of color. But he was right. Sunsets didn't look like this in Eight.
"I always thought if I came to the Capitol…" his voice drifted as if thinking aloud, "I always thought it would feel different."
"Different how?"
"Well, in school… you know, they teach us that the first humans got into Narnia from here. The portals our ancestors came through, that's where they built the Capitol."
Lucy nodded against the railing.
"I thought it would feel a little like that other world. The one we came from."
"Isn't the Capitol enough like another world on its own, though?"
"I suppose. It's just… not the one I wanted."
She glanced at him and then back at the sunset, silver spires gleaming red in the distance. What could he possibly want if this wasn't enough? But then, hadn't she wished the same?
"I always wanted to go into the wilds," she said, and this time it was Caspian's turn to look at her.
"Outside the fence?"
She nodded. "On the train you could see… it was just… so much green. Imagine a whole world like that."
"But there's nothing there. I mean, there's no people."
"Maybe there are," she said. "The old kind."
Caspian hummed in thought, eyes growing distant.
At last, Zardeenah came out to fetch them for dinner, and even Lucy's imagination failed to distract her as she extracted her legs from the railing and pushed herself up to bare feet on cold marble, wishing she'd thought to change or wash as she followed Caspian inside, straightening gym-scuffed silk under a crystal chandelier.
Polly and Digory made cheerful small talk and Caspian conversed politely while Lucy picked at a doughy pastry with her fork, nibbling tiny bits of filling from its metallic tips, the guilt sitting heavy in her stomach leaving very little room for food.
All that time and energy they'd poured into her, wasted. All their kind words and encouragement, all their careful answers to endless questions.
Perhaps the world really was better when no one cared about her.
The old women at the factory would say what they always did, what a shame, she was so young, and then dab at their eyes and go about their work. If Marjorie mourned, it would only be out of guilt.
Digory made a few attempts to ask about her day, but she couldn't seem to speak around the lump in her throat, and Caspian answered most of it for her.
She couldn't even thank him.
As much as she wished the awkward meal would end, however, what came after was worse.
They gathered around the television for the announcement of the training scores, just as they had three days ago for the recap, but now Lucy buried herself as deep as she could into the plush sofa. She had never before wished so desperately to disappear, yet she couldn't tear her eyes from the screen, dreadful curiosity gripping her.
She needed to know.
Her stomach dropped as the announcer, Caesar Flickerman, appeared on screen and gave his trademark introduction with a shock of neon purple hair. He'd hosted the Games longer than Lucy had been alive, and he'd always been the part she hated least, but now his exaggerated grin just made her want to throw up.
Clips from the Reapings and Opening Ceremony played behind him, and another Lucy beamed on screen, waving in that stunning dress, the otherworldly beauty of that face the stylists had given her.
"Looks like she's got some surprises in store for us, doesn't she folks?" Caesar laughed and cold sweat beaded on Lucy's arms.
And then the scores began.
Glozelle's handsome face appeared on screen next to the number as Caesar read it out: "Nine."
Susan matched him with her own 9, Peter got a 10, and the Two girl, Edith Jackle, got an 8.
Then Eustace appeared, and next to him his score of 7. Not bad, not by a long shot. No one would complain about a 7, especially from an outlying district. Lucy might even have felt a little proud for him if she hadn't been so preoccupied gripping her hands to keep from trembling.
Jill got a 6.
Maybe Lucy could land in the middle, too, something average no one would look twice at.
Edmund scored an 8, the same as Edith.
Caspian shifted on the sofa.
Lasaraleen got a 4. Truly pathetic.
The blonde beauty from Seven, Lilliandil, got a 6 like Jill.
And then Caspian's picture flashed on screen, and Caesar read out his score, eyebrows raised. "Ten."
Polly gasped and Digory clapped Caspian on the back.
"Good man!"
Lucy almost glanced at him, almost tried to give some form of congratulations herself, but then her face replaced Caspian's and Caesar Flickerman looked down at his cue sheet.
"Again from District Eight, Lucy Pevensie..."
Lucy held her breath, heart pounding in her ears too loud for a hope or a prayer.
"Three."
Her insides turned to lead.
Three?
Polly sighed, very quietly, but Lucy heard it.
She stared hard at the carpet as the other scores went by, but they hardly mattered. Fives, sixes, Aravis had a 7, Rabadash a 10. Even Corin landed an 8.
And then it was over. And she'd scored the lowest of all. A THREE. She'd failed even worse than she'd realized.
"What went wrong?" Polly murmured softly, not accusatory, but Lucy recoiled internally all the same.
"I... I slipped, on the ropes. It would've been fine but I wanted to... I don't know... there was a knife, I'm, I'm not hurt or anything but..." She shook her head, voice thin like a frightened child, fighting desperately against the tears that would only make her look like more of a fool.
She'd wasted the one good chance they gave her.
A long silence stretched out in which the mentors must have looked at each other.
"Sometimes tributes use low scores as part of their strategy," tried Polly, but Digory interrupted.
"I'm afraid that would clash with her image up till now. It would be one thing if she'd been going for helpless, but..."
She hadn't.
"Perhaps, if she played it off somehow?" Polly's voice betrayed her lack of confidence, and Lucy's heart had given up beating ages ago.
The mentors threw out a few more half-hearted ideas, but she couldn't recover from a 3, especially when even the runts from poorer districts had all scored higher.
Even Lasaraleen, who she'd thought a very sad case, now had a better chance at sponsors than she did.
Lucy stared at the snowy carpet, vision lost somewhere in the air. Why couldn't she just vanish? Why couldn't she just die and be done with it?
But just as the mentors exhausted their attempts at inventing some impossible new strategy for her, Caspian spoke.
He'd been perfectly quiet up till now, but his voice was sure and solid.
"What if we were allies?"
