reapings, part two: skumfuck
What can I say? I guess it's obvious you would end up this way
When you live amongst the dead... (when you live inside your head...)
cordura faux, district eight female
…
She still has the nightmares, sometimes.
Taffeta doesn't know about them; Cordura's made sure of that. They sleep in the same bed, under the same sheets, but they have different pillows, and the weight of her own makes it easy enough to muffle her shouts, curses, sobs and screams. If nobody can hear the anguish of her memories, it's like the trauma doesn't exist. Not for Taffeta, not for Eight, not for Lord, and not for Cordura, who has never wished for anything more than freedom from the devils that live in her head, casting midnight shadows over sun-lit walls through every minute of her waking day.
(Sometimes the shadows are dimensional, too, with rough-hewn features and unnaturally wide smiles, their teeth sharpened into vicious points eager to be sunk into human flesh. Cordura feels them reaching for her, clawing at her skin with their greedy fingers and broken nails every time she looks in a mirror and sees her cursed features, her mismatched eyes. She doesn't look like him, but she knows he's in her, twisting himself into her guts and eating her up from the inside. They have the same blood in their veins, after all; filthy blood, tainted blood. Poor blood, the furthest thing from blue there is.)
(She hates it. By the Capitol, does she hate it.)
Cordura doesn't want pity, no matter what Taffeta may think. She's strong enough to weather the clouds that've been left to roil inside her soul, a dark tempest forged from identities she's stolen, lives she's ruined and names she can't quite recall. There's little room for peace in her days, but she's gotten accustomed to living in chaos. Since the first day Cordura Faux was brought into the world, her life has been nothing more than a perfect storm.
Spade Sinclair - and Taffeta Bengaline - didn't change that. They just made the fray worse.
(She's hidden her nightmares for a reason.)
"Cordura," her girlfriend's voice murmurs, bleary with fatigue, "what're you doing?"
"Just thinking," Cordura responds, shifting closer. She presses her torso against Taffeta's back, her chest flush to the elegant taper of her partner's shoulder blades, so warm despite the chill of their heatless apartment. One of her arms moves to embrace Taffeta around the middle (wrong, it's all wrong, she doesn't belong there, and - you shouldn't be here), and even though a part of Cordura wants to recoil, she hooks her chin over the older girl's shoulder, laying a kiss against the soft flesh of her neck, mere centimetres from the hollow of her throat.
(It's easy to forget how fragile Taffeta is. So often Cordura thinks of her as impervious, but she's human underneath her armor, just like the rest of them. No matter how imperious she may act, no matter how well she puts on airs, she's made of flesh all the same. She's got blood that spills and bones that break. Something about that is reassuring… Cordura can't say why. Maybe it's because she's a partner rather than a lover. Maybe it's because Taffeta wields affection like a peacekeeper wields chains, using her honeyed words and fluttering eyelashes to bind people to her service and make them do her bidding. Cordura may be in charge in the bedroom, but she's never had any doubts about who really calls the shots in their relationship. Taffeta's stretched her out and wrapped her tight around her dainty fingers, and oh, she loathes her for it, for all of it.)
(No, not all of it. Not the before. Only the after.)
"Go to sleep." Cordura's voice isn't gentle, isn't soft. It's stoic and firm, no different than how it's always been, and yet Taffeta seems reassured by it when her own hand presses atop Cordura's own, linking their fingers so tightly that it aches. "Reaping's not for a few hours."
"Reaping," Taffeta says, and with her words comes a laugh - dry, brittle, practically a sneer. "You should've finished Gilroy off when you had a chance."
Her eyes shut. Cordura doesn't flinch, even though the words feel like knives when they're hurled against her, cutting deep without leaving a mark upon her skin.
You're weak, she hears, and she thinks about her sister, cowering against the wall before their father's gun, her eyes screwed shut and her body trembling.
You're pitiful, she hears, and her sister's body morphs into Muriel Foulard's, lying on the bed beneath Cordura's body, her mouth open as she thrashed in the throes of ecstasy, entirely unabashed at her adultery. Cordura remembers how her wrists felt under her hands, how her cries shifted from pained to rapturous, each exhale of her breath making the reveal of her husband's best-kept secrets feel all the sweeter.
(Taffeta hadn't been happy with her work, then. She wanted Gilroy dead, not just maligned. And Cordura had agreed to do her dirty work regardless. Because she owed her. She owed…)
You're nothing, Tartan Foulard spat at her as she stood over his father with a gun, ready to exact a revenge that wasn't even hers to begin with. You and Bengaline both. I'll scream, you know. They'll come if I scream, and I'll tell them everything, Spade Sinclair. The peacekeepers'll lock you up and you'll never get out.
(I'll ruin you unless you let him go.)
(I'll ruin you, just like your father.)
No. No, Tartan never said those words. But he didn't have to. Neither did Taffeta.
Nobody has ever judged Cordura more harshly than she's judged herself.
I did everything you asked me to do, she muses as she breathes in the scent of Taffeta's perfume, her face nestled against her partner's silken hair. I did everything.
And you don't even give a shit, do you?
Spade Sinclair is gone now, but Cordura Faux still exists to pay the price of her alter ego's sins.
… whatever.
That's a problem for another day. For now, she just wants to sleep. Pick out her clothes, pet her cat, enjoy a good meal before the day ahead.
Fuck knows it's going to be a long one.
elysia ansaldi, district one female
…
Elysia Ansaldi is empty.
There's a void inside her. It's always been there, so deep inside her body that she has no means of being able to reach it, and so vast that she wouldn't be able to fill it even if she could. Whether she's stuffing herself full of food or drinking her weight in liquor, whether she's spent a night screaming into her pillow or smacking around dummies at the Academy until her knuckles are raw, whether she's written her thoughts down or let her memories drift away and washed them down the drain with the blood she purged from her hands, the hole remains unfilled. And Elysia can't fix it. She can't fix herself.
She'll always be hollow. Regardless of whether or not she wants to be.
Ankara Lamotte is proof of that.
"You shouldn't think so much, you know," Anka joked as she leaned backward, her figure bending further and further until she was stretched out across the floor, uncaring for the sweat and grime that coated her skin. "It's not good for your health."
"So now you're an expert on health, are you?" Elysia had retorted, wry as ever. Ankara laughed, reaching over and using the back of her hand to lightly thwack her on the thigh. She'd been smiling, her cheeks flushed, and Elysia couldn't help but idly think of how pretty she was, spread out against the training mats with her eyes blown wide, her dark hair glossy like obsidian under the dim lights.
(When they were still in the puppy-love phase, way back in their sixteens, Anka had seemed like a star: iridescent, radiant and untouchable. Elysia had almost been scared of her brightness; nervous to get too close, lest she burn her out the way she did everyone else. She told herself it was foolish to worry, told herself she could quell the flames of her rage that were so prone to sparking out of her control because she wasn't weak, she was strong. Tough as nails, and wholly capable of reigning in her feelings. After all, she'd proven herself in training; she could handle weapons, could handle pressure, could handle her sister's drunken lapses, her parents' frequent fighting, the sting of poverty and all that came with it. She was stable, and she could be stable for Anka. So she'd asked her out.)
"Only yours," Anka said, kneading her skin with calloused fingers, until Elysia rolled her eyes and huffed and slapped her hand away, just as she always did. She'd risen to her feet, grabbed for her bag and her half-empty water bottle, making sure to check in with the trainer on watch before signing out for the day. Ankara gripped her hand when they made it past the door, tugging at her with sheer enthusiasm as they slipped out of the training center and into the streets of One.
Elysia remembers sitting with her at the curb by the run-down park, still hot and tired from the exertion of sparring. She remembers holding Anka in her lap, their thighs pressed together and their hands twined as they watched the sky, waiting until sunlight faded into darkness before parting ways, heading off toward their respective miseries and their respective homes. She remembers lying in bed that night, unable to sleep for the giddiness and mania stirring inside her chest, her emotions stirred by little more than the thought of I have a girlfriend. Anka. She's mine. Mine. My girl. My partner.
(She thinks she might've been happy, back then. But who's to say really? When it comes right down to it, Elysia's not sure she knows what happiness is. Perhaps she did at some point, when she was younger, when she wasn't so incapable of being a person, but anymore she just feels miserable. Trapped in a rut of brooding and aching and hating herself for all the messes she's made, the pain she's caused. Her life is empty. She's empty.)
(And Anka's broken, just like everything else she touches.)
She should've listened to her instincts. She should've pulled away when the stress started to wear on her, let Ankara leave before she had a chance to paint her fragile skin black and blue. But she hadn't. She'd let her wants override her sense, allowed herself to lose control. And for what, affection? Attention? Infatuation, desperation, a desire to have something she was never meant to have?
(Elysia should've known better. She's not the sort of person others are supposed to love. She's a monster.)
(And she deserves to be alone.)
A soft mrow? carries up from the foot of the bed, accompanied by a tug on the blankets near her legs. Elysia yawns, pushing herself up on one elbow as her cat leaps onto the mattress, kneading the worn fabric of the blankets with soft, grey paws.
"Hey, baby," she murmurs, reaching a hand out to give Grey a playful scratch behind the ears. "Did you come to wake me up?"
Grey flops down at her side and stretches out languidly, clearly reveling in the attention she's getting from her oft-absent human. Elysia can't help but smile as a purr rumbles from inside the cat's chest, warmed by the expression of animalistic affection. At least you don't hate me yet.
(Not like she doesn't deserve the hatred, though. Not like she doesn't deserve Anka's enmity, or Casimir's scorn, or the glares she gets from the Lamotte parents whenever she sees them in the market square during free weekends. She'd tried to apologize - written letters, stopped by their house on the off chance that maybe, just maybe, Ankara would be willing to see her… but she knows it's not enough.)
Tension lingers inside her temple, pressing hard on the walls of her skull. Elysia closes her eyes, inhales sharply through her nose.
It's fine, she tells herself. I'm fine. Training's fine. Anka's fine… mostly. Everything's fine.
(She knows she doesn't really deserve forgiveness. Months of cruel words and rough touches and the occasional hit where the bruises wouldn't show won't go away just because she says she's sorry. And the explosion… that was something else entirely.)
(It's no wonder Anka can't stand to look at her.)
Elysia exhales through her mouth, pursing her lips as she continues to stroke Grey's back. She tries to focus on the sound of her purr, the texture of her soft fur, the blankets pooled around her body, snug against her bare legs.
All she can do is focus on the present.
The past isn't something she can repair.
cordura faux, district eight female
…
She's alone when she walks to the City Hub.
It's not a surprise; Taffeta's outgrown the reapings, and whatever family Cordura once had is long dead. Her father put her sister in the ground, and she put him right there next to her, left his mutilated body in an unmarked grave. He was still breathing when the dirt got poured over his head, caking his body in layers of filth. Cordura thought it was an appropriate death for the bastard - treated like dirt, buried like trash, left to rot and decay in a place where nobody would care to look for him. Sometimes she likes to remember the way he screamed and spat at her when she threw him in the hole, his legs broken at the knees and his face a mess of bloody pulp, distorted beyond any recognition. It didn't make up for even half of what he'd done to her - or to Muslin - but it had put a smile on her lips to see him suffer.
(Cordura's accustomed to lying, but she won't lie about that. There's no reason to.)
Her black heels clack against the brickwork of the streets, each step she takes measured and graceful, like a Queen amongst commoners. An unbidden smile crosses Cordura's lips, twisting them at the corners before she can draw it in. People are staring at her, their eyes fixed on every inch of her body, her fishnet tights, her leather jacket, the chains and studs hanging from her pleated skirt. And Cordura knows part of it's because she's a spectacle - so different from the typical populace of Eight, fashionable, confident, majestic in her stature - but she can't bring herself to mind. She's in her element. And she's A.
(Not a C, like the majority of the peons in Eight, barely scraping by in their common clothes with their common jobs, perfectly content to live out their lives as mediocre people when so many of them could be more. Not a D like the boring socialites from the casino, all pomp and priss, with over-inflated egos and limited skill. Cordura Faux is an A, will always be an A, even if it's just in her own head, because she knows her worth and it's more than Eight, more than her father, more than Gilroy or the casino or Taffeta fucking Bengaline, even if Taffeta's the closest to A anyone here will ever get.)
I'm a socialite. I'm an ace. I'm worthy. I'm not dirt. I'm not -
"Hand," a peacekeeper says from within her periphery, and Cordura scowls, something acrid burning her windpipe when she stretches her arm out, lets the C-tier prick her finger. A tiny drop of blood wells to the surface of her thumb, and she watches as it hits the little panel on the scanner, the screen lighting up with a blue tinge as her identity is confirmed.
"Faux," the peacekeeper muses. Her voice sounds bemused, almost as if she knows something Cordura doesn't.
Cordura's eyes narrow. She stares at the woman until sweat starts to bead on the peacekeeper's brow and she turns her head away, clearly unsettled by the vitriol of Cordura's stare.
"Right, you're clear."
I better be, Cordura thinks, but she doesn't say anything, just moves past check-in to the aisles of antsy children, her feet carrying her to the eighteens without a second of dalliance. Her peers part for her without comment, like they know she isn't someone they want to cross, like they can sense the anger bottled up inside her heart, lingering at the back of her throat to be spewed the second she decides it's necessary.
She stares at the stage, waiting and watching.
And when the escort arrives she goes away. Far away. Beyond Eight's reach, and beyond Taffeta's words, saying she should've seen it coming, Cordy, this is what you get for letting Gilroy go, this is the price of your failure, you're weak, you're pathetic, you're a disappointment and no one will miss you.
She moves through the crowd. Her feet take her closer to the stage, closer, closer… but she's not going to the Games. Not yet, at any rate. She has unfinished business.
The peacekeepers spring into action as Cordura spins on her heel and lunges into the fourteens section. Her hand reaches forward and grabs hold of an ironed shirt collar, pressed and crimped to perfection. The shirt looks so pristine around Tartan Foulard's shoulders - immaculate white, not a speck of dirt to tarnish it. So clean it's practically taunting her, and Cordura hates that, hates that he gets to be unblemished, because the little rat's filthier than her, and he doesn't deserve to be pristine, he doesn't deserve to keep his image, not like this, not when he's ruined her…!
Cordura drags him close, so close she can smell the fear radiating from Tartan's body. She bares her teeth at him in a broad smirk, then tosses him sideways, reveling in the sound of his body hitting the dirt, stars, she's wanted to do this for months. Her heel comes down on his face, smashing into his nose once, twice, thrice and going. She doesn't stop until she can see the blood leaking from his broken nose, the bruises spawning around his left eye and his mangled jaw, so ugly, so fitting for an F, it's exactly like his personality.
"Snitches get stitches, Tartan," she sneers at him when the peacekeepers grab hold of her arms, wrangle her hands behind her back. "Think about that next time you look in a mirror, you skeevy little bitch."
elysia ansaldi, district one female
…
When her name falls from the escort's blue-tinged lips, Elysia can't find the energy to feign surprise.
She knew this was coming. Selection. The vote, the Games. Her name printed on that tiny slip of paper inside the girl's reaping ball, underneath a little heading that reads Tribute chosen by popular vote in a print so bold that it's finality cannot be questioned.
It was never a matter of debate for One. Elysia Ansaldi was always destined for the Games. Just like she'd at one point been destined for the Academy, back when she was no more than a wide-eyed, twelve-year-old girl with messily-braided hair and a temper too fiery for her parents to handle. She'd never wanted to start training, but they'd seen it as the best path for her. The only path for her, actually; she was pent-up even as a child, full of frustration and trepidation and desperation that hindered her as much as it drove her to succeed. She needed something to help her push herself, something that she could throw herself into headfirst, and aspire to master with reckless abandon.
Training had given her an opportunity to rise above the trainwreck that was her family, and the mess that lived inside her head. Her mentors had kept her on her toes, worked her hard and pushed her to her limits, but they'd never once asked her to slow down or limit herself for the sake of her peers. They'd let her reach and strive and bleed and hurt, and through it all Elysia had been grateful.
She couldn't explain why, exactly. She couldn't tell her trainers that it was because messing around with weapons and putting her body through hell kept her sane, served as a coping mechanism for all the bullshit that went on inside her head. She couldn't let them know that she trained because it kept her in check, or that she'd nearly stopped because it no longer could.
She couldn't explain why she was so reluctant when they told her she'd be volunteered this year, after so many years of playing Career Devotee, claiming she needed the Games because she needed the money because her family was counting on her to give them support.
She couldn't tell them that she didn't want this, because even if she fought, even if she won, she'll never stop seeing Anka at the other end of her blade, clutching at Elysia's arms, scratching at the hands that she'd wrapped around her throat, begging her Eli, Eli please, y-you're hurting me, p-please… stop, I… I can't… I can't breathe…!
(Elysia's lucky that she kept it mum; she told Ankara's family, and Ankara told a few of her friends, but nothing ever made it back to the trainers. She'd gotten to keep her reputation in the Academy, the fierce and hardened trainee who'd been ranked first in her class three years in a row. Officially, that's why she's being voted in - Career campaigning, plus a personality a little more rough-around-the-edges than what's normally preferred here in One. Unofficially, she knows that it's not quite so simple. She's fucked up, in one of the worst ways a person can fuck up. Getting reaped is a fair enough way for her girlfr - her ex to demand penance.)
(If Anka's trying to seek justice, who is Elysia to deny her?)
Her boots drag as she makes her way through the barren aisles leading from the square up to the justice building. There's lead in her soles, weighing her body down even as she continues pushing forward, but she does her best to ignore it. She passes the seventeens, the fifteens, the fourteens, the twelves… she passes the stairs and the escort and an athletic blonde boy she recognizes from the training center, standing still on the stage beside their mentors' chairs.
She raises her head, tilts her chin up and locks her jaw tight, letting herself become statuesque as all Ones are supposed to be. Whatever guilt she feels doesn't matter when she's got their eyes on her. She's a tribute, now - her District's expecting her to fight, to persevere, to champion their values across every stage through the whole of Panem. And damn it all if Elysia Ansaldi doesn't mean to do just that.
Being a bastard doesn't discount her from being a patriot. She'll bring One pride.
She'll do her best to make it home.
"District One - your tributes!"
The square erupts into applause. Elysia keeps her shoulders squared and her posture strong, letting her peers' accolades wash over her in waves, putting on the face that she knows her trainers want to see.
And when she sees Casimir Lamotte glaring at her from beyond the crowd's banisters, an arm wrapped protectively around his sister's shaking shoulders, she simply turns her back…
… and marches onwards towards her fate.
A/N: skumfuck by sum41.
And with that, we've passed the halfway marker! Thank you so much to Ali and Linds for sending in Elysia and Cordura; they're both amazing characters, and I'm beyond hyped to be writing them. I hope you both enjoyed their portrayals!
On another note, I'd like to apologize for how long this chapter took - unfortunately, I've been going through the ringer a bit in regards to real life, so this came quite a bit later than I'd hoped it would. Hopefully the next update will be sooner. Thanks to everyone for being so patient, and I'm sending good energy at all you lovely readers. Until the next.