Hello all! I own nothing, as per usual.
I hope you enjoy this, even though it DID turn out a tad bit sadder than I intended it to be. But sometimes these things write themselves!
Please read and review!
Note: Aislin is pronounced Ash-Lan; it's an old Irish name, and very pretty.
Enjoy!
Cressida closed her eyes, drawing in a slow, shuddering breath. She had loved someone, back in the Capitol, before all of this begun. Aislin. Even the ghost of her name constricted Cressida's chest. They had met in film school in the Capitol; Aislin was tiny, barely 5'4", with freckles and wild naturally-red hair that only enhanced the startlingly emerald color of her eyes. She immediately became the center of the action whenever she entered a room. At school she had been unrefined, a bit of a loose canon, with ideas that made her peers and professors twitchy and nervous. And to top it all off, Aislin had worn men's fashion, and very little make-up. The over-all effect was altogether not Capitol-esque.
And Cressida had been entranced with her. The last day of the school year, a heavy flood-light had fallen over and caught Cressida in the brow, knocking her flat; when she woke up, Aislin was holding her head in her lap, pressing a bloody cloth to her left eye. With how Aislin looked at her after that, Cressida had known she was in for one hell of a ride; and oh, what a ride it had been. Holding Aislin had been like embracing a forest fire; fierce, untamed, passionate, Aislin hadn't been made for the frippery of Capitol life. She had inherited from her parents one of the only residences left in the Capitol that had an actual garden; the window over her bed had been framed in these gorgeous vines; Cressida could still see the weak light of sunrise filtering through the leaves when she closed her eyes.
For six years Aislin had been hers; she had never imagined that she could feel so happy. But Aislin's ideas would not stay quiet, no matter how much Cressida had tried to talk sense into her, and two days after Katniss and Peeta's stunt with the berries in the arena, Aislin had met with some like-minded friends in the back room of the local spirits bar. Cressida had been too nervous to go; she had barely gotten Aislin to promise to let her know when she was leaving for home.
The official report was that Aislin and the rest of the group had gotten stuck in the back of the building when a main gas-line ignited; but Cressida had gotten a message from Aislin at midnight, saying she had left the bar -that she was on her way home-. They had all just disappeared, Cressida hadn't even gotten to see Aislin's body.
Cressida waited for four long, horrendous weeks for Aislin to come home; the first day of the fifth week she went out and got her tattoo, a scar to mirror the one on her soul. She chose a beautiful, twirling green vine, originating on her skull and twisting down her left arm to her fingertips; connecting her brain, heart and hand; all the parts of her that would never forget the feel of Aislin's life. The final touch was two hash-lines through her left eyebrow; a commemoration of the two fading scars left over from the incident that had caused Aislin to notice her in the first place.
When her skin healed, she had taken her film team and fled the Capitol; to join the burgeoning rebellion, and Katniss, who reminded her so much of the woman she had wanted to spend her life with.
Blinking back tears, Cressida crooned softly to Katniss, who instantly calmed and nuzzled further into the warm skin under her collarbone. Cressida hadn't held another woman since Aislin; for half a second she had thought that it was Aislin, not Katniss, having a nightmare in the furs next to her. Reality had hit her like a brick to the stomach, it always did, but if she closed her eyes and unfocused her thoughts, she could trick herself for moments at a time that the hair tickling her nose was red, not brown, that the curves pressed to her side were hers to touch, that the hands curled against her stomach entwined perfectly with hers, that the woman in her arms was Aislin, not the Mockingjay, and that they were asleep in Aislin's bed under the vines, safe and sound, rather than heading towards a likely death at first light.
Cressida pressed a light kiss to Katniss' neck, and closed her eyes. The nightmares did not come that night, not with Katniss' weight holding her down to earth.
I am sorry it was so sad, but as I said earlier, these things sometimes write themselves. Read and review please!