The Deep End
Prologue I
"What's past is prologue."
Long before he arrives, the setting sun has cast a menagerie of wicked shadows across the floor.
She's busy staring out the bay window in her kitchen when he does, watching as the unyielding colors of night encroach on the ocean's dark orange horizon. The moment she hears his knuckles rapping against the door, she drops the dishes into the sink. Walks, briskly, to the door—anything to disrupt the heavy silence that has settled once again over her home.
"Medaka," he greets when she opens the door, his voice hoarse and gravelly from days of disuse.
She rakes her eyes over the man's emaciated frame, taking in his unkempt hair and red-rimmed eyes with a quiet distaste. It's nothing out of the ordinary. It doesn't mean that she's fine with it.
(He stopped caring about himself long before she had the misfortune to meet him. She knows that he sleeps odd hours, needs to be forced to eat anything solid, and spends most of his days crying hysterically or drowning his sorrows at the bottom of a bottle. She hates it all.
More than anything, though, she hates that he isn't capable of meeting her gaze.)
"Murdoch," she replies, hoping she sounds more alive than she feels. The tension between them feels somehow thicker than the balminess in the sea-side air. "Why don't you come inside?"
Neither of them bother to acknowledge the pause that follows her words. It's a game they've had thirteen years to play, and one neither has gotten very good at.
Murdoch nods, entering the foyer beyond the door without another word. Medaka glances at the darkening sky outside, trying to ignore the way the abandoned houses across the street make her feel so deeply unsettled.
"Dinner's still on the stove, if you're hungry," Medaka suggests, closing the door behind her. She knows well by now that Murdoch won't touch it.
He nods again. "I'll help you clean afterward."
Medaka starts to brush off the gesture before she sees how serious he looks about it. "I already started the dishes," she concedes. "If you want to dry them, it will help."
In the kitchen, the two of them fall into a rhythm. The sounds of running water, bristles scrubbing, and dishware clinking against granite help to fill the silent void inside of her house.
The two of them could never work together—not after the horrors they've shared in mentorship. The comfort of his presence, if often domestic, is enough to allay her nerves and slow the spiral of her mind. She figures it to be the same for him, though she often finds him harder to read, like a book full of missing pages and scratched-out text.
Although he lives in the house adjacent to her own, Murdoch spends most of his time here. It isn't as if there are any other victors populating the village—the street has been nearly deserted for a quarter of a century. Since the Third Quarter Quell, District Four has seen only three of its tributes survive the games. Only two ever truly made it home.
In all of thirteen years since her own victory, Medaka has only been to Murdoch's a handful of times. While the exterior remains indistinguishable from its surroundings—save the unkempt grass, ever-so-similar to his hair—the interior of the house has rotted alongside him. It's dreary, dusty, and downright depressing. Worse, it smells strongly of old vomit. Her prime suspect is the couch he sleeps on most nights. He rarely leaves it, to her knowledge, except to gamble for more drinking money down in the shanty-towns crowding the nearest harbor.
He pissed his entire fortune away. His entire life. Medaka doesn't ever want to know what a decade as Four's only living victor did to his mental state, but she knows it damaged him in ways she isn't capable of fixing. The most she can do for Murdoch is offer him a stable presence. A shoulder to lean on, as he has become for her.
(In truth, she couldn't be happier to have someone understand her pain.
As selfish as it sounds, she's grateful to not have been Four's first.)
"Almost done here," Medaka murmurs. "I can dry the cutting board if you want to pick a bottle for the two of us to share."
Beside her, Murdoch nods, strands of his graying hair falling in front of his face. Message received—tonight, she isn't going to let him down an entire handle. Under her watchful eye, Murdoch will at least try to pretend to have it all together. She knows that otherwise, he will drink until he forgets; and in the aftermath, at least the hangover will give him something else to focus on besides his own mortality.
After draining the sink, Medaka finally lets her hair down, jet-black waves crashing down around her shoulders. Straightens her back, releasing a breath she didn't know she'd been holding.
In the dining room, she finds her fellow mentor clutching a bottle of dark spiced rum and two identical glasses. Seating herself, she flashes Murdoch a weary grin. He doesn't seem to catch it, his eyes focused somewhere past the glass of her patio door, left ajar to bring the breeze in.
From across the table, she watches as Murdoch's scarred fingers drum against weathered wood. She knows the majority of them aren't from an old trawling job, as are her own, but from playing pinfinger in shady bars filled with cigarette smoke and sweat-soaked sailors.
In addition to the thin white scars lining the back of her own hands, both of her palms share thick, asymmetric scars from keeping a blade from burying itself in her neck. They both have their fair share of scars—Murdoch just wears his own deeper than she prefers to.
Perhaps it isn't healthy to push away her feelings, and hide them like a message in a bottle, waiting to be found years after she's already dead. Perhaps she no longer cares… the suffocation is sweet. Painless. It's easier to ignore herself than sit with the feelings.
Finally, Murdoch catches her eye. In his, she sees a well of understanding. They might never fit together as seamlessly as shiplap, but together, each is less alone.
"Pour me a drink," her fellow mentor grumbles.
"Get me some ice," Medaka shrugs, pulling the rum closer to her. Then, as he stands to find her ice-box, "what's eating you today, Murdoch?"
A lengthy pause follows her words. She listens to him cross the floor, and take out the spherical cubes she prefers. She feels him struggle for the words, and watches the feelings dance across his face when he sits back down, both glasses across the table for a fill.
"She would have been fourteen," he grunts. Swirls the alcohol around in his glass, then drains it.
"Too early," Medaka agrees, the words sounding hollow against her lips. "Tomorrow, if I'm not mistaken?"
"Yeah," Murdoch breathes, his tone sounding bitter. "Tomorrow."
In silence, they pass the bottle back and forth. Sit with the words, the ocean's waves breaking just beyond the darkness at her door. The sun has fully gone down now—it's just the two of them, the lights in the house, and the dark expanse of seagrass, sand and saltwater beyond.
They should be at peace, if the ghosts of the past weren't so apt to haunt them.
Medaka has watched twenty-six kids go into the arena. Has seen all of them die there, save one. She'll never know if it was the arena that destroyed the girl's mind, or the nightmares. It could have just as easily been the pressure of returning home, the intensive care she was placed into, or perhaps the demands of the Capitol's most nefarious network had already reached her.
It didn't matter. Kaia Cambay was already dead before the train rolled into its station.
(Either way, she never truly made it home.)
There's something else lurking behind his eyes. An unusual pain, for a familiar friend. It hurts her that she has already given attention to the same affliction.
"You're worried about the Quell," she surmises, folding her hands in front of her once the bottle is half-emptied. It isn't a question. Ever since the end of the ninety-ninth, the entire nation has been theorizing on what the President will read off the Quell card the morning of the Reapings. Held annually on the Fourth of July, the Reapings are just over a month away. The Quell is a fear that will be left unsolved, for the time being, but the apprehension remains.
It lingers. Festers. It feels like an insurmountable experience, when life since her victory has consisted of so many already. Murdoch closes his eyes and leans over his glass.
"Yes," he says simply. A pause. "I fear that unknown."
"Me too," she assures him, refilling her third glass. The spheres of ice inside have begun to melt, signaling it should be her last. Questions unspoken die on her tongue. It wouldn't do to voice her macabre thoughts—no doubt Murdoch has his own suspicions of the Quell.
"You think we'll at least get volunteers?"
"I hope so."
Medaka shrugs. "At least they'll know what they're getting into."
Silence stretches between them once again, and Medaka leaves him to go shake the remaining fragments of ice into the sink. Though the system is faulty, it typically pulls through. She's since convinced herself that Kaia was a fluke. Most of the time, someone volunteers.
(Most of the time, it's never that easy. Never that simple. Not for the two of them, anyhow.
Most of the time, someone dies, and the newspapers stir into a frenzy, all sporting the headline: Murdoch van der Zee and Medaka Amur: Four's Biggest Failures?)
She's so sick of it. All of it.
"Let's get some fresh air," Medaka suggests, making her way back into the dining room. "I'm done drinking anyway. Could use a smoke instead."
Murdoch nods. "I understand."
She feels the breeze of the sea the moment they step onto the patio. Its cool caress tousles her hair and wraps around her shoulders in an embrace. The shore, distant in darkness, reflects the moonlight where the sand is wet from the tides. The scenery is somber, for her—the ocean after dark has never been a particularly vibrant place.
"Everything that's taken place in the past just prepares us for the opportunities to come," she muses, closing her eyes for a brief moment as she feels Murdoch's presence materialize next to her on the balcony. "Right? Maybe we'll be prepared this time."
"When will we ever?" Murdoch asks, leaning his grizzled forearms against a balustrade.
"Never," she answers, fumbling to light a cigarette in the wind. He shifts his body to lean closer to her, blocking the breeze from tampering with her vices.
"Thanks," she adds, the cigarette lit.
"Don't mention it," Murdoch says, the words quieter than they should be. After all they have been through, there is no longer a place for optimism to thrive. After all they have seen, there is no longer a reason to believe in it, either.
"Now look at us," Murdoch says, eyes level with the darkness before them. "Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea once again."
"Aren't we always?" Medaka asks, taking a long drag from the cigarette. She holds it in her lungs for a moment, before breathing a shaky exhale. She taps the ash from the edge of her cigarette off the balustrade, watching an ember fizzle out into the night below them.
"What do you suggest we do about it?"
Her fellow mentor shakes his head. "I don't know," he says, the words barely audible above the breeze. Medaka stills when she sees a tear rolling down his cheek, and busies herself inspecting her cigarette. She's almost lost the desire to speak anymore. "We hang on for as long as we can, I guess. We hope that this time, one of them makes it home."
She nods in agreement, wrapping an arm around his waist in solidarity. No matter what horrors the future has in store for them, Medaka knows they'll face it together. Through storm and shine, she is the last tether keeping Murdoch suspended above the deep end. Perhaps he is hers, too.
There's comfort in that thought, somehow.
A/N: Hello everyone! Surprise! :) Before I introduce the details of this SYOT, a small disclaimer first: I am currently working on another SYOT project!
That said, I do have a solid reasoning for opening a second. The condensed version is that after a brief hiatus, I have decided that having a project with less pressure on it will help to keep my writing skills in use so that when I am motivated to write for my larger project, Neca Ne Neceris, my skills won't be as rusty and I won't struggle as much. I understand how controversial and counter-intuitive this plan will seem, but I am committed and I do think it will really work for me. If anyone wants my full reasoning for this decision, I'm happy to go into further explanation, but I know this is the right plan of action for me.
Since the SYOT genre is in another period of oversaturation, I am going to be realistic with the submissions for this story. I don't expect to get tons of them overnight, nor will I expect this story to be fully up-and-running in a month. However, I am aiming to have a traditional story this time, meaning a full cast of two-tributes-per-district, in comparison to my other story, which is a partial based around Capitol tributes. I will be attempting to move at a relatively quicker pace, as well.
Full submission information can be found on my profile. Submissions will be due July 4th. Hopefully you give this a chance! :)