Chapter 6: Wine and Roses
(Part III)

It isn't that glass is rare in District 12, but that it's a little harder to come by. It breaks easier than most things, and things are made to last in a place like Twelve. They had to be. There was never any luxury for the extra care needed for the more delicate things. The Covey's few precious glass cups and dishes were treasure enough. Lucy Gray can hardly even imagine there could exist an entire house made of it until she finds herself standing in front of one to believe it. A world that appears so delicate on the outside. And within, it's a wonder how it keeps such beautiful things so alive. So pure and untouched.

And all that separates it from everything else beyond it are a complex of metal and panes in crystalline sheets so fine. All it takes is something hard enough. Something heavy. An angry enough intention to bring it all down. So it is with the same reverence she gives to the ancient oaks and pines that rule the woods that harbored her that she pays upon her passage across the threshold into this space.

The glass house is like a hall of transparent mirrors. The perfectly lined rows of florals like a kaleidoscope of unending tessellations, transforming in shape and color as she walks down their carved pathways. Everything is so sculpted, so pristine. It's so far in nature from the rolling wildflower meadows at the edges of District 12, but something about this space brings her the closest to that. She can close her eyes and let the rest of the senses carry her there. Led by the taste and smell steeped within this little glass world, she lets her fingertips guide her along the mosaic tiles lined beneath her steps, ushered by each brush of petal and foliage they find along this idyll's promenade.

It's only the most familiar, most ambrosial of the fragrances at the end of it that halts her leisured amble. Not one she's had much luxury to smell many times in her life. But as how these senses go, it is well ingrained in her memory. She doesn't need to look to know that before her is an entire nursery dedicated to Coryo's roses.

She smiles, because all those stories behind each of these notes in the air resurface all at once. They're all pretty. All warm and nice. What she doesn't expect to see is the full spectrum of colors to behold among these majestic blooms. Among the few he's ever gifted her, she recalls ones of deep red. Maybe some in shades of pink. And of course, his immaculate white ones. But here, she is breathless in awe of the sea of variegated hues that graces her eyes.

How privileged she feels to have this sight to keep for herself. This could be the first and only time ever she gets to see this, and she can feel as though she's seen the spectrum of the world itself.

An old story comes to mind then. The one about the hapless boy that managed to make a lost girl feel even the merest shred of comfort, dragged from home in chains to a city she knew she might never leave. It didn't matter much who he was or what he was even doing there. But he'd given her this small thing of beauty, and for no real reason at all she could think of. It'd held no real use to her either. But she kept it, continued to take comfort in it in the coming days, when everything all around only grew uglier and uglier. And as she got to know this boy better over those following days, his little rose meant more to her than he probably ever even knew.

Lucy Gray longs to remember it all again. Looking down at the full bloom cupped within her hands, she gently brushes her fingers along the velveteen faces of its petals. One of them along the very outer edge comes loose as her thumb trails past it, stopping her breath. She hadn't meant at all to mar this lovely thing, but…

No, it'd be worse to leave it to brown anyway amongst the snowy white of its magnificence, halfway to fallen on its own, she reasons. A careful pluck, and it releases from the bloom with ease. She stares at it between her fingers. Closes her eyes before bringing it to her nose to soak in its scent, and it takes her right back to that story, to that time at the train station platform again. Even the grime collected from days on that freight car and the industrial smells of the running railways hold nothing to that of this tiny petal. Just like the one the boy gave.

Still, it isn't enough.

So she parts her lips to its edge, places it on her tongue. Unlike then, she lets herself savor its taste this time. Lets it linger between her lips until it fills her heart with everything it bears. Everything she has been bereft of for more than five years. His rose means more to her than any grand meal or pretty dress. Even the comfort of a roof above and a proper bed and pillow beneath her.

And it is something startling that tows her back from that memory. Lucy Gray only opens her eyes again at the beckoning of the moisture seeping through their corners. She quickly swallows the traces of the petal on her tongue as she brushes at her eyes with the cuff of her sleeve.

"You're not supposed to be in here."

The soul-sucking fright gets her worse than in the kitchen this time. With a gasp that very nearly almost comes out a cry, she falls back onto her haunches from where she'd been crouched by the roses, clutching at the collar of her blouse. This time, it isn't guilt she feels for supposedly being somewhere she isn't supposed to be. There's an air of unpleasantness that hangs between the intruding voice's mild displeasure and her panic-turned-petulance.

"Good afternoon to you, too, President Snow," she returns sourly.

Standing at the pathway's end some yards away, he stares her down, focus narrowing. It isn't exactly mistrust that colors his gaze here, but bewilderment, perhaps?

"No one is supposed to be in here. The gate is always locked. How did you get in, Lucy Gray?" he questions more specifically.

In a somewhat pretended huff, she returns to prodding idly at his roses. "Picked it open."

Her cool, unbothered answer is likely an honest one, but he doesn't quite care for her attitude about it. But furthermore—what in the hell?

And…there is none of his expected annoyance or outrage that she can pick up on as she listens for it while feigning disinterest. It's uncanny enough to steer her away from the rose she's minding to steal a peek over her shoulder. The incredulousness in that frozen funny face of his. Like a job well done, she has to press her lips thin to hide that twitch of a smirk begging at their corners. There's always something about getting a rise out of authority that she never quite grows tired of. The last time she'd done so earned her a solid blow to the face by good ol' Mayor Lipp, along with a direct ticket to the 10th Annual Hunger Games. Boneheaded as it sounds, it'd be hard for her to say even to this day that she'd have done it any different, given the chance.

"Don't look so surprised. Five years is plenty time to pick up at least a few useful tricks," she hums with the same, far-too-easy nonchalance. "I'm sure you've got some, too."

Coriolanus' response comes only in a drawn exasperated sigh as he shakes his head, running a hand back through his locks.

Okay, but she isn't that much of a hell-raiser. Or at least, she doesn't try to be. She pauses, relenting just a bit in her regard. "If I didn't know any better…I'd say you looked a little stressed there."

"You know security's been trying to find you for the past hour?"

Well, Lucy girl…took them that long, huh?

"We agreed, didn't we? That they needed to know where you are at all times."

"And I told them I'd be going for a walk in the garden."

Coriolanus is hardly amused by her playing semantics here.

"What? They're a little ruffled I didn't say which?"

His gaze hangs for as long as he lacks the words to say to this. He has no taste for confining her back to her room, and not for something so juvenile, but there is a significance to how his security detail operates that she is failing to observe.

The weight of his silence doesn't escape her then. Lucy Gray has done enough mischief in her life to understand those boundaries rather quickly. (Even if she opts to blatantly disregard them sometimes.) And she knows that Coryo has never been the kind to raise his voice, but it's telling enough when he simply stops responding. There's pissing someone off, and then there's getting them to completely shut down. The former was easy enough. Especially when it came to born assholes. Like the entire Lipp progeny. Like some of the meaner Peacekeepers little Lucy girl was stupid enough to learn the hard way weren't worth the hassling. Like Billy fucking Taupe.

And then there's Coriolanus Snow.

It's always been different with him. She doesn't know why, because he is absolutely capable of saying and doing some shitty things, too. Maybe it's because he always manages to feel terrible about it afterwards. Because he's never made up some crap excuse for any of it to her. Because he's always come around from it.

Eventually.

The rose she's been fiddling with springs back upright on its stem as she releases it. She's slow to turn back around, keeping her gaze low as she peers over her shoulder at the man standing that small distance away. The subdued glance she gives offers some credence to those whispers of remorse she can't unhear now.

And somehow, so fittingly, this seems exactly enough to disarm his frustration.

"You're not upset with me, are you, Coryo?" her reticent voice ripples across the stillness between them.

No. It's gone completely then. How could he be? Hearing that they'd somehow managed to lose track of her did pull him almost immediately away from his work in his office. So, sure, maybe he had been the slightest bit annoyed initially. Maybe even a slighter bit more worried than that, if only briefly so. It hadn't taken long before he realized where she might have actually snuck away off to. Artifice wasn't beyond her, but Lucy Gray wasn't a liar.

Coriolanus relieves another beaten breath, a gentler one this time. Even so, he can tell she still isn't sure how to take his nonresponse. She seems to ruminate a bit to herself before slowly coming back to her feet. The pale, pressed linen skirt she's chosen to wear unfurls down past her knees as she rises, now showing the rumples and creases from the afternoon's exploits. Decorating the neck of her finely ruched blouse are ties fixed into a draping bow. She stands facing him now, hands withdrawn, busying idly at those tail ends that hang from her collar. It's the first time he's seen her dressed in anything that isn't sleepwear since her arrival, but it'll still be some time before her newly commissioned garments will be ready.

He isn't sure what leads his thoughts to this, but something in him is glad for what he sees. She hardly looks Capitol, even if it's its threads she dons. But neither does she look like some common district girl. It's just plain Lucy Gray. It's his girl he sees there.

And no…he's not upset with her.

She shifts uncomfortably between her feet—again, favoring her left as he's come to notice well now. Her lips part with something to say, and he is reminded of that moment in her room just as the damned stylist had to come knocking. There's just been too many missed moments like that. Too many distractions. Too many interruptions. But they stand in his glass house now, an entire world he's built precisely to block those intrusions out. There is all the time to be had here. So he makes use of it and waits for her words to come.

"I've been meaning to ask…" she finally speaks, and it comes like a lingering respite. She waits for that uncertainty to pass, for any sign at all in the man standing there that might rebuff anything that finds itself pouring out of her.

There is none of that. Only his patience as he watches, waiting.

"…How is Tigris, by the way?" Following her question, she catches that merest shift in his stillness then. She isn't sure what that means, but when he says nothing to it, she continues her thought. "I was actually surprised she doesn't live here on this estate with you."

Whether it's some effort on her part to divert his mood, he can't be too sure. And it's unfortunate that she simply hadn't been around to know any better. Of course he can forgive her this. But he doesn't want to go down that hole. Especially not now. Not here.

"What brought you out here to my greenhouse?" he asks instead.

Lucy Gray smiles gently. She knows a deflection when she hears one. She answers then as though to beckon his memory. "You know what always catches my heart first," she muses as she reminisces on every sweet moment this has shown itself between them before. "I just followed the smell of the flowers."

And it occurs to him then. Of course she'd find her way here. The estate gardens are plentiful with their famed Capitol Roses, in some ways even more immaculate than the varieties Grandma'am had cultivated. But somewhere along the way of genetically breeding their rich vibrance, the Capitol Rose had somehow lost its scent. For that very reason, it comes as no surprise that Lucy Gray would find little appeal in them. Even he disdains them as substandard blooms, for flowers known distinctly for their fragrance to offer nothing beyond a synthetic, pretty-looking façade.

"Couldn't help it. The ones in here just fill the air and tickle your nose down to the little hairs from so much farther away," Lucy Gray tells him with a fond little inward laugh. She raises her gaze to meet his eyes, all the levity of her mischief gone this time. "And…there's some lavenders you've got here that reminds me of that nice soap she made for me back then," she adds, nodding in their direction some rows away, farther down the path.

She's still trying to steer this back to the matter of his cousin. And she has to beckon with such affection. It's all the tenderness he has longed to see in her again, but why did it have to be this? Her timing was always so wretchedly exact. Bringing in a whole world of insufferable complications with all the wonder and bewilderment. How was Lucy Gray Baird even possible?

She sees that he gives nothing away with his lingering gaze. He is not amused. He is not happy. And—damn it, Lucy girl—she fears it might just be because she's pushing it a little too far this time. Maybe it was too wishful to think about the man who'd whiled away the better part of the night with her over sweets and wine here. And the part of her that knows better knows this. Still, there's just something there that's so hard to look past. Like some transparent wall that sets them apart. One just like those that make up this space. And maybe that's why he keeps all of this locked up, reserved only for himself.

Maybe she shouldn't be here.

I'm sorry, Coryo.

But she wants to know. She wants to hear it from him. To hear what exactly he wants to hide behind that wall. Because it isn't fair of him to ask it of her without giving anything in return. He can't be so selfish like that.

"You can't be doing this, Lucy Gray. Evading my security. Going off into places you shouldn't be."

He doesn't sound angry, but she can tell he means this.

"I didn't mean to wander off and worry anyone. Really."

And she means this, too.

But Coriolanus' sparse reaction begins to settle deep into her. He looks as though he's weighing his thoughts right then. It always worries her when people go quiet. Like there's so much that needs to be said, that wants to be said, and the only reason why it stays quiet is because it's just too damned awful to all come out. The simple not-knowing, when all that's known is that things are unwell and unsound. The silence becomes unbearable then. She just wants to hear something. Anything.

"…What about your grandmama?" It might be reaching, but she wants so desperately to turn this around. Steer it away. Something to just bring the stories back. "I hope she's been in good health."

"She passed. A year and a half ago."

Funny how much easier it is to tell someone about his dead Grandma'am than it is to give his fuck-up of a cousin even a passing thought. And somehow, it also escapes him how deep another's empathy can reach. He is taken by the genuine lament in Lucy Gray's sunken countenance then.

"Oh, Coriolanus…I'm so sorry to hear that," she breathes.

He realizes then how grief-stricken she is by this. And it leaves him somewhat bewildered. Grandma'am was just some old Capitol woman she'd hardly even known. Who had very few kind sentiments for that dirty tribute girl from Twelve her grandson had been charged with mentoring, certain that the ill-fortuned waif would die within a day of the Games and cost him his prize money.

He is even more puzzled then, watching as she looks about, proceeding to fetch his pair of pruning shears from the nearby tool cart, and with such deliberation, helps herself to one of his blooms. There's a part of him he needs to stamp out inside, that almost thinks to protest, because 'stop wrecking my things.' It's that undeniably parsimonious part of him that forbids everyone other than himself to harvest what is his here. That explicitly keeps this place untouched and unsoiled simply because it is his.

But he sees the reverence of how she holds that rose she's just taken in her two hands. Holds it like gold dust in front of her. And she is the one now, who passes those dozen paces that separate them. That steps past that transparent wall the way only a ghost can, as though it were nothing at all. As though it meant nothing at all.

Before he can say anything to her despondence, she reaches to delicately tuck the cut into the breast pocket of his jacket.

"…In her memory," she offers softly like a gentle orison.

The words elude Coriolanus once more, but for entirely different reasons this time. He tries to comprehend this. The depth of Lucy Gray's decency. The compassion he's always known of her. And yet it's another thing entirely to receive it, relinquished so profoundly without ask or need.

In truth, he'd done what grieving he'd needed at the time, but there was little sadness in him truly for her passing. It had been natural and expected. The woman had a long and decent life, and there was little to mourn for one that had been well lived. But seeing Lucy Gray in her sorrow for this life she had little to do with, he is only reminded of how soft her heart is and always has been. Her good and pure nature. One that always honored and respected life even in death. He'd seen it then, too. Before and after the Games. The shame of ever doubting it begins to descend on his own heart again.

He expects too much of himself in others. In her.

'There's a natural goodness built into human beings.'

Just like that day in the woods, he has never forgotten her words either. It's precisely moments like this that make him wish he could believe it as easily as she does. Because he's born witness to it before. Even if only once. Even if only in this single, lone woman standing before him who offers it to those who have no business deserving any of it.

And when she's standing this close to him again, patting down and fixing the white rose in his pocket, he finally sees. And it isn't like when he's looking at her in passing, when she doesn't notice him stealing glances from across the room, when her eyes aren't staring him right back. He looks purely at his girl and sees the vestiges of everything he's left her with. Everything he's done. The red in her eyes and the residual moisture that keeps them from ever drying. He never meant to dampen her precious heart with any of this sorrow. And how he sees its state now, ailing and sinking right before his eyes.

Coriolanus can't help the draw of his hand then. The boy in him would have held her, brushed away every trace of those abhorrent tears. He hates them every bit as much as she does.

But the man stays his hand. He doesn't. He can't.

How dare he even?

Her light is hers alone, and all his touch will do is ruin it.

"I'm sorry."

Lucy Gray stops.

"I didn't mean to make you cry."

Her eyes meet his in this lingering incomprehension, but just as she notices herself blinking, she realizes then that her tears hadn't stopped since the moment he'd come upon her here in this glass house. That part of her had never left that memory she'd wandered off away into.

Startled, she quickly daubs at her eyes with the gathered ends of her sleeves. With a wan, halfhearted smile, she tries to salvage what's left of her composure then. He can't know she's been crying long before he ever got here. That no, it wasn't him. It isn't his fault at all that she wants something that's already long drifted out of her reach. She knows better than to hang onto things like this. Things that are long past and long gone.

It just hurts to be reminded that no matter how much warmth and comfort old stories can bring, they don't change a thing in the real world outside of them.

You're not little Lucy girl anymore. You grew out of her long, long ago.

And how much Coriolanus hates that mask. So maybe...

'There's a natural goodness built into human beings.'

...Maybe he can try believing this. Stop expecting himself in others. Live up to her, his girl, for once. He's seen the extent of her lament and sorrow. How it'd drawn and led her to this solitary space. It is his own private refuge from anything and everything else. And it is he who can make this allowance for her. Offer her the peace that might quell everything she carries inside.

After enough consideration, he reaches his hand into his jacket beneath where she'd fixed her rose, searching the interior pocket under his lapel. "No more breaking into my locks, okay?" he says gently, presenting her with a small, silver key.

Lucy Gray stares at the thing, just as finely engraved as the beautiful compact he'd lent her before she'd been taken to the arena. She hesitates to accept this gift, however. She still owes him the last one she's managed to lose.

"Is this another loaner?" she utters half in jest. Part of her doubts he'd ever entrust her again with another thing so precious of his.

"It's yours."

Her expression wanes again at this. There isn't any indication in him that second guesses what he's offering. Only then does she dare to take the small key. She cradles it in her palm the same way she holds his roses. And she swears she will treasure it like his mama's compact. She will safeguard it even better this time around—with her will and all her being. It isn't just the key, but this entire world it opens the gate into. His cherished garden and the flowers within it and everything they mean to him. He is trusting her with all of it. Everything.

"And what is it that you get in return for such a generous gift?" she can't help but tease, her tentative radiance rekindling in embers as she smiles to herself, marveling at the precious thing in her hand.

To this, the President has no response to give.

Well, this can hardly do. Not for all the words she lacks to rightfully express her profound gratitude. And the Covey don't let their debts hang over them. Not when they can help it. She thinks to offer, then, the only thing she has to give in that moment.

A simple gesture.

She rises to her toes to close the distance, pressing her lips softly to his face.

Coriolanus feels as though those passing intervals simply cease then, lulling his eyes shut to the familiarity of this. How right and how good and guiltless. His skin and flesh and Lucy Gray's touch it's all so longed for. And for the brief, halting breath that passes, he feels all of those moments and sensations resurfacing all at once again.

And it ends before his conscious thoughts can even catch up.

She draws away, back to her feet. Looks to him with a gentlest, purest regard.

"I hope that's a fair exchange."

His lips part with words lingering just on their edges. He lets another breath pass before he decides, then swallows them back down. Back with every suspended thought along with all the sentiments they carry. She is smiling again, and he doesn't want to do or say anything to sabotage her joy anymore. He just wants to remember this again. Remember how she looks and how it fills him. All the innocence he hates himself for ever forgetting.

So he presses his lips into a thin but well-meaning smile of his own. It's all he spares before turning his steps around to take his leave back down the mosaic path toward the gate.

Lucy Gray watches him depart, listening to the faintly receding echoes of his paces against the tiles. There's a whisper of something that continues to linger with her in the wake of his absence.

A ripple.

A swell.

A reflection.

The bereavement that all of it outlines more than it fills.

He makes it past the hydrangeas before she brings herself to cut through it and all that unbearable silence that widens with the distance between them.

"You know…when you invite me into your gardens…" she calls, letting her voice carry along the glass walls down to him. He's gotten a bit far, but she can see his steps slowing from where she stands. "…Let me here into your greenhouse. To see the blooms. Touch and smell each of these little treasures for myself…"

Lucy Gray falters over the thought she means to say here.

Don't let him go like that, Lucy girl. Just say it.

"…It'd be nice if, maybe…you could come along to walk with me one of these days."

Coriolanus pauses before turning back around. They're standing even farther away now than before, but he can still find her eyes. All the intent behind their color.

"It's not like anyone else is going to." She falls back on that humor again when she doesn't get an answer.

And she just sees him suspended where he stands. Sees him steer his gaze away, thinking. That passing notion of how aggravating it can be how stuck in his own head he gets sometimes. And she muses over how he's got that bad habit of always keeping her waiting. But then she might just be worse for somehow managing to forget that every time until it happens again.

Stupid boy.

He smiles.

Just tell me something. Anything.

"Remember to lock up after yourself when you leave, Lucy Gray."

I'm tired of being left alone, Coryo. Of chasing all the things that have gone.

She smiles back.

The gate shuts in the distance, and it's only her once again among the roses.

Notes: FINALLY, this should conclude all three parts of this danged shared 'chapter', lol. The thing I wanted to accomplish was bringing Lucy Gray's perspective a bit more into the story. From here on, she and Coriolanus should start to share the center much more as the story continues focusing on how their relationship develops! I hoped to delve a bit into the inner conflicts and doubts they both struggle with in these chapters. The draw and the longing are so loud in them, and yet neither of them seem able to properly communicate or seek it between each other. And even as they'll continue to rebuild themselves, I see it as a consistent struggle between them that will always keep them, as a really insightful friend of mine describes, like train tracks that forever run parallel to each other, but never quite able to meet.

I hope the conflicting sentiments were conveyed well enough in this chapter. God, their feelings are like emotional constipation AND barf, lol… I guess 'bittersweet' is the one feeling I wanted to linger on by the end of it. They're so frustrating in the best ways. I love touching on the best things, but I just can't see them quite getting in reach of it without the worst still being attached somewhere along the way. Common recurring themes to look forward to, yayy…haha!

As always, thank you to everyone for reading! ^_^ The next update might take a bit longer since I kind of have a bigger chapter planned, heh. (It'll be worth it I hooope… ;) Please bear with me until then! Thanks again! 3

9/6/23