A/N: Hey, everyone! I just had to write something for these two. I was trying to imagine how Snow might be feeling about a life outside of Panem and how he might learn to adapt to it. In this scenario, he never found the guns in the cabin.
I was also feeling pretty Christmasy and wanted to set this in winter for the season ;) Enjoy!
Northern Lights
•*.
"Ten thousand thousand rainbows rushed
And revelled through the boundless sky,
In jousting, flashing radiancy."
-David Vedder
.*•
The first drops of snow fell onto his blistered, cold-stiff fingers. He moved about the dense forest, putting together a fresh bundle of firewood. The forest creaked in the frost, the call of the wild birds sounding from the branches.
Would he never escape those birds?
His entire body ached as he walked, but his back most of all. He remembered very clearly what it had felt like to sleep in an actual bed and the loss of that was taking a toll on him.
He had actually managed to construct something halfway decent that he could loosely call a "home" before a fire caught and he and Lucy Gray had to abandon it before the first chill of winter. They were now residing in a ramshackle, makeshift tent with only a small fire pit for warmth and nothing at all soft to sleep on.
Foot slipping on an ice patch, Corolianus stumbled and nearly dropped the wood pile before he righted himself with a tight grimace. He sucked in a breath, then caught the telltale, acrid scent of burning meat.
Again? He thought desperately, immediately turning and heading back with hurried, infuriated steps. He didn't feel he was ever going to get the hang of this cooking thing. Just about every other meal he tried to make ended up charred somehow.
His eyes fell to the blackened, shriveled remains of the rabbit he'd caught and he roughly threw down the firewood before retrieving the meal hastily off the fire. He gazed down at it in despair as his stomach grumbled. He considered tossing it into the dirt before a small hand found its way to his arm and squeezed.
"This one didn't turn out so bad. See? There's some nicely cooked bits on the other side."
Coriolanus sighed loudly before glancing at Lucy Gray, who had returned from her task of gathering water from the nearby stream.
She met his eyes, gave an encouraging smile, then released his arm to tend to the fire.
Coriolanus shivered in the cold, sweeping his gaze up at the heavy sky. He could hardly believe this was his life now. This meager existence. He didn't think he could possibly sink any lower.
Being with Lucy Gray...even that was not enough to help him find much joy in it. All the earlier thrills of new love were starting to fade into familiarity and that familiarity could hardly bring much comfort when so much of their time together was spent just struggling to live from one day to the next. It was becoming a real drudgery.
He collapsed beside Lucy Gray, more out of habit than from any actual desire to be close to her. He supposed it was from a need to be warm too. They had to stay near each other to avoid succumbing to the cold.
He watched as Lucy Gray put the water over the fire to boil and purify it before pouring it into two steel cups and handing one to him.
The hot liquid soothed his insides, but nestled uncomfortably in his empty stomach.
"Now let's see here..." Lucy Gray reached for the rabbit then went about carving the best of it off the stick. She hummed under her breath as she worked and it reminded Coriolanus that she hadn't actually sung anything since setting out into the wilderness with him.
She couldn't really be much happier than he was, could she?
They ate and he forced himself to swallow every bite of the horrid meal. He couldn't believe he'd complained so much about the cabbage and lima beans he and his family used to eat following the war -- he'd go back to that in a heartbeat if it meant leaving all of this behind.
The thought of his family brought a sharp ache to his chest. He thought of Tigris and he thought of the Grandma'am. He'd defected from the Peacekeepers and had brought disgrace to his name. To their name. He wondered if they'd lost the apartment yet. If they were now living somewhere small and disgraceful because he was no longer sending them a paycheck. They'd been relying on that.
He had not had to take part in their humiliation, but it was still unbearable to think of them going through it.
I'll never see them again, he acknowledged. But I suppose that's still better than hanging...
"I know you hate it out here."
Lucy Gray's voice roused him and his eyes slid over to her. She didn't look at him, only stoked the fire, expression distant and tired.
"I can see it on your face," she explained. "Even in the way you look at me now."
Coriolanus sighed, mind immediately pondering how best to respond to her. But his sharp wits had dimmed. His skill for figuring the right way to respond to people was no longer polished. He nearly always had a tendency to blurt the truth out to Lucy Gray anyways though. Somehow, he'd just always been compulsively candid with her.
Except for that lie about the number of people I've killed... That still hung between them, though she hadn't brought it up again.
He wrung his sore hands together and stared hard at the side of her face a long moment. "...it's not you. I'm happy that you're here with me. You're the only good thing about any of this."
"I'm not enough." She said it flatly. Certainly.
It gave him pause. Wasn't she? He'd wanted a life with her. He'd longed for a place where they could be together.
He blinked before relenting with another sigh. No, she was right. Before they'd had to run off, he'd longed to leave District 12 to become an officer. He had been willing to leave her behind to pursue his ambitions. That had always been his priority.
And now he'd lost it all. There was now no chance of him ever being part of his old life. Of being anyone worthy of the Snow name. He wasn't even worthy of the districts. He'd left all of Panem behind.
And now all he had was Lucy Gray and she was not enough to fulfill him.
Coriolanus ran a hand through his hair, which had started to grow again. The edges had started to curl as they used to, though the strands were more dull. He swallowed.
"I've lost it all, Lucy Gray. We both have. Everything we used to be. Me with my education and you with your music. And now?" He threw up his hands as he shivered, eyes shifting wildly about the dense forest. "It's just us out here. Alone. Forgotten. Meaningless. There's nothing else here. Nothing at all."
And they were going to die out here. They weren't going to last the winter, which was only bound to get colder. They'd just be two frozen corpses who no one would find.
Lucy Gray nodded in thought as she finished her food before she went about gathering the squirrel hide she'd skinned earlier. She added it to her growing collection. For warm socks and mittens, she had said. She was so much more suited to life out here than he was. She had the survival skills and the constitution for such a baseless existence. All he was out here was her incompetent sidekick.
But even Lucy Gray's light had faded without the music and the audience she thrived in.
"I know I said I thought it'd be just us out here...that we wouldn't be finding anybody else like Tam Amber said, but I think I'd like to be proven wrong about that. It'd be good to find some sort of community. Things might start looking up then." She said.
Coriolanus had originally scoffed at the idea when Tam Amber had mentioned it -- the idea of any civilization outside of the Capitol's reach -- but now he found himself desperately hoping for it too.
Oh, if only. Then maybe we can have something of a normal life. Something less solitary anyway.Of course, these "free" people could very well end up being murderous lunatics who would kill he and Lucy Gray on sight. If that was the case, then he felt it would've been better if he'd just stayed behind in Panem to be hanged. At least he'd have spared himself these months of discomfort.
But he supposed it would prove, one way or another, if Dr. Gaul was right about ungoverned, lawless people.
"It's definitely a long shot," he said to Lucy Gray, glancing down at his hands and observing the blisters again with a wince.
"Oh. Here. I whipped up something for those."
He looked over and watched as she took out a small tin, where there were orange flower petals floating in an oily substance.
Lucy Gray dipped a finger into the mixture then ran it in soothing circles over his wounded skin. Coriolanus swallowed, feeling an immediate surge of guilt for his resolutions about her.
"I'm not enough." Her voice echoed back to him.
He watched her face, so dedicated as she cared for him. Thinking only of his discomfort and doing what she could to make all of this easier for him.
He wanted so badly for her to be. Enough, that is.
Ever so faintly, the love he felt for her flickered back to life, and he found himself offering her a small smile in thanks. The blisters did feel better.
"There," she said before glancing up at him. She seemed surprised to see a smile on his face.
He honestly didn't know how long it had been since he'd smiled. Poor Lucy Gray, having to put up with me like this... She should never have had to. This should never have been their life.
Coriolanus leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers. She returned the kiss carefully, he noticed, and he smoothed a hand over her hair when he leaned away again, trying to soothe her distress in away.
"Thank you," he muttered before his eyes fell to the tin in her hands. "What is that?"
"Calendula," she answered. "Helps with pain and inflammation. Helps keep it from getting infected too. Mixed it with a little animal fat, so I could make a nice balm."
Coriolanus nodded. Without her expertise and knowledge of these things, he felt they'd both have died their first week on their own.
Lucy Gray rose to put some more wood on the fire and Coriolanus pulled out the makeshift bedding they had on hand -- only a few tattered blankets for warmth.
"If we come across a hibernating bear," Lucy Gray began as she snuggled next to him. He wrapped them both in a layer of blankets. "We can use the furs to keep a lot warmer. This isn't going to cut it much longer."
No, it certainly wouldn't. As the sun sank lower, casting the forest into dark, terrfiying shadows, he started to shiver violently and held Lucy Gray tighter. He noticed she did the same. His earlier, warm feelings for her were being driven out by the cold. The cold was all he could think about.
The fire provided bits of heat, but the sharp wind was battering them from all sides.
"I wish things were different too, you know." She breathed out the words with chattering teeth. "But there's no one I'd rather be out here with than you. I don't know what I would've done all on my own."
Coriolanus tried to push back the cold so he could focus on her words. He nodded stiffly. "I can't imagine anyone could do this by themselves." He kissed her forehead. "There's no one I'd rather be with either."
It was true. If he was going to die, at least he could die beside her. He supposed it was as good a death as he could ask for.
Sleep eventually came and he had hazy dreams of rampaging, raging tribes people. He dreamt of them hunting them down and slaying them while they slept.
He jerked awake when he felt a small shove, eyes frantic as he prepared for the killing blow that was sure to come.
But when he looked up to see Lucy Gray's face, he settled. It was still dark and there was a strange, greenish glow around her.
"What is it? What's wrong?"
The fire had started to die out and moving was painful.
"Nothing's wrong," she grinned before pointing up at the sky. "I just didn't want you to miss this. Look!"
Coriolanus forced himself to turn, the cold so much more fierce than it was earlier, but when he saw what she was pointing at, his mind was finally able to focus on more than the harsh weather. His breath caught as he watched the dance of iridescent light in the sky. His eyes fixed on the waves of green, blue and purple.
"Isn't it beautiful?" She asked.
Hauntingly, it reminded Coriolanus of Dr. Gaul's rainbow snakes, slithering around in the sky the way it was. But as he continued to stare, it started to remind him more of Lucy Gray's reaping dress. The way the colors had moved when she walked.
It was hypnotic in the same way she had been when he'd first seen her. Transcendent.
From the corner of his eye, he watched as Lucy Gray stood and walked out barefooted onto the frosty grass, seemingly unaffected by the cold. She wrapped her arms around herself and his eyes shifted from the lights to the way they lit upon her.
It looked like she just might fly away into those lights. Soar high above the world with them. Like that strange ballad she's named after.
She was still so extraordinary.
Coriolanus willed himself to move and, rising to his feet, he wrapped a blanket tight around himself and joined Lucy Gray. He stopped behind her and brought his arms around her waist, securing the blanket around them both. He lifted his eyes and enjoyed the scene with her, watching the sky dance.
Nature. Freedom. Chaos. How was it that some of the most beautiful things sprang from those terrifying sources? No one could control the river of light in the sky and that lack of control allowed it to shine without reserve. To exist without shame or caution. To soar above. Untouchable.
For a moment, standing here in the wild with Lucy Gray, he became acutely aware of his own lack of shackles. There was absolutely no one to control him. No one to control either of them.
They were the only two people in this strange, new world. And it was theirs. All theirs. No one was coming to take it from them.
They were free. They were chaotic. That sensation he'd felt while swimming in her lake, that recklessness he'd experienced while swimming with unknown dangers lurking beneath him, suddenly excited him as much now as it had then.
He was free. He was chaos. He was an unknown danger. He had become what the Capitol so feared. What it couldn't control.
"We'll get new dreams out there," He had said to Lucy Gray when they'd first set off from Twelve.
All of this started looking a lot less like the lowest form of existence and more like its opposite.
He could conquer this. They could. This savage, deadly, beautiful place...they could stand on top of it all.
Like those mockingjays. They'd transformed from something controlled to something free.
Relentless. Adaptive. Strong.
Maybe he didn't hate them at all. Maybe he never had. He had feared them. Feared how uncontrolled they were. Feared what that symbolized and what it meant for the Capitol's control.
But why should he fear it when it was something he too could become?
"Maybe my freedom's worth the risk," Lucy Gray had said at the lake. She had said she thought the Capitol's price for security was too high to pay.
Coriolanus valued security above almost everything else. No cost had been too high. Not really. But to rise above the chaos, to stand at the top...wasn't that real security? A free security?
Lucy Gray had always seemed as if she had a natural command over nature. Over dangerous things. Just like her snakes, he thought. And standing with her now, he felt some of what came so naturally to her. He felt powerful.
The biting cold cut into him and he invited it, refusing to give it the satisfaction of conquering him.
"I don't hate this," he said to her quietly.
Lucy Gray looked up at him with a smile. "Of course not. How could you?"
"Not just the lights," he said before he moved around to face her. He lifted a hand to her face. "I mean being out here. I think..." he nodded to himself as he breathed in the icy air. "I think we can do this. This is our world now."
Lucy Gray's brows furrowed as she searched his eyes. She was probably wondering what had changed his mind. But after a moment, her expression lightened. "I've never thought of it that way."
She gave him a beaming smile then, all of her light returning to make her radiant again. The swirling sky continued to glow over her. He watched as the colors shifted across her face.
"You and me," Lucy Gray nodded to herself. "I like the idea of owning this wild, new world with you."
"Own it," she had told him in that dreadful cage. No matter their circumstances, that's exactly what he would do.
Coriolanus openly admired her, feeling a surge of love for her all over again. It was them against the world. He'd always liked the idea of that.
And out here, all of things that had separated them, all their opposite opinions -- between Capitol and the Districts, control and freedom -- none of that existed anymore. He felt more united with her than ever.
Lucy Gray looked at him then with so much love reflected back at him that he felt instantly swept up in it and leaned down to kiss her. It felt that he hadn't really kissed her in a long time. And she didn't hold back. Her earlier hesitation was gone.
When she started shivering, Corolianus pulled away and stared down into her eyes a long moment before he pulled her toward their tent.
"Come on, let's get this fire going again. Don't want us freezing to death."
"Not a bad last view though," she laughed.
He set some more logs on the fire as she added more kindling.
Coriolanus sighed, somehow content.
Yes, he felt he just might learn to enjoy the rest of this new life.
Snow lands on top. He would stand at the very top of his wilderness.