For Art. ❤︎
I sat with my anger long enough until she told me her real name was grief.
—C.S Lewis
my dear,
we are all made of water.
it's okay to rage. sometimes.
it's okay to rest. to recede.
—Sanober Khan
There's a ghost in this house.
But,
I've learned that the house is me.
And the ghost is also me.
—Oliver Jeffers
In her dreams there is fire. A man with a butchered face. A woman screaming.
In her dreams everything burns.
In reality, Melody Korvats stands at the far edge of the pen so that the Peacekeeper assigned to her may easily slip her out once the pomp and circumstance ends. It is colder than she would have expected for a summer day, but she hasn't been out into the yard for what seems like eons. Once you've committed a crime, people stop caring about your rights to breathe fresh air.
Serena has not been to see her in nearly a month—Mel searches through the surrounding crowds for her sister, but finds only scores of unfamiliar faces. A boy, no older than seven or eight, is fixated on the silver bands linking her feet together. Her hands are free for the sake of the cameras, but they will not chance her running.
She is still searching for her sister when they call her name.
Before she got on the train, the Keepers unlocked the fetters from her ankles.
By the evening there were going to be pictures plastered of her over every Capitol newsstand. That's what Sarain told her, at least. A child in a gray jumpsuit marched in and out of the Justice Building, in and out of the car, onto the platform. Only released once her mentor had a hold of her.
Her partner, whose name she cannot recall, has found difficulty in not staring at her. Mel can't say she blames him.
"So what were you in for?" Sarain asks casually.
If anyone was going to ask the question, it would be her mentor. Melody cannot yet find the courage to tear her eyes from the projection screen. "I'm surprised you don't already know."
"Frankly, kid, I don't bother with things that don't concern me. So are you going to spill it, or do I have to ask Xanthe to pull your records?"
Melody sighs, her mood souring. Not that it wasn't nearly there already, given the situation. "I… I killed someone."
Sarain kicks her legs up onto the coffee table, emitting a low whistle. "That's good."
"No," Mel says quickly. "No, it's not—"
"It means you're ready for what has to be done."
"And so says I want to do it again?" she snaps. If Sarain is at all bothered by the sudden change in her attitude, she does not show it. "It was wrong, it… I shouldn't have let myself get to that point. Regardless of what he did."
Some would say Everett deserved worse. That Melody should have found a way to remove him from his home and tie him up somewhere where no one would ever find him, torture him until he was sobbing, begging for forgiveness. But she doesn't think he would have. Just because Mel regrets the actions doesn't mean she would hear him utter similar words.
He knew exactly what he was doing when he doused her family home in gasoline and set it ablaze. He wanted her mother dead, and for what—to further his own agenda, his political extremism? Nothing else had mattered.
Everything else, simply collateral.
Sarain hasn't even asked why. Maybe she doesn't even care. As long as Melody is willing to kill that's all that matters, right?
"I made a mistake," she says firmly. "I was so consumed I couldn't think of anything else. I don't want to be like him. He took my parents, he took my brother—"
"You still have a sister, do you not?" Sarain asks. "I saw her in the Justice Building, whoever she is. Someone that hugs you that tight… you have something to fight for, whether you want to or not. Do you want me to get back to Five, without you, and tell her you're dead because you just gave up?"
What does she want? To scream at Sarain until her throat is raw and she tastes blood—her blood, Everett's blood, whoever dares to get too close. She is capable of atrocities, of lifting one of her sister's knitting needles from the box that lives in their new living room and wreaking havoc with it alone.
His eyes had been the worst part. When she sees his face, when he hangs over her like a stormcloud threatening to spill its contents, his eyes are nothing but two empty sockets, bloody and dripping. She remembers the feeling of them splitting open, her stomach rolling, the stickiness that had been left between her fingers as they had shoved her unceremoniously into the van.
She wants to forget it all, to be able to vanquish his ruined face from her head.
Mel just wants to rest.
She may very well have the plague.
Outside of those who traveled with her on the train from Five, Melody has yet to have a true conversation with anyone. She knew it was doomed to be that way from the moment she encountered her prep team. They had attended to her with a Peacekeeper in the room to watch her, flitting around her like anxious birds, fingers hardly ghosting across her skin. Even Axius, whose job it was to make her stand-out, had been in and out of the room in what she had to imagine was record time. The rumors had spread, done their damage, before she had even had a chance to explain herself.
Her options were Sarain and Khione, who had some amount of obligation to speak to her, and Avel. He seemed like he had a good heart. Although Mel could see the uncertainty building in him when he attempted to speak with her, an attempt was far more than she deserved. Her District partner could have been callous, even cruel, but he had tried.
The tributes in the gymnasium around her have left a very wide berth. A single cough, it seemed, and Mel could have them flat on their backs. It was all she could do to watch alliances form around her, take note of everyone's moves. She could only find true consistency in one of them—the tall, dark-eyed girl from Two, who tracked each of Melody's movements like a hawk would a mouse. It felt as if a target had been sprayed across her back in bright red paint; the Careers had marked her as an enemy, and Mel would be unable to slip through the cracks.
She should have expected it. They deemed her a cold-blooded murderer the moment the headlines had first sprouted from the ground, and that is not something they can allow to oppose them.
"Melody? Do you mind if we sit?"
She blinks, the wire snare in her grasp disappearing. Although Avel has always had a presence about him, Mel doesn't truly realize just how tall he is until that moment, looking up at him from the bench. Wasting away in the detention facility hasn't done her any good, but she's never thought of herself as small.
Behind him are two others—if her memory serves her correctly, the two he spent the entire first day of training with. Nine and Eleven. Today, they were talking to the girl from Twelve, but she appears more distant. Perhaps they're giving her some space.
Mel looks back down at the snare and nods, silently. She hears a beat of awkward shuffling, and then Eleven sits down at the table to Mel's right, gesturing at her allies. After a moment, Nine follows.
Mel waits. Avel sits down next to her.
"How has it been going?" Avel asks. He picks up an instruction manual, but fails to make himself look truly busy with it. "Have you talked to anyone?"
"You know I haven't talked to anyone," she answers flatly. Avel's not a fucking idiot, not unless Melody has completely misjudged him.
"I just meant—"
"It's fine, Avel."
His eyes threaten to bore two holes into the side of her skull, but Mel stays resolute—not in making any progress with the snare, but in refusing to look back. He isn't someone whose feelings she has any interest in hurting. Somehow, all over again, it feels like she's back in the detention facility, surrounded by girls who would gladly pick her corpse clean like a pack of rats—Avel isn't one of them. There is no use in hurting him.
A part of him almost reminds her of Nio. She recalls watching him arrive home some two years ago toting a cardboard box, and Mel remembers sitting up with him into the long hours of the night as they bottled-fed a cluster of motherless kittens. They had lost two of them, but in the end there had been three who lived, who grew up. He was good. Too good, some would say, for the world he had been born into.
When she looks at Avel, infrequent as those moments are, she sees that same thing in his eyes.
"You can take some time to think about it, but I was going to suggest that you join us, if you'd like," Avel offers. "We could—"
"Why?" she retorts quickly. Give in, her brain cries. He'll keep you safe. You know he will.
She didn't realize how badly she wanted to until that very moment.
"I just thought—"
"You're not thinking," she accuses. "I'm not going to put a target on your back, too. I won't get you killed."
She has startled both of his allies out of their conversation, and now they stare at Mel with wide eyes as she shoves back from the table and nearly knocks into Avel's side. As if by some foreign instinct he reaches out to catch her as she stumbles, but Mel jolts away before he can make contact with her skin. He nearly grabbed ahold of her wrist right where all the burns are, where the reminder is branded into her—
She doesn't quite run, but it comes close.
Merride makes a great show of reaching across the space between them to lay her hand on Melody's knee.
The audience seems relieved to find that her hand does not come into contact with razor-sharp thorns.
"I'm sure you can forgive my intrusion," the interviewer decides, smiling thinly. "But I simply have to bring it up. We have heard quite the stories about you in the Capitol, Melody—and about what happened back home in District Five. Is there anything you would like to say on the topic?"
She expected this. Sarain had run through multiple answers with her and plucked every single one to hell and back. After all of twenty minutes Mel had locked herself in her room and crawled beneath the covers.
"I—"
Her voice shakes. It's a wonder Merride can't hear her heartbeat—she can certainly feel Melody's ragged nails beneath the safety of her palm after she spent all her time backstage picking away the work Axius had done to them.
"It's not… an easy thing to talk about, I guess," she decides eventually. "I did an awful thing. There's no denying that."
The audience is smaller this year, undeniably, but in the very front row a girl no older than ten sits framed by her doting parents, who occasionally lean down to offer her hushed whispers. Something could go wrong in that girl's life one day, the same way it did Melody's. In all her scenarios, this wasn't something she ever said to Sarain.
"I'm not the first person to have gone through something like this," Mel offers. "And I don't imagine I'll be last. I just want everyone to know that you don't have to make the same choice I did. You don't have to let yourself be consumed by so much… so much anger and hatred and revenge. There are other ways forward. Even if I didn't take one of them, I know it's true."
She cannot recall a time in recent history where she has spoken so openly, and for everyone to hear. She can see in Merride's enthusiastic nod that she's made the correct decision, even as her skin continues to prickle, heat rushing to her face in undulating waves.
Melody has made her choice, but if she can save even one soul, if she can convince someone… maybe that's enough to be worth it.
Mel does her very best to ignore the shadowy figure in the kitchen that is Avel.
He made his presence known from the beginning—Mel heard him coming, anyway. He's not the quiet type. For nearly ten minutes now she's been listening to him bumble about in the kitchen, each movement interspersed with the occasional quiet swear and the harsh clank of dishes along the counter.
It's late, and any person with sense would be trying to get as much possible sleep before they're packed up in the morning. She expects him to leave. When he sets down two mugs on the table before her and throws himself back into the chair opposite her own, Mel racks her brain for appropriate words. Finding none, all she can do is stare.
They've been doing a lot of that, the two of them.
"It's hot chocolate," he says pointedly. "Without any poison, I'd like to add."
Mel frowns. She watches him retrieve his own mug, nursing it between his hands as he takes a careful sip. "My grandma makes it better, but it's alright."
She can't tell if it's miserable or not, how much Avel tries when he's gotten almost nothing in return. Mel leans forward to scoop the mug up, letting the warmth seep into her palms. It's hot enough still to nearly scald—a feeling she is all too familiar with. Her left hand welcomes it eagerly. Her right, scarred and warped, is numb to it.
"I'm sorry about your family," Avel offers. "I just… I'm not sure anyone's said it."
She hasn't thought about it until now, but it's the truth. Sarain had acted like it was a useful bit of history. Khione had looked upset, but she had been uncomfortably silent. And what were these Capitolites, fewer by the year, meant to do? Even if they apologized, Mel isn't sure she could believe them.
"Thank-you," she murmurs. He nods, leaning back so that his eyes can trace over the horizon-line just beyond the city. The quiet that spans between them isn't as awkward as she imagined it to be.
She could die tomorrow. She probably will.
"Do you have family back home?" she asks, careful not to fix her gaze on him too intently. To look means to know too much. Is there any point now?
Even in her peripherals, Mel sees him nod. "My grandparents. My mom."
"Your dad?"
"Died, at the beginning of last winter."
"I'm sorry," she says quietly.
"Don't be."
It's enough to make her look at him. Something in his tone has shifted, darkened a hair. Though it's obvious something has changed, Mel can make no effort to decode the look in his eyes. She always liked to believe she was able to read people, that she could figure out anything before her—until now, at least.
"He just wasn't… he wasn't a good person," Avel clarifies. "Even that's being generous. Don't be sorry. Nobody else is."
She nods. Avel has shifted forward, elbows propped on his knees, eyes fixated on the floor. He looks up at her, a mere millisecond of time passing between them, and the floor seems to shift dangerously on her feet. There's something in that look. Something…
"When did he die?" she asks, voice wavering.
"The beginning of last winter, I said—"
"When, Avel?" she snaps. "What day? What day did he die?"
He places his mug so close to the edge of the table that she expects it to fall from its perch almost immediately, but it somehow remains. Her own hands shake so tremendously that she expects glass to shatter between them. Though liquid sloshes over the brim and soaks through her thin pajamas, she hardly feels the residual heat.
"November seventeenth," he answers quietly, solemnly. Her heart's rhythm seems to skip over several beats. The air is stolen from her lungs. She chose that day for a reason. It was the day before her sixteenth birthday, the day when she would finally be the same age as her brother when he was killed.
Mel isn't sure how she manages it. She stands. She places the mug down on the table. Her knees quake so dangerously it is a marvel she does not slump onto the floor in a boneless heap.
"He didn't have a son," she denies. "I knew everything about him, I—I figured out it was him, I figured out everything—
Avel only looks at her. There is nothing there but a resigned sort of sadness. No anger. Not even true upset.
He's not lying.
Is there something in the shape of his nose, the slope of his jaw? His eyes, even. Mel can't recall what color Everett's eyes were before she turned them red. Not that it matters, now. She cannot see Avel any longer for the film of tears that has overtaken her own.
She doesn't realize she's moving until Avel calls after her. Mel feels distant, her psyche floating above a moving body. Someone else is controlling her, removing her for her own good. She hears her name spoken again, as if in another world.
She is already long gone.
She is still thinking about that conversation as she stands on the platform.
She is still thinking about that conversation when the gong rings.
She is still thinking about that conversation when the edge of a knife's blade catches her across the forehead.
He told us right away, Sarain had said this morning. He holds no animosity towards you, you have to see that. He's been trying even if you don't understand why—
She doesn't understand why. She doesn't understand…
She's bleeding.
Mel is on the ground. A flurry of dirt and a shower of rocks erupts around her, choking her. Droplets of blood wash into her eyes as she shakes her head, trying to figure out up from down, left from right—which of the Careers was throwing knives in training? Was it more than one of them?
She has no time to figure it out. Melody launches herself forward, scrabbling through the red-brown dirt, catching her nails in the earth to propel herself forward. She practically falls on the bloodied knife that had opened her up, left hand launching out to a pack that calls to her louder than anything else. The familiar whistle of a knife turning over passes through the space her head had been as she launches herself to her feet and around the nearest platform, not taking a chance to look back.
The ground beneath her feet is both barren and rocky. It stretches out in all directions, rising in the distance in the forms of great cliffs and mountains that seem to have no end. They're the same color as the dirt she urges herself through, the leafless shrubs, the steaming caverns and—
And the sky. The sky is bloody.
This is hell, she thinks. They figured out where you belong and they've put you here.
She has not felt the urge in quite some time, almost though she never would again, but for the first time in eons she allows it.
Mel laughs.
By the time she ceases running she is soaked through with sweat, her head throbbing so strongly she feels sick.
The heat has always been Mel's friend—it chases away the cold she remembers feeling the day her and Serena had run down the street to find their house turning to cinders, the snow seeping through the laces of her boots. This, she had to admit, is something else. The air feels thick, almost syrupy, as if the very instance of walking could be slowed down tremendously.
She is forced to settle to the earth whilst fighting off waves of dizziness, discovering no first-aid kit in the lightweight pack that came along with her. It's only meager rations, a water canteen, and a small bottle of pills she can only assume is meant to purify it. Not that she's seen any out here.
What she does see, as she presses herself even further into the dirt, is a figure weaving haphazardly through the sweltering valley, half-running and half-tripping over themselves. As they grow closer, unaware of Mel's presence, she grips tight to her knife. Not now, she pleads. Please don't make me do this now, not yet—
The girl stumbles. Crashes to the ground. Eight, Melody thinks. As she begins to pick herself up, gravel embedded in her knees, she freezes at the sight of Mel some twenty feet out.
She is unarmed. Without anything, Melody realizes.
The choice is not a difficult one. It's what her parents would do, what Serena would do. It's what Nio always would have done.
Mel lobs the canteen a few feet out, and doesn't move. "Just… don't drink it all. Please."
She is surprised by the urgency in which the girl rushes forward after her initial distance, grabbing hold of the canteen as if it's her only lifeline out in this vast wasteland. It may very well be. Mel watches her take a few small sips before she slides it back. "My partner," she manages, in-between hiccupping sobs. "He—the Careers—"
She nods in understanding. "You can sit," she offers. "I don't bite."
The girl does not smile. She does sit, though, and that feels like enough.
The day morphs into night and then back again—at least, Melody thinks it does.
The sky hardly changes. There is no moon, no stars, nothing to mark the passing of time. Only a vague shift, as if the sky has turned into its own kind of festering wound.
Sometime in the middle of that strange night, Eight curls up on the ground and closes her eyes, shivering despite the unyielding warmth. Melody allows it for a few hours before she begins to rearrange her pack once again, leaving a pack of the rations before the girls outstretched arms.
She's halfway to her feet when she hears the girl's voice croak out. "Please don't go."
A part of her was afraid of this—but did a part of her want it, too? It's only natural to crave it, to fear being alone out here.
She turns back in time for the girl to sit up, brushing the overnight accumulation of dust from her hair, wiping away at her bleary eyes. "I'm Alain," she says quietly, stretching out her hand. Melody allows herself to reach out, grasping at Alain's hand. They both seem to hold on longer than strictly necessary.
"Melody," she answers. Not just Mel, who still some days feels like a charade, a hardened shell of what once existed.
There is much uncertainty surrounding whether or not she can be that person again—she won't dare believe it's even possible.
Not yet.
Alain is a good kid. Two years younger than her, from Eight as she suspected, and a nervous chatterer to boot.
Her head seems to rotate on a constant swivel, as if whoever took out her partner is hot on their heels. For all Mel knows, they are. They have seen nothing. Not on the first day, in which Alain talked more at first before it began to lessen, and not on the second either. The only thing to signify that they weren't alone in this place were the sporadic cannons.
There were seven faces the first day. Three now. One of them was the Nine boy—for a moment Mel allows her mind to drift to Avel, who could be truly anywhere, who she will never see again.
And that's for the best.
As the anthem ends, Alain shuffles closer to her, the rocky outcrop overhead casting her face into shadow. Somehow she feels safer further up into the craggy peaks—there are less opportunities for people to sneak up on them, to stumble into their hiding place. Tomorrow they will have no choice but to venture out with only droplets left in their canteen, to reach the water far below them. It's that or die.
Alain's hair tickles against her skin as she settles her head on Mel's shoulder with a careful precision. She taps her fingers gently against the other girl's arm and only then does Alain seem to properly settle, content with Mel's acceptance.
Maybe Alain doesn't know the rumors. She may never have listened long enough to hear them. It's a long shot, but perhaps she has found someone in this world who doesn't think her a complete monster.
Even though you are, Everett's voice supplies, echoing about her skull. Accept it.
Mel stares at the distant horizon a long while before sleep finally comes for her.
A horrified scream nearly ruptures her eardrum.
Before Melody's eyes are even open the heavy weight of Alain at her side is violently ripped away—moments later hands seize her arms, and when she finally manages to see she's completely horizontal, being yanked unceremoniously dragged through the rocks.
"Well look what we have here!" a voice celebrates. "Just what I wanted!"
No. God, no, please no—
"Can someone shut her ass up?"
Alain is still screaming. The arms holding Mel finally drag her upright—a hand fixes in her hair, fingers pressing into her skull. She thinks it might be the Two boy, but she can barely even thrash. Her legs kick aimlessly in the air. It's the One boy that has a hold of Alain, arms wrapped around her like a vice. No matter how much she squirms the girl from Four approaches without hesitation, spear aimed—
"Don't!" she yells. "She hasn't done anything, you're not after her!"
You're after me.
Violence has never scared her. Certainly not blood. Mel isn't sure why she closes her eyes. Maybe if she doesn't look, it won't really happen. Alain's screaming is more shrill, a banshee out here in the wilderness.
There's a sickeningly wet series of thuds. A finger taps tenderly beneath her chin, and she opens her eyes to find the Two girl's face a scarce inches from hers, her head tilting curiously.
"And here I thought you were a heartless little killer just like the rest of us," she murmurs, a grin growing on her face. "I don't like being wrong, you know."
A cannon booms. Two steps back to examine the handiwork, and it takes Mel a moment to notice that Alain is still being held upright. The Four girl twists frantically at her spear, teeth grinding together. It's stuck in the meatiest part of her torso and every movement only widens the garish cavern. It's Alain's insides that have fallen to the ground in messy coils, entire lengths of them spilling out over the ground.
Somewhere to her left, someone is retching.
Mel doesn't necessarily mean to let herself go slack, but her knees make it easy. The white-knuckled hold around her biceps loosens just enough.
Without thinking she throws herself forward—the faceplant into the dirt is worth it, because she's free. There's still six of them, though, and they're almost in a perfectly neat circle around her. She's surrounded. Only one of them has yet to turn their attention to her. The Four boy, still bent over at the waist, wiping away the dampness from his mouth.
Easy target, she supplies. Just like Everett was, late at night. He thought he was safe at home, tucked away.
No one is ever safe.
She crashes into Four's side and together they sprawl out onto the ground. There is no time to reach for the knife she has stored into her boot—he's dazed, anyway, still seemingly confused, and Melody wrenches the machete from his grasp without thinking twice about it.
She hacks down. Blood sprays over her face. There's no telling where the blade has landed. Does it matter? She brings it down again, feels it catch further in flesh. That's what matters.
A fist cracks into her face before she can strike down a third time.
"You fucking bitch!" the Four girl shrieks. The next hit aimed at her face sends her flailing off the boy that gurgles away on the ground. A boot lands dead center in her gut and she rolls two or three times over, coming to a stop in the dirt, panting and bleeding. The gash on her forehead has opened up. Her nose gushes burning droplets of blood into her mouth and down her chin. She can hardly see straight, and yet Mel forces herself to her hands and knees, shaking herself like a feral dog.
That's what she is. She's brutal and wild and most of all she is a fucking killer.
At least that's what the world wants her to be.
A cannon fires. The Two girl steps forward, twirling a knife between her fingers. "I didn't want it to end this soon, Five," she tuts. "I thought we could have some fun together."
Melody pushes herself backward a few inches, and the toes of her boot come into contact with exactly what she was afraid of: nothing. The craggy, uneven edge of the cliff that had been nearly twenty feet away the night before is at her back now, and the monsters before her. There is no neat ending, no easy decision. But the butchers will carve her up and bathe in her blood, she knows. At least below she can sink into the steaming river and escape all of this for good.
She spits a thick wad of blood onto the ground. "Fuck you," she manages, jaw aching fiercely.
Mel throws herself back off the cliff's edge.
It's hard to misjudge something. Even harder to accept when you do.
She's halfway down when she realizes what a terrible mistake she's made. It's so far. She's spinning head over heels. The faces of the Careers peering over the cliff disappear and she is still falling. There is nothing to hold onto. Nothing to save her.
The water is right there.
At least I got to it, she thinks hysterically. It's the last thought she's allowed to have.
"Miss Korvats."
There she sits—hands shackled in her lap, garishly orange jumpsuit, awaiting a verdict. There was no need for a trial, no need for all this fanfare. In the row behind her Serena sits, managing a silent cry as the clock continues to tick away.
She knows what the judge is going to say. She knows that no one is coming to save her.
Except there is a light, far above. A speck of it. An angel, she thinks, the tender warmth of its arms encircling her one last time. She can be at peace with this. She can accept the consequences for what she's done.
Without warning, the arms lift her up. She is suspended, hanging, pain licking up her spine—
"Mel, it's okay."
She screams.
It's a strange haze to exist in.
Mel is vaguely aware of movement around her, the murmur of her name so soft it may as well be the bubbling water. Whenever she opens her eyes she encounters nothing more than a strange, red film, unable to tell if it's the earth around her or blood that has dried there, rendering her blind.
She flexes the fingers of her left hand, loose fragments of rock scraping against her tender skin.
"Careful, Mel."
She knows that voice. It is as non-threatening as they come, and yet the sound of it feels like a gunshot. She forces herself up without preamble, without thought, unprepared for the onslaught of pain that strikes her from every direction. A wave of dizziness washes over her and she retches, gut twisting, but not so much as a drop of anything comes forth.
God, it hurts. Her ribs and her arms and her head, her face—
Hands fold around her arms. They're much kinder than the Two boys ever were. They don't mean to cause harm.
"Please stop moving," Avel begs. "I don't know how bad off you actually are, alright, I'm no doctor, and I really don't want you to make anything worse."
He's here. Here, with her. Why the fuck is he here following their very last conversation? Her ignorance of him the morning of was pointed—Mel had gone out of her way to wake with the dawn, not that she had slept much anyway, vacating Five's apartments before Avel had even shown his face. They had been on separate hovercrafts. She had deliberately not even attempted to look for him during the countdown.
"Mel, breathe," he soothes. "It's okay, you're alright—"
"I can't see," she blurts out. It's suddenly more important than anything else. She can feel him there, knows it's not a figment of her imagination, but she can't see him. She can't see anything. "I can't see, I can't fucking see."
"Hold on, hold on."
If the adrenaline wasn't firing rapidly through her veins, Melody is nearly certain she would have slid back to the ground and laid there for all of eternity. Moments later she hears a series of splashes, Avel's heavy footfalls returning to her once more. Mel forces herself into a stillness only occasionally broken by her weakening tremors. "Don't move," Avel requests, and she feels his hand curl gently around her jaw, which aches under the touch. Something damp is pressed against her eyes, rivulets of water running down her certainly swollen cheeks. She can feel it now.
And as he wipes away at her eyes, she begins to see again. Still in a half-haze, Mel does her best to blink away the remaining blurriness. She is greeted by Avel's face, a gentle smile ghosting across his lips.
"Better?" he asks. "I didn't… I didn't want to touch your face too much. It's…"
"Bad?" she finishes weakly. He nods. That smile is replaced oh so quickly by a slight frown.
"You're bruised pretty badly. I think your nose might be broken. Between that and the blood… mud, too, from the riverbank—I didn't want to poke around too much. I'm pretty sure I fixed your arm, though. Popped right out at the shoulder. If I'm wrong, though, feel free to tell me. I could try again. Or maybe you don't want me to."
Avel is frowning, still, now down at Mel's arm. "I had to rip up your jacket," he explains. "Sorry."
Her shoulder does ache terribly, but she can move her arm enough that she suspects his suspicions were founded. Mel can only stare down at it, held to her sternum by a knotted length of fabric that loops around her neck. He fixed it. He saved her life. Mel is supposed to be dead.
Her eyes go blurry once again. Tears sting against her ruined face and wobble free from the end of her chin. "Mel?" Avel asks. She can picture his face clear as day, but doesn't dare look up—eyebrows knitted down into concern, eyes searching for an answer.
"Why are you doing this?" she manages, but her voice cracks something awful. "You should go, please just go—"
A sob cuts through whatever she had been thinking to say next, though Melody isn't sure she had anything left in her arsenal anyway. Her body hunches over of its own volition, curling in on itself as continued sobs continue to wrack her frame.
"I don't deserve this," she cries. "Not from anyone, especially not from you."
An arm curls around her back. "Well, you're stuck with me," he says calmly. "Unless you plan on getting up and running."
She can hardly move, let alone rise to her feet and leave him. Mel shakes her head, as if she can still somehow deny his words. Chase him away. Make this stop. Avel's arms only wrap tighter around her in response, effectively cutting off any chances of desertion. He holds her like she is worthy of such a touch, lets her cry out six agonizing years and the pain that remains with her to this day.
Melody is not hopeful enough to think that she will feel better for it.
He tells her of his allies. What happened to them.
They lost Nine not long after the bloodbath. She learns his name was Breccan, a fact she couldn't be bothered to know before. One of the Careers stuck him in the leg and he bled out even after they dragged him a mile or two out. That night, or something akin to it, Eleven had gone to find water. She never came back.
Her face had appeared in the sky sometime whilst Mel was lying there unconscious. Whether she had abandoned Avel outright or met some other unfortunate, drawn out fate, she does not know.
She doesn't know, either, how somebody could dare to abandon a person like Avel. It feels wrong.
Even now he sits in silence and allows Mel to think; beyond the simple explanations, the facts, they have not spoken much. Detaching herself from his arms and wiping away at her swollen face was shameful enough of an act to complete. She busies herself instead with picking the flaking blood from the edges of her fingernails, scraping away layers of congealed mud to expose the bruised skin beneath.
"Why are you doing this?" she asks finally, staring into the empty space between them. The question haunts her just as much as Everett does, hangs over her like a funeral shroud.
Avel props himself up on an elbow. "I told you he wasn't a good person—not that you needed me to confirm it. Honestly, I don't think he wanted me, not from the get-go. They were young. Not married at the time; that's why I have my ma's last name. The first clear memory I have of him he was screaming at her. Don't know what about."
All the time Melody has thought the woman in Everett's house was screaming because of the tragedy of it all, because she was watching someone she loved be ripped away from her in such a brutal fashion.
There is much Mel has been wrong about.
"When I was young I spent most of my time with my grandparents," he explains. "Or at my aunt's. I still do, really, if I'm not with one of my friends. Because when I went home it was just… ugly. He would try to poison the minds of anyone he could get his hands on with the same ideologies, and whenever my mom would try to leave things would just get worse. If I'm sad about anything, it's not what happened to him. I wish I would have had a father, y'know? I wish my mom had someone better in her life."
"I'm sorry," she murmurs. Two words aren't enough to neatly wrap the years of suffering—not for either of them.
This would be the perfect opportunity to close the space between them and take his hand, to offer even a modicum of the comfort he has offered her. If only the slightest movement didn't cause her excruciating levels of pain—another mark of the universe working against her.
"I won't say what you did was right, but I can't blame you for it, either," Avel says. "Maybe… maybe the world is better off without him. Maybe we are."
"Maybe," she surmises. She turns, wincing, to glance at the rocky outcrop above them, the cliff's edge far in the sky.
She still can't help but think the world would be better off without her, as well. Serena could move on without an anchor attached to her at the waist. The world could begin to forget about them, her and Everett both, the havoc they wreaked on everything around them.
Mel does not move when she hears Avel shuffle closer. "This was falling out of your pocket when I moved you off the riverbank," he tells her. "I thought it must have been important, so I held onto it."
He eases her fingers open, placing in her palm a folded sheet of paper, still damp. The edges are worryingly frayed, ink bleeding towards the edges, but it is hers, near disintegration or not. "Thank-you," she whispers, and he nods.
"Get some sleep, Mel."
Yet another thing she is undeserving of. When she was reaped Melody believed it was the universe enacting revenge against her, that in committing one act of treachery she would be forced to suffer through many more. She cannot deny that she should have been dead by now, several times over. The world might be better off for it, just as it is with Everett.
But the world is not letting her go so easily.
"Melody?"
Her name in its entirety is what causes her to open her eyes. The slowness to it, as if it melted off his tongue unwillingly, the uncertainty, is why she sits up. Although tendrils of pain snake down each of her limbs she forces herself to rise, anchoring herself against the cliff face.
Before she makes it there, Mel forces the knife out of her boot—she can feel the bruise it has left behind on her skin as she stumbles from beneath the overhang, feet slipping in the muddy riverbank.
Avel is perhaps only twenty feet away, shielding his eyes against the glaring light. She sees what is gaze is caught on almost immediately, forcing herself to slog through the last five feet or so to his side.
"What is it?" he asks, reaching out an arm to steady her before she even properly arrives. "Do you think—have you always had that?"
She shrugs. Avel's eyes linger for only a heartbeat longer before he joins her in watching the ghostly figure that seems to shimmer its way across the water's edge, feet skimming the ground. It appears to be made out of nothing more than mist, as if you could pass a hand through it and shatter the entire image. There is something to the shape of it, almost humanoid…
It turns to face them, reforming and coming back together all in one swift movement.
She knows the face it becomes.
Melody has no idea how she can go from her constant state—filled with burning warmth, hair plastered to her forehead after such a brief expenditure of energy, and suddenly feel so cold. The air itself has frozen, flecks of ice beginning to creep up from her toes. She swallows, forcing a breath so deep her chest shakes.
Avel has yet to react. Or, rather, he has not changed, appearing as puzzled as he did when Melody first approached. He certainly doesn't look alarmed. If Avel doesn't see his father's face, but she does…
It's not real, is it? Nothing more than a figment of her imagination. That, or she's well and truly losing it. An infection has taken hold of her, or the heat is getting to her brain. Something other than Everett being here, now, an apparition gliding across the water.
Mel swallows. "We should pack up and leave."
Not that she has anything to her name but this knife; Avel's pack is nearly empty as well, the bandages he had collected depleted by her wounds and the only food remaining crumbs that lingered at the bottom.
"Do you think you should be moving so much?" he asks. "We don't have to—"
"We do," she insists. "If they're sending mutts this close, or… or whatever that is, we've been sitting still for too long. I can handle it."
He doesn't look quite convinced—frankly, Melody doesn't think she has the words in her vocabulary to do so. All she can do is move and hope she's not lying to herself. Each step will hurt. It's not going to get any better.
Avel catches her around the elbow, pulling to a careful stop. "We can leave," he agrees. "But take your time. We don't need to run. Besides, we've got a long way to go."
She cranes her head back, catching sight off the cliff's edge. It seems unbelievable that she plummeted over it, threw herself into this river, and somehow survived. She doesn't believe she would have if not for him—sooner or later someone else would have arrived to put her out of her misery, or she simply would have slipped away.
It seems she owes him so many favors. Any more and they will begin to add up into an insurmountable amount. The least she can do is get him out of here, before something worse comes for them.
When she turns, the ghost that became Everett is gone.
"D'ya think we could kill one?"
Avel stares upwards, head moving much like a spinning top as he tracks the circling birds drifting lazily throughout the sky. The gleam in his eyes appears almost childlike, filled with a daring amount of hope.
"And how do you plan on doing that?" Melody asks flatly. She has been an easy cure for joy these past few years. "They are flying, you realize."
He sighs. "Yeah."
"You have wings I don't know about?"
"Killjoy," he mutters, but there's enough amusement in his voice that Mel doesn't feel so bad about it. Of course, she will if they both happen to starve to death, but that's a ways off. At least she hopes so.
In Avel's defense, not all of the circling creatures are so high up—every so often a few swoop lower, close enough that if he were to jump he may just graze their mangy feathers. In the not-so-far distance a trio begins to lower themselves to a cluster of sunbaked boulders. One disappears between them, wings flapping frantically as it lowers itself to the ground.
"What about now?" Avel questions.
"If you get your eyes pecked out by a vulture…"
"I won't!"
He takes a long, hard look around their surroundings before he leaves her side, rushing to the boulders with her knife clutched in his hand. Mel has no choice but to amble after him, a quiet gratitude rushing through her at his forethought. Avel has hardly strayed more than three paces from her side, not in their entire ascension up the cliff or in the passing day since. Mel knows that he never would unless he was confident that no one was going to sneak up on them.
Avel's arms begin to wave about wildly as he reaches the boulders, his voice rising in volume—not the exact hunting method she was imagining him starting with, but Mel already knows she won't have the heart to chastise him for it. Her stomach will just have to pipe down for now. It's only as she draws closer that she sees the deep-seated concern in his eyes, forcing herself at a pace that her legs heartily disagree with.
She hears the wet, dull thud of the knife connecting with flesh, but her surprise at his success is short-lived as she rounds the boulders to his side. Avel bends forward, grasping the dead creature by its wings and giving a great heave to tear its talons free, finally exposing the body beneath it for them both to see.
The vulture is cast to the wayside as they observe her—her ashen skin and hollow cheeks, lips cracked and bleeding. Each breath emerges as a quiet wheeze, her chest seeming to rattle with each exhale.
"Hello?" Avel tries, but Melody already knows silence is their answer. Her attention is drawn to the girl's leg, bent so terribly in the wrong direction that bone has forced its way through the center of her shin, the skin surrounding it having been mauled, peeled back in layers.
There is a bloodied strip of flesh caught in the beak of the dead bird; Mel gives it a kick for good measure.
"Should we…?" Avel murmurs. There is dread in his voice, the likes of which she has not heard before. It seems obvious. Whatever this girl faced, she is not coming back from it.
Avel has not moved an inch, and Melody did not expect him to.
She steadies herself before she reaches forward, gently unpeeling his white-knuckled grip from around the hilt of the knife. "Do you know who she is?"
He crouches down by her side, letting Mel clutch at his shoulder as she joins him, kneeling in the dirt. "Seven, I'm pretty sure," he says. "I don't… I don't remember her name. I'm sorry."
There is no scenario in which she tells him this is okay and feels right in saying this. Every bit of it is wrong—they are not meant to be here, nor this girl, strangers both in life and near-death. Avel reaches forward to brush away damp strands of hair that have stuck to her feverish temples, and the girl doesn't so much as flinch. It will be less like dying and more like slipping away.
The rage that had filled her with the Four boy has long since passed. As she presses the knife to the girl from Seven's throat and cuts through flesh, there is only grief. Avel closes his eyes as the cannon booms, and Mel sits back on her haunches, wiping away the blood at the cuff of her pants. For a moment she's in the house again, Everett's corpse on the floor by her feet. Mottled brown feathers tickle at her hands where she places them in the dirt, shaking her out of it, and she once again gives the bird a shove, scowling.
Filthy thing, scavenging on them as if the Capitol isn't bad enough. The remainder of the flock continues to circle above their heads.
It appears they have dinner after all.
They are speaking less.
She is choosing not to take it personally—as much as she wants to. In being a bystander to such death and ruin, Avel's mind is no doubt running a mile a minute, regardless of how much time passes.
Mel wishes her own head could raise such concern. In truth, she has seen so much of it these past few years that it seems only like another day. As they grow closer to the end, she has none of the anxiety the others must be harboring.
She expected to be dead a long time ago.
"Is now a bad time to admit I read your poem?" Avel wonders. His eyes remain between his feet, scuffling away aimlessly at the shale between them.
Her spike of fear is unwarranted, but lodged like a stone in her chest. "Lyrics," she admits quietly, fingers drifting to her pocket as if the sheet has someone disappeared in all the time they've been moving. She feels its frayed edges, the odd crinkling.
"That makes more sense," Avel says. "I mean some of it's hard to read, but I can see that. It's… it's good."
Her skepticism is quickly noted—his enthusiasm ramps up tenfold in his answering nod, as if offering encouragement. "It is, Mel. I'm serious. You should keep up with it."
She has not written a sheet of lyrics since that first day in the detention center; she has not picked up an instrument in even longer. Her favorite violin and its rich spruce whorls lost to the flames that had engulfed their house. The piano in the living room had survived the worst of it, but by the time they had been allowed to pick through the wreckage looters had scavenged its inside, torn off its keys.
In being her biggest supporter, Nio would say the same things. Keep going with it, Mel. You're going to be Panem-famous one day, let me tell ya.
Yet another reason Avel should not be here. Yet another reason she may not be able to save him.
A cannon echoes through the night.
A handful of night-black crows take off from their perch on a nearby spindly tree, the wood made gray by ash. They squawk in alarm and disappear into the sky—Mel watches them until she can no longer spot even a single one.
"There aren't many of us left, are there?" Avel asks.
She tries to ignore the fear in his voice. Mel thought he had been asleep for some time now. "I don't think so."
"Do you think it's tomorrow, then?"
Mel cannot concretely say one way or another whether they may be approaching their demise. "Maybe," she settles on. It's not what either of them wants to hear, but there's no use in lying. The truth is an ugly thing when it's laid bare in front of you. Soon, one of them will be dead. Whether the end is arriving or not, she knows that with certainty.
Avel turns away from her on the ground, wrapping his arms tight around himself. "Night, Mel."
She does not say it back—the lump in her throat is far too great to allow words to escape.
They cut down the Three boy with ease.
Between the two of them it is more like a slaughter. From their hiding place her and Avel watch as Three falls, spilling blood into the dirt. He was frail, begged and pleaded as if that was going to make a difference. Perhaps if it had been anyone but the Two's, he would have had a chance.
Before the boy has even stilled the two Careers have rounded on one another. Avel shoots her a bewildered glance, mouth gaping open and shutting just as quick.
"Do they think they're the only two left?" he whispers.
The girl with her knives, the boy brandishing his hatchet. They move with ease, betraying no signs of strife besides cuts or scrapes. That can only last for so long. This fight will certainly be drawn out—they will tear one another open before they allow the other to succeed.
She grabs at Avel's wrist, unknotting the sling that still holds her together with the other. "Listen to me," she instructs. "The second one of them is dead, we rush the other. They'll be exhausted from the fight."
"But—"
"No." She cuts him off. "I know you don't want to, I get it, but one of us has to get out of here. You—"
You have to get out of here.
Does she mean it?
"Do you think one of us can?" he asks her earnestly. There is childlike terror in his eyes, a deep-seated fear of the unknown. Melody slides her hand down his wrist and into his own, gripping tight at his fingers.
"One of us will," she insists.
It feels like the first time she has not lied to herself in years.
She cannot see again but for the sky.
Or is that her vision?
"Avel?" she asks, but her voice is nothing more than a croak, and Mel's vision doubles when she rolls onto her side. To her left, a bubbling laughter rings out.
There is no answer.
"Aren't you cute," Two says, teeth bloody when she smiles. "So protective of one another."
Her partner's corpse lies mere feet away, but neither of them have paid it any mind. He fell. Mel remembers rushing forward and Two picking up the fallen axe and pain exploding in her head and she was bleeding again, her fucking forehead—
How many times could that gash be reopened before it would never close again?
There is another figure on the ground beyond them, unmoving. "Avel?" she asks again. Dread inches up her spine and nearly paralyzes her.
"Oh, he's good as gone, little killer," Two informs her. "Real fucking shame, huh?"
As she lunges forward her vision warps and blurs—her victim on the ground, for that is what Mel reduces her to, doubles and triples and multiplies until she can no longer tell where the real girl ends and the copies begin. The only thing that remains fixed is the knife in her chest. Avel's knife. The thing rendering her immobile, the thing killing her.
But Mel finishes the job.
She nearly stabs down towards the girl's face, but something draws her arm away. All the while two deep, dark eyes blink up at her, seemingly unafraid and wholly accepting. As if she knew this was her fate all along. Melody plunges her knife into the girl's throat and holds it there, leaning over her with all the force can muster.
Before she dies she lets out one last ugly, gurgling bout of laughter. Blood fountains from her mouth.
Mel is long gone before the last droplets even come to a standstill.
"Avel." This time it is not a question, but a demand—one which he does not answer. She crawls to his side, fingers reaching out feebly for any point of contact. They claw at the bloodied edge of his shirt, following the stain all the way up to a point just below his chest. Though she may not have witnessed it, the act plays out in Mel's mind so that she cannot forget it—the axe descending. How brutally it ripped free.
"Avel—"
"Mel?" His voice is quiet, scarcely a whisper. "Ow."
"Don't move," she snaps. "I'll fix this, just give me a second."
Except there's nothing to do. There's nothing for her to grab. Nothing is going to fall from the sky. She only has the knife that she yanked from the Two girl's throat and her hands tremble dangerously around its hilt. Her options are simple, laid out explicitly.
Avel's hand reaches out for hers, and she nearly keels over in her urgency to grab a hold of it. "Whatever you were about to do," he manages. "Don't."
She swallows. "How do you know what I was about to do?"
Mel has always thought she was wild, unpredictable. That's why Everett is dead and why she ended up at the bottom of that cliff. To be seen feels like walking down that street all over again, the acrid tang of smoke scratching at the back of her throat.
Terrifying.
"Whatever it was. Don't."
"It should be you," she insists. "I don't deserve it."
His head lolls towards her. A smile fights its way onto his face. "Since when was it about who deserves it?"
Never, maybe. But that's what it should have been. This arena should have chewed Mel up and spat her out from the first day. There is no acceptable universe in which she walks out of here while he dies. Is that not the point, though? This is the world she lives in, one where her parents are taken from her, her brother, where she is so consumed by revenge that she throws away what little she has left. The universe is not just. Serena has been trying to tell her that for a very long time.
"It's not about that," he continues. "It's about… it's about who wants it."
"Don't you want it?"
He shrugs. Pain flashes across his face, and she reaches forward to still him. "I guess so. But I'm okay with it being you, too. Your sister shouldn't be alone in the world. You go home. You set up your fancy new house and start writing songs again and you make sure the future is as good as they say it's going to be. Okay?"
"Okay," she agrees. Even that single word feels like it was forced from her throat. It's a pretty picture, one not anyone could paint. But it's almost believable.
For his sake, she wants it to be real.
"What should I do?" she wonders. "How do I… how do I make this better?"
He pulls his fingers from hers. Mel cannot remember the last time she felt so cold. He simply pats the space beside them, the bloodied dirt. "You lay down right here. I want you to read me those lyrics again. Fill in… fill in those blanks that I didn't know. So I can remember."
She does, obediently. The dirt is as unforgiving as she remembers, but the pain is fleeting. She knows only the warmth of his shoulder pressed to hers, the comfortable pressure of it. "And what about after?"
Her voice wobbles. She knows tears are coming, and even staring up into the sky cannot stop them. They burn against her cheeks, and for the first time she longs for the winter.
"We'll figure it out," he decides quietly.
So she reads. The first time over, and then slower the second time, just to make sure he truly remembers. Before the second time is over Avel closes his eyes, and Mel knows that is the last time she'll see them. When she finishes she folds the tattered sheet of lyrics into the palm that she still grasps onto, ignoring the stiffness to his fingers.
Melody cannot force herself to move. It's all she can do to breathe, to ensure her heart continues pumping blood through her veins. Everything else feels too strenuous. She almost wishes she could close her eyes and go to sleep—what a kindness that would be, for a girl who sleeps so little these days, shadows beneath her eyes to prove it. Because in her dreams, the two of them lie there for a very long time, and eventually the Capitol decides to bring them both out. It is the perfect ending. It isn't one Melody deserves.
In reality, Avel is dead.
They take the scars from her arms.
It is the first thing she notices upon waking—the unblemished, smooth skin that runs from her right elbow to the tips of her fingers, restored at long last.
She is sobbing before she recognizes making the decision to do so. Distantly she is aware of Sarain removing herself from the room, back-tracking awkwardly until the door clicks shut behind her.
Melody does not hurt. Her body is free and clean and she is as she existed before her family's death, untainted by the fire that took them from her.
It's everything else that aches.
She does not recognize the door re-opening, but the gentle pressure of someone's hand settling on her knee is unmistakable. She jerks, arms coming up to shield herself, but there is no threat. Nowhere to go, either. For the first time in years she is safe and she has never felt further from it.
His smile is not false, though, nor placating. It is the smile of someone who understands. A reluctant one. Saddened, even.
"You'll be okay," Aidan says. "I promise."
Khione helps her write a check long before she's off the train.
She writes the name Anore Targray on the envelope with a shaking hand, just in case her fear forces her to drop it in the letterbox rather than handing it over directly. She already knows it will take her days to do so much as stand on the doorstep and simply wait. If not months.
No matter how much time passes, Mel is convinced she'll never be able to look the woman in the eye.
But she has to try. She has to see it through, to do some good. She has to do what Avel would have done, and Avel would have made sure Serena was well-looked after.
She cannot give up so easily.
Serena runs her hand along the mantle's edge, and the silence extends.
It is the perfect place to prop up family photos. If any of them had survived the wreckage of their family home, Mel would have already placed them there.
All they have are their memories, and she can't help but wonder when those will be gone, too.
"Well, it's nice," Serena says, at long last. "Nicer than I even expected."
"Better than the apartment?"
"Hey, I worked hard for that shithole," Serena remarks. "Two jobs, night shifts, the whole nine yards. I don't even remember the last time I had a spare moment to sit down and write."
It's the first time Serena has sounded like… well, Serena, in so long. How much of that is her own fault? Of course Serena didn't sound the same when she was visiting Melody through a flimsy plastic partition. She was upset. Disappointed. Trying to weigh the pros and cons of keeping up with her criminal sister if she was ever going to have a life worth living.
"Well, you'll have time now," Mel says quietly. She feels small, like she ought to cower under her sister's gaze. Serena has never been intimidating—she was Mel's protector, always watching over her.
It would be so easy for Serena to walk out that door and never come back; Mel could not even blame her.
"Listen, I—I know I've apologized before—"
"Every time I came to visit," Serena reminds her.
"Because I mean it," Mel stresses. "You were right. Of course you were right, okay? I should have stopped searching for him. I should have just gave it up, let it go, whatever I needed to do in order to stop thinking about it. But I couldn't, and I can't take it back now—"
"Mel."
"Please just—"
"Mel," Serena says firmly. "I forgive you."
She practically trips over herself, desperation in her reaching hands as she throws herself at her sister—Serena's arms meet her halfway, enclosing her. "I wasn't done," Serena emphasizes, chin hooking over Melody's shoulder. "They set you up with someone, right? I want you to talk with them at least once a week. And you'll talk to me, too, whenever you need, about anything. I don't want you to get lost again."
"I can do that," she relents. This isn't about just her anymore. Frankly, it never was, but Mel was lost. Seeing anything but her own desires was impossible for a time. "Will you stay?"
Serena thwacks her gently on the arm. "I kept visiting because I couldn't stand the thought of you being alone. You think I'd leave now?"
"I wouldn't blame you."
"From what I remember, I think he wanted us to stick together. I think we have some sort of responsibility to fulfill that."
Avel did want that. No doubt he wanted a lot of things that he will never get, now, but if Mel can fulfill at least that… well, she has to try. Her and Serena both. Of course you have to try, a voice supplies. What other choice do you have?
It's not Everett's voice. Not even Avel's, which she halfway expects. It almost sounds like her own, which she had thought lost after so long.
She can speak again. In her dreams one day she can sing, too.
Cruel as the world may be, perhaps there is still good in reality after all.
END.
Call that a classic twistedservice sibling ending moment. /j
I did not make a blog for this because uh, laziness? But dear Mel is in fact now a member of my victor's blog and will be making an eventual appearance in the next SYOT installment in the Monarchia Verse. Thank you to Art again for trusting one of us with your child and for the horrible ideas that spawned as a by-product of her adoption. She's mine now, thanks.
For those unaware, this was written for the 2024 Victor Exchange on the SYOT Verses Discord. This is the fourth iteration in which any who wish to participate submit a tribute and are then randomly assigned another author's tribute to write—a tribute who must win under any circumstances. It's a great deal of fun (among other things), so I guess we'll see you next August with another round.
Until next time.