Terra Cruze (terraza) wrote in colosseum, @ 2014-05-05 03:22:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! 57th games, &placeholder, victor: 38th terraza cruze, victor: 49th miles rhodes |
WHO: Miles Rhodes & Terra Cruze [D6]
WHEN: [Backdated] Some hours after Shift died
WHERE: A dank seedy basement in the house a man known for his illicit drug and booze parties.
WHAT:
STATUS: Incomplete
The stained and torn suede couch was embedded into the corner of the cellar. Garbage and powder and pills littered the floor and table. A leaky hole in the ceiling dripped a musty smelling brown water onto the table below it. Miles was sprawled out on his back, staring up at the pipes from where they poked through the otherwise concrete wall and wound around near the crack. In the dim dirty light his pallor was even whiter than normal and his bloodshot eyes were crusty in the corners. His head pounded and his stomach rumbled. He licked his dry lips but barely wet them. The smell of sick rose from his chin and shirt but his attempt to wipe it away was futile. His elbow knocked an empty liquor bottle to the floor. Shift’s body must be in the Capitol now, but Miles was confined here. His body felt like lead, weighing every inch of him down to the matted couch. Take me, too he pleaded with whatever unseen force could read his thoughts. And his eyes drooped, letting him fall into another abyss of darkness. But it wasn’t death. And when his eyes opened again he was still staring up at the same rusted pipe, hoping for the worst. And Terra was next to him. Miles may have disappeared completely to everyone else in the Training Center, but even after all the places Angelina and Shay and Florian and Halle might have looked found nothing, Terra still had more places to try. She'd brought him there the first time, just another bullet point on the list of things that she couldn't forgive herself for and kept her up at night. Years before that Parker had brought her, and when she first took Miles she'd felt a sense of accomplishment, like she was doing something good, like she was closer to Parker. Even now she wouldn't admit to those early years of trying to turn Miles into Parker in her mind, to use him to fill up the void she felt, but she could sometimes admit the mistakes she made with him. The house wasn't anywhere she ever wanted to be again, though. How Terra made it the whole way and knocked on the door and faced the Capitolite she once knew too well to ask for Miles, how she made it down the stairs while every piece of her screamed for something she no longer wanted, she couldn't know. But she was there, beside Miles and trying to focus on him, on the pain in her chest, even as her hands shook and she knew the answer to it all was just steps away. Three times she'd walked back to the stairs, and three times she managed to sit back down beside Miles until he finally woke up. She didn't say anything, she didn't need to, but her hand went out and stroked his curls, brushed the perspiration off his forehead. She leaned in; their eyes met. That was her greeting. Miles couldn’t bother to be startled when Terra’s eyes met his. Nor did he smile. In fact, he seemed nearly impassive about the whole thing until he rolled onto his side, letting his face smash into the dirty back cushion of the couch, squeezing his eyes tight shut to block out everything. Even the smell of bodily fluids and trash didn’t bother him much. It was a struggle to gather his thoughts, to try to reign in his feelings, but in the end he just felt a familiar burning sensation in his eyes. Only there weren’t any tears left, so they just felt raw and burned out. After a moment, he finally fell flat on his back again, this time focusing his gaze on Terra, rather than the pipe in the ceiling. “You found me,” he croaked, throat dry and harsh. Sour bile lined the inside of his mouth and his tongue and cheeks were covered in indescribable filth but he swallowed hard and licked his lips again. "Duh," she whispered, a noise resembling a laugh coming out of her mouth but it was grotesque. There was nothing jovial or amusing about that moment, but it was completely like Terra to laugh at the most inopportune of times; it was what kept her sane. It was what kept down the feeling in the pit of her stomach, the feeling that was more than simply an emotion but a beacon. It was looking at Miles that finally made Terra cry, hot tears burning her cheeks. She placed one of her shaky hands on his neck, the cold in her fingers apparent as they rested against his neck. Her nose curled slightly at the smell of him, but it didn't make her back away any. She'd never like it, but it wasn't unfamiliar. "I'm always here." Miles offered her a faint would-be smile though it didn’t quite turn the corners of his mouth upward. There was a grateful wave that passed over his eyes though, glassy and red as they were. With a shaky hand, he reached out to wipe away a few of the drops on her face even though he would have been crying too if he had anything left to shed. For a long time he didn’t say anything more, just letting her silently grieve with him. There were so many words tangled in his mind but none at all seemed capable of escaping his tongue. He’d never been good at hiding his feelings, but neither had he been good at expressing them. Miles’ family life had been complicated since he the day he was Reaped and though he’d always known that Terra was the only person to really understand him after he became a Victor, it was in this moment, with her there at his side, that cemented it. Shift was dead, but Terra was there. Somehow, that took the edge off. “I wasn’t a good brother,” he said after awhile. “They took that from me.” The hint of anger was a lot more subtle than when he’d thrown a punch earlier in the year, but it was there all the same, quiet and fierce, seeking an enemy. "You were— Don't say— You can't—" but her words didn't make sense, and Terra wasn't sure how to make her insides fit back together in all the right places again; somehow over the last few hours they'd been knocked loose and she couldn't quite figure out why no one was staring at the gaping hole in her stomach. They never had, no matter how big the black hole inside her got. It was only ever hers, as it only ever could be. They took so much from them, Terra didn't dare voice, and then she and Miles both continued to take more. "You love him," she said, as if it were going to help at all. INCOMPLETE |