Blue, Sugar is on that good kush and alcohol. (prematurely) wrote in colosseum, @ 2014-05-05 10:25:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! wrap up, - districts, victor: 20th sugar blue, victor: 32nd camilla infair |
WHO: Camilla Infair [D1] and Sugar Blue [D1].
WHAT: The years before the end.
WHEN: -59th, ~60th, ~65th, post 75th.
WHERE: D1.
STATUS: Complete.
WARNINGS: Violence, implied sexual coercion [the capitol sucks], all of the sads.
When she finally decides to act, it is on just another countless, lonely night in One. His place, this time—damp dishes in the kitchen and her back against the arm of the couch. She is sprawled across it comfortably, her legs a folded peak over his lap such that her knees make a neat table; one of Sugar’s hands rests there, their casual grace as easy as it ever has been, together and apart. She says it simple at first, when she finally summons the courage. “I love you.” It is not a declaration she hasn’t made before, in weary gratitude or heavy sadness, and when she says it this time, it doesn’t really sound any different than it has for twenty, thirty years. Camilla is his best friend. This is not news. But she continues looking at him, steadily, her pale face a perfect theatre mask revealing nothing and everything, because she doesn’t follow it up, doesn’t do anything except watch him silently for a reaction, though uncertainty nestles in her middle. He has heard it before and she is his best friend. and with his parents buried, his sisters are the only people who come before his fellow victors. He doesn’t bother to look up from his magazine, flipping idly to the next page instead (thoroughly disappointed that the Capitol no longer prints articles on him). A squeeze of her ankle with his left hand and a distracted smile, and he speaks with no hesitation. “I love you, too.” “Sugar,” she answers, a little too insistent, though when he does finally glance up, all that is waiting on her features is patience. Maybe a hint of that pernicious uncertainty. There is something in her tone that catches, that pointedly tells him there is more to this than just those three words; she cannot even begin to voice it, but she tries, at least, an effort to be straightforward that is more difficult for her than any alliance talk or Capitol negotiation. When all that comes out is a struggling, “I mean…” she undoubtedly falls short of her mark. He sets the magazine on her knees, just staring for a moment. He’s heard those words countless times, from all sorts of men and women and with varying degrees of seriousness, but rarely have they moved him. “What do you mean?” he queries quite sincerely, but he has to already know at that point, if he bothered to think of anyone but himself. Her brows furrow, pull together, and for a long moment she’s not even sure what she means. It’s a collection of nagging feelings in the back of her mind that have coalesced into a single question, tied by fragile string to a handful of moments all peppered throughout thirty years. Each of them a quiet portal to something that might have been, something they might have breached. She straightens up, her heels pressing against the side of his leg, but she doesn’t switch positions, just looks at him sort of hard, like she’s trying to decide whether to say something. How to say something. Camilla finally settles on an equally ambiguous but heavily managed, “Do you want to stay with me?” that explains nothing but puts, at least, the barest sentiment into words. Her gaze is steady, but her eyes uncertain. It’s not the last question in the world he expects to hear from her mouth, and it’s seemingly a lingering one--something between them ignored for years and probably for good reason. All pretense is out the window around Camilla, so the things he would do for Capitolites are nowhere in sight and the smile he gives is more youthful and honest than it’s ever been. He moves closer, fingers at her cheek. More meaning clings to it than the words actually have, and when her Sugar’s answer is to move toward her, a breath that she doesn’t realize she’s been holding escapes her, a soft noise that connotes solid understanding. A moment later, she turns into the touch of his hand against the side of her face, and presses a single, simple kiss to the center of his palm. Good, it seems to say. Me too. ▾ The years fall away alongside what little distance there was left between them. Everything is uncertain, at first—new and strange and unexpectedly right, but they settle into one another’s hollow places with a fullness neither of them has ever quite known. They discover teasing romance alongside familiar charm. One night sees them slow dancing as he croons softly into her ear. Others see her asleep on his chest. Few see them separate. His house in the Village is still his, in all technicality, but they abandon it, and gently correct the concept of ‘her’ house into ‘their’ house. It’s questionable how much has actually changed: the readiness with which they depend on one another is indecipherable from before, but there is a new warmth present, much of the time. A new freedom, as well, complete surrender of anything hidden from one another; but that isn’t always as glowing. “You can’t possibly believe this, Sugar,” and she is racked with sheer disbelief, staring at him frustratedly from across the distance of their kitchen table. “They can fix anything! They control everything!” Her hand is pressed flat against the wooden surface, but her eyes are angry. “They didn’t save her because they didn’t want to.” “So give me one good reason why they wouldn’t want to?” Sugar says with an easy smile, palms illustrating his doubt. “We’re not talking about some accident from District 12--we’re talking about Calixte. People have her face carved out on their stomachs. They had no cause to harm her.” More than anything, it’s the smile that nettles her: she has never looked to take the part of the woman shouting at him, is unbelievably irritated that she is reliving a fight that she once disrupted, but she can’t help it. She is quivering with anger. “Give me one good reason why they killed Shimmer,” she challenges him in return: her voice doesn’t even quake on the name. “No. That’s different,” Sugar shakes his head, sounding more fervent now. “Calixte was a victor. She made it out. Fair and square. She didn’t owe them anything anymore, Camilla; she’d already paid for it.” “We keep paying forever, Sugar,” and her voice is a cry of indignation, of pain, of fury. She is all ire now, all sharp edges and rough voice with a keening undertone of something needier. “You know they didn’t leave me alone after I made it out.” Accusation surfaces anew when she speaks again. “They didn’t even leave you alone. You just--” and she struggles for words, “you just ignore it, you pretend it isn’t real!” “Look. They didn’t kill Calixte, okay?” It’s hard to miss the impatience in his voice, but the firmness he speaks with doesn’t fully conceal the pain it causes him to even discuss the possibility. He begins to question his own pronouncements--he doesn’t want her to be right. “It’s not about being left alone--they give us a new purpose.” Her voice is harsh, uncensored. “And what purpose is that?” The roughness in it speaks to something else they never talk about—there is pain and fury buried deep in the woman who stares him down, and she doesn’t stop to think about why he’s in denial, doesn’t stop to think about much of anything before she tells him, “We’re their playthings. The Capitol can do whatever they want to us, and we can’t do anything about it, but we at least don’t have to believe them.” She is as confused as she is in disbelief when she finally asks, “Why do you believe them?” “Why can’t you?” he retorts, but looks down at the table and swallows hard, resistant to the horrible reality even though proof stands right in front of him. “Because,” and her voice is absolutely desperate, as though she can’t understand how he can possibly be asking her this. “After everything they’ve done?” And her voice cracks on the last word and she knows she is going too far, knows she needs to stop talking, but she can’t, and she is on the verge of breaking when she says, “They killed her. Or at the very least, they didn’t save her, and you know it, and not saying it doesn’t make it untrue.” “They’ve done a lot for us, Camilla,” although his voice lowers, fervor depleted, and his head hangs a little. It’s a bit of a copout, but he can’t deny his love for the gifts sycophancy yields. He doesn’t want to believe her, to think that the Capitol could take everything away from them if they wanted to--because if they could, what was the point of it all? She lets out a helpless breath, all in a huff, and she bows her own head, though a moment later she shakes it from side to side. “You tell yourself that if you have to,” she finally says, withdrawing her hand from the surface that lies between them, a strange kind of surrender. There is disgust lingering in her features, and while most of it is for the Capitol, some too is for the denial he has to shroud himself in to survive. ▾ Camilla is certain by the end of the second day of the 75th Hunger Games that she has cried out all the tears she can possibly produce: Cashmere and Gloss, golden brother and sister, two of their crowning jewels, gone in an instant. She remembers vividly fearing for each of them in their respective games, holding her breath for every engagement, but they proved themselves. They came home to her and to One. When they go down on a sandy beach, blood spilling into the thirsty sand, she buries herself in Sugar’s arms as though they will shield her from the pain and the loss. Mere weeks later, she finds herself staring at nothing when he walks into the room, and as soon as he opens his arms for her, she walks forward to be hidden away there again, lost in confusion and grief still. Sugar tries to look at the bright side of it all--certainly, they’ve lost Cashmere and Gloss, but the rest of them are still breathing--and to Sugar, that’s all that matters now. Cashmere and Gloss were just another sacrifice, weren’t they? And they’ll gain another two in a couple years, when it’s their time again. Achilles, Pecan, Vellum, and Gemma will experience what victory feels like again, and again, and even after Sugar passes, the cycle will continue. “I’m sure they didn’t---” he tries it, but thinks better of reassuring her the Capitol didn’t mean to kill their victors a few moments too late. “I’m sorry.” Neither the words nor the following apology strike her the way they maybe should: the stages of grief have long since become tangles for her that weave in and out of every emotion she feels, and this time is no exception. It comes on the tail of awareness that some have escaped the clutches of the Capitol, however briefly. She’s almost numb with the lack of knowledge. “None of us were getting out of there,” she finally manages, soft as a whisper but flat somehow. It’s not an accusation, not even a deliberate slight against the Capitol he loves so much, but a truth that she acknowledges. “If they couldn’t do it, we had no chance.” Camilla finishes it with a defeated little sigh, rubs her cheek against his shoulder; she is stuck between thoughts of what is lost and what is yet to come when the first harsh bang sounds at the front door. She barely has time to flinch before a second follows it in quick succession, the smash of shoulder against wood with mechanical rigidity, and the look she casts that direction is full of alarm. His hands fall gently from Camilla’s sides and he, too, turns towards the noise. He lets her go, taking a few firm steps away from her. It’s a peacekeeper who splinters the door, shoving his way inside, flanked by another two. Sugar’s mouth is agape, and he tries to string together the proper words for the intrusion. This is their home, they are victors from District One, not some outlier riff-raff. But as soon as his hand raises in protest, a single shot is fired, straight to the forehead. It’s precise enough that he doesn’t feel pain, but too quick to allow much reflection: all he wanted was to tell Camilla how right she was about everything, to say goodbye to his fellow victors and surviving family. His head hits a table, and he’s dead. He collapses with such incomprehensible finality that Camilla sees nothing for a full second. The world whites out alongside the sound of a shot and the moment when her Sugar jerks backward with the force. She hears nothing as he smashes into the surroundings of their home, as he hits the ground, a broken marionette, every sound blocked from her ears. Her lips part and a strangled sound that she doesn't control looses, something of gut-wrenching depth and pain and keen anguish. Blood has barely begun to pour out onto the carpet of their living room when it all comes rushing back in. There isn't time to react, only one split second for agony to pierce her before the intruders find their next target through the space of the hall, still standing with mouth ajar. Every instinct that has kept her alive this long kicks into overdrive. It is fight or flight. A split second later, she is running for the stairs and they are behind her, she can hear the shouts and the pounding feet. Everything hurts, she isn't meant for this anymore, but adrenaline and building fire and sheer fear for her life keep her racing desperately to her bedroom, and when the first man behind her gets hold of her shoulder, she attacks. She backhands him with such force, such endless, encompassing fury, sixty years worth of it, that his head snaps to the side: she is thrice his age and she still remembers what it is to murder, what it is to crack a man's skull and see his blood on her hands, and she holds nothing back. The first Peacekeeper goes down at her hands, and she has him under the jaw: Camilla Infair kills her sixth with bare hands and a twisted neck and a heart full of rage, but the time it takes to dispatch him, to leave him discarded and dead on the floor, sees the butt of a different gun smashing into her temple and, dizzily, another gloved hand in a fistful of her hair. The thirty-second victor is weeping by the time she's dragged downstairs again, to the same space she'd run from, and she barely hears the disgusted voice from the doorway when it gives the order. She doesn't look up to see the barrel of a gun. She just sobs at him and his ruined form and the stain of claret through blurred eyes, and death, when it comes for her a moment later, is a final fucking relief. |