a sense of wonder (only slightly used)

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 16:21:25 GMT

new lj layout! electrumqueen
well, it's not technically new (i think it was uploaded in 08?) but the stylesheet on the one i'd been faithfully using died and i was like, eh, let's dig through mems for layouts. i definitely remember bookmarking more than one, but.

in other news: i'm done with the semester! i wrote two essays yesterday, neither of which was stunningly brill but definitely better than some of the crap i handed in second year and now i'm sitting in an airport about to fly to prague. (well, montreal then zurich then prague, but.) i'm hungry and the heels on my shoes need to be patched and there is a small child who likes to climb on people (he's adorable, idmind) and i'm trying to work out how to tell several people i don't think i want to live with them next year. UGH being an adult is SO hard.

i'm cutting myself slack for now though given that i've had maybe eight hours of sleep out of the past 48. the second essay i wrote was kind of a dream: i panic woke up at 4am on monday, typed half of it madly till 6, then fell back asleep. when i looked back over it i was pleasantly surprised, lol. i'm hoping none of my snarky notes to self remained in the paper because if they did i'll look SO unprofessional (though i look unprofessional anyway because i AM.) argh.

hmmmm. idk what to do on family trips ever. i'm so bad at randomly talking to people / weeding out tourists. i did back nice clothes and i think i look friendly enough so hopefully people will want to talk to me! crossing my fingers AND toes.

look up it's christmas

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 18:27:15 GMT

GUYS LET'S DO THISSSSSS.

WRITE ME ALL THE FIC ALL OF IT.

hmm

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 00:25:14 GMT

21 most recent first lines!

1. Gabe wasn't surprised when they called his name.

2. "I'm Kitty," she says.

3. There's a rule.

4. Naevia is One, that’s the thing.

5. “This is our champion?" Duro mutters, shuffling from foot to foot.

6. This is something Victors say:

7. They call him Bringer of Rain, because his arena was a desert.

8. They get out.

9. It's not like you've ever stayed in one place for long.

10. Gale Hawthorne is seventeen years old, on fire.

11. William is fourteen.

12. William has just turned fourteen; next year is his year. [My timelines are still all fucked up re: Billiam in the Hunger Games verse. I have a piece of paper w everything plotted out but I gotta dig it out from somewhere.]

13. "Go," murmur the spirits.

14. The angel is moulting.

15. Hades said, "Once upon a time there was a war."

16. "I got into grad school," Chloe says.

17. The Great Library of Alexandria is beautiful, cool and airy in the summer with the wind rushing through all the pillars, ruffling the hems of all the robes of the passers’-by.

18. Annie is sitting next to Johanna’s bedside.

19. "You won, Frankie," Gerard says.

20. Mal's voice is bright down the line.

21. William is twenty years old and in a band with a stupid name and Pete Wentz (Pete Wentz!) is friends with Patrick Stump, is friends with William, likes William's band.

"that is not my name."

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 21:45:42 GMT

i delayed the spartacus finale as long as possible but now i have green tea ice cream and procrastination and also tears.

i was holding it together until the battle started and then like, i don't know, as soon as all the romans fell into the ditch i was gone and i'm sobbing. like AND NOW THERE IS THE JUMPING KILL THEM ALL CALLBACKS ARE THE BEST/WORST MY HEART WHAT IS IT I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO EMOTIONAL IN A BATTLE SCENE BEFORE JFC

like i read the av club review first because that's what i do, i'm skittish about gore so i protect myself, but like. ryan was so right i am at the point where i am just like YOU GUYS CAN MAKE IT IT CAN ALL BE OKAY YOU'RE THE BEST

ZERO FOR CRASSUS. YOU ARE THE MOTHERFUCKING WORST CRASSUS.

EVERYTHING FOR LUGO. LUGO IS THE MOTHERFUCKING GREATEST.

LOL @ CAESAR. developing a set of feelings now will do you zero good. go away. (/ i really really wanted him and kore to be bffs.

(my ice cream is melty around the edges and fucking amazing. mmm, green tea ice cream.)

lol castus. i never really cared much about him. sometimes i think i am doing this show wrong because i really don't care much for the supporting characters - they are all well-rounded, generally, but like. .. no intense depths of feeling. (like ffs, spartacus is my fave. nobody on the internets seems to like spartacus the most.)

ALL THE JUMPING. MMM, JUMPING.

DIE IN A FUCKING FIRE, CRASSUS.

AW, ALL THE BATTLEFIELD BRAVADO DIALOGUE IS SO PERFECT.

GANNICUSSSSS I FORGIVE YOU EVERYTHING BECAUSE OF YOUR PENDING DEATH. SAXA LOOKS BEEEEEAUTIFUL.

LOL GANNICUS/CAESAR. I COULD SHIP IT.

MOTHERFUCKING SPARTACUS HELLO LET'S BE MARRIED YOU ARE SO BEAUTIFUL AND VIOLENT J'ADORE.

OMG I AM SO HERE FOR THE CONTRASTING OVERWHELMEDNESS OF GANNICUS/SPARTACUS I MEAN IN A WAY WHERE I AM CRYING THE UGLIEST OF MOTHERFUCKING TEARS OH MY GOD SAXA

FUCK SPARTACUS YOU ARE THE BEST OF ALL MEN.

SAXA!!!!!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

OH MY GOD GANNICUS AND SAXA WHY DID YOU BREAK HER HEART BUDDY OH GOD I SHIP THEM SO HARD STILL EVEN THOUGH HE DID HER ALL THE WRONGS OH MY GOD ;___;

WHAT A LOVELY DEATH SCENE I MEAN.

I LOVE THAT DESPITE EVERYTHING THE GLADIATORS STILL WEAR NO ARMOUR. FUCK YEAH GLADIATORS.

NAAAAEVIA

WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME SHOW

FUCK OFF AND DIE CAESAR

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

GANNICUS WATCHING EVERYONE DIE FUCKING KILLS ME

(fic about gannicus and naevia reevaluating their post-ludus relationship plzkthx)

NAEVIA LOOKING TO THE SKY JFC

FUCK GANNICUS I JUST

I WANTED YOU TO MAKE IT OUT SO BAD

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

THIS IS THE WORST THING EVER

I ACTUALLY HAVE TO PAUSE AND SWALLOW AND EAT ICE CREAM WOW THIS IS THE MOST UPSETTING THING, SHOW WHY

WHYYYYYYY

okay back. let's do this. CAPSLOCK RIGHT BACK ON.

IF THEY SHOW GANNICUS GETTING CRUCIFIED I WILL BE UGLY SOBBING ALL OVER MY KEYBOARD I'M JUST WARNING YOU NOW.

MOTHERFUCKER THIS IS UPSETITNG

CAESAR GET. OUT.

(DUSTIN CLARE IS SO BEAUTIFUL OMG.)

C'MON SPARTACUS I BELIEVE IN YOU

FUCKING KILL HIM

HISTORY YOUR SPOILERS ARE THE. WORST.

OMG FLASHBACKS. WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TOME.

AHHHHH. I'M SOBBING. THIS IS LEGIT SO PAINFUL

FFF MUCH LIKE GRABBING THAT SWORD MUST HAVE BEEN

SPARTACUS YOU ARE LIKE. AMAZING.

OH FUCK HE'S GONNA GET STABBED IN THE BACK

SON OF A FUCKING

OH MY GOD

WELL

SHIT SON

CRASSUS WHAT

OMG THIS IS THE MOST UPSETTING VIEW EVER SPARTACUS ;____;

THAT IS A LOT OF SPEARS IN YOU BUDDY

"WOULD THAT YOU HAD BEEN BORN A ROMAN" GET OUT, CRASSUS, HE WOULD NEVER

"BLESS THE FATE THAT IT WAS NOT SO" OMG SPARTACUS I DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW YOU'RE SO THE BEST

OMG SURA'S CLOTH

FUCK YEAH TEAM AGRON

SAVE HIIIM ;___;

SOMEBODY GO AFTER MOTHERFUCKING CRASSUS

(BUT I MEAN IT IS NICE THAT HE HAS TURNED AWAY FROM VENGEANCE TO BE AT SPARTACUS' SIDE)

NOOO THIS IS SO UPSETTING AW WARRIROS

GET OUT CRASSUS I HATE YOU

ALSO YOU CAESAR

FUCKING ROMANS

(like i'm sorry, i really want reincarnation!fic where spartacus is a modern revolutionary/ all the revolutionaries?)

NO OH GOD THE APPIAN WAY I CAN'T

I'M SO FUCKING UNPREPARED FOR THIS LIKE SO. NOT. READY.

I'M GOING TO MUTE IT BECAUSE LIKE. GANNICUS.

WOW THIS IS UNPLEASANT EVEN MUTED OMG BB

CRUCIFIXION IS THE WORST AND I'M SO, SO SORRY AND I HOPE SOME RANDO COMES AND STABS YOU AND SAVES YOU

"IGNOBLE END" FUCK OFF CAESAR I SEE YOUR HARDON FOR HIM

OMG KORE

KORE REALLY

CRASSUS YOU'RE THE FUCKING WORST

JENNA LIND HAS THE BEST CRYFACE I HAVE EVER SEEN

OH REALLY CRASSUS YOU CAN SAVE SPARTACUS BUT NOT FUCKING KORE, REALLY. WHAT A SMUG POLITICIAN DBAG.

"FEARSOME TRIUMVIRATE" GET OUT. GET OUT I HATE YOU.

(srsly i would kill for au where caesar saves kore and gannicus.)

OMG OENOMAUS

OH BB.

YOU ARE SO FUCKED IN THE HEAD BUT I'M GLAD YOU'RE HAPPY AS YOU DIE AND I REALLY HOPE THIS MEANS YOU JUST LIKE GIVE UP AND STOP BREATHING BC QUICK DEATHS ARE THE MOST ACCEPTABLE TO ME.

OH SPARTACUS. "ALL SAFE?" I JUST WANTED YOU TO BE OKAY BUT I MEAN I ALSO WANTED MIRA TO BE OKAY SO WHATEVS. (I'M ALSO MAD UPSET THAT ALL HIS PEOPLE AREN'T SAFE BUT.)

NO OMG SPARTACUS DON'T DO THIS TO ME DON'T DIE

PLEASE DON'T

HISTORY IS THE W O R S T

"THAT IS NOT MY NAME. I SHALL FINALLY HEAR IT AGAIN." OH GOD SURA/SPARTACUS FOR EVER.

I AM LEGIT MAKING THE SAME FACE AS AGRON.

"DO NOT SHED TEAR" ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING SPARTACUS.

BEST LAST WORDS THOUGH, OMG.

"YOU SHALL ALWAYS BE REMEMBERED IN THE HEARTS OF ALL WHO YEARN FOR FREEDOM" SERIOUSLY SOMEONE GIVE ME REINCARNATION FIC I WANT IT SO BADLY. SPARTACUS AS THE SPIRIT OF REVOLUTIONS, C'MON.

AW NAGRON ARE SO CUTE. AW BABIES.

OMG THAT FUCKING RED SERPENT.

UGH THIS SHOW. THIS SHOW.

I'M SORRY I CAN'T EVEN. THIS IS THE MOST UPSETTING SHOW IN THE HISTORY OF HUMANITY. WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO WITH THESE STILLS LIKE FOR REAL. GANNICUS/MELITTA/OENOMAUS GUYS WHY DIDN'T YOU THREESOME OMG THE LUDUS STAFF OMG THE ROMANS I DON'T EVEN

OMG SURA/MIRA/LAETA GET OUT GET OUT

REBELS <333 (none for sybil sry)

THIS IS SUCH A LOVELY THING TO DO

VARROOOOOOOOOOOOO

THE GLADIATORS!!!!

ANDY WHITFIELD.

HOW FUCKING GREAT.

i'm really upset this show is over, but basically that was amazing and they deserved all the seasons

and now i deserve all the fic where history was wrong, okay. also all the reincarnation fic because that shit is my catnip.

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 02:07:46 GMT

just TANKED my canpol final bye 4.0 it was nice knowing you ;___; and my ta was like, super disappointed in my lack of paper and he was like, "sunday?" and i was like "... i'll try" and i guess now i will! ugh.

aaand i got out, texted the girl i was planning to live with this year and she responded with "i haven't studied for my exam on monday and i just made my sister cry. i win." #inappropriateresponsestootherpeoplessadness

ugh i just want to curl up in a little ball and cry and maybe drink. but i can't. because i have to write this essay.

i will never, ever, go to grad school. undergrad is driving me nuts. i am, however, super excited to do nothing all summer. NOTHING AT ALL except baaands. except i have to find someone who is going to may fall out boy so i won't be alone AND i have to figure out what i'll do when i turn 21 and it will be depressing because my life is depressing.

fic: every heart is a package tangled up in knots someone else tied // bartimaeus // ptolemy

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 01:18:39 GMT

coffeeshop!au fic, because i roll like that. copperiisulfate is an enabler and i love her.

every heart is a package tangled up in knots someone else tied
ptolemy (kitty, bartimaeus, nathaniel.)
g.

Ptolemy comes back to the shop. Everything's different, but one thing's the same.

*

"I'm Kitty," she says. Her hair's back in a messy ponytail, strands violating the health code to frame her face, dark eyes huge against pale skin. "You're Bartimaeus' friend, right?"

"Ptolemy," he confirms, offers his hand for her to shake. Their skin contrasts: light on dark. "Nice to meet you."

"You too," she says. Her grip's firm, careful. "Can I get you a drink? On the house, just don't tell Nathaniel. He takes being manager far too seriously."

Ptolemy laughs. "I know the feeling," he says. "Corporate was a bitch when I worked here. Just a black coffee's fine with me."

*

Bartimaeus is prickly and wry and cautious around Ptolemy and Ptolemy knows it's his fault, knows he shouldn't have said, you know I have to do this, so much it's not you it's me when it was really neither of them, it was I need to save you. It really fucking hurts when Ptolemy goes to touch Bartimaeus' hand, to lean on his shoulder, and watches him flinch; it hurts when he thinks, automatically, I want to kiss you and cannot.

Once he says "You're pale these days," and Bartimaeus shrugs. "You're not around to protect me anymore." It's a punch to the gut; air gasps out of Ptolemy and he tries not to blink.

Nathaniel, Ptolemy's replacement in the coffee shop, is suspicious enough for all of them. He says, "Do you need sugar in your tea?" and frowns at either response. Ptolemy is lucky his grant money keeps him in tea and coffee because no way would Nathaniel let him sit here to write his dissertation without the protective mostly-full mug, help up like a ward against evil spirits.

Kitty is much easier to deal with; she's got cool eyes, considering eyes but they're not vicious, they're not full of pain either. Kitty judged him the first time they met: found him acceptable, not worth shredding, but not proven ripe for exultation. She sneaks him cookies and coffee and he edits her scathing essays on structural inequality and developmental psychology.

He likes the way she looks at Bartimaeus; careful, kind, wry, exasperated: full of love. He likes more the way she looks at the metal wrapped around Bartimaeus' throat, anchoring him to this realm, to his slavery. Loathing, furious: full of hate.

*

It was only a matter of time. Bartimaeus is made of magic and Ptolemy has never been able to resist him; it's gravity, pulling them closer and closer even through all that hurt thick in Bartimaeus' magic-dark eyes.

"I love you," Ptolemy says, cross-legged on Bartimaeus' beat-up couch where he's been sleeping for the past two weeks. "I love you so much."

Bartimaeus stills, barefoot in the doorway to the kitchen with an apple in his hand. "Get the fuck out," he says. The collar's dull at his throat, dull and ugly.

Ptolemy thinks you don't eat but he says, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I-" tripping over his own feet on the way out, down the stairs, into the cool night air with the weight of Bartimaeus' accusing eyes pressing down on his back. There's graffiti on the sidewalk; a tag with a little bird on it, fresh and new. It'll probably be cleaned by the next morning; it's not a great part of town but it's pretty good.

A beat up trash heap of a car stills by the curb. "Hey," Kitty says, leaning out the window with her hair loose in the wind, "C'mon, get in."

*

Ptolemy is so drunk. He hasn't been this drunk since undergrad, poured into the line of Bartimaeus' shoulder murmuring I love you in Latin, in Aramaic, in all the languages he wasn't alive to learn with Bartimaeus for once not even correcting his pronunciation.

Salve, he mutters, and Kitty frowns, all three of her heads twisting rapidly back and forth.

"You all right there?" There's a beer in her hand. Her hair's loose, falling dark around her face, swinging closer and closer to his own as she bends towards him.

"I miss him," Ptolemy says. His own voice echoes through his head, bending and warping. "I miss him so much."

"You shouldn't have lied to him, maybe," Kitty says. Her eyes - all six iterations - are sharp, gleaming in the dark.

"Kathleen Jones." The syllables roll around in his mouth like the beer she pressed into his hand. "You're so beautiful, Kathleen."

"Christ," she says, sitting down beside him, all bird bones and sharp shoulders, "you're so drunk. My mum calls me Kathleen."

"It's a pretty name," he says, but he's said it in Aramaic and he has to stop, correct himself. "You're very sharp, Kathleen Jones. Like a dagger."

"I don't speak to my mum," she says. He's focusing on the light on the rim of her beer bottle, on her fingers circling it elegant and pale. "She doesn't like my life choices."

"I didn't know how to explain to Bartimaeus," Ptolemy says, "I - I didn't want to say I'm going to save you in case I couldn't."

*

Bartimaeus said, "I don't know what you want." He sounded so tired, lines deep around his mouth.

Ptolemy's fingers twitched with the desire to rip the collar off, away; to let the spirit free, to the form it wanted. "I just," he said. "I just want to get to know you."

Bartimaeus rolled his eyes. "I'm a demon," he said.

"And I'm an undergrad," Ptolemy said. "And sometimes you whistle the Smiths when you're pulling espresso shots. You've read half my textbooks and you hate soy milk and nobody treats you like a person and it makes me angry, it makes me furious because you roll your eyes at all the half-caf non-fat skinny orders and you leave post-it notes in the margins of my essays and -" He stopped, forced himself to stop, forced his shoulders down and his fists open. "Sorry," he said, "I'm sorry, I-"

Bartimaeus' eyes were dark, the bottom of the ocean, the centre of a far-off galaxy. "Fuck," he said, "you could have just said you wanted essay help."

Ptolemy thought, I wonder what you look like, thought, I want to kiss you, but he bit his lip, said "That would be great," instead.

*

"He's bound to this town," Kitty says, slow, careful despite the alcohol heavy on her voice.

"There's got to be a way," Ptolemy says, knows he sounds desperate, doesn't care, "to undo it."

*

Ptolemy was writing an essay behind the counter, a critique of Swans of Araby: the Movie Musical. It was for an elective literature class and he was arguing against the othering of the djinn and it was boring.

Bartimaeus, in his favoured form of a lean dark-skinned boy, hooked his chin over Ptolemy's shoulder. "You all right?"

"Yeah," Ptolemy said, twirling his pen between his index and middle finger. "probably should have started this earlier than the due date, but it'll be fine."

Bartimaeus shrugged. "Civilizations are usually destroyed in a day or so," he said. There was something in his voice. "In my experience."

Ptolemy twisted his face around, caught Bartimaeus' gaze: heavy, brilliant, easy to drown in. He thought, I can't. He was so close.

Bartimaeus didn't need to breathe but Ptolemy could feel heat against his lips, against his skin. His palms itched; he fought back the urge to push forward, to close the distance between them, bare though it was. He could not forget the collar, the binding that caused his orders to be heard; not that he ordered, not that he would -

He breathed, Bartimaeus -

"Ptolemy," Bartimaeus whispered, "Ptolemy, can I-"

"Yes," he said, dizzy with it, barely sure what he was agreeing to, one hand against the counter for balance. He wasn't cognizant of his own tilt forward but he must have done it; the line of his back was a slope it hadn't been before and-

and Bartimaeus' smooth lean fingers were caught round the back of Ptolemy's neck; he was smiling brighter than several suns and that smile was pressed against Ptolemy's mouth.

Ptolemy forgot how to breathe. It was all right, though, because even though Bartimaeus didn't have to he was, for them both.

-

Someone is stabbing Ptolemy right in the eyes, with maybe pickaxes - pickaxes or long, sharp knives. Maybe metal toothpicks. He throws his forearm over his eyes and realizes it's the sun, and he doesn't drink because it's a fucking terrible idea.

"Hey." It's Kitty's voice, wry with a little warmth bleeding through. "You look like ass, Ptolemy."

"Mmrph," he says. "I'm dead."

"You should be so lucky," she laughs. "C'mon, I've gotta go to work. I can drive you in if you want."

He rolls over, arms tangling in dark grey sheets. The pillow smells like Kitty's hair: lilac shampoo. He's not wearing his jeans. "Kitty?" He sits up, head throbbing, mouth tasting of dead things.

She's standing at the foot of the bed, looking like she's had a good twelve hours of sleep and a healthy breakfast, in a grey tank top and faded black jeans. "You spilled beer over everything. Don't worry, nothing illicit happened - we just chucked your clothes in the laundry. You'll fit Jake's stuff, I think. He won't mind."

"Jake?"

"Jakob," she says, "my flatmate. He's a bit taller than you but half your clothes are oversize anyway."

Ptolemy rolls his eyes, doesn't mention that most of his huge ugly sweaters are stolen from Bartimaeus, who used to take him thrift-shopping and kiss him in the changing rooms, who used to lean over his shoulder and order massive long-sleeved shirts with cats on them on eBay. The rolling of the eyes was a bad decision. "Fuck," he says. "Ow."

"Ibuprofen?" she offers. "I'd let you sleep but the exterminator's coming in a bit, so."

He scrubs the back of his hand across his mouth. of course they have insects; every student flat in town has something gross. He spent most of his undergrad living with Bartimaeus, thankfully; magic keeps most animals away. (Except stray cats. There's a sleek gray cat, looks too clean to be feral, always twining round Bartimaeus' ankles that keeps sending him judgemental looks.)

"Sure," he says. "Thank you, by the way."

She looks at him for a long moment, something confusing in her stare. "Yeah," she says, "of course."

*

Her car is just as shitty as he remembered, only he's less distraught and more dead. Fuck, he thinks, the full force of Bartimaeus' disapproval barrelling back into his guts. He fists his hands in the ends of his sleeves. Jakob, it turns out, is at least a head taller than Ptolemy; frankly he'd probably have been better off in Kitty's clothes.

"Do you want me to drop you at the library?" she asks. "Or um, anywhere."

He peels his face off the window, which might be sticky with something that isn't him. "Um," he says.

"Library it is, then," she says, starting up the car. Obviously it's loud enough to pulse his brain three times quick.

"Hey," he says, brain still foggy with what did I do last night and why am I moving, "Did I-"

"Drunk code," she says, half-smiling, "don't worry. I got your back."

When he gets out of the car she leans out the window, kisses his cheek. "Feel better, Ptolemy."

*

The bell over the door jingles when Ptolemy walks in. From behind the counter, Bartimaeus raises an eyebrow. "You look like a cat sicked you up."

"Shut up," Ptolemy says, hands in his pockets. He showered at the gym, ran off the worst of the hangover, but his hair's wet, no longer the disgusting mat it was when he woke up but still gross, and he knows there are bags under his eyes; and it's Bartimaeus, whose hurt Ptolemy has never been able to bear. "Can we talk?"

"Nothing to talk about," Bartimaeus says, careful. I'm sorry, his eyes say, I overreacted. "You want a cup of tea?"

"Sure," Ptolemy says. "Thanks."

*

"The thing is," Bartimaeus says, sprawled on the couch with his head in Ptolemy's lap, "The thing is when you were here I was brave. I knew how to be brave. You left and I - I forgot."

This time it is Ptolemy who stills. "I- "

When Ptolemy and Bartimaeus were first - whatever they were - Bartimaeus' human form was more like his; darker skinned, with eyes the same colour. They couldn't have been brothers, but distant cousins, perhaps. Not that he stuck to one human form very often; slight shifts in build, in eye colour, in hair texture to remind Ptolemy that he wasn't human.

Ptolemy took it for what it was: a gift. Bartimaeus had invested so much in being non-threatening, in being the same as all his captors: to appear as anything else, Ptolemy knew, was a risk. He murmured thank you and then he thought I'm going to save you and now-

now Bartimaeus' form is solid, semi-permanent; a lean pale-skinned man with dark hair and dark eyes, dressed like any other first year in the throng of them, getting drunk and failing 100-level Psych. Except there are no first years with collars round their throats.

The words are on the tip of his tongue, caged barely by his teeth. I didn't leave you, I went away to help. "I'm sorry," Ptolemy says, smoothing a hand across Bartimaeus' silky hair, "I have to go."

*

Kitty's barefoot, hair up. She leans against the doorframe, one foot braced against her ankle. "Hey, Ptolemy." There's flour on her cheek.

"Hey," he says, car-keys digging into the palm of his hand. "Can I come in?"

"Sure," she says, stepping aside. "I was trying to bake, but it's probably for the best that I stop."

He toes his shoes off, shoves his keys into his back pocket. It's a nicer flat when he's not quite so terrified: threadbare in places, but isn't every student flat? His had been nicer - university-built, scholarship-provided, not to mention with the comfortable cushion of family money - but he'd spent all his time above the coffeeshop so it didn't really matter.

"You all right?" she asks. "Cup of tea?"

"You're so English," Ptolemy laughs. "No, I'm all right. What are you baking?"

"God only knows," Kitty says, and then she shuts the door, puts her hands in her pockets, says, "Do you think you can actually set him free?"

"Jesus," Ptolemy says, perching on the arm of the couch. "I was drunk, wasn't I."

She half-smiles. "You're also obvious. I googled your advisor - world expert in djinn binding, really?"

"Is your flatmate home?" Ptolemy asks.

"He wouldn't say anything," Kitty says, "but no, he's not."

"I just," Ptolemy says, "I just I can't risk anything."

"I get it," she says. "I promise, I - I care about him, too."

*

"You know she's got a boyfriend," Nathaniel says, quietly. Bartimaeus has fucked off to sun himself on the roof in cat-form and Kitty's got an exam, so it's just the two of them in the shop; Ptolemy at the table by the counter, Nathaniel perched on the barstool behind it.

"What?" Ptolemy says, accidentally biting down too hard on his pen. Blue ink spatters all over his mouth and he grabs for a pile of napkins.

"Here," Nathaniel says, passing him a chunk, dabbing at his shirt. "Jakob. He's a townie."

"I don't think they're - together," Ptolemy says, "but even if they were, it wouldn't matter."

Nathaniel raises an eyebrow. "I'm not completely socially useless," he says. "You've been spending a lot of time together."

Attempting to free the spirit bound to your shop doesn't seem like the appropriate response. "We're friends," he says. "She's helping me with my research."

Not even a lie.

"Oh, is that what we're calling it these days?" Bartimaeus asks, slipping out of the woodwork. He's made of sunlight today, a brilliant beautiful silhouette. He is not often beautiful; says it's too easy, not enough of a challenge; says human minds' limited understanding of beauty chafes at him (like the collar, Ptolemy always adds).

"That's what we're calling research," Ptolemy says, "yeah."

*

He tells Kitty, over pad thai at the little shop down the road. The owners know Kitty by name and frown at him threateningly, as though he's going to strip her of her virtue right there in front of them. "Nathaniel thinks we're - together."

"Nathaniel's repressed," she says. "He's projecting. He thinks everyone's fucking just because he and that awful woman in his cohort can't keep their hands off each other." Her teeth are white against her lower lip.

"I think he likes you," Ptolemy grins, thinking about Nathaniel's pursed lips, shifty eyes.

"Shut up," Kitty groans, "what is this, grade school?"

"I think," Ptolemy says, "I think we should let them believe it."

"Jesus," Kitty says, "you really don't want him to know about this." It's not no.

*

"What would you do," Ptolemy said, "if you could just leave, right now? Go wherever you wanted?" The sun was in his eyes; he blinked, and turned his face away into the breadth of Bartimaeus' shoulder.

"I don't know," Bartimaeus said. "I've never - there's never been any point thinking about it. maybe-" His fingers traced foreign languages on Ptolemy's spine. "Don't let it go to your head, but I'd - I'd stay."

Ptolemy pressed a kiss to Bartimaeus' false skin. It didn't taste alien; he felt whole, alive, real, except for the cool span of the collar. "Me too."

Ptolemy was taking a class on magicianship in the modern age. His textbook said, Djinn don't experience anything resembling human emotion.

*

Kitty says, "I still think you should tell him." There's ink on her fingers and the light from library lamp is harsh on her cheekbones, eyelashes. The book in front of her is older than the building they're in, possibly older than Bartimaeus, even. First Bindings, it's called.
Ptolemy's is more recent: A Critical History of Human-Spirit Relations. "Shh," he says.

"Oh, please," she says, "it's eleven on a Saturday night at the start of term, we're the only ones in here."

"The librarian hates you."

"She loves you, though. I wouldn't worry. Suck up."

Ptolemy shrugs. "Just because I spent some time in the library-"

"Ptolemy." Her shoulders are sharp, straight. "He- he thinks we're fucking, and I know you don't want to do that to him."

"I just want to protect him," Ptolemy sighs, all of it rushing out of him, "all we've done is hurt him and I just - I can't hurt him anymore, I can't give him hope and take it away. That's the worst thing you can do."

Kitty sighs. "He's a person, Ptolemy. That's not how it works.''

"Are you telling me it wouldn't be worse?"

"I'm telling you, it's not your call to make."

*

"I like you," Ptolemy says. They're both kind of drunk, unsuccessful and tired, sitting on the hood of her car with the moonlight gleaming on her hair.

"You love Bartimaeus," she says, her face pale, close to his.

"Human hearts," he says, "are kind of huge, if you think about them."

Her lips are cool. Her fingers fit his cheek like they were made to go there.

*

"This is the ugliest thing I've ever seen," Ptolemy snarled. He was really fucking drunk and Bartimaeus' collar felt cold, cruel under his fingertips.

"Shh," Bartimaeus said, kissing his hair. "Shh, it's not your fight."

Ptolemy thought, but you can't take it off.

*

Bartimaeus says, "Ptolemy, what the fuck."

Kitty's hands are in her pockets. She won't meet his eyes.

"Kitty," Ptolemy breathes.

"I had to tell him," she says, teeth white on her lower lip. "You know I did."

i don't know where i'm going but i don't think i'm coming home

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 19:04:53 GMT

so like before SRR leaked i totally had a post half-written about why i love young volcanoes so much - and it fits totally with my feelings on the rest of the album so blah blah blah

basically young volcanoes is the perfect triumphant AND nostalgic song. it's a callback to chicago (which is why i fucking lost it when srr the song sampled chicago is so two years ago) and to being obnoxious band kids and to growing up and everything will be okay, you know? EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY. and everything is awesome. i really like the nostalgia that permeates this album; it's not regret, it's not longing, it's just a warm recognition of something that was, something that shaped, something that is in the past and is no longer. this band isn't just a band it's an experience. it's my youth but it's their youths too, it's adolescence and getting fucked up and making terrible decisions.

i am so into parallels, i'm so into things coming full circle. i'm obsessed with the way SRR is an echo for what a catch - last night i was talking to alex about how i was going to make a gifset of comparisons between every song on srr and every fob single, but it looks like i don't have to because they're doing it for me. like it's aurally a very different album and i miss the old sound but the new sound is fun and they sound happy and i'm happy with whatever this band does because it's beyond the music, at this point; they're carved somewhere deep in my psyche and i will follow them till the bitter end. it sounds melodramatic but it's so true; i was so "lol fob" and then they came back and just: you know what, pete wentz, you are a melodramatic fucker but so am i, let's go.

i like this album because i loved folie a deux and infinity on high and from under the cork tree (not so much take this to your grave, but you'll pry where is your boy tonight from my cold dead hands) and this band loves all their old stuff SO MUCH and i love that. i love that the first track is about change, even as motherfucking obvious as it is. anyway i feel like young volcanoes and a lot of this album is a little bit of a retrospective and i am so here for that, fuck.

ARE YOU READY FOR ANOTHER BAD POEM?

where'd the party go? is the textbook song for this feeling i think. like it's a little sad but it's not, really. it's like, that was fun, that was awesome, but i have this new other thing that's good too and i think that's the healthiest way to deal with this feeling, this overwhelming nostalgia that i think the entirety of bandom just got gripped with. by bandom i mean anyone who ever wore black eyeliner in the mid-2000s. oh my god.

(basically: there's a reason i wrote half a tv show about the formation of fob in chicago and i think it would be SUPER SUCCESSFUL if they'd do it, like we're due for all the capitalization on pop-punk nostalgia. JUST SAYIN.)

anyway i love this album because it feels like victory. it feels like taking the past and integrating into your new, functioning life. i love this album because it is exactly what i needed.

you are what you love / not who loves you

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 15:16:39 GMT

i have a make up midterm in two hours and fall out boy just put up their album for streaming and i can't i can't i can't

i am IN LOVE i just

THIS FUCKING BAND

i need to get more ~in the fandom~ because my feelings are ABSURD

> ALONE TOGETHER

THIS IS THE ROAD TO RUIN / AND WE'RE STARTING AT THE END

"my heart is like a stallion / they love it more when it's broken" <- are you for real

AND DO YOU WANNA FEEL BEAUTIFUL <- i am here for these echoes

YES LET'S BE ALONE TOGETHER

> WHERE DID THE PARTY GO

UGH THIS IS LIKE SO CATCHY. I AM SO HERE FOR THIS. IT'S SO MOURNFUL/CATCHY EXACTLY LIKE OLD FOB.

"NOW WE'RE DOOMED TO ORGANIZING WALKIN CLOSETS LIKE TOMBS" HELLO I LOVE MEDITATIONS ON FAME THANKS FOR READING MY MIND

> JUST ONE YESTERDAY (FT FOXES)

THIS OPENING FUCKING KILLS ME

"I'D TRADE ALL MY TOMORROWS FOR JUST ONE YESTERDAY"

"LETTING PEOPLE DOWN IS MY THING, BABY"

"ANYTHING YOU SAY CAN AND WILL BE HELD AGAINST YOU / SO ONLY SAY MY NAME"

MMM FOXES. I'M SO EASY FOR MALE/FEMALE HARMONIES

> THE MIGHTY FALL

MMM THIS IS SO ... SORT OF GRITTY? I LIKE IT. I LIKE EVERYTHING. EVERYTHING IS GOOD.

"OH HOW THE MIGHTY FALL ... IN LOVE" OH YEAH.

"WE SHOULD HAVE LEFT OUR LOVE IN THE GUTTER WHERE WE FOUND IT"

YEAH OK NOT HERE FOR THIS VERSE.

> MISS MISSING YOU

OH WOW FROM THE FIRST NOTE I WAS LIKE "I CAN'T I LOVE"

"IT'S TIME FOR ME TO FALL APART"

"MAYBE I'LL BURN A LITTLE BRIGHT TONIGHT / BUT LET THE FIRE BREATHE ME BACK TO LIFE" < HERE FOR EVERY FIRE REFERENCE

"CAUSE I AM THE BEST YOU'LL NEVER HAVE"

"THE PERSON YOU'D TAKE A BULLET FOR IS BEHIND THE TRIGGER" FUCK OMG.

> DEATH VALLEY

WELL THIS IS SEX. "I WANNA SEE YOUR ANIMAL SIDE"

(I STILL REALLY MISS THE DEPTH / VERBOSITY OF THE EARLIER LYRICS BUT THIS IS GOOD FOR ME.)

"I'M EITHER HERE FOR AN INSTANT OR GONE TILL THE BETTER END"

I REALLY HOPE THIS IS A SONG ABOUT HOW LA SUCKS. (I AM INTERPRETING THIS ENTIRE ALBUM AS BEING ABOUT HOW LA SUCKS)

> YOUNG VOLCANOES

I KNOW I SKIPPED LIVEBLOGGING THE FIRST TWO BUT I LOVE YOUNG VOLCANOES JUST SO MUCH. LIKE UGH THIS SONG JUST GIVES ME ALL THE FEELS. IT MAKES ME THINK ABOUT BEING YOUNG, ABOUT THE MYTHICAL CHICAGO I BUILT IN MY MIND TO GET ME THROUGH HIGH SCHOOL, WHERE I'D BE IN A SHITTY GARAGE BAND AND EVERYTHING WOULD BE OK.

"COME ON, MAKE IT EASY, SAY I NEVER MATTERED" ALWAYS REMINDS ME OF YULE SHOOT YOUR EYE OUT

JUST SCROLLED DOWN, REALIZED I ONLY HAVE TWO SONGS TO GO: THIS IS NOT OKAY

> RAT A TAT (FT COURTNEY LOVE)

WOW I'M HERE FOR COURTNEY

"ONE MORE OFF KEY ANTHEM ... REMEMBER ME AS I WAS NOT AS I AM" UNF HELLO

I DON'T CARE I AM HERE FOR ALL THIS FUCKING NOSTALGIA

"MY HEART IS A GRENADE AND YOU PULL THE PIN AND SAY WE ARE FINE GROWING OLD / IN THE HOPES OF A FEW MINUTES MORE"

"IT'S NEVER GETTING ANY BETTER THAN THIS" I DON'T KNOW WHY THIS FUCKING BAND DOES THIS TO ME BUT I CAN'T REMEMBER HOW TO FEEL ANYTHING OTHER THAN ECSTATIC

"ARE YOU READY FOR ANOTHER BAD POEM?" perfect.

>SAVE ROCK AND ROLL

OMG THE INTRO FUCK YOU FALL OUT BOY YOU KNOW MY FEELINGS ABOUT CHICAGO IS SO TWO YEARS AGO

FUCK EVERY CHICAGO CALL OUT IS SLAYING ME

"I NEED MORE DREAMS AND LESS LIFE"

"HOW'D IT GET TO BE ONLY ME" OMG

"OH NO, WE WON'T GO / CAUSE WE DON'T KNOW HOW TO QUIT, OH NO" NEVER LEAVE ME AGAIN

"YOU ARE WHO YOU LOVE / NOT WHO LOVES YOU" THIS IS GOING TO BE TATTOOED ON SO MANY POST-SCENE CHILDREN/ADULTS FUCK

EVERYTHING IS FALL OUT BOY AND NOTHING HURTS

eta:
i think my fave songs are the singles (all perfect), alone together, JUST ONE YESTERDAY (unf a+++ use of foxes) rat a tat (a+++ clove) and SRR. srr is SO GOOD. but basically i love everything except the rap on mighty fall. EVERYTHING IS AMAZING.

what are your thoughts?

when rome's in ruins, we are the lions, free of the colosseums

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 06:07:59 GMT

I HAVE A LOT OF SPARTACUS FEELINGS

I JUST KEEP CRYING MY WAY THROUGH THIS SHOW

NEXT WEEK I'M GOING TO DIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

(my spartacus song is totes young volcanoes now I NEED REINCARNATION FIC ASAP.)

do you wanna feel a little beautiful, baby?

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 15:41:38 GMT

This is a post about Fall Out Boy.

I fell in love with bandom at fourteen, fifteen; it's unclear when. I think I'd been reading Panic at the Disco fic, I think I'd been a bit in love with Ryan Ross and his bird eyeliner and his fauxhawk (disastrously I got my own at sixteen/seventeen; it could have been badass but I really was too lazy for maintenance and ended up looking like Sonic the Hedgehog). It's so fast, the slide into band fandom: one second you're cruising for whatever porn you're in the mood for, the next you're sleeping in a Hush Sound t-shirt you ordered for a grotesque amount of money online sobbing about living too far from North America, you're sprawled out in a line for the one Fall Out Boy show in the past three years with the sun burning your too-pale skin (you spend a lot of time inside, remember; the internet is the only place that understands you) thinking, "maybe I should pee," but you don't want to lose your place in line. (For future reference, Anna, you should always pee. People in the line aren't that awful and too many of my concert experiences have been coloured by me gripping the banner trying not to think about the obnoxious pressure on my bladder.)

Anyway the point is that I think, musically, Fall Out Boy is the band that always got me best.laniaaa always had Panic locked down and while I was fond of William's hips and hair and Santi will always be one of my favourite favourite album, while Cobra and Gabe made me so happy I couldn't even, while I definitely locked myself in my bedroom and turned up The Black Parade so loud my mother was concerned about her quiet, reserved kid, while the Hush Sound's first two albums were the soundtracks to my attempts to get fit in the long walks from my house in Mairangi Bay to Browns Bay, an hour and a half later, there has never been a lyric that hit me harder, that still hits me harder than "the poets are just kids who didn't make it". I don't even understand why, particularly, I just: I just.

I'd lie in my room and listen to From Under The Cork Tree and Patrick and Pete (and Joe and Andy, I guess; I was never aware of them really and that sucks, because they were probably just as instrumental to my childhood/adolescence) told me stories about a teenagehood I wasn't having, about bitter love affairs that had (still have) thus far avoided me, ripped up my heart, reminded me I wasn't alone. They held my hand, they anchored me to some friendships that have since, sadly, fallen by the wayside but that I needed anyway because when you're fifteen you need everything, everyone: I don't know about you but I was a sullen angry seething writhing mass of resentment and heartache at fifteen, I was a gaping wreck and I just craved everything.

The song that will forever, without fail, remind me of high school and panda eyes and skinny jeans, of long concert lines and that time Lania and I stalked Brendon Urie and Jon Walker, crying with fear/joy/hysteria in the back of her mother's car: that's I've Got a Bad Idea and a Dark Alley.... And I know emo is a mess of a thing; I know that Pete's got some serious issues with women, I know that everything is problematic, but that's the thing: everything is problematic, and Fall Out Boy meant so much to me. Something so immense.

They told me I could be somebody else. They told me I could go anywhere. They told me: wait it out. You'll be better soon. I don't know if that's what they meant to say, I don't know how much of it's tied up with the high school fic and all the aus I read, but that's what I heard.

I wrote a concept album about an AI girl when I was fifteen, I think. I still have the lyrics on my iPod Nano (in the notes section! Fuck yeah I'm cool). It was pretty rad.

I made a post about how much I missed bandom last year (LAST YEAR! It feels like six months ago), about how much I miss the intensity of it. My goal for this year was to feel that again, was to go to shows and fall back in love with writing and the internet and be the girl that 15 year old me wished she had the guts to be. I bought flowery Docs and went to a couple shows but then school strangled me and going home was depressing and I was back to where I'd started, back to thinking "probably I'll go to grad school for something I don't care about" but it's not like that, my life. It can't be easy; not that grad school would be easy but it would be the logical choice and I can't do that, I won't make my life into a ladder of predictable choices until I die. I put myself in relationships with people who don't understand me, who drink with me and hang out with me but okay, there's a core of me that I forgot about, I think, until my bandom renaissance in July: I'm the kind of girl who wants to lie on her bed and listen to Sophomore Slump, who wants to write novels to Santi, who wants to stay at shows until four in the morning, who falls in love with words and people on the internet. I'm cynical but I'm not that cynical; there's a place for sheer brilliant joy and I don't ever want to let it go again. I think I'd forgotten that for me, school coexists with bands and fandom, that for me being creatively productive is inherent to my sanity, that I need to make things or I'll atrophy.

I spent too much time getting drunk with people I don't have anything in common with, is the point. I'm sick of trying to fit myself into something other people find comfortable: I'm not even good at it, anyway. I'm a fangirl: I'm funny and I'm smart, I'm pretty and I need to pick swimming back up again; I love political philosophy and critical analysis of TV/movies; I'm a writer and I'm in fandom, which means I can pick up any number of other skills if something I'm making demands it. I like getting drunk and I like sitting in my room on a Saturday night with that chill clear feeling when a story wants to rip its way out of your fingers.

My point is: I'd forgotten about all of that, it had slept away from me and I'd slept it away in a haze of essays and pretending to be a grownup and being disappointed with everything in my life, accepting it like it's okay that I haven't found people I really deeply want to spend the rest of my life with (platonically; romantically I'm really not on the market) and then "My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark" came barrelling into my life like a sign. I was at the worst point of my depression, I think, when I realized how much I missed them; that week where I'd stopped eating, stopped talking, stopped doing anything. It didn't pull me out, didn't make me go "I'm okay now," but it made me feel better and it made me feel connected to something again.

I had a point when I started typing but it's been half an hour and it's gone now. I think it was something like this, though. The new song made me cry. It hit my heart like nothing since What a Catch, but deeper; I don't think I've ever loved a song in the specific way I love "I've Got a Bad Idea" but "Young Volcanoes" might be it. It's the music, it's the lyrics: there's something about the nostalgia of it that just gets me in my heart. It sounds like coming home. Maybe it's that they came back, they came back amazing and if they can do it so can I: fifteen year old me in all her furious creative brilliance can come back tempered by my knowledge and experience and better hair.

I bought one ticket to the FOB show here in May. I'm going to be living alone (well, in residence, but it'll be empty). It's going to be summer. I'm going to pretend to be a functional human. I'm going to need them.

Here is what I think Fall Out Boy reminds me, has always reminded me when I needed it most: I'm brave. I just need to act like it.

Basically, I think I'm actually going to buy Save Rock And Roll.

fic: you steal me away // the hunger games // seneca crane (/johanna mason)

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 22:24:49 GMT

so i have like a long and winding headcanon about the relationship between seneca crane and johanna mason (and also haymitch abernathy!) which comes out a lot in panem victor's breakfast club (STILL BEING WRITTEN I KNOW BUT IT WILL NEVER SEEN THE LIGHT OF DAY PROBABLY/SADLY) so i felt like i would try and articulate it a little bit! seneca crane has a weird headspace though.

you steal me away
seneca crane (/johanna mason, + finnick/seneca, team victors)
pg-13. mentions of prostitution, murdering, sociopathy; all your usual capitol warnings.
set in the same universe as panem victor's breakfast club, and probably and your dreams will break the boundaries of your fears.

There are not many things Seneca Crane wants and cannot have. There is only one, in fact: a girl in green with an axe in her hand, dripping with her competitors' blood.

*

There's a rule. It might be new; it might not. Either way it's a heavy weight.

Seneca Crane is twenty-seven and he has been appointed Gamesmaker; the youngest in the Games' history. He is the right person. He is covered in more blood than most Victors.

Seneca Crane is twenty-seven and brilliant and when he speaks the Capitol sits back, mesmerized. He knows that Gamesmaker is a sop, something to stop him in his true goal (President Crane, he dares not say aloud, but sometimes he mouths it for the weight of the words on his lips) but his opponents are not prepared for the length of this game that he is willing to play.

It is Seneca Crane's first Hunger Game in charge and the rule is this: Gamesmaker must refrain from any undue contact with tributes and/or Victors. In theory, it's to prevent something like the Victory of Shimmer from One, five years ago, a fifteen-year-old whose survival was ensured, essentially, for the pleasure of Gamesmaker Claudius.

Gamesmaker Claudius had no ambition. Nobody mentioned the rule to him.

It is Seneca Crane's first game and there is a skinny twig of a girl from Seven, crying on Caesar's shoulder for the glaring cameras. Nobody expects anything of her, least of all Seneca Crane.

President Snow leans in, all bloody breath and rose perfume. Remember rule 53, he says.

*

Later, Seneca will think: I was outclassed. He will think, this was the plan from the start. He will think, your game was longer than mine.

It will be too late for him to do anything about it, though. It will be too late for anything but the berries.

*

Her name is Johanna Mason. She is fifteen years old and her ribs show through her dark brown shirt and her eyes are red from crying. She cannot hold a knife without dropping it from trembling fingers and she clings to her district partner as though she is drowning. Seneca Crane should think she is weak, pathetic, not worth the glory of the arena-

But there's something there, something sharper, hidden in the back of those dull, sobbing eyes. Seneca did not get to where he is without being a good liar, but more importantly he did not get here without being able to spot other people’s mendacity.

He says, “Let's put an axe in the Cornucopia. The Sevens are familiar with them.”

*

The frontrunner is a hulk from Two. Seneca has never liked Career tributes; they take all the fun out of the show. There's no desperation to them, not until the very end, when you have to cut away because there are some things even the Capitol won’t show.

He says, “Let's get rid of all their supplies.”

Johanna Mason is still weeping. Her partner is dead but she is hiding in a tree.

The Careers will come her way, looking for food. He shouldn't be curious but he is.

*

Johanna Mason pulls an axe out of the back of the boy in front of her and buries it in the girl from Four's throat. When the boy from Two tries to throttle her, still sluggish, underestimating her ability, she knees him hard, wrenching the axe from the girl's throat to slice his gut open.

She is all bloody. There is blood in her hair and all through her clothes, colouring all her skin crimson.

“Happy birthday to me,” she says, staring directly into the camera.

Seneca Crane pauses with his fingers over the controls, ready to send down a rainstorm. He has never seen anything so beautiful in all his life.

*

Remember the rule, President Snow murmurs. The crown is a delicate filigree thing in his hands: silver and gold with rubies strewn through.

Seneca's mouth is dry with desire. “Congratulations,” he tells Johanna Mason, and if his hand lingers a little too long around hers, if his mouth is a little too hot when he kisses her cheek, well.

These things happen.

She bares her teeth in something like a smile. “Much appreciated,” she says. It’s more of a snarl.

She is, he thinks, almost as beautiful as she was when she was all covered in blood.

*

To become Gamesmaker is not very difficult if you remember one thing: do not stop for anything.

By the time Seneca Crane is twenty-seven he has killed twenty-four of his rivals. He thinks this is fitting: it is more than even the most bloodthirsty Victor, though less televised. Nobody will ever know of the beauty of those kills: the way he'd strangled the girl at the top of their policy class, pressing a kiss to her lips before he wrapped his fingers around her throat; the poison he'd slipped in his superior's tea that mimicked a blight from Eleven, allowing him his first promotion in the Games department.

It's all right.

Seneca remembers.

(Seneca remembers everything.)

*

Finnick Odair is the President's favourite. It’s a poorly-kept secret; Finnick is everyone's favourite. (Not Seneca's, though.)

Seneca can have anything in the Capitol. (Except the one thing he wants.)

At the afterparty for Johanna Mason's Victory, Seneca says, “I’d like Finnick. How do I make that happen?”

The President doesn't blink. “Of course,” he says, half-smiling. “Leave it to me.”

*

I made you, he whispers to Johanna Mason; her nails carve his back, rivulets of blood running down his spine. I made you and you are mine.

You forget, she breathes, eyes black as night, it works both ways.

He wakes, shirtless, sweating.

Finnick Odair turns around, moonlight gleaming off his bright, bright eyes. “Are you all right?”

Seneca smiles, twisting around to kiss him. “Never better.”

*

Finnick says, Haymitch, he dreams about Johanna.

Haymitch swallows a shot, then another. For fuck's sake, Finnick, don't tell her.

*

She's not on the market for a long time. Part of him is proud of her. Part of him is thinking: if I can't have you nobody can. She’s all over town, beautiful and untouchable; his scrappy girl teetering on too-high heels, too thin, wearing little but an air of palpable distaste.

When she finally cracks he feels betrayed, almost. She was his girl in blood. It’s different when she's not entirely his.

Her mother looks like her. Weaker, though. More fragile. She would not survive in an arena; she survives even less the needle in his hand.

This Game, he is ordered to flood the arena. It is not interesting; he would argue against it strenuously but there is only one man Seneca obeys without question and it is the President. The Victor is a girl from Four, dripping and terrified.

She is no Johanna Mason.

*

He sees her at a party. She’s wearing green and her eyes are shining, every movement deadly like the arena made her. She is on the arm of some social climber in the treasury and he wants to rip both of their throats out; he wants nobody else to ever touch her again.

“May I cut in?” he asks, and the man cannot say no, not to Seneca Crane.

She blinks, recognition flooding those lovely sharp dark eyes. Her arm is warm, light on his shoulder. Her breath smells fermented. “Hello,” she murmurs. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I haven't seen you in a little while,” he says, quietly, whirling her out onto the floor to the sound of whatever drum beat is currently popular among Capitol youth.

“Not since you crowned me,” she says. Her voice is clear, too clear for the drugs blurring her gaze. She smells like perfume and sweat and a little bit of ugly, ugly sadness.

“I was wondering,” he says, strobe lights bright in his eyes. “What made you change your mind?”

She shakes her head. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

*

The next time he sees her there are bruises on her wrists, hidden by makeup but he is sharper than that, he can see what others can't. He catches her eye from across the crowd, does not go over to speak to her.

He doesn't have to.

Her last client was the teenaged son of one of the President's advisors. It is a matter of a phone call to his supplier; his next high is his last. His death is slow, and painful. There are so many mistakes that can be made with these kinds of chemical combinations.

Seneca, says the President, but he doesn’t care, not really. These petty machinations are beneath his notice.

*

What happened? Finnick asks. He looks sick: it is because of him, this mess, this situation she is in. Him and his girl back home.

Doesn't matter, Johanna says. Don't make a thing out of it, Finn.

Haymitch murmurs, have you seen Seneca Crane lately?

My Gamesmaker? she asks. No.

Haymitch shakes his head, thinks, my?

*

Seneca Crane cannot touch Johanna Mason. He is sick with how much he wants her but he won't; he can't; he's not ready. He consolidates his power base, runs the most elegant games that have been seen in all of Panem's years (no Victor since has held a candle to her), fucks Victor after Victor of the ones that are not his.

He is crueller than he used to be. He pictures marks on Johanna's lovely skin and leaves his own, tenfold.

It becomes a thinly-veiled secret: if you hurt Johanna Mason, your death will be unusually slow, unusually cruel. President Snow raises an eyebrow but the trivial battles of his courtiers are of little consequence to him: he is still the one in control.

*

The 73rd Victor is a birdlike girl from One. Her name is Sonnet; she reminds Seneca a little of Johanna, more than any of the others before; the most interesting Career he’s ever seen. Her sociopathy is too visible, though. It's not beautiful to watch; no unfurling of deadliness, no art to it. Simply blood.

*

Gamesmaker's in love with you, 73 says. How'd that happen?

What, Johanna says. What? But she closes her eyes and swallows, and it makes sense.

*

74th games and what he's thinking about is the Quarter Quell, after. He's had a good long tenure and it'll be nice to go out with a bang before he proceeds to something bigger, something better; office, perhaps, a nice department head position from which to make his next move.

The girl from Twelve is a volunteer. That's new, he thinks. Her eyes gleam a little like Johanna's, all those years ago.

“Put a bow in the Cornucopia,” he says.

*

“Seneca,” Cinna says. They went to school together but Cinna's rise has been altogether less meteoric; he was always skittish about blood.

“I like the thing you did,” Seneca says, “with the fire. It's pretty.” They're all working together, after all; this is all about the show. “And the relationship's great, it's tragic. It's exciting for the viewers.” He'll have to kill one of them fast: probably the girl.

The President's been dropping hints about a malleable, homespun Victor. Little blond Peeta Mellark might do nicely.

“It's not pretty,” Cinna snaps. “I'm trying to keep them alive.” He blinks, as if surprised by his own vehemence. “I--”

“Don't worry,” Seneca says, hand on his shoulder, “I understand. It's tricky, transitioning into the job. The first time is the most - complex.” The first time, he thinks, leaves marks.

*

Katniss Everdeen keeps surviving.

He's almost impressed.

He would be more impressed if there wasn't a seething tide turning in the Capitol, if his head technician hadn't turned to him and said, “I know I shouldn't feel like this but he's going to be so sad when she dies.”

*

“Fire is catching,” Haymitch Abernathy spits.

Seneca raises an eyebrow. He is not unnerved this is just - not expected. “Drink somewhere else,” he says, and gestures for the guards.

He has never seen Haymitch this - animated.

*

Ask me to do it, Johanna says, standing in front of Haymitch in a black dress. Her hair is curled already, in lovely sweeping spirals. Ask me to or I won't. Her stomach is roiling. They have told her stories about Seneca Crane but Haymitch has never, ever had a Victory.

His fingers twitch like he needs a drink. Jo, he starts, and then his eyes flick down, away. Jo, I need these kids to come out alive.

All I needed, she says. She leans down to kiss his cheek; his stubble is rough against her bare lips.

*

Seneca is sitting at home with a drink, Capitol whiskey from the last Victory, a bottle he's been saving for a bad day or a good one: this is certainly the latter. He's never had a Game run this far off the rails.

There was a riot in Eleven, the President murmured to him. There is so much weight on his shoulders.

They are calling for a solution, a fairy-tale ending.

There is only him to make this decision.

The door slides open.

He looks up.

“Hey,” says Johanna Mason, graceful on high heels, beautiful in a tight black dress. “A little bird told me you could use a little company.”

*

I know about the rule, she murmurs, but I swear I won't tell. Nobody will ever know. I’ve spent all this time wanting you.

*

He has forgotten how to breathe. Her lips are red like blood.

He buries his hands in her hair and kisses her so deep he thinks he might drown. You’re mine, he whispers, I made you and you are mine.

She has always been his blind spot.

*

She is surprised by how gentle he is.

She whispers, I am no tame animal, and drags her nails down his back.

His exhale stuns her. The depth of his eyes catches her, holds her tight and drowns her, but she is no Annie Cresta, she never learned to swim.

*

She curls into his side, makeup smeared, hair tangled. Her nails are gory with his blood and his lips bear the marks of her teeth.

He has never felt like this before. Never, not once.

“I don’t know what to do,” he whispers, his arm around her, their bare skin pressed together. “I don’t know how to fix this.”

She sighs. “You know there’s only one way,” she says. “The dual Victors of District Twelve.”

It’s like a lightning bolt, it’s like his heart has not been beating for a thousand years only to start up again. “Yes,” he says. He is imagining the President’s mouth twisted down at the edges; he is thinking, “An opening salvo.”

“They won’t tell you what to do,” she says, and her teeth are sharp and her eyes are bright, “they can’t,” and he has to kiss her, has to pull her close.

They are one entity, after all.

*

I have to go, she says.

He looks - she had never thought of him as human before, only as the machine that set the axe in her hand, that ripped her ribcage apart. Now he is looking at her as though he has found God and she – pauses, just for a moment. But she was destroyed in her arena, she was all blood and bone and broken pieces and that was his fault.

He says, I know.

I’ll be back, she says. She wonders if he knows that she is lying.

I know, he says, again.

Maybe, she thinks, he is too busy lying to himself.

She thinks, you made me. You should have known that I would only ever betray you.

*

“You broke the rules,” President Snow whispers. “And look what happened.”

Girl on fire, whisper the districts. The Mockingjay lives.

The berries are dark in his hands. He thinks of her mouth, of her eyes.

He thinks: it was worth it.

MIX: just stay alive // thg!spartacus

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 03:10:48 GMT

so i have no idea what's happening with lj's posting interface but it's preventing me using ampersandroadwhich means this journal is i guess going to have to get all the mixes. D:

a mix for spartacus: panem et circenses

SPENT GLADIATOR II the mountain goats
stay alive. maybe spit some blood at the camera. just stay alive. stay forever alive. / spartacus.

HIGH FOR THIS ellie goulding (monsieur adi remix)
you don’t know what’s in store, but you know what you’re here for. / lucretia.

DEAD HEARTS stars
they were kids that i once knew. now they’re all dead hearts to you. / gannicus.

EMPTY metric
i’m so glad that i’m an island now / agron.

RUNNING gil scott-heron + jamie xx
i will be running in the other direction, not running for cover. / crixus.

HUMAN daughter
despite everything i’m still human, but i think i’m dying here / naevia.

COSMIC LOVE florence + the machine (seven lions remix)
you were in the darkness too, so i stayed in the darkness with you. / crixus/naevia.

SUGAR WIFE the national
if you tried to make a miracle you never shoulda tried / batiatus.

MOON AND MOON bat for lashes
i’m a huntress for a husband lost at sea / mira

THE FEAR ben howard
i will become what i deserve / spartacus

POMPEII bastille
oh, where do we begin? the rubble or our sins?

8tracks!

that fucking cunt said that to everyone

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 05:18:39 GMT

WELL THAT WAS A VERY FUCKING UPSETTING HOUR OF TELEVISION WASN'T IT

i mean, i'd always been into crixus/naevia but this episode just fucking wrecked me. ugh they love(d) each other SO MUCH like literally they are the textbook half of the whole (FINNICK/ANNIE, deathmallow !) and like i just i don't have enough emotions for his last moments ugh ugh ugh ;___; i am just so fucking scared for naevia now, like there's no way she can not die but i just want it to be fast. like when they were talking about having children and being safe, like i'd seen the clip before but in that context i was just clutching at my face legitimately at the soap opera level trope of wanting her to be pregnant and get out and raise the baby with spartacus and agron and nasir and saxa and kore and laeta on their goat farm. omg naevia just like, slammed my heart up in there. (like i don't really want either of them to survive without the other??? because they're SO INDIVISIBLE but at the same time like NAEVIA PLS PLS PLS)

tiberius is awful. i did not see that coming AT ALL and fastforwarded through that rape scene like a motherfucker. oh my god, just die. but i mean, it did make caesar slightly more sympathetic BUT NOT REALLY GIVEN THAT HE IS STILL DOWN FOR KILLING CRIXUS everything comes back to crixus now. when he sorta quoted spiderman to crassus i was just like not. impressed. GET OUT TIBERIUS NOBODY LIKES YOU.

everything involving the brotherhood made me weep buckets. GANNICUS AND CRIXUS. (even though gannicus is vile, i appreciate his relationship with THE LAST GUY FROM THE LUDUS UGH i really want some outsider pov stuff from gannicus because it must be SO WEIRD to see like, naevia, and like, to have seen mira and whatnot i am just so easy for outsider pov.) CRIXUS AND AGRON. (even though agron is ON NOTICE for reasons i shall arrive at proceedingly.) AGRON AND SPARTACUS. (my headcanon is that agron was briefly into spartacus, because he's into intense/honest/"good" people which spartacus is!! and then that slowly mellowed to them being biffles but like ugh my heart.) CRIXUS AND SPARTACUS. literally every exchange between them and i was just like I CAN'T I CAN'T I CAN'T. they were brothers ;___; spartacus i really wanted you guys to meet again in this life ;___;

(+ this ep was so good for parallels i was weeping all over the place. ugh when crixus saluted naevia???? the speech before the ~last battle~ was perf and the batiatus callback was A++++++)

i was pretty unimpressed with agron though o m g. like way to be controlling to the max, like i understand that your issues are around not being able to protect your people but taking nasir's choice away from him and basically thrusting him into castus' arms? NOT OK. (and i totes read the wresting your happiness bit as being about castus, c'mon, what were all those judgemental looks at him? NOPE.) like really i don't care how inadequate you think you are, your partner is a fully functioning human who makes his own goddamn choices. (like up to this point i've been very lotwhatever about agron's possessiveness? like it's obviously not a shining feature of his personality but i find it kinda hot, so it's not a dealbreaker. this was like: no.) i basically wanted to hug nasir. i really wish this show had gotten a longer run so that nasir and agron could have gotten together, been adorbs, broke up and been awkward (my fave trope is exes who are in the same army and one of them is of drastically higher rank IDK WHY) and then gotten back together before the end because i think it would lead to a much more equal relationship which is what i really need to root for (see: why gannicus/sibyl is the worst).

speaking of, saxa's little takedown of gannicus was nice, but i'd have liked it better if she hadn't made it a) about sibyl, and b) implied that she'd fuck him again, because NOPE. saxa you have better things/people to do. (saxa/donar forever, guys.)

i'm so enamoured of kore and laeta. like i kind of ship it??? when kore was just like BOOM DELIVER BABY, ignoring all her severe trauma, and when laeta was like FUCK at the tent bc c'mon, tents are hard, and like when laeta stood up for kore with spartacus? i just i really like kore i like her SO MUCH and i like laeta a lot too and i think they would be excellent bffs(/who make out) and i would be down for them to run off with spartacus and have a farm and agron can suck it up and learn to like sheep because nasir wants him to.

i did really like the fight scenes. they were all v aesthetically pleasing, except for the montage towards the end, which just fucked up the timelines and made me really confused??? like what was going on, why was caesar a mess if presumably team crixus/naevia/agron (which i would read all the fic about, just sayin') had been marching for ages??? unless tiberius had raped him more than once but his dialogue was like, "won't happen again" SO IDK. usually they're not bad about timelining. (also i'm kinda sad that it all seemed a bit ... rushed? idk i feel like they could have given him another half an episode of campaigning with naevia and stuff before i had to watch him beheaded in front of her i'm still not ok about it.)

IN CONCLUSION: i would watch the show about naevia and crixus on the shores of the afterlife. oenomaus and melitta can come too. also donar and mira and barca and pietros. but none for ashur.

MIX: love, draw your swords // the hunger games // johanna (/finnick, gale)

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 23:47:08 GMT

a finnick lives!mix for that au i wrote a hundred years ago where finnick makes it out of mockingjay and everybody is sad.

CALL YOUR GIRLFRIEND. erato.

and you tell her that the only way her heart will mend
is when she learns to love again
and it won’t make sense right now but you’re still her friend

Johanna has only ever been selfless about one person (two people, if you divide them, but FinnickandAnnie is the truest thing she has ever known), about one love story. There are so many horrible things that are her fault. This is her one good act.

KEEP YOUR HEAD UP. ben howard.

cause i’ll always remember you the same
oh eyes like wildflowers, oh with your demons of change

Finnick looks beautiful by the sea. She always thought he would. She would recognize him anywhere but here he takes her breath away, looking out into the waves with the wind rippling through his hair, silhouette lean and golden and lovely.

ANGELS. the xx.

light reflects from your shadow
it is more than i thought could exist

Annie is worrying at her lower lip and her fingers are twined together around each other and she looks so tired, so drawn and so thin. “I need you to stop Finnick,” she whispers. “I need him to be here.”

WARRIOR. kimbra.

you’re just pushing me down, pushing me down, pushing me down
they wanna take our light, take our light, but never cry for the ones you love

(When Johanna won, they tried to tell her who to fuck. She said go fuck yourselves and they killed her mother, her sisters, everyone she’d ever said hello to and she still said fuck you and then—
and then Annie Cresta was reaped and Finnick Odair looked at her, said, I can’t lose her.
Johanna Mason pulled her shoulders back and said, you win.)

HEARTLINES. florence and the machine.

this fantasy, this fallacy, this tumbling stone
echoes of a city that’s long overgrown
your heart is the only place that i call home
can i be returned?

“Jo,” he says.
She crashes back into her body. Her voice sounds wrecked as though she has been screaming, crying, calling his name from a long way off. “The Capitol doesn’t exist anymore, Finn. We’re not what we used to be.”

THISTLE AND WEEDS. mumford and sons.

spare me your judgements and spare me your dreams
cause recently mine have been tearing my seams

She said, “Haymitch, I know this isn’t a love story.”
“Oh, Johanna,” he said, and kissed her forehead as though she had ever been young.

WONDERWALL. ryan adams.

maybe
you’re gonna be the one that saves me.

She calls Annie. “I don’t think I know how to be happy.”
Annie’s voice is warm, full of love. “Is this about Gale?”
“No,” she says, and then, “maybe. I don’t know.”

DIG A HOLE. william beckett.

judging by the look in your eyes
i’m getting carried away with all my
waiting and my wishing

“So you went to see Finn,” Gale says. The wind from their open window ruffles his hair, dries the sweat on his bare chest.
Johanna shrugs, twining her fingers in the sheets. “I— needed to know what I wanted.”
He takes a deep breath. “We should— we should go to Twelve.”

DRAW YOUR SWORDS. angus and julia stone.

so come on love, draw your swords
shoot me to the ground
you are mine, i am yours
let’s not fuck around.

There is a knock on the door. Gale is making a movie in the ruins of the Capitol and Johanna is drinking a glass of wine. She gets up, glass in hand; pads her bare feet across the floor and pulls the door open and there is Finnick, standing too large for the doorway, too large for his skin, in front of her.

BARELY LOVE YOU TOO. frank + derol.

tell me what you wanna say
is it safe enough to say
i barely love you too

Three words, she thinks. She mouths them, but there is a time for everything.

8tracks link because mediafire killed a whole bunch of my old uploads and i just don't think my heart can deal.

"you're too old to be so shy," he says to me, so i stay the night

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 19:35:43 GMT

i feel like i'm connected to my body by this really thin thread and i'm floating away, away, away. if i get far enough it will snap and i won't have anything to go back to. part of me just - wants it to.

i'm writing a paper on globalization and i don't actually know what's going on and it's due tomorrow at midnight and i have a stats assignment due that i haven't started yet and a lot of this is my failure to manage time but that's why last semester when i wasn't sick i started everything early! doing things last minute just stresses me out inordinately. now i have an hour and a half left with this book from course reserves and of course i'm writing this instead of being productive.

last week i wrote a screenplay because i didn't want to write my paper. sometimes i feel like i just need to make things. the other thing i did was make an online dating account, get incredibly personally honest, and watch what happened. i have literally no desire to actually date any of those people but i think it was three am and i wanted human connections with people who know nothing about me. now there is a boy talking to me and i am sure if we met it would be uncomfortable and we wouldn't speak but i've made up this future for us, where we play music and occasionally make out when we're drunk and it's -

i wrote, there, "what is your night worth without a story to tell?" which is a shane koyczan quote, and i wrote about how i just want my life to make me feel like i feel when i walk out of a movie or read something really good: that is, like i am part of something important, something vivid, something meaningful. but i don't think that is how real life works.

you know what would be cool? hunger games + animorphs. i want kat making the hard call to send gale in to kill her yeerk-controlled sister; i want haymitch the cranky andalite. i want kat and peeta dating during the war and not being able to sustain it, afterwards.

i finally sucked it up and started using hypemachine and guys i found daughter and now i really want a bastille/daughter collab/mashup IT WOULD BE AMAZE.

"do not fucking cast that look."

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 05:44:52 GMT

ugh like there were a lot of things that made me happy this episode (KORE! NASIR! AGRON'S FACE! CRIXUS/NAEVIA! CRASSUS SUCKING AT SOMETHING FOR ONCE! NOTHING SUPER GROSS SO I COULD WATCH EVERYTHING STRAIGHT THROUGH! EVERYBODY SURVIVING!) i am going to fucking KILL SHIT i am so angry about gannicus like WHAT THE FUCK GANNICUS YOU WERE MY FAVOURITE I WAS ROOTING FOR YOU WE WERE ALL ROOTING FOR YOU. like i am SO FUCKING UNIMPRESSED with this gannicus/sybil bullshit a) because saxa is my homegirl but also because b) gannicus was my homeboy and CLEARLY DUDE YOU HAVE SOME COMMITMENTS GOING ON AND IDC IF YOU WANNA DUMP SAXA (that's a lie i care deeply and i want to punch you in the face MANY TIMES FOR IT) but you gotta be honest dude. also sybil, i'm trying really goddamn hard to like you, but you are BORING AS SHIT and when their relationship was platonic big bro/little sis and she was like the annoying baby kitten i was like, ok you're cute/useless/adorbs i can work with that but now i'm just like, is she seriously supposed to be capable of being in a relationship? because i'm sorry but this is a girl who is incapable of fleeing a fucking city when she's told to, this is a girl who is basically stalking the guy who saved her and decides to fucking FREEZE TO DEATH IN A BLIZZARD and she's basically put gannicus on a pedestal like this is ... not a healthy relationship at aaaaall and i feel like the show has generally been really self-aware where the dynamics of relationships are concerned but this time it feels like they're trying to swing gannicus/sybil as like, BEAUTIFUL AND MEANINGFUL and i'm sorry no. no. no.
also her smug face when saxa is like, "yo boyfriend i see you're not dead" made me really sad :( OH SWEET SAXA I'M SORRY :( YOU DESERVE SO MUCH BETTER.

on the plus side, nagron's two minutes (less?) of screentime were qt and i love kore like a lot, what a badass. + the spartacus/crixus fight scene was fun and ia of all the gross dead body uses spartacus comes up with.

fic: my head is an animal // spartacus (thg!au) // agron

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 21:26:32 GMT

so now i have progressed to not being to sleep until six am: dear midterm season i wish you were dead.

my head is an animal
agron (duro, spartacus, batiatus)
pg; character death, intimations of violence/prostitution/etc
thg!fusion.

“This is our champion?" Duro mutters, shuffling from foot to foot. Mandatory Victory Tour attendance makes everybody restless.

"Shut up," Agron says, "that's Spartacus."

He’s tall and lean - not as tall as Agron and Duro, but they’re tall - and there’s something in his eyes, something lost and haunted and full of a rage that makes Agron shiver, just a little.

“He looks bigger on TV,” Duro muttters.

Agron elbows him. “A 20-foot screen will do that.”

It's Agron's second-to-last year. He's almost unhappy about it; when he ages out of the tesserae it'll be less tesserae and, in a worst-case scenario - well, better not to tempt fate, but if it's going to be any of his mother's sons who go into the arena it'll be Agron.

Duro says, "You've got that look on your face."

"What look?"

Duro raises an eyebrow. "The one where you've tried to think and it's a bit difficult."

"Shut up," Agron says, cuffs him round the head.

They slide into the crowd and the two years between them divides them too far, an unbreachable gap.

Batiatus says Duro’s name and Agron does not even think. “I volunteer,” he’s saying, shouting, cutting through the crowd before the ice can hit his veins, before Duro can get to the stage.

Spartacus’ eyes widen and he smiles, a little, clasps Agron’s forearm. “That was brave,” he says.

You’re a fucking idiot, Duro mouths. There’s all this fear in his eyes.

The crowd is entirely quiet. Maybe it isn’t; maybe that is just the sound of Agron’s heart, deafening.

He bows for the cameras. We who are about to die salute you.

Duro punches him in the shoulder: not very hard, not hard enough for anything to bruise. “You fucking idiot. I don’t need you to save me-”

“Shut up,” Agron mutters. Duro is too large now to fit comfortably in his arms but there is a rightness to it, to him. He smells like soap and charcoal. “I’m sorry.”

Their mother kisses his hair. “Oh, Agron,” she whispers, voice cracking, “please come back.”

The train isn’t loud, mechanically. He’d thought it would be - the mine machinery is loud. The Capitol can afford better, probably.

The girl spends all her time sobbing. She reminds him of his sisters: he thinks he could put his arm around her, could say it will be okay, but he doesn’t lie to them and he won’t to her.

Spartacus sits beside him. “Listen,” he says, low, urgent, “I need you to tell me what you can do.”

Agron says, “I,” and then he shakes his head, “we used to go past the Meadow for firewood, for game.”

Agron did not know Spartacus, before. Agron was Seam and the boy who would be Spartacus was something else, something half-wild, something - free.

Nobody thought he would win.

Now, Agron thinks, blisters on his hands from relentless drills with sword, bow, axe, it is a wonder that anyone thought Spartacus wouldn’t.

The weight of Spartacus’ gaze falls heavy on his shoulders.

I want to get you home, he says.

Agron does not think Spartacus is the sort of person you can say no to.

In a way, the Careers make it easier. It is the Careers who slit the throat of Twelve’s girl at the Cornucopia, so fast that Agron cannot even cradle her body; the Careers who decapitate Six’s fourteen-year-old boy who looked at Agron like Duro had. Agron knows how to stay alive in a forest arena, and he knows vengeance.

It is easy to think of them as wolves at a fresh kill; easier, certainly, than to think of them as children who fall beneath his knife, his hand.

Blood always looks the same. But there is nothing you can do about that.

Spartacus says, “Hey,” and Agron opens his eyes and there is the hand on his shoulder, warm, careful.

“Congratulations,” Batiatus says. His eyes gleam dark, satisfied.

Agron turns his face away, into the clean laundry smell of Spartacus’ shirt: the arena was dirt and blood and he is-finally clean, it seems. (Never clean. you will never be clean again.)

“You won,” Spartacus says, and his voice is so kind, so sad, Agron wants to weep.

“Welcome back,” Duro says, and he smells like soap and charcoal and Agron never ever wants to let go. “I knew you’d make it,” he adds, muffled by Agron’s shirt.

“You’re a shitty fucking liar,” Agron says. His face hurts. He has never smiled so wide in his life.

“Hey, neighbour,” Agron says, leaning out the window of the new beautiful house in Victor’s Village.

Spartacus half-smiles, waves: the only other occupant, in all the village. “You want a drink?”

They sit in his front room, immaculately appointed, painstakingly beautiful. There’s whiskey in a wide translucent glass, amber against Agron’s skin. “This is strange,” Agron says.

Spartacus sighs. “I’m sorry,” he says, “winning isn’t- it’s not a good thing. It might have been kinder if you hadn’t.”

Agron shakes his head. “I have a family,” he says. “I couldn’t not.”

Spartacus’ exhale is quiet, ancient; an overgrown city’s last sigh before collapse. “I had a family, once.”

“They’re telling stories about you in the capitol,” Batiatus tells Agron. “There are posters. You and your little brother; everyone’s swooning.”

“Oh,” Agron says.

Spartacus’ weight is firm, solid at the back of him. “Is there something you need?”

An eyebrow, raised. “There’s something I want.”

The woman is bright blue and there are feathers under the skin of her arms and Agron cannot get it up.

“I don’t understand,” he tells Spartacus after, “I don’t-”

Spartacus says, “They want you to forget that you were ever anything other than theirs.” There is a faint, defiant twist to his mouth.

“I have a family,” Agron whispers. He went to the arena for Duro; this is not so much worse.

“They know that,” Spartacus says, and there is this very, very slight crack in his voice.

“It’s the Capitol,” Duro says, softly, “It’s the capitol that’s the problem. We don’t need them.”

“No,” Agron says, “Duro-”

The view from the stage is different when you are no longer the sacrificial lamb on it. Everyone looks smaller.

“Duro,” Batiatus says.

Spartacus’ arm is across Agron’s chest, the only thing keeping him in place.

“No,” he says, “you can’t.”

Everything is red but it is Spartacus’ voice, Spartacus who has never steered him wrong.

“Agron,” says his mother, desperate.

“I’m going to bring you home,” Agron swears. He thinks maybe he has forgotten how to breathe.

Duro’s pale, too pale. “There you go,” he says, all hollow half-smile, “always taking credit for things you didn’t do.”

The Capitol is writhing, seething, filthy and hideous. It was almost easier when it was the arena he had to go in.

Spartacus murmurs, “This is for your brother,” and Agron grits his teeth and follows his lead.

“I can’t let my brother outdo me,” Duro grins, for the interviewer.

Agron knows his brother, knows the tightness around his eyes, in his voice.

“I love you,” Agron says, “don’t forget that.”

“I think he can do it,” Batiatus says. “Probably. There’s a good fucking chance.”

It is like he is trying to be thoughtful, considerate, but it doesn’t really work, on him.

The televisions are all huge here. The volumes are all the way up.

Agron is very, very drunk.

“Don’t look,” Spartacus says, and it’s so kind, so terrible.

Agron does not see it but he hears it and it is so, so loud.

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 17:29:12 GMT

freaking out. handed in paper late. slept in. midterm in two and a half hours, haven't studied. handing in stats assignment late (losing 20%) emailed for extension on paper due friday

yeah schedule died.

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 06:15:24 GMT

so yeah, instead of papering i wrote a tv pitch and now i'm freaking out like, a lot. dear school i hate you.

fic: trust me, boy (you wanna be high for this) // spartacus (thg!au) // gannicus

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 07:42:52 GMT

ugh ugh ugh procrastination time :/

trust me, boy (you wanna be high for this)
gannicus. (oenomaus, melitta.)
pg-13. implications of prostitution, violence; on screen character death.
1,775 words.

This is something Victors say: Anyone can win the games. It takes something else to survive.

Gannicus was sixteen, a Career tribute from District Two. He volunteered ahead of his best friend, slipped past him with a smile and a wave and maybe next year it’ll be your turn and grinned out at the cheering, roaring crowd. By then, even, he had been noticed - he and Oenomaus, the two best and brightest of the Two’s technically-illegal Career School. Melitta rolled her eyes at him from the girl’s section, just a flicker of concern passing her face before it was gone: everyone knew he would be coming back.

The escort read the next name and Gannicus blinked three times, put his hands in his pockets and blinked again. Oenomaus was pale, open mouthed; Melitta shook her head slow, confused, and stepped forward, through the crowd.

Gannicus thought, nobody will volunteer for her. It hit him at the same time as it hit Oenomaus; Oenomaus’ mouth snapped shut and Gannicus swayed, shook his head, extended his hand to help Melitta up because she was his friend, even if nobody else would be volunteering because that just didn’t make tactical sense, not for the Centre, not with Gannicus as strong as he was. It would be a waste.

“Ladies and gentlemen of District Two,” announced Quintilius Varis, “I give you your tributes.”

Melitta’s hand was sweaty, clammy.

Gannicus took a deep breath, squeezed it tight, whispered, “Don’t worry. You’ll be back.”

They ask him, after, what it felt like to hold her body in his arms when he had promised to bring her back, when he had been secretly in love with her all this time.

Varis is watching, off-stage.

He tastes dust in his mouth, swallows stale anger, fear, horror; says, “I would have done anything to keep her safe,” and for all the thousand lies he has told the Capitol interviewers, this is the one truth. He would have killed them all and then laid his own throat bare and he would have done it gladly, without a second thought. He loved Oenomaus and he loved Melitta and her life - her life had been, objectively, worth a whole lot more than his.

“I swear,” he told Oenomaus, in the quiet tastefully-appointed waiting room, “I swear I’ll get her home.”

“Gannicus-” Oenomaus looked like he would be sick, like he had just come out of the practice arena, “You’re my best friend.”

“You love her,” he said, slow, careful, “and she didn’t choose this. We did, we’re trained; she’s not. She - she deserves to come back.”

Oenomaus swallowed, caught Gannicus by the shoulders, pulled him close. “Both of you deserve to come back,” he said. “Thank you.”

He would have done it. He could have.

They were not close to the end when it happened but he had trained his whole life for this: he could kill thirteen tributes, he could do it with the knives from the pack or sharp rocks from the lakeside or he could make a bow from the trees. He could do little else but this, this game he had been made to win.

They made camp, the two of them, in a thicket by the edge of a cliff. They were safe, he told her; nobody would come near them, not this early, not while there were easy kills to be had still. He built a low fire and she went to the river for water and they were safe, he thought, they were going to make it.

And then the cannon went off.

It was not until they asked him if he had anyone at home that he realized, that it hit him. It had always been the three of them: Gannicus-Oenomaus-Melitta. OenomausandMelitta, and Gannicus. He had never begrudged them their relationship; they had never shut him out.

“Any sweethearts back home?” Cossutius asked.

“No,” he laughed, thinking about all the girls who had passed through his bed, charming and lovely but ultimately meaningless, nothing in comparison to Oenomaus and Melitta - oh, he thought, oh.

The game, this game, was all about perception.

He bit his lip, looked away, “No,” he said, letting the horror seep through; “no, she came here with me.”

(It was not until much, much later that he realized it was true.)

He didn’t think it was her, at first, but he ran anyway, just in case, because he had sworn to her that he would bring her home. Then he saw the face in the sky, thought through his racing heart, through crippling heartache that if nothing else he could avenge her, could rend the life from whoever had slain Oenomaus’ beautiful Melitta, his friend, his partner, the girl who had raced with him as a child, who had thrown sand in his face and bound up his career school wounds, who had gotten drunk with him that first time and confessed that she loved the way Oenomaus laughed.

He outpaced the hovercraft, knelt by the prone body as it whirred above them. He was crying, he was choking on his own tears; he was thinking about Oenomaus’ face and the grief overwhelmed him. There was a little pool of water by her side, by her pale beautiful face, and he thought always boil the water but she had been in training to design jewellery, how could she have known?

Oenomaus caught him in a fierce hug, whispered, “I know you would have brought her home if you could, brother,” and Gannicus could not move, could only think: I told them the truth when I said I loved her and I did not mean to, could only think: I have betrayed us all.

He built her a funeral pyre, though he could not stop the hovercraft taking her body. Her hair streamed dark and lovely below her limp body and he thought he had never seen anything like that before, anything like Melitta’s body, absent Melitta.

He built the fire as high as it would go and waited for all of them to come to him.

It did not take long.

(It was, in fact, a record.)

It was the most impressive win in the history of the Games: thirteen slain by Gannicus’ hand, in the four hours following Melitta’s death. There had been almost a riot in the streets; Capitol citizens outraged by the unpalatable fate of the star-crossed lovers.

As an appeasement, they gave him a wooden sword and Capitol citizenship and told him he was free.

Years later the Gamesmaker, Tullius, tells him that they poisoned the water only when they saw her coming, that they could not afford to have a sympathetic pair at the very end. He is very drunk; he says, “you were so convincing, Gannicus; we all thought the two of you were in love.”

Gannicus grits his teeth, shakes his head. “What do you mean?” he says, wry twist to his mouth, “of course we were.” He imagines the spray of Tullius’ blood, how it would look, crimson across the marble floor. His fingers twitch to see it realize, but this is the Capitol: there are cameras everywhere.

They only kissed twice, Gannicus and Melitta: once for the cameras, when she realized the game he was playing and picked it up too, pressing her lips to his in a desperate realization, a show for all the Capitol viewers to send them food and weapons once they were in; the other time, he likes to think, was theirs.

The cameras were all facing in different directions; cannons were going off all around them. She looked fragile in the black Tribute jacket but her hands wrapped steady around the knife; she whispered, we made it past the Cornucopia, and he laughed despite himself, high on adrenaline, on the quick kills of the two who had tried to take Melitta out, stick with me, baby, we’re going all the way to the end.

She turned to him, then, and her eyes were wide and her fingers were cool on the side of his face, and he could do nothing less, only lean in and kiss her, hold her close.

He thought: we’re going to win.

That was stupid, obviously. There is no we in victory.

The next year, Oenomaus said, “I’m going to volunteer.” He had not been the same since Melitta, since Gannicus’ win; he had believed Gannicus when he had said it was for show and you know she loved you but there was this space between them, there had to be, even though they knew they loved each other.

Gannicus said, “You’re going to win,” and he smiled, bright, as though it would not be a death sentence, as though the arena would not strip Oenomaus of every last good thing about him as it had done for Gannicus.

He had not been able to protect Melitta, though he had sworn he would: the least he could do was keep her lover safe.

He clapped Oenomaus on the shoulder, said, “You’ll move into the house next door, we’ll be neighbours again,” and they laughed like they were whole intact people, like Melitta was in her mother’s house, like the sun still shone bright.

After, Gannicus went to Quintilius Varis and said, “Oenomaus will never go to the arena.”

Varis raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know,” he said, “it does seem like it would be satisfyingly symmetrical.” The weight of his gaze was heavy, hungry.

The citizenship protected him, now, but Gannicus understood how the Capitol worked: you gave something to get something else. He closed his eyes, fell to his knees.

That year, Two’s preliminary Games were particularly brutal: Theokeles, a promising fourteen year old on many forms of illegal pharmaceuticals, went berserk and took out one of Oenomaus’ eyes in the final round.

“I’m sorry,” Gannicus said. It wasn’t a lie, not really. “I know you wanted to win.”

Oenomaus, wrapped in bandages, shook his head. “They’ve offered me a job at the Centre. I suppose it’s the closest I’ll get, now.” This year had been his final chance, but anyway Two would not send someone defective like that. There was no risk of him, standing on that stage. Not anymore.

Gannicus clasped his arm. “That’s something.” He swallowed; there was a bitter taste on his tongue. “I’m moving to the Capitol.” (Varis had suggested it; it had not been a suggestion, really. There are always - things that can go wrong, in a training centre.)

“Oh,” Oenomaus said, one eye dark. “Congratulations.”

fic: panem et circenses // spartacus (au) // spartacus/sura

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 03:07:16 GMT

um. i don't know. i'm really scared of this paper? that's my only excuse.

panem et circenses
spartacus (sura, varro, glaber, batiatus)
pg. character death (extensive); violence.
~1200 words. hunger games fusion.

They call him Bringer of Rain, because his arena was a desert. They call him Spartacus, after a long-ago warrior; they call him Victor, and rest the heavy crown upon his brow.

Never do they ask his name; never do they offer him a choice.

Before he left, she pressed her mouth to his ear and whispered, kill them all.

Now when he dreams of her those words are all he hears, echoing and echoing till he has drowned in them.

It was the Capitol man who chose him - Gaius Claudius Glaber, wearing a sword too heavy for him at his hip, lips crossed with a smirk too unprepared for the reality of the wilderness beyond the fences. Glaber who swore he would bring them food, would make sure Twelve's children did not starve this winter, if only he could be guided through the wilds to the remains of District Thirteen. It was Glaber who wrote down his name (the old name, the name of the man she loved), Glaber who whispered welcome to the Capitol when he stepped off the train.

He does not think it was Glaber who gave the order, or Glaber who stepped into the little house that smelt of woodsmoke, curing meat and drying herbs. It would not have been Glaber who looked at the girl kneeling by the fire praying for Twelve’s boy-tribute’s safe return and slit her throat; Glaber has not the stomach nor the foresight.

For Glaber, taking him was not a cruelty. It was a matter of whim; easily forgotten.

I love you, she whispered, I love you above all things, beyond all things.

He pressed his hand to her cheek, helpless, as though if they willed hard enough they would fuse into one person, one safe infinite being, beyond all of this.

Come back to me, she told him.

He swore he would.

You are allowed one thing in the arena: one thing to remind you of home.

He lost the scrap of fabric she bound about his arm on the operating table; the escort told him it was cut off when they dealt to his dehydration, to all the infections; that it was necessary, or he’d have scarred.

He would have borne a thousand scars if it meant he could keep even the barest solid memory of her, proof that she existed, once upon a time.

Proof that she ripped that cloth from her skirt and pressed it to his skin, that her deft fingers bound the knot, that she kissed his skin and whispered you are the only one I will ever love.

Proof that she was killed to prove something to him.

They call him the Bringer of Rain because his arena was a desert and when he killed the hulking boy from District Two the sky went dark and stormclouds opened. They murmur about the theatre of it, how aesthetically minded is that Gamesmaker, Gaius Claudius Glaber.

They do not know why the girl from District Twelve died (they do not know that she died; they would have to know that she had ever lived for that), but he does:

He held up a shield and the light reflected into Theokeles’ eyes, blinding him so he could slit his throat, so Theokeles’ head could detach from his body with one last stunned blink. But that is not the only thing that the light hit; it also struck a transmitter which, unprepared for that much heat, spasmed into death, breaking the forcefield surrounding the arena, the forcefield that kept the dry air in and the rainstorms out.

The boy they called Spartacus held up a shield and showed the Capitol that they were vulnerable and for that -

For that he must be punished.

He woke in the white room with the taste of antiseptic in his mouth, with bandages all around him and an overwhelming lack of thirst, a foreign sensation after so many days parched. The escort, Quintus Lentulus Batiatus, pressed a dry hand to his; for the cameras it was to be a consoling gesture, a motion of support, but he knew it for what it was: a threat.

I know what you did.

He did not even know what it was that he had done to anger them. Not for a long time.

There was a boy with him from District One; a boy with kind eyes and a warm laugh, a boy who said I volunteered for the Training Centre to pay my family’s debts, who paused a little, voice dropping to murmur, I did not think they would choose me. His name was Varro and he smiled as though his heart was not breaking, whose whole face lit up when he spoke of the girl he loved.

(The boy who would be Spartacus knew more than to speak of the girl in the forest but he should have known better than to think silence would protect her: there is nothing about you the Capitol does not know, if it cares to hurt you.)

Varro was the last of the other tributes to survive and he whispered, swear to me you will look after Aurelia, and then he took Spartacus’ sword between his palms and thrust it between his lungs. The blood he choked on was red, so red, the kind of red you dream about drowning in.

Varro had known, then, that to enter the arena is to be destroyed by them as long as you live, to have all those you love destroyed by them; he had known, too, that Aurelia was pregnant.

On the Victory Tour she came to him, a girl in a white dress with a babe in arms. For the cameras she said, “He wanted it to be you,” so the Capitol citizens would watch and thrill at the friendship that had formed between two such unlikely boys, and in his ear she whispered, he and I did not want the arena for his son.

He is almost sure it was Quintus Lentulus Batiatus who killed her. If it was not his hand that struck the blow it was surely his order; surely his ambition that wished Spartacus to be a malleable, obedient Victor, to bring honour to the District Batiatus had been given as punishment, as recognition of incompetence.

Batiatus knew nothing of the girl by the hearth; he thought her death would mean do as I command or suffer the consequences.

Sura’s body was cool when he stepped into the little house, wrapped in the Capitol finery they had thrust upon him. He had the crown in his hand, in his left hand to give to her, to say I thought of you, only you, that is what gave me strength all those days but it fell, metal ringing twice on the dirt floor before was stilled by the dust. His knees gave out as they had not given in all those days of no water, only blood; he hit the ground with only her grey laid-bare throat before his eyes.

He pressed a shaking hand to hers and the chill of her flesh flooded his own, stilled the beat of his heart, stilled his own breathing and froze him there, to the ground.

He closed his eyes and heard her voice:

Kill them all.

so i'm putting my defenses up, cause i don't wanna fall in love

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 07:54:01 GMT

for deathmallow!

lol oh wow i'm just spitballing what do you think?

spartacus won his games and came home with the blood of his district partner on his hands, only to find the still-warm corpse of his wife cooling on the floor of the house in victor's village. he dreamed of her that first night, her cool voice whispering kill them all and when he woke he swore he would.

gannicus knows what it feels like to get fucked by the capitol. as a career trainee, he was forced to sleep with his best friend's girlfriend for the capitol's amusement, forced to watch her die in the arena, forced to lie to his best friend to keep him alive for all these years, after. he doesn't think there's any point to rebellion, not anymore. (he knows that the capitol always wins, and he knows what's at stake.)

agron volunteered for his little brother; it was purest luck, coupled with an adolescence among the trees, that allowed him to survive his game. two years after he won, duro's name was pulled from the ball again, and he did not share agron's luck.

crixus didn't start out as a crowd favourite, but within hours of reaping panem had fallen in love with him, with his bluster and his swordwork and his rippling muscles. gifts fell like rain his year; even his gamemaker, lucretia, was a little in love with him (or so the rumour goes). it was all fine, until his victory tour stopped in district one and he met a girl.

naevia is a daughter of district one, and no career. it's a mistake when she's reaped - or a lesson, to all the sons and daughters of the districts who fall in love with victors - their first loyalty is to the capitol. she'll never know what crixus did to get her out of the arena - as he'll never watch the footage of what she did to survive.

mira is a junior stylist, who has been promoted just in time for the quarter quell. she's assigned to a little-remembered victor: spartacus, of district twelve. there's something about him, she thinks - something that makes her dream of fire.

marcus crassus is the general of panem's defence force. julius caesar is the architect of the quarter quell. lucretia was crixus' gamesmaker; her husband batiatus was the gamesmaker for spartacus'.

IDK, IDK.

fic (kind of): be careful making wishes in the dark // spartacus (au) // agron

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 21:14:17 GMT

so apparently i'm into spartacus now (not as much as i'm into not doing anything remotely productive, but what're you gonna do) and i guess i was thinking about ridiculous aus because i ALWAYS do that and then i was like, fff this actually matches up REALLY WELL with nikita (/lfn) and then i made this and then i plotted out three seasons of l'homme spartacus (lolforever, stupid names are stupid) and then i wrote this. it's kind of really silly? not well thought? badly characterized? also super limited because i believe in people not knowing all the information when they do things, and most people in spartacus, except for spartacus, operate with a fraction of the information.

BE CAREFUL MAKING WISHES IN THE DARK
agron. (spartacus, mira, crixus, naevia, nasir, gannicus)
pg. allusions to murdering/torturing etc, but this is on the nikita side of the gory discretion shot line, so.
agron is a free man because of spartacus; if spartacus asks, he will gladly jump back into the breach. but it is different, when you choose a mission.

They get out. It’s bloody and ugly and no amount of showers will get the grime out from under Agron's fingernails, but it's not like he wasn't used to that. They flee to the safehouse Spartacus arranged by just being him, by sheer force of personality, and sometimes Agron wonders if maybe Spartacus shouldn't have bothered with the bomb but just willed Batiatus to stop breathing.

Spartacus stands straighter, but he moves like a man with weights on all his limbs. Crixus drinks and disappears and comes back worn out, tired; his contacts just don't hold up without the weight of the program behind them and nobody knows where Naevia went. Mira fixates on everyday battles, on where they're going to get milk and the generator's fraying cords and whatever this thing she's doing with Spartacus is. And Agron - Agron doesn't know what he's doing, but it's weird, to think that he doesn't answer to anyone anymore.

That's bullshit, though. Agron answers to Spartacus. In this, in everything. In anything Spartacus could ever ask of him.

Agron is in the basement, training for a war he's never going to fight: fists slamming into the punching bag, knuckles connecting with concussive force, enough that he can't hear himself think for a moment.

"Agron." It's Spartacus, clear enough to cut through any noise, through any force.

He stills, turns to meet that piercing stare. "Spartacus?"

"I have a mole in the program," Spartacus says, very quietly. "I have coordinates for their next mission. Are you in?"

It’s like everything was out of focus, blurry. The inhale clarifies the world, makes it sharp and true. Agron leans in to clasp Spartacus' arm: it's not even a question.

--

"How can we trust your mole?" Crixus snarls, still on edge, bleeding from the loss of Naevia. "How can we know they won't betray us?"

Spartacus rests a gentle hand on Crixus' shoulder. "I deactivated the mole's killchip myself, Crixus. I would place my life in their hands."

"And ours?" That's Mira, cool and calm. Her eyes are clear and sharp, a question, not an accusation.

"And yours." His voice is kind but it is so heavy: it is, Agron thinks, something resembling an impossibility to doubt him.

"Must be an extraordinary person," Agron says, picking at the tape on his knuckles to reveal the bruised, bloody mess underneath; he's been spending a lot of time with the punching bags, lately. When he worked for the program it was people he could beat bloody but now he is a person, not a tool.

It is different, he thinks, when it is a mission you have chosen.

“Better be,” Crixus says, running his hands through his hair. “For our sake and theirs.”

--

Agron finds himself talking to the mole sometimes, late at night. Spartacus had said, It's a difficult thing. Sometimes you just need a friend, a connection; can that be you?

Agron does not know if he is actually capable of saying no to Spartacus, these days (ever). Thankfully he hasn't had to.

The mole is sharp and observant, occasionally wry. They keep away from identifying information: no names, no genders even. They talk about silly things: television they watched as kids, breakfast foods they favour, cats versus dogs (the mole likes cats; Agron's always been a dog person) and it's - almost, something like, something approaching easy.

--

There's a message when Agron gets out of the shower, blinking on the face of the disposable netbook they've kept to stay in contact with the shell program the mole uses to keep in touch with them. prev head of tech held at mines. extraction difficult, but possible.
too dangerous, Agron types, immediately, and wipes the conversation. Crixus is enough of a loose cannon as it is, and the mines--

Too much to risk.

--

i'm on assignment. they're bringing her out for it. if it's going to happen it'll be now.

that's a hell of a risk, Agron types.

two days, the mole says.

--

They interrupt an assassination and stagger home: Agron and Crixus first, Mira and Spartacus after, she wrapped in his coat, blood dripping from her hairline; he grim-faced, scowling.
she sits on the kitchen island with the resigned grace of routine; Agron does the math, figures it's his turn to get the medkit out from under the sink. (Just your average house rules, boys and girls; your average household for a family of assassins.)

"They know about the mole," Spartacus says, like he's the one with the bleeding gash, "they don't know who but they know it's someone. Keep your contact limited."

"Agron," Crixus teases, light for once.

Agron's hands are shaking. He daubs alcohol onto a cotton swab and swipes at the wound on Mira's forehead; shallow but ugly. He thinks, we should exfil. His heart is beating too fast: he is imagining (remembering) a knife through a bulletproof vest, a bloody mouth curving around his name. "I’ll pass that information on."

--

they know, Agron types with trembling hands.

they've been checking. i'm okay.

extraction?

A pause.

no.

--

Mira makes tea when she's stressed: stirs in the leaves and the herbs and the hot water and sits with her hands wrapped around the cup, staring out the huge, impractical windows (who'd pick Spartacus for a huge impractical house? They all wince, coming around corners, but they're safe enough to wince at least).

Agron leans over her shoulder, breathing in the hot fragrant steam. "Hey."

"Hey," she says, "oh, Crixus was looking for you."

"What?"

She turns, and her eyes are so dark and there's this strain on the edge of her voice and Agron feels his knees weaken, just a little, "Agron, is there something you didn't tell us?"

Then there's something slamming into the side of Agron's face, and Crixus' voice growling deep into the shell of his ear, "Naevia."

--

"You’re comms," Spartacus said, low and disappointed, "please make sure to pass on all information, not just what you think is pertinent."

"This is a bad fucking idea," Agron said, pressing an Icepak to his ribs. The stitches under his left eye were starting to itch. "You’re all going to die and I’m going to hear it through the fucking comms-"

"Not your call," Spartacus snapped, and the sting of it was worse than the sprain in his wrist, the various bruises where Crixus had thrown Agron into the wall, which Agron hadn’t even fought because, well.

"Come in Red Serpent," Agron says, from the small plane he is sitting in outside an extensive series of former salt mines, converted into a prison nobody talks about; "come in, Warrior, Archer."

Three respective affirmatives do nothing for his blood pressure. worse: the sound, over the tinny speakers, of Crixus breathing Naevia's name and then run, of Mira's "get out, get out," of watching the three dots separate into two and one, of the one staying still, lost, alone. Of watching it blink out, disappear.

"Shit," Spartacus says, breathing harsh.

"Give me statuses," Agron says, like his heart isn't trying to claw its way out of his fucking chest, "Warrior, come in--"

"They got him," says Mira, every syllable slamming into Agron’s ears like Crixus’ fist, "he dropped his earpiece, it's gone. They’re on our tail, prepare for a speedy exit."

"Did you get her?" Please make this worth something.

"Yeah," Mira says, like a prayer (please let it be true), "yeah, we got her."

--

"What happened?" Agron asks, hitting close on the plane doors as soon they tumble in, blood and filth getting all across the mesh flooring.

"The mole got us out," Spartacus says, the mess in his arms coughing, face turning towards Agron to reveal Naevia's eyes, Naevia's nose and mouth and tears, "but they came fast, too fast. He had to take Crixus to buy us time." As though it helps, he says, “You know Illythia’s MO. she won’t kill them fast.”

The sob shakes the air. "You shouldn't have," Naevia whispers, broken and cracked, "now I've doomed him too."

Mira slumps against the door. "There's no point," she says. "We can get him back." We have to.

--

two new prisoners: crixus and oenomaus.

you still secure?

as much as anyone can be. they're bringing in an outside interrogator.

--

"They have Oenomaus," Agron says, "fuck knows how they got him--"

Spartacus is a straight, brilliant line of violent anger. "Into the lion's den it is."
Naevia says, "I'm coming with you."

"You're on comms," Spartacus says, looking at her - bruised, bloodied, furious - and discarding any attempt to make her stay in bed, as would be sensible.

She nods, doesn't wince even though Agron's seen the mess of her back, of her shoulders, and he knows what kinds of pain meds she's been taking, knows breathing must be a supreme act of will itself.

black tie, says the mole, it's a black-tie execution. they have the brass to impress.

i'll bring my best stiletto, Agron says. Like a joke. Almost.

--

Mira dresses in red-gold, daring slit at the thigh and very low drapery at the front; Agron whistles, wonders where she's keeping the knives, the gun. With Mira weapons are often unnecessary; he’s pretty sure she could kill him with her shoe, if she tried. The ruby necklace at her throat is, he thinks, full of sleeping gas.

Spartacus, dapper in a perfectly-tailored suit, adjusts the knife at his ankle; looks up and smiles. Agron wonders sometimes if he is being cruel, but Mira and Spartacus are ciphers both.

"You look nice," Naevia says, and goes back to fiddling with their computer system, "God, you've been running some shit hardware." (The Naevia of Agron's training would have said that, smiling; this Naevia's voice is as hollow, desperate, as her eyes.) She's wearing an old sweater of Crixus' over a pair of Mira's leggings. He remembers her hair used to be longer.

Agron raises a hand. "Hi," he says, "so the fucking bow tie-"

Mira laughs, glides across the floor to rest her fingers on the loose fabric at his throat (bare, exposed, this is how you end up dead), loop the lines through, across, under. "Just like old times."

"Pretty much," Spartacus says. His smile is as feral as any of Crixus'.

--

It’s almost too easy to get in: Naevia still knows the system like the back of her hand, still knows how to rewrite the code so when Mira flirts with the guard a USB in Spartacus’ hand (and a program uploaded by the mole) means it’s two seconds before Agron’s face, Spartacus’ face, Mira’s face are no longer red flags but VIP list. It’s not actually an execution, obviously, but rather an evening of canapés and funding requests to celebrate the immanent destruction of the one threat to the program’s continued existence - but it’s the closest thing they’ve got to an opening, so.

“Oh,” that’s Naevia’s voice, in all their ears, “oh, they brought in Gannicus.”

Mira’s hand goes to her throat. “What--”

Spartacus’ throat moves, the murmur only audible because of the mic taped there, translating the vibrations to words in Agron’s earpiece, “Get word to the mole, we’ll exfil him with the others.”

Agron thinks, this is beginning to sound a lot like clusterfuck, and then he thinks, beginning to?

--

It’s just like any number of black-tie events Agron attended when he was on staff - same expensive dresses, expensive champagne, any number of decorations to disguise the fact that the building’s underground, that there are no windows and everyone has a hard, blank stare. He recognizes a few of the people - not many, but he wasn’t Spartacus, who isn’t recognizable himself, really. They’re all trained to disappear in a crowd.

He, Mira, and Spartacus exchange a look: disperse, until Naevia has a location, and split off in different directions; Agron tries not to feel naked without Spartacus nearby and snags a shrimp canapé off a circulating plate held by a slender, dark-haired (beautiful, thinks a part of Agron’s mind he tries to keep shut down, these days) man, probably a new recruit by the way his shoulders rest - angular, slightly dangerous, without the training yet to hide the training. “Bad luck,” Agron says, keeping his face out of the line of the cameras (no need to make Naevia’s job any more complex), “pulled the service shift?”

The recruit laughs, balancing the silver tray flat on his palm, “Could be worse,” he observes, “I could have the champagne.”

“True,” Agron says, swallowing his shrimp (delicious, but they always are), “I had it a couple of times, during my training - pretty fucking awful. Drunks falling all over you and you can’t really say no because they all have drivers.”

A smile, “So you’re a field agent, then? I haven’t seen you around, but I’m new.”

“A bunch of us have been called in,” Agron says, remembering the mission information the mole wired them, “I’m not sure what for, though.”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” the recruit shrugs gracefully. “I’m Tiberius, by the way.”

“Erik,” Agron lies. “Pleasure to meet you.” They’re all so young, he thinks. Young, and free, and this place destroys everything true about them. (About you.)

Got them, Naevia says, triumphant. There’s a closet near the left exit, meet there. They’ve rebuilt since I was last here - you too, probably.

“I’ll, uh, go mingle.”

“I can see someone making eyes at these shrimps,” Tiberius says, smirking a little. “Pleasure was mine.”

If you’re done flirting. Naevia again.

Shut up, Agron whispers.

--

Crixus and Oenomaus are being held three floors down, on a level Agron never visited even when he was allowed to wander at will (never). Mira peels off to plant explosives at the base of backup elevator shaft – the one nobody uses, with a fortunately hotwireable elevator - and that leaves Agron and Spartacus, striding along the hallways, too familiar and yet not quite.

“We fucking destroyed this place when we left,” Agron observes.

“Clearly not as thoroughly as we should have,” Spartacus frowns, and Agron can see a plan forming behind his eyes.

“We have to get Crixus back to Naevia,” he says, “or we won’t hear the end of it.”

Damn right, Naevia says, please don’t get yourselves killed before you bring him back. Two guards, right ahead. I’ve disabled the security cameras, go ahead, do what you want.

The guards are easy - shamefully easy, they decide, looking at each other over the prone bodies - clearly the Program’s been slacking under its new leadership.

Crixus is bloody but Agron’s seen him look worse. He looks up, hair shaggy in his eyes, and grins a bloody-toothed smile.

“I’m sorry,” Agron says, “I should have told you, I should have come with you--”

Crixus just rolls his eyes. “Took you long enough,” he coughs, as they unlock his chains.

Next one won’t be as easy, guys. Gannicus is in there, I don’t-

“Okay, question,” Agron says, “who the fuck is Gannicus?”

--

Gannicus is the man standing in front of bruised, broken Oenomaus with a syringe in his hand. “This is the fastest,” he’s saying.

“For fuck’s sake,” Crixus says, gesturing with the gun in his hand, “I remember you being more impressive.”

As if on cue, sirens wail.

Guards on their way.

“Don’t be an idiot, Crixus,” Gannicus says. His suit is crisper than Spartacus’, hair golden in the light. “I had a fucking plan, you idiot.” He shakes his head. “We’re under twenty feet of solid concrete, you think you can run--”

“Not so solid, in a minute.” Spartacus smirks, then sobers. “Oenomaus, it’s my fault you’re here. Please come with us.”

Stop talking and get out, you’ll be bottlenecked in a minute - the guards must have something that triggers an alarm with heart failure. Knock them both out if you have to.

“Now is not the time to fucking debate,” Agron spits, and

Gannicus sighs, shoulders slumping, syringe falling from loose fingers. “Let’s go.”

Oenomaus stirs in the chains. “Melitta.”

“Not now,” Agron says, grins a little to find Crixus in unison with him.

Gannicus looks at them, at Oenomaus. “Sorry, old friend,” he says, and hits him quickly in the temple. “Only way to get him to just do something,” he explains, “does someone want to help me with these chains?”

Explosion in five.

--

Outside is a fucking nightmare - lights dimmed, emergency lighting a malevolent crimson. Gannicus has produced two Glocks from somewhere in his suit and in the light looks dangerous, deadly.

Two routes of exit - least resistance, most resistance.

“Agron,” Spartacus says, “take Oenomaus, find Mira. We’ll draw their fire.”

“Well,” Gannicus says, teeth flashing, “I don’t know about you but this is definitely how I wanted to spend my Saturday night.”

The first wave of guards round the corner. Naevia says, hard right, now, and Agron gets a better grip on Oenomaus’ prone body and sprints.

--

“Are you sure this is the right way?” It’s dark, the sirens are blaring, it’s been a fucking long time, and Oenomaus is fucking heavy.

“I’m pretty sure it’s not.” The voice isn’t Naevia’s, but it’s familiar. “Allow me to introduce myself - my name’s Nasir. And you’re going the wrong way to get out.”

Agron’s night vision isn’t what it used to be, but he’s pretty sure - “You’re the mole,” he says, and the young recruit in the dark suit sketches him a sloppy salute, tray of shrimp nowhere to be seen.

“I owe Spartacus a thousand life-debts,” he says, “and anything that hurts the program is a joy to behold. This way.”

“How-”

Nasir’s shoulders firm, eyes bright in the darkness. “You’re going to set off explosives shortly. You’re going to want to be outside the range when it hits. Your favourite Thundercat is Panthro; you only like waffles when they’re burnt.” There’s a smile Agron thinks, maybe, barely; it hits him in the gut, hits him hard in a way it really fucking shouldn’t.

“Okay,” Agron says, “you’re due for exfil, let’s get out of here.”

--

Mira is waiting by the elevator shaft, barefoot and a little bloody, a program-issue gun in her right hand, the detonator in her left. “Agron!”

“Look what I brought,” Agron says, arm wrapped around Oenomaus’ knees.

“They’d better hurry the fuck up,” she says, pale, “I don’t know how long we’ll be able to hold the exit. Get him in the elevator, who’s-”

“Your man on the inside,” Nasir says, “soon to be outside, I suppose.”

She raises an eyebrow. “All right, then.”

Agron puts Oenomaus down in the elevator, back slumped against the far corner. “The decor really hasn’t improved,” he observes, straightening - everything feels better when you’re not carrying 180 pounds of muscle.

“That’s kind of the point,” Mira says and her eyes widen and she is raising the gun and--

The sound rattles all their ears, even through the sirens.

Agron turns to see a blonde woman in a blue dress, standing behind them with a bullethole in her chest, the light flickering across her pale face, falling to her knees.

The cry is Nasir’s.

Mira says, “What the fuck-”

Nasir is at the woman’s side in a heartbeat, kneeling to cradle her head in his hands. “Chadara, what--”

“I followed you,” she murmurs, barely audible, “I thought - I didn’t want to believe it, Tiberius, I told them you were loyal--”

Detonation in one.

“Why would you do this?” Chadara whispers. “We were safe, Tiberius.” Her eyes flutter closed.

Spartacus, Crixus, and Gannicus round the corner. “What--”

“Thank fuck,” Mira snaps, “elevator--”

“Nasir,” Spartacus says, holding out his hand.

“I have the shell on a USB,” Nasir says, “you wiped the camera footage, the detonation will block the elevator shaft--” he closes his eyes, shakes his head. “If Chadara was the mole, there’s no more suspicion.”

“Nasir,” Spartacus says, something desperate in his voice.

Nasir rises to his feet, hands bloody, shaking. “I’m more use to you in here, and you know it. Go.”

You’re out of time, Naevia says.

“Goddamnit,” Spartacus says, and steps back into the elevator. The sound of his palm against the up button rings through the tiny space.

Mira says, “Good luck,” and throws Nasir the gun.

The explosion drowns out the world but they’re rising up and up and up and Agron thinks we made it, but he can only see Nasir’s face, Nasir’s eyes and he is thinking, remembering
my turn to save you, big brother
and he drops the gun in his hands and breathes out, breathes out.

--

“We can’t use the shell anymore,” Spartacus says, showered and wearing sweatpants that hang low on his hips. “There’s no way to contact him from within the program.”

Agron scrubs a hand through his hair. The sun is coming up; its light is too bright for his eyes. “Fuck.”

“We’ll intercept him on his next mission,” Spartacus says. His hair is dripping. “Set up something more effective. Naevia says it looks like they bought it.”

“Hey,” Mira says, gently, hair falling in loose waves around her face, “Hey. This is a victory. Imagine Glaber’s face.”

It feels good, despite Nasir under all that concrete. “He’s fucking furious,” Agron says, “fucking impotent bastard.”

“That’s the spirit,” she says, and they’re all smiling and Crixus and Naevia are wrapped in each other’s arms and the sun is coming up and that’s - that’s something new.

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 02:01:59 GMT

...and now i have a midterm on the fourteenth

that's great

thanks so much universe

you have always worn your flaws upon your sleeve

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 22:50:24 GMT

omg let's hear it for magical abilities i seem to have mustered in order to get myself out of my deskchair and finally to the library! i now have the three books i was supposed to start with on this horrible plan of a paper (if anyone knows anything about marx and hegel and wants to baby me through that would be amazing because i feel like i used to know things about marx and this class has shredded ALL OF MY CONFIDENCE in myself). plan for today: get all important info out of those + the other two you picked up for interest, note if any other books are needed.

also, i got an extension on my paper that's due on the 12th till the fifteenth, which isn't amazing but honestly i probably don't need that much time/if i do i will get a medical note or panickedly email my ta and he'll probably help me out because he's a good dude. so secondary goal for today is to do the first wave of reading for that paper, because he told us exactly what to read.

to ADD to my funtimes, i also have an astro assignment due tomorrow (no worries, it'll take like half an hour) and a stats assignment due on the 12th (i haven't bothered asking for an extension because that dude's hardcore, and i also know it'll take like a day and a half max).

so my schedule basically looks like this (+ is vastly unreliable since i'm still ridiculously sick, fuck the universe):

monday: research for theory paper, research for canpol paper, astronomy assignment, polisci association meeting.
tuesday: outline for theory paper, further research if necessary. eight hours of class. sleep. email canpol ta/theory ta if monday's research was confusing.
wednesday: draft for theory paper. i expect i will be crying at this point because i don't understand anything. probably meet with theory ta. (two hours of tutorial+drop in for stats.) attempt to revise for stats quiz, but my notes are shit so who even knows.
thursday [DUE: theory paper, stats quiz]: edit theory paper. cite theory paper. hand in theory paper (god willing). (+5hrs class) probably will push handin till friday. (fingers crossed.)
friday: further research for canpol paper. meet with canpol ta, probably, because i don't know anything. start stats.
saturday: finish stats. email stats to ta, who is lovely and will look it over. third wave of canpol research.
sunday: more canpol research.
monday: correct stats. finish stats. (+polisci meeting.)
tuesday: more canpol research. (+8 hours of class)
wednesday: outline canpol. draft canpol. (run outline past ta?) (+3hrs of tutorial)
thursday [DUE: stats]: draft canpol. (+5 hours of class) hand in stats.
friday [DUE: canpol essay]: edit canpol, cite canpol, hand in canpol. collapse.

ugh looking at this makes it look even more unrealistic. fffff.

on the plus side i have bastille's new album, bad blood, which does ungodly things to my chest. UGH SO GOOD!!!!!

(ps journaling i missed you <333)