Chapter Text
When the knock sounds at the door, Maysilee grabs a carving knife from the kitchen.
To many of the people in Twelve, the knife would seem like an overreaction to a mere knock. Maybe it was. But Maysilee’s ability to make clear judgments on what is and is not an overreaction has long since been broken. The people in Twelve could think what they wanted to; they weren’t plagued by nightmares of Tributes and mutts. They hadn’t seen face-to-face what human beings could do to each other in the worst of states. They didn’t know the true dangers of the world like Maysilee did. Besides, she told herself, this was different. This wasn’t an overreaction. Far from it.
Because she doesn’t have guests. She never invites anyone over.
It had been so long since she’d had any kind of real human contact, so long that almost everyone in Twelve have long since stopped trying to reach out to her, so long that some curious children peek into her windows to see if she had died in her new house. But it was necessary. Essential. People in town may understand somewhat, but they don’t understand fully. They can’t. No one can. The one person who could is long dead now.
The knock sounds again, more insistent this time, as Maysilee creeps down the luxurious hallway. The rain patters on the windows in heavy droplets, thunder rumbling, low but powerful enough to shake the carpeted floor beneath Maysilee’s feet. All of these- the carpet, the sound of rain, the thunder- they hide the sound of her footsteps. Good. This will give her an advantage. Maysilee gets a better grip on the knife. She has the upper hand. She can take whatever is on the other side.
When she opens the door, she almost drops the knife in shock. Almost.
And she realizes in a single horrible incident that she cannot confront the person standing on the other side of the mahogany door. This is perhaps one of the only people that she cannot bear to face.
Lenore Dove stands on the marble steps leading to Maysilee’s front door, her clothing soaked through with raindrops, her brown skin slick with rainwater and curls plastered to her neck and forehead. She’s breathing heavily like she’s been running, no sprinting, and though she’s squinting in the pouring rain, though her lashes are catching raindrops that likely blur her vision, Maysilee can see the determination in her eyes.
A determination that demands to be reckoned with.
“What are you doing here?” Maysilee croaks. Her voice is dry and cracked; how long has it been since she last used it? It sounds so unfamiliar coming from her lips.
Lenore Dove takes a step forward, and Maysilee brings up the knife, more on instinct than anything else.
She doesn’t want to hurt Lenore Dove. But she will if she has to.
Lenore Dove doesn’t even flinch. If anything, her eyes burn brighter as she takes another step, nearly in the doorway now.
“Let me in,” Lenore Dove says, her voice steady but intense.
“You know I can’t do that,” Maysilee snaps. Lenore Dove takes another step, and Maysilee blocks the doorway, her chest bumping against Lenore Dove’s as she does so, causing Lenore Dove to stumble back a step.
Lenore Dove was always the shy one in school. Even though Maysilee could tell that Lenore Dove didn’t necessarily like her, she never said a word to Maysilee, always choosing to keep to herself. She read books at her desk, in the yard during recess, stared out the window at the songbirds in the trees when she finished her work early. She didn’t say a word to Maysilee or her friends. Barely even looked at them most times, averting her eyes quickly whenever Maysilee caught her staring. That was one of the only real things Maysilee knew about Lenore Dove: that Lenore Dove was shy. As such, she had always imagined Lenore Dove to be sweet. Innocent. Incapable of any kind of real violence.
But the Lenore Dove that stands before her now burns hot with fury. When her eyes meet Maysilee’s, they steal the air from Maysilee’s lungs with just how bright and angry they are. Her jaw sets in a hard line, her hands clenching into fists.
“Let. Me. In.”
Maysilee tries to slam the door shut, but Lenore Dove shoves her boot into the doorframe before it closes, stopping it in its tracks. Her hands come up to grab the edge of the door, and now the two are wrestling the door back and forth, grunting with the effort.
“Go away!” Maysilee yells angrily.
“No!” Lenore Dove shoves the door back so hard it makes Maysilee stumble back a step. She quickly recovers and slams her shoulder into the door, leaning her full weight into it. Lenore Dove doesn’t hesitate in mirroring this stance; they’re both about the same height, though Lenore Dove is a little less willow-y than Maysilee, making her a bit heavier. The door jerks back and forth uncertainly, being pushed in on by almost equal weight on both sides.
“Lenore Dove, stop it-”
“Maysilee, I am going to stand out here until you let me in!”
“You can’t do that!” Maysilee growls, slamming her shoulder again into the door again, this time hard enough to send a shock of pain down her shoulder blade. “The Peacekeepers will arrest you for breaking curfew and trespassing! They could hang you!”
“Sounds like you should let me in then!”
“No!”
In her panic, Maysilee shoves hard, harder than she means to. The door slams again, right up against Lenore Dove’s boot, harder than it had before. Lenore Dove lets out a sharp cry of pain, and a panicked guilt surges through Maysilee. Out of impulse, she pauses in her struggle for only a moment. But it’s all that Lenore Dove needs.
Lenore Dove shoves the door aside, falling forward, and slams her weight into Maysilee, hard enough to send Maysilee tumbling backwards with a yelp. She lands on the carpeted floor hard enough to knock the wind out of her, Lenore Dove right on top of her.
She struggles, but Lenore Dove moves quickly, deliberately, like she’s been thinking about this; she grabs Maysilee’s wrist and slams it hard against the ground, hard enough that her fingers spasm and she drops the knife. Lenore Dove grabs it, pulling herself off of Maysilee and dashing down the hallway, stopping at the end and turning to look at Maysilee, panting, but crouched in a stance, like she’s prepared for Maysilee to attack her.
The rain is getting into the hallway through the open door, soaking the red velvet carpet so dark it appears almost brown. Raindrops wet Maysilee’s blonde hair, droplets flinging onto her skin, her clothes. She rolls off her back, gripping the coat hanger by the door for support as she shakily stands, panting just as hard as Lenore Dove.
For a moment, they just stare at each other, both poised to run, to strike, whatever necessary. Thunder cracks, loud and deafening, making Maysilee flinch. Lenore Dove doesn’t move, but she’s shivering pitifully. With a start, Maysilee realizes how cold Lenore Dove must be; the houses in the Victor’s Village actually have air conditioning, and Lenore Dove is soaked to the bone, fully vulnerable to the cold gushes of air from the vents.
“What are you going to do? Stab me?!” Maysilee spits. “You can’t even work up the guts to sing in front of a group of people! And you think you’re going to stab a Victor of the Hunger Games?! You’re a fucking idiot!”
It’s not her most eloquent insult by any means, but she knows how to make her words sting; she’s had years of learning how to attack others, how to pick apart their insecurities, when to strike, the perfect tone to make someone quiver. It works, because Lenore Dove’s face crumbles, her lower lip trembling slightly, her dark eyes going teary and doe-like.
It doesn’t feel good, making Lenore Dove like this. Guilt flashes through Maysilee, hot and unbidden. She wants to apologize, to beg for forgiveness, but she clenches her teeth, forces her mouth shut.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Lenore Dove says, her teeth chattering. She drops her defensive position, wraps her arms around herself in a desperate attempt to become warmer. It doesn’t work; she looks downright pathetic suddenly, sopping wet and shivering, eyes far too soft to be able to put up any real kind of a fight against Maysilee.
Something in Maysilee breaks. Much to her embarrassment, hot tears start to form in her eyes, properly this time. They sting the back of her throat, burn the skin of her cheeks as they fall.
“Why won’t you leave me alone?” she pleads, her voice cracking. “I told you, I-”
“I don’t care.” Lenore Dove tosses the knife aside, which clatters across the tiles of the kitchen floor. She takes a pained step, wincing as she rests her weight on the foot Maysilee had slammed in the doorframe. “The Capitol can kill me if it wants to. I’m not going anywhere.”
Maysilee’s vision blurs. Her voice grows suddenly thick.
“Lenore Dove, you can’t-”
“Maysilee-”
“I promised Haymitch, I would-”
“Maysilee!”
“You have to go, Lenore Dove, I’m begging you-”
Cold hands cradle Maysilee’s face, shaking but firm. When Maysilee finally looks up, she can see those dark eyes, far too close to hers, can see the trembling of her lower lip, how she tries to still it by sinking her teeth into it. She can see the spray of freckles across her cheeks, the hint of shadows beneath her eyes, the lashes stuck together from the rain outside.
Four scratches down the side of Lenore Dove’s left thumb, slowly healing, parts of the scabs having fallen away to reveal the paler skin of new scars beneath.
The ability to speak seems to have been robbed from Maysilee; she opens her mouth to protest, to beg Lenore Dove to let her go, but instead, a sob is wrenched from her lips. Maysilee falls forward, and Lenore Dove catches her, crumples to the ground with Maysilee, holding her tightly as Maysilee begins to wail, high-pitched and loud and cracking like glass. Lenore Dove tucks her chin over the crown on Maysilee’s head and squeezes hard, water soaking Maysilee’s clothes and skin, cold seeping into Maysilee’s bones, into her stomach and heart.
And god help her, because Maysilee clings to Lenore Dove like a lifeline. She clings to the first human contact that she’s had in a very long time.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Maysilee is being held back. She’s not sure by whom or what. She finds that she doesn’t particularly care.
How could she?
Her eyes are on the orange tongues of flame, licking up the white siding of her house and painting the violet sky above with shades of hellish amber.
She must be thrashing; her elbow connects with something soft, and she hears a grunt of pain, but the vice-like grip around her waist doesn’t give. It tightens, and Maysilee can hear animal cries, furious and agonized, cries that take her far too long to realize are coming from her, shredding her voice raw, barely audible beneath the roar of the fire.
Then all at once, her whole body seems to give, and the person who’s holding her falls to the ground with her, drawing her close and clinging to her with shaking hands.
One of those hands moves and touches one of Maysilee’s necklaces. With a start, Maysilee realizes that it’s holding Haymitch’s flint striker, still hanging around her neck from the leather bootlace he had used. She lets out a cry, clawing at the hand hard enough to draw blood.
“No!” she screams. “It’s not yours! It’s not! Haymitch told me-”
Her voice is cracking like fine china, hoarse and pathetic. She can’t tell if it’s from the screaming, from the billows of black smoke that poison her lungs at the air around her, or if it’s a twisted combination of the both. The hand draws back, and for the first time, Maysilee sees it; the nails painted orange, the skin a light brown color, the inside of the sleeve containing a strip of raspberry ribbon, slowly being soaked with blood from the four scratches carved into the back of its hand.
She doesn’t resist when the hand comes back to touch the flint striker again, the painted fingernails moving shakily over the feathers and scales carved into it. Over the engraving. Maysilee doesn’t want to give it up, not yet, but the hand never tries to unloop it from her neck. Despite her animalistic desire to cling to the last bit of her brother that remained, she tries to tell the person that they can if they want to. It’s for her, after all.
But then the hand releases the flint striker. Lenore Dove wraps her arms around Maysilee, her cheeks stained with tears and dark curls wild.
“Let me go,” Maysilee pleads. “Lenore Dove, please-”
“They’re dead, Maysilee,” Lenore Dove says shakily, barely audible over the crackling of the fire. “It won’t do any good to run after them now.”
Maysilee’s eyes run over the street; there are people running, yelling, tossing buckets of water into the roaring inferno that refuses to cease. In a single, terrible moment, she knows it to be true.
Without realizing exactly what she’s doing, Maysilee buries her face in the curve of Lenore Dove’s neck with a painful gasp. Lenore Dove’s arms tighten around her, almost hard enough to hurt, but Maysilee is suddenly terrified that if Lenore Dove lets go, she will fall apart.
Distantly, Maysilee registers that Lenore Dove’s shoulders are shaking. But neither lets the other go, even as Maysilee’s house, the one containing her sister and father and mother, collapses into a pile of burning embers and ash.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Maysilee can feel the way Lenore Dove’s eyes scan her home in the Victor’s Village. The fine layer of dust coating almost everything. The clothes scattered around the house. The overflowing trash cans, drink stains on the cream carpets of the living room, the smell of quiet filth that fills the house.
Maysilee almost doesn’t let Lenore Dove into her bedroom, nerves overcoming her when she remembers the current state of it with sickening clarity. But she squares her shoulders, tries to put on her familiar, haughty look, the one that she had used to shield herself from the indignities of being a member of the poorest District in all of Panem, the one that she had used on Capitol citizens in a desperate attempt to show that even with their riches and fine clothing, she was not beneath them, even as she knew how far from the truth that was. She lets that look slip back onto her features, twists the doorknob, and swings the door open.
The bed is rumpled, the sheets stinking of dried sweat and filth. Dust fills the air, covers the dresser, the floor, the windowsill. Dirty clothes tossed everywhere, in piles on the empty side of the bed, in heaps on the floor. Mugs and cups sit on the desk, a few with liquid still inside, dead bugs floating on the surface. The bedside drawer is open, and Maysilee moves quickly to close it, unsure if Lenore Dove had seen its contents or not, but determined not to let that faze her.
She feels Lenore Dove’s eyes scan over the room, feels her slow to take it all in. When Maysilee turns, Lenore Dove is looking at her with such pity it makes anger flare up in Maysilee, hot and unforgiving. She has to turn away, resisting the urge to slap that pity off Lenore Dove’s face, trying to hide her humiliation at the expression itself, yanks open the drawers to her dresser.
Maysilee doesn’t say a word as she hands Lenore Dove a set of clothing.
It’s nothing remarkable really; a set of pants, and a lavender silk button-up shirt. She and Lenore Dove stand eye to eye, and so Maysilee figures that her clothing will fit Lenore Dove just fine.
Lenore Dove doesn’t hesitate; her sopping coat and blouse stick to her as she strips them off, revealing a soaked-through brassiere. Maysilee quickly looks away, turning to face the corner of the room with an all-too-familiar feeling of shame and guilt as Lenore Dove changes into dry clothing. Maysilee busies herself by changing her own wet clothes; she’s pretty sure Lenore Dove isn’t looking, but just in case, she changes as quickly as she can. She doesn’t want to be exposed for any longer than necessary.
When Maysilee turns, Lenore Dove is in the bathroom, the counter scattered with empty bottles of perfume, half-used cases of makeup, an opened lipstick forming a tiny circle of melted pink wax on the quartz surface. The door is open, and Lenore Dove is holding one of the only clean towels, gingerly patting down her wet curls and drying the rainwater from her damp skin.
When she sees Maysilee looking, she holds up another towel to her, like a peace offering of sorts. For a moment, Maysilee considers refusing. But something in her deflates, and so Maysilee takes it with a grimace of thanks. The silence is awkward as the two girls squeeze water from their hair, pat their skin dry, neither one of them looking at the other.
But when she’s finished, Lenore Dove doesn’t leave the house.
Maysilee is at a complete loss for what to do about it.
For a while, Lenore Dove and Maysilee seem to just orbit each other, not touching or acknowledging each other. Lenore Dove heads to the living room, wraps a blanket around her shoulders, and sits on the couch, hair still damp and eyes alert. Maysilee picks up the knife from the kitchen floor and shoves it back into its spot in the knife block. She paces around the house restlessly, avoiding the living room as much as she can in the hopes that Lenore Dove would get bored and leave, but she seems to have the patience of some kind of saint, because Lenore Dove makes no move to go. She doesn’t even move her position on the couch, much less get up.
Maysilee is the one that ends up getting bored (and even more irritated; her mother always used to say that Maysilee became as angry and restless as a vengeful wasp when she was bored). So she grabs the final clean towel from the bathroom and tries, with motions sharpened with anger, to soak up the water on the floor in the hallway. It doesn’t help in the slightest. She just gets a damp towel, and a disgustingly damp carpet.
It doesn’t matter. The house is filthy anyway. What’s some potential mold in the carpet going to do?
Outside, the world has darkened into shades of ebony as the sun fully sets. The thunder and lightning have stopped, but the rain persists, only softening slightly from its intensity before. A glance in the living room confirms that Lenore Dove has still not moved an inch, still sitting on the couch wrapped in a throw blanket. Furious, Maysilee stands in the doorway of the living room, staring at Lenore Dove with her best withering look. She can see Lenore Dove’s throat bob nervously, but she doesn’t acknowledge Maysilee. She doesn’t even look in Maysilee’s direction.
“You have to go,” Maysilee says finally, her voice cold and cutting. Lenore Dove shakes her head. Maysilee lets out a frustrated sigh, gritting her teeth and pointing to the door. “I’m serious, Lenore Dove. Out.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” Lenore Dove says quietly, her voice trembling.
Maysilee swallows a sudden wave of nausea at the admission. The next words come out painfully vulnerable, quietly afraid.
“I’m not the one you should be afraid of.”
Lenore Dove’s jaw tightens, but stubbornly, she doesn’t move. Maysilee takes a step closer, crossing her arms and staring down at Lenore Dove on the couch. She doesn’t return Maysilee’s stare, still looking ahead like the dusty curve of the mantleplace holds some kind of answer to a question that she’s been yearning for.
“Why are you even here?!” Maysilee finally snaps. “I thought you hated me.”
“I didn’t hate you,” Lenore Dove says quietly. Her fingers absentmindedly trace the pattern on the blanket wrapped around her shoulders. “Not even during our school days. I wasn’t fond of you by any means, but I never hated you."
“And now?!” Maysilee demands, icy and cold. Lenore Dove frowns in confusion, and finally, she looks over at Maysilee, her face vulnerable. Aching.
“Why would I hate you now?” Lenore Dove asks, her voice small.
Maysilee scoffs.
“Maybe because I came home alive, and your boyfriend didn’t?!”
Tears prick in Lenore Dove’s eyes. Another stabbing sensation of guilt spreads through Maysilee’s chest. She tries to ignore it, tries to shove it down deep where it can’t hurt her anymore. She can’t get soft now. She can’t back down. She needs Lenore Dove to leave before she gets hurt, because everyone is at risk now. Everyone who associates with Maysilee is in danger.
“Maysilee, I don’t blame you for Haymitch’s death,” Lenore Dove says tearfully. Her hands fist the blanket, pulling it tighter around her like she’s trying to block out a sudden draft, her voice rising. “I was the reason he ended up in that Arena. I was the one who fought that Peacekeeper. He was sent in because he was defending me, remember?! How could I ever blame you?!”
Maysilee turns her back to Lenore Dove, stalking off towards the exit.
“You loved him too,” Lenore Dove says, her voice a little louder this time, quivering in the air between them. Maysilee bristles, stopping in her tracks.
“I never felt that way for-”
“I know you didn’t love him the same way I did,” Lenore Dove interrupts quickly. “But you loved him the same amount.” A brief hesitation. “Didn’t you?”
Maysilee doesn’t answer. She lets the silence stretch, letting it hang between them.
A silence that’s broken, painfully so, when a choked sound escapes Lenore Dove’s lips.
“Maysilee, you’re one of the only people who understands how hard this is.”
In her angry, slightly dazed state, Maysilee almost wants to laugh. But instead, she whirls back around, stalking closer to the couch again until she’s standing by the arm of it, lacing each of her words carefully with bitter poison. “And you came here to… what, exactly? Ask me to dredge up old memories of him to make you feel better?”
“Please,” Lenore Dove pleads, suddenly sitting up, moving to the edge of the couch like a bird about to take flight. “I can’t go back to that Covey house, I can’t. Everywhere I look, I see him, I can’t stand it-”
“So you came here to crash on my couch? To run away from the Covey, to demand charity and housing from me-”
“I-” Lenore Dove stammers, freezing. “No, not exactly-”
A wild sense of pride fills Maysilee’s chest. Lenore Dove is falling into the position that Maysilee needs her to be in, a vulnerable, scrambling one where Maysilee can rip and tear at her until she finally leaves, until she’s so far away from Maysilee that the Capitol will never even think to come near her again.
Maysilee laughs, loud and sharp. “It certainly sounds that way!”
“Maybe,” Lenore Dove concedes hesitantly, before rushing forward again. “But that’s not the only reason-”
“Oh, it’s not?” Maysilee mocks. “Because it seems like you needed somewhere to hide from your daddy, so you ran to the person you could most easily latch on to and suck dry like a parasite-”
Something in Lenore Dove snaps, like a spark leaping from a flint striker into a pile of leaves. Her eyes go up in flames, burning hot enough that no amount of ice Maysilee could send her way would ever reach her.
Lenore Dove strikes like lightning; sharp, distinct, white-hot.
“I’m worried about you, Maysilee!” Lenore Dove shouts, loud enough that it feels like it shakes the house, tears beginning to fall down her cheeks as her voice cracks into uneven shards that cut into Maysilee. “You’ve been locking yourself up in this house, doing God knows what! No one has actually seen you in months! Some people think you’re dead!”
Maysilee stands, completely stunned. Lenore Dove swallows hard, her hands reaching for Maysilee’s, like she’s pleading, like Maysilee is both the lifeboat in the ocean and the one drowning in the waves.
“I saw the morphine needles in your garbage,” she whimpers. “I saw them in your bedside table, Maysilee!”
Maysilee sees burning red.
She feels suddenly horribly off-balance; Lenore Dove has flipped the dynamic, the one that Maysilee had so prided herself on being able to navigate, and now Maysilee is the vulnerable one, helpless to Lenore Dove and whatever she wants to do to her. The thought makes her feel angry, makes her feel like a wild animal clawing at the muddy edges of a pit, trying desperately to grab ahold of the ledge and climb out. She tries to regain back a small amount of the power that she had, snatching her hands away from Lenore Dove’s grasp and snarling.
“That’s none of your-!”
Lenore Dove stands so fast that the blanket falls from her shoulders into a heap on the ground, so fast that Maysilee almost falls over backwards in shock. Her voice replaces the thunder that has long since stopped outside, shaking Maysilee to her core and roaring through her bones.
“Maysilee, I don’t care that you’re using!” Lenore Dove shouts. “I care that you’re alone!”
It feels like an anvil has been dropped from the sky, crashing onto the ground between them, loud and final. Maysilee stops dead, her eyes going wide with fury and fear and something heavier, something that threatens to drag her down into the abyss below to drown or to be buried alive.
She’s suddenly aware that she’s crying again. She’s crying, and she’s shaking, and she’s humiliating herself in front of Lenore Dove. She’s crying in front of one of the only girls in the District to ever look down on Maysilee.
Alone.
Yes, that seemed like an accurate assessment of her current predicament.
It’s strange, hearing every bit of suffering that she had experienced in the last few months be summed up in a single, concise word, as simple as it was painful.
Haymitch had always said that he loved Lenore Dove like all-fire. He never mentioned that Lenore Dove was fire itself. A fire that burns hot enough to melt Maysilee’s icy exterior and words, leaving her completely exposed and raw and vulnerable in a way she’s never been before.
Maysilee turns on her heel and stomps out of the living room, up the stairs to her bedroom.
“You better be out of this house by morning!” she yells down the steps. “I’m serious!” And with that, she slams the door to her bedroom and turns the lock. She will never let Lenore Dove close enough to melt her defenses ever again.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lenore Dove is curled up in her blanket, asleep on the couch, when Maysilee comes downstairs.
Of course she is.
Her curls are slightly frizzy, dark and spread out around her head like the swirling edges of water. Her lashes rest against her freckled cheeks, occasionally fluttering softly as she stirs slightly. Her lips are parted, her breathing almost silent as her chest rises and falls, her fingers curled slightly where they rest against the cushions.
She looks like a creature from a fairy tale. Like a nymph plucked from a mossy bed of flowers in the forest and placed, still sleeping, in this living room, sacred and innocent and achingly beautiful.
Maysilee stands over Lenore Dove’s sleeping form, simmering with rage.
For a long while, she debates with herself whether or not she has the strength to pick up Lenore Dove and toss her out the front door. She wouldn’t be much heavier than Maysilee. She could do it if she wanted to; push Lenore Dove out the door while she’s vulnerable like this, while she’s too tired and dazed to fight back. Yes, that seems like the right course of action.
After a long while, Maysilee moves quietly to the kitchen, leaving Lenore Dove on the couch to sleep on peacefully.
She makes a simple breakfast consisting of toast with blackberry jam spread unevenly across it; her hands are shaking too much to do it properly. After a moment of hesitation, she makes another plate, silently cursing herself as she does so.
She moves as quickly as she can in the kitchen; there’s a pile of dirty plates in the sink, the food going hard and moldy on the china surfaces, and the sight and scent are enough to make her gag. The buzzing flies don’t help much either, the sound making Maysilee feel jumpy. Sometimes, Maysilee is almost convinced that they’re mutts, sent from the Capitol. One wrong move, and they’ll descend upon her, peel the meat from her bones and feast on her innards until she’s nothing but a set of pearly bones, just like Ampert.
She almost wishes that were the case.
Maysilee leaves the second plate out on the table in the dining room, before sitting down a good distance away from it, and trying to eat.
Despite her best efforts, Maysilee only manages to choke down half a slice of the toast. This scares her slightly, a dull pang of panic echoing through her. After the Arena, she swore to herself that she would never again take food for granted. That she would eat what she could with no regard for her weight, and that she would treasure each bite, because she now knew how hunger hurts, how it spreads through you like a cancer and chokes the life from you.
But the morphine that she’s been indulging in since she came home, the one that she stuck in her arm this morning, curbs her hunger. It makes it harder to eat, makes her feel like her stomach has shrunk three sizes. If she forced down too much, she would just choke it back up again later, which was a complete waste of food entirely. She’s lost a significant amount of weight since she left the Capitol.
She stopped looking in mirrors when she’s not in clothes.
Since coming home from the Capitol, since losing her family and her belongings in that fire, she finds that she tends to switch between two extremes. It starts the same; she’ll go days without showering. Days of lounging around in loose pants and an oversized sweatshirt, only getting up long enough to drag herself to the bathroom to relieve herself before she falls back into bed.
Then, she’ll catch her reflection in a mirror, and will be overcome by a sense of panic. In a single moment of sickening realization, she can feel the dried sweat, smell the stink of her skin and clothes, feel the itchiness of her scalp, and see the sunken look of her face.
And she’ll suddenly go into an almost manic state. She’ll scrub herself raw in the shower, shave every bit of body hair that she can find, frantically condition and detangle her hair. She’ll put on layer after layer of expensive Capitol makeup in a frantic attempt to hide the way her cheeks are becoming hollow, the circles under her eyes, the needle marks in her arms. Buff and polish her nails. Curl her hair. Dress in the finest clothes she has.
And then, as done up as a Capitol citizen, she’ll stand in front of the mirror. Blonde hair curled, face painted, jewelry glistening. And she’ll plead with her reflection, with her done-up face.
Please.
I just want it all to stop.
Please show me that I’m still here. That I’m still beautiful. That I’m worth something.
Please, let this make me feel better.
But it never does.
Instead, she looks in the mirror and sees a broken doll, painting over the fissures of her exterior in a desperate attempt to distract from the missing pieces that have been cracked or snapped off entirely.
Doing things like that, dressing up, caring for her appearance, used to bring her a sort of comfort. It was something small that she had control over. A way to establish her own power in a given situation. Now, it feels like she’s trying to deny a part of herself. Now, with weight lost and the house slowly falling apart around her, it all feels like too much of a beast to try to take. It feels insurmountable. It feels as though this is the way she’s meant to be, the way she’s always been, messy and ugly and disgusting. At the very least, it’s what she deserves.
How can someone like her, who witnessed and took part in such ugliness, try to pretend to be beautiful?
Lenore Dove enters the dining quietly, the blanket still wrapped protectively around her shoulders, blinking the remaining sleep from her eyes. Maysilee quickly looks away, gesturing to the plate on the table. Lenore Dove frowns suspiciously, eyeing Maysilee as her body goes tense in anticipation.
“You’re not trying to kick me out anymore?” she asks.
“It’s not going to do much good, is it?” Maysilee says flatly. “You’ll just come right back.” Lenore Dove doesn’t react; her eyes scan Maysilee’s face, and then Lenore Dove steps forward towards Maysilee, her thumb coming up to wipe at the corner of Maysilee’s mouth. Maysilee freezes in place, too shocked to make any kind of real move to stop her. Heat crawls across her face as Lenore Dove touches her cheek, as her thumb grazes the corner of her lips, but Lenore Dove pulls back after a moment, showing Maysilee a smear of blackberry jam on her thumb.
“You just…” She gestures to the corner of Maysilee’s mouth again. Her cheeks darken, and she clears her throat. “...sorry.”
Lenore Dove seems suddenly shy again as she turns away, grabbing a napkin from a pile in the middle of the table to wipe her thumb off on. She’s back to that quiet girl Maysilee knew in school, the one that keeps to herself and avoids the other kids her age. It’s such a contrast to the night before that it briefly makes Maysilee wonder if she had merely dreamt their argument. If Lenore Dove is a flame, then she no longer resembles a burning inferno, but rather a candle; small, softly glowing, flickering faintly in the corner of Maysilee’s vision.
Lenore Dove sits and picks up her own slice of toast from her plate, and eats quietly, gratefully. Her eyes travel around the luxurious dining room, over the dusty paintings and swirling patterns of the wallpaper, until they fall upon the half-eaten slice of toast on Maysilee’s plate. They remain there for a bit too long, long enough to make Maysilee feel suddenly self-conscious. Maysilee pushes the feeling away the best she can, and in a strange moment of quiet kindness, slides the half-eaten toast gently towards Lenore Dove. Lenore Dove shakes her head, pushing it back. Her eyes move over Maysilee’s form, soft and curious in a way that makes Maysilee feel warm inside.
“Have you been eating?” Lenore Dove asks softly, her dark eyes concerned.
This snaps Maysilee back to reality. To the night before.
A wave of cold irritation seeps into her bones.
“Why do you care?!” Maysilee snaps icily. “Hell, why are you even still here?! If this is about your secret graffiti, I’m not going to tell anyone, so just go away-”
“Is it so crazy to think that I actually might care about you?!” Lenore Dove snaps back, her fiery nature rising to meet Maysilee’s frosty one so quickly it almost gives Maysilee whiplash. “Is it impossible for your mind to comprehend that I’m concerned for your well-being? That you meant something to Haymitch, and so you mean something to me?! Is that so hard for you to understand?!”
Maysilee should back down; instead, she rises to the argument.
“Oh, Haymitch? You mean the boyfriend who you trash-talked me to?!”
“I can get over a petty gripe that I had with you when I was twelve, Maysilee! I’m not a little schoolgirl anymore!”
“Are you certain?! Because you ran away from home like a child, you threw a temper tantrum last night-”
“I did?!”
“-and oh, yes, I’ll bet it was suddenly very easy to get over your little butthurt feelings about me, especially when I suddenly have this large, expensive house that you could waltz right into-”
Lenore Dove stands suddenly, slamming her hands so loudly on the dining room table that it makes Maysilee jump. “Maysilee, I was arrested and interrogated by Peacekeepers when I was twelve years old! I spent the majority of my time during the Games in a prison being tortured and assaulted by guards! Do you really think that your little snipes at me are going to intimidate me in any way?!”
Maysilee can’t think of a response to that one.
So instead, she stares at Lenore Dove, mouth agape in shock, at a complete loss for words. Lenore Dove scowls at Maysilee, her hands shaking slightly as she picks up her plate and storms off to the kitchen. Maysilee remains there for a moment, her mind reeling at a million miles a second, so hot with fury that it feels like steam is shooting out of her ears. For a brief moment, she imagines running in after Lenore Dove and hitting her as hard as she can, dragging her down and clawing at her until she runs out of the house just to get Maysilee to stop attacking her-
Then she remembers the state of her kitchen.
A surge of panic rushes through her. Maysilee jumps up, tries to run to intercept Lenore Dove, but it’s too late; Lenore Dove stands in front of the pile of dishes, her eyes scanning over the moldy bits of food and the swarm of flies around the sink, a disgusted sort of expression on her face.
There’s no way for Maysilee to win this. No way for her to continue to pretend that she is above Lenore Dove. Maysilee is at the bottom, so far beneath Lenore Dove, beneath the Capitol, beneath anyone in Twelve at all. She’s pathetic, she’s disgusting, she’s nothing at all.
Especially to Lenore Dove.
At the very least, maybe this will be the thing that finally convinces Lenore Dove to leave.
Lenore Dove turns back to look at Maysilee, her expression unreadable. Maysilee is almost certain that a part of Lenore Dove is taking pleasure in this; little Miss Maysilee Donner, so high and mighty, looking down her nose on the people of Twelve, now reduced to a morphine-addled, hideous mess of a person with tangled locks, sunken cheeks, and a sink full of moldy dishes.
But Lenore Dove’s jaw sets. She places her plate down next to the filthy sink. Ducks to the cabinet underneath to grab a sponge, the untouched bottle of dish soap, and a pair of rubber gloves. She pulls back her hair, ties it back with a sky-blue ribbon, one of many that are looped around her wrists. She brushes past Maysilee, marches over to the other cabinets, rifling through until she pulls out a bottle of wine, a shot glass, and a roll of shrinkwrap.
“What are you doing?!” Maysilee demands, her voice surprisingly hoarse. She feels humiliated. Raw. Vulnerable. She had always prided herself on being clean and proper, and this crack in her persona, this manifestation of a flaw that is so plain to Lenore Dove, feels like standing stark naked in front of her.
Lenore Dove uncorks the wine bottle, pouring it into the shot glass. “Old trick Tam Amber taught me. We get fruit flies in the summer sometimes.” She adds a few drops of dish soap to the wine, covering the top with the shrink wrap. She secures it with a rubber band, pokes a few holes in it with a toothpick, and sets it on the windowsill behind the sink.
Then, her hands move to the filled sink. She stacks the moldy plates in piles next to the sink, filling up the counter to the right of the basin with stacks of filthy dishes and piles of silverware caked with rotting food residue. She grabs the sponge, swats a few flies buzzing around her head, and picks up the first plate, turning on the water hot enough until it steams, drenching the plate in dish soap, and beginning to scrub furiously without a word.
It’s nothing like what she was expecting Lenore Dove to do, not even in the slightest. Maysilee doesn’t know what else to do but watch, completely stunned as Lenore Dove goes through, piece by piece of cutlery, plate by plate, bowl by bowl, and scrubs.
It’s not all pretty. Lenore Dove wrinkles her nose at each dish, even gags once or twice at a particularly bad plate. But each time she does, her eyes burn with determination in that way that makes Maysilee’s heart flutter in her chest. And then she attacks it with the hot water, soap, and sponge like her life depends on it.
Lenore Dove is about a quarter of the way through the pile of dirty dishes when Maysilee finally speaks.
“I’m sorry,” she says. She’s surprised by how soft her voice has gotten, how meek and quiet. “I know it’s bad.”
A hint of a smile plays across Lenore Dove’s lips. Her curls are growing wild from the steam; she blows one away from her forehead as she picks up a bowl, her thumb tracing over a chip along the rim of it.
“After I went to…” Lenore Dove chokes, but forces herself to continue, her voice delicate and fragile. “... went to Haymitch’s funeral, I stayed in bed for weeks. Clerk Carmine would bring me these apples. He was trying to make me feel better, you know?” She laughs, dry and humorless, pained. She pours dish soap onto the bowl, wets the sponge. “Anyways, I always felt so… heartsick, I guess, that I could never eat them. And then I felt bad for not eating them. So I would just put them under my bed.”
Maysilee frowns, but doesn’t interrupt. Lenore Dove continues, her voice shaking slightly.
“Well, one day, Tam Amber came in to check on me. He opened the door to my bedroom and started gagging.” Lenore Dove washes the soap away from the bowl, sets it aside, and reaches for another dish. “Turns out, the apples had gone bad. They were getting all squishy and brown under my bed. It took forever to clean up all the goo and get rid of the bugs.”
Out of shock more than anything else, Maysilee laughs. But she quickly catches herself, clearing her throat as her cheeks heat up with shame. “Sorry,” she mumbles.
“Don’t be,” Lenore Dove replies quickly. She gives Maysilee a shaky sort of smile. “It’s funny.”
Another silence stretches, long and unbroken between them. The pile of clean dishes grows a little.
Maysilee hadn't gone to Haymitch’s funeral. She couldn’t bring herself to, a regret that keeps her up at night sometimes. But her mind conjures an image of Lenore Dove, standing by a grave, dressed in black. Devoid of the bits of color usually stitched into her clothing. She wonders if Lenore Dove reached out to Burdock for comfort. If she was close enough to reach out to Willamae and Sid for support.
Looking at her now, hunched over Maysilee’s sink, unable to speak of Haymitch without bursting into tears, she knows that Lenore Dove had remained alone at that funeral.
Maysilee reaches out and touches Lenore Dove’s elbow. Lenore Dove doesn’t look up, instead scrubbing harder like she’s trying to distract herself. Maysilee swallows.
“I’m sorry about Haymitch.”
Lenore Dove’s hand finally goes still on the plate in the sink. She bites her lower lip as she stares out the window, at the rainwater-soaked ground outside, blinking rapidly to fight back against the rising emotions. Maysilee continues shakily, tears of her own starting to form.
“I can’t even imagine,” Maysilee whispers. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Silence again.
Lenore Dove turns off the sink with a shaky hand and sets the plate down, her gloved hands moving to grip the edge of the sink. She takes a few shaky breaths, but on the fourth one, it splits into sobs, soft and breathless. Like she’s trying to fight them before she speaks.
“I just…” Another broken exhale. A sniffle as she tries to pull herself together. “...there’s no one to talk to. The Covey were all so surprised that he meant so much to me. Because to them, he was just this bootlegger kid who was trying to get me into trouble. They didn’t even know him, but they hated him, and now they’re so surprised that I’m actually grieving for him because they never even cared enough to know him in the first place.”
Lenore Dove’s breathing begins to quicken, her words growing thick with emotion.
“And I tried to talk to Burdock about it, but he’s pretending like nothing happened. Because he’s torn up too, and he can’t bear to talk about it because he doesn’t want to cry, and he’s trying to be strong for Astrid. And I definitely can’t talk to Willamae and Sid because they’re on the verge of starvation all the time now, and Willamae has had to pick up so much extra work just to survive-”
She brings a hand up to her nose, her eyes squeezing shut.
“And the one person, the one person I want to talk about this to more than anyone else?! He’s dead.”
A single tear slips down Lenore Dove’s cheek.
“Haymitch is gone, and I am so…”
Maysilee knows the word, even before Lenore Dove says it.
“...alone.”
Maysilee’s heart twists painfully and sharply in her chest.
Before she can think better of it, she steps up behind Lenore Dove and wraps her arms around her, buries her face in her wild curls and holds on. Lenore Dove finally bursts into tears, properly this time, melting into Maysilee’s hold as she cries, as she hiccups and gasps for air amidst the ugly heaving of her sobs. Maysilee holds on even as she herself begins to cry as well, quieter than Lenore Dove, but still pained, still aching and raw and hurting.
“You know…” Lenore Dove weeps. “I have this picture of him. It’s this stupid picture I took of him by the lakeside with Burdock. And he’s smiling at me.” A new wave of sobs emerges from Lenore Dove’s lips, and Maysilee nods into her shoulder. “I-I had to put it away, I had to hide it, because every time I look at that picture, all I can think is…” She swallows with a pained sound, bursts like a dam yet again.
“...is that he doesn’t know! This person in this picture doesn’t know that he’s doomed! That he’ll never get to live that life he dreamt of! It’s gone, it was stolen-”
Lenore Dove makes a strangled sound at the end of her sentence, and Maysilee feels her fingers dig into the palms of her hands in an attempt to ground herself as Lenore Dove chokes out, “I can’t, I can’t look at him-”
“I know,” Maysilee whimpers, her voice catching as tears stream down her own sunken cheeks. She turns her head to press her cheek against Lenore Dove’s shoulder, gasping for air as she shakily confesses, “I have a picture of my family in a locket. I have to keep it away from eyesight in my jewelry box, or else I’d-”
Lenore Dove turns in Maysilee’s arms and hugs her properly.
In a single moment, every bit of fight leaves Maysilee. The selfish desire to have someone, anyone in her life wins out. It is a decision that she’s not sure if she will regret or not, but right now, it feels like the only one that can be made.
And in a single moment, for the first time in her life, Maysilee understands Lenore Dove, fully, even if only for the moment itself.
She understands that Lenore Dove is here because she cares about Maysilee. She’s here because she’s grieving, and needs someone who understands. She’s here because she can’t stand the confusion of the Covey, the misunderstanding and the judgments, and she has nowhere else she can go.
Most of all, she’s here because she recognizes the loneliness in Maysilee, the loneliness so much like her own, and is determined to do something about it. For both of their sakes.
Maysilee pulls Lenore Dove impossibly closer, as if she can fuse them into one being, as if she can squeeze the pain from her and take it as her own, and Lenore Dove does the same, breathing raggedly as sobs escape her lips, the sounds joining Maysilee’s in a mournful chorus.
“I’m sorry, Lenore Dove,” she says, though the words never feel like enough. Lenore Dove shakes her head, presses her mouth to the curve of Maysilee’s shoulder in a mirror of what Maysilee had done to her. Her hair smells slightly flowery, smells of rain and earth and sun against Maysilee’s nose, and she gasps in lungfuls of it.
They hold each other tightly in that kitchen, surrounded by a slowly decreasing population of buzzing flies, and piles of clean and dirty dishes alike; the evidence, the ugly physical manifestations of Maysilee’s grief and trauma surrounding them like the bars of a cage.