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She nearly slipped, the rain turning the soil into mud, but Lucy Gray Baird kept on running.
The snake under his mother’s shawl should buy her a bit more time.
Her heart was in her throat as his voice continued to echo through her mind.
Besides you?
You wouldn’t tell anyone.
Her gut feeling was right.
There were three people who hung for Mayfair’s death.
Sejanus was the only one unaccounted for.
She remembered the way Coriolanus stood there, lips tight, eyes vacant, like he knew. He must have.
It had struck her odd.
And now she finally understood why.
He killed his best friend. His brother.
Who was to say she wouldn’t be next?
Her chest began to constrict, forcing her to stop running. She clutched a tree, gulping in breaths like she was underwater. The bark was rough, but something solid she could hang on to. She wasn’t a fighter nor a hunter. Lucy Gray was a performer and now she was in a song about her survival.
I can’t let you die.
I’m going to get you out of here.
Tears stung her eyes, and she pressed her face to the tree, lightly banging it, a sob strangled in her lungs.
He broke her trust.
He ruined it.
She loved him. He saw her for the real her. Everything he’d done was for her, right?
He did want to go back to the Capitol, she knew that. But he sacrificed so much for her. He must have known he would get caught cheating in the Games.
She looked back towards the cabin. She was too far away to see it, the thicket of trees keeping her hidden from him.
Lucy Gray touched her lips, remembering the feel of Coriolanus’s own on them. He kissed her until her toes curled. There was a sweetness in his kisses that slowly turned into desperation. Like he was trying to carve himself into her. She’d never been kissed like that before. Billy Taupe’s kisses were lukewarm compared to Coriolanus’s. Billy kissed her like he had an itch to scratch. Coriolanus touched her, let alone kissed her, and he made her blood quicken, made her lean until she was pressed up against him.
This was the same boy who she now feared might kill her.
He held the gun, looked at it like it was his salvation and when his eyes snapped to her, she could see them clouded with paranoia.
But he was following her to an unknown place. He was giving up the Capitol for her. He never indicated he wanted to go back.
Lucy Gray ran her teeth over her lower lip.
He loved her.
He must have, right?
She was a performer, after all. She twirled the entirety of the Capitol around her finger with one short interview and one song. She embodied the demure girl who had nerves of steel and heaps of courage. She performed for Coriolanus until he knew he had to save her.
But now her performance became a reality.
Oh, she loved him.
Her heart had skipped multiple beats, and she nearly fell to the floor when she saw him standing there, his head shaved and grinning at her.
Lucy Gray closed her eyes.
He loved her.
He loved her.
He loved her.
He killed for her.
He wouldn’t hurt her.
The rain stopped, the scent of petrichor rising in the air.
She could go back, tell him she ventured further into the woods looking for Katniss and forgot herself. That she dropped his mother’s shawl unknowingly.
Yes, she should think rationally about this.
This was her Coriolanus Snow. She had been through the worst with him. She had no one left in this world but him. He knew what she went through. More than the Covey.
She wasn’t the same girl before.
She would survive this world, but her heart wanted him.
She wanted to fall asleep in his arms. Shed away the nightmares until all that was left were dreams. He’d want that too, right? A new start? Even if his heart still belonged to the Capitol?
He would learn to love the woods like she did. Find the magic in them like she did. Besides, where they were going, if there was a destination, would be a different place for the both of them. The trees would become wilder, the animals more abundant, surrounded by strange and new plants and flowers.
There might not be any katniss where they were going.
Lucy Gray took one step forward to the cabin, her heart in her throat, and breathed in deep.
Yes, they could talk about it.
She could explain her worries and fears when she saw the look in his eyes. When he lied.
She’d tell him she knew it wasn’t a lie to hurt her but to protect her.
She’d confess how she also played him like a fiddle with her charms at the beginning. How she was a survivor and that was what she did. She had to endear herself to him, so he’d save her.
She took another step forward.
She thought of when she was in the water, clinging to him. And even then, there was the faint scent of roses clinging to him. His heart beat strong and steady under her hands. There was a sureness to him that she desperately wanted to hold on to.
There was so much in their future.
Their story didn’t have to end here.
Her steps became more solid, more determined.
A hesitant smile tickled the corners of her lips, and she thought of calling out to him.
Would he hear her this far away?
She could try.
“Corio—”
The sound of a gunshot stole his name from her mouth, and she stopped, falling to her knees in shock.
Lucy Gray’s hands searched her body of their own accord like a muscle memory. But no blood stained them. She wasn’t shot.
It was in the distance.
Coriolanus, she thought desperately. Was it him? Was he hurt? Was it Peacekeepers? But why would the Peacekeepers come after them?
She climbed back to her feet, praying he was all right.
But then another gunshot shook the air and another and another and another.
Each one was like a punch to the gut.
It was him.
He was the one shooting.
A faint agonized scream reached her, and she closed her eyes.
She began to step backward, her eyes burning with tears and a lump lodged in her throat.
He realized what she did.
That she ran away.
That she feared him.
That she hid the snake.
That she left him behind.
That she didn’t trust him.
The paranoia she’d seen darkening his irises had spilled out.
Lucy Gray!
He was screaming her name.
But Lucy Gray turned around, the tears finally free and hot on her cheeks, and started running again.
She was right the first time—she nearly walked back to her death.
That wasn’t her Coriolanus. That wasn’t the boy she fell for. Or maybe he was like that the whole time, but he was just a great performer as her.
Maybe it was always a performance.
But if it was, why did it hurt so much?
If it was, why did his kisses feel so real?
Why was he trying to kill her? Why was his voice soft with her? Why did he look at her like she was everything good in the world?
She ran and ran and ran, and with each footstep on the ground, she felt lost and found.
When her surroundings became unfamiliar, she stopped, taking refuge behind a giant oak tree, peering back. She tried breathing in slowly to soothe her overworked lungs and strained her ears to listen to anything—a broken twig, the stomp of boots, the click of a gun.
But there was nothing.
She was alone.
He hadn’t followed her.
He had let go—cut her loose.
With a hand on her heart, her breaths slowly started to steady. Then she ran it through her hair, pushing the strands out of her face. When she reached her ear, she froze.
One of her earrings was missing.
It must have fallen.
She wondered where and if Coriolanus found it.
Lucy Gray Baird smoothed down her dress, straightened her back, and continued walking, her tears blurring her vision.
He couldn’t catch her now.
She was flying away; her songs would be the only legacy she was leaving behind in Panem.
She would become a folklore. She would become the Lucy Gray from the song. He once asked her about Lucy Gray—of her fate. She told him she was a mystery. Now he would hear her in the trees and in the breeze.
It was real, Lucy Gray thought as she picked a dandelion and blew on it, watching the seeds flutter away. It was real for both of us. And it will haunt us for the rest of our lives.
Lucy Gray Baird forgot to count the years, but they were visible in the whites of her hair. Each strand sang a song of the lives she lived.
She found life far away from everything, and yet the distance never brought her the comfort nor the easiness she craved. There were times when she still felt like a survivor—looking over her shoulders.
She didn’t even remember how far she walked, how many days until she found a settlement so removed from what she lived through.
Where they lived from the Earth and the Earth gave back.
The days became months became years and the memories softened. Every once in a while, rumors from Panem reached her, but she never paid them any attention. That was the before. She didn’t live in the before. She buried those feelings and sang songs for the trees in her new home, so they’d know her. She sang them to a gentle boy who fell for her and reminded her nothing of the one she left behind. She sang at her wedding, and she sang for the children she felt safe to bring into this world. She sang for love and life and for the family she always yearned to have and finally did. The performance of a lifetime.
She sang in the spring and was quiet during the winter.
One day, on the very first day of winter, she stepped outside, nestled in her shawl, and watched the sun break over the horizon of the mountains. Something cold flickered on her hand and she raised it, quietly laughing at how the years had blanched her hands, making her skin translucent.
A single snowflake sat between her knuckles, the intricate architecture of it glistening in the morning sun.
Something weighed heavy in her heart, and she knew without knowing how that he was gone.
Lucy Gray Baird smiled even with her eyes pricking with tears for the life she could have had with him if he weren’t so consumed with greed. Even at her age and the happiness she had, she found herself mourning him and the life that could have been.
In the end, Dean Casca was right; she had outlived him.
She outlived them all.