Chapter Text
The lipstick Barb Azure lent her is pink and bold, like a peony blooming from inside her mouth with its vibrancy. When she leans back from the mirror and stops fixing the edges, she starts wondering if the blue eyeshadow was a good decision after all, since it doesn’t really match her flowering lips.
Well, she’s already running late, so there is not much left to be done about it. The room already smells like hairspray and cheap perfume, and even with the tiled walls, the scent clings onto everything.
Lucy Gray stands up straight, smooths out the electric blue blouse she has on — yeah, maybe the lipstick was the bad choice here after all, but she’d hate for Barb Azure to think she doesn’t like it — and smiles at herself in the mirror.
Once she’s out of this motel room, she will be a star. She will walk with her shoulders rolled back and with her grin in her ears and if anyone asks, she’s already famous back home. Nothing can get in her way, and if that record label exec asks if all of them come as a package deal, she will say that it’s all of them or none of them, and because her smile will rival the sun, he will take the whole group under his wing.
“Lucy Gray?” Tam Amber asks from behind the bathroom door, knocking twice. “We should go.”
“Yeah, I’m ready,” she says, tightening the curly bun made of caramel brown hair on the top of her head. The other half of her hair curls around her shoulders. Lucy Gray points at herself in the mirror and says, “The Capitol won’t know what hit them.”
Once she comes out of the bathroom and does a little spin in her baggy, short-sleeved blouse, thick tight belt and high-waisted jeans, the sixteen-year-old Clerk Carmine is the only one who whistles and cheers. Maude Ivory’s already by the door, second-hand Mary Janes strapped on, eager to leave.
“Billy Taupe?” Lucy Gray asks with her hands on her hips. “I know damn well you aren’t doing crosswords while I’m trying to show off my outfit.”
Her boyfriend lowers the magazine with a sigh. “We had to wait for you for so long, can you blame me?” He already has his flat cap on, dark curls blooming out from underneath it. He knows she likes him clean-shaven, yet for some stupid reason he decided to grow that moustache that’s somewhere between actually thick and just lame stubble for the most important day of their career.
“Well, we should get going,” says Barb Azure in her vibrant top, high-waisted skirt and those damn huge, neon earrings that Lucy Gray is still so jealous of.
Albeit a bit sour, Lucy Gray just moves to the room door to pull on her red, especially-loved sneakers. The weather’s been brewing pinballs in her hairline ever since the flight, but she could not be happier about not having to carry a jacket around.
“We’re gonna be stars from now on, aren’t we?” asks Maude Ivory, who Barb Azure had helped get tight curls in her blonde hair to match Lucy Gray, but the poor young girl’s hair texture could not be changed even by a full bottle of hairspray. Alas, Maude Ivory remains with loose waves, a cool denim skirt and a tucked-in sweater. She’s still the prettiest girl in the world, even without the curls. Lucy Gray knows that much as she leans down to smile at her.
“Oh, honey, we already are.”
-
He sits in the swivel chair, his back plagued both by sweat and pain from the minimal support. The others left about an hour ago, but if Coriolanus doesn’t finish this project by the end of the day, he’ll surely get reprimanded. The computer shows his current spreadsheet in bold, green letters with the black background, which happens to be his only light source, as some idiot already turned off all the office lights even when it was obvious Coriolanus was still working.
There are two kinds of people in this world, and as far as Coriolanus is concerned, he hates being either. Not having anything to do — being free, as some would call it — would drive him mad, yet this corporate hell is like getting shot in the chest every single day.
He promised himself he’d be more, back when he first started, fresh out of college. Yet it’s been a whole year and he’s barely over petty tasks like getting coffee for the higher-ups and faxing information or news that he didn’t even get to put together himself.
Maybe he’s being too hard on himself, or maybe he’s just not as good and charismatic as he thinks he is. Maybe that is why all the people at the office have stayed distant: polite, courteous and, to anyone looking from the outside, fond of Coriolanus. However, he sees right through them, just like they see right through him. He doesn’t like them and they don’t like him, and maybe Coriolanus can only blame himself.
Of course, there is Sejanus. The son of the CEO, working a lowly office job in the cramped cubicle right next to Coriolanus. And of course, having connections to the higher-ups means not sitting in the office well past six in the evening. Sejanus is lucky, in that regard. Lately it has seemed like he is lucky in every aspect of his silver-spoon life, while Coriolanus rots in front of the headache-inducing computer that keeps running into errors.
He would hate Sejanus too, if it weren’t for the perks. However, if things keep going the way they are going on the current evening, Coriolanus will not live to see those upsides.
The office building is old and fragile, construction taking place downstairs even at the very moment as Coriolanus’s dress shirt sticks to his back with sweat, but that brings him little comfort. At least they’re getting paid for the overtime, even at the cost of breathing in asbestos.
Coriolanus promises to himself: if he finishes this project before eight PM, he will reward himself. He will grab a few beers and a bag of chips from the corner store and he will drop by Sejanus’s place and bitch about life while Sejanus nods along sympathetically. Coriolanus will listen to the man’s activism about whatever current issue is going on and encourage him to do something about it if he cares so much. They will pretend like they understand each other, and everything will be okay again, even if just for the night.
Just a few more spreadsheets and Coriolanus will be finished.
-
The sun is setting as Lucy Gray pools pennies into the vendor’s hand. It’s a nice park in the middle of the busy city, with Clerk Carmine having taken his shoes off to feel the grass between his toes and Maude Ivory enjoying the ice cream cone Lucy Gray so graciously paid for.
Well, she can’t blame the girl. This is the best day of their lives so far.
The man in the booth counts all the change and gives Lucy Gray a quick nod: payment received. She then turns to the rest of the Covey with a grin. A wave of excitement that had been kept down low until now bubbles to the surface and she beams, “We did it!”
“We did it!” Maude Ivory cheers, arms raised high with the cone gripped tightly in her other hand.
“Soon we won’t need that run-down motel,” Barb Azure says rather calmly, given that Lucy Gray is buzzing with joy. “We’ll get a real apartment.”
“With a balcony?” asks Clerk Carmine.
“You aren’t gonna start smoking again,” Tam Amber warns him while Billy Taupe lights up one, the cheapest brand he could find that tastes bearable, even if Lucy Gray never liked the taste herself. She is more of a herbal girl herself, even if that’s going to be a hell of a lot more difficult to hide in a big city than back when she could take long walks in the woods or the meadow to relax with Billy Taupe.
“Alright, Clerk Carmine, Maude Ivory,” says Lucy Gray, reaching her hand far to point at the buildings surrounding the park. “Choose a building here. Any building. And I’ll do my darndest to find us an apartment in that very building.”
Billy Taupe chuckles after a puff, his voice already scratchy. “Some of those are office buildings, sugar.”
Lucy Gray looks back at him and gives him the sweetest of murderous smiles. “And don’t those have plenty of space for the six of us?”
Shrugging and turning away to blow his toxic waste into someone else’s face, Billy Taupe gives up on a losing battle, meanwhile Maude Ivory is pursing her lips and observing the buildings for a good while. She tends to do that — think things through carefully. She’s a horror at the thrift store, but it’s better than the tween going out drinking moonshine in the meadow with Billy Taupe and his friends ranging from two to five years older than her.
Lucy Gray doesn’t regret it, of course. She would’ve maybe just hoped for her teen years to revolve around something other than alcohol and smoke in her lungs and tabs of blotting paper dissolving under her tongue as she spun around trees, feeling every crease of the bark under her palms.
Well, there was the music. That much Billy Taupe didn’t involve his big friends in. That was solely theirs, the Covey’s, and now those friends are still doing acid in the backwoods while their family is making it big in the Capitol.
“That one!” Maude Ivory yelps, awakening Lucy Gray of the memories of the first time she harmonized with her guitar and Billy Taupe’s accordion. She looks in the direction of Maude Ivory’s pointed finger and spots a pale yellow, a bit run-down tall building that does not have any balconies.
“Why that one?” she asks, tilting her head as if coming down to Maude Ivory’s level would mean seeing what she is seeing. It’s really plain, the building. It’s just across the street from where they’re standing, so with a crosswalk, one could just walk up to it and stare at it in all of its strained glory.
“Because it’s shaking,” says Maude Ivory, and Lucy Gray’s eyes widen.
Indeed, as she straightens her head, the yellow concrete walls seem to tremble. How does a building just do that? Is it about to come down in broad daylight?
Well, it is almost eight in the evening, so the place is probably empty and no one will be affected by the pillars on either side of the front door coming down under pressure.
Or maybe she’s totally wrong.
A man pushes through the front door, and from the distance, Lucy Gray sees platinum blond curls, suit jacket hung over one arm while the other holds a briefcase, and most important of all: a look of defeat on his face.
Then it all comes crashing down.
“Holy shit,” Billy Taupe gasps, nearly chuckling in disbelief as the foundations seem to give in and the yellow walls start crumbling down, quickly and easily trapping the man under with the roar of a final call for help.
“Where’s the payphone?” Barb Azure asks, panicked, looking around the park for any wall or booth with a phone to call 911 with, but Lucy Gray’s faster. She’s sprinting across the street before even Tam Amber can grab her arm to stop her.
She doesn’t know why she does it: she has to avoid the cars passing by fast so as not to die herself, but she saw that man. She saw him come out. Her body hairs are standing up from horror and she can feel her heart in her throat but she runs over the busy street to get to the collapsing building.
There’s so much rubble. So much dust she breathes in and then coughs once she stops by the front of it all. She can barely spot the man under it all, but she does hear the gasps of passersby as everything someone once worked to build comes crumbling down in under five pathetic minutes.
“Can you hear me?” Lucy Gray exclaims, eyes wide so far it hurts as she looks around for the man she saw.
Nothing.
Did she just see someone die…?
She’s seen people die before, alright. Cancer is no joke. However, this stranger, this man who she has no relation to, is under the rubble and she can’t reach him. And for some reason, that feels more barbaric than seeing her own father wither away day by day.
“...Can you hear me?” she tries again, weaker.
Then the hand flies out. A scratched-up, bloody hand, followed by an arm with a ripped dress shirt that used to be white, followed by a piece of concrete nearly crushing his head.
Lucy Gray climbs over the big pieces of walls and broken glass to get to the man, to get to his sight, to maybe not let someone die when she could save them, even if the smoke in her lungs makes her cough and cough. Finally falling to her knees in front of him, she manages to meet his ice blue eyes under blond hair slowly seeping with red.
She would hate to admit how taken aback she is by the sight. Those eyes are wide, brows furrowed deep in pain, lips barely visible from under the smoke and the big piece crushing him.
“Help… me,” he croaks, something wet appearing in his blue eyes.
Lucy Gray parts her lips twice before managing a panicked response, “Yes. Yeah, yes, yeah, I will help you.”
She digs her hands under the piece of rubble and starts pushing: she knows she can’t manage to raise it, it’s too heavy. The only option is to get the pressure off his head before he dies.
“You’ll be okay, okay?” she whispers — or grunts — while trying to push the concrete. “My cousin is calling 911. You’ll be okay.”
The man doesn’t respond. As he twitches underneath the piece, Lucy Gray manages to spot his other hand, resting nearly limp but coming out from the other side of the rubble. He’s reaching for his brown leather briefcase.
“Focus on breathing, okay?” Lucy Gray whispers. “You’ll get your briefcase. Someone will come help. Soon.”
Her mascara must be smeared by the tears running down her cheeks by now, the thick smoke making her eyes sting and water to no end. However, she still looks down at this stranger with a strong smile.
“You’ll be just peachy, alright? Can you tell me your name? I can call a family member later,” Lucy Gray says, palms all scratched up from the rough surface of the concrete.
The man tries to cough, but it fails, under the weight of it all. His lips are parted and a droplet of blood runs down his forehead. Lucy Gray pulls on the hem of her blouse to stop it before it reaches his eyes, which are wide by the time she looks back down at him.
“Death is a lot scarier up close,” he croaks, which surprises her. “I’ve never had to… see it like this before.”
Lucy Gray plasters on a strong smile and tells him, “And you still won’t have to. Just stay conscious, alright? I’m sure help is right around the—”
“Are you injured!?” someone yells from behind the rubble, someone with their voice so authoritarian that Lucy Gray hops to her feet and starts flailing her arms.
“There’s someone under the rubble! He needs help!” she yells at the firemen she sees starting to climb in through the fallen walls and broken windows. Two go to the blond man lying nearly dead under the big wall while one comes up to Lucy Gray.
“Are you injured? Were you inside?”
“No, I just— I tried to come help—”
“Then get out of here,” the fireman demands, droplets of sweat falling from under his helmet in the weather. “You’ll just be in the way.”
Lucy Gray quickly nods, but doesn’t leave before taking one quick look back. The firemen easily push the concrete off the man before gently shaking him. He’s lost consciousness and they start carrying him out of the remains of the building.
She can’t help but notice, though, the briefcase left behind. Without any further thinking, she snags it by the handle and climbs back out of the disaster, her clothes covered in a gray layer of something.
Outside, pedestrians are staring as the blond man is carried into an ambulance and as the Covey runs up to Lucy Gray to check on her. She’s wiping her eyes, smudging the red scrapes with black and vibrant blue.
“Why would you do that?” Billy Taupe demands, grabbing her arm. “The building was still collapsing, you could’ve died!”
“That was so awesome,” Clerk Carmine says.
As Lucy Gray is shrugging herself free and going in to hug Maude Ivory who has tear streaks down her cheeks and melted ice cream in her palms, Barb Azure stops her by grabbing both of Lucy Gray’s arms.
“Are you okay?” she asks, and it’s a strange question, because Lucy Gray’s not the one being wheeled away in an ambulance at the moment.
“Yeah, I— I’m okay, I think,” she says, still clutching the briefcase tightly in her hand. “Might need a shower, though,” she tries chuckling, but the smoke has made her voice hoarse.
“Let’s go back to the motel,” Tam Amber says. “It’s been a long day anyway.”
Lucy Gray nods, but not before taking one last look back at the ambulance disappearing behind the corner.