HEART OF GOLD | CORIOLANUS SNOW

𝘾𝙃𝘼𝙋𝙏𝙀𝙍 70

A sharp pain shot through Lilith's wrist, and she registered herself being yanked and shoved roughly under a table. Snow crammed himself into the remaining space just as the world gave another violent rock, and another. And another. But it was the noise that had Lilith cowering.

Everything was so loud.

Despite jamming her fingers against her tragi to seal off her ear canals, she still seemed to hear every decibel of the high-pitched alarm. Lilith pressed harder, desperate to block out the obnoxious sound. She squeezed her eyes shut, as if they, too, possessed auditory senses. All her efforts were in vain.

Just when she felt vaguely sick and the onset of a monstrous migraine, just when she thought it would never cease, the awful shrilling stopped, as abruptly as it had begun. Panting, Lilith eased the pressure off her ears, which rang and throbbed with a discomfort she couldn't tell resulted from physical or auricular damage. Her fingers still in place in case they needed further protection, she cautiously opened her eyes. There wasn't much room to move her head. Somehow knowing it was best she didn't anyway, she peered sideways—at a wall.

As her vision adjusted to the gloom, Lilith observed flashes of colour on the plain surface. Faint bursts of orange that coincided with the earth quaking, coming through the half-height windows behind her. From the whistling that always accompanied a glow, she surmised her hearing was still, at least partly, intact.

Staring at the flares dancing on the plaster, Lilith thought she had an inkling of what was going on, even though she had only ever seen it on TV. Specifically, in a documentary shown during one of her history lessons at the Academy.

Dean Demigloss had reiterated that the clip was real footage from the Dark Days, that those were real Capitol citizens fleeing for their lives. That those were real Capitol citizens—dying. The bloody aftermath, which had given Lilith nightmares for a week, had been the point of that class. Emphasizing the destruction wreaked by the rebels, their brutality, their audacity. Underscoring the need for the Treaty of Treason as a measure to preserve peace, to prevent another uprising.

It was always about what had sparked the conflict—the districts' envy of the Capitol and their greed for power. It was always about the consequences, quantified by an appalling body count.

The starting. The ending.

No one ever talked about the during.

Now that Lilith thought about it, everyone in the Capitol above a certain age had to be a survivor of the war. But no one talked about what it was really like to live through one of these assaults—not to her, at any rate. Her friends were too young to know, and this subject was never discussed at home. Lilith supposed it was with good reason. It was common knowledge that those three years had been an unprecedentedly tough period. If she was still traumatized by a pitch-black trunk after fifteen years, she could only imagine how harrowing their experiences must be. The same way she could only imagine what was happening outside.

She hadn't managed to glimpse anything. The sudden darkness had frozen her, until the floor undulated like that of a yacht in a storm, nearly throwing her off her feet. Then she was here, doing her best not to become deaf and staring at a wall—a wall that was no longer flickering. Lilith blinked, confused. She hadn't noticed when it had halted. A long time must have elapsed, though, for her nausea was negligible and the pulsing in her ears had abated to a considerably less worrisome level.

For ten seconds, Lilith concentrated on the same shadowy spot. Nothing changed. She repeated it once more, listening carefully now, too. Then once again, thrice in total, to make sure.

Not a glimmer. Not a whistle. So why was everything still shaking?

Studying her surroundings, Lilith took a while before she could determine the source. Constrained by an area never intended for a grown human let alone two, both anatomies had to be crouched, backs hunched, with chins tucked close to their knees. Their bent legs were shunted at an angle, Lilith's compelled towards the inner side since she'd entered first, four limbs forced against each other so that everything fitted under the cramped shelter.