Insurgence [h.s]

twenty-one

The air on the rooftop is freezing cold. Humidity has condensed into ice on the floor, too cold to melt it. For a brief moment, Alouette lets herself realise this isn't supposed to happen—that the heat coming from the floor just below her feet should likely keep the roof ice-free all winter long. That it isn't doing it, because that floor belongs to the presidential family's apartments, and they were closed off almost a decade ago.

Now, ice gathers on the roof, thick and slippery, making the path to the railing dangerous. Alouette sinks to her knees right where she's standing. Her breath comes out of her lips in cloudy puffs. Autumn has come to an end, and winter has been quick to claim its throne. Gone is the ambiguous weather and the mild climate of the south. The north winds hiss through the streets of Northfair, past the signs and advertisements, past the cars skittering down the streets. The thin layer of frost that covers the destroyed buildings all around the Palace reflects the lights of the city like gemstones reflect sunlight, neon green and hot pink haloes rising from the ground like ghosts of Northfair past.

Everything is falling apart. That's the thing, though, isn't it? Everything has been falling apart since the start. Alouette's efforts to change the present have always been nothing more than desperate attempts to keep alive something that was already gone, like a doctor still trying to resuscitate a patient hours after their heart stopped beating because it's less daunting than having to pronounce them dead. Every step of the way, it gets a little farther from medicine and closer to necromancy.

She doesn't know what to do with the little her father has left her. Her mother has vanished, her sister is missing, and so what if Daniel Ivenhart trusted Harry at some point? She can't bear to look at Elijah in the eyes. Every time she sees Jesse, all she feels is shame and guilt. Thinking of Elodie and Anthony locked up in the bowels of the Palace makes her throat close, and she doesn't know how to fix any of it. The hints her father gave her are useless—Harry isn't the young man he met a decade ago anymore, and all her problems originate from him. Even if he thought him an ally, to her he's just an enemy. Worse than that, even, because she can't win against him. What is there to win anymore, anyway? Even if she found a way to kill him tomorrow, it would not bring her sister back. It would not fix her mistakes. The dead would not come back to life, Elijah wouldn't get back the use of his leg. And she would hate it, too. She would hate it, because she just can't seem to be able to hurt him. And maybe it's a weakness, but is it, really? Is it so bad to retain her soul and morals even when no one else around her does? Must she forsake all that she is in order not to feel so guilty anymore? Will retaining her humanity damn her even further, when she already knows she wouldn't win anyway?

Where is the line? The one that shouldn't be crossed, the one that determines it all. Where is it? Have they crossed it already? If they have, how long ago did it happen?

Was she the one that made the first step?

We all strive for freedom.

Why do you think you're any different from me?

A shiver runs down her spine as a terrible realisation strikes her. She's the one that crossed it first, with Harry. She's the one that designed the levels of the match, that erased and redrew the line on the ground over and over again to suit her objectives. She's the one that taught him there are no lines, with them.

We've both crossed lines plenty of times.

They did it so often that they started to lose meaning—that it became normal to redefine and redraw them over and over again, until it became so normal that she forgot they existed altogether.

You've made your choice, so its consequences are yours, too.

Her present is haunted by her mistakes. Her ghosts are silently watching her, waiting to be joined by her next victim.