All These Dying Things

Part 4

Part 4

She did not remember agreeing to this.

This rendezvous with Senator Collins, a meeting her father had insisted upon, of course. She remembers the way his cold blue eyes had smiled her, (cold cold cold, he’s always been so cold) his lips pulled up in a predatory smirk, the glint of his eyes like steel.

She thinks steel is a good word to describe him, cool, and strong, and sharp.

Clarke remembers how hard she’d had to bite into the inside of her cheek when her father had been explaining how the day would go to her, not once, not once asking her of her thoughts on the situation, not once giving her the option.

 When he’d told her that, after her marriage ceremony to Senator Collins, she should produce male heirs quickly, avoid the disappointment daughters may bring, she’d barely noticed the bitter pain of teeth and gum and blood because what had her life, the entirety of her being been, other than an effort to please him? She was marrying a stranger, a man she knew she’d never find fondness for in her heart for, all for him.

Surely this had handled the misfortune of her gender enough.

(More more more he always wants more than she could ever give.)

They were out in the mid-afternoon sun, the gentle sheen of day a tender lull to an aching mind, but Clarke found little comfort in the soft bask of the sun, rays like fire on the back of her neck.

(Can’t forget, won’t forget.)

She was trying to enjoy herself, she really was. But she couldn’t entertain the possibility of ever experiencing any type of pleasure with the company of the man that stood, with ease, beside her.

Any type of pleasure.

And with the more time she spent in the Senators company, the more her quiet detest grew for him, clawing from the inside at her, begging to be let out and unleashed on the objectionable man.

He sent her these looks sometimes, these very specific looks, like... like he wanted to consume her. Not in the way that a man lusts after a woman (though these types of looks were not exactly uncommon), but in the way of destruction, tearing through something and marking it and claiming it, and breaking it and snapping it until it’s on its knees, ready to submit, and ready to die.

She hated these looks.

He smiles now, and she can’t help but be a little repulsed, because he is all daggers for teeth and such an exact shadow of her father she wonders how he can stand in the sun. For a second she thinks he may burn, but then she remembers that shadows do not burn, they only shrink, growing smaller and smaller, until the darkness they thrive on is finally eliminated, and they shrink, dying.. . oh so slowly…

(Don’t forget won’t forget.)

She ignores the slight sting that comes with the hostile gaze of the people around her. She had always held a strong fondness the people of Rome, and she knew that they had always favoured her as a royal. After, her father of course. And so, she knew this look of loathing belonged not to her, but to the boy that stood beside her. Finn.

The name had not once passed her lips since the ultimatum of their paring, and if the ghost of a thought brought her such discomfort, then she was sure it never would.

The people, oh how they hated their dear senator. His big ideas of governing Rome never accounted for the poor, skipping over them, in the way a general may look at his battles, count the losses and victories, and when it is something he disproves of, order a scribe to write down all his battles as won, adding to the power of Rome and choosing to wash over his mistakes with a ink so dark it may just be enough to keep the truth of history hidden beneath a murky shroud.