[PREQUEL TO RADIANCE]
❝you have one job: convince me, or you may find yourself in the rubble of a ruin that was your own making.❞
ontari nightfall is the newest victor for the capitol to add to their list. she'd heard about the horrors that come wit...
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┍━━━━━━━♔━━━━━━━┑ THE WEIGHT OF LIVING ┕━━━━━━━♔━━━━━━━┙
｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ
THE NIGHTMARES AREN'T even the worst part. Trauma has a knack for making the horrid dreams vivid and lifelike, occasionally convincing one that they're trapped in the arena once more, that their escape had been the dream and they're back in reality. But though they drag Ontari from the clutches of sleep, kicking and screaming until her mother bursts in to hold her and calm her down, they still aren't the most terrible part of it all.
It's a culmination of things, really. The new shakiness in her hands that had once been so steady, making her tea spill over the side of her cup when she can force anything down. A distrust of all of her surroundings that makes her question what's real — a wonderful product of the graphic nightmares. A deep, deep sense of emptiness that sucks away her motivation to do anything. Though those who emerge from the Games are called the victors, the rest of their lives may as well be hell, the place they've been sent to as punishment for their crimes. Because the survivors are the ones who have to live afterward. And doesn't that make them the biggest failures of all?
Ontari doesn't leave her bedroom for a week. At first, she can't even leave her bed, leading her to use chamber pots in order to relieve herself. She hardly speaks. The rhythmic opening and closing of her jaw to consume food is too daunting a task, so her parents bring her different soups and broths. Cassian delivers tea that she doesn't drink. He comes back an hour later to retrieve the cup, finding it in the exact same place he'd left it, its amber liquid cold. But he still does it twice a day as if hoping he'll find it empty.
Hestia, as expected, doesn't visit.
By the eighth or ninth day of Ontari sitting in her room — the days have all blurred together — she's woken from a daze by pounding footsteps that get louder and louder as they come closer to her room. Her mother's voice pleads, "Hestia!" before the bedroom door flies open so hard it nearly slams into the wall and busts off its hinges. Ontari hardly reacts, merely shifting her eyes to see her sister standing in the doorway.
Hestia's long hair is tied back from her sharp face with two french braids that join the rest of her hair down her back. Her rose-gold satin blouse, tucked into beige trousers, presents a light appearance that is a sharp contrast to the storm on her face. Her eyebrows knit together as she examines Ontari's unmoving figure in her four-poster bed.
The room is much too big for Ontari to think it reasonable. Her bed is king-sized — huge for one person — and makes her feel lonelier than ever, if possible, because she can't be hugged tight by all of her blankets as she could in the twin bed from their old apartment. The ornate purple rug on the floor is already in need of a good shaking. Her walk-in wardrobe has gone entirely untouched except to find the pajama set she's been wearing for days. The floor-length mirror is tilted at an angle that presents Hestia in all of her rage-filled glory. Everything is coated in a light layer of dust.
