Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Madden Lovell cannot see beyond blood.
Even now, knelt at his marble altar, humiliated and crushed with false hope and mercy does she realise this. Madden is no killer, she cannot bring herself to do it. To tie the noose around his head, to grab the knife from the dining table, to draw the gun from beneath the chair. She is afraid of him, not angry, the man she used to chase through the gardens, the same man sentencing her to fools errands and punishing her with false smiles and sparkling jewels. He has taken her soul, he keeps it locked in a music box, but the song never ends.
He keeps her dancing, toes bleeding, muscles aching, cheeks sore. He pulls at her strings, a puppet-master lulling her around the stage like his own personal doll. Madden knows they all feel like that, every sick and miserable fucker that resides in the Capitol. They are vultures, but they are all too-strung up on the high-life to consider even a whisper of change. The Avoxes remind them of their voice and the Peacekeepers keep them in check, Madden does not want to live without a tongue, but she does not want to live as a porcelain doll that is being pushed closer to the edge of the dusty shelf. The tile below threatening, the fall begging to destroy her. She needs him, just like he needs her.
Because girls like Madden don't get what they want.
He is horrific, teeth-baring, saliva spitting, a monster unchained. A creature, vile and full of poison. If anything, he is a snake, patiently waiting for his victims to succumb to the venom, watching as their breath is stolen and they choke to death. They are nothing alike. That's what she tries to tell herself as she sits in the wooden chair, clock ticking away, air stale. She is a dog, a wolf, snapping with sharp teeth, biting and snarling at anyone who walks by. She is too angry to think properly, she is full of too much love and too much emotion to satisfy him.
The ridges of his palm sting with her disobedience.
Coriolanus stares into her eyes, they have the same eyes, there is fire behind them, there is death in the edges of the pupil, bleeding through waves of light green and blue and freezing their veins solid. He is bristling with rage, she can see it in the way his jaw stiffens and his eyes tighten. Madden is overwhelmed with shortcomings, she doesn't hate him and she supposes that really, that is the worst part. She doesn't hate him because some sick part of her sympathises, some sick part of her still recognises him as her kin, some sick part of her understands, some sick fucking part of her agrees with him.
Sometimes, she wants to strangle her soul until she is a broken-necked apparition, limping and possessing any vessel just to feel afraid.
The curtains have been drawn, the crowd has said goodnight, the rose petals on the stage and the flowers have long since died. Madden sits there, in his office, white walls staring back at her, daring her to un-fuck the mess she has made, but daringly she sits, like the good little girl she was raised to be and she withers like a dying flower. He doesn't react, he doesn't blink, he barely acknowledges her stature. She know Coriolanus does not take kindly to begging, so she doesn't even try, not that she was that pathetic anyway.
