OUR FOREST OF THORNS | tbosas ✔️

023 || Wishes, Wants, Desires

Daphne moved her hand over, taking hold of his own and thus freezing his words in his throat. She didn't look up to meet his eyes, something he was definitely grateful about, though to see her study the bloodstained state of his hand was perhaps just as vulnerable of him as having her read the fear in his eyes.

"Whatever you had to do in there to make it out," Daphne murmured over those words, aiming to keep their conversation private, "I'm glad you did it." Though until then she held onto his hand tenderly thanks to the pain seething behind her fresh bandage, in order to prove her point, she forced herself to tighten her grip ever so slightly.

For Coriolanus, it felt as if it was his heart she had squeezed by bringing up that particular subject he wished he could just ignore until it disappeared — there was no escaping what he did, but surely, it was only human to at least try.

"You don't know what I've done," he looked away from their hands the second he realized he blurted out what he would otherwise deem to be a pathetic response. He was all so very pathetic that he feared she would place him in the same bucket at the Plinth's, or even worse — below them.

"I know what you've done," she corrected him, not yet letting go of his hand. "You survived."

"You make it sound like I did the right thing," he shook his head. "Like bashing in the skull of a tribute was the only way—" Saying it out loud gutted Coriolanus with a hiccup of warning, telling him to swallow his words there or face the consequences of tears shed in a house which wasn't his own, thus reaching uncharted shores of new levels of pathetic. Bringing voice to what existed in his memory up until that point made it all so awfully real: he was a killer forced by circumstances, but a killer nonetheless.

Though she had trouble actually picturing Coriolanus get that violent, the sight of his bloody hands seemed only confirm his story for her. Daphne was shocked by how unwavering her faith in him remained, shocked to sense that she wasn't repulsed by the images his confession created in her mind, but instead endeared to hold onto him a little tighter, keep him from slipping into more dangerous paths where she knew she wouldn't be able to follow him no more.

"You did what you had to do," she restated. "Don't think for a second that I could hate you for it, because truth is, I would have hated you more if you let yourself be killed by whatever Tribute attacked you in there. You don't get to say you love me and then abandon me, Coriolanus Snow."

"Can you even still love me after what I've done?" Coriolanus shook his head and finally sought to meet her eyes. "Is my new nature not the very thing you said you despised?"

"Did you go into that arena by your own free will to kill them?"

"No—"

"Even if you did I wouldn't have hated you for it," Daphne interrupted him with such promptness that the nature of her answer was guaranteed to stun Coriolanus. "Killing those Tributes early would be a mercy, given the nature of the Games. But no, you weren't in there out of your own free will. What prize was there for a Tribute killing a Mentor again?" This time, she gave him no time to answer whatsoever, turning to face him until her knees bumped into his and then continuing immediately, "That's right. There was none. They attacked you like animals and they died like animals. Man defending himself against wild creatures is as old as it gets for instincts riddled in our blood. What separates us from the animals is being able to tell when we should rely on our instincts and when we should subdue them by all means necessary. Albert is an animal, he's a slave to his primal instincts. But you can and have stopped yourself from violence before. The gun and Birches. You think I didn't see that, but I did. You are not an animal, so I need you to stop with this nonsense and realize Gaul is the one to blame for the Tribute who you had to kill to survive, not you."