CHAPTER FOUR — Train of Thought ..
______________________
Had Daphne not been there with him, Coriolanus knew for a fact that the train running this late would have driven him mad.
They had arrived at the station during the first minutes of sunrise, when the previously cold night was still making its freezing touch felt, but now, the sun high above the glassed ceiling overlooking the empty platform was cooking them alive on their little bench, as if they have in the meantime turned into flowers trapped inside a greenhouse. Both of them have had to give up their fashion sense and remove something in order to not start sweating under the haze of sunlight, which is why, to Coriolanus' right piled his uniform's red jacket, with Daphne's pristine white coat on top — blood mixed with snow.
He scarcely cared to notice the fashion sense behind what fellow students and citizens of the Capitol wore anyway, but it was hard not to appreciate the beauty sitting now to his left. From the moment he had laid eyes on Daphne for the first time that morning, something in his heart was blissfully put into motion, with the promise to remain so for the rest of the day spent in her presence. The white of her shoes, of her long coat and of her trousers, reminded him of the rose he carried for Lucy Gray — a gesture Tigris had insisted it would be proper of him to go through with —, tucked in an inner pocket of his coat.
To look at her was a generous distraction from remembering the horrors from the war that lingered and waited around every corner of the Capitol to get the jump on him. Staring at the white Daphne wore, he ignored the memories of the train station, each time he had waited for his father to get back from the frontlines and that one single time in which only the news of his death returned with the usual train, and instead focused on the memory of snow in winter, blocking the street and creating an obscure light of its own during the night.
Daphne appeared to have anticipated the long wait time that this trick he wanted to pull on every other mentor was going to entail, because she had brought with herself a purse which, surprising Coriolanus with its spaciousness, contained two decently sized books.
"This one is yours," she extended one thin book towards Coriolanus, taking his mind completely off of even the idea of being there to anxiously wait the arrival of a train in the first place. "A gift," Daphne clarified for him in hopes that his hesitation would be vanquished faster.
With great reluctance and some warmth rising to his cheeks, he took the book from her hand and studied its fragile cover. "On the Internal State of Russia," Coriolanus read out loud the title, taking a moment to spell out the author's name in his mind before continuing, so as not to make a fool of himself and mispronounce it before her. "By Konstantin Aksakov. 1855." His gaze turned inquisitive and he shifted its focus towards Daphne, "To what do I owe the pleasure of such an unique gift?" He's heard some of the Academy boys with less conduit and class than him complain about girls and their obsession with dates and anniversaries, so the thought hammered like lightning upon his head, making him gulp dryly before leaning back and trying to hide a true concern behind a chuckle, "It must be a special occasion."
Daphne however expected that borderline confused reaction from him and was even amused to see him insinuate that there had to be any occasion at all for her to share knowledge with him. "Open to chapter three," she gave him directions through a stiffening of her giggle.
Curiosity had Coriolanus open the book and flip its pages with the distinct hunger of an avid reader. He stopped once his eyes landed on the roman number three, circled with a red pencil. From that red circle, a short arrow pointed to a similar brief message in the messy writing he recognized as being Daphne's without much struggle. She had the writing style of someone whose hand could not keep up with the speed at which the mind fired away the words, however, she knew enough about what was proper to try her best to keep the letters intelligible. Even if she failed each and every time at achieving true calligraphy, as Coriolanus' own handwriting was a mastery of, she never stopped trying to remain a step ahead of hieroglyphics, making of her messy style one so undeniably unique.
It read: 'Where the New World begun'.
"I did say I would tell you about it eventually," Daphne gave him a short nudge that ended up being nothing more than her elusive way of ending up leaning into his left arm to also stare down fondly upon that page.
Chapter three of the essay was by no means huge, a trait that, upon noticing it, had Coriolanus clear his throat with a short cough and lift the book from his lap, holding it up so he may avoid hunching in order to read out the underlined phrase close to the beginning of the single paragraph which had been noted by the author as a whole section.
"Having separated itself from the state, having made the distinction between the protected and the protector, the land, or the people, does not wish to cross the boundary that it has itself established; it does not wish to govern, but wishes instead to lead a rational life worthy of human beings." Coriolanus settled back and lifted his chin ever so slightly as the book descended back onto his lap.
Daphne watched with shameless thirst to witness that very thought process she knew was happening behind his eyes. Though she doubted she would ever admit to such beliefs, she was convinced he looked the best when he was thinking deeply — those moments when his features relaxed and he stopped caring about how hardened his glare could get or how cold would his gaze become. In those moments she swore she saw a glimpse of who he truly was when all the facades and games were gone and, to put it plainly, her heart still danced each and every time she was granted a look at the real face of Coriolanus Snow.
Now, more than ever before, she was actually nervous to spot that moment when the blue of his eyes would spark with his very first reaction to what he had just read — that line was her whole world and he was dissecting it before her very eyes, by her own masochistic request.
Finally Coriolanus furrowed his brows and descended his gaze back onto the book. His head tilted to the side. His eyes skimmed over the underlined fragment once again, skipping back above to look at the note Daphne had left for the paragraph at hand.
He wasn't understanding it, Daphne noticed, swallowing the drop of disappointment that threatened not only to poison her mood for the whole rest of the day, but also linger on her tongue as a filter spewing out words she did not mean in tonalities that did not define her.
Before he could indulge himself in one final third read, Daphne closed the book for him and pressed it on his lap, over the red fabric of his uniform. She was counting on the fact that her hand's position would bring Coriolanus to look up at her attentively and, without missing a beat, he followed her expected course of events.
"You'll understand it better when you read the whole thing," Daphne lifted her hand innocently and returned her attention in a cruelly ignorant fashion to her own purse left open in the crammed space between them. "It may seem as quite a light read, but trust me, you should be alone while going through it, so you may properly give it a thought."
"But what does it have to do with your project?"
"Don't worry," she dismissed his immediate concern. "You'll understand."
You have to understand, every fiber in her body shouted back with desperation that she had thankfully kept contained by pulling out yet another distraction — her beloved Baudelaire. "Care for a French practice while we wait?"
And just as she had let the words out, Daphne felt her cheeks light in a blush, half embarrassed and half extremely grateful that by no means would Coryo's mind be as lacking in virtue as hers to think a 'French practice' might as well be an invitation to kissing.
As expected, Coriolanus did not pick up on the reason behind why her face had suddenly drawn near to the gentle shade of cherry blossoms — a comparison rather ironic of him to make given the perfume she was wearing in considerate abundance had a soft aroma of cherries —, ruling it under mere excitement to return to her favorite poems.
Coriolanus found himself suddenly grateful this French poet was long gone and turned to ashes beneath the ruins of some distant place across the ocean from them; had he been a living and breathing person in the Capitol, Daphne Ravinstill would have surely not had spent that pleasant morning with him.
And it was a true power that she had displayed by making a tensioned awaiting into a 'pleasant morning'.
By the time the sun was right above them and less than thirty minutes separated them from an early afternoon, reading poetry on that bench in a lonely train station warmed into a greenhouse, their posture too had relaxed into a truly colloquial state. Coriolanus' left elbow was propped behind Daphne, atop the back of the bench they were on. Though her open purse had remained between them, it no longer served as a chasity reminder separating their thighs from touching, but rather a propping point for Daphne's own elbow. She had turned around ever so slightly to allow the back of her head to rest on Coryo's shoulder. He read comfortably from above her head and everything was, by all means of characterization perfect.
All days should be like this, Coriolanus told himself, listening to Daphne's French and allowing himself a second away from translations to merely daydream and inhale what felt like a new memory being made to override the old, horrible ones the war had left behind in that train station to haunt him.
A long whistle was what had rocked the foundation to his perfection — the train.
Within the second, Coriolanus not only remembered why he was there early and what was at stake with his status as a mentor in the long run, but he also jumped to his feet, fretting to put his uniform's jacket back on, all the while he looked back at the edge of the platform, to hopefully see the exact moment the approaching train makes it stop there.
Daphne was a calming hand amidst his chaos.
She stood up after him, closing the book and leaving it on the bench, so she may immediately take his jacket from his hands and give it a good shake that it very much needed. Grabbing from around its collar, she held it up to help him get dressed, a help Coriolanus was too agitated to even phantom refusing.
After having him dressed in full uniform, Daphne let her hands trail up the clean cut of the jacket, neating it out on his chest until she reached for his collar and fixed it for him. Finally, her hands climbed even further upward and she masterfully rearranged his curls too, leaving no room for him to object against how she styled it.
"How do I look?" Coriolanus allowed that nervous question to make it out past his inhibitions and past his lips bound to smile at the sensations Daphne drew from him with a disarming and nonchalant control. He begun searching the inner pocket of his jacket for the rose he was supposed to give to Lucy Gray.
"Handsome as ever, Coryo dear," Daphne mused, allowing the compliment so often on her mind to finally be voiced, simply for the fact that she knew it would help his confidence, an otherwise necessity towards doing what he had to do.
Pulling the white rose out of his pocket, Coriolanus had to assess truthfully that the flower was definitely not as pristine as it had been in the morning. It has been awfully neglected by him and it looked the part. However, hearing the creaks of the train slowing down in the station, he had no time to worry about the liveliness of the rose in his hand, clipped of thorns.
The sight of the rose had made Daphne move her hands away from Coriolanus a little faster though, yet another detail a version of him that wasn't in such a stressed hurry wouldn't have overlooked so easily.
"For... for your little tribute, I presume?" Daphne asked with a thoughtful hesitation, her gaze raising slowly from the rose she had stared at, to finally look Coryo in the eyes.
"Do you think she'll like it?"
What's going on? Daphne asked herself, standing statue in a time dilation bubble, before a friend who looked in dire need of reassurance at her. She would have otherwise been swift in responding, but there she was instead, numbed to it all.
What is this familiar feeling? And the sensation was familiar indeed, because it tasted of a childhood filled with shadows, a mouthful of blood from biting her tongue and picking her nails with her teeth until her fingers were wounds mirroring the gaping pit of her chest.
She must have answered Coriolanus, and whatever she did tell him seemed to have made him smile, because one second he was there with her and everything was warm, and in the following moment, she watched him hurry to the cargo train from the container of which, followed by an oozing stomach-curling scent of insalubrious conditions, Peacekeepers dragged out the Tributes whom dragged along their chains too.
A faint ringing poisoned Daphne's hearing in her right ear, but she ignored it, seeking from a distance as desperately as Coriolanus, the colorful skirt of his tribute. It was only once Lucy Gray came into view that their reactions separated into two different directions, because while Coriolanus exalted in relief, Daphne's heart scrunched, sending a grimace of terror across her face.
The ringing in her ear persisted, threatening a headache, but Daphne ignored it for the sake of crossing her arms over her chest and pressing her right palm to her heart, as a silent form of beseeching it to find calm again.
But how could her heart be calm when she was forcing it to watch Coriolanus Snow — her Coryo — gift a white rose to that fragile District 12 girl and her cunningly charming smile?
No, her heart could not be calm in such degrading conditions.
But it could well sink through her ribcage instead, fall right past her senses and into a pit of the most dangerous venom in existence, one that had poisoned her from way before her mother died: jealousy.
Daphne Ravinstill was drowning in it.
• • •
AUTHOR'S NOTE :
And with Lucy Gray here to be their disturber of peace, I can safely announce things are only going to get more tense .. 👀 and fun from here on
For those interested by the way, the essay Daphne gifts Coryo to read in relation to her "New World" project is available online to read in full as well. I will only be quoting some fragments of it from Coryo's perspective, everything else will be analyzed by his understanding of it during future narration.