CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - Sunrise on Victory ..
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When the atoms that make out their bodies had been created and arranged, they were put into the shapes they now held so the two of them may lay perfectly next to each other. That is what Coriolanus Snow was certain about as he watched in perfect silence how complete relaxation looked on Daphne's features.
Lately, both of them have pushed recklessly on the human limits when it came to sleep schedules, so as soon as they found themselves facing each other in bed, with not a single light to disrupt the darkness from dropping a luring veil over their heads, they fell right into the trap set by their own soft breaths growing longer and deeper. Coriolanus would have liked to believe that Daphne fell asleep first, but while he had no certainty about that variable, he could thankfully have full reign over a different achievement — that of waking up first.
The sun hasn't come out yet, though he's been there, petrified in the very same position he had woken up and went to sleep into, for at least half an hour. It was so early in the morning that what few birds were left in the Capitol haven't yet awakened either. The streets outside were bare and deserted, the house itself was creaking of slumber and desolation. Blue tinted light flooded through his dirty window and reflected off of walls in a soft mirage of fog in which dust particles danced to that secret symphony Daphne told him about.
He reckoned he won't be moving any time soon, not when the sight he was graced with upon waking up was what poets would call an endless fountain of inspiration. Daphne had the allure of fairytale to herself, even with the presence of that bruise on the marble of her skin. It felt sacrilegious for that stain to be there, but flaws and imperfections are often what set apart art pieces from masterpieces — the latter, Coriolanus was convinced, could not exist as being defined in perfection, but rather in the knowledge that perfection exists behind conditionals and despite every single wrongdoing which would have otherwise tarnished a normal art piece to a failure, instead of elevating it even further.
He obviously wished he could just erase that bruise from her skin, but since he had no such powers, he grew to appreciate how miraculous it was that she still looked like a dream despite the tarnished spot.
In the blue hues swirling around the room, her auburn hair had captured darker nuances in the relaxed waves framing her face. What he could once describe as an autumnal shade had been turned for him to witness as a rusted smudge of the softest fabric, reminiscent only to the crimson of damp wood after rain.
Coriolanus didn't know why he always ended up comparing Daphne's beauty to that of a forest, because he hasn't really seen one in so long that picturing it perfectly was near impossible. Now, he started piecing together that the mystery of endless forests in which there is a promise to getting lost was simply too akin with Daphne's never-ending knowledge and her thirst to add layer after layer to it. With all the books she's read, he could also smile now over the fact that perhaps a splinter of her soul misses the trees and sees their spirits in the pages she flips.
He could stay there, sharing his pillow with her forever and he wouldn't have a need for anything else as long as time stops and lets them have their eternal peace. But the longer he waited, the clearer his mind got, until eventually, he no longer saw her at all.
Tomorrow, the Hunger Games begin, Coriolanus thought, slowly dropping on his back, careful not to fall out of bed nor nudge into Daphne and risk to wake her up. There's only fourteen Tributes left, but Lucy's chances are not that great against them either, he reasoned.
His movement has, no matter how calculated and silent, still shifted the weight disposal on the bed in such a manner that Daphne too had to move — she shifted closer to him and made her dear Coryo's heart exalt far too early in the morning. The true blow attacking his senses was when, as she shifted closer to being melted into his side, Daphne made herself comfortable by draping her left arm around him and using his shoulder for a pillow.
The burns on his back from his little explosive excursion in the arena complained achingly about having to be pushed further into the mattress, even by just a small weight like her arm. However, Coriolanus bit down on his tongue and accepted that no blessing ever comes without drawing a price of its own.
"I have to win," he judged then, in a barely audible whisper, his left arm wrapping around Daphne. He picked up the hem of the blanket that had fallen off her shoulders and, looking downwards, he made sure he lifted it back up to cover her again. His shirt hadn't been buttoned up all the way on her, so much of her cleavage and her shoulders was bare and exposed to the still chilled air of the room yet to be greeted by a true summer morning light. An improper thought passed unchecked in the forefront of his mind, making Coriolanus wonder if she will at any point in the future, even without talking about that kiss of theirs, let him see how his lips felt touching more tender parts of her body, such as her neck; he guessed feeling her pulse answer to his presence could not have been anything but pleasant.
And that's what he had to win for — not only his family, not only for the sake of his name's legacy not being abandoned to rubble and to ruination, but also so he could finally feel worthy to hold her that close and experience that bliss.
Daphne was by all means brilliant. The blood that ran in her veins was the blood of a victor, of someone whose name will hold reign over an entire chapter of history. He couldn't be a footnote on her pages. If he wished to honor her and their alliance, he had to raise higher in the ranks of society and aim his goals further than the bare minimum he so far planned, and for that, he had to make it to University first.
The moment in which Daphne woke up was marked by a sniff-like sharp inhale that she drew in. A jolt traversed her body and she shuddered closer — any closer now and she would have either pushed Coriolanus off the bed or come on top of him; he knew which one he would have enjoyed more.
"Good morning, Miss Ravinstill," he greeted quietly, before she would have the chance to do either of those two things. Straining the back of his neck to look down, Coriolanus caught the exact moment in which Daphne's eyelashes fluttered and her eyes opened, glazed by an innocent confusion.
"Mr. Snow," she smiled. As quickly as that smile graced her lips though, she hid it away, ducking her head. "Has anyone ever told you," Daphne hummed, quiet enough so the hoarseness of her voice was barely audible, "you make a remarkable pillow?"
"You are the privileged single tester of my pillow capabilities," Coriolanus mused along, grateful to hear that she woke up feeling far better than how she had been last night.
"Lucky me," Daphne leant on her back, still resting her head on his shoulder, thus also trapping his arm beneath her. She brought her hands up and interlaced her fingers over her chest, features relaxing as she stared up at the blueish illuminated atmosphere of the room. Through faint filaments of light danced dust particles. "It's so quiet," she couldn't help but note out loud in an appreciative sigh.
"Everyone's asleep."
"No, I mean...," Daphne tilted her head back in a futile attempt to look at Coriolanus without yet considering sitting up as an option available to her. "It's perfectly quiet. I hear your breath, my own, but that's it. Nothing more. God, Coryo," she set herself back laying normally, "it's been so long since I had a little silence. Ten years. But who's counting, right? I didn't even think it would be possible to hear silence again, not until you kissed me."
To hear her acknowledgement of their kiss out of the blue had startled Coriolanus' breath to stop in his throat. He's all but forgotten how anxious he was for a closure to that moment. It was not as if he was expecting feedback on his performance, though it would have been welcomed — given Daphne was his first, and most likely his last, he imagined it could only be beneficial for the both of them if he were to know for certain whether his minimal experience in kissing gained from reading a couple of dubious fragments from mandatory books was sufficient or if there was a demand that he do better next time. Coriolanus simply wished to know if there was hope for him yet to be with her, if there would be that next time.
Before he could ask though, Daphne sat up, leaving his side feeling the nip of the cold air. Goodness, a thought flashed in his mind, will I ever be able to sleep comfortably without her again?
"What?" his confusion frowned over his features though, while he watched Daphne sitting there, knelt in the middle of his bed. She was staring upwards, but by following her line of sight, Coriolanus was met with the boring sight of his plain ceiling. There was nothing there, much as he knew Daphne would like to argue 'nothing' is a concept used by those who don't know better. "What's wrong?" He inquired, propping himself back on his elbows to get ready to sit up as well.
The movement from his side of the bed caused Daphne to blink. Her lips moved over a whisper shivered off her lips so quietly that not even him, way less than a meter behind her, could make out what she said.
Whatever it was that she saw on his ceiling had widened her eyes and now, Coriolanus was starting to get curious, so he sat up and insisted, hunching forward so he may rub any shade of sleepiness from his eyes before straightening up, "Did you see something?"
"Pen," Daphne articulated what he could only understand as being some random word. That random word however marked her leaving the bed in a hurry, almost losing his shirt that she was wearing in the process — the garment had slid off her left shoulder and she pulled it back up clumsily, scrambling as best she could without stumbling too towards his desk that she took into her line of sight. "Pen, Coriolanus!" She shouted back over her shoulder, the urgency of everything finally resounding to morph his confusion into panic. "I need a pen!"
"The drawer," Coriolanus answered, a bit absent-minded. Watching Daphne go for the drawer closest to her, on the right side of his desk, he raised his hand, "Left side."
There was panic translated in her movements too. He could swear he caught a glimpse of Daphne's lips moving across fast-uttered mutters when she pulled harshly on the drawer to the left. From all the way back in his bed, Coriolanus didn't have hopes of understanding what she was saying, so he decided that was the time for him to slip out of bed as well.
"Shut up!" Daphne shouted, only pointing back at him, but otherwise keeping her attention glued on the insides of the drawer. She picked out of it not a pen, but a marker, because in the meantime, she noticed Coriolanus had no paper in sight that would be easily accessible for her.
I didn't say anything, Coriolanus wished to have complained, but he was far too stunned to speak, watching Daphne step on his chair and kneel on his study desk, bare knees and all, so she could reach the window. She pretty much bit off the cap on the black marker to save time and have its tip touch the translucent surface faster. From the moment that it touched it, he counted three taps on it before her hand started moving from the wrist across numbers, symbols and what-not — the sort of stuff he wouldn't be able to translate with what little he knew of Mathematics.
However, Coriolanus had a great memory to thank for his academic achievements and though he didn't know Mathematics nearly enough to read what she was writing, he could recognize at the very least the beginning of that equation: it was the exact same one he saw she had left unfinished on the middle of a blackboard in her room.
Given as there were starting to be parts of it that he didn't recognize, Coriolanus made an easy assumption — Daphne was trying a new solution for it.
No later than a minute of tension, having filled almost every square inch of his window, the tip of the marker lifted from the dirty surface and remained suspended in air. Daphne blinked, taking in everything she had wrote up to that point, bit by bit, checking for errors once, then twice and a third final time for good measure. Time and time again her mental gymnastics stretched across calculations, giving her the same result, the same verdict, the same end that once she accepted, her left hand clasped over her mouth just in time to muffle her short scream of surprise.
Coriolanus noticed she was trembling and saw a disaster waiting to happen since the table was nowhere big enough for her to actually sit on it properly yet Daphne was about to collapse back to sit on her heels. Just as she did, he was behind her, making sure that instead of falling back off the surface, her back met his chest and his hands her waist to steady her. She flinched as if she had just been reminded he was there too.
"It's done," she breathed out through her fingers, slowly lowering her hands to her lap, eyes wide still staring up in pure disbelief at the window painted by her most beloved science. After the days she's had, she had lost all hope in finding the solution to the final equation; turns out she needed a little sleep and silence to see the truth as plain before her eyes as anything could be. "It's actually done. The last piece we needed. I did it."
Tears filled her eyes, but before Coriolanus could do something about it, Daphne turned away from facing the window and the sunrise behind it that lifted over the buildings of the Capitol. She kicked off his desk some stack of books in the process of turning around. Because she was still on the desk though and still on her knees, for once Daphne was a little taller than Coriolanus and from that angle, he was completely taken off guard to feel her palms frame his face and hold him while she stole a kiss from his lips, one so hungry and shameless that it kept on stealing from him everything it could — breath, sense, reason.
He didn't know if he actually liked having to tilt his head back to kiss her, but too many fireworks went on in his mind to form a genuine complaint. Instead, a man of action at heart, Coriolanus held firmer onto Daphne's waist and pulled her off the table, helping her down after kicking his chair away — the chair ended up falling over, next to the books, and he imagined with this much noise, the whole house was most likely already awake.
Once set down on her feet however, Daphne drew away from the kiss with a wide smile on her lips. "This is where the New World begins," she whispered to him, the spark in her eyes turning into the very embodiment of innovative excitement. These are the eyes of someone born to change the world, Coriolanus told himself, leaning in for a second kiss as he had turned alight with passion anew thanks to how absolutely breathtaking she looked with victory radiating off of her.
However, Daphne let her hands slide from his face down to his chest and leant back, "Do you want to see it?"
"See it?" Coriolanus tilted his head to the side, curious enough to pry his eyes off her chapped lips and resist looking at anything which laid below them, awfully revealed thanks to his shirt's large fit on her body. He met her eyes — there he could get lost and keep his dignity as well.
"Do you want to or do you not?" Daphne inquired, unable to stop herself from smiling a little wider now, excitement getting the best of her. Too long has she waited for this moment, too long did she have the future so far out of her reach that it could be barely called more than a hopeful dream. But the future was here. The future was now and every cell in her body was on fire thanks to it. Ten years of suffering, years worth of prearations, a lifetime of obsession, and it all came down to this.
"Yes or no, Coryo." Her hands now grasped the fabric of his shirt and tugged on it ever so gently. "But you have to know that if you say 'yes', then you're saying 'yes' to not sleeping tonight. You'll be saying 'yes' to returning in the Capitol tomorrow morning with dangerous knowledge that you must hide perfectly whilst you attend to your Mentor duties. You'll have to pretend that nothing happened, and I assure you, it will be life changing what you will witness. Most importantly," she tugged a little harder on his shirt now, bringing him closer by a step which flushed their chests together, "if you say 'yes', then you swear you will be by my side. No matter what happens, what you see or what you feel in the aftermath of it. There is no going back if you say 'yes', even though you may think I'm delusional or cruel or fucking psychotic—"
Coriolanus pressed his lips onto hers, taking the end of her sentence on the tip of his tongue before leaning back only to leave room to rest his forehead onto hers. "Yes," he answered, his heart rate going insane as all the information she gave him was being processed. It sounded dangerous. What did she mean that they will return in the Capitol tomorrow? Where would they be going? It all already sounded insane. "Yes," he nodded too this time around.
Daphne left one final happy peck on his lips before slipping around him to find the clothes she came there with. She made a silent decision to button up Coriolanus' shirt around her and only put back on her pants. "Meet me at the train station in about three hours," she announced once she started dressing herself. "Don't be late."
"Can I know where we are going?"
With the knowledge that she will have time to change her clothes and fix her make-up before actually getting to the train station, Daphne didn't care to arrange herself too well just then, only focusing on being ready to leave quickly. "Pass me an actual pen and a piece of paper, would you?"
By the time Coriolanus gave the two requested items to her, Daphne was already dressed decently enough to leave the house. Though he expected to get their destination written down to him, Daphne folded the paper and pocketed the pen along with it. She nodded to the window behind Coriolanus, "Wipe that thing clean when I am gone. No one in the Capitol should know how to read it, but let's not take our chances with that. We're going to District 2. You'll need to wear something that doesn't stand out. So not the Academy uniform, much as I love how red brings out your eyes."
District 2? Coriolanus was left too stunned to actually respond to their short lived goodbye. Why would we be going to District 2? he asked himself at first, only to soon correct his inner inquiry haunting him in the confines of his room, now once again lonely. How would they be getting to District 2?
Moments after Daphne left his room in a hurry, Tigris appeared in Coriolanus' open doorway, "Miss Ravinstill stayed the night?!"
Thaddeus had slept overnight in the car, following Daphne's order to wait there. From the moment she sat on the backseat of the vehicle, asking him to drive her back home, she hasn't stopped for a second from noting down from memory the solution to the final equation her project needed solved in order to be worth the resource waste in the attempt to move it into second phase.
"After you drop me off," Daphne started when they went past the gates of her home's property, finally having finished writing too. "I'll need you to go to District 2. Presidential permit. I will call ahead to let them all know you're coming. If they ask, though they shouldn't, tell them you're part of the quality control committee established recently to evaluate building structure. Anything else they ask you, just tell them Ravinstill sent you. No other title. Keep it as ambiguous and brief as you can." She paused in order to lean forward between the front seats and pass him the folded piece of paper with her calculations, "You'll be taking this piece of paper personally to Dr. Watt. He'll know what to do with it. Use no intermediary and do not show the contents of the paper to anyone else before him, no matter what. Me and Coriolanus will be joining you before lunchtime for the first testing."
"The first testing?" Thaddeus' eyebrows shot upward as he pocketed on the inside of his coat the important piece of paper he was supposed to be delivering.
"It's time, Thaddeus," Daphne leant back, sighing through her smile. "No matter what happens tonight, the world will never be the same."
After a short pondering silence, Thaddeus too released a short exhale, "Good."
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AUTHOR'S NOTE :
We're almost at the scene where Coriolanus ( and therefore all of you too ) gets to know what "New World" project actually is !!! I am so excited !! Any last theories, y'all?
Be warned though that the project is divided into phases and though immediately in the next chapter we learn what phase 1 is, the next two phases are like pieces of a puzzle — can't really make out the big picture of what the project is without them. I am however looking forward to seeing if any of you have any ideas, though, taking into consideration everything Daphne mentioned so far, including the math and the essay from Aksakov that she got inspired by to begin with.
I've been researching a crazy amount for this fic, I realize 😅 but well, I am dedicated to the art of writing, what can I say...