ᴡʜᴏ: LIVINIA CRANE & AUGUSTUS CRANE ( @cfcannons )
ᴡʜᴇʀᴇ: THE TRIBUTE TOWER, LOBBY
ᴡʜᴇɴ: POST-TRIBUTE INTERVIEWS
She hasn't spoken to Auggie since the morning after the tribute ball – when sibling bonding had inevitably devolved into squabbling which had inevitably devolved into surgically-precise jabs at one another's sore spots. If there was one thing the Crane children could be counted on, it was that any truce between them would be tenuous and short-lived. She hadn't planned on speaking to them tonight, either – this event was already taxing enough without expending energy on a pointless fight with her thorn of a sibling.
And yet, when she catches their eye across the lobby of the tribute tower ( because, of course the fucking lifts aren't working – as if Livinia's night could become any more arduous ), her feet are carrying her towards Auggie before she has a chance to think better of it. Perhaps she would have left them alone – continuing her staring contest with the wall ahead of her – were it not for the flash of deep purple in their outfit. "You've got to be fucking kidding me," She mutters, stalking across the lobby and sidling up beside Auggie.
"Still wearing purple, I see." She says between gritted teeth. "Are you completely insane?"
ᴡʜᴏ: LIVINIA CRANE & MAXIM CRANE (@reblrths) & AUGUSTUS CRANE (@cfcannons)
ᴡʜᴇʀᴇ: TRIBUTE TOWER, LIVINIA'S ROOM
ᴡʜᴇɴ: MORNING AFTER THE TRIBUTE BALL
tw: torture mention, parental death
Livinia had woken up in her room at the tribute tower. For a moment, she thinks it might have all just been a bad dream. That she'd been so tired from the night before that she'd gone back to the tower than her own apartment, fallen asleep on the couch in her dress and neglected to remove her makeup. Her head is pounding more than it usually would from a typical hangover, every single one of her nerves seem to be fried, her muscles stiff and sore.
She raises a hand to her face and her fingertips come away black with smudged mascara – she stares at it for a long moment before noticing four thin, moon-shaped indentations across her palm, caked with dried blood. "Oh, god..." She whispers, looking at her other palm and finding matching marks, formed from her own nails pressing too hard against tender flesh. The night comes back to her after that – the questioning, the torture, Maxim's screams, and...
She scrambles to pick up her phone, finding it on the table next to her. Dozens of messages light up the screen – sorry about your mom, my condolences, my thoughts are with your family – and there's news articles at the top – FOUR KILLED BY REBELS. TRIBUTES FLOW FOR CRANE MATRIARCH. REMEMBERING RHEA CRANE. She's going to be sick. Her hands begin to shake so violently that her phone clatters to the ground, the screen shattering on impact. "Shit," She mutters, gently bending down to pick up the shattered glass. She needs to contact her siblings.
Before she can dial the phone, there is a knock at her door. There is nothing she wants less than to answer it – to be seen like this, makeup smeared across her face, burn marks on her collarbone. But there's an undercurrent of fear – that it's a peacekeeper on the other side, that if she doesn't answer, she will be punished again for non-compliance. She swipes at her eyes and flattens her dress, hoping to look somewhat presentable, and goes to the door. She cracks it open, just enough to see whoever is on the other side, but all pretence of hesitancy is dropped when she catches sight of MAXIM.
He looks worse than she does – battered and bruised and with dark circles under his eyes. She only takes in his appearance for a second before she is lunging forward, wrapping her arms around him and burying her head into his chest. It's an act so vulnerable that it reminds her of when they were kids, before the world hardened them into monsters. "Thank fuck you're alive."
ᴡʜᴏ: LIVINIA CRANE & AUGUSTUS CRANE ( @cfcannons )
ᴡʜᴇʀᴇ: PRESIDENT SNOW'S MANSION
ᴡʜᴇɴ: THE TRIBUTE BALL
While some people might be uncomfortable with lavish parties or large crowds, this was, unfortunately, where Livinia shone. It was both a blessing and a curse of her upbringing – that she knew exactly what to say and not to say, how to stand and smile, how to be perfectly presentable. Of course, within the first fifteen minutes of her arrival, her darling mother had made a point of criticising her outfit and belittling her work – though this was hardly a surprise. And, as if that wasn't bad enough – she catches sight of her sibling's handiwork on Dante's face not long after the training scores are presented, which causes an anxious knot to form in her gut.
She's no idiot – unlike some of the ignorant partygoers, Livinia understood exactly what Augustus was trying to achieve with the plum hues, and she was sure that she couldn't be the only one. She manages to find them quickly, grabbing them by the arm and pulling them to the side to hiss in their ear. "I noticed Dante's makeup," She says, "I was just wondering if you were always this stupid, or if tonight was more of a one-off occasion. So I can be prepared."
∗ 97﹕ sender has hidden an injury from receiver , and receiver finds out . auggie & liv <3
tw: references to torture, injuries, and alcohol
She may not be the oldest, but Livinia has always felt protective of her siblings.
Maybe it was her mother's doing – imbuing her with an inflated sense of responsibility for the actions and wellbeing of those around her. Or perhaps it was just a repressed instinct to nurture – however vile the word felt on her tongue. Though she would rarely admit it, there were few people in the world she cared about more than her siblings. Even if they spent most of the time at one another's throats, there was still an understanding that, when all the cards were on the table, they would still sit down to eat at it. Together. That they were a united force against whichever outsider forces threatened them.
It had been easier when they were children. Max and Auggie never strayed too far from her line of sight. She would be there when the nannies patched up their knee scrapes. She would know when they were upset. Although comfort had never been Livinia's strong suit, she would try, in her own way. She would watch them a little closer – ask the cooks to give them extra dessert.
Then, they all grew up. Grew apart, even if they were still hopelessly intertwined in one another's lives. Her parents would call caring a weakness, and, eventually, Livinia came to view it as one, too. She learned to reign it in, she learned to be cold. Max learned to hide his feelings with a bright smile and bold lies. Auggie learned to be quiet. And, when they weren't, they learned to be angry.
Maybe she shouldn't be as upset as she is, then, when she sees deep scars on Augustus' back and realises she has no clue how, or when, they got there.
Maybe, if she were a little more sober and the moon were not so low in the sky, she would have swallowed her morbid curiosity and pocketed the information for later. Maybe, if she hadn't invited herself to crash at Auggie's place in lieu of going home to her boring husband, she wouldn't have seen the scars at all. Maybe, if they hadn't been equally inebriated, Auggie would have thought twice before slipping into their pyjama shirt with Livinia seemingly in the next room.
They don't seem to realise their mistake, at first. They turn back around and fix Livinia with a sheepish grin – move to gather some blankets for her to sleep with. But Livinia doesn't move. Her feet won't let her – and she's not sure if it's the shock or the alcohol, but nausea quickly makes a home in her stomach. She feels unsteady on her feet. She doesn't notice as Augustus' expression quickly morphs into concern, and then they are darting forward to steady her. She thinks they're saying something to her – but there's cotton in her ears and hot tears springing to her eyes. She wipes them away furiously.
A plethora of possibilities run through her mind – maybe they fell backwards into a rose bush, maybe it's carpet burn, or road rash, or some sort of nasty skin condition. Anything but the horrifying, numbing, most likely conclusion that her mind continues to skip to like a broken record. Somebody did this to them. Somebody hurt – no, tortured, her sibling... and she had no idea. Somebody did this to them. Somebody looked Auggie – her older sibling, the one she had idolised as a child and started to understand as an adult, one of the only people in the world she truly loved more than herself – in the eye, and mutilated them.
And Livinia didn't know. They didn't tell her. They tried to hide it from her. They had suffered in silence, because their sister would always be too cold to understand, right?
Livinia lets out a shaky breath, then another. Her entire body is shaking – she's sitting on the bed now. Auggie must have manoeuvred her there in her haze. Sat her down and taken her hands, rubbing small circles over the back of them. Finally, she gathers the nerve to look them in the eye – she's sure her own have an uncanny mix of fury and sorrow, and she speaks – "What happened?"
