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Everything goes to hell when Claudius turns around in the parking lot and Selene and Misha aren’t there.
“Hey, is everything okay?” He frowns and turns to Lyme, who’s standing by the driver’s side door with her keys in her hand, an odd look on her face. “They’re not keeping Selene for any bullshit new Victor commentary, are they?” Claudius can’t remember now if they held him back his first year out; it’s kind of nice, now, that the early parts of his recovery have fuzzed together, but that doesn’t help now that he actually wants to pull out a specific detail.
Lyme jangles her keys, looking back over his head toward the Justice Building. The others are already getting into their various vehicles; Brutus shoots Lyme a look that Claudius doesn’t miss but also can’t interpret, but he doesn’t say anything, just slides into the truck with Emory and Devon and pulls away. “Misha texted,” Lyme says finally, still not looking at him. “Selene knows the male tribute this year. They’re going to stay and see him off.”
Claudius turns to stare at her as his brain turns over and tries to put that together in a way that makes sense. “Has that ever happened before?” he asks finally. Most of them remember the ones who go in after them for the next few years, it’s part of what makes the initial recovery so tough. Claudius had the unique position of being more familiar with the years above him, since he’d lived in Residential unofficially from the age of seven and the older boys adopted him early, but even he recognized the tributes who came after him.
Lyme hesitates again, then shakes her head. “Not since I’ve been here,” she says. He watches her pull herself out of her introspection and slot things back into place where they’re supposed to be. “Sorry, D, I should’ve told you to catch a ride back with someone else. Now you’re stuck waiting for me.”
“It’s fine,” Claudius says, a little too fast. “I don’t mind.”
Her mouth quirks a little, and they’re all in their best Reaping Day suits with hair and makeup done to look good for the cameras and the two-storey screens so it’s a little jarring to see her up close looking so tired and worried. “You’re a good kid,” she tells him, and Claudius puffs up a little in spite of everything. “Let’s go find somewhere to sit so we’re not attracting attention. Somebody’s bound to notice if we hang around the parking lot.”
Of course, what follows is a mildly hysterical attempt to figure out where the hell they can go that won’t ping everyone’s radar, since they can’t go to the Justice Building or stand around the square, and they’re dressed in their most conspicuous clothes so there’s no hope of blending in with the post-Reaping crowds at any of the downtown restaurants. Eventually Lyme says ‘fuck it’ and they drive the truck halfway up the path and pull over, then take a walk up a random side path through the trees.
“Do you know anything about him?” Claudius asks, kicking at pine needles with the toe of his shoe.
Again the hesitation before Lyme answers, and Claudius gives her a sharp look. He watches her frown, sees her chew the inside of her cheek, and waits for her to run through the calculation of whether or not to tell him before finally deciding he’s ready. He should feel proud, or worthy, or something, and maybe a couple years ago he would have but right now all he’s got is apprehension.
“Yeah,” Lyme says carefully. “Calli mentored his brother two years ago.”
Claudius stops dead, but Lyme keeps going and he has to jog to catch up with her. “Shit — really?”
“Yeah.” She runs a hand through her hair, making a face as her fingers come away sticky with gel. “Normally family information doesn’t make it into the files, but obviously there are exceptions.”
Claudius remembers the boy from the 71st, all right, a death so gruesome that Lyme pulled rank on him for the first time in two years and actually turned the television off, dragging him out to spar at three in the fucking morning so he would stop insisting he had to watch until the end. “And Selene knew him,” Claudius says as the next piece of the puzzle falls into place with a deafening clang. “And now —”
“Yeah,” Lyme says for the third time in a row.
“Shit,” Claudius says, and drags a hand down his face. “Guess we won’t be doing that Victor-family camping trip this year, huh.”
They stay out along the paths for another hour or so until Lyme’s phone alerts her to another message. “Okay, they’re done,” she says. Claudius swats at a mosquito whining around his neck and glances at her, but either Misha didn’t give her any more information or Lyme’s not sharing because she only slings an arm around Claudius’ shoulders and turns him back around toward the road.
Selene doesn’t say anything as they all pile into Lyme’s truck, and Claudius hesitates himself before climbing in. On the way in they sat by seniority, mentors in the front with the younger Victors behind them, but sure enough now Misha climbs in behind the driver’s seat and squeezes herself into the back of the cab without comment, leaving Claudius to take the front passenger side next to Lyme. It’s not like the Reaping drive is ever particularly chatty, but this time the silence feels like a living thing, and Claudius rolls down the window just so that the rush of air will give him something else to pay attention to.
This isn’t just someone Selene knew in Residential, he’s pretty sure. It might’ve been, maybe she really did manage to get super close with a pair of brothers after moving to a secure facility where cross-gender friendships are restricted, but ... that doesn’t make much sense. Seems much more likely that Selene knew them before, maybe they went to school together, maybe they were friends growing up, maybe — Claudius’ heart squeezes in his chest — maybe they’re even related, cousins or something. Selene doesn’t talk about her family, not in the brittle, avoidant way that Lyme does, so Claudius always sort of figured things were fine but forgettable, nothing her mentor really had to shake loose like he had. But maybe she’s just better at hiding things.
Once they get back, Claudius slips out and folds the seat down so Selene can get down. He sneaks a look at her, and while she’s unusually quiet she’s still here, she hasn’t slid backwards into her head and disappeared, so that’s something.
Whatever this is, Misha can handle it, she’ll fix things and help keep Selene on an even keel and they’ll get through it because they have to. If nobody in the Village has ever faced anything like this before, well — Selene has always insisted on being a trailblazer.
He wants to do something, let her know he’s here for her, but one look at Selene’s ratcheted posture and Claudius knows better than to try to touch her. And so he shoves his hands in his pockets and makes eye contact with Misha instead, and she’s in full-on mentor mode now, focused and serious without a hint of his shit-headed big sister who used to prank him and drag him out to participate in her bullshit, but she takes the time to hold his gaze and nod. She’ll find him, her eyes say, when it’s time.
“C’mon,” Lyme says, after they separate. “We should spar too.”
He doesn’t need to, Claudius starts to say, he’s not the one whose childhood friend or cousin or whatever just got reaped, but something inside him twists and he realizes exactly how much he needs Lyme’s hands on his shoulders and her presence telling him she’s not going anywhere. “Yeah,” he says, dizzyingly grateful.
Lyme pulls him in for a kiss on the forehead, then they head inside the Village together.
Later that night, Claudius has settled in with his music when Misha and Selene show up at his door. “Hey, D,” Misha says, and she’s not playing like nothing’s wrong but she’s dropped a bit of the super seriousness at least. “I’ve gotta make some calls. Why don’t you and Selene hang out for a bit, keep each other from going stir-crazy? No Reaping footage, yeah?”
“Yeah sure, of course,” Claudius says. He’s watched the reruns a few times with various commentary, trying to figure out who might be the contenders this year, already feeling himself getting sucked in against his will. Selene wears a face that says she knows exactly what her mentor is doing but can’t argue the point, and at least if Misha is sending her to Claudius instead of Devon there’s a bit of a veneer of hanging out with friends rather than leaving her with a minder.
Selene flops down onto his couch and jams her feet against the coffee table, posture lopsided like she can’t decide whether to hunch or fake casual. “Hey,” Claudius says, sitting down next to her. “Do you want to —”
“No,” she says flatly.
Claudius laughs a little at her tone, and also the recognition he feels in his soul in response. He and Lyme talk about his feelings a fair amount, all things considered, but only after she’s knocked him to the ground and sat on his head for a while. He and Selene don’t exactly have that kind of lead-up established. “Okay, fair enough. What about the treehouse? We can grab a bunch of food and some music and blankets and just, I don’t know, chill for a while. And not talk about feelings, I promise.”
Selene eyes him with suspicion for a long moment, but then she uncurls. “Yeah, okay,” she says. “But only because you’re precious, and I bet you have enough stuff in your fridge for, like, a whole picnic and everything.”
“I … the fuck?” Claudius stares at her. “Who’s precious? Selene, what the hell? It’s called having food, like a normal person. You’ll understand once you’ve been out a little longer and actually start making your own grocery lists.”
She bares her teeth at him in the barest hint of her old shark smile, and Claudius snorts and throws a couch cushion at her head. “Whatever,” he says. “Come raid my fridge, you gremlin, and figure out what you want to take outside.”
They can’t exactly pretend it’s a day like any other, but Selene wants to be distracted and Claudius has permission to distract her, so it works out well enough. At any rate there’s food, which is rarely a bad idea, and Claudius brings out his latest instrument, a little wooden box with metal prongs screwed in at various lengths that he thumbs to create different pitches, and that’s amusing enough to keep Selene occupied for a while. They fiddle around with it and eat the food and Selene makes fun of him for his cozy treehouse while flopping back and enjoying its comforts, so all in all it’s a fairly standard interaction if Claudius doesn’t think about the two tributes who will by now be stopped on the train behind the curve of the mountain range waiting for the district trains to catch up.
Misha shows up later, knocking the secret code she made up half as a joke but half because Claudius got twitchy about people invading his space back when he first built the original rickety platform in the tree. “Hey,” she says. Claudius waits for her head to appear over the edge, but instead a pile of blankets and pillows flies up instead and nearly hits him in the face. “Sleepover time.”
“Wait, seriously?” Claudius stares at her as Misha finally scrambles up and over, making her way to Selene and kissing her forehead before stealing a cookie from the now diminished platter. “You do know this was originally supposed to be my sanctuary, or whatever. No non-Claudiuses allowed.”
“And we’re all proud of your emotional growth, letting other people into your space,” Misha says, deadpan, but when Selene grins her gaze flickers with a shadow of seriousness. “You want us to move inside?”
Claudius tries not to gape all over again at the show of concern for his personal comfort and boundaries. He’s still not used to mentor Misha and all the good examples she tries to show in front of Selene, but he’ll take the effects when they benefit him, that’s for sure. On the other hand, the treehouse has grown over the years, and while it’s not exactly a luxury apartment in the Capitol, it can definitely handle the three of them camping out for the night if Misha wants to give Selene something else to do and keep her away from televisions in the middle of the night.
“No, it’s fine,” he says,” he says with an exaggerated sigh to show his capitulation. “But I’m demanding payment in the form of breakfast.”
“That’s fine,” Selene says immediately, so quickly that Claudius immediately suspects a trap. “But I don’t have anything in my house so we’ll have to use what’s in your fridge. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Or we go to the market tomorrow and pick up some actual food so we don’t eat him out of house and home,” Misha says, mock-stern, tugging on the ends of Selene’s hair as her girl makes a face but doesn’t protest. Claudius chews on that one for a minute, trying to figure out why it sounds so weird, until it hits him that that’s totally an Emory line, from the sentiment right down to the phrasing, and the whole surreality of the situation sinks in again.
(Emory helped him build this treehouse, too, Claudius remembers. They aren’t friends, they’re not even close, she’s too good and decent and hardworking and it makes Claudius feel itchy, but she used to come over with wood and tools and help him shore up supports or add another level and finally set up the roof so he wouldn’t get completely soaked if it started raining. He still doesn’t know what to do with her, but she’s helped all of them at one point or another, and now she’s responsible for getting Selene’s childhood friend home alive.
Everything connects in the Village, from Selene headbutting Misha’s shoulder and Misha putting on her mentor-face and the beams of Claudius’ treehouse and the boy sitting in the tribute car waiting for his state-sponsored execution. Some days it’s blood; today it’s Emory. Weird thought.)
At least nobody’s Arenas have had treehouses in them yet, Claudius thinks, and then almost laughs at the absurdity of it before the thought distracts him with horrified fascination. Imagine an Arena that’s a twisted child’s playground, all the possibilities those could afford the Gamemakers — but by now Claudius can recognize an oncoming spiral and pull himself out of it. Now he can just be glad that he and Selene aren’t triggered by anything so innocuous and can have fun relaxing in his backyard without worrying about setting off any meltdowns.
Selene falls asleep first because Misha hands her a glass of water and a couple of pills, and she grumbles a little but doesn’t make more than token complaint. Misha stays up a while longer to watch over her, carding fingers through her hair, and they both wait for the cadence of her breathing to slow until the drugs kick in and sleep takes over.
“What did you and Emory talk about?” Claudius asks finally.
Misha glances at him, eyes sharp. For a second he wonders if she’s going to try to bullshit him or play stupid, but in the end she only shakes her head. “Comparing notes,” she says, and that makes sense. “Looks like the stories check out so far.”
“So they really did know each other before Residential?” A low knot settles in Claudius’ stomach.
“Is that what she told you?”
“No, but I mean, what else could it be?”
“I’ll let her tell you, when she’s ready,” Misha says, which is what he thought she’d say, but is also a confirmation of itself, and she’ll have to know that too. She sighs, and now this is weird in a whole other way because Claudius hears something new in it, a hint of connection he doesn’t remember being there before. They aren’t peers, Misha is a mentor and he isn’t and she’s ten years his senior besides, but she’s letting him see a little bit of her tiredness and frustration. “This year’s going to be a shitshow, D,” Misha says with feeling. “So much for ‘nobody watches their first year out’.”
“You’ve got this,” Claudius says, a little surprised to realize he means it. “She’s crazy about you.”
Misha snorts, but he thinks she’s pleased as she settles down next to Selene. For a while they both compete to be the last one awake, Misha as the vigilant mentor and Claudius as the ones with people invading his space, but eventually Misha loses and drifts off with Selene curled up a few feet from her side.
Claudius stares out at the waving branches a little longer, mind whirling with the first eddies of a worry he’s not willing to think about just yet, but eventually the combined power of Selene and Misha’s sleep-breathing draws him down.
He manages it until the interviews, when Alec — looking scrubbed and handsome and disturbingly earnest beneath the Centre-cultivated edge, effortlessly gorgeous in a way that means he barely even thinks about it unlike Claudius who has to claw for every scrap of his blood-soaked sex appeal — puts on a for-the-cameras hint of shyness and drops hints about a mysterious girl back home who’s like a sister to him.
Everything in the room fades out at the edges, his vision tunnelling around the television screen as a low roaring starts in his ears. The interview doesn’t spend a lot of time on it but Claudius’ attention snags as though trying to run through bramble, and he completely misses the switch to the next tribute whatsoever.
“Hey,” Lyme says, her voice snapping him back to attention, and he glances up to see she’s shut off the TV. It could have been just now or could’ve been ten minutes ago, Claudius has no way of knowing, and that’s … probably not great, is it. “Up, let’s go.”
“I don’t need to,” Claudius says, even as he pulls himself up off the couch and helps Lyme push the furniture out of the way. It’s a token protest and he doesn’t bother to push it, there’s a tightness already pressing in his chest and he imagines lying there tonight with it pushing on him as he tries to sleep and no, no he can’t. Let them spar it out until the feeling disappears and he’ll feel much better.
A few rounds in, Claudius realizes his error: after the initial knockdown and pin to remind him who’s boss and get his head on straight, Lyme tugs him back to his feet and dances back out of the way, drawing him out, and Claudius hisses through his teeth. She’s not here to punch him until he settles. They’re going to talk.
“I don’t need to talk about it,” Claudius says, diving at her waist, aiming for a failed takedown that should end up with him flat on his back, staring at the ceiling with stars dancing in his vision and Lyme’s arm across his throat. “I need to stop thinking about it.”
Lyme ducks and rolls him over her shoulder, catching him in a headlock before letting him go and moving back out of his space again. “Too bad,” she says calmly. “That’s not how feelings work.”
Claudius glares at her. “Sure it is. You push them down really, really far and you never talk about it and then eventually you stop feeling them. Isn’t that what you and Brutus do all the time?”
Lyme snorts, and this time she does knock him down, but she doesn’t pin him, doesn’t straddle his chest with her forearm beneath his chin until the flailing in his mind settles. She does hold him down with one hand on his chest while Claudius continues to scowl, and this is not what he had in mind at all. “Yeah, it is, Captain Perceptive, but you miss the part we don’t show to the kids, which is once a year or so it all bubbles up to the point where one of us might say or do something stupid, so we have to get blind drunk and kick the absolute, ever-loving shit out of each other to push everything back down again.”
“I am absolutely okay with that deal,” Claudius says, though he files that information away for later, when he has the mental space to process it. The year that twelve-year-old volunteered on a dare he got to see a side of Lyme he never expected, a depth of grief and rage and weariness she’d never let slip above the surface before, but Brutus? What could he be hiding?
“Unfortunately for you, that’s not part of the mentor package,” Lyme says dryly, and throws him again.
For all the sparring they do on a regular basis, Claudius can’t remember the last time a bout left him so frustrated. No matter what Lyme refuses to finish it, she’ll knock him down and pin him but she won’t hold him there, won’t keep him long enough for it to stick, always standing up and nudging him with her foot until he gets back up for the next round. Again, again, again, more stupid, pointless exchanges like they’re back at the Centre going over sparring drills with the trainers calling out forms, and Claudius always loses but it doesn’t give him the same satisfaction.
“What do you want from me!” Claudius bursts out finally, wrenching his arm out of Lyme’s grip and pulling away to catch his breath, chest heaving.
“I told you,” Lyme says, implacable. Spots of anger bloom in Claudius’ chest. “This ends when you talk.”
“I don’t want to talk,” he grits out.
She shrugs. “I can do this all night.”
He hisses again. “You’re supposed to sit on me and make me talk,” he says, a little wildly. There are — not rules, exactly, but they’ve played this game before, and Claudius takes comfort in knowing how it’s supposed to go. “Not whatever this bullshit is.”
Lyme drops the act a little, lets her expression crack just enough for him to see a flash of sympathy. “You need to figure out what’s stopping you or it won’t work, kiddo. Dragging it out of you isn’t gonna fix it this time.”
“I bet Selene’s mentor doesn’t make her have epiphanies before she gets a hug,” Claudius shoots at her, rolling his shoulder and feeling like a five-year-old but completely unable to stop it.
“Neither did yours when you were her age,” Lyme says, unmoved. “So let’s figure out what you’re scared of.”
I’m not scared! Claudius almost says, except as soon as he thinks it a sharp spike drives straight through him and leaves him gasping. And shit, okay, fine, he’s scared, there’s an ugly, twisting fear digging its claws into his gut, but if Lyme is willing to stand here all night to force him to talk about it then she’s probably not going to leave him over whatever stupid thing he says.
Fear is not a new emotion for Claudius but it is a throwback after several years of comfort and emotional safety, and recognizing it triggers something strange and primal inside him. There are no stakes, no actual danger, but the fight turns desperate as Claudius finds himself slipping back into old habits. The fight slides sideways, and at first he tries to keep it normal, stick to routine sparring moves, but the scrabbling panic rises in his throat and there’s only one thing to do.
Claudius reaches inside himself and unleashes the monster. It’s been years since he let it out, years since he allowed the dark, ugly recesses of himself to surface, but now he lets all of that come back, fighting with every once of Arena madness, all the selfish desperation of his persona that had cut a little too close to the bone for comfort in those long dark hours. He fights, not like a good, sane Victor six years out, but scared and crazed and wild like a fresh kid who’s afraid it’s all going to disappear the second he blinks, and he’ll find himself back in the Arena, starving and exhausted and alone with cameras tracking his every move.
And Lyme stays, of course she does, through every cheap shot, every sloppy counter, every time he hits the ground and scrambles back up with a primal scream stuck in the back of his throat. She stays and she fights him down and now she holds him, now she pins him to the floor and throws her weight over his chest and leans her forearm across his throat until the tears leak out the corners of his eyes. Again, again, again, until the old terror finally leaches out of him like sweat and he’s left winded and shaking, wrung out and exhausted and near tears but no longer looking for the exit.
Lyme studies him for a long second, then sits back and pulls him in close, folding him into her arms. Claudius buries his face in her shoulder, and he lets the steady beat of her heart and the even rise and fall of her breaths ground him as she runs her fingers through her hair. He waits for her to tell him it’s okay, she’s got him, everything’s going to be fine, but the silence stretches out and an air of expectation fills the room — not tense, but waiting. Claudius exhales.
“I’m not nice,” Claudius says. “You know that, it’s my selling point. Selene likes me because I’m not nice. But then we’ve got Tribute Fantastic up there, all sincere and handsome and boy next door made good with the dead brother, and now Selene was secretly friends with him for years? They obviously had something that went deeper than ‘hey both of us killed people and we’re both mean’ or Selene never would’ve been friends with him. And now if he wins he’ll have whatever they had before and he’ll have killed people, which is me and Lene’s thing, so how am I supposed to compete with after that?”
Lyme scrubs her nails across his scalp. “You know you aren’t just friends because of your winning personality, D. She trusts you. More than that, Misha trusts her with you. That’s a big deal.”
It’s stupid, but that gives him a little rush of pride before his overall mood swamps it again. “I know, but we were just getting started. Nobody really knows who they are until they’ve been out a year, they’re still working through all the shit.”
“And you were there for that,” Lyme reminds him. “We remember the ones who were with us from the start, before things got easier.”
“Yeah.” Claudius sighs, and he slumps against her and breathes a little easier. “I’ll get over it, I promise, it’s all just so weird. This is why we pretend nothing existed before the Arena.”
Lyme kisses the top of his head, then shakes him a little and pulls back. “Time for sleep,” she says. “Let’s check those bruises and then get you to bed.”
Claudius should probably complain about being fussed over like he’s fresh out again, but given his complete emotional backslide, that would probably be idiotic. Instead Claudius lets Lyme massage out the soreness from his shoulders, work some cream into the bruises already starting to purple on his skin, and haul him upstairs with a glass of water and a handful of sleeping pills. He falls asleep with his mentor sitting next to him on the bed, fingers combing through his hair, and Claudius’ last thought before the drugs pull him under is that Alec better win this one because otherwise this is a lot of stupid headcasing over a dead kid.
“Just say it,” Selene says, throwing a pine cone and hitting Claudius in the head. He tries for a blank expression, but she rolls her eyes so hard it has to hurt and bends down to scoop up a rock, tossing it casually in one hand. “Come on. I’m the champion of avoiding things, and you’re driving me crazy.”
“I’m not — ugh.” Claudius drags a hand down his face, and Selene makes a satisfied noise and tosses the rock back into the trees. He glares at her, but Selene only stares right back, unperturbed. “I just keep thinking about the interview you did for Alec, but we aren’t talking about that. I’m not avoiding things, I’m being polite and respecting your boundaries. I should get cookies, not rocks thrown at me.”
Selene drops the teasing face, at least, going quiet a little and scuffing her feet in the dirt for a minute. “Misha says the interview helped,” she says finally. “He got a lot of sponsor support after that.”
“I bet it did,” Claudius says cautiously, while trying not to sound too much like he’s being careful. Selene has probably had about enough of being handled over the past few weeks, and she might see the necessity of it but Claudius would rather not add to the impression that everyone is walking on eggshells. “You really sold it, I was impressed. And I was just thinking about …” fuck it… “how much of it was true? I know you knew him, but we all know each other in Residential and we still make up bullshit stories about soccer practice or whatever for the interviews because that’s what they want.”
“I had to embellish some of it,” Selene says. She looks up at the canopy of leaves above them instead of at him, and Claudius draws one knee up to his chest and waits. “It’s — things are fuzzy before Residential, you know how it is, and it was hard to find it and pull it all back out again. But I think so, mostly. I know what it feels like when I’m making something up out of nowhere.”
“He’s not what I expected, for someone you’d be friends with,” Claudius says. The itch starts up at the back of his mind, and he tries to shove it back. “He seems so … sincere.”
Selene snickers, her fingers twitching in a reflexive gesture that Claudius recognizes as reaching for a knife she’s not cleared to carry yet, not without her mentor there to keep an eye on her. “He is that. And you’re still being weird and avoiding whatever it is you wanted to talk about.”
For a good minute Claudius considers whether or not to continue bullshitting, but Selene gave him an honest answer and that’s worth at least a little disclosure. And hey, if it gets too honest and uncomfortable, they can always fall back on punching each other and running away to talk about absolutely nothing real or genuine for the rest of the summer. “Fine,” Claudius says, waving a hand vaguely in her direction. “Looking at him being all Perfect District 2 Archetype and imagining the commentary — Alec the boy next door, your long-lost childhood best friend, the two of you tragically separated but united in shared grief and now soon to be reunited after a common struggle — it just makes me feel a little —”
He stops at the look on Selene’s face, eyes wide and mouth twisted in horror. “What?” Claudius bursts out. “I’m just saying, I know how they’re going to play it if he wins, and —”
Selene lets out a low gurgling sound and flops back dramatically, dragging both hands across her face. “Why did you have to say that,” she moans. “I had a nice life until now without thinking about what a terrible cliche that is. Now I’m never — ugh! I’m never going to be able to un-hear any of that.” She says ‘ugh’ again, dragging the word out as long as she has breath, which like most Careers with a lifetime of cardio training, is an impressively long time.
“Um,” Claudius says. This is not what he intended. “I’m … sorry?”
“I hate you,” Selene says around the palms she has mashed over her face. “I hate you so much. I hate my life. I hate everything. ‘United in shared grief’, oh my godddd. Did anyone tell you that you could write for tabloids? That was a masterpiece in terrible. If it wasn’t about me I’d get Misha to stitch it onto a pillow and frame it.”
“I have no idea how I’m supposed to react to any of this,” Claudius says to the air, just in case the universe cares. “I wasn’t trying to give you some kind of weird crisis.”
Finally Selene subsides, peeling her hands away and glaring at Claudius. “You owe me a foot massage when we get back,” she says, accusing. “A good one, for putting that into my brain. And this is all because I decided to be a good friend and ask you what was wrong instead of setting your sleeve on fire to distract you.”
Claudius studies her for a long moment, the play of disgust across her features that’s a touch too exaggerated to be natural but also too much to be an accident — Selene’s acting in the Arena never cracked, not in pouring thunderstorms or ankle-deep mud or face to face with swords drawn — and finally he lets out his breath in a laugh. “You know what, it doesn’t matter,” he says. “You’re such a good friend my bad mood is gone. Now I can see why someone as nice and sincere as Alec was friends with you. Who knew that underneath it all you were such a good person?”
Selene stares at him in shock, but Claudius only grins. He can’t remember the last time one of their conversations ended with Selene off-balanced and sputtering, rather than the other way around. “Hey, you don’t like me because I’m nice,” he reminds her. “Diversity in friendship is important.”
“When we get back to the house I am eating all your cookies,” Selene informs him, imperious and vindictive all at once. Claudius, too filled with relief to care about making his customary protest, only tosses her a salute, and Selene huffs and settles for throwing a pinecone at his head.