Married AU: Claudius Runs Away
Lyme adopting Claudius is too good to be true. He tries to prove it.
Claudius stares down at his hands, torn half to pieces and oozing blood. They don't hurt, not really, but that's only because the cold numbed his skin. At least that means they're not ever going to hurt, because chances are Claudius isn't going to have warm hands ever again, not until the snow melts. He stares at his hands, then up at the fence he just spent the last half an hour climbing over, the huge monolith with the smooth sides and the barbed wire that he crawled through, the one that Lyme told him never, ever, ever to try to go over.
It's the only thing she told him never to do. That's why Claudius had to try to do it, though now as he stands on the far side, the wind whistling and blowing snow through the tear in his jacket from the last final tumble downward, his ankles stinging from the jarring contact with the frozen ground, he can't remember why. His nose itches, and he wipes it, then his eyes, with his sleeve for good measure.
Claudius stares at the fence. There's an easy answer. All he has to do is walk around the perimeter until he gets to the front gate with the guards. Tell them he went over. Tell them he broke the rules. Let them hold him (what's the punishment for climbing anyway, Lyme never said but Claudius assumes they beat him, traitors in the Centre get given to the trainees for them to show how much they've learned about proper obedience so maybe it's something like that) and call Lyme. Then Lyme will come and she'll know that Claudius broke the rules and she'll know he didn't listen and she'll know he's a bad kid who will never, ever change and she'll realize she should have let him stay at the Centre until he was old enough to volunteer and die for Panem but it will be too late now.
Claudius lets all that run through his head, and it doesn't take him long to decide that no, that's not going to happen.
He's going to die out here in the snow.
Because let's be real. Claudius lived through three months of winter before, when he was seven, before the Centre took a chance and took him in, before he ruined it all by pushing pushing pushing, trying to prove something he doesn't even remember anymore. He lived through the winter by breaking into houses and stores and restaurants and sleeping where he could, by going to school for most of the day and the Centre for the rest of it so that he only had to be outside at night.
But Claudius is finished at the Centre, and he can't go back to school because they'll call Lyme, and he doesn't want her to punish him, doesn't want her to look at him and for him to see that he's every bit the worthless, ungrateful boy his mother always said he was. He couldn't scare her at night with a knife against her shoulder, or when he lit a match and dropped it in the trash can, couldn't make her hate him by yelling or screaming or attacking her, but he's done it now. Now she'll know.
If he doesn't die this winter, if he doesn't starve or freeze or any of the million things that can happen when you're out in the mountains alone, maybe he'll volunteer this summer anyway. Maybe he'll call out in the dramatic pose before the one who's chosen speaks, and he doesn't know what they'd do to him but probably he'd be dead even before the train reached the Capitol. At least everyone would know.
Except no, he can't do that. He can't become a traitor on top of everything else. He's already betrayed Lyme this much; doing that would be taking every last bit of faith she put in him and spitting on it, and Claudius can't even think about that without trembling. Or maybe it's just the cold. Either way.
He can't go back through the gate. Claudius looks at the fence again, and he sniffs so hard the snot goes back down his throat, making him cough. The first cough squeezes his chest because he remembers coughing, remembers the wet rattling in his chest and the feeling that there were rocks pressing on his lungs so he could never get a full breath of air. It's too early for that, but if he's not careful it will happen.
If he'd stayed at the Centre, next winter they'd be throwing him and the other thirteens into the lake to teach them to fish themselves out. Claudius wasn't worried about getting his orange bead so much as he was about that.
At least he has his scarf. Lyme doesn't -- didn't -- let him outside even to play without full winter clothes, and he wraps the scarf fight around his face. He put his mittens in his pockets for the climb, and now he fumbles with frozen fingers and gets them out. The cuts on his palm catch on the yarn and for the first time the pain actually reaches his brain as the skin peels back. It doesn't last long, and Claudius tucks his hands under his armpits and turns into the wind.
Maybe up into the mountain it won't be so bad. There should be caves somewhere, maybe he can stay there. Except there's no food in the mountains, not in winter, and Claudius isn't so stupid and optimistic that he thinks he can hunt up there and actually find anything, never mind cook it, and maybe if he'd done more survival training but not yet. He can't go down to the city because it's winter and that means school and people will ask him where he's supposed to be and then if they don't take him back to the Village to be punished then it's back to one of the homes and Claudius would rather die.
Well. Actually...
A lot of the mountain is technically Village territory, but there's a high stretch of cliff face that he knows he could get to without much trouble. It will take him most of the day to climb, and he's never done it in winter but he does remember places where a person could fall for a long time before hitting anything. At the base of the mountain the angle is wrong, only a few feet before smacking into rocks, and that would hurt and it wouldn't be enough. But there's a spot where once he sat and looked straight down for ages and when he pushed a rock over the side with his foot it disappeared into the trees long before he heard anything. It's been years and he never really focused on where it was, but even if it takes him a while to find, it doesn't actually matter. What else is he going to do with his time?
He climbs.
He climbs, and sometimes he falls. Once he falls far, his feet giving out on the ice and loose stones and he tumbles down, bashing his arm and finally his head against a rock and he thinks maybe that's it, but no. No, it's just pain and ringing and dizziness and the blood is warm against his face before it freezes and no, he's still here. Claudius tries not to cry until he realizes it doesn't matter, there's no one to see it, so who cares. Except that the tears and snot freeze too and that feels awful so he stops that pretty quick.
He climbs until he can't climb anymore, until his legs are jelly and his arms shake, and he finds an outcropping and huddles there, his hood pulled high over his face. He's sweating and exhausted and shaking, and now, finally, the ache sets in. Claudius screams this time -- it's better than crying, it's primal and the trainers said if they have to do something it's much, much better to scream than cry -- but it doesn't help him.
One time a kid in training asked if it wouldn't be easiest to freeze to death. They'd heard it felt like falling asleep. The bigger kids laughed, but the trainer didn't. The trainer sat them down and told them how much it hurt, the panic and the pain and the confusion and hallucinations and finally, at the very end, the burning. The hovercrafts almost always recovered tributes with their uniforms half torn off because they swore they were on fire.
"You're not dead until you're warm and dead," said the trainer, and Claudius was only ten at the time but he was sitting in on the session and the words sank deep into his chest.
He's definitely not warm yet -- he's freezing, gone past numb and into straight-up cold and pain -- so he's not dead. Claudius doesn't know how long it will take him but he's guessing days. He's lived through this stage before. It will be days of the ice and the pain and the slow gnawing in his stomach and the dizziness and dehydration as they all take their time about which will kill him first.
Way easier to jump.
The cold deepens as it gets dark, and Claudius pulls his knees up to his chest. He closes his eyes -- the lashes stick together -- and he shudders, but finally, finally exhaustion pulls him under.
He wakes to flashlights in his face. Claudius wakes with a gasp from a nightmare about the Arena -- cold, alone, cut off from the Pack because he's a traitor, an ugly, ungrateful traitor, and he begs the sponsors for gifts but there's nothing -- and he tries to scramble away but his limbs lock. The best he can do is flatten himself back against the rock and bite at the hand that tries to tug him down. The glove tastes bad, hard against his teeth, and he tries to spit but nothing comes out.
"It's all right, kid," says a voice, muffled by the thick scarf. "We're not gonna hurt you."
Oh, he knows. They're going to take him and bring him somewhere warm and thaw him out and then they're going to kill him. Whether it's by tossing him into the Centre and telling the kids to make an example of the one who wasn't even good enough to die for his country, or by putting him in the home for kids that nobody wants, or by throwing him in a quarry, or by giving him back to Lyme so he can see the disappointment on her face, either way.
Claudius tries to fight them, but he's too tired and too cold and has no footing, and one of them holds him while the other presses something cold and sharp against his neck and then he's gone again.
When he wakes up again, he's moving. Or, well, someone is; Claudius can't move, he's wrapped up in blankets or something but he is moving, and he thinks it might be a car until he focuses on the rhythm. It's rocking too much to be a car, swaying almost, and he thinks maybe a boat until he turns his face to the wall and feels a zipper cold against his cheek and it's not a wall, not a wall at all.
He panics, but the arms holding him tighten and he's swaddled and exhausted and can't get away. "I'm not putting you down, so you might as well cut it out," says a voice, and Claudius feels it rumble in the person's chest as they speak. Except no, not person, because even delirious Claudius knows that voice.
Claudius twists his fingers in the front of Lyme's coat. He's not sure where they are; she's walking upright so they're not on the mountain anymore, but the wind is still cold against his cheeks so it's still outside. "Where are we going?" he asks, and the fear sticks him like an axe right through his heart.
"Home," Lyme says. "We're patching you up and you are going to have a long shower until you're not blue anymore, and then I'm not letting you out of my sight because you scared the shit out of me. And I mean that literally."
It's probably the hysteria, but Claudius starts to laugh. "Which part is literal?"
"What?"
"Are you literally not letting me out of your sight or did you literally shit yourself?" It's not funny, none of it is funny, but Claudius is here and Lyme is here and she hasn't told him she hates him or thinks he's an ungrateful monster and honestly, he doesn't know what to think.
"Smartass," Lyme says, but she shifts him in her arms, lifts him higher and Claudius swears she noses his frozen hair. "But I'm serious. You are never doing that again."
Claudius licks his lips. They're chapped and dry and he tastes the sting of blood. "What if I did?"
"Then I'd drag your ass back down all over again, and then I lock the doors," Lyme says fiercely. "And if I have to stand in the damn bathroom while you shower I will, because you're my kid and I love you and you are not ever scaring me like that again."
This time Claudius does burst into tears. "I'm sorry," he bursts out, and it's like every word he's ever learned escapes him except for those two. All he can do is cry and say 'I'm sorry' over and over again until they stop sounding like real words.
"I know," Lyme says, and she shifts him, tugs him up so his head is tucked in her shoulder with her arms around his waist, and his legs dangle down like he's a giant four-foot-something-tall baby but it doesn't matter. Claudius presses his nose against her neck and sobs harder.
He keeps apologizing, and then he remembers how to promise never do to it again and so he alternates, and it's a torrent of word-vomit that pours out of him and he can't stop. He clings and burrows and cries and this is not what he'd expect from himself, he's twelve years old and lived on his own when he was seven and has broken more noses than he can count and one time he took his mom's wedding dress down and cut it into narrow strips and laid it out for her to find, and here he is crying I'm sorry I'm sorry I love you I'm sorry until he can barely breathe.
"Yeah, baby, I know," Lyme says in his ear, and he probably imagined that but he doesn't care.
Finally they reach the gate, and for the first time since the beginning Claudius struggles. "I can walk," he says, protesting. He shouldn't get carried into the Village. They'll kick him out for being weak.
"Yeah, yeah," Lyme says, indulgent, but she doesn't let him down, and finally Claudius gives in and leans his head against her shoulder.
Claudius stares down at his hands, torn half to pieces and oozing blood. They don't hurt, not really, but that's only because the cold numbed his skin. At least that means they're not ever going to hurt, because chances are Claudius isn't going to have warm hands ever again, not until the snow melts. He stares at his hands, then up at the fence he just spent the last half an hour climbing over, the huge monolith with the smooth sides and the barbed wire that he crawled through, the one that Lyme told him never, ever, ever to try to go over.
It's the only thing she told him never to do. That's why Claudius had to try to do it, though now as he stands on the far side, the wind whistling and blowing snow through the tear in his jacket from the last final tumble downward, his ankles stinging from the jarring contact with the frozen ground, he can't remember why. His nose itches, and he wipes it, then his eyes, with his sleeve for good measure.
Claudius stares at the fence. There's an easy answer. All he has to do is walk around the perimeter until he gets to the front gate with the guards. Tell them he went over. Tell them he broke the rules. Let them hold him (what's the punishment for climbing anyway, Lyme never said but Claudius assumes they beat him, traitors in the Centre get given to the trainees for them to show how much they've learned about proper obedience so maybe it's something like that) and call Lyme. Then Lyme will come and she'll know that Claudius broke the rules and she'll know he didn't listen and she'll know he's a bad kid who will never, ever change and she'll realize she should have let him stay at the Centre until he was old enough to volunteer and die for Panem but it will be too late now.
Claudius lets all that run through his head, and it doesn't take him long to decide that no, that's not going to happen.
He's going to die out here in the snow.
Because let's be real. Claudius lived through three months of winter before, when he was seven, before the Centre took a chance and took him in, before he ruined it all by pushing pushing pushing, trying to prove something he doesn't even remember anymore. He lived through the winter by breaking into houses and stores and restaurants and sleeping where he could, by going to school for most of the day and the Centre for the rest of it so that he only had to be outside at night.
But Claudius is finished at the Centre, and he can't go back to school because they'll call Lyme, and he doesn't want her to punish him, doesn't want her to look at him and for him to see that he's every bit the worthless, ungrateful boy his mother always said he was. He couldn't scare her at night with a knife against her shoulder, or when he lit a match and dropped it in the trash can, couldn't make her hate him by yelling or screaming or attacking her, but he's done it now. Now she'll know.
If he doesn't die this winter, if he doesn't starve or freeze or any of the million things that can happen when you're out in the mountains alone, maybe he'll volunteer this summer anyway. Maybe he'll call out in the dramatic pose before the one who's chosen speaks, and he doesn't know what they'd do to him but probably he'd be dead even before the train reached the Capitol. At least everyone would know.
Except no, he can't do that. He can't become a traitor on top of everything else. He's already betrayed Lyme this much; doing that would be taking every last bit of faith she put in him and spitting on it, and Claudius can't even think about that without trembling. Or maybe it's just the cold. Either way.
He can't go back through the gate. Claudius looks at the fence again, and he sniffs so hard the snot goes back down his throat, making him cough. The first cough squeezes his chest because he remembers coughing, remembers the wet rattling in his chest and the feeling that there were rocks pressing on his lungs so he could never get a full breath of air. It's too early for that, but if he's not careful it will happen.
If he'd stayed at the Centre, next winter they'd be throwing him and the other thirteens into the lake to teach them to fish themselves out. Claudius wasn't worried about getting his orange bead so much as he was about that.
At least he has his scarf. Lyme doesn't -- didn't -- let him outside even to play without full winter clothes, and he wraps the scarf fight around his face. He put his mittens in his pockets for the climb, and now he fumbles with frozen fingers and gets them out. The cuts on his palm catch on the yarn and for the first time the pain actually reaches his brain as the skin peels back. It doesn't last long, and Claudius tucks his hands under his armpits and turns into the wind.
Maybe up into the mountain it won't be so bad. There should be caves somewhere, maybe he can stay there. Except there's no food in the mountains, not in winter, and Claudius isn't so stupid and optimistic that he thinks he can hunt up there and actually find anything, never mind cook it, and maybe if he'd done more survival training but not yet. He can't go down to the city because it's winter and that means school and people will ask him where he's supposed to be and then if they don't take him back to the Village to be punished then it's back to one of the homes and Claudius would rather die.
Well. Actually...
A lot of the mountain is technically Village territory, but there's a high stretch of cliff face that he knows he could get to without much trouble. It will take him most of the day to climb, and he's never done it in winter but he does remember places where a person could fall for a long time before hitting anything. At the base of the mountain the angle is wrong, only a few feet before smacking into rocks, and that would hurt and it wouldn't be enough. But there's a spot where once he sat and looked straight down for ages and when he pushed a rock over the side with his foot it disappeared into the trees long before he heard anything. It's been years and he never really focused on where it was, but even if it takes him a while to find, it doesn't actually matter. What else is he going to do with his time?
He climbs.
He climbs, and sometimes he falls. Once he falls far, his feet giving out on the ice and loose stones and he tumbles down, bashing his arm and finally his head against a rock and he thinks maybe that's it, but no. No, it's just pain and ringing and dizziness and the blood is warm against his face before it freezes and no, he's still here. Claudius tries not to cry until he realizes it doesn't matter, there's no one to see it, so who cares. Except that the tears and snot freeze too and that feels awful so he stops that pretty quick.
He climbs until he can't climb anymore, until his legs are jelly and his arms shake, and he finds an outcropping and huddles there, his hood pulled high over his face. He's sweating and exhausted and shaking, and now, finally, the ache sets in. Claudius screams this time -- it's better than crying, it's primal and the trainers said if they have to do something it's much, much better to scream than cry -- but it doesn't help him.
One time a kid in training asked if it wouldn't be easiest to freeze to death. They'd heard it felt like falling asleep. The bigger kids laughed, but the trainer didn't. The trainer sat them down and told them how much it hurt, the panic and the pain and the confusion and hallucinations and finally, at the very end, the burning. The hovercrafts almost always recovered tributes with their uniforms half torn off because they swore they were on fire.
"You're not dead until you're warm and dead," said the trainer, and Claudius was only ten at the time but he was sitting in on the session and the words sank deep into his chest.
He's definitely not warm yet -- he's freezing, gone past numb and into straight-up cold and pain -- so he's not dead. Claudius doesn't know how long it will take him but he's guessing days. He's lived through this stage before. It will be days of the ice and the pain and the slow gnawing in his stomach and the dizziness and dehydration as they all take their time about which will kill him first.
Way easier to jump.
The cold deepens as it gets dark, and Claudius pulls his knees up to his chest. He closes his eyes -- the lashes stick together -- and he shudders, but finally, finally exhaustion pulls him under.
He wakes to flashlights in his face. Claudius wakes with a gasp from a nightmare about the Arena -- cold, alone, cut off from the Pack because he's a traitor, an ugly, ungrateful traitor, and he begs the sponsors for gifts but there's nothing -- and he tries to scramble away but his limbs lock. The best he can do is flatten himself back against the rock and bite at the hand that tries to tug him down. The glove tastes bad, hard against his teeth, and he tries to spit but nothing comes out.
"It's all right, kid," says a voice, muffled by the thick scarf. "We're not gonna hurt you."
Oh, he knows. They're going to take him and bring him somewhere warm and thaw him out and then they're going to kill him. Whether it's by tossing him into the Centre and telling the kids to make an example of the one who wasn't even good enough to die for his country, or by putting him in the home for kids that nobody wants, or by throwing him in a quarry, or by giving him back to Lyme so he can see the disappointment on her face, either way.
Claudius tries to fight them, but he's too tired and too cold and has no footing, and one of them holds him while the other presses something cold and sharp against his neck and then he's gone again.
When he wakes up again, he's moving. Or, well, someone is; Claudius can't move, he's wrapped up in blankets or something but he is moving, and he thinks it might be a car until he focuses on the rhythm. It's rocking too much to be a car, swaying almost, and he thinks maybe a boat until he turns his face to the wall and feels a zipper cold against his cheek and it's not a wall, not a wall at all.
He panics, but the arms holding him tighten and he's swaddled and exhausted and can't get away. "I'm not putting you down, so you might as well cut it out," says a voice, and Claudius feels it rumble in the person's chest as they speak. Except no, not person, because even delirious Claudius knows that voice.
Claudius twists his fingers in the front of Lyme's coat. He's not sure where they are; she's walking upright so they're not on the mountain anymore, but the wind is still cold against his cheeks so it's still outside. "Where are we going?" he asks, and the fear sticks him like an axe right through his heart.
"Home," Lyme says. "We're patching you up and you are going to have a long shower until you're not blue anymore, and then I'm not letting you out of my sight because you scared the shit out of me. And I mean that literally."
It's probably the hysteria, but Claudius starts to laugh. "Which part is literal?"
"What?"
"Are you literally not letting me out of your sight or did you literally shit yourself?" It's not funny, none of it is funny, but Claudius is here and Lyme is here and she hasn't told him she hates him or thinks he's an ungrateful monster and honestly, he doesn't know what to think.
"Smartass," Lyme says, but she shifts him in her arms, lifts him higher and Claudius swears she noses his frozen hair. "But I'm serious. You are never doing that again."
Claudius licks his lips. They're chapped and dry and he tastes the sting of blood. "What if I did?"
"Then I'd drag your ass back down all over again, and then I lock the doors," Lyme says fiercely. "And if I have to stand in the damn bathroom while you shower I will, because you're my kid and I love you and you are not ever scaring me like that again."
This time Claudius does burst into tears. "I'm sorry," he bursts out, and it's like every word he's ever learned escapes him except for those two. All he can do is cry and say 'I'm sorry' over and over again until they stop sounding like real words.
"I know," Lyme says, and she shifts him, tugs him up so his head is tucked in her shoulder with her arms around his waist, and his legs dangle down like he's a giant four-foot-something-tall baby but it doesn't matter. Claudius presses his nose against her neck and sobs harder.
He keeps apologizing, and then he remembers how to promise never do to it again and so he alternates, and it's a torrent of word-vomit that pours out of him and he can't stop. He clings and burrows and cries and this is not what he'd expect from himself, he's twelve years old and lived on his own when he was seven and has broken more noses than he can count and one time he took his mom's wedding dress down and cut it into narrow strips and laid it out for her to find, and here he is crying I'm sorry I'm sorry I love you I'm sorry until he can barely breathe.
"Yeah, baby, I know," Lyme says in his ear, and he probably imagined that but he doesn't care.
Finally they reach the gate, and for the first time since the beginning Claudius struggles. "I can walk," he says, protesting. He shouldn't get carried into the Village. They'll kick him out for being weak.
"Yeah, yeah," Lyme says, indulgent, but she doesn't let him down, and finally Claudius gives in and leans his head against her shoulder.