bluecloudsandwhispers

[bluecloudsandwhispers]

Distance, timing. Breakdown, fighting… (Lucy Gray Baird x Coriolanus Snow)

Lucy Gray Baird // Coriolanus Snow

CONTENT : After Lucy Gray runs from Coriolanus Snow, she survives the bullet and goes under radar.

Or… Snow probably thinks he’s deluded.

I can’t tell if this is Lucy Gray x Snow or Lucy wants to kill Snow, but…. Enjoy. I’ll try not to abandon this acc. Idk I just really like writing this man being hopeless. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did writing it.

‿̩͙⊱༒︎༻☾༺༒︎⊰‿̩͙

The forest was endless. Its trees stretched high and their twisted branches nearly clawed at the sky, blocking out all but the weakest slivers of moonlight. Everytime Coriolanus Snow went there, it filled him with a sense of dread. He slowly moved his way through the array of moss and grass that covered the forest floor, carefully treading his boots through the brambles and foliage.

A soft song infiltrated through the trees, too intricate and human to be one of a bird. It was soft, almost weightless, drifting between the trees in a haunting manner that felt like a ghost.

“Nothing you can take from me was ever worth keeping…”

His breath hitched. It had been years since he’s heard those words, that voice. But he knew it like he knew his own heartbeat.

Running faster, he pushed through the brambles until he reached a small clearing. Lucy Gray Baird stood in the centre, barefoot on the wet, mucky ground. Her dress, faded and worn; she had been here a while, it was clear.

She looked different, yet the same. The exact same.

The moonlight bathed her body in a silver colour, her eyes were… sharp, wary, perhaps knowing, and were trained on him before he had even made a sound.

“I knew you’d come,” she murmured, her voice holding no warmth or remorse, sprinkled with a tone of mild amusement, “Like a dog to a bone.”

He stepped closer, leaning against the tree. “You were never a bone to me, Lucy Gray.”

“No? Then what was I?”

His lips curled into sly, practiced smile, “some sort of.. Prize?”

Her laughter echoed through the forest, even though the laugh was hollow without even an inch of humour, “That was the problem with you, Coriolanus. You never saw me as a person. Not once.”

He took another step, his gloved hand reaching out and resting on her tanned face, but she stepped back. She was always just out of reach, always slipping through his fingers like sand.

“You left me,” he said, his voice soft and laced with a hurt that felt almost tender.

“You tried to kill me, Coriolanus.”

His jaw tightened, “You betrayed me first, Lucy Gray.”

She tilted her head, watching him as she stepped back again, “Do you tell yourself that at night?” she spits harshly, “That I was the villain? That I made you into what you are?”

“I know what I am Lucy Gray, I don’t need to tell myself anything.”

“Yet here you are,” she smiles, slow and knowingly, “Still chasing me.”

His fingers twitched at his side as he watched her dark brown eyes gaze into his like bullets. She was right. And that infuriated him.

She had always been his weakness. The one thing he could never truly possess: a girl so stubborn it was impossible to own her like he wanted to. He wanted her like he wanted a pet, and she was the one loose thread in the tapestry of his life that he had carefully constructed, and even after all of this, he couldn’t let her go.

He reached for her again, this time grabbing her wrist. She didn’t flinch, didn’t even struggle as his grip tightened on her.

“You don’t belong here.” he whispered softly, his voice cracking. It was almost like he was trying to convince himself.

Her eyes looked up into his, there was not a single ounce of joy in them, “Neither do you.”

Coriolanus studied her, taking in the hollowness beneath her eyes. The way her collarbone jutted out a little more than it used to. Bony and frail. She had survived out here all this time… without him. Without the capitol. Without anyone. It should’ve been impossible, yet here she stood.

His grip on her wrist tightened, pulling her closer until their faces were just inches apart.

“Come back with me, Lucy Gray.”

“You don’t really believe that could work, do you?” she murmured.

“You really think you can keep running forever?”

She leaned in, enough for him to catch the scent of lingering rain and pine in her hair, her voice tender, “I don’t need to run, Coriolanus. You’re the one still chasing ghosts.”

He felt what could’ve been a knife twist in his chest. She wasn’t wrong. He had secured a place at the top of Panem, and everything had been done to erase her. But none of it erased him from her memory. None of it had dulled the echo of her voice in the back of his mind.

His free hand cradled her cheek, his thumb grazing the edge of her jaw. For a moment, he considered bringing her back by force. Molding her into something that fit into his world perfectly.

But she would never fit. She had been born to slip through the cracks, through his fingers, she couldn’t be a piece of his world.

Her gaze softened, just for a moment. Then she pulled back, breaking free from his hold with the same effortlessness she always had.

“You think you can just disappear again?” he said quietly, but his tone was laced with edge, the last hold on his control breaking against something deep and raw.

His hand twitched. He could take her. Drag her back. Hide her. Find a way to make it work.

“You think this, is freedom?” he gestured around to the dark, sprawling woods. “Living out here? Barely even surviving? Scavenging for food like a wild animal?” his voice dropped lower, coaxing her softly “You could have had everything, Lucy Gray. You could’ve had a life beyond this, with me, where I could care for you and give you the world.”

“I do have everything,” she said simply, “You think I was free when I was singing for my supper in District 12? When I was paraded through the capitol by you as if I was a trained bird in a gilded cage?”

“This is the first time in my entire life I’ve been truly free, Coriolanus. No audience. No cage. No you.”

His breath hitched, anger curling hot in his gut as he grabbed her by the shoulders, “You’re lying to yourself,” he whispered to her cruelly, “You’re lying to yourself, Lucy Gray? You’re alone out here. No family, no future. This isn’t freedom, it’s exile.”

“And you think that you’re family? Someone there for me?” she murmured, looking him straight in the eyes, “You can’t love. You love being loved. You love having control. And that’s all there is to it.”

“I’m not alone,” she whispered, stepping back and away from the hands that held her in place. “and I don’t need you.”

He wanted to argue, to force her to understand. To make her see that she was wrong. That what she thought was freedom was nothing more than a slow and inevitable death.

His throat was too tight and his hands were empty, she was already slipping away. She disappeared into the trees once more, leaving him with nothing but the sound of her voice. Soft, drifting almost weightlessly in the wind.

Like a ghost, she slipped through her fingers all over again.