Chapter Text
Coriolanus comes back home late. Carefully styled hair disheveled, cheeks rosy. A boyish smile painting the features of a man he’s only so recently grown into.
Ever since graduating from the University, he’s been coming home later and later, if at all. Constant banquets, dazzling parties, patrons buzzing like flies around the brightest alumnus with a brilliant future ahead of himself. The youngest Gamemaker in history, with a head full of ideas, head full of plans.
He whispers her name now, stardom dimmed amid the dusky walls of their home. He plucks her from behind the sewing machine, swaddled in silk and fur, hair wrapped in curlers, and takes her in arm to dance through the parlor.
“Coryo!” she laughs, swirling around him. “You’re drunk, you rascal.”
“I have much to celebrate,” he says, honey on his breath. “I’ve worked so hard for this. For all of this.”
“And I don’t know anyone who deserves it more,” she replies.
He spins her around him to the rhythm of imaginary music a few more times, full of giggles, before their dance slowly comes to an end. He falls onto the sofa, breath heavy.
“Oh, Tigris,” he sighs. “I feel like I’m on top of the world.”
She smiles fondly as she perches beside him. “Careful. Don’t let it go to your head.”
He leans on the backrest, arms stretching wide. He tells her of grand things, of all the propositions people have made him between gulping down glasses of posca. All the job opportunities, all the offers of patronage. She can imagine it all in great detail. She can imagine herself hanging on her cousin’s arm, in a dress of her own design, glistening gold. Perhaps she can make a name for herself, too, one day.
“Mr. Cardew has even offered me his daughter’s hand, can you believe that?” he says, chuckling.
“And did you accept?” she teases.
He falls silent for a beat.
“Well, I didn’t say no.”
She laughs. “Oh, Coryo getting married! Grandma’am would be beside herself.”
“I didn’t say yes either,” he corrects. “I don’t—well, I don’t know.”
Giddy, she tucks a stray curl behind his ear. “It would be nice,” she promises. “A lady of the house. She’d bring some life into it.”
A friend, a sister. Someone to lighten up both their lives.
He looks at her, suddenly grave. “You’re enough for me, Tigris. You’ve been the lady of the house for as long as I can remember.”
“Hardly.” She’s blushing now. “I’ve only done what I had to do.”
He hums, thoughts drifting away. He lays his head on her shoulder and she gently strokes his hair. It’s always calmed that racing mind of his.
“It could be nice,” he murmurs, mostly to himself.
“You can think about it another time, hm?” she says. “Go to sleep now. Another big day tomorrow, I reckon.”
He falls asleep on the sofa and she covers him with a quilt. Sleeping, with his guard down, he looks soft like a boy again. Back when they were children, she would slide under it next to him and wrap herself around his scrawny body, huddling for warmth. She would plant kisses on his hairline, praying that they find food to eat the next day. But those days are long gone now. He has brought them back to glory and splendor, her little cousin. He said she needn’t worry about anything anymore, and she trusts his words more than anything. He’ll make it all alright again.
There is a rose on her desk when she gets back from work. Blood-red, fresh-cut, in full bloom. She twirls it in front of her nose, savoring its familiar gentle scent.
There is a rose on her desk every next day of the week. The prettiest ones plucked from their garden, in all colors of the rainbow. She collects them all and places them in a vase made of intricate glasswork. They never seem to wilt.
In the evenings Coriolanus locks himself in his father’s study. What he works on, she never finds out. Something too elaborate to trouble her pretty head, he once said. Not to be disturbed.
But she drifts about the house as a ghost most days, so very lonesome. Mrs. Plinth comes by sometimes—not so often anymore. Grandma’am has long passed. Well, not so long at all, but it feels like it. (She can still see it clear as day: her weeping into Coriolanus’s shoulder, soiling the fine wool of his coat. His face stern as carved from stone. Crassus Snow come to life again.)
She comes into his office when the loneliness gets too hard to bear. Brings him tea, just to have an excuse to exchange some words. Not let him get too distant.
“What’s with the roses?” she asks today, sat across the heavy desk, sipping on her own drink.
The question seemingly catches him by surprise. He hovers above his work, unsure.
“I thought you might like them.”
She breathes out a shaky laugh. “I do! They make a nice bouquet. But if I wanted to make one, I could’ve gone to the garden myself, you know.”
“Saved you the trouble,” he replies tersely.
“Well, uh, thank you.”
Further conversation falls short then. He gets cold like this these days. Ever since he came back. Face closed off, lips pressed into a tight line. He looks so much like his father then, sickeningly so. She cannot stand his patronizing gaze.
She leaves him to his antics. The roses’ scent turns putrid in her nose.
Mrs. Plinth comes by one day — they bake pastries together. It’s comforting to make food with her own hands, given they are cooked for by servants these days. Sometimes, quite selfishly, she misses doing it herself, despite the poverty that haunted them then. Coriolanus would laugh at such a notion.
The entire time Mrs. Plinth keeps sending her weird looks. It makes her rather uneasy.
“Do I have something on my face?” she finally asks in the middle of kneading the dough, wiping sweat from her brow with a floury hand.
“No, dear.”
“What is it then?”
“Well, you’re acting—You haven’t said anything about—”
“About what?”
Mrs. Plinth falls silent. Tigris’ brows press together in confusion.
“About what?” she repeats.
“Oh, the engagement, dear.”
She drops her work, wiping her hands on her apron.
“The engagement? So Coryo’s made up his mind?” Mrs. Plinth looks equally confused. Tigris laughs nervously. “About the Cardew girl?” she supplies. “He hasn’t told me anything!”
“No, dear,” she says, wrapping her hand around Tigris’ forearm. “Your engagement.”
She must have gone white as a sheet, since Mrs. Plinth adds, almost whispering, like someone could be spying on them, “You didn’t know? My husband told me; apparently Coriolanus had said it was a secret, that he doesn’t want publicity on it yet, but—but, not to tell you? I simply cannot wrap my head around that —”
“Who am I getting married to, Mrs. Plinth?” she asks. Her voice is shaking. Maybe she doesn’t want to know the answer after all.
The older woman’s face falls into a pitying grimace. “Oh, my dear, it happens, you know,” she babbles, “in Capitol families like yours, it’s not so bad at all, and I’m not here to judge—”
“Who is it?”
A torturous pause. “Well—your cousin, of course.”
Tigris laughs. “My—what?”
Mrs. Plinth’s fingers only dig deeper into her arm, as if in a futile attempt of showing sympathy.
“Surely he was joking,” Tigris says. “I would take things he tells your husband with a grain of salt. You know how men are with each other.”
“But dear,” Mrs. Plinth insists. “He’s told everyone. Well, everyone that matters. He’s making arrangements.”
She shakes her head. “Surely not,” she reiterates. “I’ll have a word with him when he’s back.”
All she receives in response is that condoling stare. Like someone’s died.
She returns to baking with renewed vigor, and they say nothing more on the matter.
Coriolanus comes back home late again. She’s been waiting for him at the kitchen table, wrapped tightly in her mother’s furs for comfort. He pays her no mind, heading straight into his study. She follows behind him, bearing no gifts this time
“Coriolanus,” she prompts, leaning against the doorframe. He doesn’t look up when she enters. “I’ve heard the most wondrous news.”
“Is that so?”
“When were you going to tell me we’re getting married?”
She phrases this as a joke, smiling, but the look in his eyes as he finally raises his gaze immediately makes her face drop.
“Who told you that?”
“Coryo—”
“Who told you?” he repeats, rising from his seat. The tone of his voice so akin to his father’s as he scolded her, distant memories springing to mind.
“Wait, you’re not serious, are you?”
He’s beside her then, taking her hands into his, cold on cold.
“Tigris.” He says her name so strangely. A chill runs down her spine. “I was going to propose. Formally. You weren’t supposed to find out like this.”
She tries to pry her hands out of his grasp, but it is unrelenting against her wrists.
“Let me go—”
“Tigris, look at me,” he says. And so she does. His face, so familiar and yet so alien, all sharp lines now. Pale eyes glinting. “Listen. You made me think about it. I don’t need another woman. You’re everything I need. What I've always needed. And you feel the same way.” She shakes her head weakly. “I know you do. Don't lie to me.”
“Coryo, you’re like a little brother to me,” she protests.
“It’s not like we’re actually siblings.” He has the gall to chuckle. “Marriage between cousins isn’t so uncommon, you know. Especially in old families like ours. Especially considering we’re the only ones left.” He sounds so self-important. She feels nauseous. Why should we muddle our bloodline? remains the unspoken question between them.
“Remember—” He’s so close now, one hand wandering upwards to finger a strand of her hair. “—when we were children, we used to play mommy and daddy. You’d cook dinner and I’d go outside pretending I’d gone to work. You’d kiss me when I returned, remember?”
His voice grows distant. Suddenly she’s seven and he’s four, crying into her shirt after his mother’s death. She’s nine and he’s six, huddled under the rubble. She’s eleven and he’s eight, and they’re playing house. They’re kissing on the mouth like real parents do, and her uncle is pulling them apart, screaming. She could never understand why it was wrong then.
“I remember,” she whispers.
“You had this doll.” His breath tickles her skin. “This ugly doll. We’d pretend it was our baby.”
“Coriolanus—”
“It’s alright,” he says. “You can kiss me again now.”
She makes no effort to, frozen. But his lips are suddenly on hers, and it’s not a dry childish kiss any longer. He’s prying his way into her, enveloping her, and she feels so small under him. So small and so vulnerable, and his arms feel so strong around her, no longer like the feeble child she’d embrace during the worst nights. It’s an aching realization—that he’s truly a man now. He had come back from the districts changed; she just didn’t want to notice it. What a strange feeling it is.
He’s whispering her name now; she registers it like through thick fog.
“Tigris.” He says it so sweetly. “Tigris.”
“Coriolanus,” her voice replies.
“It’ll be nice,” he promises.
She feels her eyes well up with tears. “Why were you going around, telling people? When Mrs. Plinth said it, I—I felt like such a fool.”
He fishes a handkerchief out of his pocket, wipes a tear away from her lash line. “I guess Mrs. Plinth won’t be visiting us anymore if she makes you so upset.”
Powerless, she lays her head on his shoulder, since there is nothing else she can do. His shirt smells so nauseatingly of roses.
“What if I say no?” she asks, trembling.
He runs his fingers through her hair, excruciatingly gentle.
“I really don’t think you have much of a choice,” he says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.