"𝘍𝘪𝘳𝘦 𝘧𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘴𝘯𝘰𝘸."
in which persephone ignis, born of fire and love, writhes under the tricks and power of snow to form the black swan.
(young! coriolanus snow x fem! oc)
takes place during and after th...
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—Shell Shock—
When Persephone sat down in a Capitol Hospital for the bullet wound on her back, she realized not once had she cried over Arachne. She screamed and scrambled to help, but not a tear had sprung from her eyes. She did not have to fight the urge to cry like she had with Reaper.
An odd anomaly.
As the Peacekeeper dragged her away earlier, he pointed out that she was bleeding. At first, Persephone brushed off his observation as misguided, for her hands were covered in Arachne's blood. He could have easily been deceived. When she denied it, he pointed to the small of her back where a hole in her uniform resided.
"No," he told her again, "you're bleeding. Must be from one of the gunshots."
She landed right in a medical room, sitting on top of a gurney without a thought behind her eyes. Although a clear-headed version of herself would have had her heart pounding with Coriolanus in the room, Persephone couldn't feel a thing. Not the dried blood on her hands, nor the guilt in her heart for being utterly responsible for the murder of Arachne Crane.
One of the hospital nurses walked into the room, causing Coryo to stiffen up from his position of observing the Ignis girl. She had been easy to read for him, but now she appeared to be an empty shell of the girl she had been just an hour ago.
"Hello, Miss Ignis, I heard we have a gunshot wound today. Where might that be so I can take a look and stitch you up?" The optimism in the woman's voice almost triggered Persephone to gag again. She only kept her gaze to the white wall across from her, not registering a word.
Once Coriolanus realized she either refused to speak or simply couldn't, he stepped in for her. "Her back, ma'am. Lower back."
"Oh, okay." The nurse nodded and set a tray of tools down next to the sitting girl. "Miss Ignis, could you turn around for me and take off your blazer?"
As Persephone began shuffling with a slow pace to shrug off the blazer to her uniform, she made the grave mistake of glancing down at her stained hands. She had been reminded of the death she failed to prevent. That her classmate from her youth, Arachne Crane, was gone.
Her lungs felt heavy. Her heart accelerated. She took short, rapid breaths as she struggled to scratch the blood off her fingers. "Perse!" She heard a familiar voice yell. "Shit, Perse! Stop!" Coryo gripped both her hands and separated them. "What are you doing?"
"Get it off," she muttered and thrashed against the boy's grasp, "please- just get it off me-"
"She wants the blood off her hands." The nurse observed calmly and spoke only to Coriolanus. "There is a sink in the bathroom down the hall, she can wash it off there."
