Triple Crown

[Sonmi-451]

More added.

I stare out the window as the landscape whips by, trees green blurs, soil a brown smudge and flowers various shades of blotches and wish I could just throw all of my problems, all the fighting, basically just the last five days out of the window and watch them crash into the ground and break. Well, everything except for Luke. And Jackson. And Abby. They’re the only people who’ve made these last five days nearly bearable, so I’d save them, if I had a choice. Speaking of Abby, I wonder how she’s doing. She’s probably happier that the first round is over and that she only has to die one more time, because I am determined that she will not die in the third round and will make it home alive – and so will Luke. If I win the first two rounds and get first choice in a partner, everyone will expect me to pick Luke, with us being lovers and all, but I can’t do that. Luke can keep himself alive, Abby can’t, and I’m pretty sure Luke already knows what that part of my plan is. However, I don’t think he has any idea about my plan where I die to ensure that he and Abby make it home alive, since they’re both so much more important than I am. Luke’s parents couldn’t survive without him, considering that he’s an only child and therefore their pride and joy. And Abby, well, even if she’s not vital to her family like Luke is, she’s too young to die and reminds me too much of my little brother for me to let her die while I’m alive. And that’s why I intend to die to keep them alive. My family would miss me, sure, but they could do without me, because I’m not an only child and I’m not necessary to their survival. Besides, Gwillan and Gruffen might get the recognition they deserve with me out of the way.
I pull my eyes away from the window to find Luke staring out the windows on the other side of the train, his eyes distant as he thinks of any number of topics: my insincerity; how I broke his heart; my lack of devotion; the fact that, most likely, one of us will die soon; the possibilities are really endless. But I know, in my heart, that whatever Luke’s thinking about, it has to do with me. I see his expression, as cold and smooth as a piece of polished marble, and I know that he’s thinking about me and everything I’ve done to him. But wouldn’t he be happy, now that we’re officially dating? I leave the compartment in silence, not being able to stand that broken boy and his broken heart in this broken world any longer.
I find Max sitting by himself in a different car and I murmur as I sit down next to him, “I thought he wanted this,” and I know that Max will know exactly what I’m talking about.
“He wanted it to be real, Lizzie,” Max almost whispers in reply, rising to his feet and leaving me alone as quickly as I joined him.
So now I’ve lost Max and Luke and Jackson and Abby all within three days. That means I’m one person short of being an ace of lost people. But maybe that’s all I can do, terminate. Maybe that’s all I’ll ever be able to do. After all, how many people have I killed now? How many families have I ripped apart? How many relationships have I ruined by alienating myself, on purpose or unintentionally? The list of my kills, whether it’s people or animals or relations, goes on forever, and I’ll always be expanding it. Always. Maybe I should just give up on the hope of ever finding someone and ever settling down and ever stopping moving because I can’t stop. I’m inherently dangerous, remember? So wherever I am, there will be danger too, and I couldn’t lose another person, especially not one loved, not with all of the people I’ve already lost. But maybe this loneliness is best; that way I don’t hurt anyone besides myself, and I’ve already got a layer of psychological scar tissue too deep to penetrate that I can use as a barrier to stop anything that comes at me. Besides, if I’m lonely it will be easier to die.

“Fifteen minutes until arrival in Section Eight,” a metallic voice announces over the intercom, and I instantly rise to my feet, knowing what happens now. Knowing that Luke and I now are ‘dating’ and have to act accordingly. As if on cue, Luke walks through the south door of the car I’m in and I start towards him, his gaze locked on mine.
“Miss Lightning,” he whispers in greeting, his eyes darting up and down my body. I drop my own gaze for a moment to be reminded that the dress I’m in is very tight fitting.
“Mister Gates.” Luke really does look dashing in the black, buttoned-up shirt, black dress pants and black boots he’s wearing; we really are a well-matched couple in height, physical appearance and choice of clothing.
“‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars/But in ourselves,’” Luke murmurs, taking a few steps closer so that the gap between us is about five feet.
“I think this one’s on the stars, dear Cassius,” I reply, and weak smiles spread across both of our faces. Luke then closes the gap between with us a few steps so that his face is only two feet from mine.
“Dear Brutus, ‘now is it Rome indeed and room enough/When there is in it but one only man’. Only one of us can come out of this alive, Lizzie,” he tells me as he gazes down at me, and I can see my reflection in both of his pupils looking down at me as well. “And I know you want it to be me, which I don’t get. You’ve got as much, if not more, reason to live than I do, but you would die in my place. Perhaps you have far more devotion than you think you do, Lizzie, even if it is for a horrible cause with stubborn reasons.” My mouth twitches slightly, but I don’t let a smile appear; now is not a time for lightness.
“And you think that you dying for me is going to help anyone?” I shoot back, my temper getting the best of me. “People need you more than they need me, Luke. Besides, how could I go home without you?”
“How could I go home without you? I need you far more than you need me, because if you’re gone, I don’t have anything. If I’m gone, you still have Jackson and-”
I cut him off by grabbing his collar and kissing him fiercely – and then I feel it, that hunger I felt when I kissed Jackson. It’s small, true, but it’s there. And that makes me so happy and sad that I can’t do anything but just continue to kiss Luke and hope that he understands how much I need him.
When I finally pull away I find him looking down at me, his brows knotted in confusion. “You are so… progressive. No, maybe you’re more dynamic than progressive.”
Now it is my turn to be confused. “What do you mean?” I ask him, wondering if the shock of me kissing him has somehow messed with his mind.
“You’re always moving and changing Lizzie; it can be quite hard to keep up.” His eyes shine with the same smile that quirks his lips, and I think this is the happiest I’ve seen in four years of knowing him.
“So are you actually having an issue keeping up now? Because if you are I’m going to leave you in the dust,” I tease, not resisting as he wraps his arms around me and pulls me to him. I place a hand on his chest and feel, underneath his muscle, his heart beating steadily and reassuringly.
“I will always keep up with you,” he whispers in my ear as his lips gently brush my cheek right below my ear.
We then just hold onto each other until the train arrives in Eight and I keep my mind completely blank, knowing that distracting myself by thinking about what happened and about Luke’s and I’s twisted relationship will not help me. When we finally slow to a stop and the doors to the outside world begin to open, Luke silently holds out his hand as a way of asking for mine. And I give him my hand as a way of showing that, no matter what I feel about him, we are a team. Forever and always.

[Sonmi-451]

More added.

Luke and I never let go of each other’s hands during the governor’s half-hour speech, because we’re keeping each other up the whole time. I keep on looking out at the people of Section Eight, who are required to gather and celebrate and pretend that they’re happy that we won, and notice how desperate they are, how wildly their eyes flit around, how almost every person’s ribs can be seen through their clothing. They are so sad, all of them, and are as frantic as rats trapped in a cage. But I guess being the poorest section with the worst living conditions that’s least cared about by El Nieve would make you feel like a rat caught in the crushing trap of poverty and starvation. It makes me feel so fake, so porcelain, in my perfect black dress and my perfect makeup and my perfect white heels, as if I would shatter into a million pieces if one of those poor, distraught people even touched me. However, what surprises me the most about these people is that, at the end of the governor’s speech, when they’re all supposed to clap and fake how much they’re enjoying this, no one claps or even makes a motion as to put their hands together. Instead, they all put two fingers to their foreheads salute me, like I did to the audience during the last round of hand-to-hand, and, before I can stop myself, I find myself saluting them back. I scan over all of their faces, still desperate but now mostly masked with a grim determination, like soldiers marching off to a gruesome battlefield death. But, by defying El Nieve, I guess they are signing their death warrants, which means that I can now add all of Section Eight to my kill list. It really will never stop getting longer, will it? Dropping my hand instantly, I look over at Luke in confusion to find him scanning the crowd with a distant, concerned expression, and I can tell that he’s thinking what I’m thinking: that we’ve just killed these people.

“Oh God, what did we do Luke?” I cry as my legs give out and I sink down the wall, ripping off my stupid white heels and throwing them across the floor with a vengeance. I don’t want anything to do with them or anything else made in El Nieve, which I guess includes me now.
“Well, we definitely didn’t do damage control, that’s for sure,” Luke mutters as he sits down next to me, his head in his hands.
I sit straight up and gaze over at Luke in astonishment. How could he know about that? “Did Rush give you the help-us-or-we’ll-kill-your-loved-ones talk too?” I ask him, thinking that I’ve been incorrectly reading his motives if he did.
“Yeah. And, of course, I chose the help us option because I didn’t really want to be responsible for my parents’ deaths along with everyone else I’ve killed.” I see the bags under his eyes and realize that the last few days have aged him ten years at least. “We’ll never stop killing people, will we?” He raises his head and stares me straight in the eye, his gaze desperate and pleading.
I shake my head and see his face fall ever so slightly, since he had to know I was going to answer know even if he was hoping against it. “No, we never will. It’s the only thing we can do now Luke. The Triple Crown’s taken everything else away from us.”
“I guess I understand what you mean about being inherently dangerous now.” Luke chuckles softly and bitterly, his mouth contorting into a grimace and his eyes reflecting loathing and rage.
“Look at it this way: if we die, we won’t be able to hurt anyone else besides ourselves,” I tell Luke, reaching out and touching his arm gently just to remind him that I’m still here, for the time being, and so is he.
“But… I can’t let you die. I just can’t, Lizzie.” He shakes his head. “Oh God, this is all my fault! If it weren’t for me, there would be a lot more people alive right now! If it weren’t for me-”
“You think this is your fault?!” I exclaim, looking over at him in shock and anger that he has to be so good as to take responsibility for me. I don’t want him to clean up after the mess I’ve made. After all, I intend to stain it with my own blood in the end, so I why would I want it all cleared up now? “Luke, I’m the one who did that salute during the Triple Crown! I’m the one who has the huge kill list!”
“Lizzie, we share a kill list,” Luke tells me, and I drop my head in begrudging admittance of the fact that he’s right. “You do seem to have more practice at killing than I do though, considering how you broke the fastest kill record by twenty-three seconds.”
“Yeah, that was held by you!” I shoot back, attempting and succeeding in diverting the topic away from my killing prowess. I have no intention of telling Luke my secrets, since it’s better for him to not know them. He has too much to think about to begin with. “And you don’t just kill someone in thirty-three seconds without practice. Which brings me to the question, Luke: how did you learn to fight?”
“I took self-defense classes and practiced fencing every weekend,” he replies, acting like his fighting skills are no big deal. “I guess I didn’t realize I was very good until I came here and actually got to fight in a life-or-death situation.”
“Oh.” Now it’s my turn to be shocked. I mean, you generally practice fencing and self-defense on dummies, so it’s got to be a big leap to fight against people. But if you forget that they’re people, I guess it’s no different at all.
We sit in silence for a little while, absorbing the fact that both of us are trained killers and that we kill people no matter where we go or what we do, until Luke pipes up and asks aloud, voicing what I’m thinking, “Well, where do we go from here?”
“Well, to start with, we really need to work on our damage control, since I don’t want to go home and find everyone I care about dead; I’ve already got too many deaths on my conscience to begin with.” I force myself to not think about my family and Jackson being murdered and continue talking. “And damage control means we have to go all-out in our love for each other.” My mind jumps to the kiss earlier and I quickly brush it aside; one kiss that made me feel something doesn’t mean I love Luke, and besides, I can’t love him now, considering I’m going to be dying and leaving him soon.
“Done,” Luke answers instantly, a small smile more than tinged with sadness flitting across his face. I hear Max’s words, “He wanted it to be real,” ring around my head and I shut them out, knowing that I can’t afford to think about if it’s real or not right now. “Well, anything else we need to do?”
“When we get back into the arena I guess we can try the whole double-suicide thing again, but we might not get as much of a chance as we did last time, considering that they’ll want a Triple Crown winner and can’t have one if we both die, although us being too rebellious may make them want to have us dead, so you never know.” I shrug again and look over at Luke, finding his hand and giving it a reassuring squeeze. “But for now, all we have to do is keep up our in-love-and-dating act.”
“It’s not an act for me, Lizzie,” Luke murmurs, his gaze locked on mine as he rises to his feet and pulls me up with him. And he’s done it again; he’s made me feel like a horrible person without even trying because he’s honest about loving me when I don’t love him and am just acting.
We then just stand there, staring each other down, until Max pokes his head around the corner and calls to us, “Come on, the feast’s starting,” and the last thing I think as Luke leads me into the dining hall is that it’s funny how our roles have switched: I’ve become the actor and Luke’s become sincere.

[Sonmi-451]

More added.

The dinner is modest, with little food by El Nieve standards and a lone fiddler in a corner playing softly. I like it the most of any ceremony we’ve been to so far though because it’s the smallest. During the dinner, I don’t eat very much, as I ‘m too sickened by the state of the people to ingest anything, especially in their presence, and I begin to think that maybe El Nieve ceremonies are better because they don’t make me feel nearly as guilty. After everyone else finishes eating, four or five more musicians with various instruments come out, the lights are dimmed and the dance begins. Luke places one hand gently on my hip and I take his other hand with one of my own, and we dance slowly in a circle to the music, not saying much as we cling to each other to keep ourselves upright. I know this would probably be a great time to do some damage control by kissing, but I can’t bring myself to continue this awful act with all of the poor, desperate people from Eight still watching me and seeing right through me. I think Luke feels the same way, because he says nothing about damage control either.
Finally, after about fifteen minutes of just twirling, I get enough nerves to dare to attempt to act in love, and I stand on tiptoe and whisper in Luke’s ear, “I think it’s damage control time,” then kiss his neck to cover up our communication.
I hear the music slow even more and Luke draws me closer to him so that we are touching. I gaze up and him and he gazes down at me, and for a mere millisecond I see it, that look in his eye he had when telling me there was no one special in his life, that look he had when we won Hand-to-Hand and he thought I was in love with him, and I know what it means: that he’s not acting. And then he bends down and kisses me, and I kiss him back, uncomfortably aware of the void in my chest where there was feeling earlier today. I see Max watching us very closely out of the corner of my eye and I avert my gaze quickly; I can’t make it seem like Max is part of this and blow our cover.
When Luke finally pulls away, he considers me for a second before leaning in again, this time kissing my neck and working his way slowly upward. In between kisses, he murmurs in my ear, “Should we try to sneak off together? For damage control?” and I wait until he kisses me on the lips again to answer.
“As long as we make it so obvious that we can’t not get caught,” I tell him quietly as stand on tiptoe and kiss him gently on the cheek.
In response, Luke abruptly scoops me up in his arms and begins to walk towards the servants’ quarters in plain sight of everyone in the room. I am careful to quickly morph my shock into giggles and it almost sickens me to know I could be called simpering, but I guess that even I can play the part of a lovestruck, sappy girl when the threat of death to everyone I care about hangs over my head.
I’m relieved that I don’t have to keep up the silly in-love act for too long, as we only make it a couple steps before the governor asks us, his voice falsely stern, “And where do you two think you’re going?” Underneath his fake strict tone, however, I can hear strain and sadness, not very noticeable but most definitely there, and it makes me grateful that he’s willing to help us pull off the love act even when he knows it’s just an act.
“Oh, nowhere,” Luke answers, gently setting me down and dropping his gaze to the ground as he pulls off the caught-guilty face perfectly, and it occurs to me that, after all the acting I’ve seen him do, I might not be able to trust him again. But then I remember that he would never act around me because he’d have no reason to, and I’m slightly comforted, even though we’re probably both going to be dead before I get a chance to trust him or not anyways.
“Well, go on back then,” the governor commands, trying to seem imposing and disappointed in us but just seeming tired, sad and desperate. Like the rest of the people in Section Eight.
“Yes sir,” Luke mutters, his gaze still on the ground, then grabs me by the hand and leads me off back towards our original dancing spot. When we begin to dance again, Luke bends down and whispers in my ear, “Was that obvious enough for you?”
I nod my head almost imperceptibly, a smile creeping across my face, and murmur in reply, “Yes, that was very obvious. In fact, I don’t think you could’ve made it any more noticeable.”
“Well, I probably could have if I started trying to take your dress off right here, but I thought that might have been overkill even by your standards.” At first I give him a flat look, trying to look unamused, then lean forward into his shoulder to laugh. When I pull back, I see him grinning down at me, his eyes twinkling.
“I like it when you laugh,” he tells me quietly, his eyes glued on mine as his hands rest on my lower back. “You have a beautiful laugh… along with beautiful eyes and a beautiful nose and a beautiful mouth and beautiful ears and a beautiful smile and a beautiful face and a beautiful body and a beautiful voice and, the most stunning of them all, an absolutely radiant personality.” For a second I can’t breathe or think or do anything because I’m so taken aback by Luke’s compliments, but when I finally come to my senses, I throw my arms around Luke’s neck and kiss him passionately, feeling his arms tighten around me as he kisses me back.
He pulls away after a long while, and, best I can tell, it’s only for air, although he doesn’t make a move to try and kiss me again. Instead, he murmurs, not nearly as quiet as when we’re communicating privately because this qualifies as damage control, “So you kiss me for telling the truth? I guess I should be more honest then.” He then leans in and kisses me softly on the neck, his lips working their way up to my mouth again.
“I guess maybe you should,” I reply, trying my best to act as content as Luke is. I jump when he hits the spot where Marshall nicked and bruised me on the neck and try to cover it up by exclaiming, “That tickles!”
However, I can tell Luke knows I’m hurt because he raises a hand and gently traces the not-so-small cut on the side of my neck with his finger. He then kisses me incredibly lightly on my scratch and asks me teasingly, going along with the ruse, “Oh, right there?”
“Yes, right there!” I tell him, pretending to collapse into laughter and doing a pretty good job of faking if I do say so myself.
“I didn’t know you were ticklish, Miss Lightning,” he tells me as he pulls away, his eyes twinkling, but underneath the pretend happiness, I see worry, and it makes me smile sincerely to know how much he cares for me.
“To be honest,” I begin, staring up at him with almost amazement as I realize how much he loves me and would do for me when I don’t love him and have never done anything for him. “I didn’t know I was either.”
Luke then leans so close that our noses are touching and whispers, “You’re not invincible Lizzie,” before kissing me gently as one hand slides up towards the back of my neck and pushes me into him. I relax under his steady, warm touch and kiss him back, aware of the void in my heart but also aware of his lips pressed against mine.
“Hey lovebirds, time to go,” Max calls to us, and we break apart quickly, Luke smiling down on me as he brushes a strand of hair away from my face.
He bends down and is about to scoop me into his arms when I stop him by saying, “No, not this time. It’s my turn now.”
“What do you mean?” he asks me confusedly, a slight grin still haunting his lips.
In answer, I bend down and scoop him into my arms, hefting his weight and finally telling him, “Luke, you really aren’t that heavy. I don’t know why you don’t let me do this more often,” before marching off after Max to a round of applause.

[Sonmi-451]

More added.

And that’s how every Section visit goes. Luke and I stand together, hand in hand, pretending to care about the governor’s speech while we really look at the horrible conditions or the signs of rebellion, then we kiss or do some kind of damage control, careful not to add any other Sections to our kill list. We go to the dinner after that, where neither one of us eat much because we’re too preoccupied with the memories of the Triple Crown or with the desperate people or with the tension that threatens to break the air. And, when the dance comes along, we force smiles onto our grim faces and walk out to the floor and twirl in slow circles together, me laughing at things that aren’t funny and Luke nearly killing me with the pain radiating from his eyes. Then it’s damage control time, and we kiss and I feel awful for not loving Luke when he’s so perfect for me and Luke gets even more hurt because he knows I’m just acting to save people I love and people I’ve never met when he’s not just acting, and we both end up feeling horrible. It’s harder than the Triple Crown, a lot harder, because at least when you’re in the arena all you have to worry about is your own neck, and the families of the kids you killed aren’t standing in front of you, and it doesn’t matter what the Sections are doing. All that matters is staying alive, and I’d much rather spend an eternity in the arena than have to keep worrying about a lot more necks than just my own and feeling like a terrible person every moment I’m around Luke and knowing that every move I make could kill or save millions. So by the time the victory tour is almost over and our last stop is El Nieve itself, I feel like I’ve been run through a meat grinder eight times, and I can tell by looking at Luke that he feels the same way. I wonder what our relationship would be like, if we made it home alive. He’d still love me, and I still wouldn’t love him, but would I feel so in debt to him that I’d date him because I know that’s what he wants? No, that would be worse – for him and for me – than not dating him at all and having everything I owe to him hanging over my head. But the thing is, I don’t know if I could ever be with anyone other than Luke ever again, because no one besides him knows what it’s like in the arena, to be forced to murder desperate, innocent children for the entertainment of a desperate society. And then there’s also the fact that we’d both be so broken, so beyond repair, so stripped of our humanity that we might need each other to keep each other whole and sane and alive, so I don’t know if I’d even have a choice as to date Luke or not if we got back because my need for someone who knows what it’s like might overcome everything else. Jackson could win Alexa back, no problem, and then he wouldn’t need me anymore, and Luke still would, and then it’d all work out, right? I can have Luke and Jackson can have Alexa and we’ll all be happy, right? So now all I can ever have is a not-so-happily ever after with a not-so-happy boy that I don’t even love, which means that El Nieve has not only taken my present by my future as well. I guess the repercussions of the arena will never stop; they’ll reverberate throughout my whole life for the rest of my life, and I guess going back to how we were isn’t an option if we get home. Of course, there’s always that if, but if I can execute my plan, it won’t be an if, because I won’t be coming home. Besides, now that my future’s been taken away from me as well, maybe it’s best to die now and not have to live out a future that I didn’t choose, that I don’t want.

[Sonmi-451]

More added.

The first thing I think when I see the inside of Russel’s castle is, “It’s beautiful.” The castle, from the outside, looks dark and forbidding with its faded brickwork that had its best days a few hundred years ago and looming towers that literally block out the sun when the angle’s right. But its inside is the polar opposite. In classic El Nieve fashion, everything is white, the walls, the floors and the furnishings, but gold inlay and gilt wind their way around many things inside the castle, making its paleness bearable. The ceiling of the dining hall goes up at least forty feet to be capped off by a glass skylight probably two hundred feet wide and a hundred feet long that shows the stars in all of their glory. I can hear Luke’s breath catch in his throat as he takes in all of the beauty around him, and I glance over with a smile on my face.
“You’re right, it’s pretty, but it’s not nearly as beautiful as you.” Luke finds my hand with one of his, returns my smile and, for a moment, I don’t see any pain in his eyes. But that moment ends too quickly, and, as we are jerked abruptly back to reality by Max shoving us into the dining hall, the hurt returns to his eyes again.
I gasp in awe at the sheer amount of food laid out in our honor. Ten-foot-long tables filled with whole roast birds and pigs and cows even, stuffed with vegetables and fruit and even other animals. And then there’s four tables dedicated just to soup, with huge pots filled to the brim with every kind of broth and bisque and chowder imaginable, and, after that, five tables are occupied by side dishes of many colors, shapes and sizes, including fruit and vegetables and bread. And, at the very end, are three tables covered in so many different kinds of dessert that it would probably take at least an hour to name them all.
“Boy, you’d think they actually like us,” I mutter under my breath as I gaze at all of the food and think about how long it must have taken to prepare all of it. I turn to Luke to see a wan half-smile flitting across his face and stop him from walking forward by pulling him aside into a cutout six feet tall and six feet wide in the white marble walls.
“What?” Luke looks at me, confused, and it makes me happy to see the pain disappear from his eyes for a millisecond. So Luke’s not in pain as long as he’s changing emotions, hmm? I guess that means he’s in the pain the rest of the time though.
“You alright?” I ask him sincerely, gazing up at him and intertwining my fingers with his own. I know, that at a base level, he hasn’t be alright since we came here, but that unease that goes with our existence in this dimension needs to be overlooked for now.
“Yeah,” he answers quietly, nodding his head and pressing his lips together in what I think is supposed to be a reassuring smile. “Well, I’m as alright as I can be.” He pulls one hand away from mine and raises it to my face to gently caress my cheek, then pulls the other one away and drops them both by his sides. “I’m just living with the reality that I didn’t get to tell the girl I love ‘I love you’ the way I wanted to and that she doesn’t love me back because she’s in love with another guy and that I fall harder for her every moment I’m around her but realize even more every second that I can’t have her and that I didn’t get the fairytale ending I wanted with her professing her love for me and us riding off into the sunset and that I’m probably going to die soon with the knowledge that I came close but I wasn’t enough, that I didn’t quite make the grade.”
For a few moments that span the eternities between our dimension and the one we’re currently in, I just stare up at Luke, every memory I have of him flashing before my eyes: him giving me the only genuine smile I got from any guy the first day of eighth grade, getting into a huge debate with him over Fahrenheit 451 in Honors LA in eighth grade, him managing JV soccer freshman year even though it meant not playing baseball, me running into him and getting tomato soup all over both of us the second-to-last day of freshman year and then talking to him as we both cleaned up at a drinking fountain, him catching me when I fell halfway through sophomore year, going over to his house to do a project and being struck by how much he meant to his parents halfway through the last semester of sophomore year, getting soaked by the sprinklers when running outside in Weights together two weeks from the end of sophomore year, sitting next to him and joking with him in Philosophy and Religion during the first semester of this year, high-fiving and celebrating with him after our team won Capture the Flag in Weights only two weeks from when we were taken. Did he really love me that whole time?
“How did you… how did you do it? How did you live every day with me right in front of you, parading around with one guy or another, a lot of them your friends? How in the hell did you put up with me enough to love me, and why in the hell didn’t you ask me out? I definitely would have said yes!” I almost yell, staring him down with puzzlement and shame in my eyes. I seriously don’t know how he put up with me, since I know I wouldn’t have been able to put up with myself.
“You wouldn’t have meant it though,” Luke murmurs, and I at least have the decency to bow my head in admittance. “And dating you when you don’t mean it is worse than seeing you every day with a different guy.” Now I drop my head so low that it’s nearly hitting the ground, because I know Luke is talking about our current situation.
“I guess I see why you wanted it to be real,” I mutter, searching the white-and-gold tile beneath my feet for answers. In my mind, I put myself into his point of view: the guy I’ve liked – no, loved – for four years and I are whisked off to a different dimension and we have to act we’re in love just to stay alive, but it’s not just an act for me. It’s only an act for him though, and then, of course, there’s that other girl…
I hate myself for not loving Luke, I hate Jackson for me loving him, I hate the stars for causing this fault, I hate the Triple Crown committee for ordering us here and I hate Max for following those orders. I hate everything and everyone in and about this dimension, because it all seems to bring Luke pain. I gaze back up at Luke, staring into his eyes and seeing my reflection in each one of his pupils.
“Why do you care about me so much? Why can’t you just see that I’m inherently dangerous and stay away? Why can’t you-”
Luke leans down and kisses me, wrapping his arms around me and refusing to let me pull back. And then I feel it again: that hunger starting in my heart and spreading throughout my body, and I kiss him back, grinning up at him when he pulls back.
“That was a really nice way of telling me to shut the hell up,” I tell him, and I see his eyes twinkle happily.
“I’m only returning the favor Lizzie.” A genuine smile – for once not tinged with sadness – curls his lips and he offers me his hand with the calloused, large palm up. “Shall we?” he murmurs, his gaze locked on mine.
“We shall.” I nod my head and give him my hand, feeling his fingers instantly tighten around my own. We then turn back towards the dining hall, hand in hand, and enter to a round of applause and cheering, but the whole time I’m only thinking about what’s going to happen when I have to let go.

[Sonmi-451]

More added.

“What do you want to try first?” a voice behind me asks as I purvey the food options at the table in front of me, but I don’t have to turn around to know that it’s Luke. What he looks like, what he sounds like, what he feels like, what he smells like, what he tastes like are all permanently ingrained into my memory now.
I see him come around to my right side and feel him wrap an arm around my waist, and, shrugging my shoulders, murmur, “None of it. But that wouldn’t be very good for damage control, now would it?”
“I know what you mean,” Luke mutters under his breath. I guess we share the feeling that we don’t want anything to do with anything made in El Nieve. In a louder voice, Luke says, “The chicken? That looks good,” then leads me over to a different table, and I smile briefly as I realize how lucky I am – and so is everyone else I love – to have Luke and his incredible gift for knowing exactly what to say and exactly when to say it, because God knows I’m not very charming or persuasive or good with words.
Luke hands me a warm plate and points to various dishes as we along the side of the table together. I take a tiny amount of each one, to be polite, but know that I’m going end up throwing most of it away later. I feel someone nudge me gently and look up to find Luke scanning the small tables around us, where other guests are sitting and eating. “Where do you want to sit?” he questions over the din of the crowd.
I grab silverware for both of us as we reach the end of the line and reply, “Wherever we can sit by ourselves,” then follow Luke as he carves a path through the crowd towards an empty table with four chairs in the southwest corner of the hall.
“Does this work?” He sets his food down, turning around to survey the rest of the chamber, presumably to find another empty table if I find this one dissatisfactory.
“This is perfect,” I tell him, giving him a genuine smile as I squeeze myself into the seat facing away from the wall and facing him.
“I could have sat there!” Luke exclaims, rising to his feet as though to right this awful wrong, but sits back down when he sees the flat look I’m giving him.
“Luke, me sitting in a seat that’s slightly hard to get into isn’t nearly as horrible as you seem to think it is.” I roll my eyes as I think that this is what I get for wearing dresses. “Besides, I want to sit with my back to wall so I can see everyone.” And so I don’t get stabbed in the back. I mean, I doubt anyone from El Nieve’s going to want to ruin the fun by killing me early, but the people in this dimension that I trust I can count on the fingers of one hand.
I see the light of understanding click in Luke’s eyes and I know that he understands my motives now. However, he doesn’t get a chance to say anything in response, because I see Max and Mitchell and call to them, both searching the hall for a place to sit with plates of food in their hands. “Hey!” I gesture for them to come over and smile at them as they sit down.
“Max, Mitchell,” Luke greets, giving them a grin of his own as he scoots over to give them more room. “How are you guys doing?”
“Never better,” Mitchell answers warmly, his gaze glued on me so I get the feeling he’s talking to me. However, I see his eyes running up and down my body and I know that he’s just checking to make sure his dress – this one a beautiful, tight-fitting crimson – fits right.
“I don’t know Mitchell,” Max says dubiously, running one hand nearly as big as the plate in front of him over his shaved, bald head. “I’m having a pretty hard time keeping up with these two, so I’d definitely say I’ve been better.” That brings a smile onto all of our faces, even mine, though I’m carefully studying both Max and Mitchell the whole time, and it concerns me to see that, under careful inspection, they both look worse for the wear.
After a few moments of silence, during which I’m alternating between watching Mitchell and Max and Luke is watching me watch Mitchell and Max, Luke pipes up and says, “Well, let’s eat!” and, as if a spell has been broken, we all start moving.
Like usual, I pick at my food, not really eating it but just giving my fork something to do, and instead amuse myself by scanning the crowd and finding some of the oddest-looking guests. The colors catch my attention almost immediately and I have to hide a snort in my hand as I see them following each other and simpering in a little line. No matter how long I spend around them, I will never be able to think of them as anything besides Broncos colors.
“What’s so funny?” Luke asks me, and I tear my gaze away from them to look at him with a smile still on my face.
“Kate, Theo and Macy,” I reply, and instantly Luke’s mouth twitches slightly and his eyes light up a little.
“Broncos colors, don’t you think?” he murmurs, and I nod my head in agreement, picking them out of the crowd again easily.
“They’re funny all right. If I didn’t know that they don’t even know what football is, I would’ve thought that they had planned it.” Now it’s Luke’s turn to nod, and he turns his head ever so slightly to see them out of the corner of his eye.
When he finally catches sight of them, he shakes his head and mutters, a smile on his face, “Quite the fashion statement, hmm?”
“Thank God they haven’t tried to do that to us yet,” I exclaim in reply, thinking that being monochromatic is definitely not my thing, although, if I did have to choose one color to be, I’d go with gold, because not much would have to change.
Mitchell, who had been completely silent up until this point, now pipes up and tells us, “Oh, trust me, they most certainly wanted to. In fact, they wanted to surgically alter both of you, but I convinced them that you two didn’t need it.”
I sit straight up at the mention of surgery, my fingers tingling as I feel the number thirteen carved into Jackson’s flesh. “Good,” I force myself to say, refusing to let the panic spreading through my body show. “I’m not fond of surgery.” Suddenly feeling claustrophobic in my corner, I look around me to find no way out to the sides, which means that the only way out is over the table. Rising to crouch on my chair, I tense my legs and propel myself, head-first, over the table, barely clearing the edge on the other side. I have just enough time to stick my arms out, catch myself, and roll neatly into a standing position. Feeling an acute pain in my feet as I put my weight gingerly on them, I bend down and rip off my shoes, sighing in relief as I flex my toes and feel the soreness ease.
“They’re too small; sorry Mitchell.” I look up, shoes in hand, to find Max, Luke and Mitchell staring at me with looks of astonishment on their faces. “What?” I stare back at them, starting to become concerned.
“That was… amazing,” Luke murmurs, his tone almost reverent. “How did you land that without hurting yourself?”
I shrug, thinking that leaping over a table definitely doesn’t qualify as amazing but going along with it anyways. “I don’t know. I mean, I just landed it the easiest way possible. I don’t get why that’s so amazing, but…” My gaze moves between them, Luke still amazed but Mitchell and Max amused.
“He’s only saying it’s amazing because he saw a lot of your thighs Lizzie,” Max tells me with a smirk on his face. As if on cue, Luke begins to blush profusely, his face turning a brilliant shade of crimson.
“That’s… that’s… no!” Luke splutters, clearly trying to defend himself but only proving even further Max’s statement.
“Luke, you should quit while you’re ahead.” I pat him on the shoulder and he quiets with a sigh, finally realizing that the cause of defending himself is a pointless one, as Max will believe what Max will believe. Obligingly Luke scoots over to give me room to sit down next to him, but I opt to sit squarely in his lap, which he seems to like better too.
“So, what do you mean, the shoes are too small?” Mitchell leans across the table and takes the black flats from me, examining them with a frown on his face.
“The shoes are too small for my feet. I mean, I don’t know what else I could mean by saying the shoes are too small.” I feel Luke wrap his arms his arms around me and lean back into him momentarily, appreciating for the first time that he was the one to come here with me.
“How can that be? I made measurements based off your height and weight and came up with an exact shoe size, so I don’t know how they can be too small.” Mitchell pulls at the shoes in different directions, the furrows on his forehead becoming more prominent. “Well, they haven’t shrunk at all, so I have no idea as to how they could be too small, as I know my measurements were right the first time.”
Knowing that I might not get another moment to talk before Mitchell launches into another “But they have to fit!” spiel, I open my mouth and hold up my hand when Mitchell tries to speak too, as I will not be interrupted. “That’s the thing, Mitchell. My feet are a lot bigger than they’re supposed to be, if you go off my height and weight.” Turning to Luke, I tell him, “My feet are supposed to be a woman’s size eleven, but they’re a woman’s size thirteen, man’s size eleven-and-a-half instead. The funniest part is that they don’t even make woman’s size thirteen shoes normally, so I have to special-order them through Nike.”
“Your feet are three sizes smaller than mine then. You have awfully big feet Miss Lightning,” Luke teases, smiling at me. Suddenly I realize that our faces are only a few inches apart, and I look away quickly, not in the mood for any more damage control than sitting on Luke’s lap.
“Ah, that explains it then.” Mitchell seems somewhat relieved, now that he knows it’s not his fault that the shoes don’t fit. To be honest, I don’t see why it matters beyond the fact that they don’t fit, but I’m not a stylist and don’t devote my life to clothes and fashion either. “Well, I’ll get right on making you a pair that fit then.” Mitchell gives me a grin and I see the excitement in his eyes, and I’m reminded that he really does love his shoes.
“Hey Lizzie, you going to eat that?” Max asks me, jerking his head in the direction of my abandoned, nearly-full plate of food.
I shake my head, staring at the plate with contempt. No matter how hungry I get, I will not eat anything produced by slave labor. “Have it Max. I don’t want it.” I watch as he extends one large arm, pulls the dish to him and begins to eat.
“You can have mine too,” Luke says, and pushes his plate in Max’s direction as well. Now, turning to me, Luke murmurs, his eyes full of concern, “You’re getting thinner. I can feel your ribs.” I feel him gently tracing the individual ribs and relax a little under his touch, my breathing slowing but still faster than usual.
“You’ve always been able to feel my ribs,” I counter, hoping that Luke will just give up on the matter because the last thing I want is to be force-fed on top of everything else.
“Not like this.” He drops his hand and looks at me with such evident distress that I almost feel like I should eat something, just for his benefit, but I refuse to eat anything made in El Nieve, because it has undoubtedly been grown or manufactured at the expense of the Sections. “You really should eat something Lizzie, because it’s not like we’re going to have a lot of food during Survival.”
“Besides, if you don’t, I can always have Kate, Theo and May surgically alter you,” Mitchell adds, surfacing from his trance of studying the shoes long enough to get on Luke’s side, and I give him a flat look. He’s supposed to be helping me, right?
“I’ll eat something when we get back to the Champions’ Center, alright?” I finally say, hoping to just get everyone off my back.
At last, Luke nods his assent, but, when Mitchell has gone back to his shoes, he whispers in my ear, “You know, this isn’t very good for damage control, refusing to eat the food they’ve made in our honor.”
“I know,” I begin, staring Luke in the eye, “but I don’t care. Not right now, at least, because for once, I’m going to do what I want to do.”
Luke nods his head in understanding and then we just sit, gazing into each other’s eyes, me trying to read him and Luke probably thinking about how I’ve broken his heart, until the shrill, crisp note of a bell breaks the air.
Instantly I rise to my feet to hear a cool – but thankfully human – voice announce that the dance is starting, then turn to Luke to see him taking his shoes off. “What are you doing?” I stare down at him, utterly perplexed. “I thought your shoes fit.”
“They do,” he starts, “but we might as well match. Besides, you don’t need any other distinguishing features; you’ve got too many for your own good already.” We both smile as I breathe an internal sigh of relief at the fact that Luke doesn’t know what I actually am, since it’s one hell of a distinguishing feature in itself. “Now, Miss Lightning, may I have this dance?” He bows respectfully and offers me his hand, which I, of course, accept.
“You don’t even have to ask, Mister Gates.” I then lead him out onto the dance floor as I realize how much we must stand out: me a good six inches taller than the average El Nieve woman, and Luke a good five inches taller than the average El Nieve man, and both of us in our socks to boot.
I sigh inwardly as Luke places one hand on my hip and takes one of mine in the other, since I know that it’s damage control time, that it’s time to break Luke’s heart into a million pieces with my insincerity. For the ninth time.
We begin to twirl slowly, Luke gazing down at me as I stare off into the distance, wishing that I could just run through one of the huge glass windows and fall to my death – the castle is at the top of a cliff to make it harder to infiltrate – when I remember that I can’t, that I won’t die, no matter how much I want to.
I am startled slightly when I feel Luke’s lips on my neck and tear my gaze away from the window to find myself staring into one alarmingly clear ice-blue eye. “‘Concrete girl, don’t fall down/In this broken world around you/Concrete girl, don’t fall down/Don’t fall down, don’t fall down, my concrete girl,’” he whispers in my ear, and my eyes shoot open in surprise. “The only thing is, you’re not completely concrete Lizzie. I know there’s a human and a heart and feeling in you, no matter how much you wish there wasn’t.” He pulls back, searching my face for emotion I refuse to give.
“Don’t you think it’d be more appropriate to quote the part ‘fake your laughter’?” I brush past Luke’s remark about not being concrete; it may be true, but I’m not going to admit to it. I would much rather continue to tell myself that I am concrete, that I cannot be broken, than face the fact that I am not invincible.
Luke shrugs, still scanning my face for any reaction. “Maybe. I don’t know.” He gently raises one hand and caresses my cheek gently, moving his hand down to cup my chin. I feel my heart rate increase dramatically, because the last time this happened, I ended up kissing someone, and I’m not sure I want to do that right now. Leaning closer until our noses are touching, he tells me quietly but with strength, “Actually, no, because I know you don’t fake all of it, Lizzie. I know you don’t fake it with Abby; I know you don’t fake it with Mitchell; I know you don’t fake it with Max. I guess I’m the only one you fake it with.”
I shake my head, tears filling my eyes, but blink them away sternly. Now is not a time to lose it to crying. “Luke, I don’t fake it with you.” I meet his gaze fiercely just before I kiss him, grabbing his collar and pulling him into me as I feel his arms tighten around me. And, for the third time in probably ten times as many kisses, I feel it: that hunger, starting in my chest and spreading through the rest of my body that I’ve come to associate with overwhelming happiness and unbearable sadness. But, for once, I refuse to let myself feel the sadness, and just lose myself in the happiness, in the joy that maybe I love Luke, that maybe, just maybe, I don’t have to act anymore.
When I finally pull away, needing air, I find Luke gazing down at me with a distinctly pleased look of almost confusion on his face. Bending down over me, he whispers in my ear, “Maybe I was wrong about you Miss Lightning. Maybe this isn’t just an act for you anymore.” He then kisses me on the tip of my nose and holds me against him, a genuine smile on his face and his eyes twinkling – for once no hurt apparent in them.
I am nearly overcome with joy when I see that, for once, I’m not causing him pain every second of every day, and I bury my head in his shoulder to stop myself from breaking down and bawling, because there’s still a hole in my heart the size of Jackson Lucas Carter. That hole hurts me every time I kiss Luke because it begins to throb with my betrayal of Jackson and my loneliness and my feeling that I’m a wretched human being, my feeling that I should have never fallen for Jackson because it’s only ended up hurting us both. So I can’t help but hear a song lyric, from To Them These Streets Belong by Rise Against, echo around in my head as Luke and I dance.
“‘It’s not this hate/But the loneliness/That’s left me here into this mess of love.’”

[Sonmi-451]

After a while, unfortunately, people begin to gravitate towards us, asking for pictures and dances. Thank God most of them are rich El Nieve girls wanting to dance with Luke, for which he gives me sincere apologetic looks, but there are a few yuppy El Nieve boys who ask to dance with me. I don’t want to be touched by them; I don’t want to be touched by anything having to do with El Nieve; I don’t want to be touched by anything having to do with this dimension; but, for the sake of damage control and the cameras, for of course there are press here, I force a smile onto my face and dance with each and every one of them. The only thing that keeps me from kicking them in the shins and running off is the threat of death to my family and my friends and Jackson that’s hanging over my head. I know having the deaths of the people I love on my conscience – if I still have one, after spilling so much blood – would be far too much to bear. The fact that many of them look rather disconcerted at me having two or three inches on them also makes the dancing with them more bearable, because I know I’m embarrassing them in the process. However, one boy, who seems to think he’s incredibly handsome despite having large, stick-out ears and a monkey face, decides that his hand is going to go a bit farther down than my hip. At first, I try to ignore it, knowing that getting angry at an El Nieve boy on national television when I’m supposed to be getting people to like me would not be good, but, when he is literally touching my butt, I decide that my persona is far less important than my personal space, so, as quick as my last name, I grab his arm, turn him around, and put him in as tight a headlock as I dare while pinning his arm against his back in what I know to be a painful position.
“You should keep your hands to yourself, Monkey-face,” I tell him, enjoying my three-inch height advantage as he whimpers and claws feebly at my arm.
“Lizzie!” Max barks sharply at me, rising to his feet and walking over towards me. “Let him go!” I stare him down and see a mixture of alarm, fear and panic in his eyes, and I know that Max isn’t a fool for being afraid; in theory, all of us could executed for my assault, but El Nieve wouldn’t do that before the Triple Crown was over, because then they’d have to explain why they had lost a mentor and a champion.
“Max, Monkey-face here,” I begin, indicating the boy I’m threatening to asphyxiate, “seems to think that, when you dance with a girl, your hand does not stay on her hip, but instead moves down and to the back some.” I hear Monkey-boy’s whining become louder and I see the anger on Max’s face waver as he looks between Monkey-boy and me, clearly trying to decide whether to believe my story or Monkey-boy’s exaggerated moaning.
Finally Max repeats, “Lizzie, let him go,” but with less of edge to his voice, and I remove my arm from around Monkey-boy’s neck and shove him forward.
By this time, Luke has come over – as has nearly every other guest in the castle – and asks me gently, “Lizzie, what happened?”
“Oh, nothing,” I reply, shrugging my shoulders. “Just a mix-up on where to put your hand when dancing with a girl, as apparently Mr. James-” I finally remember Monkey-boy’s actual name, Anthony James. “-And I have different opinions on where to place said hand.” I catch Luke’s gaze for a moment, but a moment is all I need to see the understanding flicker in his eyes.
“Well, Mr. James,” Luke starts, turning towards Monkey-boy with an expression of pure sympathy on his face, which quickly morphs into a look of anger, “When in doubt, keep your hands off my girlfriend.”
And then Luke punches Mr. Anthony James square in the face.

Luke and I are seated side-by-side on a couch in a compartment of the train and are watching Max pace agitatedly back and forth in front of us, his head in his hands as he mutters things under his breath.
Finally he stops walking and turns on both of us, the anger in his eyes making his fiery irises even more dramatic. “That was unacceptable, both of you!” he booms in his most intimidating voice, affixing us both with an incredibly angry gaze that reminds me kind of being burned alive. “Lizzie, I don’t care if he tries to French-kiss you against your permission, you do not hurt him unless he’s in the arena with you! Then you’re welcome to cut as big of a hole in him as you want, but since that boy was not another champion, you don’t hurt him, no matter what he’s doing to you! Do you understand?” Not wanting to be yelled at again, I nod my head tersely, drop my eyes and grit my teeth in frustration. So apparently anything in El Nieve is untouchable, despite the fact that El Nieve has violently ripped us from our lives and forced us to either murder or be murdered.
“And Luke, that goes for you too! You do not punch someone in the face, no matter what they do to you or Lizzie, unless you’re in the arena! Do you understand?” The anger in Max’s voice is fading and is being replaced by a weariness; I guess having to keep two seventeen-year-olds alive who have their own, very definite opinions and don’t even want to be kept alive is probably incredibly exhausting.
“Or what?” Luke’s quiet response, not externally defiant or loud, takes both Max and I by surprise, and we both look over at him, not knowing what he’s talking about. “What happens if we continue to do this, if we touch the untouchables of El Nieve?” he repeats, staring back at Max and I, seeming to be genuinely curious.
“Then,” Max begins, “then it’s endgame, then it’s all over. Then it doesn’t matter that you’re champions of the Triple Crown, then they’ll get rid of you no matter how many lies they have to make up. You can kiss your lives goodbye.” He shrugs his shoulders, emphasizing the hopelessness of the situation.
“We already have, Max,” Luke replies steadily, his gaze glued on Max’s. “So what do we have to lose? I’d rather die myself and die in defiance than live as one of the broken masses with no sense of self.”
“So you’re saying you’d rather die on your feet than live on your knees?” I ask Luke, affixing him with an inquisitive golden stare.
“Certainly,” he answers immediately, his eyes locked on mine, causing a thin smile to flit across my face.
“‘You’re a shameful opportunist! What you don’t understand is that it’s better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.’ ‘You have it backwards. It’s better to live on your feet than to die on your knees,’” I murmur quietly, my smile fading nearly as quickly as it had come. “Know who said that, Luke?”
He shrugs his shoulders and shakes his head, looking puzzled. “No. I only know Switchfoot songs, remember?”
“Lizzie, you’re walking on dangerous ground by quoting things like that,” Max cautions, but I brush right past his warning and continue to talk.
“Rise Against said that in their song Survivor Guilt. Well, Rise Against didn’t actually say it; they took a sound clip from Catch-22 and used it in their song, but same effect.” Turning to Max, I tell him, “Max, Luke’s right. Our lives are already gone. We’ve got nothing to lose – except for our humanity – and that’s the one thing I refuse to let El Nieve strip away from us. When I die, I will die on my feet, as Elizabeth Eleanor Marie Lightning, not on my knees and not as a pawn of their great game.” I sit straight up, staring Max right in the eye and knowing that nothing he says or does will change my mind.
“Lizzie, you don’t have to die! In fact, you most likely won’t die, if El Nieve gets their way, so why don’t you just let them rig the Triple Crown for you and come out victorious?” Max shoots back, and I’m almost taken aback by the selfishness of his words.
“I couldn’t do that Max, because then I’d have his-” I jerk my head in Luke’s direction, “-and Abby’s deaths on my conscience, since I would’ve basically left them for dead, and I can’t do that, I can’t just leave them to die. And that’s the point, Max; my death will be a rebellion in itself because then El Nieve won’t get their Triple Crown winner, and I can die knowing that I didn’t fail anybody, that I kept everybody alive that I wanted to and that I died as myself, with my sense of self, and that’s so much more than I’d get if I won.”
Max sights, his huge chest heaving and his whole posture resigned. “Lizzie,” he begins, “do what you will, but know that, as your mentor, I will be trying to keep both of you alive.” His eyes dart towards Luke for a second and I nod, knowing that I’m not going to get any more out of Max than that.
“And Lizzie, know that, as a person who loves you and wouldn’t be able to live without you because you’re my whole world, I will be trying to keep you alive too,” Luke adds, getting that look in his eye that means he’s set on whatever he’s decided. Which means that I’m going to have an even harder time of dying in peace ,with Luke always beside me and making me feel guilty about going and leaving him alone.
“Ok. But know that, as a stubborn, determined, strong-willed seventeen-year-old girl with her very definite opinions, I will be trying to die.” I give Max and Luke small smiles and they return them, but there is a markedly changed feel in the air around us now, and I know for sure why.
The real Triple Crown, Lizzie versus Max and Luke and everyone else determined to keep me alive at their expense, has just begun.

[Sonmi-451]

More added.

I stretch out on the luxurious bed in my compartment and watch the moonlit landscape rip by in a blur of silver, blue, gray and black. Like usual, I can’t sleep, and watching the land go by calms me some and gives me time to think, something I desperately need.
So what do I do about this start of the real Triple Crown, me versus Max and Luke and maybe even myself? I can’t go home without Luke, I know I can’t, even if it’s only for the distinctly ignoble reason that I wouldn’t be able to face his family and friends without feeling responsible for his death somehow, and, of course, there’s also that thing that I need him, that I maybe love him and maybe can’t live without him. But Luke, he needs me far more than I need him, because I know that he has nothing if he doesn’t have me, and that he would probably just end up committing suicide or being so miserable that his life is pointless, so I guess we’re stuck. I can’t live without Luke, Luke can’t live without me, but one of us has to die and both of us are trying desperately to keep the other alive. So what do I do? I know what I want to do: I want to die, in rebellion of El Nieve, and save Luke and Abby in the process, but that would be the coward’s way out, because death is easier than life and because I’d be leaving Luke, all by his lonesome, to deal with the problems we created. But is possibly losing my humanity, my sense of self and Luke in the process of surviving worth it? Is living on my knees, broken and crushed and without Luke, better than dying on my feet as myself and with Luke? No, it isn’t; I’d much rather die on my feet with someone I loved next to me than live on my knees. But that’s really the base question here, isn’t it? Is your humanity or your survival more important? Are the sacrifices you make to live worth living?
A knock at my door jerks me to attention, and I sit up and rise to my feet, padding soundlessly over to the door and opening it silently to find Luke staring down at me.
“Couldn’t sleep either, huh?” I murmur, and he shakes his head in conformation. “Well, come on in then.” I move to the side to let Luke enter, then sit back down on my bed and motion for Luke to sit next to me.
“So what do we do?” Luke asks me, his eyes made silver by the moonlight reflecting off of them. He finds my hand with one of his own and holds onto it with a desperate air, as though if he lets go, one of us will be lost. The worst part is that’s not such an unrealistic fear.
“I don’t Luke,” I answer quietly, meeting his gaze and tightening my grip on his hand. “I haven’t known since we left home, and I don’t think I’m going to start knowing anytime soon either.”
He nods his head, dropping his eyes to the floor. “I just wish… I just wish there was a way that we could either both go home or both not return. But, of course, El Nieve’s going to try to keep you alive, since they want their champion, so that means I have to die somewhere in there.” He pauses for a second, and I can hear him swallow. “So, I’m going to try to keep you alive the best I can, even though you probably won’t need my help. I think it’s more for my benefit though, so maybe I can say that I died for a cause, that I had a purpose.”
I feel my chest constrict and I take a couple deep breaths, willing myself not to cry as I realize that Luke wouldn’t just die for me, he would die for the idea that he was helping. However, Luke notices this and instantly becomes concerned, scooting over to me and wrapping me in his arms as he questions, quietly but with a sense of urgency, “Lizzie, are you ok? What’s the matter?”
“You’re the matter!” I cry, pulling myself away from him and staring him in the eye. “You’re so devoted to me that you’d give everything just for the idea – the idea, not even the knowledge! – that you were helping me, and I just wonder why, Luke, why? I’ve given you nothing except a broken heart and some fake kisses, but you’ll willingly give me everything you can at the drop of hat. So I ask: why? Why do you care about me so much when I’ve never really cared about you? Why do you give me everything when I’ve given you nothing? My God Luke, why are you so damn devoted?!” I finally exclaim, burying my face in his shoulder and not protesting when he gently picks me up and sets me down in his lap.
Luke merely holds me for a little bit, not saying anything and letting me cry on him until I can’t cry anymore. When I’ve calmed down enough to breathe normally and presumably hear him, he murmurs in my ear, “Lizzie, oh Lizzie, we’ve been over this so many times. It doesn’t matter if you don’t love me, it wouldn’t even matter if you didn’t care about me, because I’m in love with you Lizzie, and I always will be, always, and that’s why I’m so devoted, that’s why I care so much. I love you so much that you’re my whole world, so I’d hope I’d be devoted to something that important, you know?” He sees I open my mouth to say something, holds up his hand and continues talking. “And Lizzie, I don’t know why I love you, all I know is that I have ever since I first saw you, and I fully intend to keep loving you until I die, and into heaven – if I make it there – too.”
I start to laugh through my tears and choke, “You honestly think you won’t make it into heaven? Luke, if anyone’s heaven-worthy, it’s you for sure. You’re so genuinely good that God would stupid not to take you. If anything, I’m not the one not going to heaven, considering I’m the one who broke your heart, gave you nothing and actually wanted to kill you earlier.”
“Only because we were both going to die!” Luke shoots back hotly, anger coming from his voice and eyes that quickly fades away and is replaced by more quiet sympathy. “Lizzie, I know you, and you would never think about killing me unless it was part of our plan, like it was, or unless you thought you were helping me or doing me a favor.” I nod my head reluctantly, knowing that, fortunately and unfortunately, what he says is true. “And Lizzie,” he begins, cupping my chin gently with one hand, “you would make it into heaven just as quickly as I would because you would give everything for a cause – or a person – you believe in. When I managed soccer freshman year, I saw the way you sacrificed yourself for the team, for the goal. It didn’t matter if you got hurt; all that mattered was that you scored and won the game. By the way, you totally should have been on varsity freshman year,” he adds, and I smile slightly through my sadness. “After all, you played for the Junior National team that year, right? And if you’re good enough to play almost-Olympic level soccer, then I’d say you’re definitely good enough to make Elizabeth High School’s varsity team, considering that we’re no soccer power.” Luke has a way of making me instantly feel better, no matter what has just happened or what horrible danger is facing us. When I’m with Luke, it seems like the only thing that matters is the present, that the past and future just fade away into oblivion for a few minutes, and this relief from the demons of the past and the monsters of the future is probably the only thing keeping me sane at this point.
“Luke, I still don’t know how you do it.” I wipe away my tears with the back of my hand and touch his face gently, feeling the warmth of his skin underneath my fingers and desperately hoping that he won’t lose that warmth soon.
“Do what?” He grabs my hand gently and kisses it as he grins at me, his eyes twinkling in the moonlight.
“I still don’t know how you keep up with me, put up with me and love me when I don’t love you. It’s more than incredibly exhausting, since every second must drain you to fatigue.” I look up at him and see that something in his gaze has changed greatly. There again is that aching in his eyes and his voice, and I know I’ve blown it big time again.
“Lizzie,” he begins, his voice a hushed whisper, and already I can see the pain overflowing from his expression and hear it bubbling over in his voice. “I thought you said that you weren’t faking with me, at the dance earlier.” His eyes search my face for any emotion or reaction that would confirm or deny that.
I pause, my breath catching in my throat, and look him in the eye to see that unmistakable hurt there again. I can’t tell him about those kisses where I felt something, I just can’t, because I don’t know if what I felt was real or just me convincing myself I love him out of sheer desperation. So, instead of pouring my heart out to him and telling him I love him, which would be the decent thing to do even though I’d be lying, I tell him, “Luke, that was damage control. That was what Rush wanted me to say, that was what I had to say to keep my family and friends alive. I know, I know, I’ve betrayed you again – I do that a lot it seems – but I had to Luke, I had to. I owe it to the people I love to keep them safe and to myself to not have to deal with being responsible for their deaths too.” Luke nods his head in defeat, clearing his throat with some difficulty and dropping his gaze to the floor. I feel the tears begin to well up in my eyes again but I hold them back this time, since me crying two times in one night would be very uncharacteristic and disappointing too.
After a long while of me sitting there thinking that I’m a horrible person because I don’t love Luke when he loves me with his all and him probably thinking about how I’m a horrible person too, Luke asks me quietly, “Lizzie, can I stay here with you for the night?”
“Of course Luke,” I answer just as quietly, looking up at him and being struck by how much he reminds me of a little boy right now. “I mean, neither one of us is going to get any sleep any other way,” I add, and Luke nods, his whole body seeming to slump as he sits next to me with his hands in his lap and his eyes on the ground.
I then lay down and pat the bed next to me to tell Luke to lay next to me, looking up at the ceiling, where the moonlight is slowly creeping its way across the white panels and turning everything it its path blue and silver. I relax a little when I feel Luke’s arm snake around me, and sneak a glance over at him to see him looking out the window, his eyes distant but still filled with pain. My God, is all I can do hurt people?
“Good night Luke,” I whisper to him, rolling over and resting my head on his chest as he continues to stare out at the landscape blurring by us, probably thinking that it’d solve so many of his problems if I were to fall out that window.
“It will be, because I’m with you,” he murmurs in return, turning his head to look me in the eye and gently brush a stray strand of hair away from my face. “And that’s all I could ever ask for, is to be with you, even if it isn’t real.” I see the longing and hurt in his gaze and wish that none of this had ever happened, that we could just go back to Elizabeth and continue our dysfunctional relationship where I don’t really know he exists and he’s in love with me but won’t tell me because he would want our relationship to be real if we were to have one. But I know that we can’t go back now, because the Triple Crown has changed us so much that going back isn’t an option. We’ve both had to murder or be murdered, act well enough to convince a nation so we don’t lose our lives as well as the lives of our loved ones and keep ourselves alive and sane while doing both of those things. Through all of this, the Triple Crown has stolen the definition of a ‘normal teenager’ right out of both of our vocabularies and has thrown it into a furnace, only to be recovered as a pile of ashes. And the Triple Crown’s trying to do the same with our sense of self, with our empathy, but that’s the one thing I won’t let it take from me. When I die – and I know now that, when it’s all said and done, I will be dead – I will die me, Elizabeth Eleanor Marie Lightning, with the knowledge that I gave it good show, that I kept the people I loved alive, that I accomplished everything I could hope for out of my death. I will die knowing I died for a purpose, and I think that’s more than other people get out of passing on. I guess that means that for once, I might actually be fortunate.

[Sonmi-451]

More added.

“Good morning, Miss Lightning,” I hear a voice murmur as I open my eyes, and find Luke sitting up on the edge of bed and looking down at me with a smile on his face. No trace of his sadness of last night remains except for the pain hiding in his eyes, and I’ve seen that so much that I might actually be able to stand it now.
“My God, how do you keep on doing that?” I ask him incredulously, sitting up, yawning and stretching luxuriously, then, completely on accident, look down to see my ribs sticking out of my tank top as I stretch. Maybe I am getting too thin.
“Do what?” There is no smile in his reply this time, as clearly he’s remembering that, the last time I asked him something like this, I took the remnants of his heart out of his chest and crushed them into a powder with my words.
“Get up before me. I average four to five hours of sleep a night usually but somehow you manage to get up before I do every morning.” I look over at him expectantly, hoping for an answer that I might actually accept, and, yet again, am struck by the sheer physical beauty of his eyes. On first glance, they are an ice blue, a nice color but not stunning or incredibly remarkable in any way; however, if you look closer, you can see that they are a million different shades of blue, ranging from nearly white around the pupils to a neat rim of navy on the outer edge of the irises. I find myself so captured by their attractiveness that I almost don’t hear what Luke says in response.
“I get up extra early so I can watch you sleep. Like I said before, I like watching you sleep and seeing you so peaceful and calm is worth losing an hour of rest.” He gives me a gentle smile and reaches out a hand to caress my cheek, and I relax under his touch, wishing I could just forget about the future and the past and stay in this moment forever.
“You know, Lizzie, I think I finally figured out something that’s been bothering me for a while now,” he murmurs after we sit in a serene, content silence and absorb the sun coming through the window for about a minute.
“Which is?” I scoot closer to him, so that our shoulders are touching, and hang my feet off of the end of the bed. I glance down momentarily and see that, in fact, my feet aren’t that much smaller than his.
“I think I finally figured out what you smell like, even though that’s kind of awkward.” He looks over at me for confirmation with a shy grin on his face, and I shake my head because I know that I’ve been trying to commit Luke’s scent to memory ever since the first time I talked to him, on the roof the night before interviews, because, at that time, I thought I might not get another chance.
“And what, Mister Gates, do I smell like?” I give him a smile, genuinely curious since, even though I have an incredibly sensitive nose, as part of being a wolf in a human’s body, I’ve never really been able to smell myself.
“I know this is going to sound weird, but… I think you smell like ozone. You know, like how it smells after it rains?” I nod my head slowly, a million worst-case scenarios flashing through my head. If Luke finds out that Lightning isn’t just a name, I might lose him for good, since learning that my whole human existence is essentially a lie might be too much for even him to take. In all of the commotion in my mind, I nearly don’t hear what he adds at the end, but I catch him say, “And, even though a lot of people don’t like that smell, I do. It reminds me of beginnings, of fresh starts, and I think that you can’t have too many of those, because there’s always new possibilities to be explored or new things to be discovered when there’s a new beginning.”
“Well, I’m honored to smell like fresh starts,” I tell him genuinely, thinking that it’s ironic that me, an immortal, reminds someone of new beginnings when I’m the opposite of them, the ever-existing rather than the ever-changing.
“Sorry, I know that’s weird, I just realized it and said it aloud.” He shrugs, a smile still on his face, and, seized by an impulse fueled by his diffident kindness and his general attractiveness, I lean forward and kiss him on the cheek.
“What was that for?” he asks me, looking pleasantly surprised, when I pull back, and I see that his grin has widened some. Good. I like seeing him smile, especially since he doesn’t do it very much because of this situation we’re in.
“For being one of the nicest – no, the nicest – guy I’ve ever met,” I tell him, then lean my head on his shoulder for a moment and feel him wrap his arm around my waist, and I laugh a little on the inside as I think of what Gwillan and Gruffen, my identical older brothers, would do if they were here and saw me with Luke. Gwillan and Gruffen seem to take it upon themselves to personally approve all of my boyfriends, since they’re both twenty, six-eight, two-forty and are going to ASU on full-ride football scholarships, but I think that even they would be literally speechless upon seeing how perfect Luke is. Well, I guess Luke would be the first boyfriend of mine that they would completely approve then.
“You know, I think my brothers would like you,” I murmur, getting captured by Luke’s gaze and not trying to pull away. Upon seeing his puzzled expression, I add, “They’re both twenty, six-eight, two-forty and going to ASU on full-ride football scholarships, so they take it upon themselves to personally inspect and approve all of my boyfriends, and I think that you’d be the first to pass without them saying anything bad about you. No,” I begin, realizing what Gwillan and Gruffen would actually do, “they’d probably grumble and say you’re too perfect and that I need to find a human boyfriend because you’re clearly not human.”
Luke grins at the last part and replies, “No, I think I’m the one who needs to get a human girlfriend, because you are clearly too… amazing to be human.” I feel my heart rate return to normal and remind myself that Luke doesn’t know, that he doesn’t need to know, that he never will know because one of us will die before he does.
I give him my best fake smile and he seems convinced, so I take a deeper breath than usual and answer, with complete sincerity now, “Luke, you’re ten times the human I could ever be, and nothing will ever change that.”
When his jaw falls so far open that I think it’s danger of hitting the ground, I gently close it for him and tell him, “Luke, you’re going to catch flies. I mean, if you want extra protein, just eat more meat at breakfast.”
However, Luke seems unfazed by my joke and responds, appearing quite stunned, “Lizzie, that part about me being ten times the human you could ever be, that’s the nicest lie anyone’s ever told me.” He pauses for a moment, a grin on his face now, and continues, “I really appreciate it, I really do, but I hope you know that that is a complete and utter falsification, since you are so much… more than I am.” He raises a hand and gently cups my chin, then leans forward and kisses me on the end of my nose. “Every day, every hour, every minute, every second I’m around you, I’m always thinking, ‘How on earth did I get you?’ I mean, even though it was only chance – or I guess really horrible luck – that we had to do this, it just makes me wonder why God gave me this opportunity to be with you, even if it’s only for a couple months until we both die. And then I wonder if maybe God gave me you, just for a little bit, so that my life could be complete, even though it’s so short, and, every night, I thank God from the bottom of my heart for putting me here, for letting me get to know you and love you even more before I die. You know, Lizzie, I think that I’m incredibly lucky, the luckiest person on the planet, because I’ve gotten to kiss you.”
Now it’s my turn to be truly and completely amazed. I sit there in silence for a few moments, trying to reconfigure the thoughts that Luke has so perfectly blown apart with his statement, and just finally say, giving up on speaking from my head and deciding this is better left to my heart, “My God, why don’t I love you? Why is the only thing I can do to you is hurt you? Why don’t I-” I freeze, not knowing if I should finish the sentence as I had planned, with “feel something for you,” because that’s not true – I do feel something for Luke – but intermittently and sporadically, not the steadiness that he has in his love for me. I don’t think what I feel for him qualifies as love, and I don’t want to hurt him even more by telling him that I feel something for him, but that it’s not real, that it’s just a little crush brought on by desperation, because I know that would hurt him even more than I already have hurt him; it would be like me taking the powder that remains of his heart and stepping on it repeatedly.
“Lizzie?” He gently places a hand on my arm and looks at me in apprehension, his eyes clouding over with concern. “Are you alright?”
I stare at the floor, thinking about how I should respond. I want to yell at the top of my lungs, “No!” and pour my heart out to him and tell him about everything – about what I am, about Jackson, about my fake feeling – but I know I can’t. Luke’s got too much on his mind already, and me giving him even more to worry about wouldn’t be good for either one of us. So the rational part of me just wants to say, “Yes,” and never come back to the subject and never tell Luke about me or Jackson or my fake feeling and just, for once in my life, let everything be. But I can’t do that, I know I can’t; if Luke and I can’t trust each other, then we don’t have anything, not even the twisted, sorry excuse for a relationship that we have now. So, instead of answering and letting one side of me get the better of the other, I rise to my feet and walk out of the door without saying a word.

[Sonmi-451]

More added.

“Max, I don’t know what I did wrong,” I hear Luke say, and I press my ear to the door of the closet I’m in. Following my departure from Luke’s presence, I promptly found the most secluded storage closet on the train that probably no one else knows exists, locked myself inside and began to bawl my eyes out. I cried myself out within fifteen minutes and then just sat there with all the cleaning supplies, marveling at how bleach and mops make such excellent company for the lonely.
“One moment it’s perfectly fine – I mean, she even kissed me on the cheek – and she tells me she thinks her brothers would like me and that they’d probably say I was too perfect and that she needed to get a human boyfriend, and then I tell her that I need to get a human girlfriend because she’s too amazing to be human, and then she tells me that I’m ten times the human she’ll ever be, and then I tell her that’s the nicest lie anyone’s ever told me, and that she’s so much more than I am and then I just kind of told her how I feel.” I put my eye up to the small hole in the door and see Luke shrug, even though he looks like there’s a ten-ton weight sitting squarely on his shoulders. “And then she went off into one of her things, saying why didn’t she love me, why is the only thing she can do to me is hurt me, and she got onto another why don’t I, and then she just stopped. And then I asked her if she was alright and she just sat in silence for a little bit and then just got up and left. I’m trying Max, I’m trying my hardest, but I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.” The pleading and desperation in Luke’s voice makes me want to stop listening right then, but I force myself to keep my ear next to the door, since I might actually learn something that could help me face Luke again. If I ever come out of this closet. After all, it’s a pretty nice place compared to the world outside of it.
“Luke, you’re being incredibly self-centered if you think that you’re the sole cause of Lizzie’s behavior,” Max tells Luke in response, and I smile despite myself. Leave it to Max to defend me when I really shouldn’t be defended. “I mean, think about all the other stuff that’s happened to her in these last few weeks. She’s been taken from her universe to another one, had to fight and kill other children to survive, had to act in love with you to keep her loved ones alive and lost the boy she loved all in a matter of three weeks. I mean, that would be enough to crack many people to begin with, and add the facts that she feels awful about not loving you and that she knows one of you is going to have to die in the end… it’s not hard to see why she’s acting so erratically and stressed.” I put my eye to the hole in the door again and see Luke bow his head and drop his gaze to the floor.
“I know, Max,” he mutters, addressing the carpet, “but I don’t know why she feels so bad about not loving me. I mean, I haven’t done anything to make her feel that way, have I?” I hear the hope and apprehension in Luke’s voice and hope Max lets him down easy, since this could do with some sugarcoating or maybe even a nice little white lie.
“Actually, you have and you do, every day and every hour and every minute. I know you don’t mean to, but you’ve definitely made her feel like that, trust me.” This is not what I had in mind in terms of sugarcoating.
“What have I done – or what do I do – to make her feel that way? Because all I want to do is show her how much she means to me, show her that she’s my whole universe, but somehow I always end up hurting her. I just want to know what I’m doing wrong so I can stop hurting her.” I know that’s what Luke tries to do when he’s around me, but his sheer devotion and love for me just end up making me feel even worse.
“You hurt her by telling her things like she’s your whole universe,” Max says, then, upon seeing Luke’s incredibly confused expression, continues, “When you tell her things like that and profess your love for her, you make her feel bad that she doesn’t feel the same way, even though she wants to.”
“So I have to stop saying I love her to not hurt her?” Luke blinks repeatedly, completely and utterly perplexed.
“So far, yeah,” Max tells Luke, smiling slightly at Luke’s expression. “Just give her time, Luke. She’s being faced with a really desperate situation, and I don’t think she really knows what to do right now. I mean, between surviving and you and Rush’s threats of doom to her loved ones, she hasn’t had much time to sort things out and think. So, Luke, the best, most loving thing you can do for her right now is just give her time, alright?” Max claps one massive hand on Luke’s shoulder, then turns and leaves the room to leave Luke sitting by himself and me in the storage closet with my consult of cleaning supplies.
I watch as Luke lets out a great sigh and buries his head in his hands, appearing to be saying something under his breath. Pressing my ear to the door, I quickly pick up what he’s uttering with my incredibly sensitive wolf-ears.
“My God Lizzie, my God, my God, my God. Why is everything I do wrong? Why can’t I do anything right for you? Why can’t I just show you how much you are to me without hurting you? Why am I not good enough to do just that? Why am I so corrupt that, when I try to help you, I only end up bringing you pain? Why did I fall in love with you the first time I saw you? My God, I wish I could reverse that – actually, no, I wish I could reverse everything that’s happened here, and just go back to Elizabeth and continue on with our lives where you don’t really know I exist but I love you with all of my heart the whole time. Loving you secretly and seeing you dating my friends was a lot easier than this, a lot easier, because, even though I knew you didn’t mean it with them, you didn’t have to act in love with me and prove that me loving you was a fool’s dream that I should have never had. But here we are, Miss Lightning, here we are, me with a broken heart and you in love with another guy and us with a camera-made love, but maybe this is all we can ever have, these dysfunctional relationships. We hurt each other every minute we’re around each other, and it seems like that’s how it always will be, because I won’t stop loving you and you won’t start loving me, no matter how much you want to. We’re at a sort of stalemate I guess, but at least I know that, if you could choose who you love, you’d choose me, and that means almost as much to me as you actually loving me would. I know it’s not the same, that you saying you’d choose me to love if you could is a sorry excuse for the real thing, but it’s the best we can do, and I’ll take it. I’ll take anything you give me and hold onto it with all of my heart and soul because it comes from you, and you are everything to me. You are everything I could ever want or need, Miss Lightning, and seeing you and holding you every day is really the only thing that keeps me sane. Oh God, why did this happen? Why did we, of all people, get sent here to die? Bad luck? God’s vengeance or God teaching us a lesson? I remember you saying that you think this one’s on the stars, and I agree with you. I hate our stars for causing this fault; I hate Jackson he’s better than me and you love him; I hate myself for not being quite good enough, for almost making the grade. I hate everything about this place, everything except for you. I could never hate you, Lizzie, never; I’d commit suicide before I’d hate you, and so far it looks like that suicide part is going to happen, unless you get in my way in your foolish quest to keep me alive. Just let me save you, please, because at least then I’d know I died for a purpose, because I’ll die either way, you know. I’ll die to keep you alive and I’ll die if you die since I can’t live without you, so please just let me have a goal to my death, please. But, Miss Elizabeth Eleanor Marie Lightning, the love of my life, know that, no matter what happens, I am always yours.” His voice cracks and breaks off, and he rises to his feet and exits, tears streaming down his cheeks.
I turn to my company of bleach and mops, my mouth hanging open in shock, try to say something but can’t, and begin to cry again.