CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE —        Wishes, Wants, Desires ..

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          "I'm sorry for the late hour," Daphne deliberately tensed her jaw in hopes of her voice not actually bending to the undulations dictated by the obvious pain coming from her right hand. The pain had gotten a lot worse by the time they got to Dr. Cellgrey's house, yet she couldn't find it within herself to regret punching Sejanus, much as she couldn't bring herself to complain about her wound — unlike Coriolanus and his many needed stitches, her little accident would be easily fixed by a tight bandage and some patience.

"You wouldn't have made a home call if you didn't truly need my assistance," Dr. Cellgrey dismissed Daphne's worries with a faint appeal to his vows, tightening the bandage a little more before tying it up. He sighed back in his chair, dropping his hands on his knees. "I only hope you two won't be making a habit out of needing a medic every week now though," he made sure that through his alluded scolding he also threw a look back over his shoulder at Coriolanus.

Though he was curious to know how they each got their wounds that late evening, Dr. Cellgrey knew it wasn't his place to know such details, irrelevant to actually doing his job. And indeed, it was far too late in the evening to even truly want to place curiosity above anything else at all. The yawns he kept resisting were signs that he was missing the bed the unexpected knock on his door pried him away from, just about enough to be comfortable in silence of unanswered questions and even with leaving the two night visitors on his couch while he drags his step to the kitchen, to follow protocol and put on the kettle for some tea — though Daphne had spared a moment to insist Thaddeus should be there to pick them up soon enough.

The silence in which Coriolanus and Daphne were left was disturbed him deeply. He felt like he couldn't be trusted with a moment of introspection, not when everything that happened in that arena was still a visible stain on his hands — feeling like an intruder in Dr. Cellgrey's house had discouraged Coriolanus from asking to use the man's bathroom, so he was yet to wash his hands clean of the blood so obviously not his own.

"Did you fix the... decay problem?" Coriolanus cut desperately at the silence between them, clinging onto the only subject he knew they would have discussed first, had the night went according to plan.

He had had plans for that night: getting home after Mentor duties, taking a shower, putting on cleaner clothes and waiting for Daphne downstairs with invitation to extend that he show her their small rose garden on the roof. But all thanks to Sejanus and his idiotic attempt to kill himself into a martyr of sorts, he now sat besides Daphne, not only wearing stains of blood, but also sporting an unflattering disheveled look — his creased and torn shirt, yet to be buttoned all the way up over his bandaged chest, his uniform coat and pants of a red no longer pristine, but dusty and bruised. Fact was, Coriolanus feared to take a look at himself in the mirror because he knew he would seeing a frightened boy, dirty and pale, someone otherwise not even close to being worthy of the fantasy of marrying Daphne.

"I did," Daphne nodded after a short break which felt like a century of pressure had been added onto Coriolanus' chest. Hearing her reply didn't cure his uneasiness either because it so seemed that the topic of conversation he approached wasn't going to take them anywhere but back to the dangerous quietness he needed so badly to avoid. "It wasn't all that difficult," she added with a deep sigh.

"Good," Coriolanus nodded, so focused on keeping the conversation going that he discovered himself unsatisfied with his choice of words. "I mean, congrats—"

Daphne moved her hand over, taking hold of his own and thus freezing his words in his throat. She didn't look up to meet his eyes, something he was definitely grateful about, though to see her study the bloodstained state of his hand was perhaps just as vulnerable of him as having her read the fear in his eyes.

"Whatever you had to do in there to make it out," Daphne murmured over those words, aiming to keep their conversation private, "I'm glad you did it." Though until then she held onto his hand tenderly thanks to the pain seething behind her fresh bandage, in order to prove her point, she forced herself to tighten her grip ever so slightly.

For Coriolanus, it felt as if it was his heart she had squeezed by bringing up that particular subject he wished he could just ignore until it disappeared — there was no escaping what he did, but surely, it was only human to at least try.

"You don't know what I've done," he looked away from their hands the second he realized he blurted out what he would otherwise deem to be a pathetic response. He was all so very pathetic that he feared she would place him in the same bucket at the Plinth's, or even worse — below them.

"I know what you've done," she corrected him, not yet letting go of his hand. "You survived."

"You make it sound like I did the right thing," he shook his head. "Like bashing in the skull of a tribute was the only way—" Saying it out loud gutted Coriolanus with a hiccup of warning, telling him to swallow his words there or face the consequences of tears shed in a house which wasn't his own, thus reaching uncharted shores of new levels of pathetic. Bringing voice to what existed in his memory up until that point made it all so awfully real: he was a killer forced by circumstances, but a killer nonetheless.

Though she had trouble actually picturing Coriolanus get that violent, the sight of his bloody hands seemed only confirm his story for her. Daphne was shocked by how unwavering her faith in him remained, shocked to sense that she wasn't repulsed by the images his confession created in her mind, but instead endeared to hold onto him a little tighter, keep him from slipping into more dangerous paths where she knew she wouldn't be able to follow him no more.

"You did what you had to do," she restated. "Don't think for a second that I could hate you for it, because truth is, I would have hated you more if you let yourself be killed by whatever Tribute attacked you in there. You don't get to say you love me and then abandon me, Coriolanus Snow."

"Can you even still love me after what I've done?" Coriolanus shook his head and finally sought to meet her eyes. "Is my new nature not the very thing you said you despised?"

"Did you go into that arena by your own free will to kill them?"

"No—"

"Even if you did I wouldn't have hated you for it," Daphne interrupted him with such promptness that the nature of her answer was guaranteed to stun Coriolanus. "Killing those Tributes early would be a mercy, given the nature of the Games. But no, you weren't in there out of your own free will. What prize was there for a Tribute killing a Mentor again?" This time, she gave him no time to answer whatsoever, turning to face him until her knees bumped into his and then continuing immediately, "That's right. There was none. They attacked you like animals and they died like animals. Man defending himself against wild creatures is as old as it gets for instincts riddled in our blood. What separates us from the animals is being able to tell when we should rely on our instincts and when we should subdue them by all means necessary. Albert is an animal, he's a slave to his primal instincts. But you can and have stopped yourself from violence before. The gun and Birches. You think I didn't see that, but I did. You are not an animal, so I need you to stop with this nonsense and realize Gaul is the one to blame for the Tribute who you had to kill to survive, not you."

Her reasoning was sound enough to have Coriolanus return his gaze to observing the carpet of the living room.

"But I get it," Daphne sighed, allowing her hand to slip away from his. "Or at least I can imagine that it's not easy to take a life. Remorse is only natural."

"I've never felt more helpless," Coriolanus said, almost speaking over her. "Everything was closing in on me and... I hated it, I hated feeling that scared again, that alone. That Tribute, I hated them for making me feel that way. For a brief moment I was back in the war, but not in the Capitol, not anywhere I could hide or run, but on the battlefield, like my father. God, Daphne, I didn't want to die and I hit that Tribute as if killing them would stop this fear from growing inside of me. They were probably dead and I was still hitting them, scared that they would get up and I wouldn't be able to do this all over again."

"You shouldn't have been there to begin with." Daphne wished to reassure him even further, but before she could say anything more or even attempt to find the right words to let him know that Dr. Gaul will pay for this, a prompt knock on the door forced her to stand up.

"Was that the door?" Dr. Cellgrey called from the kitchen, sounding as if he had fallen asleep next to his kettle, something highly likely to have happened.

"I got it," Daphne responded promptly. She knew who would be at the door anyway and her expectations were met spot on, her eyes meeting Thaddeus' as soon as she opened the door.

"Miss," he greeted her with a numb expression which, unlike many times before, Coriolanus assessed from afar to have held a nuance of joy to it. He imagined it had everything to do with Gaul's laboratory being on fire and seeing as Thaddeus passed Daphne a labeled vial that she immediately pocketed only proved his suspicions right.

Departing from Cellgrey's home and leaving the old doctor to whatever hours of sleep he could still salvage didn't take them all that long, so as soon as they were both seated on the backseat of the car, with Thaddeus having instructions to take get them back to Coriolanus' home, he couldn't help but point out, relieved to finally have another subject to talk about, other than his moral depravity from earlier and the dehumanizing experience of having choice stripped from him, "I should have known you wouldn't make such a display of power unless you could gain more out of it."

Daphne chuckled, accepting this change of subject merely because she felt that if she pushed Coriolanus any further on the previous topic, it would do neither of them any service; with a bit of luck, she hoped her words would reach him after he's slept on it all. Nonetheless, the privacy of her car allowed her to get the vial out of her pocket and finally show it to him, an important first step in letting him know his consciousness won't go unavenged. "Any guesses on what this might be?"

Coriolanus paused from buttoning up the last two buttons of his shirt in order to take the vial and study it. Since the label only presented him with a scientific notation of whatever it was the liquid the vial contained, Coriolanus shrugged and returned the vial back to Daphne shortly after.

"Snake venom," Daphne explained it for him. "From the snakes that got Clemensia, to be more exact."

"Goodness, Daffy," his eyebrows knitted down, watching Daphne pocket the vial with a certain dose of skepticism about how that thing should even exist. "What could you possibly need that for?"

"Deaths without scapegoats turn into mysteries," she affirmed with a certain air of carelessness that told Coriolanus all he needed to know about what meaning she kept behind her vagueness. Now that his hands were stained, he looked differently on the idea of poisoning her family — he knew the toil it would claim on her. "Can't exactly have the dead be forgotten if they become mysteries now, can we?" Daphne reasoned. "Point is, Gaul is not the only one who can play dirty, and believe me, forcing you into that arena was dirty. She's trying to gain a counterpart to the blackmail I got on her and there's a lot she can do with footage like that to hurt either one of us."

Coriolanus' heart sunk into a bottomless void from where all he could hear were its desperate beats echoing to him a plea for reprieve. This can't be happening, every fiber of him was cowering before the prospect of utter perdition, yet even shivering, Coriolanus hoped to hide his shock by straightening up in his seat and looking out the window to his left. "What footage?" He dosaged his voice to come out monotonous.

"Everything in the arena is recorded, dummy."

More so than ever, that nickname felt like a lash hand just been whipped onto his bare skin. Daphne kept talking and the world kept moving around him, but Coriolanus' eyes glazed over behind the blur of tears. This is it, he thought, seeing not the dark streets outside, but his own reflection, staring him back, blaming him for being caught in the crossfire between Daphne and her enemies. I was never going to win the scholarship to begin with, he realized. The odds have never once been in my favor.

Upon wiping the single tear he blinked down on his right cheek, Coriolanus corrected his composure hastily and met Thaddeus' gaze in the rear mirror. "Can we stop here for a moment?" Watching as Thaddeus sought Daphne's confirmation in order to follow the request, Coriolanus dared only reach out and take Daphne's hand, reminding himself to hold her gently and not double the damage of a punch she threw on his behalf, "I'd rather not get home just yet and..." Having avoided looking at her, he finally made out where they were — thanks to Daphne nodding his way, Thaddeus had pulled over too. "It's a bridge," Coriolanus pointed out, letting go of her hand and hurrying to get out of the car. "We have our best nights on bridges, don't we?"

She barely heard the end of his inquiry given his unprompted hurry in exiting the vehicle. "Did I say something?" Left behind so abruptly, Daphne couldn't help but wonder of such things out loud, though she gave no time for Thaddeus to actually answer before she got out of the car too and joined Coriolanus, before the railing. He stared into the distance where the night horizon of the Capitol had returned to its usual pitch black now that the fire at the lab has been put out. It was quiet throughout, save for the murmur of the running engine of their car.

"What's wrong?" Daphne found the silence disturbing since she didn't know what exactly was wrong with her Coryo, only that something was definitely off about him.

He gulped down his surfacing thought of perhaps asking Daphne to help him out. Since there was no way he would be granted what he deserves after his academic and mentoring performance, not now that Dr. Gaul and Dean Highbottom hold that footage of him killing a Tribute, his mind begged of him to consider asking Daphne for help — any help — or at least Sejanus' family — it would be only fair for him to get rewarded for saving that idiot —, however asking her was out of question and asking Sejanus would forever cast an unfavorable shadow on the Snow's. He was trapped: no where to turn, nothing to do. Goodness, it felt as if he was still in that arena, as if he never made it out.

Perhaps asking Daphne for help would be easier than asking Sejanus's father for a reward, Coriolanus reasoned about as soon as Daohne gave him a nudge to remind him that she's there besides him and that she had asked him a question. But she's already done so much for me, that very part of him that she loved fought nail and tooth against seeking further aid. And I've done nothing for her.

"What is something that you want?" He inquired in return after such a long silence that Daphne was almost ready to return them to Dr. Cellgrey, to insist he take another look at Coriolanus' head — maybe he had hit his head too hard.

That question took her off guard, finally prompting her to furrow her eyebrows and look away from him. "What I... want?"

"Yes," Coriolanus confirmed, his tone telling her nothing more about what he meant. "Is there something you want to have or do, outside of all these political goals and ideals? A wish."

"Oh," Daphne responded shortly, deeply puzzled by a seemingly normal question; the banal was what they've never found discussing with each other before. "That's an unusual question. What—?"

"Just humor me, Daphne," Coriolanus cut her off with a plea, averting his gaze to the side when she tried to get a better look at his expression. He didn't trust himself to be seen at the moment; he was bound to fear the worst, that his eyes would still bubble some trapped tears and his bottom lip would quiver in that exact way that would tell Daphne how lost he felt.

She took notice silently of the way he was gripping the stone railing, the contact between his nails and that harsh material, the shiver of his fingers, and with a sigh, she straightened up, "There is one thing actually." From the corner of her eyes, Daphne observed Coriolanus corrected his slouching too for the sake of this revelation — he was most likely relieved to hear that she had something she wanted, though she didn't exactly understand why it brought him such solace. "But you'd be the only one to learn about this, so you'll have to swear you will tell no one."

Daphne, who would I even tell? he wished to inquire, but instead, he relief on only a solemn nod, "I swear."

Though she realized she hasn't actually dug around in that part of her mind for a while now and in anticipation of such a deep excavation, her ear ringing returned ever so faintly to warn her against poking at this sleeping monster, she couldn't back out now, nor could she fabricate a lie. "Ever since I can remember," she threaded carefully, "my mother had an obsession with cherry trees. Every night, the same bedtime story, about the same cherry tree lost inside a forest. Every day, the same plea that my father replace the olive tree in our house with a cherry tree. She was properly enamored with the darn thing, though I genuinely doubt she'd ever actually seen one. Each time she described one of these trees to me and my brother, her cheeks would grow pink and her eyes would fill up with light, as if she was a beacon ripped from the sun itself."

Coriolanus' heart broke insides its pits of darkness and perdition, but he still watched in awe. Daphne, how can you trust me with such delicate sides of you, with such ease? he asked, though he knew he would sooner die than break her trust, the one thing he had earned and he wasn't going to lose if he could help it.

"And you should know, I've always been into poetry," Daphne flirted with a chuckle, one that came hand in hand with a bouquet of melancholy, casting sadness over her eyes whose focused lowered to the street beneath their bridge. "Most people think poetry is a pretentious pampering of language, but I believe it's quite the opposite. Poetry is the supreme attempt to concentrate and purify language into an almost remorseless power to speak. It spoke to me many times and before I found my resolve better handled in the New World project, I kept myself afloat during the war by dabbling in my own attempts at distilling language. They were puerile attempts and I won't torture you with my deplorable verses, but there was this one reoccurring theme..."

A poet, Coriolanus humored that image of Daphne in his mind. Had he not been so desperate to find out her wish, he would have perhaps interrupted her to insist hearing how her thoughts took shape in poems; knowing how hooked he is most of the time on her words, he had no intention on believing that her poetry would be anything but marvelous.

After a moment of hesitation, she sighed through a pained smile, "A single cherry tree, trapped and hidden somewhere deep in a forest of thorns." Even at the mere mention of it, Daphne felt like she was transported back to that time in the hospital, with bombs still going off outside, trapped in a room where she couldn't sleep, much as she tried, because between praying that no missile hits near the hospital and being kept awake by her ear ringing whispering to her the secrets of the universe, she had no rest. "Maybe I was missing my mother, or maybe that's just how a child managed to make sense of a cruel world, but damn did it make me obsessed with cherry trees too," she attempted to laugh it off, but understanding it all too well, Coriolanus placed his hand over hers on the railing to let her know there was no need to cover her sorrow before him.

She took the liberty of taking a break to breathe before turning to look at him, "So I suppose I would really want to see a cherry tree before I die, if they still exist."

"Thank you," Coriolanus found it within himself to lift his heart up from the darkness and smile for her. Thank you for trusting me, he meant to say.

"Are you going to tell me what this is really about?"

This is me, he thought, making sure that there is still some way I can be of service to you even after I've got nothing left to me, not even the promise of a bright future.

"It's nothing," he responded instead. "I just wanted to know more about you."

"All of a sudden?"

"I've been kissing you quite a bit, Miss Ravinstill, and it made me realize I can always get to know you a little better too."

"And here I thought my kisses were good enough to have you lose your mind, not think through new realizations," she teased, turning away from the railing and thus beckoning him to do the same. Before Coriolanus could reassure her that her kisses were the best and he needn't even have a comparison term to know that for certain, Daphne inquired, "What's your wish then?"

To feel worthy again of the privilege that you are to me, his mind had a clear and coherent answer. After all, ever since their relationship started evolving towards whatever it was that they were now, something that he could, in an excess of zeal, call 'the dating stage lovers', he's been having more and more of a hard time feeling like he deserved being her one and only choice. Yes, he gave her a silent break from her dreadful ear ringing. Yes, he gave her occasional advice and helped her that one time with Albert. But no, none of that was enough to outweigh everything she gives him just by letting him think of her as his.

Daphne chose him, though she didn't have to — he wasn't the only available choice and she could have had anyone else with beauty and money like hers. She chose him though she could have gotten way more out of anyone else than she ever could from him. Try as she might to claim otherwise, Coriolanus knew that if only she looked, she would have found another man with intelligence, wealthy enough to replace him and count as an improvement. If only he would have had the money — then he would have indeed become the one and only match for her.

"You're my wish come true," Coriolanus admitted, that somehow being the single answer he could spare so close to the truth.

"Aha," Daphne didn't buy his attempt at dodging the real substance of question. "You're not getting away with some cheap romantism after I gave you a piece of myself I have never before granted to anyone else. Now," she lifted her right hand so she could grab a good hold of his collar and pull him down, a gesture to which he played along so she didn't have to strain her wounded hand too much, "tell me your real desire, Coriolanus Snow."

There she was with her liquid gold eyes, staring into him like there was something precious his soul held that not even he knew about. How could he not want to be better, richer, stronger — for her? If she was a prize to be won, he would abandon all inhibitions to earn her.

"I'd probably want a bigger rose garden, to honor my mother," he found himself confessing and even going as far as mentioning his mother, something that lightened Daphne's grip on his collar and lifted a burden off his chest that he didn't realize he has been carrying. Her hand descended in a caress down his chest. "Big enough so there can be roses there all year round," Coriolanus surprised himself by continuing that dream, "and we could still make sweet jam out of some of them without leaving the garden bare."

She took a final step closer to him and, to his surprise, she wrapped her arms around him, lowering her left temple into resting onto his chest such that she could still look at the dark horizon of the Capitol from amidst their embrace. "I can see it," she confided in him then, eyes glazed over, lost in the image he gave her. "Us," she smiled, "having a greenhouse filled with roses, with one cherry tree in the middle. Our little hideout for when governing gets too tiring."

Coriolanus took a deep breath — she smelled as if she had just walked out of that greenhouse, from amongst the flowers. "Are you coming over tonight?" He inquired then, managing to surprise himself much as he did her with his promptness.

Knowing that the Games could end tomorrow and with them, his family's prestige would sink into non-existence, it had finally dawned on Coriolanus that this might as well be the last night he could share with Daphne before she would be so out of his reach that he'd have to learn to satisfy his longing with merely the ghostly memory of her. His arms were tired, his body ached, and from amidst exhaustion, all he had left was this paranoid fear heralding doom at every step. Too much had happened that night for Coriolanus to find an easier solution to his problems than to prepare for the worst.

"As much as I wanted that at the beginning of the evening," Daphne sighed away from his embrace, surprised once again to feel Coriolanus' silent attempt to hold her in place, "I think you need your rest for tomorrow." She looked up at his eyes and could tell that one day, his pleas will be catching her off guard and from there on, she won't ever be able to refuse him anything at all. "Your little tribute is still alive."

"Not for long," Coriolanus didn't hesitate to drip pessimism into his words.

"Coryo," Daphne called ever so softly, her left hand climbing to the side of his face to hold him. "This system is fucked."

That's putting it plainly, he thought, resisting the urge to lean into her touch.

"You've seen it tonight," she brushed back one of his blonde curls that has been ruffled to shadow over his forehead. "You've felt it tonight, when those Peacekeepers cared more about a stupid Game than protecting us. People do not get what they deserve in this system we've allowed the likes of Gaul and my drunk father to create. But I promise you this," her hand caressed back to his cheek, "you will have a fair chance at that prize I know you desire and I know you deserve. Just make sure you win. They'll have to acknowledge your merit in the end."

"I don't deserve you," Coriolanus stated before he could filter himself through, away from sounding so relieved. She would help him, without him even asking her to. There was an image in his mind of all the debts he had to her — an ever growing mountain, piercing the clouds.

Daphne smiled, bashful before his comment to be urged to look away. "The system is fucked, but we have each other," she said then, her extended stay in District 2 having solidified in her mind that at the bar, she would have died had it not been for Coriolanus. "Anything I do for you, you'd do for me too. I have no doubt about it."

• • •

AUTHOR'S NOTE :   
      Coriolanus Snow learning the concept of "unconditional love" is honestly so much more heartbreaking that I thought it would be. This is a different sort of obsession than he had in the book with Lucy Gray, because unlike her Daphne is a Capitol woman, who's got all this power and who could have had anyone she liked. At the beginning of the story, Coriolanus calls befriending Daphne a privilege and as the story progresses and their relationship does too, thus revealing Daphne as the sort of person who loves unconditionally, he starts to realize he may be unworthy of this privilege, one that he has taken for granted. So instead of an obsession like the one in the books, this one leads him into a furthering of ambition immediately. ✨️

Sorry for the little rant, I had to let it out because this chapter was suchhh a tiresome one to write but I sure hope it was worth it.

Felt good to tease the title of the book a little 👀 hope y'all caught that.

Now, buckle up though, because in regards to Coriolanus learning unconditional love, that part of his character development is not yet completed until he is forced to enroll in the Peacekeeper program. Idk how to tell y'all, but his Peacekeeper era is about to be such a beautiful development for the relationship he has with Daphne, literally cannot wait to get there with writing.

Okay, this author's note got long, oops — but I am not leaving until I thank you all for the 50k reads on this book !! Thank youuuu ~