iliekrp | (no subject)

So, I mentioned before that I had deleted scenes from Flint's epilogue that I couldn't seem to work in, thematically. Well, it eventually turned into a whole thing on its own, and I finally wrapped that up, and here it is. I think that, aside from rp memes and such, this is the last I had to say on Flint. I was going to do a tl;dr character summary like I did for Twill, but I think I've said everything I needed to say at this point. I ended up getting surprisingly attached to this character, considering my initial premise was, "Lol, I'ma play an asshole, that will be fun.

Such tiny lungs, but so much sound. Flint had always had Rosa or his parents around to help him change the diapers or quiet the cries, but now he was alone with Gema for the first time and longed for the arena, the Capitol, any trial but this.

“Hush little baby don’t say a word, papa’s going to buy you a mocking bird,” he sang, like his mother used to, but the baby only wailed louder.

“A la nanita nana nanita ella, nanita ella. Mi nina tiene sueno bendito sea, bendito sea,” he sang, like Rosa sang to her, but Gema screamed so loud her face turned scarlet.

“Please, please be quiet,” Flint begged, but she didn’t oblige.

Desperate, he sang, “What's a rock and what's a gem?”

Gema stilled, cries easing to a steady whimper. “Had to be that one, didn’t it?” She shuffled, screwed her face up, ready to cry again. “Fine, whatever you want. What's a rock and what's a gem? How do you distinguish them? What's a gem and what's a rock? If you know the answer knock…”

* * *

Rosa had told him what happened when she dropped her daughter off, but now he stood in front of her inspecting the damage himself. A bad black eye, swollen purple, and a split lip.

“Who did this?” Flint never enjoyed killing, but he felt like he might enjoy killing someone now.

“A boy at school,” she said.

Flint didn’t know what a normal dad would do, but he wasn’t going to beat up a ten year old boy.

He was going to teach his daughter to do it herself.

* * *

“You’re the Capitol’s lapdog,” Gema spat. At her age, he was training for the games, thinking he was a grown up who knew everything about the world just because he knew how to kill.

But she wasn’t wrong.

“There are worse things to be,” Flint replied, not rising to the bait.

* * *

Flint was appropriately somber for Julius’s funeral, wearing a white button down and serious expression. He said a few words - nothing eloquent, just that Julius was a good man, a brave man, and would be remembered - and waited out the rest, his mind drifting away from the service, past old fences, across desert sands and glassy craters.

Afterwards, Flint decided that Julius was the kind of man who should be celebrated, not mourned. He sought out his fellow Victors, but Lyme and Brutus were uninterested, and even Enobaria and the other young Victors turned him down.

So he went home alone, pouring himself a shot of expensive Capitol tequila for each of Julius’s virtues - and two for each of his best vices.

But his celebration soured to anger, and he poured a shot for every moment that Julius would never see and every moment that Shale had missed by seeking solace on the open road. He felt alone, like he had in the arena once the pack split. It was an old wound torn open and raw all over again, but this time he could treat it with alcohol.

When Rosa came to check on him, she found him on the floor, sweating and covered in his own vomit, grumbling incoherently. She cursed him, slapped his face when his eyes rolled back, and finally managed to get him cleaned up and into bed. She refused to let him sleep, too worried he’d die, so she sat up with him all night, babying and berating him by turns. When he was sober enough, he swore he would never do this again, and though he claimed not to remember the promise the next morning, he kept it.

* * *

After the war, Flint Blackstone wasn’t hailed as a fallen hero. History would remember him long after he died, at best as a victim of Capitol propaganda, at worst as one of the villains.

If not for the Rebellion, he might have been buried in an ostentatious grave with a marble marker standing stark white against desert sands. Instead, Gema had him cremated. She didn’t want to leave a memorial for strangers to spit on because of what they thought they knew. The urn spent months on her mother’s windowsill beside a large fluorite crystal and a dozen smaller, but no less impressive, mineral specimens. Rosa seemed content, but Gema couldn’t shake the itch of unfinished business.

Once Gema decided what needed to be done, Rosa needed very little convincing. Jasper couldn’t make the trip, but Claudia gladly agreed to come on her father’s behalf. The three women piled into a rusty pickup truck with Rosa in the middle, cradling the urn.

They passed the last ring of piñon trees and arrived at el borde del mundo on foot. Two’s southern border, nothing more than a weathered old electric fence, was exactly as it had been decades before, when Flint stood here with Shale and Julius.

“Should we say something?” Claudia asked, and when no one began, she said, “I just can’t believe he’s gone. I never imagined him not being there, you know? He just had such a big personality… He’ll be missed.”

“Flint was a damn idiot, and I loved him. But he knew that,” Rosa said.

They looked to Gema, but she shook her head in silence. Rosa passed her the urn, and Gema walked right up to the fence, which hadn’t been live since long before she was born. She held her father’s ashes in one hand, her free hand grasping the fence as she stared out at the crater ahead, smooth and round and empty. She gripped the lid of the urn, but hesitated. It still wasn’t right.

Gema took a step back and, with two strong kicks, managed to knock down the fence post. She walked over the weathered chain links, out past el borde. Standing on the precipice, she opened the urn and emptied its contents over the edge, watching the wind take Flint’s ashes over the crater and into the desert beyond.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Oh my god, this is great. I love Flint so much and this is the perfect ending.

Thank yooouuu! I thought I might never finish this/figure out anything to do with it, since I wrote all the scenes but the last one when I wrote his epilogue, and I didn't know what to do with them.

This is so good 😭😭😭😭

TYTYTY!

Julius/Shale/Flint hanging out in that big desert in the sky forever now.

Perfect

Thank you!!!!